The Winemaker's Daughter, page 32
Regards,
Bob
The second clip from the Wenatchee paper, headlined: FS TO TRANSFER FIRE INVESTIGATOR, reports the results of the internal investigation of Leon Treadtoofar. The Forest Service found he had erred in his investigation, allowing one of the subjects to influence the outcome, and in the process overlooked key facts. As a disciplinary move, he would be transferred next summer to another unit of the Forest Service.
They watch the Italian Cup finals with Marco Provenza and root for Milano. Uncle Giacomo calls just before the final. They can barely make out his words, he is so excited. “If Milano wins,” he says, “it will be the greatest day of my life.” And how old are you again, Uncle Giacomo? “I will be seventy-five in November.” Lazio gets an early goal on a stunning header, a setup pass from midfield that ricochets off the bald head of their multiply pierced star. The lead holds until late in the game, with ten minutes to play, when Milano ties it up. Regular time ends with the teams still deadlocked. In makeup time, a Milano player is clipped from behind and rips up his knee. The injury seems to inspire the team. They score on a penalty kick, and it holds. The cup is Milano’s.
Joy fills every crag, valley, and village of the Piemonte. In Alba, people spill into the streets honking horns, pouring Prosecco over heads, strangers kissing strangers. Brunella and Teddy parade down the town’s medieval alleys, eating dessert four times, singing the Milano song until the sun comes over the hills and touches the Tanaro River with the color of victory. Their late sleep is broken by a bang on the door in early afternoon. It is Marco Provenza, pale and breathless.
“Giacomo is dead!”
“Are you sure?”
“They found him wrapped in Milano banners, early this morning.”
“Killed?”
“No, they think heart attack.”
Brunella smiles. So many ways to die, and every man finds his own route to heaven. She makes sure that Uncle Giacomo is buried with the front page of Milano’s newspaper, Il Giornale—the entire cover taken up with words and pictures of the team’s victory—and dressed in the team’s colors. The service is small, attended by only a handful of people. For as long as the baby of the Cartolano family lived in the Langhe Hills, it is surprising to Brunella how few friends he has. She is happy that Lucciano Albertini, from the school, has made it to the funeral.
“You are a gentleman,” she tells him.
“For you, Signora Cartolano, I would do anything,” the little man from Naples says.
As they walk away after the burial, Brunella takes Lucciano Albertini’s arm and kisses him on the forehead.
“I won’t be coming back to school in the fall,” he tells her. “I’m moving home to Napoli.”
“Moving home? Lucciano, you cannot. You are my best friend in all of Italy. Why?”
“I don’t belong here in the north. I know what they say about me at school. Do not think I cannot hear them. They don’t like Neapolitans. They think we are like monkeys. I know. My only consolation, if I can be immodest, is that you should hear the way they talk about the Sicilians.”
“You must stay, Lucciano. Who will teach alternative-to-religion?”
“I’m too far from home.”
“Too far? Naples is just a day’s drive south. I am eight thousand miles from where I was born.”
“Americans are different. I never should have left Napoli.”
In the fall, four months pregnant, Brunella is told to come down to the Law and Justice Center in Torino at ten o’clock in the morning and to bring an avvocato—an attorney. The carabinieri know about the window, Teddy says. They will kick us out of Italy. They know we never checked in with them, have stayed past the length of a tourist visa, and are getting ready to bring a bambino into Italy without sufficient evidence of long-term employment. They will deport us, surely. Maybe jail.
When Brunella and Teddy arrive at the Law and Justice Center without an avvocato, the magistrate is angry and Brunella thinks now they will surely be deported. We have a saying here in Italy, the magistrate tells them: He who has himself for an attorney has a fool for a client.
“We have the same saying in America,” Teddy says in English, and she tells him to shush, she will talk to the magistrate. She riffs for five minutes in Dante’s Italian on the perfect symmetry of Italian law, particularly how it protects old houses.
“Then you will appreciate what I am about to tell you. We have here the will of your uncle, Giacomo Leonardo Cartolano. He owed back taxes in excess of one hundred seventeen thousand euro. We have taken the back taxes. Otherwise, his will is very clean. Let me ask you something under oath. Sign here, please.” She gives him her signature. “You are Brunella Angelina Cartolano of the United States?”
“That is my name.”
“Then you are now the owner of the estate of Giacomo Leonardo Cartolano.”
She gasps.
“He left everything to you. And might I ask, Why no mourning dress? In the south a woman dresses five years in black for an uncle.”
“What am I supposed to do?”
“First, you pay additional taxes. Let me advise you of something, Brunella Cartolano: Do not try to dodge taxes, the oldest of Italian sports. You may have to sell some of the land, or you may be a rich American with money. Either way, it’s not my business. One more piece of advice: Be a good steward of your land. Remember, you are only a caretaker, no matter how long you live. We are done here. Buon giorno.”
The new owner of the villa dating to 1682 and the unkempt vineyards that produce a vino da tavola of unknown quality spends the first month doing nothing. She wants to fix the window. She and Teddy buy Venetian glass block and stack it to make a small unobtrusive window in the bathroom.
“Now you must wait for amnesty,” says Marco Provenza, who has been kept on because he knows all the secrets.
“Amnesty?”
“Every few years the government lets you declare your illegal house modifications. You declare, and you pay a fine, and then the window has the full protection of our cultural preservation laws. In that way, you are no longer a criminal.”
They get married on a Saturday in November just after the last of the Nebbiolo has been harvested and the Piemontese have started to slow down for the winter. The wedding is a small ceremony in San Lorenzo, the twelfth-century church in Portovenere. Brunella is well into her second trimester, but she looks radiant in a silk dress as white as the chalk cliffs south of Barolo.
“Memorable cleavage,” Lucciano Albertini says to her, and the comment fills her with pride. The children from her English class sing at the wedding. Lucciano plays the John Lennon song himself, on a cello; the alternative-to-religion anthem never sounded as good as it does now under the limestone shelter that honors the saint on the grill. Glancing at the burned saint, she feels Niccolo and cries that her brother cannot be here. She wishes Babbo could her see her now and wonders about his honor and what will happen to his creations in the coulee now that Roberto has sold it to a holding company owned by Waddy Kornflint. Of course, everyone wants to know about the baby: Do you have a boy or a girl or don’t you know: and if it’s a boy—ah, well, you are one of the chosen ones, and if it’s a girl you can always try again. And your baby will be Italian, yes? We need babies in Italy. There are no children. We have become too selfish. America is too violent. It’s all about money and fat people. You do not want to raise a child there, please. On their wedding night, Teddy curls up behind Brunella, careful not to shake the baby. He is no longer a kept man, he says, but the owner of a four-century-old estate.
Every winter the winemakers of the Langhe Hills hold a Christmas tasting and contest in the big castello at the end of the cobblestone road in the village of Barolo. This year, Matteo Rudolfo has invited Brunella and Teddy to be his guests. She wants to bring an entry of her own.
“I’m sure your uncle Giacomo left you a very quaffable vino da tavola, but we have only one rule at this tasting: It must be Nebbiolo.”
“S, Matteo. I have something.”
Miguel has sent Brunella a case of the Cartolano Nebbiolo. His note explains that this was the one Brunella’s father called Niccolo’s vintage, the last wine Angelo Cartolano ever made. The grapes grew on nothing but well water and hose extensions from the pond. The wine has been in oak for two years and has just been bottled. Let it settle, the note says, and then enjoy a long life with a taste of the coulee. When they try the wine, Teddy is unsure what to make of it, but he likes it. “This rocks,” he says.
Brunella holds a glass to her nose, trying to find the elements as her father taught her. Earthy, yes, as Angelo’s wines always were, though nothing like the truffle hint of the true Barolos. Tannic as well, but surprisingly settled for a Nebbiolo from such a ripe vintage. And for wine that has been in wood for two years, the oak is subdued. She sips, sloshes it around, runs it from the front of her tongue to the back, and then holds her fist in the air.
“Babbo was right, Teddy, Babbo was right! This wine . . . has a story.”
On an icy evening in December the winemakers march behind a banner down the winding main street in Barolo, past Christmas lights and shopkeepers who applaud the masters of the Wine of Kings, to the castello that holds many of the secrets from centuries past. The village is tucked snug into the hills, like a midwinter sleeper. Following a trumpet’s blare, they enter the building and make their way down three flights of stairs to a high-arched stone-walled basement. Off to one side is a room full of leather-bound books and boxes stacked to the ceiling with notations of vintages past. There, records are kept in meticulous detail—rainfall, monthly temperatures, time of harvest, volume of grapes—so that a winemaker generations later can find an account of what worked in a particular year. Then comes a blessing from the bishop of Torino, the most solemn moment in the ceremony. When Europe’s great vines were destroyed by the scourge of phylloxera in the nineteenth century, Nebbiolo alone survived. The Piemonte winemakers believe the fact that the grape lived while the plague wiped out almost everything else was a miracle, though they continue to debate if Bacchus or Jesus was directly responsible. For that reason, Angelo chose Nebbiolo when he started his vineyard in the coulee; perhaps he would not be able to craft a great wine, but he knew the vine itself would never die.
Three wooden tables are stretched, end to end, in the center of the tasting room in the castello. On the tables are the wines, each covered to the neck in a paper bag and marked by number. The vintners are to choose the ten best wines. This is the first year that an American has been allowed to enter a wine, and Brunella’s presence has generated backbiting and complaints. One of the best-known of the Barolo masters, Romeo Alettino, a twelfth-generation winemaker, scowls throughout the tasting. Allowing the American wine into the contest, he says, cheapens the event. He is a massive man, with four chins, a red face, and swollen fingers that look like little hot dogs.
The winemakers work their way through the samples, sniffing, sloshing, and spitting. They scribble notations on pads, exchange information, argue and cajole, speculate and harrumph. Brunella feels tired, carrying a baby now in its seventh month. She sits off to the side and watches the masters at work. After two hours of tasting, the winemakers begin their presentations, a chance to show how refined and developed their palates are.
“This wine,” says Matteo Rudolfo, who leads off the discussion, pointing to a bag marked by the number 18, “is from the 1990 vintage. It is powerful, and still very much in its youth. I give it my highest score.” He invites the other winemakers to join in the discussion of bag number 18. Most of them agree with Matteo, though Romeo Alettino says it is not a 1990 at all but probably much younger.
They unveil number 18 to find that Matteo got it exactly right—it is Barolo Cannubi from the spectacular ’90 vintage.
“Bravo, Matteo!”
The winemakers discuss three more bottles: a Barbaresco, a Nebbiolo from Langhe but not within the Barolo D.O.C., and a fifteen-year-old vintage that fooled everyone by the strength of its fruit. Brunella is starting to fret. Teddy is angry and can barely restrain himself. “These weenies,” he says. “What do they know?”
Matteo calls for attention. “Now I want your picks for the American Nebbiolo,” he says. The winemakers make apologetic faces to Brunella, some patting her on the head, saying “Mi dispiace” just before they proceed. The most vocal is Romeo Alettino.
“This, clearly, is the American wine,” says the three-hundred-pound Barolo master, his eyelids half closed, his stubby fingers wrapped around a bag-covered bottle with number 72 on it. “It tastes of too much oak. It has a juvenile quality, really. And there’s a cheapness. Almost a tawdry cheapness. Very American.”
“S, s,” another winemaker says. “Romeo is right. È vero—there’s a cheapness, I’m sorry to say. The fruit is far too aggressive, like it’s been hurried along. Typical with the Americans, always in a hurry. Mi dispiace, Signora Cartolano.” Others join in, piling on the insults, some of them sneering. Only Matteo and two very old men pick a different bag.
When at last the brown paper is pulled away, the grand tasting room falls silent. The wine that Romeo Alettino and his colleagues have dinged with a slew of insults is not the American Nebbiolo but a Barolo from one of the newer Bordeaux-influenced winemakers. The Spectator had given it a 95 rating.
“Impossible,” Romeo mumbles. “And where is the American wine?”
“Here is my guess,” says Matteo, hoisting the bag chosen by him and two elderly men. “You can taste the terroir, but it’s not our land, not the Langhe Hills. It is fresh and original, with much life ahead of it. Bring it back in five years, and I would be worried about the future of Barolo. A wonderful finish, some licorice in there. All in all, this wine has a story.”
“Matteo!” Brunella bolts from the chair, her belly so extended it looks like she could give birth at this moment. “Grazie, Matteo!” She kisses him, and he laughs while stripping away the bag to reveal Angelo Cartolano’s last wine.
“Congratulazioni!” says Matteo, kissing Brunella in return. “Gentlemen, our Nebbiolo has found another home.”
“A home?” says Brunella.
“S, s.”
In bed as a light snow falls outside the villa, Brunella cannot sleep. The baby is kicking at a furious pace, but that is not what keeps her awake. She nudges Teddy, trying to engage him in conversation.
“Is it time?” he says, sitting upright, glancing around the room. “I’ll get the car.”
“No, no, Teddy. Something else. We have to go back.”
“What?”
“We have to go back to the coulee.”
“I’m the owner of an Italian villa with a baby on the way and free medical care. I cannot go back to America, Brunella. I have nothing there.”
“We must. Don’t you realize what happened tonight with Niccolo’s vintage?”
“Now owned by a holding company of Waddy Kornflint.”
“That Nebbiolo of ours—it was not forced. It is authentic, Teddy. Didn’t you hear Matteo, the way he described it? It tastes of the land. What my father started, when he had just the pond for water, and this wine, which was made after he returned to basics—we cannot let that die.”
A seven-pound three-ounce girl is born on the twenty-fourth of January, three weeks early, in a fifteenth-century ospedale in Asti. As there are so few babies born in Italy, Brunella was given a large suite to herself and, during labor, was helped by three attendants, along with the dottore and Teddy. The infant is healthy, as ripe as fruit, the dottore says. Brunella can see Teddy’s face in the baby, the face before fire reshaped his features, and also the Cartolano nose. It will take some time to see if the eyes burn green. She asks the dottore for a small vial of her baby’s placenta. They name the girl Angelina Tedea Cartolano and make plans to take her to America in the spring.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
SHE SLIPS into a room stripped bare of pictures and stacked with boxes. It feels cold and anonymous, like government space. She stares at the empty windowsill—where Leon Treadtoofar once kept his lodgepole pinecone from the Yellowstone fire—and looks around for a place to leave a note. He has not returned her phone calls. Staring outside, she tries to phrase her words, to get it right, but the city distracts her. After their year and a half in Italy, Seattle looks new, wrapped in green and so temporary, everything made of wood and glass, oversize, under construction. The cars are big. The people are big. It feels like a city not far removed from the wild, with something growing from every crack in the sidewalk, the rhododendrons luminescent. It does not take much to remember why she put up with the rain.
“Help you?”
Leon fills the room at once. She moves toward him in the doorway, forgets what she was going to say in the note. She wants to touch him.
“I thought you left the country.”
“And I thought you were fired.”
“They don’t fire you in the Forest Service. They just send you to a place without trees.”
“So where are you going?”
“I’m being transferred to Oklahoma.”
“What’s in Oklahoma?”
“Grasslands. National Grasslands run by the service.”
“Aren’t there a lot of Indians in Oklahoma?”
“Not by choice.”
“Why not leave the Forest Service?”
“It’s family. I could never leave.”
“È vero.”
“What that?”
“Italian: ‘So true.’ ” She touches his face, the Nez Perce nose. He stares back, no reflex to respond, stares hard.
“I heard you had a baby.”
“A girl. You want to see a picture? She’s beautiful, Leon.” She starts to retrieve a photo.
“You never said goodbye, Brunella.”
“Why would they send you away?”
