Bread and Wine

Set in 1930s fascist Italy, the novel opens in the rural Abruzzi, a mountainous and impoverished region southeast of Rome. Don Benedetto, a 75-year-old retired priest, waits in his garden at Rocca dei Marsi with his sister Marta for former pupils she has secretly invited to celebrate his birthday. Dismissed from his teaching post after the bishop deemed his bluntness unsuitable, he lives in seclusion, estranged from relatives who resent his lack of influence with the authorities. Only two former pupils arrive: Dr. Nunzio Sacca and Concettino Ragù, an officer of militia, who bring dispiriting news of dead, bankrupt, or unemployed classmates. Don Benedetto asks about his favorite pupil, Pietro Spina, and reads from the boy's school essay expressing a desire to live for justice regardless of consequences. Nunzio reveals that Spina was arrested, escaped deportation, and has lived in exile across Europe, ill with lung trouble. After the guests leave, Concettino privately tells Nunzio that Pietro has returned to Italy and the police are on his trail.

Nunzio is summoned before dawn by Cardile Mulazzi, a young peasant who once befriended Pietro near Marseilles. Pietro appeared at Cardile's door the previous night, feverish and on the run, and Cardile hid him in a farm shed. Nunzio barely recognizes Pietro, whose face has been artificially aged with tincture of iodine to evade police. The two clash over Pietro's return, but when Nunzio examines Pietro's emaciated body, compassion overtakes him. They agree Pietro will remain hidden while Nunzio arranges a safer refuge.

Nunzio proposes that Pietro disguise himself as a priest and convalesce in the remote mountain village of Pietrasecca. Repulsed by the idea, Pietro ultimately agrees. Nunzio dresses him in a cassock, and they construct a new identity: Don Paolo Spada. Peter Thorn becomes Paul Sword.

A cab carries Don Paolo through the night past his birthplace, Orta, where village dogs howl in recognition. At the Girasole hotel in Fossa dei Marsi, the landlady begs him to see her dying daughter Bianchina, who attempted a self-induced abortion to avoid dishonor and refuses the local priest. Though anguished by his deception, Don Paolo sits with the girl and tells her she is already forgiven. Old Magascià, a one-armed carter, then takes him by donkey cart up to Pietrasecca, a remote mountain village.

At the inn of Matalena Ricotta, a superstitious widow, Don Paolo is bedridden with fever. Devotional books rouse forgotten childhood memories and reconnect him with his earlier religious sensibility. When a pregnant woman threatens to throw herself from his window unless he blesses her unborn child, he reluctantly complies, realizing he is trapped: Performing priestly acts invites more requests, yet refusing them causes real suffering.

Bianchina, now recovered, tracks Don Paolo to Pietrasecca. He sends her to Rome to restore contact with his clandestine party organization. He also meets Cristina Colamartini, daughter of the local patrician Don Pasquale, a young woman preparing to enter a convent but asked by her father to remain because the family needs her to care for three ailing elderly women. Don Paolo is captivated. Their conversations about faith and vocation grow increasingly frank, though constrained by his false identity. In his diary, he confesses that lying to her is torment and questions whether he has exchanged the opportunism of a decadent Church for the Machiavellianism of a political sect.

Don Paolo attempts to engage the cafoni, the poorest peasants, in political discussion. He resolves a card-game dispute with a parable about dethroned kings, and villagers mock a reading of government propaganda with sharp questions. Yet when he presses them about the possibility of change, they express complete resignation, dismissing freedom and equality as beautiful but impossible dreams.

Bianchina returns from Rome with sealed party documents on internal disputes in the Russian Communist Party; Don Paolo has no interest in them. At Fossa, he meets young men who want a "second revolution," and he and Pompeo, the chemist's son, agree to plan practical action.

Shedding his cassock at a Roman bathhouse, Pietro reconnects with the underground. Romeo, a veteran organizer, describes the movement's decimation by arrests and informers. Pietro visits Uliva, a former comrade living in squalor, who argues that every revolution inevitably becomes a tyranny and the party is already corrupt. At a church on the Aventine hill, he meets Battipaglia, the inter-regional party secretary, who demands he endorse the party's condemnation of opposition figures in Russia. Pietro refuses, admitting he burned the reports unread. Battipaglia threatens expulsion. Romeo later reports that Uliva destroyed his own apartment with explosives, killing himself and his pregnant wife while preparing to bomb a government ceremony. When Romeo insists that leaving the party means abandoning its ideals, Pietro disagrees, comparing the distinction to that between the Church and Christ.

Pietro finds Annina, a seamstress in Rome and Luigi Murica's former lover. She describes how Murica, after being arrested and beaten, became consumed by terror. On Christmas Day, when police came to her flat, she hid Murica on the roof and was raped by two officers to prevent his arrest. Returning, Murica called her a whore and vanished. She says she can never live with anyone again.

As Don Paolo, Pietro returns to Fossa on the day war on Abyssinia (present-day Ethiopia) is declared. Pompeo has volunteered, believing war will bring state socialism. That night, Don Paolo writes anti-war slogans in charcoal on walls throughout Fossa. Back in his room, he suffers a hemorrhage. Bianchina tends him and cleans the charcoal evidence, later deflecting suspicion onto an unknown cyclist.

Don Paolo visits Don Benedetto secretly. The old teacher, diminished and isolated, tells Pietro that God is present in the still, small voice of an unarmed man who writes "Down with the war" on a wall. Their conversation is interrupted by Don Piccirilli, an informer priest, and Pietro escapes through the garden window.

A stranger arrives at Pietrasecca carrying a letter from Don Benedetto: Luigi Murica. In a painful confession, Murica reveals what Annina did not know: He agreed to serve as a paid police informer after his arrest. He describes his torment, his flight, and his eventual rebirth through Don Benedetto's guidance. Don Paolo reveals his true identity: "I'm not a priest. My name is Pietro Spina." They share bread dipped in wine in silence, and Murica declares he is ready for anything.

The first heavy snow falls. Murica is arrested and beaten to death by militiamen, who found a paper in his pocket proclaiming that truth and brotherhood will prevail. At the Murica house, mourners share bread and wine. Pietro speaks: Bread is made of many grains, wine of many grapes; both mean unity.

Bianchina brings urgent news: The authorities know Don Paolo is Pietro Spina and are coming to arrest him. Pietro borrows a horse and gallops through the snow to Pietrasecca, where Cristina intercepts him. He confirms his identity, asks her forgiveness, and hands her his diary, telling her it contains the truth of his heart. He flees on foot up the frozen stream toward the Goat's Saddle, the only mountain pass to the other side.

Cristina learns Pietro has gone into the mountains without warm clothing or food. She gathers provisions and heavy clothing and climbs a steep shortcut through deep snow, tearing her hands on thorns. She reaches the area of the pass but finds no trace of him. Collapsing, she calls his name. A voice answers, but it is not human: It is the howl of a wolf, summoning others. Through the driving snow she sees wild beasts approaching. She kneels, closes her eyes, and makes the sign of the cross.