The Winemaker's Daughter, page 31
“He’s Ladin?” says Teddy.
“No, he’s Bronze Age. Three thousand years before the Romans. Look, they think he was forty years old when he died.”
“What was he doing so high up in the mountains?”
In Bolzano for dinner, Teddy orders dumplings filled with meat and potatoes, which makes Brunella frown.
“You’re getting strangolapreti—that’s sacrilegious.”
“Why?”
“Strangolapreti—it means priest stranglers. Not a lot of Catholics in the Alto Adige.”
Teddy grins, summoning the waiter. “And a nun-choking ale to go with it, please.” He turns to Brunella. “Why save a priest? They’re all child molesters, aren’t they?”
“Not over here. Italian priests have mistresses.”
For five days, they look for the Ladin in the high valleys of the Dolomites. They start in Ortesei, following the river in the Val Gardena. They hike in early November sun, passing cattle with bells around their necks, grazing on near-frozen grass, and herders with felt hats and cell phones. An amphitheater of peach-colored mountain surrounds them. For lunch, they stop in a hut and eat sausage wrapped in thick slices of coarse bread. They hike another six miles in the afternoon. Brunella is intoxicated; at times she skips through the meadows. Teddy calls her Heidi and tells her to save her gymnastics for night with him. In the town of Selva they find a Ladin craft store, selling wood carvings and costumes, and a clerk who speaks German better than he does Italian.
“Do you not speak Ladin?” Brunella asks.
“Nobody speaks Ladin,” the clerk says. “Except in the museum at Vigo di Fassa. You want to buy carvings? The bear is very nice.”
“Somebody must speak Ladin,” Brunella says.
“Your can hear it on the radio. The Ladin have a station. That’s the law. But nobody listens. You want to buy a carving of the chamois? It’s authentic.”
At dinner they notice immediately that something is missing. The menu is German—sausages, wurst, schnitzel, and heavy beer—and the diners are silent, eating their food without saying a word.
“We’ve left Italy,” Brunella says. “No Italian could ever eat in such deathly silence.”
When they reach Vigo di Fassa, they find a woman who speaks fluent Ladin, which she explains is not a dialect but a distinct Romance language, born out of the conquerors’ Latin and the natives’ Rhaetian. The Ladin lived through many invasions and held on, the woman says, because they could hide in the mountains. This has been their home for almost two thousand years. The hardest time was the Great War, when so many battles were fought in the Dolomites.
“My father lost two uncles in the Dolomites,” Brunella says.
“These mountains have seen much sorrow.”
“And whose side were the Ladin on?”
“They did not care who won the war, Italians or Austrians. It’s all the same. They just wanted to be left alone.”
“Do they live somewhere—a central part of a village? Can we visit them?”
The woman laughs. “How long have you been in the Dolomites?”
“A couple of days.”
“The Ladin are all around you in these valleys. You have been among them. You would never know unless it was festa and they were in costume. Some still grow millet and oats and make cheese. But they are dying out.”
“Like the salmon fishermen of Puget Sound,” Brunella says.
“I do not know about fishermen,” the woman says.
“And what keeps them alive?”
“The government. We have subsidies for endangered cultures recognized by the European Union. It’s good for the museum. We buy new computers, and Windows 2005. I can get you carvings of Ladin bear, Ursus speleus; it’s very rare.”
“Where can we find the bear itself?”
“Here,” the woman says, with another laugh. “The museum is the only place that can sell the Ursus speleus carved by the Ladin. The bear does not live anywhere else. He has been extinct for a long time.”
Teddy and Brunella spend their last night trying to get up into the wildest part of the Dolomites. They want to find a place without cable cars, trams, chairlifts, or roads, but they are told it is not possible. They hike nearly ten miles to a hut, a rifugio with a close-up view of Marmolada, the highest of the Dolomite peaks on the Italian side of the border. It changes colors with the light, glowing strongest at dusk. They are fed a stew of game and mountain herbs, potatoes and dumplings, which they eat at a table with four other people. The person who runs the hut, an Italo-Austrian named Herman, knows everything about the Dolomites and is a good cook and companion.
“Where is the wilderness?” Brunella asks him after dinner, sipping an Alto Adige grappa in front of the fire.
Herman scrunches up his nose. “What is wilderness, selva ?”
“No, selva is forest.” She tries to explain. “Like . . . in the American West, where I come from. The mountains as they always were, a place where you might be the first person to set foot. Wilderness. Come si dici in Italiano? ”
Herman says there is no word in Italian for wilderness.
They spend the winter in the Piemonte apartment of Uncle Giacomo, trying to build a life. Brunella gets a job teaching English to sixth graders at the scuola in Alba, while Teddy tries to learn Italian. The schoolboys are very rough, not paying attention, always up to tricks. One day it’s glue on the seat, which prompts a girl to cry all morning. The principal sends the girl home; the boy stays. Ah, the ragazzi, you know how it is, Signora Cartolano; their mammas will talk to them. Another day it’s a luncheon prank, when two boys put food coloring in the fettucine sauce, turning it blue. The cook is admonished; the two boys are patted on the head. You know how it is with ragazzi, Signora Cartolano, just let it be. We have no children left in our country—we’re not producing enough to sustain Italy—so you must be lenient. Brunella sits in on religion class, fascinated that the public schools would teach the subject. It is broad and traditional, a snooze. The alternative, the class a student can opt to take instead of religion, has only a handful of children and is taught by a little man from Naples, Lucciano Albertini, who is dressed in a meticulous suit and silk tie at all times. They listen one day to the John Lennon song “Imagine” and deconstruct the lyrics. Another day the children are taught how to read road signs on the autostrada; the one that looks like men shoveling poop, Lucciano says, means road construction, which gets a good laugh from the students of the alternative-to-religion class. So practical, Brunella tells Lucciano.
The apartment is always cold, but Brunella and Teddy do not complain. They have no phone, but to Brunella’s surprise she does not miss it. Uncle Giacomo’s calls are routed through Marco Provenza. Everyone in Italy has a phone planted in one ear, talking in restaurants, in church, on scooters. The FedEx packages arrive from Houston and Seattle, always legal documents, the dense, verbless prose communicating liens placed and threats soon to be executed and dire consequences for parties of the second part. Roberto speaks to his sister only through his attorneys, trying to clear the strands leftover so he can complete the sale of the estate to the lawyer from California. For now, the Cartolano homestead is empty except for Miguel, who stays on, paid by Roberto to keep the vineyard going. Brunella waits, with forced detachment, for news from the Forest Service. She is anxious for Leon’s final report to see where her father has ended up in the government narrative and what became of Kosbleau. With Angelo dead, there is no witness to Kosbleau’s scheming. And the only witness to what happened during the fire is the man who shares Brunella’s bed.
Teddy and Giovanni continue to run, even during the winter months. The Alps seem close enough to be on top of them, but the snow rarely sticks around the lowlands. It’s cold and dry. Teddy can almost run a five-minute mile. He and Giovanni do sprint work at the indoor track in Torino, alternating that with long runs in the valley between Alba and Asti. After his runs, Teddy returns home as if riding a carpet on helium, kissing Brunella all over. He is beyond pain.
“Those are the endorphins in you speaking,” Brunella says.
“I thought you said it was a way to get closer to God.”
“Knowledge is the great spoiler of mystery,” she says.
Milano, Roma, and Lazio fight it out for the cup in the second half of the season. Napoli was in contention but they have fallen back. Brunella’s friend at school, Lucciano Albertini, is crushed when Napoli loses three in a row. Behind his back, the other teachers make fun of Lucciano. He’s dark and short, and you know, Signora Cartolano, how the Neapolitans are, a little lazy, a little slow; maybe you should watch your purse. See how he’s dressed with the silk tie and the jacket every day, like a pimp. The Neapolitans, some of them, are as bad as Gypsies, Signora Cartolano. You must keep your distance. You’ve seen the prostitutes along the road. They are Neapolitans or Africans. You can tell by the smell.
The first hint of spring arrives at the end of February, with the almond trees pink-flowering and fragrant, and the hated Lazio team on top in the standings. Teddy and Brunella become soccer fans, in part because hatred of Lazio has seeped into them by sports osmosis, and in part because they are not looking forward to Uncle Giacomo’s return, should Milano not make the final. They have their unfinished projects. The toilet is an ongoing disaster. First, they had to unblock the pipes, then fix the pump. And a septic tank dating to the Great War has split a seam and come gurgling to the surface. In a rage one day, Teddy pulls at the chain and it breaks off a ceramic piece at the base of the overhead toilet tank. He throws the piece at the wall and it bounces, shattering the window.
“Now what have you done?” Marco Provenza says.
“It’s only a window. I’ll go into town. It can’t be hard to fix.”
“You must get a permit from the government first. They can arrest you if you go ahead without the permit. And the carabinieri; surely they will be called. You are on the edge of some very serious trouble, my friend. Take a nap. Take many naps. And then forget about it. You can always shit in the woods.”
Brunella spends three days in five permit offices in Alba, showing progressively more leg as she moves through the Piemonte bureaucracy. Uncle Giacomo’s house dates to 1682, she is told in the historic preservation office. It has Savoy influences, some touches from the Napoleonic era, a room added during the Risorgimento—the rebirth. You would think all of Italy’s glorious past was coursing through Uncle Giacomo’s dump. It cannot be altered in any way without grave consequences, Signora Cartolano.
“Signorina, per favore,” she says, hiking the skirt even more, “are we talking about the same place?”
“S, s, it’s all here in the books.”
“I just need to replace a window.”
“It is not a window you are replacing, Signora Cartolano; it is a fragment of history.”
“Signorina, per favore.”
They hammer plywood over the opening and wait, all spring, for a permit to come through on Uncle Giacomo’s bathroom window.
She opens the latest FedEx envelope and finds a single page— handwritten—from Roberto. This time, no legal papers, no lawyerly summons, just a simple note:
Brunella:
I remain deeply hurt by your insinuations and your overt hatred of me, but we have some business that needs immediate attention. The buyer has withdrawn. He could not wait out the uncertainty of Father’s estate as it winds though the legal process. In his place we have a new buyer from Seattle. I have yet to meet him, but he has offered to pay twice what our gentleman from San Francisco offered. That’s right, twice! Our senior water rights are now worth a fortune because of a new government buyout program. In fact, the water on Father’s property may be worth more than the vines, or so I’m told. I can’t imagine how you’re getting by or what you’re doing over there with Flax, or if you even receive my many urgent summons. But this offer is nothing to walk away from. It would make you financially secure for life. I’ve enclosed a clipping about the Indian from the Forest Service. Most interesting!
Cordial regards,
Bob
The clipping is from the Wenatchee paper, headlined FS INTERNAL PROBE OF FIRE INVESTIGATOR HEATS UP. Leon Treadtoofar is under investigation, the story says, because his work on the Johnny Blackjack fire may have been compromised by his closeness to one of the subjects.
In the late afternoons, home from her teaching job, Brunella walks the Barolo vineyards, knocking on doors, introducing herself, trying to pry some secrets of the grape from the clannish men who make the wine. Always the men. She becomes friends with Matteo Rudolfo, a thickset vintner with dancing eyes. His family has been making wine since the 1870s, when Barolo came of age in the courts of Europe, which he says is not very long in the story of wine. In Pliny the Elder’s natural history, he tells her, the Roman wrote of a climbing vine in the Piemonte that grew in the fog. He places his hand over hers, tightens it.
“And I know of your father,” says Matteo Rudolfo. “From what I’ve heard, Angelo Cartolano has done great things in America.”
She cannot help but like Matteo, for no one else among the Piemontese has shown respect for the Cartolano name. They know only the old bachelor, Giacomo, the roustabout with his untended vines and ramshackle villa; few connect Brunella to the Nebbiolo from the American West. On Matteo’s land is a catch-basin pond, just like the one Angelo built in the coulee. Matteo says his grapes rely on water from the sky and the pond—nothing else. To force a Barolo by any other way would be cheating, he says. Sipping Dolcetto late one afternoon in Matteo’s courtyard, Brunella tells him her father’s story. Matteo jumps up several times at key moments of the telling, once spilling his wine. His grandfather as well considered sending the children off to America after Il Duce used the poisonous gas in Ethiopia, the bastard. And how did Angelo make his wine come to life in the New World? Surely, Nebbiolo could never find a home in such a faraway corner of the world.
“We have a long growing season, longer than any other place in the States. The sun sets at ten o’clock in July. You know how Nebbiolo won’t ripen if it does not get the long days. And Babbo has done a lot of experimenting. He innovates, following his palate.”
“We had our innovation already,” says Matteo, his face stern. “Now we have perfection, based on decrees dating to 1758, passed by the town of Alba and strictly enforced. I know my friends in Bordeaux and California disagree with me, but I know in my heart I am right. We have been making the greatest wine in the world for some time now, and one big reason is because we set standards.”
“You say 1758, Matteo? Do you know what was going on in 1758 in the American West? They thought there was a river connecting one ocean to the other. The Rocky Mountains had not been charted. And many people still thought California was an island.”
“If you’d let the Genovese continue to map your New World, you wouldn’t have had that problem.” He pours more Dolcetto for both of them. “You look so lovely in this light, Brunella. I can see the face of the Piemonte in those green eyes of yours. You belong here, yes?”
She returns to Uncle Giacomo’s house woozy from the Dolcetto and ravenous for Teddy. He is lying in the overgrown grass shaded by chestnut trees, reading A Soldier of the Great War, when Brunella crawls toward him. She uses her teeth to pull down his running shorts, though he continues reading. She works her way past the Nike scar and brings him slowly to arousal. Then she mounts him and rides in the last of the Piemonte light, bouncing and rocking, until she falls atop his chest, exhausted. Her eyes closed, she listens to the gallop of his heart and takes in the aroma that fills Uncle Giacomo’s fields, down from the Langhe Hills, strongest at the end of the day: jasmine.
“Does all of Italy smell like this?” Teddy asks.
“Only in the spring.”
She craves big breakfasts, lots of extreme cheese, aged taleggio and Piemonte robiola with the musky tastes, loud and over the top. She also visits the gelateria every day, sneaking out of school during the midmorning break, waiting for the shopkeeper’s gates to slide back, and then pouncing on fresh-smoothed ice cream. The cantaloupe-flavored one is her favorite. Her senses are alive like no other time. In the middle of teaching about common English adjectives—not so hard to learn, you don’t have to match gender, as a beautiful table is never anything but asexual—she rushes from the classroom and hurries down the hall to the bathroom to vomit. It is like this for weeks, the need for extreme cheese and gelato, the nausea at some point in the day. And in the late afternoons— Teddy. She wants him all the time. She wants him standing, leaning against the ancient rock wall outside. She wants him upside down. She wants him in the bathtub, glistening like a seal. She wants him in the middle of the night, when he is softly snoring. Nothing makes her full.
She will not drink more than half a glass of wine anymore, even the light Soave and Pinot Grigio.
“Are you—?”
“Yes! I mean, I think so.” Face flushed, green eyes lit. “Yes! Eight weeks, about. I saw the doctor today. A bambino is on the way, Teddy.”
“American or Italian?”
When school is out they count the days till Uncle Giacomo’s return, making the most of every hour alone in the Langhe Hills summer. Another note arrives by FedEx from Roberto:
Brunella:
The estate has finally cleared. You should be getting formal notice of this soon. I have become sole owner by default. As I predicted, the will from Father that you produced was ruled invalid because there was no witness. You can’t say I did not give you fair warning. You ignored everything that was sent to you and missed all four court appearances. The judge was extremely tolerant of your intolerant behavior. I have gone ahead and closed the sale with the second buyer. It turns out to be a holding company in Seattle for Waddy Kornflint. I believe you know of him from your work there. They paid us $3.7 million. I will try to make sure, despite your obstinacy, your continued absence, and your overt hatred of me, that you receive a share of the proceeds of this sale. Please see the enclosed clip on the Forest Service investigator.
