Aaron Elkins: Dying on the Vine

“Yes, but what do we tell them if they want a definite answer?”

“You tell them what I just say. I have not yet made up my mind. What is so hard about this?”

Franco, the eldest, who thought of himself as a natural peacemaker and arbiter (he was neither) intervened. “ Babbo , all Severo is asking is that you make your decision before you leave for your vacation. Surely—”

“Is no vacation.” Pietro told him sternly, not for the first time, “Is un mese sabatico . I think about this thing on my mese sabatico . Then I make up my mind.”

But his voice had lost some of its authority. He was being evasive, even untruthful. The Humboldt-Schlager offer had a catch. Naturally. ( Non c’è rosa senza spine. There is no rose without thorns. ) The catch was known only to Pietro and Quadrelli. When the company had increased their offer they’d also changed the original provision that called for Franco to become the winery’s chief operating officer and for Luca and Nico to continue in their present positions. Now they’d decided they had no use for any of them; they wanted all of them out and gone the day the deal closed; out of the winemaking operation and gone from the living quarters. Otherwise: no deal. To Pietro, it would once have been unthinkable: family came first, above everything. But times had changed, and Pietro had changed with them—at least a little—so more recently, it had become, well, thinkable. Besides, with the money he would get from the sale, he would make ample—very ample—provision for their futures. So, there was nothing for him to be embarrassed about, anybody could see that. But then why had he not told them?

“ Why do I make my mese sabatico now, this minute?” he went on with a ferocity that stemmed from shame. “Because this is when I take. Just as the vines must have their set time to rest and replenish, so must the mind.” He glanced at the inexpensive Casio watch on his stubby wrist. “Now, if nobody got nothing else—”

“I have something,” said Niccolò, at twenty-six the youngest of the brothers by a dozen years.

Pietro, who had begun to rise, sank down again and looked suspiciously at him. “Well? Nico?”

“It’s something I really think you need to think about before you leave, babbo .”

“Wha-a-a-t?” It was as much a warning growl as a question. Pietro Cubbiddu didn’t care for being told what he “needed” to do, even when it came from his handsome, charming rascal of a baby boy, who was granted indulgences that his older brothers didn’t get. Besides, he thought he knew what Nico had on his mind, and he didn’t want to hear it.

“Well, it’s not about the winery, it’s about your will. I know you’re upset with Cesare, and I agree with you, he has it coming, but don’t you think he deserves at least—”

Just as he’d thought. “Don’t tell me what Cesare deserve or don’t deserve,” he snapped. “My will is my business, not yours. I got every damn right to change it any damn time I feel like.”

Every right and every reason. Cesare was his wife Nola’s child by her murdered first husband, Eliodoro. He had been an infant when she and Pietro had married; a few months younger than Nico. It was Cesare, even more than Nola herself, who was the source of the tightness, the hollowness, that now never left his chest. Pietro had joyfully welcomed the child into his family, treating him as his own and lovingly introducing him even as a boy to the rudiments of wine and winemaking. Cesare had taken to it like fleas to a dog. Like his stepbrothers, he had been sent off to the United States when the time came, to the famous “enology” program at the University of California. And, like the others, he’d lapped it up and been given an important role to play in the winery.

And how had Cesare repaid him? By betraying him. With his years of priceless training and experience at Pietro’s expense, and with no warning to Pietro, two months ago he’d announced that he’d accepted the position of assistant cellar master at Tenuta Vezzi, a rival winery only a little smaller than Villa Antica, and just fifteen kilometers to the north, near Rignano sull’Arno, halfway to Florence. There was no doubt in Pietro’s mind, and no surprise either, that Agostino Vezzi—spiteful, envious, old geezer that he was—had offered the boy the job for no other reason than to get Pietro’s goat. But that Cesare had accepted—and accepted without even having had the decency to consult with him—that had been a blow that had laid him low.

Pietro had responded in the way honor demanded. He had thrown Cesare out on his ear (incredibly, the boy had expected to continue to live at Villa Antica) and had made it clear that he was no longer to consider himself the son of Pietro Cubbiddu. At Pietro’s instructions, Quadrelli was now drawing up the formal papers for disowning and disinheriting him. Signing them would be Pietro’s first order of business on the day he returned from his mese sabatico . It was not what he would have wished, but it had to be done.

As might be expected, all this had done nothing to improve his deteriorating relations with Nola, who had shrieked at him like a fishwife for an hour, been silenced only by the mute threat of his raised and quivering fist, and had sulked ever since. The road trip to his cabin in the Casentino mountains wasn’t going to be a pleasant one, and for the first time he wished that he’d learned to drive, rather than having to depend on others to get him anyplace. For years one of the boys had taken him, but since Nola had learned to drive a few years ago, the task had fallen to her. On the first day of September, Nola, who was uncomfortable at Villa Antica in his absence, would take him to the isolated cabin, then continue north to spend a quiet month with her spinster aunt near Bologna, and then return exactly one month later to pick him up on the way home.

He’d thought about asking one of the boys to drive him up instead, but Nola was no fool. If he suddenly declined to ride with her, she would conclude—correctly—that something was up. And that he did not want; it was necessary that she behave as she normally would.

Nico clamped a hand over his heart, pretending fright. “Okay, babbo , okay! I didn’t mean to wake the sleeping giant.”

Pietro laughed. Even when he didn’t understand what Nico was saying, the boy could always make him laugh.

Franco raised a bony finger. “There’s one more thing, babbo . I need to know whether to keep the rotary fermenter or not. We only have another week to commit. I think we should do it.”

A rough shake of the head from Pietro. “The what?”

“The rotary fermenter? From Cosenza? Three years old? Twenty thousand euros? It’s an excellent buy. We’ve had it on approval for almost a month now. Galvanized frame, access catwalk—”

“And what is it that such a thing does again?” This was asked partly because he’d forgotten the details, but mostly for the simple pleasure of irritating his increasingly officious, impatient, eldest son.

“It macerates the—”

“It what ?”

Franco pursed his lips. Clearly, he knew he was being had, but he also knew that Pietro would trust his judgment in the end, as he always did when it came to things that didn’t engage his father’s interest—such as modern production methods and sophisticated equipment. “A rotary fermenter,” he said through only slightly clenched teeth, “will assure consistent contact between the must-cap and the juice, not only shortening the total fermentation time, but eliminating the labor-intensive—”

He was interrupted by Luca, the middle son. “Rotary fermenters,” he said disgustedly, “those cement-mixers you love so much—damn it, Franco, can’t you see they rob the grapes of their individual character, of everything that separates the soil of our vineyards from every other vineyard in the Val d’Arno? No, better to take a little longer and let the wine macerate naturally into what it was meant to be, not something some machine made it into.”