Chapter 10 Elisa
Elisa
August is a month of joy and anxiety: joy, because the grape harvest is approaching and we get to see the fruits of a year’s work; anxiety, because of everything that could go wrong.
Parasites, viruses, fungi, hailstorms . . . and every kind of plague in the Bible and beyond.
Four years ago we had a tough time—like so many other winemakers—with Scaphoideus titanus, a sneaky little insect we soon referred to as Syphilis titanus, with the unfortunate superpower of attacking the vines with an incurable infectious disease.
This morning Foliero and I are studying some of the leaf samples he collected yesterday, which have jagged edges and brownish spots.
I’m examining them under a microscope so we can anticipate any issues like downy mildew; an increase in humidity can make it easier to attack the vine.
“So?” Foliero asks me, anxiously.
“I don’t see the typical mosaic marks, nor do they have the characteristic polygonal shape, delimited by the veins,” I say, observing the sample on the slide.
“But let’s collect some leaves from the same row and neighboring ones every evening to see if they appear.
We have to stave it off for a few more weeks to get us through the harvest.”
“May God give us a good one!” he exclaims, mounting his horse. “I’m going to tell Carlo and Angelo.”
Carlo and Angelo are two other winemakers who work with us. A few years ago, Count Umberto bought the neighboring land, so the estate’s holdings almost doubled, and we hired both of them. They could easily be retired, but they grew up working the earth, and they hate sitting around at home.
I’m afraid to say I get it. I can’t imagine spending my days doing crosswords.
While I am still observing the leaves in what I call the office—just a makeshift cubicle at the entrance to the stables—I notice a dark shadow stretching across the table.
“Mariana just baked some raisin rolls. They’re still warm. I thought you’d like a snack,” says a man’s voice behind me. “Elisa.”
I turn and see Michael behind me.
Hearing him say my name has an unexpected effect on me: My breath catches in my throat. Luckily I’m sitting down.
“Hi there. So do you finally recognize me? A little slow on the uptake, don’t you think?” I reply defensively, once I’ve recovered from my shock.
“I never could have imagined our first meeting after fifteen years would be so—”
“Grotesque?”
“Confusing,” he corrects me.
“I wasn’t confused at all,” I counter.
“You can’t expect me to have recognized you straightaway. You’re quite a bit—”
“Thinner?” I interrupt him again.
“Stop finishing my sentences. I was looking for a better way to say it, but yes, you have lost weight. Plus you were disguised by that apron and hat.” He holds out the raisin roll. “It has vanilla sugar on it.”
“Still incapable of saying sorry, huh?”
He leans against my desk, arms folded. “You’re the only person I know who would make assumptions over a pastry roll.”
One thing I’ve always envied about Michael is that he’s practically bilingual, which has made it difficult for me to win our verbal duels. That much, at least, doesn’t seem to have changed.
“I already had breakfast,” I reply indifferently. Feigned indifference, because I’m hungry and the roll smells like heaven, but I won’t accept it out of pride. I can’t let him buy my forgiveness with pastry.
Michael places it on the table in front of me. “Maybe you’ll want a snack later.”
We stand there, staring at each other in silence, me sitting on my stool, him standing with his hands stuffed in his pockets.
“Is there anything else?” I ask.
“I think we got off on the wrong foot,” he says.
“Certainly not my fault,” I tell him.
“We could talk.”
I stand up, even though it gives me no height advantage whatsoever since he’s still several heads taller than I am. “I have to work,” I reply matter-of-factly. “The vineyards are waiting for me.”
“Let me go with you. I’m curious to see Le Giuggiole again after so many years.”
“I’m going on horseback,” I point out.
“So what?”
“Have you seen yourself? You can’t ride dressed like some city boy in your suit trousers and leather shoes.”
“I’m not going to work in the city.”
“It doesn’t matter; you know what I mean. You’re not dressed for it.” I’m pushing him away, be it out of spite or as a defense mechanism I’m not sure. On the one hand, I would like to reconnect; on the other, I’m afraid to discover that Michael is no longer the person I used to know.
“I’ll change,” he replies, shrugging. Now, this is totally an “old” Michael thing: never give up and persist until he gets what he wants.
“You mean you brought battle clothes as well as suits and shirts?”
“Actually I have nothing at the moment. I left my suitcase in the taxi, but if things haven’t changed, there should be some extra work trousers and boots here in the stables. Or am I wrong?”
He’s not wrong. “Yeah, well . . . you don’t want to wear someone else’s dirty clothes.” I try to dissuade him.
“I don’t mind. Where are they?”
“In the bathroom, right here next to the office,” I relent.
He closes the creaking door behind him, leaving me alone with my thoughts. Or rather, my only thought: I’m not ready for this.
What will we talk about? Weather? Traffic?
I’m a literal kind of person. I’m no good at small talk.
I realize I’m biting my nails, so I quickly stick my hands in my pockets, as if Giada herself were breathing down my neck.
Of course that roll does look rather inviting, and it’s fragrant and warm .
. . Maybe I’ll just take a bite while he’s gone.
The butter and the sweetness of the raisins slide from my tongue straight to my heart. Delicious.
The truth is that Michael knows sweets make me feel safe, and they’ve always been his way of apologizing to me.
When he tripped me at the stream, he offered me a slice of peach tart; after tearing a page from my math notebook, he brought me a chocolate cream puff; after he used my bike without permission and bent the wheel, he gave me a jar of Nutella.
Come to think of it, he bears some of the blame for my weight as a kid.
They say the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach, but I’m no better. The first bite whets my appetite, so I take a second, then a third, more and more voraciously, until I devour half of it.
I’m about to take another bite, but the bathroom handle clicks, and I have just enough time to rewrap the roll in the napkin and put it back where he left it.
“Ready,” he announces enthusiastically.
“Do you still remember how to ride?” I ask.
He gives me a sharp look, with poorly concealed malice. “Do you remember how our fights always ended?”
“You’re in no position to brag, Michael. We still have an apology in play.”
“Don’t worry; I’ll choose my next move wisely.”
We weave through the vineyards on our horses, light-years away from the time we’d both ride Arthur—may he rest in peace—me in front and his arms encircling me to hold the reins.
“Not that it’s any excuse for my behavior, but I have to admit I didn’t expect to find you here,” he offers. “Plus you’ve changed a lot. I didn’t put it together right away.”
“And where did you think I’d be?” I ask him.
“In Milan. You always said you wanted to work in a publishing house.”
Ah, yes . . . sweet teenage dreams of yore. “Well, I changed my mind. Plus, moving away would have meant leaving my father.”
“Ah, yes, how is Alfio? I don’t think I’ve seen him around.”
“He’s dead,” I say, flatly.
“Oh, sorry. I hadn’t heard that either.”
“Aren’t there phones in London? You could have spared us a call if you were that interested in how we were doing,” I hit back.
“I didn’t call,” he admits. “But neither did you.”
Touché. I can’t argue with that one.
“End of play, ball back to center. But if it’s not too painful, can you tell me what happened? Was Alfio ill?”
“It happened twelve years ago, but he’d already been ill for a few years. He had heart problems and high blood pressure. I’d been helping him with the vineyard for a while, and when he got worse, I took over. Then suddenly he couldn’t get out of bed.”
“How old was he?”
“He was around sixty-four, but a lifetime working on the vineyard added a good ten years to his age. Luckily he didn’t suffer too much, less than a month.
” In hindsight, knowing he had so few years left, it was the right decision to stay, though the real reason I didn’t go was Linda.
Where was I going to go at eighteen years old, with a little girl?
“What about you?” I ask, to avoid sharing more.
“I graduated from Eton and then read economics at Oxford. I got a master’s degree in New York, and then I went back to London. My brother George died four years ago, and I took his place at Saxton & D’Arcy, the family financial management company, and now I manage the assets our parents left.”
The indifference with which he says “My brother died four years ago” does not escape me.
I heard about it from Count Umberto, but I pretend it’s news to me. “I’m sorry—my condolences.”
“I stopped mourning him years ago, if I ever was. But thanks anyway.”
“How did he . . . ?”
“Car accident,” he says succinctly, and I don’t press him further. He and George hadn’t been on good terms as children either.
The conversation dead-ends on George. I try again, hoping to be luckier. “And what exactly do you do at Saxton & D’Arcy?”
“I manage the investments of important people who are too busy to do it themselves. They put their assets in my hands, and I grow them.”
“Compelling,” I comment with a hint of sarcasm.
“If you look at it from the outside, it’s a fairly monotonous job.
Basically all I do is sit at a computer, looking at graphs or reading strings of numbers, though in reality I’m collecting data so I can make the best decisions.
And I can assure you that as the assets grow, it can be quite compelling. ”