The Winemaker (9 page)

“What do you want?” the man named Peña asked quietly.

His eyes stayed on the firearm.

“Is this the group of hunters?” the thin youth asked, and some of the boys began to laugh, for they saw it was dim-witted Jaumet Ferrer.

“How did you know to come here?”

“I was setting out on my hunt when I met Lluis and asked where he was bound. He said he was going to a meeting of a group of hunters, so I decided to follow him, for I am the best hunter in Santa Eulália.”

They laughed at him again, though what he said was true. Handicapped from birth, unable to comprehend many skills, Jaumet Ferrer had taken to hunting eagerly and well at an early age, and people were accustomed to the sight of his scarecrow figure returning from a hunt with a brace of birds, half a dozen pigeons, or a fat hare. Meat was expensive, and the village wives were always happy to take his game in exchange for a small coin.

Sergeant Peña reached out a hand and took the musket, a very old smooth-bore rifle. In some places the barrel had been worn down to blue metal but he saw that the weapon was cleaned and very well cared for. He observed the dullness in the boy’s eyes and heard the innocent confusion in his voice.

“No, young man, this is the not the hunting group. Are you extremely good at mathematics?”

“Mathematics?” Jaumet looked at him in bewilderment. “No, I do not comprehend mathematics, senyor.”

“Ah. Then you would not like this, for this is the mathematics class.” He held out the musket to the boy. “So you must return to your hunt, eh?”

“Yes, I must do that, senyor,” Jaumet said seriously, and taking the musket, he walked out of the clearing to the sound of more laughter.

“Be silent. Frivolity will not be tolerated.”

The sergeant didn’t raise his voice, but he knew how to address men.

“Only intelligent young men can do our work, for it takes a working mind to receive an order and to carry it out. I am here because our army requires good young men. You are here because you need an occupation, for I am aware there is not a first son in this group. I understand your situation very well. I myself am the third son of my family.

“You are being given an opportunity to earn selection to serve your fatherland, perhaps even to do great things. You will be treated as men. The army does not want boys.”

To Josep’s ear, the sergeant’s Catalan was diluted by an accent from elsewhere; perhaps Castile, he thought.

Sergeant Peña asked them to state their names and listened as each did so, gazing at them intently.

“We will meet here three times a week, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday mornings, while it is still dark. The training will take many hours, and the work will be difficult. I shall temper your bodies for the rigors of military life and prepare your minds to allow you to think and act like soldiers.”

Esteve Montroig spoke up eagerly. “Will you be teaching us to fire guns and the like, then?”

“Whenever you speak to me…You are Montroig? Esteve Montroig. You will address me properly as ‘Sergeant.’”

There was a silence. Esteve gazed at him, confused, and then realized what he was waiting for.

“Yes, Sergeant.”

“I shall not entertain idle or stupid questions. This is a time when you must learn to obey.
To obey!
Without question. Without hesitation or the slightest delay. Do you understand me?”

“Yes, Sergeant,” they answered hesitantly, in an uneven chorus.

“Listen carefully. A word that you must wipe from your mind for all time as a soldier is
why?
Every soldier of every rank has someone above him to whom he owes instant obedience without question. Let the person giving you the orders worry about the why.

“Do you understand me?”

“Yes, Sergeant!”

“There is much to learn. Get on your feet now.”

They followed behind him in a casual column down the path through the woods to a wider trail that led into the country. That was where he ordered them to run, and they began light-heartedly, since they were young and high-spirited. They were all farm boys; their bodies were already conditioned by physical work, and most were in good health, so some of them smiled as they ran with long, bouncing strides.

Guillem made comic faces at Sergeant Peña’s back and Manel hid his laughter, letting a single snort escape.

But in their daily life they seldom had reason to run more than a few meters, and soon their breathing became ragged.

Pere Mas, who was built like Donat with a fleshy body, fell to the end of the line almost at once and presently was left behind. Their thudding feet rose and fell without cease and clumsily, so that they got into each other’s way. Now and again they jostled one another as they ran, and Josep began to feel a stitch in his side.

Their smiles disappeared as their breathing became labored.

Eventually, the sergeant ran them into a field and allowed them to flop down on the ground for a very brief time, while they gasped in silence in their sweaty work clothes.

Then he stood them in a rank facing him and taught them how to dress their line so it was straight from beginning to end.

How to snap to attention at once when ordered.

How to address him in strong unison when asked a group question that required a “YES, SERGEANT!” or “NO, SERGEANT!”

Then he ran them again—hawking and spitting and gasping—back to the forest clearing behind the Calderon vineyard.

Pere Mas came in walking, long after the others. His head was pounding and his round face was flushed. He attended the hunting group only on the very first day.

Miquel Figueres came to one more meeting, but he confided to Josep with joy that he was going to live in Girona, to work on the chicken farm of an uncle who did not have sons. “A miracle. I prayed to Eulália and God damn it, she gave me a miracle, truly a miracle.”

Envious, most of the others also prayed to the saint—Josep did, long and hard!—but she turned a deaf ear, and after that, nobody quit. None of the others had anywhere else to go.

10

Strange Orders

All through that hot August of 1869 and into the month of September, the members of the hunting group sweated and toiled for the taciturn, watchful stranger. They watched him in return, careful not to stare. The sergeant’s mouth was a straight slash between thin lips. They quickly learned it was better for them when the corners of the mouth didn’t turn up. There was never humor in his rare, inscrutable smile, which appeared only when they performed in a way he considered truly contemptible, after which he worked them without mercy, running them so far, marching them so long, drilling them so hard, and making them review their errors so often, that the mistakes that had engendered the smile and disgust finally disappeared.

He was twice their age, yet he could outlast them when running, and he was able to march for hours without showing fatigue, though he had an injury. They had seen his leg when everyone took to the river after a long sweaty march. There was a bullet hole above his knee like a puckered belly button, which he must have received long ago, since it was fully healed. But on the outside of the thigh they saw the wound that made him limp, a long ugly scar that looked new enough to be still healing.

He sent them on missions, strange errands, sometimes alone, sometimes in groups—with terse instructions that were always bizarre.

“Find nine flat rocks the size of your fist. Five of the rocks must be gray and contain black mineral markings. Four must be perfectly white with no blemishes.”

“Find healthy trees and cut two dozen billets of live wood, seven of oak, six of olive wood, the rest of pine. Then peel them of bark. Each piece must be perfectly straight and twice as long as Jordi Arnau’s foot.”

One morning he sent Guillem Parera and Enric Vinyes to an olive grove in search of a key, which he said could be found at the foot of one of the trees. There were nine rows of olive trees, twelve trees to a row. They began at the first tree; on their hands and knees they made slow, painful circuits about the base of the trunk, widening the circle each time as they scrabbled with their fingers in the soil and detritus until they were certain the key hadn’t been hidden there.

Then they went on to the next tree.

More than five hours after they began, they were crawling around the second tree in the fifth row. Their filthy hands were scratched and sore, and two of Guillem’s fingers were bleeding. He told Josep later that nibbling at his mind was the disturbing thought that the sergeant might have buried the key a little deeper than their fingers were probing; perhaps it was under 15 or 20 centimeters of earth, beneath one of the trees they already had inspected.

But at the moment when that fear was strongest, Guillem heard Enric call out. Enric had overturned a small rock, and beneath it was a small brass key.

They wondered what lock the key had been fashioned to fit, but when they carried it back, they knew better than to ask Sergeant Peña. He accepted it and dropped it into his pocket.

“He’s a crazy son of a bitch,” Enric told Josep when the day’s training was done, but Guillem Parera shook his head.

“No, the things he has us do are difficult, but they’re not impossible or crazy. If you think about it, there’s a lesson attached to every assignment. The assignment about finding the special rocks and the assignment about the pieces of wood—
Pay attention to the smallest details.
The assignment about finding the key—
Keep trying until you are successful.”

“I think he’s getting us accustomed to obey without thinking. To follow any command,” Josep said.

“No matter how peculiar the order?” Enric asked.

“Exactly,” Josep said.

Josep soon realized that he had neither talent nor aptitude for soldiering, and he felt certain that soon this would also become obvious to the driven, quiet man who was training them.

Sergeant Peña took them on forced marches in the dark of night and under the onslaught of the noonday sun. One morning he led them into the river, and they followed him in the water for mile after mile, stumbling over rocks, pulling the nonswimmers through pools. The youths had grown up along the river and knew it intimately for the few miles near the village, but he took them farther than they had ever been, finally taking them into a small cave. The grotto entrance was a bushy opening not easily seen, yet Peña led them to it without hesitation, and it struck Josep that the sergeant had been there before.

Wet and exhausted, they flopped down on the rock floor. “You must always be on the alert for places like this,” Peña told them. “Spain is a land of caves. There are
many places to give you concealment when others are trying to find and kill you—a dark hole, a hollow tree, a stand of brush. You can even hide in a dip in the ground. You must learn to make yourself small behind a rock, to breathe without making sound.”

That afternoon he showed them how to crawl up to a sentry and take him from behind, how to pull his head back to extend his neck, and then how to cut his throat with a single slash.

He made them practice the technique, taking turns being the sentry and the stalker. They used short sticks instead of knives, the end always pointed away, so that what moved over the “victim’s” throat was the side of a fist. Still, when Josep had Xavier Miró’s head back and his neck exposed, for the briefest moment of weakness he could not bring himself even to simulate the throat-slitting.

To add to his nervousness, he saw that the cool, calculating eyes had caught the hesitation, and the mouth was
smiling
.

“Move your hand,” Peña said.

Humiliated, Josep drew his hand across Xavier’s throat.

The sergeant smiled. “What is hardest about killing is to think about it. But when it is necessary to kill—
necessary
to kill—then anyone can do it. Killing becomes very easy.

“Never fear, you will like war, Alvarez,” he said, again showing the bitter little smile, as if able to read Josep’s mind. “A young man with hot blood in his balls loves war, once he gets a little taste of it.”

Josep sensed that despite the words Sergeant Peña had recognized that his balls did not contain blood of the necessary heat and was watching him.

Later, as they sat in the woods, basted in their own sweat after the final run of the day, the man talked to them.

“There will be occasions during a war when the army advances beyond its department of supply. When that happens, soldiers must live off the land. They must either obtain food from the civilian population or starve…Can you understand that, Josep Alvarez?”

“Yes, Sergeant.”

“Within the next week, I want you to bring two chickens to our meeting, Alvarez.”

“Chickens…Sergeant?”

“Yes. Two chickens. Hens. Fat ones.”

“Senyor. Sergeant. I have no money to buy chickens.”

The man regarded him with lifted eyebrows. “Of course you do not. You will take them from a civilian, find them in the countryside as a soldier sometimes must do.”

The sergeant studied him. “Do you understand the order, Alvarez?”