She looked again to the fields. Again there was silence; then her expression suddenly lightened. “I think Michelangelo was right; God didn’t create us just to abandon us. No one creates without leaving a portion of themselves in it. It’s not possible.” She smiled. “But what do I know? You’re the art expert. Buona notte, Signor Story.” She stood up and walked from the garden. Ross watched her go then looked back out over the vineyards. He sat there, lost in thought, until the green of the garden faded to black.

CHAPTER 18

“Il vino è il latte dei vecchi.” Wine is old men’s milk.

—Italian Proverb

The old men were always the first to arrive at the vineyard. It was part of an inalterable cycle of sowing and reaping. The vines stretched out their new green tendrils to the maternal trellis, the seeds appeared in small clusters, and the grapes grew and ripened. Then the old men would come, as if drawn by the smell of the grapes, like the bees and birds. They’d come wobbling up on their rusted bicycles a half hour before the harvest was scheduled, some an hour sooner. They had already had their coffees, or if it were a cold morning, their grappinos, and they would stand around with the other old men, swapping stories of past harvests, or laying out plastic harvest baskets in preparation, and waiting for the call to work.

The young workers, mostly students, straggled in right at eight o’clock or five minutes past, harried and tired, having woken only minutes before. The old men would grumble about the young people and their tardiness, but it was with forgiveness and done more to call attention to their own work ethic than out of actual annoyance.

There is a palpable excitement on the first day of the vendemmia, like that of men standing around the waiting room of a maternity ward. Every generation felt it, was charged by its electricity. They slapped each other on the back, laughed and kissed each other. Everyone was happy.

The harvest baskets waited next to the trellises, and the tractors were fired up and brought in line to the end of the rows, pulling large metal trailers that would be filled and refilled, bringing in a kilo of fruit with each haul—more than a ton of grapes—four times a day. Each tractor drove down a wide row lined with trellises while two teams of four workers, two teams to each side of the tractor, moved down the row with it, cutting the thick, woody stems, separating the grapes from the vines with metal shears, dropping the fruit into plastic baskets.

When Ross arrived, Eliana was already there with Alessio. She was wearing denim jeans, rolled up at her ankles, sneakers and a formfitting white T-shirt. It was the most American he had ever seen her. She couldn’t have looked more beautiful. Alessio saw him first.