Ilario was shaking the crumbs from the bread bag when he smelled his father's garden.
The kitchen window was open. Usually the morning came through it smelling of the horse chestnuts along the lane, or of somebody else's breakfast. Today there was thyme, warm dust, the bitter green smell of a fig leaf snapped at its stem. He stood with the empty bag over the breadboard and breathed again.
From the next room, Nerina called, "The ribbon's gone."
"Look in your shoe."
"Why would it be in my shoe?"
"You put it there last night. You said you'd remember."
A pause. Then, "I have remembered."
He smiled and folded the bag. They had enough bread for breakfast, cut thin, and afterward they would take their lunch to the bandstand. Nerina had spent the week trying to whistle like a flute. At six, she could sustain a great many activities without becoming discouraged by their results.
On the mantelpiece, behind the clock, was an envelope containing the money for their next journey to the coast. Ilario added to it on paydays when he could. The last time he had counted, it held one adult fare and something toward a child's, with the return journey still to find. There were also the days away from the bindery. A visit short enough to afford would leave them scarcely time to unpack before they had to pack again.
Cosimo's most recent letter lay beside it. He had written that the late figs were coming on and that he had plenty to keep him busy. Nerina had drawn him a picture of the bandstand for their reply, giving each musician an instrument larger than himself. They had both signed it. Ilario hadn't promised a date.
He had been nineteen when he first left. His father had stood beside the kitchen table while he checked his bag for the third time.
"I'll keep your place," Cosimo had said. "Come and eat whenever you can."
He had come back often at first. Then less often, and once with a baby who cried throughout the coach ride and laughed the moment her grandfather took her. On their last visit Nerina had been small enough to sit on Cosimo's forearm. Now her knees stuck out of nearly everything she owned.
Outside, something scraped heavily over stone. Ilario left the bread uncut and went to open the front door.
Across the lane, the field was full of roofs.
Red tiles rose behind the hedge where yesterday there had been stubble. The baker's roof, with its sag in the middle. The little square tower. Three chimneys in a row that he had once believed belonged to a single enormous fireplace. Through a gap between the houses he could see the upper branches of his father's olive tree, trembling although the chestnuts beside the lane were still.
The farthest house was moving. Its yellow walls passed slowly behind the tower; below them, a thick shelf of earth hovered just above the field. People walked beside it with their palms against the stone. A woman at the corner called something, and the others stopped. The house lowered. Leaves shook all down its vine. A soft brown cloud rose where its garden met the stubble.
Ilario gripped the doorframe. He could hear voices, cupboard doors banging, a man's shout to someone on the other side of a wall. He knew that shout. The man had used it to summon his sons from the beach.
And his father was coming up the path.
Cosimo wore the blue shirt with the crooked pocket and carried his hat in one hand. His hair had gone almost entirely white since their last visit. He was looking at the numbers on the doors, counting under his breath, until he saw Ilario.
"There you are," he said. He stopped at the gate and put on his hat, suddenly smiling so broadly that his eyes nearly shut. "What does my granddaughter like for Sunday brunch?"
Ilario went out without his shoes.
He meant to say his father's name, or ask how, but by then Cosimo was holding him. The familiar shoulder was bony under the shirt. His father rubbed his back once, twice, then kept his hand there while Ilario buried his face against his neck. Dust and soap. The very same soap. He held on so tightly that the shirt pulled across his father's back.
"Let me look at you," Cosimo said, though he didn't let go enough to do it. "Ah, my boy."
From the doorway came Nerina's voice.
"Eggs."
Both men turned. She stood in her lavender dress, a pale ribbon tied round her brown hair in a lopsided bow. She had brought her boots in her hands.
"Grandad?"
"Yes, darling."
She dropped her boots on the step and ran to him. Cosimo caught her under the arms and lifted her with an effort that made Ilario reach out, but his father had her safely against his chest already. She took off his hat to kiss his forehead, then put it back crooked.
"I can do the laces now. Papa doesn't have to."
"Show me when I put you down."
"And I like the egg crunchy round the outside."
"Then that's how we'll have it."
Ilario looked over his father's shoulder. Smoke was rising from the bakery chimney. Behind it a cypress tipped slowly upright as the people beside its plot adjusted their hands.
"Papa," he said. "Is that all of it?"
Cosimo followed his gaze. "The tower came in last night. They've only just got the baker down. We had to come round the long way with his oven."
"The whole village?"
"Well, the sea's where we left it." He lowered Nerina to the path. "Your letter said this was your free day. I hoped you hadn't gone out."
"We were going to hear the band," Nerina said. "You can come."
"I'd like that very much."
Ilario laughed then, once, with no breath to sustain it. He took his father's arm and held on while Nerina sat on the step to put on her boots.
"You brought the house."
"And the figs. Go and get your shoes."
They crossed the lane together, Nerina swinging between them until she discovered she could lift both feet and be carried. After three swings Cosimo said his arm was getting longer, and she agreed to walk.
The familiar village had come apart into separate pieces. Between the houses lay strips of field, and some of the old lanes ended abruptly at cut edges of earth. Yet the gate outside the bakery still had its rusted bell, and the painted birds over the dressmaker's door were there, and laundry already hung from an upstairs window. Ilario kept turning. A staircase he had climbed a thousand times stood facing him from an entirely new direction.
At the corner of the baker's garden, four people were easing a low stone wall down. One pressed her whole forearm against it while a man crouched to watch the clearance beneath. Their hands brightened faintly, as if sunlight lay under the skin. When the earth touched down, the light faded. The man sat on the wall and accepted a piece of bread from someone who had been waiting with a basket.
Ilario recognized the woman and waved. She waved back before settling beside the man.
"How long have you been coming?" he asked his father.
"Twenty-three mornings. We rested through the hottest part of each day. Those who know the lifting took turns, and the rest of us walked, or rode and kept things from falling. We were all excellent at telling them to go more to the left."
"Twenty-three? Your letter came three weeks ago."
"I posted it before we started. We didn't know which day we'd reach you."
"You might have said something."
"I wanted to see your face." Cosimo glanced at him, plainly satisfied. "Though I nearly wrote again when we spent two days getting the tower past a bend."
They waited while two women guided a shed across the gap ahead. The shed rode low, swaying slightly between their hands. Nerina crouched to see beneath it, and Ilario drew her back. One of the women raised her eyebrows at the child; Nerina gave a vigorous wave from the safe side of his legs.
"Can I ride on one?" she asked.
"You'd be tired of it by the first afternoon," Cosimo said. "We sometimes walked a whole hour and could still see the spot where we'd eaten breakfast."
"I'd like to try."
"I wanted to try, too. Twenty-three mornings ago."
A hen came out of the shed as soon as it settled. She hurried back along its route, stopped where it had stood, and began scratching. Nerina wanted to follow her, but Cosimo promised there would be hens at his house.
"Are you staying?" Ilario asked.
His father looked at him. "Oh, yes. We've rented the fields for five years. The baker's daughter found them. Most of us have someone here now, and there's a market every day. We talked about it all winter. Then someone said we could bring the houses, and after that nobody wanted to talk about packing crates."
Ilario looked back toward his own narrow house. He could see the open shutter of Nerina's bedroom. Fifteen minutes, perhaps, from door to door. Ten on his own. On a weekday he might come after work, tired, carrying nothing, with no tickets in his pocket.
Ahead, an old neighbor stood in the street embracing two grown women at once. He had dropped a cabbage, which a little boy was rolling about with his foot. The dressmaker called Ilario's name from her window and demanded that he bring the child to see her when they'd eaten.
"I'll miss the sea," Cosimo said as they walked on. "I woke up last night and listened for it. There's an owl here instead. Very persistent."
"We hear it. Nerina thinks it's asking her a question."
"It is," Nerina said. "I just don't know what."
His father nodded. At a low green gate he stopped and fumbled for the latch.
Ilario reached past him and lifted the gate a fraction. It opened at once.
"Still doing that, then."
"Worse in wet weather. Come in."
The olive tree shaded the doorstep. Ilario brushed a branch with his shoulder, and a dry leaf slipped down inside his collar. He stood under it trying to fish the leaf out, looking at the white wall, the low kitchen window, the lavender growing untidily along the path. He could hear Nerina asking whether the branches were strong enough to climb.
Cosimo went inside to open the back door. Nerina followed him, then came running out again.
"Papa, your picture's in here."
"Which one?"
"When you had those trousers."
There were several possible pictures. He followed her.
The kitchen cupboards had been tied shut with lengths of cloth. A pan and a colander hung from their hooks, bundled together in an apron. Cosimo had kept the table clear except for a bowl of figs, a plate under a cloth, and the batter he must have mixed before coming to fetch them. The small iron stove was already hot. From the window beside it, Ilario could see his own city's roofs instead of the long blue slope of the sea.
He had to look twice.
"Untie that for me," Cosimo said, indicating the pans. "Then you can cut the bread."
Ilario unwrapped the apron, put it on, and reached into the drawer for the knife. His hand found it before he looked. Nerina was standing on tiptoe beneath a little portrait of him at about her age, wearing striped trousers and gripping a wooden horse.
"Did you choose those?"
"I did. I liked the stripes."
"I've still got the horse," Cosimo said. "Remind me after we've eaten. Do you want to choose your egg?"
She turned so quickly she nearly knocked into Ilario. Cosimo held down the basket for her to inspect.
"This one. It's got spots. Can I crack it?"
"Into that bowl. I'll show you."
Ilario cut the bread into the narrow fingers she liked. Beside him, his father folded Nerina's hands round the egg and helped her pull the cracked shell apart. She looked into the bowl with relief.
"I didn't break the yellow."
"Very good. Bring it here. Slowly."
She carried it the three steps to the stove. Cosimo slid the egg into hot oil, and she stood back at the hiss. He put the bowl on the shelf, moved her a little farther from the pan, and gave her a piece of bread while she waited.
"Tell Grandad about your teeth," Ilario said.
She opened her mouth at once, pulling down her lip to display the gap.
"Well," Cosimo said, "that wasn't there when I last saw you."
"I did write."
"You did. But I couldn't see right inside your mouth in the letter."
She opened wider. Cosimo bent to inspect, grave and thorough, then showed her a gap of his own at the side. Nerina laughed so hard she had to hold on to his sleeve.
Ilario leaned against the table with the bread knife still in his hand. He wanted his father to turn and look at him again. There were things to ask about the journey, and the garden, and simply how he'd been. But Nerina was telling him where she had been standing when her tooth came out, and Cosimo was listening while spooning hot oil over the egg. They could take as long as they liked. Ilario set down the knife and began splitting figs.
"Not those," his father said. "Those are for eating fresh. The softer ones are under the cloth."
He lifted the cloth. Six figs lay there, purple skins split with ripeness. He could smell the honeyed centers before he touched them.
"You remembered."
Cosimo looked round. "Ilario, you asked for them every Sunday for about eleven years."
"Did you get them every Sunday?" Nerina asked.
"No. Figs don't grow every Sunday."
She considered this while her grandfather lifted the egg onto a plate. The white had a brown, lacy edge. She reached out a finger, drew it back from the heat, and followed the plate to the table.
"I can eat this now?"
"Start before it gets cold. We're coming."
Cosimo returned to the stove, and Ilario passed him the first split fig. His father dipped it in batter and eased it into the deeper pan. The batter puffed around it. For a while they worked without speaking, one handing, the other dipping, Nerina crunching at the table.
"She asked about the olive tree," Cosimo said. "Do you remember when you made your bed up there?"
"I remember you telling everybody about it."
Nerina looked up, bread poised above the yolk. "You slept in the tree?"
"For part of one night."
"He took a blanket and the good pillow," Cosimo said. "Dragged them up there while I was out. I got home and there was a stocking hanging outside this very window. With his foot still in it."
"I was on the low branch."
"Your foot was on the low branch. I couldn't find the rest of you. All I could see was bedding."
Nerina put down her bread. "Were you hiding?"
"I wanted a room outside. It was hot. And I thought if I slept there I could pick the olives before breakfast."
"They weren't ripe," Cosimo said. He turned the fritters. "He found that out fairly quickly."
"Raw olives are horrible," Ilario told her. "Even when they look ready. Don't try one."
"What did you eat, then?"
"Your grandad brought me bread and cheese."
"Up a ladder. I carried the plate in one hand and held on with the other. He was tucked so far back among the branches that I couldn't reach him."
"I had to climb down," Ilario said. "We ended up eating on the doorstep."
"But he went back up. After all that trouble, he said he was staying the night."
His father scooped the first fritters onto a dish. Ilario took it, hunting for the old crack in its glaze. There it was, running through a painted yellow flower. He had forgotten the flower.
"Did you?" Nerina asked.
"Did I what?"
"Stay all night."
"Oh. No. I fell asleep for a while, and then a hen got into the blankets."
She stared at him. "On you?"
"Right against my stomach. I woke up and something was wriggling inside my bed."
Cosimo began to laugh, quietly at first. He rested the spoon across the pan.
"I heard him from upstairs. Sounded as if he was trying to shout without opening his mouth too far in case she pecked him."
"I was not."
"You made a very small, careful noise."
"You couldn't see my mouth from upstairs."
"I was there soon enough."
Nerina slid off her chair. "Which branch? Show me which branch."
"After breakfast," Ilario said.
"You always say that."
"And then we have breakfast. Sit down, please."
She climbed back up, but turned the chair a little so that she could see the tree through the door.
There was a folded newspaper on Ilario's old chair. He moved it to the window ledge and sat down. The rung met his heel in exactly the right place.
Cosimo brought the last of the fritters, then the cheese, then remembered the sliced tomatoes. Ilario made room between the plates. His father had always eaten as if someone else might arrive halfway through.
Nerina pushed her chair closer to Ilario's. She had finished the egg and wanted to try a fritter, but only a little one. He broke his in half to let the steam out and gave her the smaller piece.
"There's pink in it."
"That's the fig."
She ate the crisp corner first. Then she took a bite that included the fruit, and looked at her remaining piece before putting all of it into her mouth.
Cosimo watched her. "Another?"
She nodded. Ilario reached for the smallest, but she pointed firmly to the one beside it.
Outside, someone began ringing the tower bell, stopped, and tried again. The second peal was better. Cosimo looked toward the window with a piece of cheese halfway to his mouth.
"Sounds different here."
Ilario listened. Without the cliff behind it, the sound spread thinly over the fields, mingling with the noises of his Sunday: wheels in the lane, a neighbor calling upstairs, the distant rehearsal of a trumpet.
"That's the band," he said. "They practice before they go to the park."
"What time do we need to leave?"
"Hours yet."
"Good." Cosimo reached for the coffee pot. "Tell me about your work. Did they give you that long table you wanted?"
Ilario began to tell him. The table had arrived, too wide to go through the workshop door, and they had spent the first morning taking its legs off. His father wanted to know whose measurements they'd used. Nerina, who had visited the bindery that day, interrupted to explain that Papa had crawled under the old workbench to find a screw and got glue in his hair.
"Paste," Ilario said. "It came out."
"There was some behind your ear. I found it."
"You did."
He turned his head to show Cosimo where, and his father reached across the corner of the table and tucked back the dark hair, inspecting him with the same attention he had given Nerina's teeth. Ilario stayed still. His father's fingers were warm from the cup.
"All gone," Cosimo said, and sat back. "Have the last one."
"Have you had enough?"
"I'm having cheese. Go on."
Ilario took the fritter. Nerina was looking from him to the tree again.
"Grandad, do the noise Papa made. With the hen."
"He doesn't remember it," Ilario said.
Cosimo set down his cup. He pressed his lips together, drew his shoulders up toward his ears, and produced a thin, strangled cry. Nerina burst into laughter, her head tipped back, showing the gap where her tooth had been. Ilario tried to object, but he had taken too large a bite, and his father was doing it again.