quilt. The pine boughs make a thick curtain overour heads through which moonlight prickles. He lies so close, nearly covering me with himself, as though to protect me. I love the weight of him. This thought makes me smile and I say the word, irony, out loud. Fernando says “Hi, honey” back to me. He is perplexed at my laugh. We sleep this way. We wake and talk some more, sleep some more until we smell, then see the somber violet breath of first light, trembling, blowing out the stars. Just a few at a time, a contained overture, until ecco, Apollo, shrieks good morning to the night, exploding what’s left of the darkness, firing up the sky in great hallelujahs of amber and orange and the fierce pink of a pomegranate’s heart.
Fall
6
Vendemmiamo —Let’s Pick Those Grapes
As we approach Palazzo Barlozzo it’s just seven, a touch early even for the duke to be paying us a call, and yet there he is coming round the back of the house, looking like Ichabod Crane. We walk up to meet him and, as a worried old papa who finally sees the objects of his concern all safe and sound might do, his dread slides into a scowl before it settles into peevishness.
“Buongiorno, ragazzi. Sono venuto a dirvi che la vendemmia a Palazzone comincerà domani all’alba. Io verrò a prendervi alle cinque. Good morning, kids. I came to tell you that the harvest in Palazzone will begin tommorow at sunrise. I’ll be here at 5:00. Be ready.”
“Great, perfect, wonderful. Of course, we’ll be ready,” we tell him brightly but shamefaced, trying to slur the edges of our mischief. It’s clear he knows we’d had a bout of trouble, and I thinkFernando is about to explain some of it to him, when the duke says, “Listen, Chou, the next time you want to let off some steam, take the road to Celle. It’s less dangerous. In trying to find your own tranquility, you’re disturbing the local peace.”
Without warning, this man who’s yet to shake my hand is taking me, hard, by the shoulders, kissing each cheek, saying he’ll see us both in the morning. It’s stunning not only that he knows we’ve spent an unusual night but that he can scold and soothe and threaten with a few words and a single gesture.
“Adesso, io vado a fare colazione in santa calma. And now I’m going to have my breakfast in sainted calm,” he says through wintry lips and assassin’s eyes, loping his way to the henhouse.
We try not to laugh until one of us begins to laugh anyway and when he hears us, he turns back and he’s laughing, too.
“Vi voglio un sacco di bene, ragazzi. I want your happiness, kids,” he yells out into the faint plash of a September rain.
W E HAD BEGUN back in June to ask Barlozzo where he thought we could help pick grapes. In my journalist life, I’d traveled much of Europe to participate in one vendemmia or another—in Bandol in southern France, on the island of Madiera, and once, farther up north in Tuscany, in the Chianti—to collect information andimpressions for my stories. Each time, the farmer in me was inspired. I couldn’t imagine living here and not being part of it. And more ardent even than my yearning for it, Fernando’s was fixed. One way or another, the banker was going to pick. But Barlozzo had been restrained about the idea. Did we realize it was un lavoro massacrante, a murderous work, that began each morning as soon as the dew was dry and lasted until sunset? He said that neighbors gathered on one farm, picked it clean, moved together to the next to do the same. He said that there were often six or seven or more small harvests in each of these circles bound by friendship and a mutual need for the simple wine that was food to them.
“Whose grapes do you help pick?” I’d asked, hoping the directness of the question would stave off more scenes of Armageddon under the still-cruel September sun.
“Usually I go to help my cousins in Palazzone, though now they’ve got so many children and in-laws swarming the
Fall
6
Vendemmiamo —Let’s Pick Those Grapes
As we approach Palazzo Barlozzo it’s just seven, a touch early even for the duke to be paying us a call, and yet there he is coming round the back of the house, looking like Ichabod Crane. We walk up to meet him and, as a worried old papa who finally sees the objects of his concern all safe and sound might do, his dread slides into a scowl before it settles into peevishness.
“Buongiorno, ragazzi. Sono venuto a dirvi che la vendemmia a Palazzone comincerà domani all’alba. Io verrò a prendervi alle cinque. Good morning, kids. I came to tell you that the harvest in Palazzone will begin tommorow at sunrise. I’ll be here at 5:00. Be ready.”
“Great, perfect, wonderful. Of course, we’ll be ready,” we tell him brightly but shamefaced, trying to slur the edges of our mischief. It’s clear he knows we’d had a bout of trouble, and I thinkFernando is about to explain some of it to him, when the duke says, “Listen, Chou, the next time you want to let off some steam, take the road to Celle. It’s less dangerous. In trying to find your own tranquility, you’re disturbing the local peace.”
Without warning, this man who’s yet to shake my hand is taking me, hard, by the shoulders, kissing each cheek, saying he’ll see us both in the morning. It’s stunning not only that he knows we’ve spent an unusual night but that he can scold and soothe and threaten with a few words and a single gesture.
“Adesso, io vado a fare colazione in santa calma. And now I’m going to have my breakfast in sainted calm,” he says through wintry lips and assassin’s eyes, loping his way to the henhouse.
We try not to laugh until one of us begins to laugh anyway and when he hears us, he turns back and he’s laughing, too.
“Vi voglio un sacco di bene, ragazzi. I want your happiness, kids,” he yells out into the faint plash of a September rain.
W E HAD BEGUN back in June to ask Barlozzo where he thought we could help pick grapes. In my journalist life, I’d traveled much of Europe to participate in one vendemmia or another—in Bandol in southern France, on the island of Madiera, and once, farther up north in Tuscany, in the Chianti—to collect information andimpressions for my stories. Each time, the farmer in me was inspired. I couldn’t imagine living here and not being part of it. And more ardent even than my yearning for it, Fernando’s was fixed. One way or another, the banker was going to pick. But Barlozzo had been restrained about the idea. Did we realize it was un lavoro massacrante, a murderous work, that began each morning as soon as the dew was dry and lasted until sunset? He said that neighbors gathered on one farm, picked it clean, moved together to the next to do the same. He said that there were often six or seven or more small harvests in each of these circles bound by friendship and a mutual need for the simple wine that was food to them.
“Whose grapes do you help pick?” I’d asked, hoping the directness of the question would stave off more scenes of Armageddon under the still-cruel September sun.
“Usually I go to help my cousins in Palazzone, though now they’ve got so many children and in-laws swarming the
Similar Books
