The Winemaker (26 page)

“…Well, I could use them. But—”

“Fourteen of them, one hundred liters each. Made two years ago for a man who wanted them for anchovies. He died, and they’ve been here ever since. Everyone wants 225-liter barrels. Nobody’s willing to take 100-liter barrels off my hands. If you can use them, I’ll add a little something to your bill.”

“I don’t really
need
them. I can’t afford them.”

“You can’t afford to refuse them, either, because I’m practically giving them to you.” Emilio picked up one of the small barrels and thrust it into Josep’s hands. “I said a
little
something. It will be a very little something. Get them the hell out of here before you leave,” he said brusquely, trying to sound like a man who was accustomed to striking hard bargains.

It was three more weeks before Clemente Ramirez came back and took the rest of Josep’s wine. After Ramirez paid him, Josep gave Maria del Mar her share and immediately made the trip to Sitges to give Emilio the cash advance they had agreed on.

He had a brief contest with his conscience regarding the second payment to Quim Torras. It was Quim, after all, who had gotten him into the financial trouble that made it difficult for him to sleep at night. But the older man had made it clear that he needed the money to accomplish the changes in his life, and Josep knew that it had been his own responsibility to examine the tanks and the house before he had agreed to take over the vineyard.

It bothered him to turn the payment over so trustingly to Quim’s friend, Jonatán Cadafalch. The coachman was, after all, a stranger to Josep; but Quim had claimed him as a friend, and Josep, seeing no alternative, found Cadafalch at the stage station.

He counted the money into Cadafalch’s palm and then gave him a receipt he had written out for the transaction. He also handed over a few extra pesetas. “Please ask Quim to sign the receipt and bring it back here with you,” Josep said, “and I will give you an additional payment when I return for it.” Cadafalch glanced at him keenly but then
grinned toothily to show he understood Josep’s position. Taking no offense, he stuffed the money and the receipt carefully into a leather bag, and wished Josep a good day.

That night Josep sat at his table and placed his money before him. First he separated from the small pile the payments he would have to make to Donat and Rosa before next year’s harvest, and then, a smaller amount for supplies and food.

He saw that what was left was meager and inadequate for any other real emergency that might arise, and he sat for a long time before sweeping the money into his cap in disgust and making his way to his bed.

The following afternoon he sat on his bench and prepared to taste the wine he had retained for his own use out of this season’s pressing, in the hope that a miracle had taken place to make it wonderful. When he had worked in Languedoc, Leon Mendes had regularly insisted on an exercise following every new vintage. Each of his workers was given a cup of the wine, and with each sip would announce in turn some subtle flavor detected in mouth or nose.

“Strawberry.”

“Fresh-cut hay.”

“Mint.”

“Coffee.”

“Black plums.”

Now Josep sipped his own wine and found it already spoiled, sour and unpleasing, tasting of strong ashes and the acidity of spoiled lemons. Also tasting of
disappointment, though his expectations had not been high. As he poured the rest of the cup back into the pitcher, the first note of the churchbell drifted into his consciousness, loud and startling.

Another note followed. And another.

A slow, solemn tolling, telling the villagers of Santa Eulália that life was hard and fleeting and sad, and that that one of their own had left their community of souls.

He did what he had done all his life at the sounding of the death toll; he walked to the church.

The church door would have a first small hole marring its finish, for the mortality notice was tacked to it. Several people had already read the notice and turned away. When Josep reached it he saw that the new priest, in a fine, legible hand, had written of the death of Carme Riera, Eduardo Montroig’s wife.

Carme Riera had had three miscarriages and a fourth pregnancy in the three-and-one-half years of her marriage. On that quiet November morning she had begun to bleed without pain and presently she gave birth to a two-month-old speck of bloody tissue, after which the clear fluid leaking from her turned into a gentle red flow. That had happened the second time she had lost a child, but this time the flow of blood didn’t stop, and she had died late in the afternoon.

That evening Josep went to the Montroig home, which was the first of the four houses located in the placa, just beyond the church. Maria del Mar was among other people who sat quietly in the kitchen, lending their presence.

Two candles shedding yellow light at her head and two more at her feet, Carme lay on her own bed, which had been transformed into a bier by drapes of black cloth that the church kept for successive use in houses of misfortune. She was five years younger than Josep, who scarcely knew her. She had been a somewhat attractive girl with squinting eyes and a heavy bosom from early girlhood, and now her hair was washed and combed, her face white and sweet. She looked as though at any moment she might yawn. The small bedroom was crowded with her husband and several relatives who would sit with her all night, and with a pair of plañideras, old women who had been hired to weep for her. After a while Josep made room for others to view her and returned to sit stiffly in a room that at times seemed loud with whispers and hushed voices. Maria del Mar had already gone. Space was limited and chairs were few, so he did not stay overly long.

Josep was saddened. He liked Eduardo and found it hard to look at the grief that contorted Montroig’s solemn, long-jawed face and robbed it of its usual serious serenity.

The following morning, no one worked. Most of the villagers walked behind the coffin as it was carried the short distance to the church for the first funeral conducted in Santa Eulália by Padre Pio. Josep sat in a back row throughout the long Requiem Mass. By the time the priest’s calm and sonorous voice recited the rosary in Latin, and the words of the prayer were repeated by the choked voices of Eduardo and Carme’s father and her sister and three brothers, Josep’s troubles had become very small.

40

What the Pig Knew

His first work of the cleanup that always followed the harvest was to disassemble the two defective vats. He took them apart as carefully as once they had been put together, probably by a Torras ancestor who had enjoyed far more skill than Josep did. That man had used very few nails, and Josep took great pains not to bend them when he pulled them free of the wood. He straightened any nail that did bend and saved each of them, because nails like these—bits of steel hand-forged to be hard and efficient, like a farmer’s life—were expensive.

As he freed the boards, he separated them into two piles. The boards that were riddled with rot would be cut up for firewood, but a number of boards were sound and he stacked them separately, the way he had seen Emilio stack wood at the cooperage, with small sticks of wood keeping them apart from one another so air could keep them dry.

In less than a day, the two failed tanks were gone, and he was free to begin the labor he loved best, walking behind the plow to steer the blade while Hinny pulled it through the stony soil.

He had almost finished ploughing the Alvarez piece, when he passed the patch of brush and thistle into which the boar had plunged after he had shot it. He realized he should do some work there, clean up the volunteer undergrowth and plow the soil so he could plant a few more vines; and while he was about it, he would pack soil firmly into the space below the overhang, so no wild creature could ever take refuge there again and threaten his grapes.

He went to work with the scythe on the brush, which gave him sufficient resistance, so that by the time it was cut, he was happy to pause. He remembered that the hole had been large enough to hide the entire pig, and he realized he would have to shovel a lot of dirt and pack it into the space.

He got down on his knees, bent his head, and peered, but he could see only the first few feet, where daylight spilled into it. Beyond that, there was darkness.

A coolness reached out to his face.

The pole that Jaumet had used to poke at the dead pig was lying on the ground. When Josep pushed it under the overhang, it went all the way in.

Something strange: when he lifted his hand as high as he could in the dark space, and flexed his wrist, he could point the pole downward, farther than he would have expected. When he rested his wrist in the dirt and moved the stick so it pointed upward, the point of the stick moved a considerable distance too.

“HOLA!”

He heard the hollowness of his voice.

Hinny, still in harness and attached to the plow, brayed in protest, and Josep forced himself away from the hole in the ridge to unharness the animal and see to its comfort, which gave him a little time to think. The hole in the ridge was exciting and interesting and frightening, all at once; he wanted to share it with somebody, perhaps Jaumet. Then he knew that he must not turn to Jaumet every time he had a problem he didn’t wish to face himself.

He went to the toolroom and found a lantern, made certain it contained oil, turned up the wick and struck a match, and carried the lighted lantern through the bright sunlight
to the bottom of the ridge. When he lay on his stomach and pushed it into the opening, it threw light a good distance forward.

The natural overhang was about twice as wide as Josep’s shoulders and it ended a little more than an arm’s length from his face. Then a roundish hole began and went in for perhaps a meter.

And beyond that, there was a dark, wider space.

Probably there was enough room for him to wriggle into the hole, pushing the lantern before him. He told himself that the boar had been as wide as he was, and thicker. But the thought of getting stuck in the narrow dark place, alone and without help, chilled him.

There were some rocks visible in the overhang, but mostly it seemed to be composed of stony soil from which a variety of weeds sprang. Josep went to the house and brought back an iron bar, a bucket, a mattock, and a shovel, and he began to dig.

When he had made the hole wide enough to enter on his hands and knees, he paused at the opening, holding the lantern forward, and peered at…what?

He forced himself to crawl inside.

Very quickly, the ground made a slight drop. As he went forward, the floor was covered with rocks, but he was able to stand shakily.

It wasn’t a cave. The lantern revealed a place more confined than his little bedroom, not even big enough to be called a grotto—a small, rocky bubble in the shallow hill, the size of a large fermentation vat. The wall to his left was of greyish stone and rose in an arch.

The light of the lantern played crazily as he turned, trying to see, realizing there could be wild things here. Snakes.

Standing there, in a little natural box in the earth, it was possible to believe that small, furry creatures might live here when they were not tending the roots of grapevines.

He turned, reentered the hole and crawled back into the world.

Outside, the air was softer and warmer, and dusk was beginning to fall. Josep stood and regarded the hole in wonder, and then he blew out the lantern and put the tools away.

That night he slept for a few hours and then lay awake for hours and thought about the hole in the hill. As soon as the earliest morning light began to dilute the darkness, he hurried out to make certain it hadn’t been a dream.

The opening was still there.

The little bubble in the hill was too small to be of any real use to him.

But it was a good place to begin. And he took its discovery to be a message that he should start working.

He returned to the house and brought out the tools, and then he studied the ridge above the opening with new eyes. It was unremarkable until he reached eye level, where a large boulder, longer than a man but thin and flat, stretched perpendicular, a natural support for the soil that would be above the doorway. He began to excavate the earth beneath the stone ridge, conscious of the fact that a door would have to be wide enough to admit his wheelbarrow.

He worked first with the mattock and was engaged with shoveling away loose soil, when Francesc wandered into sight. They greeted one another, and the boy sat on the ground and watched him work.

“What are you doing now, Josep?” Francesc said finally.

“I’m digging a cellar,” Josep said.

PART FIVE

The Blood of the Grape

Village of Santa Eulália
Catalonia
January 12, 1876

41

Digging