The Winemaker (31 page)

The old man was impressed by the wine and was visibly pleased to have the brothers with him, and the three of them spent several hours sitting companionably over the drink and several bowls of Nivaldo’s stew. Nivaldo gave Donat a cheese to carry back to Rosa.

Josep and his brother walked back to the casa through the still coolness of the evening.

“Peaceful,” Donat said. “A good old village, isn’t it?”

“It is.”

He made up the sleeping pad with a blanket and a pillow, and Donat, feeling the wine, settled into it at once. “Goodnight, Josep,” he called warmly.

“Sleep well, Donat.”

Josep washed and dried the pitcher, and by the time he went upstairs he heard the familiar sound of his brother’s snores.

In the morning they ate bread and hard cheese, and then Donat belched, pushed back from the table, and stood. “Might as well get on the road for the early traffic, so someone can give me a ride.”

Josep nodded.

“So, the money.”

“Ah, the payments? I don’t have the money yet.”

Donat’s face reddened.

“What do you mean? You told me, ‘Two payments, after the harvest.’”

“Well, I’ve made the wine. Now I’ll sell it and get the money.”

Donat looked at him. “Who will you sell it to? And when?”

“I don’t know yet. I’ll have to learn that. Don’t worry, Donat. You’ve seen the wine and tasted it. It’s like money in your pocket, plus ten percent.”

“Rosa will have a crazy fit,” Donat said heavily. He found the chair and sat down again. “It’s a hard thing for you, isn’t it, making the payments?”

“This is a difficult time,” Josep said. “I’ve had unexpected expenses. But I can do it. You just have to wait a little while for your money, that’s all.”

“I have been thinking about something that could make things easier for you…I’d like to come back to the village. I want to be your partner.”

They regarded one another.

“No, Donat,” Josep said gently.

“…Then, how is this? You have two pieces of land. You give one of them—I don’t care which one—to Rosa and me, to settle your debt with us. It could be good, Josep, living next to one another. You want to make us some nice wine, I’ll help you,
and we could each of us work together, sell our main wine for vinegar, brothers making a living.”

Josep forced himself to shake his head. “What’s happened to your plans?” he asked. “I thought you loved working at the mill.”

“I’m having trouble with a foreman,” Donat said sullenly. “He picks on me, makes life a misery. I’ll never get a chance to become a mechanic. And the damn machines are destroying my hearing.” He sighed. “Look, if I have to, I’ll just work for you for wages.”

Something within Josep shuddered as he remembered what it had been like, always squabbling, always having to do Donat’s share as well as his own.

“It wouldn’t work out,” he said, and he saw his brother’s eyes harden.

“I’ll give you some of the second pressing to take home,” Josep said, and busied himself washing out a bottle and finding a cork.

Donat came with him to the wine. “We’re not good enough to be given your best?” he said roughly.

Josep felt guilty. “Yesterday I wanted you to taste the blend, but I won’t be drinking it myself, or giving it away,” he said. “I need to sell it so I can give you your money.”

Donat placed the filled bottle in his sack and turned away.

What did his grunt mean? Cheap bastard? Thank you? Goodbye?

As Josep stood and watched his brother moving slowly down the path to the road, it seemed to him that Donat walked like a tired man treading grapes.

48

The Visit

The Castellers of San Eulália had not met during most of the autumn, but as soon as the grape harvest was complete, Eduardo assembled his climbers.

Josep was glad to attend the practice, though he didn’t understand why he liked it. He wondered what makes men want to stand on one another’s shoulders, as high as they can build a tower with human flesh and bone instead of stone and mortar, and enjoy doing it again and again.

Inevitably, the time always came when a mishap would be caused by someone’s momentary lapse, a second of strayed attention, a careless movement, a desperate swaying followed by a mass plummeting to earth.

“A fall need not happen,” Eduardo told his castellers, “if everyone knows exactly what he must do, and he does it precisely the same way, time after time. Listen to me, and we shall have nothing but success. We need strength, balance, courage, and good sense.

“I want you to climb and descend in silence, quickly, with spirit, not a second wasted, everyone taking care of himself.

“But, if you should fall…” He paused, wanting them to listen hard. “If you should fall, try not to fall out and away from the tower, because that’s where injuries lurk. Fall into the base of the castell, where your drop will be broken by the pinya and the folre.”

At the very bottom of the castell, the strong men who bore the brunt of its weight were surrounded by a large crowd that pressed in on them and formed the pinya, the bulk.
On the shoulders of the pinya stood a crowd of other people, the folre, or cover, also pressing forward to add more support to the second and third layers of climbers.

Josep thought the pinya and the folre were like a great rootball lending strength to the shaft of a tree that rose skyward.

He had quickly learned the nomenclature. A structure with three or more men per level was a castell. With two men per layer, it was a tower, with one man per layer, a pillar.

“We have an invitation,” Eduardo told them. “The Castellers of Sitges have challenged us to a contest of castell-building, three men to a layer, to be held in their marketplace the Friday after Easter Sunday—the Sitges fishermen against the Santa Eulália grape-growers.”

There were murmurs of approval and some quick applause, and Eduardo smiled and raised a cautionary hand. “The fishermen will be very strong competition, because they grow up constantly balancing themselves on boats tossed by the sea.

“I have given a great deal of thought to how we can build our best castell eight tiers tall.”

Eduardo had already designed the castell on paper, and he began to call out names; as his name was called, each climber took his assigned position, and the castell began to rise slowly and raggedly.

Josep was assigned one of the places in the fourth tier, and he participated as the castell was assembled and disassembled three times, with Eduardo studying the climbers and making several changes and substitutions.

During a break period Josep noted that Maria del Mar and Francesc had arrived. She stood with Eduardo, their heads close and their faces serious as they spoke, and finally Eduardo nodded.

“Climb on me,” he called to Francesc, and turned his back to him.

Francesc began to run unevenly, and something caught in Josep’s throat. The boy looked bad as he scuttled like a crab. But he gained momentum and threw himself at Eduardo’s back and clawed to his shoulders.

Eduardo was satisfied. Turning, he caught Francesc and ordered the first four layers of the tower to climb again so the boy could be tested.

When Josep was in position, he could no longer see Francesc. People were chatting as they stood in clumps and relaxed, but the drums and the grallas began to play lustily, as if this were a performance before royalty instead of an opportunity to evaluate a very young climber.

In a few moments he felt small hands clutching his trousers, and the child was on him like a small ape. Francesc’s arms circled his neck and he felt the boy’s breath.

“Josep!” a joyful voice said into his ear.

Then Francesc quickly climbed down again.

On Saturday afternoon Josep was moving a barrow-load of gravel from the cellar excavation to be spread on the road when he noted a trap approaching, pulled by a grey horse and containing a man and a woman.

As it neared him, he saw that the woman was his sister-in-law, Rosa Sert. The man was someone he had never seen before. Rosa gave a little wave as the driver turned
the horse into the vineyard.

“Hola,” Josep called and left what he had been doing.

“Hola, Josep,” Rosa said. “This is my cousin, Carles Sert. The mill is servicing the machines, and I have a bit of time to be free of the job, and Carles wanted to take a day in the country, so...”

Josep looked at her without comment.

Her cousin Carles. The attorney.

He led them to the bench, brought cool water, and waited until they drank,

“You go on with your work,” Rosa said, waving her hand. “Don’t you bother about us.”

So he got another barrow-load of gravel and went back to spreading it on the road.

From time to time he glanced up to keep track of them. Rosa was walking the lawyer about the property. The man wasn’t saying very much, but she did a lot of talking. They disappeared into the vines, and then they reappeared and went to the masia. They stopped to assess the house from afar and then made a complete circuit around it, peering.

“What the hell,” Josep growled to himself, for the lawyer was shaking the door to see if it was built solidly.

Josep dropped the shovel and went to them.

“I want you to get the hell away from here. Now.”

“No need to be unkind,” the cousin said coolly.

“You’ve put the wagon before the mule. Your cousin can wait until I don’t make the third payment before she takes possession. Until then, get off my property.”

They went, not looking at him or speaking again. Rosa’s mouth was set in a cool grimace, as if to indicate to Josep that he didn’t know how to talk with civilized people. The lawyer flicked the reins, the grey horse moved them away, and Josep stood by the house and watched them disappear.

What do I do now? he asked himself.

49

A Trip to the Market

Josep had inherited thirty-one empty bottles that had been abandoned by Quim, but only fourteen of them were the correct shape and would hold three-quarters of a liter. He found four old bottles tucked away among his tools, and when he sent Briel Taulé through the village to see how many he could collect, Briel came back with eleven more. In all, twenty-nine were usable.

He scrubbed and rinsed them until they gleamed, filled them with the dark wine, and tapped in the corks very carefully. Marimar came to help him make the labels. The sight of the filled bottles had the strange effect of making both of them nervous.

“Where will you sell them?”

“I’ll try to sell them in Sitges. Tomorrow is market day. I thought I’d take the boy with me, if that’s all right,” he said, and she nodded.

“Oh, he’ll like that…What do you want me to print on these labels?”

“I don’t know… Finca Alvarez? Bodega Alvarez? No, those sound too grand. Perhaps, Vinas Alvarez?”

She frowned. “They don’t sound exactly right.” She dipped the nib into the ink and the pen scratched as she drew some circles and a stem.

When she held up the label, he looked at it and shrugged. But he smiled.

JOSEPH’S VINES
1877

Early the next morning he wrapped each bottle in several sheets of newspaper, old copies of Nivaldo’s
El Cascabel,
and made a nest of ragged blankets to cushion the wine on the trip to Sitges. In a cloth sack he packed chorizo and bread, and it went into the wagon too, along with a bucket and two drinking cups.

It was still dark when he drove Hinny into the Valls vineyard, but Francesc was dressed and waiting for him. Maria del Mar stood, morning cup of coffee to her lips, and watched as they went away, the boy sitting next to Josep on the wagon seat.

Francesc was quiet, but he had never been beyond Santa Eulália, and his face showed his excitement. Very soon they entered territory that was new to him, and Josep saw that his eyes were everywhere, taking in the occasional masia, unfamiliar fields and vineyards and olive groves, three black bulls behind a fence, and the far-off sight of Montserrat reaching for the sky.

When the sun came out, it was very pleasant to sit in the wagon with the child as Hinny clop-clopped northward.