True Harvest

by Linda Cardillo

  “I won’t ask you to do that. I’ve been lonely for a long time, even before my wife’s death. I’m used to it. My time with you is a gift. But you—you have a world of opportunity before you. The vineyards, your friends. Your life is full of possibilities. Don’t close yourself off to those possibilities because of me.”

  She turned to him.

  “There is no other possibility for me except you.”

  A look of both pain and hope skimmed across Tomas’s face as she spoke.

  “It’s too much to ask of you,” he protested.

  “It’s too much to ask me to let you go. I don’t know what else to do except wait for the harvest and store up from our time together what will sustain us for the rest of the year.”

  She kissed him as the trolley pulled into the station—a firm, determined, decisive kiss. There was no more to say. No other solution.

  They parted on the platform as the final boarding call for the train to Prague was announced. He held her firmly against him. He buried his face in the scent of her hair, still in its braids. She leaned into his chest, pressing her ear one last time to the steady rhythm of his heart.

  Once on the train, she took a window seat on the side of the platform and watched for as long as he was visible. He remained on the platform until the last car had made the bend beyond the station. Then he turned and walked back into his life.

  Chapter 10

  1976-1982

  Tomas and Janosch and the crew returned in the fall for the harvest. Marielle had renovated an unused wing of the winery in the ell over the tank room, turning it into an apartment for herself. It was there that she intended to live with Tomas for the six weeks of the harvest. She anticipated Anita’s objection. The village was small; opinions of the Polish workers among the older members of the community were often negative. Even though the entrance to the apartment was within the enclosed courtyard and not on the street, Marielle knew it wouldn’t be long before the gossips began chattering over loaves of bread at Ute’s bakery.

  She braced herself for the conversation with her mother as they painted the new rooms in late August.

  “Mama, I want you to know my intentions when Tomas arrives in October. I’m going to invite him to stay here instead of at the campground.”

  “That’s gracious of you to wait to move in until after the harvest. Why not ask Janosch as well? I’m sure he’d appreciate not having to live in that cramped tin box.”

  “Mama, this is difficult for me to explain. I mean to invite Tomas to stay with me in the apartment.”

  Anita put down the paintbrush and looked at her daughter.

  “Do you realize what you are exposing yourself to? Not only the criticism of the village, but a weakening of your position with the crew! You’re the chief; they are the workers. To be so blatant about your relationship with Tomas is damaging to your authority. It’s suicidal.”

  “Mama, this whole relationship is suicidal. I can’t live with him; I can’t live without him. At least for these few short weeks, I intend to give us the life we can never have!”

  “It’s a pretense. A fairy tale. You cannot flaunt it. I’m not telling you to stop loving him. Believe me, I understand. But don’t live with him while he is here. This isn’t the anonymity of Frankfurt. You’ll suffer in subtle ways because of the judgment of others. Listen to me, Marielle.”

  Reluctantly, Marielle acquiesced to Anita’s advice. She asked Tomas and Janosch to stay in the apartment and gave up her fantasy of a few weeks of domestic life. But the apartment connected via an internal door to the main part of the house and both Anita and Janosch ignored Tomas’s nightly visit to Marielle’s bedroom.

  They deepened their intimacy during those nights—sometimes simply falling asleep in each other’s arms, physically exhausted by the day’s labor. Sometimes they continued conversations that had begun earlier in the evening, about the vineyards, about Magdalena and, as the end of the harvest approached, about their relationship.

  Tomas continued to struggle with his belief that he was cutting Marielle off from the chance to live a full life—with a husband and a family.

  “I’m not sure I ever saw that as the direction my life would take—especially when I set out on my career at Deutsche Bank. Now that I am responsible for the winery, my life is full. The vineyards are my children. I’m not missing something in my life because of you. On the contrary, you’re filling an emptiness that had been there for a long time.

  “Tomas, I’m not going to deny that there is nothing I want more than to be your wife. But that isn’t within my reach. Perhaps we can’t make this work. But I’m as committed to you as if I wore your ring.”

  Tomas left that year as he had in the past, on the morning after St. Martin’s Day. They watched the flames of the bonfire together, his arm lightly around her waist, grateful for these last moments together and the ritual of the fire, warming them as the darkness and the winter of separation closed in on them.

  Tomas returned for two more harvests without another visit by Marielle to Warsaw. Anita finally relented the third time and no longer cautioned Marielle about the propriety of his living with her during the harvest. She had witnessed the constancy between them during their annual separations—letters weekly and always, on Valentine’s Day, a huge bouquet of roses, delivered first thing in the morning by Maria.

  When Karol Wojtyla, the archbishop of Kraków, was elected as Pope John Paul II in 1978, a new energy and sense of identity surged in Poland. In 1979, Marielle returned to Poland at the same time as the Pope. When he knelt on the tarmac at the airport and kissed the ground of his homeland, Marielle understood the emotional meaning of this visit and acknowledged her own connection to Poland. As it did for John Paul II, a piece of her heart remained on Polish soil, even though her life’s work and responsibilities lay elsewhere.

  With thousands of other people, but conscious only of the man by her side, Marielle experienced one of the Pope’s outdoor Masses and began to grasp what she had observed at the church on Easter Sunday a few years before. For Poles, the Church was more than devotion and prayer. It was the constant that defined them despite a turbulent history of shifting borders and foreign oppression. With this second visit, Marielle fit another piece into the puzzle of understanding Tomas.

  During the months of separation between harvests, Marielle accumulated more puzzle pieces in the form of Tomas’s letters. They were a journal, recounting the minutiae of his life in a way that allowed Marielle to imagine his daily existence. As she moved through her own life, pruning, planting, rushing to the hillside after a particularly devastating storm to survey the damage to the vines, she would sometimes pause and see him—treating patients at the clinic, seated at the dining table with Halina and Magdalena in the evening, attending a recital when Magdalena began studying the violin. It was reassuring to her to know that he was living in a world parallel to her.

  As the date of the harvest approached, however, she would develop a heightened emotional state. Despite the letters, she always felt a stab of uncertainty. Each year was as if they were beginning anew, with an initial reserve that marked the first day of his arrival. Tomas and Janosch always came to dinner the first night, a meal Marielle prepared with great care. She drove into Wiesbaden to the food market in the lower level of the Carsch-Haus department store and selected meat and produce from the abundant displays at each stall. One year she made duck roasted with apples, raisins and sauerkraut that had been braised in Riesling. Another time she chose a leg of lamb that she simmered with onions and bacon in a sauce made from broth and Burgundy and served with dumplings.

  In some ways, the elaborate preparations for the meal and the ritual of the meal itself were a way to ease the transition from life without Tomas to Tomas as a daily presence. She poured her energy into chopping and peeling and stirring to still the voices in her head, the questions about how Tomas would react to her when he walked through the door.

/>   Each time he arrived, he greeted Anita first—in the early years with a simple handshake and later with a kiss on each cheek that she warmly returned. Then he took Marielle in his arms and bent to kiss her, holding her with his eyes closed for a moment as they both relished the reunion.

  Their first night together always began tentatively, an exploration of achingly familiar territory. But as their bodies eased into each other their hesitancy gave way to a recklessness and abandon and outpouring of all that had been pent up during their months of separation.

  For seven years these reunions repeated themselves, deepening and sustaining their love for one another. Marielle’s wines were gaining attention as she grew in confidence and knowledge in her winemaking; Magdalena turned thirteen during Solidarity’s revolutionary impact on Poland and was developing into a bright and motivated student. Tomas was named head of surgery at the hospital.

  Chapter 11

  1983-1988

  In the spring of 1983, Marielle came face-to-face with the consequences of the choice she had made to lead this divided and often incomplete life. The Rheingau Vintners’ Association arranged a trip for the group to travel to the Mosel region to visit the vineyards of a similar group of vintners. Marielle, at Anita’s encouragement, decided to go. It was a valuable opportunity to learn new techniques and be exposed to new ideas. It was also more fun than Marielle had had in a long time.

  She realized how narrow her world had become in the years since she had taken over the winery. She had devoted herself to the business and had only made time for Tomas—writing to him every week. Her friends from Frankfurt had long since moved on in their lives—furthering their own careers at the bank, starting families. Relaxing for a few days with colleagues who shared the same challenges was a delightful respite. She laughed, hiked through glorious countryside and sat over lingering meals with a different wine for each course.

  She also met a man. Klaus Eckhardt ran a winery in Kiedrich, about twenty kilometers north of her village. He was about forty, an outgoing and energetic man who reminded her in many ways of her father. There was an earthiness and frankness to him—a man without pretense who considered himself first and foremost a farmer. He sat next to her on the bus and entertained her with hilarious stories of his education as a vintner. His stories put her own anxieties in perspective. When the trip was over, Klaus invited her to a concert at Kloster Eberbach, an ancient monastery with extraordinary acoustics.

  Again, Marielle had a wonderful time in his company, forgetting her loneliness and the stress of the business. He had a large extended family full of nieces and nephews, the children of his six brothers and sisters. Marielle felt herself absorbed with ease into Klaus’s noisy and comfortable family. One summer evening she sat on his brother’s veranda, watching the sunset as the adults enjoyed a bottle of Klaus’s Spätburgunder and the children played on the lawn.

  It was a scene she hadn’t expected to be a part of, and she was disturbed by prickles of dissatisfaction. She hadn’t thought she wanted something as prosaic as this—a traditional vision of family life. It surprised her to be feeling this lack, and she went home that evening wondering if she would ever regret not marrying and having children.

  She felt no physical attraction to Klaus, but she appreciated his humor and warmth. He became a friend, willing to coax her out of her driven focus on work. She even told him about Tomas.

  All summer she questioned what might be missing from her life. She noticed women pushing strollers. When it was her turn to host the tasting stand at the village park she watched families walking, children on bikes, grandmothers doting on grandchildren. Was this a buried need that she had put aside? Would it haunt her? She didn’t know the answer.

  When Tomas came in October, he was thinner and more worn that she had ever seen him. Martial law had been imposed in the wake of strikes; civil liberties had been suspended and many union leaders had been imprisoned. His hospital had received many of the injured when government troops had attacked striking laborers. Once again, Poland had been in economic and political crisis. Marielle saw the human effect of the turmoil in Poland every time the crew arrived in the fall, but Tomas seemed to embody the ravages of failed policies more acutely than the others. When she took him into her bed the first night, she felt the unprotected angles of his body and sought to surround him with her own softness and comfort.

  After a few weeks of work in the open air and Anita’s hearty meals he had lost his gauntness. In his arms at night, Marielle felt his strength once again.

  “Are you happy?” he asked her late one night after lovemaking.

  “Yes. Being here with you is what makes my life meaningful.”

  “But is it enough? I look at you, how hard you work. And I see very little else, except waiting for these few weeks. You should be living, not waiting.”

  “When you are here, I forget the waiting.”

  “But when I’m not here…?”

  He always seemed to be attuned to what she was thinking, despite her efforts to protect him this time from her doubts.

  “Marielle, you’re still a young woman, young enough to start a family. You’re living half a life.”

  “I didn’t think I needed the other half until…”

  “Until what? Until someone?”

  “Not someone in the way you mean. I’m not in love with someone else. But I was brought into a family this year, with children and grandparents and aunts and uncles, and I didn’t know until I was in the midst of it that it represented a hole in my life.”

  “You could come to Poland and have that.” His voice was pained. He knew she was not free to say yes, no matter how much she wanted that, wanted him.

  She knew he wished that he could give her a whole life.

  She still didn’t know how to define that life.

  They didn’t resolve their dilemma that night. It hovered over them throughout the harvest and imbued their lovemaking with a desperation and hunger that drove them to a level of intensity that echoed their first time in Warsaw.

  They exhausted themselves physically and emotionally. They talked in each other’s arms, over the dinner table, on long walks on Sunday mornings along the river’s edge.

  As the Feast of St. Martin approached, Tomas came to a decision. He had seen the look on Marielle’s face sometimes on Sunday when they passed families on the river path, a look she struggled to mask. But he knew her too well.

  Like the centurion giving up his red cloak to the shivering beggar, Tomas gave up his claim to Marielle’s heart.

  “I need to set you free, Marielle. This is no life for you. Find what you need. Don’t wake up twenty years from now full of regret and bitter that I couldn’t let you go.”

  He left, as he always did, early the next morning. He kissed her for the last time and closed the gate to the courtyard behind him.

  The rhythm of her life for the last eight years and the way she defined herself were disrupted, torn. For weeks, she went through the motions of running the winery and did nothing else. Klaus called to invite her to the Kiedricher Advent concert. He had been as busy as she with his own harvest, but had also kept his distance when Tomas was there. She accepted the invitation and was swept back up in Klaus’s exuberant family. For a few months she entertained the idea of considering Klaus romantically, but when she couldn’t imagine herself making love to him, she gently dissuaded him from the possibility that they could be a couple.

  Gradually she opened herself up to meeting other men. Matchmaking friends of Anita’s began to set up blind dates. She dutifully attempted to make conversation over dinners up and down the Rheingau. Now and then she went on a second date. For a while she became serious with a young scientist who shared her interest in rowing. She felt a “normalcy” in her social life.

  But she missed Tomas more than she had expected. His empathy, his intensity, his tenderness, his understanding of who she was beneath the façade of a driven, sm
art businesswoman.

  In the fall, Tomas returned for the harvest, but he did not work with Marielle. Instead, he joined a crew working another vineyard, the one where he had labored as a teenager. His path and Marielle’s did not cross.

  For four years, Marielle thought her desire for a family would override the reservations she had about one man or another. But she found that she could not will herself to love. Whenever she got close enough, she saw only what the men couldn’t give her. In the winter of 1987, she received a proposal of marriage and turned it down. She spent the following spring and summer alone, deliberately withdrawing from the dating scene. She was in retreat from partnership and coupling.

  During that time, she reread the hundreds of letters Tomas had written her over the years of their relationship. She sat up at night in bed, remembering and reliving.

  She remembered as well his final conversation with her. “Don’t look back with regret twenty years from now.”

  In October, after Janosch and the crew arrived, she drove to the campground the first Sunday morning and knocked on the door of the camper. Tomas answered.

  His hair was beginning to gray and the lines around his eyes had deepened. His hands, hanging at his sides, were still beautiful.

  “I have no regrets,” she said. “I want you in my life however and whenever you can be there.”

  She held her breath. She had no idea what had filled Tomas’s life in the four years they had been apart. Had he found a woman who could be wife and mother in Poland?

  He reached out his hand and stroked the side of her face, then gathered her into his arms, burying a moan in the hollow of her neck. She sobbed, her tears spilling onto his shoulder.

  Chapter 12

  November 1989

  In 1989 when Tomas came back for the harvest, he once again moved into Marielle’s apartment. In the evenings, instead of struggling to learn her craft as she had so many years before, Marielle painted. That fall, rather than her usual landscape, she painted Tomas’s portrait.