The Winemaker (37 page)

JOSEP’S VINES

On a Wednesday afternoon, when ordinarily he would have pictured Donat among his loud and clacking machines, Josep went to the grocery to buy chorizo and saw his brother standing behind the counter wearing a white apron, measuring out flour to Senyora Corberó.

Donat turned to Josep as soon as Senyora Corberó was leaving.

“Nivaldo is ill. He sent for us yesterday. I knew that it meant he’s bad off, and we came at once. Rosa is trying to nurse him, while I’m keeping open the shop.”

Josep tried to think of something appropriate to say under the circumstances, but could not.

“I only need some chorizo.”

“How much?”

“Quarter of a kilo.”

Donat cut the chorizo, weighed the hunk, added another slice, and wrapped it in
El Cascabel,
everybody’s wrapping paper, the merchant’s friend. He took Josep’s money and counted out the change.

“You want to go up and see him?”

“…I don’t think so, no.”

Donat stared. “Why not? Mother of God. You’re angry with
him
, too?”

Josep didn’t answer. He picked up the chorizo packet and turned to leave.

“You don’t like anybody, do you?” Donat said.

57

Extreme Unction

It was the time of year when the grapes were beginning to fulfill their promise, gaining their color, beginning to taste as they should, the season when Josep was starting to pick a berry now and then and pop it into his mouth to see what progress was being made.

The season to study the sky, to worry about the prospect of too much rain or freak hail or continued drought.

He attributed his moodiness to the seasonal uncertainty about the fate of the grapes.

But Marimar returned from a walk to the placa with Francesc to get water and said she had met Rosa. And Rosa had told her the priest had been with Nivaldo almost the whole day.

When Josep went to the grocery, he noted that Donat’s eyes were reddened.

“He is very ill?”

“Very ill.”

“…May I see him?”

Donat shrugged wearily and pointed to the three steps leading to the half-story above the storage room, the space that served as Nivaldo’s living quarters.

Josep walked down the dark hallway and paused at the bedroom. The old man lay on his back, staring at the ceiling. Padre Pio was bending over him, his mouth moving almost silently.

“Nivaldo,” Josep said.

The priest did not appear to notice Josep but seemed to be in another place, speaking words so soft Josep couldn’t make them out. Padre Pio held a cup in one hand and a tiny brush in the other. As Josep watched, he dipped the brush and with it made a tiny cross on Nivaldo’s ear, another on his lips, and on his nostrils.

He peeled back the blanket, revealing Nivaldo’s bowed back and hairy, skinny,

legs, and applied the oil of unction to his hands and feet. Jesús, to his groin!

“Nivaldo, it’s Josep,” Josep said loudly.

But the priest had reached up and closed Nivaldo’s staring eyes.

Padre Pio’s hand had to go back again to bring the lid down over the bad eye, and then the little brush made its final cross.

For years every person in the village had visited the grocery regularly, and most people thought well of Nivaldo. Even those who didn’t hold him in high regard attended his funeral Mass and followed the casket to the burial ground.

Josep and Maria del Mar and Francesc walked to the gravesite with the crowd.

In the churchyard, he found himself standing next to his brother and Rosa. She looked at him a bit nervously.

“I’m sorry for your loss, Josep.”

He nodded. “I am too.”

“A pity, isn’t it, that they couldn’t find a gravesite for him closer to Padre’s,” Donat said to Josep in a low voice.

Why is it a pity?
Josep wanted to snap.
Do you believe he and Padre will want to get together regularly to play draughts?

He swallowed his sarcasm, but he was not in a mood to talk to them, and in a few minutes he left Donat and Rosa and wandered closer to where the burial was taking place.

His mind was in a turmoil; he had never been so weary, so confused. He wished he had been able to hold Nivaldo’s hand as he died, mourned that he had not been wise enough to offer reconciliation and some small comfort. One part of him still seethed at the thought of the obsessed, scheming insurgent, the mad old man who had sent young men off to die, who had made other men’s sons his personal gift to war. But the other part of him remembered clearly his father’s charming, affectionate friend who had told stories of the Small Ones to a little boy, who had taught him to read and to write, who had helped a clumsy youth to rid himself of the burdens of innocence. Josep knew
that
man had loved him all of his life, and he stood apart from Marimar and Francesc and wept for Nivaldo.

58

The Legacy

Within two days the entire village had heard that Nivaldo Machado had left his legal will with Angel Casals as executor, and a day later everyone knew that the grocery had been bequeathed to Donat Alvarez and his wife Rosa.

The news was accepted without surprise, and there was not a stir in the village until almost three weeks later, when Donat moved the bench from its longtime place next to the entrance of the grocery. The bench was now located on the placa before the final few meters of the grocery’s land, as close to the church as it could get without being in front of church property. Directly in front of the grocery Donat placed the small round table that had been Nivaldo’s, and another round table slightly larger than the first, and chairs. Rosa told people that the outdoor tables would remain bare except on holidays, when she would cover them with cloths.

Josep was among those who grumbled.

“Nivaldo has barely grown cold. Could they not have the decency to wait a while before making changes?”

“They run a business and not a monument,” Maria del Mar said. “I like the changes they have made. The grocery never has been so spotless. The place even smells better, now that they have cleaned out the storage area.”

“It won’t stay that way. My brother is a slob.”

“Well, his wife is not. She is a strong and energetic woman, and both of them are working hard every day.”

“You realize that both the bench and the tables are on the placa, which is public property? They don’t have the legal right…”

“The bench has always been on the placa,” Maria del Mar pointed out. “And I think it is nice to have the tables there. They liven up the placa, give it a more festive appearance.”

Evidently most of the people of the village agreed with her. When Josep walked to the placa it quickly became ordinary for him to see one or both of the tables occupied with people having coffee or a plate of chorizo and cheese.

Within two weeks Donat had added a third table, and no one in the village came to the alcalde or the council with an objection.

At a rehearsal meeting of the Santa Eulália Castellers, Eduardo told Francesc that he was progressing nicely. After the first of the year, he said, Francesc would be allowed

to climb to the sixth tier in practice, and after a while he would become the pinnacle.

Francesc was visibly exultant. When the time came for him to do his practice climb he ascended very quickly, and Josep felt the boy’s arms around his neck. He waited for what had become ritual, his name being spoken into his ear, but instead he heard something different.

A word scarcely spoken, a breath, a sigh, a tiny puff of sound, like the ghost of a word borne on a breeze.

Padre
.

That evening, when the three of them sat at the table in the kitchen for the evening meal, Josep looked at Francesc.

“There is something I would like to ask of you Francesc. A favor.”

The woman and the boy gave him their attention.

“I would enjoy it very much if, instead of calling me Josep, you would begin to address me as Padre. Do you think that would be possible?”

Francesc was not looking at either of them. Instead, he was staring straight ahead, his color high. He had a mouthful of bread, and he was stuffing in even more as he nodded.

Maria del Mar looked at her husband and smiled.

59

Talking and Listening

Their time for privacy, their most intimate and cherished moments of the day, came after Francesc was sound asleep, and one evening Josep led Maria del Mar out into the darkness, and they sat next to one another on the vineyard bench while he talked.

He told her of the group of unemployed youths she remembered well, boys with whom she had grown up. The boys of the hunting group. He spoke of the arrival of Sergeant Peña to the village of Santa Eulália.

He reminded her of the military training and the promises, and then he told her things she didn’t know. She listened to the story of how the village boys had been used as pawns; how, all unknowing, they had helped those who had assassinated an unidentified politician for reasons they could not begin to comprehend.

He told her how he and Guillem had watched while her son’s father had been killed.

“You’re certain Jordi is dead?”

“They cut his throat.”

She didn’t weep; she had given Jordi Arnau up for dead for a very long time. But her hand gripped his very tightly.

He told her the details of his life as a fugitive.

“I’m the only one left,” he said.

“Are you in danger?”

“No. The only two men who could have felt threatened by me are gone. Killed in the fighting,” he added, a comfortable lie.

It was all he told her. He knew he would never be able to reveal anything else to her.

“I’m glad there are no more secrets between us,” his wife said, and kissed him hard on the lips.

He hated it that there were dark areas he could never reveal to her.

He would make it up to her, he vowed, by never failing to treat her with love and tenderness. He found the remaining secrets as burdensome as a hump on his back, and he yearned for someone to whom he could talk about them. Unburden himself.

But there was no one.

On a Saturday afternoon, not quite believing what he was doing but unable to resist, he opened the door of the church and stepped inside.

There were eight people already waiting, pious and faithful men and women. Some came every Saturday afternoon to be shriven, so that they might bring clean souls to the church on Sunday morning to accept the Eucharist.

The heavy red velvet curtains of the booth blocked sound, but in a sensitivity designed to make sure that their own perversities would remain private, those awaiting their turns sat in the last row of benches, as far from the confessional as possible, and Josep found a place among them.

When it was his turn, he entered the dimness and sank to his knees.

“Forgive me, Padre, for I have sinned.”

“When was the last time you made confession?”

“Six…No, seven weeks ago.”

“What is the nature of your sins?”