So in addition to whatever doubts Carla Arduini might have about this dramatic turn of events, Zen had to deal with a succession of nagging internal queries about whether he had done the right thing. It had seemed a good idea at the time, but then so had all the failed initiatives which littered his personal history, and which he now saw quite clearly for the disasters they were. Why should this be any different?
That logic, though, would induce paralysis. Life was not a spectator sport, he told himself. You couldn’t opt out, and you couldn’t ever be sure of doing the right thing. All you could hope for, perhaps, was to do the wrong thing better, or at least more interestingly. Acquiring a twenty-something daughter about whom he knew next to nothing certainly promised to be interesting — and if it goes seriously off the rails, a weasel voice reminded him, you can always tell her the truth.
They walked in silence down the track, through the mild air and the strata of sunlight, the Vincenzo house gradually emerging from behind its screens of soil and vegetation. There was a low rumble of machinery at work somewhere, as well as the distant and disconsolate barking of the dog, but the house itself appeared deserted. Zen freed himself from Carla’s arm and strode across the courtyard to the main door, which lay wide open. He knocked, without effect.
‘Hello?’ he called inside.
The silence bulged lightly, like a silk drapery with a faint draught behind it. Zen rapped again, more loudly.
‘Anyone home?’
He was on the point of turning away when an elderly woman suddenly appeared in a window on the second floor.
‘ Si ’
‘Signora Rosa?’ asked Zen.
‘Well?’
‘We came to see Dottor Manlio.’
The woman sized them up shrewdly for a moment, then pointed to a row of buildings at the far end of the courtyard.
‘They’re making the wine,’ she replied, and disappeared inside.
Zen thanked the empty window and then walked with Carla across the courtyard towards the line of adjoining sheds, each a different size and design, which had apparently been added to the main structure at different periods as needed. The first few additions were similar to the main house and the other outbuildings surrounding it, but by the end of the row the idiom had changed to the efficient brutalities of modern construction.
Open steel doors in the concrete-block wall of this section revealed signs of activity within. The mechanical rumble grew louder as they approached, then was swallowed by the louder racket of a tractor pulling a cart laden with garishly coloured plastic baskets containing bunches of dull, bruise-blue grapes. A group of young people emerged from the building and started carrying the baskets inside, helped by the driver of the tractor. Zen and Carla followed.
The scene inside resembled some light-industrial plant rather than the picturesque squalor which Zen had always associated with wine-making. The floor was a bleak, runnelled expanse of poured concrete, the roof an exposed matrix of metal girders and corrugated sheeting, the lighting provided by glaring fluorescent strips hanging from the beams.
In the middle of the floor stood a raised trough made of stainless steel, lined on either side by women of all ages. Within this ran a wide rubber belt, like a supermarket checkout, upon which the grapes that had just arrived were unloaded. These precessed slowly past the waiting lines of women, whose nimble fingers darted in among the clusters, sorting out the spoiled or unripe grapes. The fruit which passed this test tumbled into yet another gleaming machine at the end of the belt, connected to a wide metal tube which ran at a slight angle straight into the end wall.
There were so many people coming and going in the shed that it was some time before Zen recognized Manlio Vincenzo, standing at one end of the conveyor belt, scrutinizing the work of the women to either side and occasionally leaning out to inspect a cluster of grapes more closely. It was still longer before he looked up and noticed the presence of the two intruders.
‘Well?’ he said sharply. ‘What do you want?’
Zen gestured vaguely, as though at a loss.
‘Just a word with you, Signor Vincenzo. But I can see that you’re busy. I’ll phone later, perhaps.’
Manlio Vincenzo ducked under the inclined metal tube and came towards them, frowning.
‘Oh, it’s you, Dottor Zen!’ he exclaimed, his expression changing to one of guarded welcome. ‘I hope you haven’t come to arrest me.’
They shook hands.
‘On the contrary,’ said Zen. ‘In fact I have some good news.’
Manlio smiled warily.
‘That’s always welcome. I made the decision to start harvesting yesterday. I don’t trust this weather. Too stable, too settled. All we need now is a hailstorm and the whole harvest could be wiped out.’
He glanced at his watch.
‘We’re almost finished for the morning, as it happens. Can you stay to lunch, dottore? And of course…’
He looked at Zen’s companion.
‘My daughter, Carla Arduini,’ Zen told him.
‘Delighted to meet you, signorina, although it’s a far from ideal moment. Who was it said that no one should watch sausages or laws being made? He should have added wine.’
He waved at the moving belt.
‘This is only the first stage, of course, but I’m doing a much more rigorous triage than we used to in the past. Since this will be the first and last vintage that I will oversee, I wanted to do an exemplary job.’
He glanced at Zen.
‘Tell your Roman friend to invest with confidence. This is going to be a quite exceptional wine. At a quite exceptional price, naturally.’
‘I don’t think the price is a problem.’
‘Unless you set it too low! The market’s so hot these days that you can sell practically anything as long as it’s expensive enough. But if you don’t charge stellar prices, the serious collectors will sneer at you. “Why, anyone could afford that,” they think.’
He gestured towards a door in the wall.
‘Let’s go and find Andrea.’
Manlio Vincenzo led the way into the next part of the connected sheds, closing the door carefully behind him. In the sorting room which Zen and Carla had first entered, there was little evidence apart from the bunches of grapes themselves that wine was being produced there, rather than knitwear or ceramics. In the room in which they now found themselves, this fact was primary and dominant, confirmed by a pervasive stench at once as heady as petroleum and as dank and dark as hanging meat or rotten leaves.
The space was almost entirely occupied by a number of huge fermentation vats made of deeply stained oak banded with metal. The pipe which had disappeared into the wall next door emerged here at the same inclined angle, running up to a level above the vats, into one of which it discharged a gush of rich red juice. Manlio waved to a woman standing on a ladder attached to the side of the vat being filled. He climbed up to join her and peer down into the internal cavity. They had a brief discussion, then came down to join their impromptu guests.
Once Carla and Andrea had been introduced, Manlio led them outside into the blissfully fresh air.
‘You’ll have to forgive Rosa,’ he warned Zen. ‘She’s a little eccentric at times, but a wonderful housekeeper. I shall miss her.’
‘Is she leaving?’ asked Carla.
‘No, we are,’ Andrea replied.
‘I hope we’re not inconveniencing you,’ said Zen.
Manlio laughed.
‘At vintage time Rosa cooks for everyone, including all the student pickers and the sorting ladies. It’s a sort of informal festa, and there’s always too much food. Rosa grew up on a big farm, but now she lives alone in an apartment in the village with no one to care for except herself, and she doesn’t care about herself. So at this time of
