Dying on the Vine

consecrated six bullets and put them in with his swaddling clothes for use in avenging his family’s honor, a not- uncommon practice in Barbagia at the time.

But the feud had died down about then, flaring up only occasionally in minor altercations, until 1985, when Nola’s then-husband, Eliodoro, had been ambushed and assassinated on his way to deliver a load of cheese to Nuoro, the provincial capital.

Soon after, Pietro’s older brother Primo had been shotgunned to death while tending his goats in their winter pasture. The Cubbiddu clan had made it clear to Pietro that it was now his solemn duty to put some of those six bullets to use, but Pietro had no wish to continue the feud—primarily because he had gone over to the dark side; he had met and fallen in love with Nola.

In 1986, they had shocked both families by announcing their upcoming marriage. Pietro was in his mid-thirties with three young sons. Nola, four years younger, had one child, Cesare, who was then an infant.

It was the couple’s hope that their wedding, like a union between foreign royals in old Europe, would end the bad blood and even bring the two families together. As a gesture, one of Pietro’s wedding gifts to Nola was the six bullets, still in the padded box in which they’d come from the priest. But it was not to be. Most members of both families—including the couple’s parents—stayed away from the church, and muttered threats hung in the air. And when Pietro’s oldest son, Franco, narrowly averted a nighttime roadside ambush (a row of flaming garbage cans suddenly blocking his way at a country crossroads, and two cars, each with several men in them, waiting alongside the road), Pietro and Nola concluded that it was time to leave. The family headed for Tuscany, the only place in mainland Italy with which they had any familiarity at all.

As it happened, Pietro had had a huge windfall a few months earlier: a government bulldozer had cut across his land without permission, wrecking his vineyard and much of his small, century-old olive grove. Fearing a suit, the government had quickly settled on 5 million lire for him—at the time the equivalent of three thousand euros. It was a fortune, ten times more money than he’d ever seen at once, and most of it went to buy an abandoned fifteenth-century convent, dilapidated and war-damaged, that he’d seen in the Val d’Arno, thirty kilometers south of Florence. It had been converted to a winery for a while in the early years of the twentieth century, and it came with a half hectare of withered, moribund Malvasia grapes. But the soil was fertile and the climate conducive to grape growing; this was Tuscany, after all. They had had to set to work at once, and work like dogs they did, joined by Luca and Franco, who were then in their teens.

Gideon and Julie had heard this part of the story before, but Linda was rolling along in high gear, and they didn’t have the heart to stop her. Besides, they both liked listening to her smooth, gentle Tennessee accent.

The Cubbiddus had plowed their earnings back into the vineyard, and with time success had come. The enterprise had blossomed (Villa Antica was now the fourth largest of the valley’s seventy-something wineries), their sons thrived and grew into four healthy young men, and they lived without the fear of faida hanging over their heads, since no one in Barbagia knew where they were.

Yet all was not well in the Cubbiddu household. At the time of the marriage, Franco and Luca were still grieving for their mother, who had died from a kidney infection a few weeks after bearing Nico, and Nola’s intrusion into the family in her place was deeply resented. Nola, for her part, made an effort to win them over, but, like Pietro, she wasn’t endowed with much in the way of patience, and she soon gave it up, settling for the mutual disaffection, deep but in general peaceably constrained, that continued to the end. This rift had created an ongoing strain between husband and wife, and, to a lesser degree, between father and sons as well.

But it was Nola’s son, Cesare, who’d had the toughest time of all. When she and Pietro had married, Pietro’s two older boys were fifteen and sixteen. Cesare was a squalling infant, not yet a year old; the teenage Cubbiddu boys couldn’t have had less interest in him; at best, he was simply another intruder, but one who commanded a great deal more than his share of attention. And although Pietro treated the boy with kindness and generosity—he adopted him, he did his best to treat him no differently from his own sons—the underlying paternal pull was simply not there. Cesare had no doubt felt his isolation and by the age of four or so he had become a needy, manipulative, totally self-centered child. To Luca and Franco, by then into their young manhood, he was nothing but a hindrance and a pest.

“To Luca and Franco,” Gideon said. “Not to Nico?”

“That’s right. Well, you see, Nico is quite a bit younger than his brothers too, so as a kid he didn’t have much in common with them either, although of course the love was always there. Blood, you know; this is Italy. But Nico and Cesare—at the time, they were only a few months apart—well, they still are, of course, but as children, they couldn’t play with Franco or Luca, but they could play with each other. And they had no memory of ever not being brothers, which also wasn’t the case for the older boys. So there was a connection there that nobody else had with Cesare. You understand, I wasn’t there for any of this. Basically, I’m telling you what Luca’s told me.”

“Of course,” said Julie.

“Nico was the older one, the more secure one, so he sort of took Cesare under his wing, spoke up for him, took his side, that kind of thing. Made excuses for him. Baby brother playing big brother. And he still does; he still sees himself as Cesare’s protector. I have my doubts about how Cesare feels about Nico these days, but I do know that there’s still a genuine love there on Nico’s part. You wouldn’t think so from that loosey-goosey way of his, would you, but Nico’s a deeply affectionate guy. He’s never given up on trying to bring Cesare more into the family.” She shook her head fondly. “It’s kind of touching, really.”

“But apparently it hasn’t worked,” Julie said. “Bringing him more into the family.”

Linda paused to let another zeppola go down before continuing. “That’s right, Franco despises him, and Luca’s not exactly crazy about him either. Neither am I, for that matter. And this I can tell you from my own experience: ‘manipulative’ and ‘self-centered’ still fit him to a T. He’s always . . . I don’t know, hatching something for his own benefit, if you know what I mean. As far as I’m concerned, I’m glad we don’t see the little worm that much.”

She paused, hesitating, but decided she might as well finish the story. “And it doesn’t help any that he’s been into and out of drugs since he was fourteen. Marijuana at first, then other junk, then cocaine. Babbo paid for him to go to rehab three, four times, but it never took. His best friend died from it, from mixing cocaine and booze—”

“A lethal combination,” Gideon said with a shake of his head.

“And that stopped him for a while, but then he started thinking, ‘Well, I guess I better give up one of them, but do I really have to quit both?’ Unfortunately, it was the booze he gave up. He doesn’t even drink wine any more, which is pretty unique around here. But now he’s back on coke. Nico says it’s all because of stress, because Pietro threw him out, and maybe it is, but I don’t know. . . .” She shook her head. “It’s all just too damn bad.”

“He injects it?” asked Gideon

“According to Nico, he snorts it. He thinks it’s less harmful than injecting, less addictive.”

“About harmful I don’t know, but about addictive he’s probably right. You get a more immediate, more intense high from delivering it straight into the bloodstream.”

“Nico keeps thinking he can get him to quit, but . . . well, good luck to him, but I think it’s way, way too late. He’s already lost his cellar-master job. Doesn’t have a job at all, as far as I know. Lives on babbo’s will.”

“That’s really sad,” Julie said.

Linda nodded. “Yes, it is. But trust me, he’d still be a creep even if he wasn’t stoned half the time.” She drank the last of her cappuccino and set the cup down with a satisfied sigh. “Well, that’s pretty much the story, and I’d better head back to the booth to help out. Things are winding down here.” She gestured toward the piazza, in which the crowds had indeed thinned out. A general sense of fatigue now hung over it. Several of the booths were already being dismantled.

“Can I help?” Gideon asked. “Need some muscle?”

“No, thanks, we’ve got everything under control.” She pushed herself to her feet. “You know how to get to the villa from here?”

Gideon nodded. “SR69 to the A1, and then straight up to Figline.”

“Right. You’re in the same apartment you were in last year. Key’s in the door. Reception’s at seven. Totally informal; what you’re wearing is fine. With the weather so nice, it’ll be outdoors, on the garden terrace. Remember where that is?”

“Oh, I think so.”