Alfa Romeo 1300 and Other Miracles by Fabio Bartolomei

Author:Fabio Bartolomei
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Europa
Published: 2012-08-07T00:00:00+00:00

35

We listen to the afternoon news broadcast with Vito. Our ears glued to the radio, we sit around the kitchen table listening to the report on the shootout, scrutinizing each and every twitch on the old man’s face.

“I knew it,” he says.

“Is all this mess breaking out over you?” I ask.

“You think they give a damn about us? Old men like me, kids like them, they’re a dime a dozen . . . no, it’s the disrespect shown to the clan. They think someone’s tangling with their business, challenging them,” Vito continues.

“But anyway, they don’t suspect us . . . ” says Fausto.

“Like I already tole you once, around here there’s people much worse than you. I think you can live in blessed peace for awhile.”

I stand up and pace back and forth in front of him.

“What’s that on your shoe?” he asks.

I look down and notice two smears of a wooly white substance on the tip of my right shoe.

“This stuff? I don’t know. It’s on the grapevines, I must have brushed against them and it stuck to me.”

“It’s on the vines down low? On the vine proper?”

“Yes, it’s on just about all the vines, it must be normal.”

“Normal my ass, that’s armillaria.”

“What’s armillaria?”

“I can see that you’ve never cleared away the weeds and the fallen leaves. The dirt underneath a grapevine needs to be clean, always clean, otherwise the water puddles up and you get this mold.”

“And how do you know about these things?” Sergio asks.

“I come from a family of farmers.”

“I thought you said musicians?” says Sergio.

“On my daddy’s side. On mama’s side, they were all farmers.” It would be interesting to delve deeper into the matter, but for now all I really care about is the health of my vineyard.

“So what do I do?” I ask.

“If it’s not too bad, all you need to do is keep the ground clean. Then the sunshine’ll do the rest. Or maybe you’ll have to use some product.”

“And how can I tell whether or not it’s spreading?”

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