The Winemaker (16 page)

From the windows of car after car, people in crowded third-class coaches looked at him as they passed on the way to lives far more secure than his.

Less than an hour later he heard train sounds again, and this time it was what he had been waiting for, a long line of freight cars. As they went past, he saw a car with the door partially open, and he ran alongside and easily lifted himself onto the bed.

When he rolled into the dark interior and got to his feet, he would have settled for the scent of onions, for this car was stale with the old odor of urine. Probably that was one of the reasons guards wielded their clubs when they caught riders, he thought. Then somebody quietly said “Hola.”

“Hola.”

As Josep’s eyes adjusted to the interior dimness, he saw the speaker lying in the gloom, slight and slim, with a small dark beard.

“I am Ponc.”

“Josep. “

“I go only as far as Figueres.”

“I am staying on the train. I’m going to France to seek work. Do you know a likely town?”

“What kind of work have you done?”

“Everything in a vineyard.”

“Well, there are so many vineyards.” The man shook his head. “But hard times everywhere, also.” He paused thoughtfully. “Do you know the Orb valley?”

“No, senyor.”

“I have heard times are better there, a valley with its own climate, warmer than Catalonia in the winter, perfect for grapes.
Many
vineyards there. Perhaps with employment, eh?”

“How far away is this valley?”

The other shrugged. “Maybe a five-hour ride from the border. The train goes directly to it.”

“This train?”

The man snorted. “No, these tracks end well before the border. Those who think of such things in Madrid built our Spanish train rails wider than the rails of France, so that if the Frenchies should decide to invade, they can’t simply move in troops and guns
on the railroad. You must walk to Portbou, cross the border there, and jump another train in France.”

Josep nodded, tucking the information away.

“You should know that they search every car at the border. You must be careful to leave this train about one-quarter of an hour—no more!—after it passes through the town of Rosas. After you see a big white water tower, the train slows on an upgrade. That’s when you leave.”

“I am greatly obliged.”

“For nothing. However, just now I wish to sleep, so no more talk.”

Josep settled himself against the wall of the car, close to the open door. Under different circumstances he could have slept himself, but he was nervous. With the toe of his right shoe he nudged the seven pesetas in his left sock, making certain the money was still there. He kept his eyes fixed on the recumbent lump in the darkness that was his fellow traveler, as the train slid over the crest and, rocking and clacking, began to pick up speed on the descent of the hill.

23

Wandering

Three hours later, he left the train without incident and walked down a winding road that eventually brought him to the sight of the Mediterranean, shining and dazzling in the warm sunlight. He went past a dozen beached fishing boats and soon was in the central placa of Portbou, where he found that Friday was market day. His empty stomach was growling as he strolled past braziers on which chicken, fish, and pork sizzled and filled the air with the most delicious of aromas.

Finally he bought a large bowl of spicy chickpea stew, which he ate slowly and with great enjoyment, sitting with his back against a stone wall.

Near him an old woman offered a pile of blankets for sale, and when Josep finished the stew, he returned the wooden bowl and went to her stand. He touched a blanket and then hefted it, feeling its soft thickness almost with reverence. When he shook it open, he saw it was quite large, wide enough to cover two people. A warm blanket like this would make all the difference to someone forced to sleep outside.

The old woman studied him with the experienced eyes of a trader. “The finest wool, and from the loom of the best weaver, my daughter. A genuine bargain. For you…one peseta.”

Josep sighed and shook his head. “Fifty centimos?” he said, but she shook her head scornfully and held up her hand to stay any negotiation.

He turned away, then stopped. “Perhaps sixty?”

The wise eyes reproached him as she shook her head again.

“Do you know someone, then, who needs a good worker?”

She shook her head. “There is no employment here.”

So he walked away. When he was out of her sight he took the coins from his pocket and assembled 75 centimos. Presently he approached the old woman again and held out the money.

“It is all I have to spend. Absolutely.”

She sensed a final offer and her talon-like hand grasped the cash. She counted it and sighed, but she took it, and when he asked for a piece of rope that he glimpsed behind the blankets, she gave it up. Making a roll of the blanket and tying the rope to each end, he fashioned a sling and settled it over his shoulders.

“Grandmother, where is the border station?”

“Follow the road through the town, and it will take you to the station. Half a league.”

He looked at her and decided to take the plunge. “I don’t wish to cross the border at the station.”

She smiled. “Of course you do not, my handsome young man. Few sensible people do. My grandson will show you the way. Twenty centimos.”

Josep walked a distance behind the small skinny boy, whose name was Feliu. It was part of the agreement that he would pay the coins at once and that they would not walk together. They went through the town and into the countryside beyond, always within sight of the sea on the right. Presently Josep saw the border station, a wooden gate across the road, manned by uniformed guards interrogating travelers. He wondered if
they had been given his name and description. Even if they had not, he couldn’t go through the station, for they would demand papers and proof of identification.

Feliu continued to walk toward the station, and with growing alarm, Josep followed. Perhaps the old woman and the child were leading him straight into arrest, in return for the money from him, and more from the guards whenever they delivered a smuggler.

But at the last moment Feliu turned left into a small dusty lane that ran inland from the road, and when Josep came to the lane, he turned into it as well.

They walked only a few hundred meters down the lane before Feliu stopped, picked up a stone, and threw it off to his right. It was the arranged signal, and the boy went away at a swift walk without looking back. When Josep reached the place where Feliu had thrown the stone, he saw a narrower lane that ran along the edge of a winter-fallow onion field, and he turned into it. Unharvested onions poked green fingers through the earth, and he salvaged several of the bulbs. They were strong and bitter when he ate them as he walked.

The onion field was the last cropland he saw, the small valley turning into thickly forested hills. He walked for almost an hour before he came to a place where the trail became a fork, splitting into two paths.

There was no directional sign, and no Feliu or any other person from whom he could seek advice. He took the path on the right, and at first he saw no difference in the trail that threaded between the hills. Then it became gradually apparent to him that the trail was growing narrower. Sometimes it seemed to disappear, but each time he would
see ahead of him marks worn by travel between trees, and he would hurry to pick up the way again.

And then the path disappeared for good.

Josep moved on through the forest, believing that he would discover the route in a few paces, as he had done previously. When finally he conceded there was no sign of any path through the woods, he tried to retrace his steps to go back over the trail he had followed from the fork, but though he searched hard, he couldn’t find the way he had come.

“Shit,” he said aloud.

For a while he moved aimlessly through the woods, but he saw no footpath. Worse, he had lost all sense of direction. Finally, coming upon a trickling brook, he decided to follow it. Houses were often built near a water source, he reasoned; perhaps he would come to a house.

It was hard, traveling through the small trees and overgrown brush. He had to crawl under and over fallen trees and circle around cliffs. Several times he passed deep, rocky chasms, all twisted earth and ragged rock. His arms became scratched by brambles, and he grew short of breath and by turns cranky and fearful.

But finally the brook entered a wooden pipe, a long hollowed log.

And the pipe ran under a road.

It was a good highway, deserted at the moment but—it led somewhere! Feeling vastly relieved, he stood in the middle of it and noted signs of life, the ruts made by wagon wheels, and hoof marks in the dust. To stroll on the road unimpeded was a luxury
after fighting all the brush and the trees. He walked only a while, perhaps ten minutes, before he came to proof of his presence in France, a sign nailed to a tree.

VILLE de ELNE

11 km

In small letters at the bottom of the sign it said,

Province de Roussillon

24

Fellow Travelers

He found the railroad tracks in Perpignan, a city with imposing buildings, many of them medieval and colored a dusky red from the narrow bricks used in their construction. There was a neighborhood of fine houses next to squalid sections of narrow littered streets hung with washing, the warrens of gypsies and other poor people. It also had an imposing cathedral in which Josep spent a night sleeping on a bench. The following day he spent an entire morning stopping in shops and cafés to inquire about the possibility of work, each time without success.

In the early afternoon he followed the railroad tracks out of the city to a likely spot and then waited. When the freight train appeared, the ritual felt natural. He picked a car with a partially open door, ran along, and hoisted himself inside.

As he got to his feet, he saw there were already four men in the car.

Three of them were clustered around a fourth man on the floor.

Two of the standing men were big, with large, round heads; the third was of medium size, thin, and rat-faced.

The man on the floor was on his hands and knees. One of the large men, whose trousers were lowered, gripped the back of the kneeling man’s neck in one hand, while the other hand was underneath, lifting the bared buttocks.

In that first second, Josep saw them as a tableau. The standing men stared at him in astonishment. The man on the floor was younger than the others, perhaps Josep’s age. Josep saw that his mouth was open and his face contorted, as if he were screaming silently.

The one holding the younger man didn’t drop him, but the two others turned toward Josep, who also turned...

And leaped out the door.

It was not a jump for which he had prepared. He was already unbalanced when his feet touched the ground, and it was as if the earth leaped up at him, hard. He went to his knees and then smacked down on his stomach and slid on cinders, the fall knocking the wind from his body so that for a short, frightening time he had to struggle for air.

Then all he could do was lie there in the dirt as the cars clattered past.

The whole train went by him and away as he mentally cursed Guillam for leaving him alone and vulnerable. First he lost the noise of the locomotive, and then the clacking sounds softened and faded into distance.

25

Stranger in a Far Land