She finished it at the beginning of November and had brought it to a shop in Wiesbaden to be framed. On November 9, she drove into the city to pick it up and take care of other errands. She was on her way back home and turned on the radio to catch the weather report.
The news was on, and the announcer’s voice was heightened, incredulous, jubilant. Marielle stopped her car and pulled over, not quite believing what she was hearing.
“Die Mauer ist weg!” The Berlin Wall had fallen.
Marielle was numb, disbelieving. She switched radio stations, thinking she had misheard or the reporter had made a mistake. But every station was reporting the same thing.
Trembling, she drove home, pulling the car into the courtyard and racing up the stairs to the apartment.
“Have you heard?’ she burst into the apartment. Tomas, sitting in front of the television, nodded. He stood up and she ran to him, still trembling—because of what this meant for East and West Germany, for Eastern Europe, for them.
The months that followed were marked by hope, upheaval and a disruption of old ways and limited expectations. As welcome as the extraordinary change was in their lives and their definition of home, country, Europe, it was change nonetheless.
The patterns they had established, the rituals and boundaries that protected all of them, not just Tomas and Marielle, but those they loved—Magdalena, Halina, Nyanya, Anita—it all began to shift. Like a handful of loose rocks, skittering down the hillside, barely noticeable as they tumbled over closely cropped grass and carefully tended rows of vines. But the changes gathered momentum over the winter, like the muddy landslide set off by the heavy, unrelenting rains so long ago.
Marielle and Anita went to Warsaw for Christmas. Magdalena, twenty-one and in her second year of studies at Jagiellonian University, arrived home on the same day. Her hair, no longer in braids wrapped neatly around her head, was closely cropped and spiked, its little-girl blondness heightened to a near platinum shade. She wore American jeans and smoked French cigarettes and now used the name “Maggi.” Nyanya chased her out to the balcony when she pulled out her cigarettes, scolding and complaining about what she had become.
At dinner on Wigilia, Christmas Eve, the Oplatek—the blessed bread—was passed from hand to hand, each of them taking a fragment as the first star appeared in the night sky.
“I have an announcement,” Maggi held her vodka glass high, as if she was about to make a toast. I’ve been accepted to an exchange program at Juilliard in America; I start next September.”
Everyone’s glass went up in congratulations. Nyanya wiped her eyes with her napkin, her expression a mixture of pride in Magdalena’s accomplishment combined with puzzlement and loss. Tomas looked at his daughter with eyes that revealed his surprise—not at her announcement, because she’d confided in him that she had applied to the conservatory. His surprise was his sudden recognition of Magdalena’s confidence in her future, her embrace of the freedom she now had to define her life however she chose.
How had that fact escaped him? For so long he had been consumed with sheltering her, surrounding her with love to cushion her from the loss of her mother. That his love and protection could have formed her into a bird with such strong wings and even stronger desire to fly was a revelation to him that night.
It was the moment he realized that she had surpassed him, that she no longer needed him. And he was free.
On Christmas, a day of brilliant sunshine and biting cold, Tomas and Marielle walked home from church, their arms linked and their heads wrapped in wool scarves.
“I want to talk with you apart from the others,” he said. “Stop with me a moment in the park.”
They sat facing each other on a wooden bench that was free of snow.
“Magdalena’s announcement last night cleared my head of a worry that I hadn’t even known I was carrying. I think I finally saw her as a woman, eager to leap into this new world that’s opening up for her generation. It made me feel old, but at the same time, I rejoiced for her.” He looked away; his vulnerability palpable.
Marielle stroked the side of his check with her gloved hand and smiled.
“It also made me see that I have nothing to hold me back now, and it frightens me a little. I feel like an old woman who has become so used to limitations and confining restrictions that I cannot imagine any other kind of life. Until my daughter opened the door for me in a way the hole in the Berlin wall did not.”
He placed his hand over Marielle’s.
“Marry me, Marielle. Let me now give you the complete man. On your soil.”
At dinner that afternoon they made their own announcement to the family and invited them all to the winery on Valentine’s Day for the wedding.
In February, Maggi drove Halina and Nyanya across the boundaries that for so many years had been ominous barriers. Tomas had gone ahead, to begin looking for work and to start the paperwork to be licensed as a physician in Germany.
Marielle asked Maggi to be her maid of honor and took her shopping in Wiesbaen to find a dress that would both suit her nontraditional style and be something she would want to take to America in the fall. They spent an afternoon wandering in and out of small shops and department stores. As Maggi delighted in the selection of fabrics and the choices arrayed on the racks, Marielle watched her and saw not only herself at that age but the daughter she had never had.
Maggi’s final choice was a black jersey wrap dress that was a striking counterpoint to her blondness and pale skin. Neither Halina nor Nyanya approved of its color or style—they would have preferred to see her as Magdalena, still in her traditional dirndl. But Marielle, about to become her mother, overruled their objections.
The villages of the Rheingau were preparing for Fasching, the German celebration of Carneval in the weeks leading up to Lent. Parades wound their way through the streets with floats full of costumed revelers tossing candy to children. Streamers and multicolored confetti flew through the air. It was a time of particular abandon in those first months of 1990, and Marielle and Tomas found themselves swept up in the music and the gaiety.
The morning of the wedding, Maria arrived with her usual delivery of Valentine roses, but instead of the dozen Tomas had always ordered in the past, he had requested ten times as many. Maria had combed the wholesale flower market in Frankfurt, corralling as many of the deep burgundy blooms as she could find.
The winery’s public rooms were ablaze with color, with bowls of roses on every table, set for the guests who would celebrate with them later in the day. Vases also rested on the windowsills formed by the meter-thick walls.
Rather than wear white, Marielle chose a dress the color of the roses, its velvet fabric echoing their texture. Her bouquet, in contrast, was white, with a single red rose in its center. She pinned another single rose to Tomas’s lapel before they walked to the church.
During the wedding ceremony, Maggi played her violin for them, a vibrant and inventive rendition of “Spring” from Vivaldi’s Four Seasons. Marielle felt the world coming to life for her and Tomas in those intense moments of music.
When they left the church on foot, followed by their guests, Maggi again put the violin to her chin and played as they strolled through the village to the winery. Along the way, friends opened windows and tossed confetti and streamers. By the time they arrived at the gate to the courtyard, Marielle’s hair was entwined with the multicolored paper strands and Tomas’s shoulders were covered with a dusting of confetti. At the reception they toasted each other and their guests with the 1988 Marcobruun, an extraordinary vintage that was to launch an incredible streak lasting eight years of great wines from the Rheingau.
Later that evening, as they lay in one another’s arms for the first time as husband and wife, Tomas raised himself on one elbow and with his other hand traced circles on Marielle’s belly.
“I’ve watched you in the last few days, taking on the role of Magdalena’s mother as well as my wife
, and I’ve thought how wonderful you are at it. A natural.”
“Thank you.” She kissed him.
“So I took that thought another step. What if we have a child now? You and I. You’re only forty-one. I know you gave that up for me but, like everything else we thought we had forsaken—a life together, a future—we have a second chance. Why not?”
Marielle was still. A list of objections began to form in her mind, conditioned for so long not to want or imagine possible what she couldn’t have.
But she knew that she had never completely abandoned her desire to have a child. For Tomas, with his daughter grown, to offer her this gift now overwhelmed her.
She burst into tears.
“Yes,” she gulped, between the sobs.
Chapter 13
1991-2007
Valentin Marek was born a year later, on Valentine’s Day, doubly blessing the day for them.
During the harvest of 1991, Valentin slept in a backpack borne alternately by his mother and father, the rhythm of their movements lulling him in the crisp air.
By the harvest of 1995, he followed after his great-uncle Janosch, dumping buckets of grapes into Janosch’s carrier as the old man stooped to Valentin’s height. By the harvest of 1998, Valentin had his own shears and worked the lower layers of the vines, only occasionally popping a handful of grapes into his mouth.
Maggi, when she finished her studies at Juilliard, won a seat with the Berlin Philharmonic. When her concert schedule allowed, she came back for the harvest, and she always made time in the summers to perform with Tomas in the courtyard concerts that had become signature events for the winery. In 2000 she made her first solo recording and Tomas and Marielle hosted a launch party for her at the winery.
By the time he was thirteen in 2004, Valentin was as tall as his father, with the same long fingers. He had inherited his mother’s eyes and chestnut hair, which he wore in dreadlocks, much to Anita’s dismay. He had also inherited Marielle’s intensity, and was the winery’s mechanic, fascinated by its equipment. He was less fascinated with school, and was chafing at the prospect of spending six more years preparing for the Abitur and then university, as his parents and his sister had before him.
On his sixteenth birthday he listened to the toasts of his parents and two grandmothers, made with wine from the case that had been set aside in his birth year. Each major event in his life—his baptism, his first day of school, his first communion—had been celebrated with the opening of a bottle from that case. On the occasion of his sixteenth birthday Marielle poured a small glass for him as well. After the toasts, Valentin stood, brushing back the hair from his eyes.
“I have a birthday wish,” he said solemnly. “It’s something I’ve been thinking about for a while. I don’t want to go to university.”
He waited for the predictable objections, and his grandmothers did not disappoint. But Marielle and Tomas knew their son well enough to understand that something else was coming. They exchanged glances.
“I want to study winemaking instead. Maggi certainly isn’t going to come back and take on the work, and who else but me?”
Marielle wanted to tell him it wasn’t an expectation, that he was free to make his own way in life, even if that took him away from the land. But Tomas squeezed her hand and she let Valentin go on.
“If you’ll agree, I can transfer to the wine institute in the fall. I’m not interested in spending years in a classroom like you two did. I’m much happier working with my hands—repairing the tractor, rigging the bottler, pruning and grafting the vines.
“I’m not like you, Papa; I don’t have the patience to study for years and years. And Mama, I’ll probably have to hire somebody to do the books when you’ve had enough of them. But I think I can make our hills flourish. What do you say?”
Marielle rose from the table and hugged him. Anita wiped her eyes. Even Halina was mollified.
Later that night, Tomas and Marielle took a walk. The moon was full, and sharing their anniversary with their son’s birthday had led them to take time for themselves at the end of the day. The night was cold but clear and they headed up the vineyard path to the top of the hill.
Tomas kissed her, taking her face in his hands.
“You’ve raised quite a young man, Mrs. Marek.”
“So have you, Dr. Marek.”
“No disappointments?”
“None. He’s much surer of himself than I was at his age.”
Tomas nodded. “And much happier than I was.”
“Are you happy now, Tomas?”
“Happier than I have ever been.
Also by Linda Cardillo
Fiction
Love That Moves the Sun
The Boat House Cafe
The Uneven Road
Island Legacy
Dancing on Sunday Afternoons
Across the Table
Italian Tales
A Mother’s Heart
The Smallest Christmas Tree
Cookbook
Come Sit at My Table
Acknowledgments
I am so grateful to my friend Ursula von Breitenbach, who not only taught me how to harvest grapes and judge a fine Riesling vintage, but also renewed my creative spirit with long weekends devoted to painting and poetry (and more Riesling). My special thanks also to Kasia Novak, whose memories of childhood summers in Warsaw added vibrancy and richness to my research.
A special note of thanks to Christine Richardson, my Bellastoria Press assistant, for her curiosity, skill and creativity in designing and formatting, and for her warmth and support as we brought this book to its completion.
To the friends and family who supported me in my earliest years as an author, I also offer a warm thank you—especially to Betsy Port, who cheered me on with infectious enthusiasm; Lani Kretschmar, who listened to my daily musings and plottings and lent her keen eye to proofreading; Toni Robinson, who spread the word far and wide to her network; and to my sister, Cindy McLaughlin, and my cousins Joan Cito, Mari Adele Thomas and Gene Vetrano, who were my “street team.”
About the Author
Linda Cardillo is an award-winning author who writes about the old country and the new, the tangle and embrace of family, and finding courage in the midst of loss. Hailed by Publishers Weekly as a “Fresh Face,” Linda has built a loyal following with her works of fiction—the novels Dancing on Sunday Afternoons, Across the Table, The Boat House Café, The Uneven Road, Island Legacy and Love That Moves the Sun; the novellas True Harvest and A Daughter’s Journey; the short story collection Italian Tales (an Amazon #1 New Release); and the illustrated children’s book The Smallest Christmas Tree.
She is also co-founder of Bellastoria Press, an independent hybrid publisher partnering with authors to produce, distribute and promote compelling and beautiful stories.
For news, previews of new work and musings on the writing life, sign up for Linda’s newsletter.
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