Nuto (whose real name was Pinolo Scaglione) is the mediator between the world of the intellectual, raised in the city, and the reality of the Langhe. He is the one who leads the writer along the paths, the vineyards, the ridges and tells him the stories of the dead and the living of this valley enclosed by the hills, where only the seasons count and time never goes by. Pavese draws fully from Nuto’s tales, reinventing and changing them. Nuto’s workshop-house is just before the Mora farm, on the road to Canelli. It was somehow like a window onto the world. Everyone was forced to walk past it: on foot, by bike, by oxcart, by carriage… and he used to talk to each and everyone of them.