EPISODE 7 - HE DIDN’T KNOW
- Enzo
- Jan 11
- 8 min read
SONG
LYRICS
He jumped down light, the grass gave way
Barefoot grace beneath the day
He smiled and said, "the work won't wait"
The olives shone, the sun burned late
We picked in heat, the hours slow
Dust clung soft from head to toe
Each breath he drew, the air grew tight
A fever hiding in the light
He didn't know what burned in me
The way his touch could set me free
He didn't know, I couldn't tell
He was my heaven, a burning hell
A hot fire in heaven, yeah
A cool water in burning hell
Maybe Abraxas was right
There is no day without the night
Hey hey hey
Hey hey
I asked if he was on his own
He laughed, "I'm better left alone"
"My brother's wild" he said with pride
"I guess the right one's yet to find."
He lay beneath the olive shade
His body calm, his heartbeat stayed
His toes moved once inside the dust
And I was trembling more than trust
He didn't know what burned in me
The way his touch could set me free
He didn't know, I couldn't tell
He was my heaven, a burning hell
A hot fire in heaven, yeah
A cool water in burning hell
Maybe Abraxas was right
There is no day without the night
Hey hey hey
Hey hey hey
The branches swayed, the daylight low
And still, he didn't know
STORY
EPISODE 7 - HE DIDN’T KNOW
Giorgio cut short my hope that he wanted the same thing I did when he suddenly turned away and jumped down from the branch where we had been sitting.
He landed lightly, almost without a sound, in the dry grass. A faint cloud of dust rose. With it came my disappointment.
He looked up at me. There was something closed in his gaze, almost uneasy, as though I had touched a boundary without knowing where it ran.
Had I given myself away. Had I misunderstood him. I couldn’t tell.
“Come,” he said at last. His voice was calm. “Work doesn’t wait. Let’s pick the olives. They’re ripe.”
He walked ahead, and I followed him to a part of the land I didn’t yet know. Behind a low stone wall, almost hidden, stood a small shed, squat, built of rough stone. No windows. Locked.
Giorgio went to a pile of stones and, with an instinctive motion, lifted one beneath which an iron key was hidden. I was surprised by how much trust he already placed in me.
He went to the door. The simple lock was old, darkened by use. Metal scraped softly as he turned the key and slid the bolt back.
The wood creaked when he opened the door.
Inside, it smelled of dust, linen, and old labor. Rough wooden frames ran along the walls. Nets lay neatly folded, poles leaned against the stone, baskets were stacked in order. Tools. Everything within reach. Not much, but everything had its place. A place for things. For what was needed to work the land and keep it safe.
It wasn’t chaotic. That impressed me and pleased me in a way I couldn’t quite explain. His property mattered to him, and he treated it accordingly. Even the floor was strikingly clean, clearly swept with a homemade broom that also leaned neatly where it belonged.
“Wow,” I said quietly, almost without thinking. “Everything here is so orderly and clean.”
He looked at me, raised an eyebrow slightly, and smiled, as if I had voiced something so obvious it needed no explanation.
Then he reached for the nets. Roughly knotted, heavy, handmade.
“They’re old,” he said casually. “My father used them too.”
I took one end and helped him carry them. The nets weighed heavy in my hands, as if memory clung to every mesh. Dust from years, sun from summers, sweat from men who said nothing and did everything.
Outside, we spread them beneath the trees, carefully and with few words. We worked in a rhythm that didn’t ask questions. Pull the nets, smooth them, secure the corners.
He took the long pole and stood at the trunk. Feet planted wide. Steady. A man who knew how to do things right.
He shook the branches. Not roughly. Not in haste. I marveled at how he made the thick limbs tremble with what looked like effortless ease. Strength without hurry. Control without display. The olives fell in dense bursts, thudding into the linen, a dark rain with a heavy sound.
“Please get a few baskets while I keep shaking them down,” he said, without pausing.
I liked his clear instructions. They left no room for doubt. They felt like a hand at the back of my neck, not harsh, but unmistakable.
I almost ran back to the shed, fetched the baskets, and strangely enough I already missed him. The moment he was out of sight, I wanted to return. I wanted to see him, to be close to him.
When I came back, I saw him with his arms raised, already shaking the last branch of the tree until it bent to his will. The net was full of olives. Everything moved faster with him.
“That’s it,” he said at last, lowering the pole. “Now into the baskets.”
We pulled the nets together and poured the olives into the baskets. The heat hung over us like a weight, and yet it wasn’t only the sun that made me burn inside.
“Do you always work alone?” I asked at some point, so casually it almost sounded harmless.
“Most of the time… no, actually always, since my father got too old for it,” he said.
I drew the net together, lifted it until the last olive rolled into the basket. My hands were dusty, my throat dry, and still it wasn’t thirst that tightened me from within.
We took the net and laid it beneath the next tree.
He shook the next branch.
I waited. Then I asked again. Carefully. Feeling my way.
“Are you always alone?”
He kept shaking without looking at me. “What do you mean?”
“I mean…” I cleared my throat. My voice sounded a shade too bright. I hated it. “Don’t you have a fiancée?”
He paused briefly. The pole rested against the trunk, as if it, too, were listening.
“No,” he said at last. “Apparently I haven’t met the right one yet.”
Something inside me flared, small and dangerous, like a spark in dry grass. It pushed me on, even though I knew I should have stayed quiet.
“So… not even for a little… fun?”
He looked at me. Just for a moment. His gaze was calm, but closed, like a door that shouldn’t be opened.
“No,” he said. “That’s not who I am.”
A short pause.
“And I don’t want people talking.”
He turned back to the tree, as though that ended the matter. As if the conversation were a net you fold up and put away before it gathers dust.
“My brother is different.”
“Your brother?” I asked, and in my mind I saw his reflection.
He laughed softly. Dry. “Salvatore. He takes whatever comes his way.”
He shook the branch harder than necessary. “I don’t even want to know how many children in the village are probably his. He has his reputation.”
“A Casanova?” I asked.
Giorgio snorted. “Next to him, Casanova would just be an apprentice.”
Then, almost tired: “And all that trouble with those women… I don’t know how many hopes he’s destroyed. He’s probably had half the village in his bed.”
I looked at him. Giorgio. A man every woman must have wanted. As naturally as I wanted him, and just as unreachable for them.
We kept working. Tree after tree. Net after net. Basket after basket. The hours slowed even more, as if time were standing still in the heat and only we were still moving inside it. With each tree, my need for his truth grew sharper. More urgent.
“And not a single woman in the village ever suited you?” I asked.
Too direct. I knew it at once.
He didn’t answer. Pulled the net together. Poured out the olives.
Then he said, without looking at me, “People talk too much. Everyone knows everything. I live well on my own.”
A breath.
“I have my peace. And honestly… I work too much to look for someone, and I earn too little to provide for her.”
I swallowed. And still I didn’t let go, as if something in me preferred to burn rather than stay silent.
“And if you met someone,” I asked quietly, “who was different?”
His jaw tightened. “Different from what?”
“From what’s expected.”
A moment. Only the dull sound of the last olives falling into the net.
Then he said calmly, finally, “I have no expectations. But they probably do. I’m a poor farmer, boy.”
He lifted the basket. “Come. These olives, then we’re done.”
It wasn’t an invitation to keep asking. It was an end.
And yet, with every movement he made, he drew me deeper in. His back, his arms, the way he breathed, as if even the air belonged to him and he belonged to no one. I saw his large hands, dusty, strong, sure, and I knew I couldn’t tell him what was burning inside me. That I couldn’t risk it. Not here. Not in 1926.
He didn’t know.
He didn’t know what was burning in me.
He didn’t know how his touch, even accidental, even born only of work, could free me precisely because it bound me at the same time. He didn’t know that for me he was heaven and hell. That I longed for him like water, and that every thought of him burned me.
And suddenly I thought of Abraxas. I had read the name once, in a book I had never fully understood. A being, it said, that carried light and darkness at once, day and night, heaven and hell united in a single form. Back then it had seemed too contradictory to me, too dangerous an idea.
And now the secret of Abraxas stood before me.
For me, Giorgio was exactly that. A burning fire in heaven and cool water in blazing hell. Something that carried me and tested me, saved me and condemned me, without meaning to. Perhaps Abraxas was right. Perhaps there is no day without night.
Because in him lay everything I hoped for, and everything denied to me. He was the light that allowed me to see. And the shadow in which I couldn’t breathe.
Maybe love is exactly that. Not purity, but wholeness.
We carried the full baskets into the shed, folded the nets, put everything away. He was sweating. The sun was low, the light softer, yet the day was still too bright and the air too hot.
I was so caught in my thoughts that I barely felt the heat. I wanted to know too much. And I didn’t know how to come any closer without destroying everything.
“The sun’s killing me,” he said at last. “I’m going to lie down for a bit.”
He lowered himself beneath an olive tree into the shade and closed his eyes, as if he could simply turn the world off, unlike me.
I sat down near him and trembled inside. My fear was great. Greater than the trust my heart had already given him.
A light evening breeze rose. Above us, the branches swayed, and the daylight already hung low among the leaves. The shadows grew longer. The world grew quieter.
And still he didn’t know what he was to me.
And I still didn’t know whether I could ever be for him the one I so deeply wanted to be.
