Wine and bread is the second novel written during the exile, and it’s published to Zurigo in the Adolf Saager’s German translation with the title Brot und Wein in 1936; it was stamped by the fascist press as a coward defamation of the Italian people; but it was really, a book of testimony and denunciation. Pietro Spina is here the protagonist, whose figure coincides with the political agitator who appears at the end of Fontamara, for which Berardo is sacrificed. Pietro is a young intellectual man of bourgeois extraction, who has gone into exile because he has embraced a revolutionary ideology and looking for something else from the bread and the wine of his country. But now he has returned from abroad, sick and in conditions of danger, because the regime watches on this refugees. In Cardile’s hut, his old classmate takes care of him, who now is a doctor and he looks for a setup in the regime. The two man have studied together under the guide of an old priest, Don Benedetto, who now is retired envoy because suspected by the political authorities. But Pietro has to left Cardile’s hut to avoid suspicions and he disguised as a priest, he went to Pietrasecca, where he finds lodging in the Matalena’s inn. There he meets Bianchina and he recovers her from a gotten infirmity. The poor Pietro lives in the town surrounded by the respect of peoplewho would to have religious performances, but he declares himself exempt from them because finding there for reasons of health, he can’t practice any religious function. There he meets characters and families like Cristina, to whom he is tied with a deep communion of ideas and feelings. Pietro, who has taken on the name of Don Paolo Spada, has often to discuss political and moral themes, like the faith, the revolution, the justice, until he decides to take back contact with the revolutionary environment in Rome, with the help of Bianchina. He himself goes to Rome where he looks for a companion of political faith, the student Murica and he tries of to conduct him into Abruzzo. During the days of the Ethiopian war, he returnes to Fossa and he assists to a fascist assembly where the local authorities, amoung rhetorical discourses and luxurious lunches, they hymn to the war. In this occasion of public folly he writes on the walls "Down The War" " The Liberty Lives."
A dramatic representation
Bianchina, who had realized his revolutionary gesture, takes care of don Paolo who has had a relapse of his illness; then he meets Don Benedetto and he has an interesting interview with him, according to which he succeeds better to see in his ideological and religious crisis; then he meets Murica, from whom he learns the tragic experience of the fascist violence against his givefriend. Then Murica is taken by the fascist and he dies because of the suffered brutalities. Mean while the first snow falls; don Paolo, who is believed a saint, is discovered and he is forced to run away in the night; being seriously sick, he runs away on the mountains in the snow before the arrival of the police; in vain Cristina follows him who has known that he is Pietro Spina, but the girl is torn by the wolves of the mountain.
The page that describes the Murica’s death and the lamentes of his parents as a kind of imitation of the torture of Christ, in which sacre and profane seem to confuse in a popular tragedy, it is the most beautiful page of the other pages of the novel. After all, all the novel is lent to such point to the dramatic representation, that the author took care of a theatrical reduction with the title "And he hids himself that was also represented with a great success".