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The Cataneo family owns the winery and everything around it, including the village where people who come to work on the harvest stay for part of the year. It's an absurd amount of land.
The only member of the family I met, besides Vittorio, wasSignoraAnna. I was surprised to find out that she is his mother, the woman doesn't look over thirty and yet she has brought four children into the world. According to Rafa, Vittorio has three younger brothers, and his father is still alive, they all live in the mansion, but in different wings.
One doesn't enter the other's wing, it's as if the huge house had been divided into apartments, which I don't understand. If they own all this and are rich, why doesn't everyone live in their own house? Why live together if you are actually going to live separately?
“Yes. I went to college, but now it's over and I had to come back” the robotic voice answers my question, and I nod my head, agreeing.
“Where did you live? I've always wanted to visit the United States” I ask using our scheme, and the answer doesn't take long.
“New York. Maybe, one day, you'll go, who knows, maybe I'll be able to go back to show you my favorite places?” Rafa asks smiling, and the suggestion falls out of her lips so easily.
I look at the blonde girl carefully, trying, for the thousandth time, to find any trace of deceit. I had never met someone as willing to offer their friendship without asking for anything in return as Rafaella. Her freckled face waits expectantly for my answer and, unable to thwart her, I write a lie on the paper.
“Of course, it would be amazing.”
This is just another lie, really. In the last few days, I have found myself in a mess of them. I lie to myself that I'm fine, that I'm accepting my new condition naturally when it's impossible to accept such a thing in the first place. Then I lie to myself that no part of me is thriving under the inadmissible and unacceptable condition any more than it did before.
I lie that I won't think about Raquel, and I also lie that she's fine, that I'm sure my sister is better off without me. I lie and I lie, and I lie, and I never think about my lies, because if I think... Oh, if I do that, if I think, I'll probably go crazy.
***
The solarium attached to the kitchen is a beautiful place bathed in sunlight, the walls are light and covered in climbing plants, there is a huge, vaulted skylight in the ceiling, and most of the front wall is taken up by glass and wooden doors.
In other times, I probably wouldn't have been able to sleep after the first time I was here without first trying to reproduce the vertical garden, the arched windows or the way some plants hang from the skylight, as if they were a green chandelier, on paper.
I don't know how people who study design and architecture would define the mansion, but I can't think of any expression other than “breathtaking.” Each new space I discover forces me to reflect on how poor the rich people I worked for were, when compared to Vittorio and his family.
These are some of the rare moments when I allow myself to think about my life, my old life, but never more than a few seconds. Never about what really matters. Sitting at a round table, I rub my hands on my white apron, anxious.
Out of the corner of my eye, I check out Luigia, the housekeeper is sitting in the corner of the room, with her arms crossed in front of her chest and her usual expression of disgust. It only took her a week to realize that Rafaella and I weren't using our lunchtime conversations to help me learn Italian.
Rafa taught me one thing or another, but we were always much more interested in chatting, complaining about life, or getting to know a little more about the world through each other's eyes, than in actually taking classes in my friend's native language. Yes, friend.
I’ve never had one before, but I think that's what Rafaella quickly turned into. Maybe I'm not the same to her, maybe I'm just too desperate for company, but I accept what I'm given andas long as the blonde is willing to let me believe she's my friend, I'll accept it.
Luigia spent fifteen minutes lecturing Rafaella, and I suspect that, when she translated the housekeeper's words for me, Rafa didn't tell me half of it. However, in an incredible turn of events, the blonde convinced Luigia that it was impossible to teach me anything in the chaos of the main kitchen during lunch hour.
Somehow, Rafaella got permission to end our day an hour early so she could teach me in an empty classroom. Apparently, I underestimated how desperate Luigia is for me to understand when she calls me an idiot with a multitude of different words. Her favorite isscema, which I already know means stupid.
But of course, she wouldn't allow Rafa and I to be alone with a cell phone, paper and pen at our disposal. Luigia must believe that we would be able to make a bomb with these few materials, or perhaps she was ordered to never leave me alone with anyone other than herself.
Sitting next to me, Rafaella nudges me with her elbow, catching my attention. I nod and smile gratefully, because I really need to learn how to communicate in this house if I want to survive here. She gives me an amused wink before pointing to the laptop screen open in front of us.
“Let's start with the basic words,” the robotic voice warns, and I nod, forcing me to concentrate on the class.
The first words “ciao” and “arrivederci” are easy, and the first is very similar to Portuguese. Over the past nearly three weeks, I've heard both enough to know what they mean. I repeat the words slowly, trying to imitate Rafaella's Italian accent, and she laughs gently before correcting me when I say something wrong.
Rafa teaches me basic phrases, such as the greetings “good morning”, “good afternoon” and “good evening”. Later, I learnto say that I didn't understand what they said to me, because I don't speak Italian. Rafaella teaches me how to ask for things, although I don't think I'll use it much. I also learn to ask someone to speak more slowly, and then we start to see phrases that are useful for work.
I learn how to ask about the day’s tasks, directions, how to ask, “where is it?” and the name of all the rooms in a house that I still don't know. When the allotted class time is over, I'm less anxious and feeling a little less trapped. Not literally, but the sensation is that the gag that was holding my mouth has just been loosened. I can do this, I can learn, and I'm a little surprised that it won't take as long as I thought it would.
It's just a start, of course, but if I keep doing everything right, Luigia won't have any reason to ban classes and in a few months, I'll be able to say anything and everything. It had been so long since I had the opportunity to learn anything other than a mechanical task, that I no longer remembered how good I used to be at school.
Finishing high school was a real juggling act, needing to take care of Raquel and support ourselves. If it weren't for the mercy of the principal and teachers at the school where I studied, I probably wouldn't have made it. They let me take leftover food home from school, and the teachers were much more generous with my absences than anyone could have expected.
“Grazie,” I say right after turning to Rafaella. I don't need to explain why. She never said anything, but with each passing day I become more certain that she knows why I'm here.
I turn to the other corner of the room and, in a millisecond, Luigia looks away from us, pretending that she hasn't been paying attention to everything that happened in class.
