The Olive Press – Part 1: The Grove

"You are killing them," said Vito.

Marianne lowered the pruning shears. She was sixty-one, a retired French teacher, widowed, sunburnt, standing in the middle of an olive grove in Puglia in a straw hat and a pair of men's boots. The trees around her were enormous and ancient, silver-leaved, with trunks twisted like wrung cloth. Three hundred of them, all hers.

"I am pruning them."

"You are murdering them."

The man at the fence was sixty-five, small, wiry, with a leathery brown face and a white moustache, in a shirt the colour of dust. He regarded her with deep, patient disapproval. "I am Vito. I farm next door. I have watched you for a week. Please stop."

"I bought this place to grow olives."

"You bought it to learn." He climbed over the wall with surprising agility. "Give me the shears."

For an hour, he pruned a single tree while she watched: a delicate, deliberate, thoughtful cut, here, then there, opening the canopy to the light. "A tree must breathe," he said. "As a woman must."

She laughed. "As a woman must?"

"As a man must also. Everyone must."

He taught her the whole summer. The grove, the soil, the irrigation, the moon. In the evenings they sat on the terrace of the ruined masseria, drinking cold white wine and eating bread dipped in the thick green oil of last year's press. The sky turned apricot, then violet. Cicadas thrummed. The old stone farmhouse glowed in the last light.

"Can I ask you something?" said Marianne.

"Yes."

"Why are you helping me?"

"Because I miss a woman on this land," said Vito, simply. "My wife loved the grove. Since she died, it has been very quiet."

Her throat ached. "I'm so sorry."

"Don't be. You have made it loud again."

"Green?" she said, with a smile, a leaf.

"Green," said Vito, smiling slowly. "Very green. Next month, we harvest."

Continue the story: Part 2 – First Pressing.