He listened for a moment. Orders, they sounded like, but there was a bizarre joyful tone to the words. Sweat dripped from his face and neck. He couldn’t stop himself from crawling forward, very very slowly, barely moving, then staying still, moving again, waiting behind tree trunks, behind large stones, staying as low as he could.
Eventually, he reached the point where, if he raised his head slightly, he could see the roof of the manor house, then, moving a little farther forward, the roof of the barn. Then the walls of both buildings, then the courtyard. At first, the scene below him made no sense. A German truck pulling away from the barn with what looked to be eight or ten cases of wine in its bed. Four soldiers who almost seemed to be celebrating a holiday. Until he saw them go into the manor house, and then appear again carrying various objects—an upholstered chair, a painting, a beautiful ceramic serving bowl—he wondered if the war had ended and they’d come to celebrate with the locals.
He watched. Four men going in and out of the manor house. One of them seemed to be in charge and directed others to load the stolen objects onto the bed of the truck in a certain way. The painting here, the bowl there, lamps over there, wrapped in beautiful quilts. Finally, the truck bed was nearly full—just enough room left for the soldiers to climb in. The man who seemed to be in charge disappeared through the front door, remained in the house for a minute or two, searching for a final treasure, Carlo supposed, then came hurrying back out again, empty-handed. For another minute they all stood silently in the courtyard beside the loaded truck. And then, to his horror, Carlo saw a puff of smoke come out of the open front door, then a tongue of flame licking out one of the first-floor windows. Two more minutes and there was smoke and flames everywhere. Windows were bursting open, glass shattering and tinkling. The men backed the truck away a short distance and stood there cheering hatefully every time there was a small explosion inside, or a larger tongue of flame showing at one of the windows. Soon he could hear the sound of the inferno, a subdued roar beyond the manor house walls. The soldiers backed the truck up farther, and he wondered if they were about to set fire to the barn, too. Then a piece of the tile roof collapsed, and a thick column of black smoke poured up and out through the hole. A huge cheer. Flames were coming out of every window, and suddenly the entire main roof of the manor house collapsed and caused smoke to puff out to the sides like the dirty exhalation of a sinful giant. One final cheer and the men were climbing into the loaded truck and it was slowly making its way south, off the property, through the gate there and over a rise. Gone.
Carlo waited a few minutes, then pushed himself forward and sat with his back against an oak tree, staring at the manor house as it burned. After the better part of an hour the flames could no longer be seen, but the entire roof was gone, wisps of smoke still leaking out the windows. Vittoria and her father and Paolo and Enrico and the servants and workers were dead, he guessed, dead or captured. Or maybe, if they’d had enough warning, they’d gone off somewhere and were safe. He felt that the last ounce of will had been drained from him. A thousand kilometers of walking only to reach an empty property and witness this.
Eventually it was hunger that made him get to his feet and start down the hill. There might be food in the barn, surely there would be. Gingerly, watching the place to his left where the truck had disappeared, he went down past the vines, picking off a bunch as he walked and eating one succulent grape at a time. Standing in the smoky air of the courtyard, he noticed what seemed to be patches of dried blood in the dirt. No mule. The barns were empty—no delivery truck, no wagon, no horses. He went from room to room on the ground floor—nothing—then climbed the steps and found, in the workers’ kitchen, part of a stale loaf of bread and some prosciutto wrapped in paper. Dazed, caught by an almost unbearable sorrow, he took a glass, carried the food down to the keg room, and sat on a bale of hay eating the food, drinking wine from a barrel he’d never been allowed to sample, holding himself on the edge of tears. What was the point of living now? Where was he supposed to go? How was he supposed to eat? Stay there and live on grapes and vegetables and apples and wine? And what? Wait for the Nazis to find him, for the war to reach him?
When he’d finished the food, he wandered back and forth in the barn, slightly drunk, worn out, broken. He decided to go up to his room and see if he might have left some clean clothes there, at least, his almost-new work boots, a beautiful piece of polished white stone Vittoria had given him on his last birthday, too large to have carried off to war. He climbed the stairs, walked down the narrow corridor, the old boards squeaking beneath his sore feet. His door was open. He’d taken one step inside when he realized that something had been tacked to the door, at the height of his shoulder. He turned and saw a piece of paper there, folded in half. He tore it from the nail, unfolded it, and saw a strange sight. The paper looked as if it had been placed there recently, but on it was a sketch—done in haste, it seemed—not very different from a drawing Vittoria had made for him when they were small. He’d been eleven, she was eight. It was summer. The family had gone away for a month, and when they returned, she’d hurried over to the barn to see him, carrying a drawing she’d made of the house they’d stayed at near Lake Como. Her godfather’s house, she said it was. The four columns, the fountain out front, it looked like a palace. He recognized it immediately, but this was an adult’s work, not a child’s. He stared at it for a full minute before he understood that she must have left it there for him. Lake Como was hundreds of kilometers away, but that didn’t matter. Before leaving the property, Vittoria had left this sketch.