The Blooms of Wisteria by Rozanne Charbonneau

In the Italian Cinque Terre, old man Attilio is determined to resist the advances of Signora Silvana Barletta.

Liguria, April 2005

Image generated with OpenAIAttilio stands under the pergola on his terrace. The vines droop with cascades of wisteria, their petals fragrant with honey and musk. He breathes in and feels richer than any duke. Yesterday, he devised the most devious plan. It is of utmost importance to protect his freedom as a solitary man. Two women are plotting against him. His daughter-in-law, Giuliana: the unsolicited matchmaker. Silvana: the widow from the village of Le Ghiare.

His eyes roam downwards over the hundreds of olive trees clinging to the slopes. Some are tended to. Others are strangled by underbrush and neglect. Only the old lay out the olive nets in December, as no youth will stoop to this backbreaking work. The modern world begins past this idyll of greenery in the seaside town of Levanto. When fair, its bay of indigo reaches far into the horizon. Yesterday evening, the clouds turned the color of oysters and wept over land and sea. Giant waves shattered into foam against the shore. The rain stopped at dawn. Voiles of mist now linger over the precipice of the valley. This is his favorite time, before the sun erases all mystery.

At eighty years old, he has survived one wife and one child. His beloved son, Davide, died of a heart attack six months ago during the hunt for wild boar. At least they shared this final experience together. Giuliana lives in the village just down the road. She takes it upon herself to visit him every day.

“You are the only close family I have left, Papà,” she would sometimes say as she stoked the wood-burning stove in his kitchen. Such sentimentality. The nagging would begin at the Formica table right after lunch.

“You should quit smoking and drinking,” she’d warn him, peering at his yellowed fingers. “It’s a miracle you’re still alive.”

The close-cropped hair on her skull was too masculine for his taste. If he wrapped a laurel branch around it, she’d look like Julius Caesar. He’d take another sip of wine and raise his glass to the emperor. “I toiled in the marble caves for forty years. I never missed a day of work.”

“When is the last time you picked up your mandolin?”

“I played for the dances in the piazzetta all my life. There is no one else left to listen.”

She would then look at the terracotta tiles on the floor. They were uneven from the stream that passed through the earth underneath.

“You know I will help you stay here as long as I can, Papà, but at some point, a more comfortable apartment in town might be…”

She seemed to have no feeling for the past. As a teenager, Attilio had knocked down the kitchen wall behind him with his father. They’d hidden casks of olive oil in fresh cement and plastered their sustenance over. Italy, 1943. Everyone had been so desperate, so hungry.

“I was born in this house, and I will die in it. You will never convince me to leave my village Dosso.”

He’s told her many times that she was as exhausting as a second wife.

“Ha! I know plenty of lonely Signore who would be happy to take my place,” she would reply, clattering the pans.

A biscia the color of tin slithers out of the crack in the right-hand corner of the terrace. She has now grown as long as his leg. A harmless animal, but he should still leave a bowl of poisoned milk out for her to drink. She could slip into the house if the French doors are left open for air. She could lay a dozen eggs in her lair.

After the siesta, Attilio sits most days in front of the green metal door to his cantina. It is favorite place for a smoke. The sun beats down on his weathered bench all year round. Yesterday, the last of the crocuses peeked their heads out of the grass. He picked a flower and placed it in his buttonhole. It would fade fast, but no matter.

Giuliana called out to him from the kitchen window. She wanted him to meet her on the terrace immediately. Annoyed, he stamped out his cigarette. “What is she doing here?” he muttered to himself. “I cooked my own lunch today and washed the dishes. Can’t she leave a man in peace?”

Attilio descended the steps on the side of his house to the terrace. Giuliana had now joined a woman standing under the wisteria. He did not recognize her. The blooms hung down like stalactites, sheltering her from the sun. She wore a navy dress over her ample breasts and stomach. Silver strands of hair framed her face. Her skin was fair, with a map of wrinkles on her cheeks. He took a step forward. Her eyes were gray with black flecks. They reminded him of shattered glass. Two wedding rings, one loose and one tight, encircled the third finger of her left hand.

“This is Signora Silvana Barletta. We play bridge together with the other ladies in town on Wednesdays,” said Giuliana. “I just wanted to show her your beautiful view while I look for my lucky cards.”

Silvana turned to Attilio, nervous. “I hope you don’t mind my visit,” she said. “We will play doubles this evening. She must have her lucky cards.”

Giuliana’s matchmaking was sloppy, too obvious. He has told her a hundred times that he does not need female company.

What are we supposed to do, fondle each other? The sap has long run dry.

He decided to have a little fun, to play along.

“And I am Attilio Perrone. How nice it is to meet you.”

He pulled out the metal chair at the table for Silvana. “Coffee is in order, but not without my finest Sciacchetrà.”

Both women looked relieved. Giuliana rushed to the kitchen for the sweet liquor and refreshments.

Attilio passed the biscotti to Silvana and asked her the questions appropriate to their generation. Where did she come from? Was it his imagination or had he seen her in the Levanto market at the stands? She blushed, perhaps at the thought that he might have noticed her. “I come from a village called Le Ghiare at the bottom of the valley,” she said.

What a pit. When it rains, a hundred rivulets of water pour down from the hills into the piazzetta. It lies in the shadows all year long.

“How lovely. I do not think I ever met your late husband.”

“He was an electrician,” she answered, crossing herself. “He died two years ago. We were blessed with two daughters. Both are married, and I have three grandchildren.”

His heart clenched, thinking of his son.

“Buon anima,” he said, raising his glass to the dead.

He needed to change the subject. Perhaps he could show her his modest flower garden below the terrace. Giuliana beamed and carried the dishes back to the kitchen.

“The soil on this lower slope is poor,” Attilio said, leading Silvana down the stairs. “Only the hardiest plants survive.”

Dozens of white lantana bushes rambled over the earth. Silvana sighed and ran her fingers over their clusters of flowers. “They are as wide as my dinner plates,” she said.

He pointed to the buds climbing the wall to the left. Jasmine would bloom in May. He would welcome plumbago and agapanthus in June. The lemon and orange trees along the right-hand wall were bare, but the branches of the kumquat tree still offered fruit. Attilio pulled the bottom of his shirt out of his jeans and made a sling. He filled it with citrus for Silvana to take home.

The sun dimmed in the sky. Crickets thrummed their evening song. Back on the terrace, Attilio picked up Silvana’s cardigan with a flourish. He made sure that Giuliana saw how gently he could drape it over the widow’s shoulders. He then thanked this misguided woman for the visit. “Such a lovely way to spend the afternoon.”

It was important to remain chivalrous. Attilio therefore accompanied Silvana and Giuliana through the piazzetta. After eighty years, it seemed no larger than a matrimonial sheet. Pink and yellow houses attached to one another blocked out the sun. The grandmothers were sitting on the chapel stairs for their daily chat. He saw their eyes take Silvana in.

“Buona Sera,” said Silvana.

“Buona Sera,” the old women replied with smiles.

There would be gossip for weeks. Maybe he could pretend Silvana was a distant relative, visiting the village for the first time.

He pointed to the Angel Gabriel and Mary carved into the ancient sheet of slate above the chapel door. “No one knows who brought The Annunciation to Dosso. It must have been stolen from Levanto centuries ago.”

He steered his charges out of the piazzetta before the grandmothers could start a conversation. On the steep road toward the top of the village, Silvana’s shoe hit a rock and she stumbled. Attilio grabbed her upper arm, steadying her fast. Her skin was dry but soft. She leaned slightly against him and then pulled away. The scent of lavender floated from her neck.

Not a bad smell, but a trap nonetheless.

His guest zig zags along the end of the terrace, then drops her body over the ledge. Twigs and leaves crackle as she writhes below. She makes her way toward the pond in his neighbor’s garden for breakfast. But he is too fond of the frogs’ chants at night. A drop of arsenic in a bit of long-life milk should do the trick.

The moment he returned home, he picked up the telephone in the hallway and made a call. “I would be grateful if you could come over right away. I have a favor to ask,” he said.

Ten minutes later, his best friend Luciano sat at the Formica kitchen table across from Attilio, shaking his head. “No good will come of this.”

“Who cares about goodness? This information will put Giuliana in her place for good.”

Attilio had asked Luciano to snoop around Le Ghiare. Through roundabout questions, perhaps he would learn if Silvana respected the old ways after her husband had died. In the villages of Liguria, both men and women left their keys in the front door to indicate that they were home. However, a widow was expected to lock her door from the inside and hang the key around her neck. If she dared to leave it on the outside, it would mean that she was open to gentlemen callers.

“What makes you suspect that she left her key in the front door?”

“Her husband was an electrician. He worked in Levanto. I doubt they paid much attention to tradition. I wager that she left caution to the wind.”

“But you tell me she is only a few years younger than you. What man would be circling her house? Does this detail truly matter?”

Attilio pounded his fist on the table. The refrigerator rattled and hummed. “I live by the old ways. My daughter-in-law understands this. If we find out that Silvana left her key in the door, Giuliana will feel like a fool. She will never bring a woman here to waste my time again.”

Luciano cracked his knuckles. “I know no one in Le Ghiare. The villagers will be suspicious.”

Attilio grinned. “Take a bottle of my Sciacchetrà. After a glass or two, tongues are bound to wag.”

The mist over the precipice has now disappeared. Attilio sits down in his chair on the terrace and laughs over yesterday’s events. He will beat these women at their game. He has asked a lot of Luciano, but he will return the favor. The water in his neighbor’s pond splashes. Belly full, the biscia will soon return to her hole. He won’t lay out the bowl of poison. She won’t hatch eggs until September. She has the right to eat, just like him.

The following day, Attilio drives his Ape, a three-wheeler no sturdier than a can of tuna fish, around the hairpin curves toward his village. He is in a good mood. He’s bought pansotti and walnut sauce at the pastaia in town for lunch. Fifty years ago, his wife Bruna would only make this triangular ravioli for Christmas and Easter. Flour was in such short supply. Now he could buy these delicacies any day of the year.

Suddenly, the sound of metal crunching screams in his ears. His body slams to the right and out the door. When he opens his eyes, his cheek is embedded in the earth. Thank God the door was unlocked. Thank God he landed on one of the few soft slopes descending the valley. There are so many deadly drops along this road. A lizard leaps out of a crevice and flees. The jaws of a metal trap bite down on the leg of a fox only two meters away. Her eyes are still, her mouth is curved up in a grin. He can feel blood trickling down his forehead. People are shouting. An ambulance wails. He turns his eyes to the left. By some miracle, his Ape has landed upright on the top of the slope. A tourist bus full of blonde-headed Germans hovers above on his side of the road. “Fröhliche Reise” reads its sign, promising joy. Large vehicles are not allowed on this stretch.

Aryans. Didn’t we have to contend with enough of them during the war?

Darkness seeps like water into his skull.

Attilio awakes in a bed with sheets as stiff as cardboard. A crucifix hangs on the wall across the room. A crack in the plaster travels close to the savior’s head. It looks like a bolt of lightning.

I am a communist. I have no use for you.

His wife, like all women of his generation, walked over the hills to the village of Montale for church. But Attilio never allowed the greedy priest to bless his house on the days of the saints. His hard-earned money belonged in his own pocket.

His leg is in a cast, hoisted up by a pulley. He smells alcohol. Shoes squeak on the floor in the hallway. A man snores in a bed in the corner of the room.

“Where am I?”

Giuliana grabs his hand. “Oh Papà. You gave us such a scare.”

Her mouth is close, but her voice sounds far away. His body feels numb, as if it belonged to someone else.

His eyelids grow heavy. The train to Genova will arrive on platform 2. He so wants to show Davide the ships in the harbor…

When he opens his eyes the next morning, a woman with silver hair is sitting by his bedside. A metal coffeepot and two rolls rest on a tray.

He lifts his fingers to the bandage on his head. “What are we doing here, Signora?”

“It’s me, Silvana. Your daughter-in-law will come in a few hours. She asked me to watch over you until she arrives.”

She pours a liquid as light as tobacco spit into a cup. It smells of nothing. Caffè americano. He won’t drink it.

“My leg hurts.”

Silvana clucks her tongue in sympathy. “I will call the nurse.” She slides the plate of rolls closer. They look decent.

“Should you be here? Don’t you have a house to take care of?”

She waves away his concern. “My daughters will pick me up at midday. We will stop at L’Abetaia for lunch.”

And where is my son?

Dawn had just broken. Attilio and Davide tiptoed through the November mist on the path to Bardellone. Davide pointed to empty chestnut husks scattered over the pine needles near their feet. The boars would be sleeping in the bushes on the slope below. They took their positions and waited. The rest of the men and dogs would arrive soon. They shot eighteen of the beasts that day by sundown. Only one bitch was gored and sent to the vet.

They butchered their prey in the garage embedded in the hill, its interior a fluorescent wound in the darkness. Attilio was the leader of the squad. He commanded respect from all the men. He even knew how to handle fat Armando, who always wanted the lion’s share. Before fists began to fly, he would send this fool to La Spezia with the livers, each packed in a separate container. The lab for disease control there was open all night during the season. “I don’t trust anyone else with these innards, young man. Our lives are in your hands,” he would tell him each week.

After the men hosed down the last liter of blood from the floor, Attilio and Davide returned home to his cantina. They sipped Sciacchetrà and smoked until midnight. Few words were needed.

Oh, what he would do to bring him back.

Attilio stabs his knife into the metal container of jam, knocking congealed blackberries onto his pajamas.

“What the hell am I supposed to do with this?”

Silvana removes the offending fruit with a napkin. “You are fortunate to be alive. The doctor says that you might even be able to leave in two weeks.”

“Two weeks!” he says, jerking his body under the tray. “I am going home tomorrow!”

Silvana steadies the cup and pot. “Giuliana tells me that you played the mandolin at all the dances in the piazzetta of Dosso. I used to sing for the festivities in Le Ghiare.”

Attilio feels his eyes narrow. Without doubt, the two women were conspiring behind his back.

Giuliana is shrewd. She has coached her friend to pretend that she follows the old ways.

“Is that so? Then why don’t you sing ‘Casounè’?”

“Right now?” she asks. “Here?” She glances at the man in the next bed.

Attilio calls over to him. Would he like to hear his friend sing? The man smiles. He assures Silvana that a song in this gloomy place would be most appreciated.

She takes her place in front of the two beds. Her cheeks flush, her lips part. Nothing. Finally, she begins to sing.

Attilio leans forward. Her voice is clear and strong. She hits all the notes, even the highest do re mis. Her dialect is impeccable, alive. A rod of light from the window beams onto her patent leather shoes. They glow, as if ready to carry her away. The pain in his leg disappears. This song must mean something to Silvana. While she sang these very words, did her late husband stand in the piazzetta and admire her as a young woman? At the end of the dance, did he walk her back to their house and make love to her on the kitchen table? Was she bold? Did she take hold of his sex?

His own wife slept with her back to him. After Davide was born, Bruna wore tight stockings to bed, up to her waist. Wool in the winter, cotton in the summer. The birth of their baby had ripped out her insides, but still. He took to visiting Saraghina, the whore who called out to him in the bombarded train tunnel along the beach. It was so easy to press her against the wall and pound away in the darkness. The two thousand lire were worth it. He never touched another woman in the village. He respected the old ways. Maybe he should have fought for Bruna, but how? His body seemed to disgust her.

The final lyrics lilt out of Silvana’s throat. A pregnant silence follows. Attilio and his neighbor begin to clap. Two nurses in the doorway join them in their admiration. No woman in Dosso has ever taken such command of “Casounè.”

Silvana adjusts the pillow behind his head at midday. Her fingers stay clear of his skin.

She is careful, a huntress tracking her prey.

He watches her leave the room.

Did I want her touch?

There is nothing to do but wait for Giuliana. A warm trickle of liquid fills his underwear with no warning. He stares at his old friend on the cross. He is naked except for a swaddling cloth around his groin.

Oh man of sorrows. Is this what awaits me?

After dinner, the evening drags on. His neighbor is sleeping. He turns on the television hanging like a bat from the ceiling and mutes the sound. Rai Uno is broadcasting the national news. Rome. The state guards are standing at attention behind the President of the Republic. They could be statues outside the Palazzo Chigi. Only the ostrich feathers on top of their helmets shiver in the wind.

After the news, the show Scopri il tuo Destino fills the screen. Beauties from all over Italy strut onto the stage and shake their behinds. These amazons tower over the male hosts. The men crane their necks to flirt in their faces. But the girls only make love to the camera. Their lips are swollen – red vulvas after sex. Attilio lets the confederacy of idiots and whores wash over him. At ten o’clock, he jabs his thumb into the remote.

Attilio awakes in the morning light. He turns his head to the side. The bed of his neighbor is stripped bare.

Deceased? The man looked fine yesterday.

Attilio calls the male nurse to help him use the toilet. He wants to be clean and washed before any female descends upon him.

“Yes, Signor Merani died around three this morning,” the nurse replies to Attilio’s concerns. “He did not suffer.”

Attilio holds onto the nurse’s arms to stand up. “At least that. He seemed like a good fellow.”

He hobbles on his crutches into the bathroom, his helper close beside him.

“It was nice of your wife to sing for the two of you. It so brightened his final day.”

“She is not my wife.”

The nurse winks. “Then your fiancé…”

Attilio loosens the string to his pajama pants. “She is not my fiancé.”

The nurse shakes his head and helps Attilio lower his hips onto the toilet seat. “If you tell me she is your cousin, I won’t bring you any breakfast.”

To his surprise, Silvana enters the room at eleven with his mandolin case. Without asking, she opens it and places the instrument on his chest.

Attilio’s fingers begin to tremble.

“What is the matter?” she asks, handing him the pick. “Surely you remember the notes to ‘Casounè.'”

He wishes he could hide underneath the bed. His labored picking will pale in comparison to her voice.

“I haven’t played in a while…”

“Don’t worry. The music never leaves you.”

Attilio wraps his left hand around the neck. The wood smells of the mothballs at the back of his closet. He’d stuffed the case there before Davide’s wake. Without him, he’d never make music again. He runs the pick over the strings. They whine like a wet cat. He slowly twists the pegs and brings them back in tune. He hesitates, then plays the first few bars. The calluses on the fingertips of his left hand have disappeared. He ignores the pain – it is there so quickly – and bears down on the strings.

His father put the mandolin into his hands when he was twelve. He practiced every day in his room to please him. When he turned sixteen, the old man insisted he join him in the village band.

“You will command more respect than the young men begging the women for a dance. The ballo liscio is just a ruse to grope their waists.”

Attilio took his seat with the other musicians on the steps to the chapel. His father, holding an accordion on his lap like a child, smiled. His uncle waved the bow to his violin. It was Attilio’s honor to open the summer dance with a waltz. As the notes of his mandolin filled the air, the people cheered and began to dance. But Luisa, the girl he truly desired, was twirled around the piazzetta by every young man in the village. So fast her curls lifted like a sail in the wind. On the Feast of San Giovanni, she only danced with Lorenzo. Picking away for these turtle doves was more than he could bear. They still lived in the house closest to the well in the hill. When the bombs dropped years ago, the villagers gathered under its arch for protection. He often wondered what would have happened if he had refused to learn the mandolin. He might have had the chance to court Luisa before he was sent to war. His life might have been different.

He fought against the allies in the south for a year. Upon his return to Levanto, he looked up at the pink and yellow houses pressed into the hill like a mosaic. At that time there was no road to the village. He began the steep climb of the mulattiere, the path for mules carrying peasants’ loads back and forth to town. He whistled a tune as he thrashed a stick through the brush. Vipers and adders were the only enemies left.

He found his father in the cantina. The man smiled and wrapped his arms around him.

“I prayed to Karl Marx to keep you safe.” Both men laughed at the joke.

The wine bottles on the shelves were empty. One cask of olive oil, a quarter full, stood next to the marble sink. His father handed him a Lucky Strike from the Americans.

“The family of Bruna Taddei, from the village Lavaggiorosso, have lost both sons in battle. She will inherit the strips of land close to our own.”

Attilio let the cigarette dangle from his lips. He knew where this conversation was heading. He could not even remember her face at the dances. “But I don’t know her.”

“Both Germans and partisans raided our larders and gardens. For the past year we’ve eaten nothing but chestnuts and figs.”

His father lit a match close to his face. Like the ever-dutiful son, he leaned forward and surrendered his cigarette to the flame.

“Your mother is suffering from malnourishment. I am sure you will do right by her.”

The smoke hit the back of his throat. First the trenches. Then a marriage of convenience…

His fingers fly over the frets. So many regrets. In those times, your father was the law. “Padre Padrone” he used to mutter under his breath.

Silvana begins to sing along. Today she almost whispers.

He finishes the last bars. “Why so soft? Yesterday you projected all the way down the hall.”

“You were in your youth. I wanted to honor your past.”

He smiles and lets his hand rest on top of the instrument. At home he will varnish the wood, maybe change the strings.

After dinner, he takes the mandolin out of its case. Tonight, he will skip the television. He is bored with the guards of the Republic. What sacrifices did they make to wear those ridiculous feathered helmets? And like sirens, the starlets with their vacant eyes will only lure him onto the rocks of despair.

He plucks the strings, remembering a lullaby he used to play for his infant son. He knew this child enjoyed their time together – two things especially: fishing, watching films.

It was early summer, anchovy season. Davide must have been eight years old. They waded into the sea with their nets. The fish swam near their legs, shiny as knives in the sun. A bold one kissed the boy’s ankle. He kept his foot still in the sand. They laughed about it all afternoon.

On Saturday evenings, they’d sit in the red velvet seats of the Corso Cinema in Levanto.

The Kid by Charlie Chaplin once flickered on the screen. The story was told in black, white and silence, like a dream he couldn’t forget. The Tramp, a man with a funny walk and moustache, finds a baby boy – the Kid – in the garbage can. He raises him as his own on the perilous streets. One day the Kid is stolen from him. The Tramp searches high and low. At the end of the film, they are reunited on the doorstep of his mother’s villa. She invites the Tramp in, “to stay a while.”

When the lights came on, Attilio’s face was wet. Davide gave him his handkerchief. “Don’t cry, Papà. No one will take me away.” They hurried to the gelateria. Chocolate ice cream always sold out fast.

After two weeks, Attilio can hobble on crutches down the hall and into the garden. The doctors are thrilled with his stamina and drive. Giuliana arrives with flowers for the nurses.

She begins to pack his worn pajamas into the suitcase. “Once I wash these and hang them to dry in the fresh air, they will be as good as new.”

Attilio notices her glance at the mandolin case, notices her little smile. She chatters on about the apple cake she’s made for him this morning, how fresh eggs make all the difference, how cinnamon is a cardinal sin except in winter…

He must cut this nonsense short. “I want to thank you for your help. I couldn’t have recovered without you.”

Touched, Giuliana straightens the collar of his shirt. “Nonsense, Papà. You’re as tough as old boots.”

Attilio sits in the passenger’s seat of Giuliana’s maroon Fiat 500. Thank heavens she honks before each hairpin curve. He keeps his eyes on the road ahead. One false move to the right and the car will hurtle hundreds of meters into the brush.

Luciano waves to them from the parking lot at the top of the village. Attilio opens the car door and hoists himself up with his crutches. He tries to reach for his suitcase in the trunk, but Luciano seizes it and places it in the back of his own Ape. His three-wheeler is narrow enough to take his friend down to the house.

How many weeks before I can climb this hill by myself? Three? Four?

A bed now stands in the middle of his dining room so that he can sleep on the ground floor.

“This is an abomination,” he protests.

“Your cast will come off in a few weeks, Papà. I won’t sleep if you try to navigate the stairs alone.”

“But I can manage with the railing and one crutch.”

She kisses his cheek goodbye. “Right. Next you will want to join the circus.”

From the window, the two men watch her barrel up the hill.

Luciano turns to Attilio. “No one would speak to me in Le Ghiare,” he whispers. “In fact, the older men were quite hostile. It is as if they wanted to protect their Silvana.”

Attilio puts his hand on his forehead. He has long forgotten his Machiavellian request.

“You were right. No good would come of it. I’m sorry.”

Luciano shuffles out the door toward his house. Attilio sits down at the table with his crossword booklet. The lines of empty boxes merging into one another, seem to mock him. The clock on the wall ticks away the minutes. After weeks of excitement, it is strange to be alone. His right wrist aches from picking the strings of his mandolin, but no matter. Tonight, he will play “Casounè.” Silvana will dance toward him in the piazzetta, her eyes gray as the bay in the rain.

The following morning, Attilio sits on his terrace underneath the wisteria. A cool wind blows through the olive trees. The leaves sway and reveal their sides of silver. The bus from Levanto honks around each hairpin curve toward his village. Hunting dogs in the cage on the neighboring hill begin to bark. He leans forward, trying to spot the passengers.

Perhaps Silvana is coming to visit me?

If only he could meet her at the top of the village like a gentleman. He would hand her a bouquet of yellow mimosa the moment she stepped off the bus. Silvana would walk behind him down the cobblestone road, her lovely hands on his shoulders to lessen the strain on her knees.

Sure enough, as if the gods had read his mind, Silvana saunters onto his terrace. “How dare you?”

His heart sinks.

“My dear late husband did not want me to shut out the world after his death. He wanted me to live, to find someone else.”

“I made a mistake,” he says, struggling to his feet with his crutch.

She shakes her fist in the air. “I thought we had things in common, but we are two stars on opposite ends of the sky.”

Attilio hobbles toward her. “Both you and Giuliana were scheming, trying to hunt me down. I had the right to protect myself.”

Silvana bites her lip. She turns her head away from him and looks out at the sea. “Your daughter-in-law told me that you are a good man, but difficult to get to know.”

Two petals fall from above onto her hair. He can see the girl she used to be.

“Let us go to the Tumelin,” he says, taking a few steps closer. “We will eat the finest fish on the coast.”

He stumbles, sending his crutch to the ground.

Slivana’s eyes widen in alarm. “Oh Signor!” She reaches for his shoulders and eases him into his seat.

Her breasts loom over him. His last illusions of control disappear.

“I say we call a truce,” he says, touching the new calluses on his fingers.

She strolls up and down the terrace, observing the moss in the cracks. After a few minutes, she sits next to him and smooths her skirt over her knees.

“Perhaps I should make coffee. Would you like that?”

A breeze crosses over the valley. The olive trees shimmer and sigh. Attilio grabs her hand. They remain still underneath the blooms of wisteria. The two of them look like a couple long married, content in the habit of love.