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.The old vintner was speechless with rage.Since the old man seemed unwilling to reason, Pietro tried reissuing his ideas as orders.This resulted in a complete breakdown in negotiations, after which the old man responded to anything Pietro said with a single word: impossible.“He acts like the whole vineyard is planted in gunpowder,” Pietro told Carolina.“And if we cut the wrong vine it will blow us all to kingdom come.”In the meantime, the front door remained locked.At first she thought it was only a passing fancy that led him to turn and take the key on the evening of the Rossi party.But as the days wore on, the old knob still refused to budge, not just at night, but by day as well.Carolina listened to Pietro’s evening soliloquies with growing amazement, trying to understand how this genial, simple man could double as her jailer.Finally, she asked.“I wanted to go to the lake today,” she said one evening, after a long disquisition on the merits of various grapes that even Carolina could tell Pietro had hopelessly scrambled.“But the door was locked.”“Yes,” Pietro said agreeably.Carolina laid her knife along her plate and lifted her eyes to his face.“I think I’d like to have a key,” she told him.His hand covered hers on the rough lace tablecloth.“It’s not safe for you to go alone,” he said.When she didn’t answer, he lifted his hand to her cheek, traced the curve of her chin, then leaned in to kiss it, and asked, “What does it matter where you are, if you can’t see?”“A man is here,” Giovanni announced from the doorway of Carolina’s room, with an air of betrayal.“Thank you, Giovanni,” she said, wondering as she rose from her chair how the child could possibly have conceived a jealousy of the old cellist.She stopped just short of the threshold, because she hadn’t heard his retreating footsteps.As she had guessed, Giovanni still waited in the doorway.“I could take your arm to help you with the steps,” he suggested.Carolina smiled at him with what she hoped was some accuracy.“I walk up and down the stairs every day,” she said.“But what if someone is hiding on them?” he asked.“Or a glass that fell from a tray?”“I will be very careful,” Carolina promised.“Thank you, Giovanni.”“I am the fastest boy at the stables,” he declared in closing, then reinforced his point with a noisy, headlong descent.After a moment, Carolina followed him.“Your young friend distrusts me,” Turri said when she reached the first landing.“Children are excellent judges of character.”For a moment, the impression of him standing at the bottom of the stairs, his blue eyes so bright they seemed lit from within, was so strong that she was surprised when the moment passed to find herself still blind.The vision had stopped her halfway down the stairs.Over the weeks since the Rossi party, she had imagined meeting him a thousand times, always in a haze in which the whole world fell away as soon as he touched her hand or spoke her name.But the actual sound of his voice had the opposite effect: instead of leading her into a dream, it returned her to herself.Her spirit, which had grown used to roaming fretfully between shadow and memories, settled back into her chest.“I thought you were an old man,” she said, and began to descend again.“With a cello.”“My worries age me every day,” Turri said.“But so far none of them have resulted in music.”Carolina came down the final step.Turri kissed the side of her face.Something sharp dug into the bodice of her dress.She pulled away.Turri laughed.“You have discovered your present,” he said.“You brought me a pony,” Carolina guessed.“A very small pony,” Turri conceded.“With sticks for legs.If you’ll sit down, I’ll make him dance.”With an even step, Carolina led him into the conservatory, but when she turned to take a seat on the divan, he caught her hand.For a few breaths, he held it tight, like a giddy man catching at the limb of a tree to regain his balance.Then he released her.“No,” he said.“Sit at that little desk.”Carolina crossed to the desk.Turri followed close.The instant her hand rested on the back of the chair, he pulled it out for her.Dutifully, she sat.“Now,” Turri said, his voice strange with excitement.“A moment.”The coarse fabric of his coat fell against her bare arm as he set something on the desk.Paper rustled and the faint, sharp smell of charcoal came and went.He turned some kind of gear, as if winding a clock, and the paper rattled and cracked.“There,” he said, and stepped back.“Should I sing?” Carolina asked.“Sing?” Turri repeated, surprised.“How can he dance without any music?”Turri laughed.Then he leaned over her chair so that his shoulders sheltered hers.His fingers brushed down her arms to her hands, which he caught in his and lifted.When he released her fingers, they settled on the keys of a new machine.Carolina shivered.“What is it?” she whispered.“It’s a writing machine,” he answered, his voice low and gentle, as if not to spook a shy animal.“Look.”He covered her right hand with his own, and pressed her index finger down.The key below it gave way.Nearby, something hit the paper with a determined slap.“That’s a letter,” he whispered.“Which letter is it?” she whispered back.“I,” he said.He spread her fingers over two rows of keys.“There is one for each letter.All twenty-one,” he said.“They are in order by the alphabet.”Carolina extracted her hands from his and ran her fingers over the unfamiliar keys.Turri’s arms still encircled her from behind.Faint heat pulsed through his thin shirt and vest.She struck another.“That is a letter?” she asked [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]