“That food needs to last us until the summer. If we feast now we’ll starve later.”

“But—”

“It was even worse when I was a boy. On the mornings when the bread was baked, the smell was enough to drive me mad. All that fresh bread, loaves and loaves of it, but Mamma could only give us a little slice each. It was never enough to take away the hunger.”

“But you grow the wheat yourselves, and you have your own bread oven—”

“We can’t afford to fire the oven more than once a week. And most of the wheat goes to pay the ammassi.”

“Can’t we just buy bread? There’s a bakery in the village.” She shouldn’t be nagging at him like this, but it made so little sense to her.

“We could, but we also have to buy things like fresh seed and tools, fabric for Rosa to make our clothes, shoes when ours are too worn for the cobbler to repair—and for most of those things, we barter what we do have. Eggs, the cheese Rosa makes, the ham and sopressa from the pig. There are taxes to pay, too—even the meat from the pig is taxed. And there’s the electricity to pay for, and the tithe for the church, and we try to have some set aside for the doctor, or for a funeral if the worst should happen. And still there is never enough.”

“I thought the ammassi was a way for everyone to get their fair share.” That’s what it had said in the newspapers.

“No. It means only that we’re forced to sell most of our wheat and potato crop to the government so they can turn around and sell it to the rest of the country for double the price. That’s what the government calls fair shares.” He covered his eyes with his hands, even though the room was near to pitch-dark.

“You must let me help. I have some jewelry with me. We could—”

“We can’t. For us to suddenly appear with money, with gold—it would attract the sort of attention we must avoid. But I thank you all the same.”

“My being here has made things harder. I know it has.”

At this he sighed. “My sister and her sharp tongue.”

“She apologized. And it is true.”

“It isn’t. You are helping. Your being here does make life easier for all of us.”

Now he turned to her, his body shifting slowly, carefully, on the noisy and too-narrow bed. A beam of moonlight, creeping through a crack in the shutters, fell across his face.

“I have to leave. Not for good. Only for a few weeks.” He had said something of the sort before, but she had hoped . . .

“I’ll be helping Father Bernardi,” he added. “And I do so with my father’s blessing.”

“Helping in what way?”