A Winter's Night by Valerio Massimo Manfredi, Christine Feddersen-Manfredi Read Free Book Online Page B

existed. So who would ever have attacked a wretch like the umbrella mender, covered with rags and without a penny to his name? The only possible motive was revenge: the man had spent his life wandering from place to place, from village to village, hiding for months in a stable like his own and then heading out again because, in reality, he was running from someone. He must have committed some crime, molested someone’s daughter or wife, and that someone had finally made him pay up.
    Floti fell asleep thinking that they’d done the right thing in burying him and not leaving his body to the mercy of dogs and wolves. May the poor man rest in peace.
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    Before long, the family turned to other tasks. Harvesting hemp was much more laborious than reaping and threshing put together. Once it had been cut, the hemp was gathered into bundles and thrown into the ponds they used for steeping. Each bundle was weighed down with big river stones so it would remain under water until the fermentation process had detached the fibers from the woody part of the plant. At that point the stones were removed one by one and piled up around the edges. They were covered with algae by now and easily slipped from their fingers and it was twice as hard to fish them out again. Then the bundles were removed; saturated with water, they weighed ten times as much as they had at the start. The men worked inside the ponds, with the water up to their waists. The damp and the stench of fermentation permeated the air all around them, stagnant and fetid, in the intolerable midday heat.
    It was like working in a cesspool.
    Once the bundles of hemp had dried completely, they were beaten against a wooden board at the hottest hour of the day so the fibers would detach more easily from the woody stem. Only the strongest of men could bear up under such strain; the weaker ones simply dropped. You’d see them swaying, then getting pale and clammy. If the others got to them after they fainted, they were carried under a tree and well water was splashed on their faces and heads. When they came to, they were given water to drink, made tepid by the sun. A little at a time, as much as they could hold, until they felt the need to urinate. There were stories about those who gulped down cold water and ended up kicking the bucket.
    Usually the head of the family, or the foreman if there were outside workers, gave these unfortunates the rest of the day off. The women in town, as in the whole province of Bologna, were only given light tasks, like raking the hay or taking care of the garden patch, unlike the women in nearby Modena. In the Modenese countryside, women were sent out with spades and shovels, even when they were pregnant.
    By the end of July, their work was finished. The hemp fibers had been wound into balls and were ready to be whitened. The dry, lightweight stems had been bundled up and stored in the hayloft. They were worthless as wood: they’d make a big white flame that crackled and sparked and went out right away, but they were handy for starting a fire. All the men had left to do was give one last spray of verdigris to the grapevines and cut back the shoots so that all the nutrients would go straight to the grapes. They readied the crates and the wine presses and soaked the tubs, the vats and the barrels in heated water until they were as watertight as a glass.
    The women picked the leaves from the elm trees used to prop up the vines so they would not overshadow the grapes. They fed the leaves to the cows and oxen, for whom they were a real treat. The elm leaves were tough and scratchy and were hell on a girl’s hands, but they had their tricks. A soaking in the whey they got from the dairyman made their skin soft and smooth as a baby’s again. Never soap. Clerice had always said that the last time she washed her face was the day she was married. Everyone had nagged her about it: “Wash that mug of yours, before you go to the