The Winemaker (5 page)

Josep was acutely aware of the girl near him. They stood without speaking, his eyes fixed determinedly at the building on the other side of the narrow street in order not
to look at her. Perhaps she was as bewitched as he. Before they awoke to the fact that the saint approached, Eulália was almost upon them. The street was very narrow at that point. There were only a few centimeters of clearance on both sides of the saint’s platform, which sometimes ground alarmingly against the stone walls of buildings until the men carrying it could make the tiny correction needed for a clean passage.

Josep looked ahead and saw at once that beyond the blacksmith shop the street was wider but already was occupied by a crowd of onlookers.

“Senyoreta,” he said warningly, the only time he spoke to her.

In the wall of the blacksmith shop there was a shallow niche and, taking the girl by the arm, he pushed her into it and pressed in after her just as the platform reached them. Had they still been on the street, the ponderous weight would have crushed and ground. As it was, he could feel the edge of the platform move the fabric of his trousers at the back of his thighs. If the platform had been jostled, injury still might have occurred.

But he was scarcely conscious of the danger. He was pressed against the girl’s body—so close together—amazingly aware of every sensation.

For the first time he examined her face, at close range and without being forced to look away after two seconds. No one would ever mistake her for one of the world’s famous beauties, he told himself. Yet to him, somehow her face was better than that.

Her eyes were of ordinary size, a soft brown color; her lashes were long, her eyebrows heavy and dark. Her nose was small and straight with thin nostrils. Her lips were full and the upper lip was chapped. Her teeth were strong and white, rather large.
He smelled the garlic she had had for lunch. She had a very nice chin. Beneath her jawbone on the left side there was an almost-round brown mole that he wanted to touch.

Everything he saw, he wanted to touch.

She didn’t blink. Their eyes were locked; there was no other place to look.

Then Santa Eulália had passed them. Josep stepped back. Without a word the girl slipped away from him and fled down the street.

He stood there, not knowing where to gaze, certain that everyone in the vicinity was staring at him accusingly for having pressed his hardened maleness against the purity of such a female. But when he raised his shamed eyes and glanced about, he saw that no one looked at him with any interest or appeared to have noticed anything, and he hurried away from there also.

For weeks after that he avoided the girl, unable to meet her eyes. He thought it was inevitable that she would never want to have anything to do with him. He sorely regretted that he had gone to the blacksmith shop on the Santa’s day, until one morning he and Teresa Gallego met at the well in the placa. While they were drawing water, they began to talk.

They looked directly at one another, and they spoke for a long time, quietly and seriously, as befit two people who had been brought together by Santa Eulália.

5

A Thing Between Brothers

Exactly a week after Josep’s return, his brother, Donat, came to the masia with his woman, Rosa Sert, his face a curious mixture of welcoming and foreboding. Donat had always been stocky, but now there were dewlaps under his jowls and already his belly was swollen like rising dough. Josep saw that soon Donat would be a really fat man.

His older brother, a fat semi-stranger who lived in the city.

They both exchanged kisses with him. Rosa was short and plump, a pleasant looking woman. She was watchful but smiled at him tentatively.

“Padre said you were gone for a soldier, probably in the Basque country,” Donat said. “Wasn’t that the purpose of that hunting group, to train you to be a soldier?”

“It didn’t turn out that way.”

Josep offered no explanations, but he told them about his four years of work in Languedoc. He poured a taste, the last from the wineskin he had brought from France, and they complimented the vin ordinaire, though it had long since lost its edge.

“So you’re working in a cloth factory? Is the work all right?”

“I like it enough. There’s money twice each month, whether there is hail or drought or any other calamity.”

Josep nodded. “Steady money is good. And what is your job?”

“Helper to a worker who keeps watch over the spools that feed the looms. I’m learning things. If the thread or yarn breaks, we rejoin it with weavers’ knots. Before the spools run out of thread, I replace them with fresh spools. It’s a big mill, lots of
looms, driven by steam. There is opportunity to advance. I hope some day to be a mechanic of the looms or the steam engines.”

“And you, Rosa?”

“I? I examine the cloth and mend faults. Take care of stains and such. Sometimes there is an imperfection or a tiny hole, and I use needle and thread to fix it so it can’t be seen.”

“She’s very skilled,” Donat said proudly, “but they pay skilled women less than unskilled men.”

There was a momentary lull.

“So what shall
you
now do?” Donat asked.

Josep knew they would have noted at once that the FOR SALE sign was gone.

“Grow grapes. Make wine for vinegar.”

“Where?”

“Here.”

They were both looking at him with horror. “I earn less than two pesetas a day,” Donat said. “I will be on half-pay for two years, while I learn the trade, and I am in need of money. I’m going to sell this land.”

“I am going to buy it.”

Donat’s mouth was open and Rosa’s lips were pressed tight, making her mouth a worried line.

As patiently as possible, Josep explained. “Only one person is willing to buy this land—Casals, who would pay piss-money for it. And of the alcalde’s piss-money, one-third would come to me, as the younger son’s share.”

“Padre always made it clear. The entire vineyard was to go to me!”

Padre had always made that clear. “The land was to go to you unbroken because only one family can survive on it by growing grapes and making vinegar wine. But Padre didn’t leave the land entirely to you so you could
sell
it. As you know. As you well know. As you absolutely and positively,
know
, Donat.”

They glared at one another, and it was his brother who looked away.

“So the rule must apply: two-thirds to the eldest son, one-third to the younger son. I will pay you a good price, a better price than Angel Casals. From that sum we will deduct one-third, because I won’t buy what I already own.”

“And where will you get the money?” Donat asked too quietly.

“I’ll sell my grapes, as Padre always did. I’ll make payment to you every three months, until the entire sales price is paid.”

The three sat silently, looking at one another.

“I saved most of my wages, four years of hard work in France. I can give you the first payment at once. You’ll get extra money every three months for a long time. On top of what the two of you earn, it will make things easier for you. And the land will stay in the Alvarez family.”

Donat looked at Rosa, who shrugged. “You must sign a paper,” she said to Josep.

“Why a paper? This is a thing between brothers.”

“Still, there is a proper way to do it,” she said, sounding determined.

“Since when do brothers need a paper?” Josep asked Donat. He allowed himself to become very annoyed. “Why should brothers give good money to a law merchant?”

Donat was silent.

“It is the way to do such a thing,” Rosa insisted. “My cousin Carles is a lawyer, he will provide the legal paper for us for very little money.”

They gazed at him stubbornly, and now it was Josep who looked away and shrugged.

“Very well. Bring me the God-damned paper,” he said.

They were back the following Sunday. The document was crisp and white, important looking. Donat held it as if it were a snake and handed it over to Josep with relief.

He tried to read it, but he was too nervous and irritated; the words on the two pages swam before his eyes, and he knew what he must do.

“Wait here,” he said curtly, and he left them sitting at what he still thought of as his father’s table.

Nivaldo was in his apartment above the grocery, his newspaper,
El Cascabel
, spread out before him. On Sundays he didn’t open the grocery until the church service let out, when the worshipers came in to buy staples to last them for the week. His bad eye was closed, and he squinted fiercely at the newspaper with his good eye, the way he read anything. He always reminded Josep of a hawk.

Nivaldo was the smartest man Josep had ever met. Josep felt he could have been or done anything. He had once told Josep he couldn’t remember ever having been in a schoolroom. In the same week in 1812 in which the British had forced Joseph Bonaparte to flee from Madrid, Nivaldo had fled the sugar fields of his native Cuba. Twelve years old, he stowed away on a boat bound for Maracaibo. He had been a gaucho in Argentina
and a soldier in the Spanish army—from which, Padre once revealed, Nivaldo had deserted. He had served on sailing ships. From enigmatic things he had said from time to time, Josep felt sure he had been a privateer before settling down as a storekeeper in Catalonia. Josep didn’t know where Nivaldo had learned to read and write, but he did both well enough to teach Josep and Donat when they were young, giving lessons at his little table, which were interrupted anytime someone came into the shop for a hunk of chorizo or a few slices of cheese.

“What is happening, Nivaldo?”

Nivaldo sighed and folded
El Cascabel.
“This is a bad time for the government’s army, one of its worst defeats, two thousand troops taken prisoner by the Carlists after a battle in the north. And there’s trouble in Cuba. The Americans are giving weapons and supplies to the rebels. The Americans can practically piss on Cuba from Florida, and they won’t be happy until they own it. They can’t stand to see a jewel like Cuba being run by a country as far away as Spain.” He folded
El Cascabel
. “So what’s on your mind?” he asked, somewhat grumpily, and Josep held out the lawyer’s paper.

Nivaldo read it through in silence. “…Ah, you’re buying the vineyard. That’s very good.” He started anew at the beginning and studied it again. Then he sighed. “You have read this?”

“Not really.”

“Jesús.” He handed it back to Josep. “Read it carefully. And then read it a second time.”

He waited patiently until Josep had done so, and then he took the paper. “Here.” His splayed forefinger pointed out the paragraph. “Their lawyer says if you miss a single payment, the land and the masia revert to Donat.”

Josep grunted.

“You must tell them this part has to be changed. If they must squeeze you, it should at least say that you won’t forfeit the land unless you’ve missed three payments in succession.”

“To hell with them. I’ll sign the damned thing as it is. It makes me feel dirty to bargain and squabble with my brother over our family land.”

Nivaldo leaned over and grasped Josep’s wrist hard, and looked into his eyes. “Listen to me, Tigre,” he said gently. “You aren’t a child. You are not a fool. You must protect yourself.”

Josep felt like a child. “What if they won’t accept a change?” he asked sullenly.

“They surely will not. They expect you to haggle. Tell them if ever you are late with a payment, you agree to add ten percent to the sum of the next payment.”

“You think they will accept that?”

Nivaldo nodded. “I believe they will.”

Josep thanked him and got up to leave.

“You must write in that change, and you and Donat must sign your name next to the changed part. Wait.” Nivaldo got the wine and two glasses. He took Josep’s hand and shook it. “I give you my blessing. May you have only good fortune, Josep.”

Josep thanked him. He downed the wine quickly, the way wine never should be drunk, then he returned to the masia.

Donat guessed that Josep had consulted Nivaldo, whom he respected as much as his brother did, and he was not inclined to argue with the requested change. But, as Josep expected, Rosa objected at once. “You have to know that you must pay without fail,” she said severely.

“I do know,” he growled. When he countered with the offer of the ten percent penalty, she thought for a long and painful moment before she nodded.

They watched while he laboriously wrote out the changes and then signed both copies of the agreement twice.

“My cousin Carles the lawyer told us that if there were changes, he must read them before Donat signs,” Rosa said. “Will you come to Barcelona to collect your paper?”

To pay us our money
, Josep knew that she meant. He had no desire to go to Barcelona. “I have just walked home from France,” he said coldly.

Donat looked embarrassed. He clearly wished to mollify his brother. “I’ll return to the village every three months to collect your payments. But why don’t you come to visit us next Saturday night?” he said to Josep. “You can pick up your signed copy of the paper, give us the first payment, and we will have a real party. We will show you how to celebrate in Barcelona!”