Sweeter Than Wine (16 page)

"Cousin Hugh!" Siegfried put out his hand.

Hugh juggled the paper and his white straw hat until Siegfried dropped his
hand.

"I'm so sorry," Alice whispered. "I didn't--that is--" Her eyelids fluttered
nervously. "Only Tati was there."

Hugh ground his teeth together. "I thought we were friends, Alice," he
accused. "But now I find you're treating me no better than the rest of my so-called
family!"

"We were sorry we could not include you, Cousin," Siegfried interrupted,
placing his hand possessively on Alice's shoulder. "But everything happened so
quickly."

"You didn't have to know him very long, did you, Alice, dear? But then, you're
just the kind of woman to make a man lose his head."

"That was uncalled-for," Siegfried said, maintaining civility despite the venom
in his cousin's voice. "And you will apologize to my wife immediately."

"You--you sneaking Hun!" Hugh sputtered, his voice rising with indignation. A
flush began to creep up from his collar. "I have nothing to say to you!"

"But you do have something you will say to Alice." Siegfried commanded. No
man, not even his only living cousin, could insult his wife with impunity.

Alice gasped, but Siegfried merely tightened his grip on her shoulder and
waited for Hugh's apology.

"I'd say you owe me the apology, Alice!" Hugh growled.

Contempt edged Siegfried's voice now. "You sound like a spoiled child, cousin.
Apologize to my wife, now. I will not say it again."

Alice slipped out from under his hand. "Really, Siegfried, he doesn't have to--
"

"He does, or I will thrash him."

"You couldn't!" Hugh bristled.

Siegfried wanted very badly to try. His hands curled into fists.

"Hugh, I'd like to talk to you," Alice said urgently. "Right now." She seized
Hugh's elbow in a seemingly friendly grip, and started to drag him out of the
winery. "Siegfried, if you come after us, you're fired."

Siegfried, surprised, stayed where he was.

* * *

"You've got every right to be unhappy about this, but you shouldn't have
provoked him!" Alice said, as she hustled Hugh down the hill to where his elegant
new Dodge Brothers car sat next to her shabby truck. "I thought he would kill
you!"

Hugh stopped. "For all we know, he did kill Bill."

"What are you talking about?" Alice asked, stunned.

"Oh, Alice, use your head. Alsace was German territory until we won," Hugh
said bitterly. "How do you suppose Cousin Siegfried spent the War? Making wine
on his estate?"

"Well, I never--"

"...considered it, did you?" Hugh sighed and shook his head pityingly. "His
father was a rabid pan-Germanist. Herr Rodernwiller would never have allowed his
sons to be pacifists." He paused a moment, letting her absorb the import of his
words, "You married the Enemy, Alice. How could you!"

"Tati didn't say anything about Siegfried being a German," Alice swallowed
heavily. She felt nauseous. "S-soldier."

"Tati. I knew she had to be at the bottom of this," Hugh spat.

"I'm sorry!" Alice cried. "You've always been my friend. If Tati had given me
any choice--"

Hugh leaned against the side of his car, heedless of dust against his white
suit. He squinted intently at her, settling his hat back on his fair hair. "Don't you
understand, Alice? Tati duped you. She never wanted you to keep Montclair after
Bill died." He looked around at the white house, the palm trees, and the hillsides
rising green under their rows of vines. "She's cheated you--and me--out of it.
Again."

"How can you say that about your grandmother?" Alice swallowed the bile
rising in her throat.

Hugh's face twisted. "Good-bye, Alice."

Alice watched as Hugh's car bounced down the gravel drive and disappeared
around the curve. She didn't know what to think. His words made dreadful sense.
Why else had Tati been so insistent on the marriage? How had Siegfried's father
lost everything?

And, thinking back, Siegfried had never mentioned where he had spent the
War. Or how he had acquired his limp, his apostasy.

She was married to a Hun. Oh, God.

She gripped her upper arms, shivering, as a slow, dry breeze rustled the palm
leaves and brought her the scents of growing grapes.

"Was that Mr. Roye?" Maria's wistful voice startled her. "Why did he go so
quick? It seems like a long time since he's been here for Sunday supper."

Alice smoothed damp palms against the thighs of her overalls, bumping
against the scraper she had unconsciously pocketed when Hugh arrived. "I--ah--
he couldn't stay."

"Was he mad about you and Mr. R.?" Maria stood on the porch and shook
crumbs out of her apron.

Alice gave an involuntary spurt of laughter. "You could say that."

"Oh. But he will come back again, won't he?" Maria's gaze followed the dust
plume hanging over the drive.

"I don't know." Alice glanced up, where Siegfried stood guard at the entrance
to the winery. Had he been watching them the whole time? "Maria, excuse me. I've
got to--" She couldn't finish. She hated the thought of the coming confrontation, but
she forced herself to march up the hill to him.

"Ah-lees, did he apologize to you?" Siegfried demanded as she drew
near.

"I want an annulment. Now." Her throat hurt and her voice shook. How could
she have let him touch her? He had almost kissed her, before Hugh arrived. Her
lips tingled. She rubbed them to make the feeling go away.

"Why? What did Hugh say to you?" Siegfried asked, bewildered pain in his
blue eyes. And there would be more, before she was finished. She steeled herself.
He was a Hun! Alice's memory provided lurid images, based on wartime newsreels
and posters: Siegfried in a helmet crowned with a steel spike. Siegfried with a
bayonet, stabbing helpless babies. Siegfried with a machine gun, mowing down
rows of courageous Allied soldiers.

Don't let it be true, I don't want it to be true!

"Ah-lees! What happened?" Siegfried reached out, and Alice felt his hand on
her shoulder, drawing her close.

She tried to step away from him, but his fingers tangled in her shirt, and
somehow her effort to escape led her back to him, her face resting in the curve of
his shoulder, her arms awkward against his bony ribs. His right arm came around
her back. She couldn't bear the thought of him holding her. If he finished the
embrace, she would shatter. Her fingers closed on the handle of the scraper
hanging in the pocket of her denim overalls. Without thinking, she grabbed it and
held it against Siegfried's throat.

"Don't touch me." Her voice quavered, but the blade held steady. When he
didn't obey, she applied a little pressure. The skin at his Adam's apple indented
along the edge of the flat tool.

He stood, unmoving. His eyes rolled as he tried to look at her while holding his
head absolutely still. "Ah-lees, what are you doing?" he whispered.

"Is it true, Siegfried? Were you a German soldier?"

He spread his hands wide in a gesture of surrender. "Yes," he said promptly,
and something in her chest turned cold and heavy. "I was."

Alice, watching him warily from close enough to kiss him, saw past his golden-
stubbled chin to his outstretched arm. The grimy bandage across his palm
reminded her of his kindness to her over the past week, and the scraper wavered.
She grabbed her elbow to steady it as Siegfried twitched. "How could you?" she
rasped. She could barely breathe. "I trusted you!"

Siegfried wet his lips with his tongue and drew in a sharp breath. His skin had
turned the color of milk. "May I speak?" he asked, trying to look at her again.

She nodded. Her voice would have failed. Bill's ghost stood between them,
casting a chill shadow.

"Without a knife at my throat? I will not try to touch you again--or hurt you at
all."

She stepped back, deliberately. She did not drop the scraper.

Siegfried closed his eyes and began to speak. "My father believed that 'All
Germans belong in one Fatherland.' But Alsace has never been either wholly
French or wholly German. When the War started, and the French invaded, half the
country rejoiced. The other half was happy to fight back. I wanted no part of either
side." He opened his eyes again and stared at her intently. "And neither did my
mother, but one of the battles swept through our village, and my brother was killed
by French shelling. After that, my father stood outside the army recruiter's office in
Schlettstat until I did my duty. And once you are in the army there is only one
honorable way out of it until peacetime."

She flinched.

"Feet first. If you still have feet."

"Hugh said--" Her lips failed to hold the right shape to form words. She
concentrated, and after she regained control she finished. "You might have killed
Bill."

Siegfried's eyes gave away nothing. His arms stayed outflung. "I might have,"
he answered her calmly, when she most wanted him to argue. "If not he, then
others like him. It was war, Alice. One obeys orders."

"I should have sold Montclair to Hugh!" Alice cried. "At least he made me a fair
offer!"

"Hugh would have torn out the vines. Tati was right. You need a vintner. You
need me." He jabbed his thumb toward his chest in a swift chop.

Alice's mouth rounded as if she tasted something sour. "I do need a vintner,
but I won't--I can't--be married to you."

"I will not stay here as a mere hired hand."

Alice was shaken by the anger in his voice.

His hands made fists, and they shook. "In the Kaiser's army, they made me an
Offizierstellvertreter
--a deputy officer. I had the duties, the responsibilities,
but not the--the rank of a real officer." He laughed shortly and forged on. "I was
never fully trusted. I was never German enough. Too many Alsatians deserted.
The real officers always thought I might be next." His knuckles whitened as his
nails dug into his bandaged palms. "This property belonged to my grandfather.
Either I stay here as your husband, or I will seek employment elsewhere. And if I
leave, Ah-lees, you will not get your altar wine."

Alice fought down her panic. He must go. But who else could she hire as
vintner, with Prohibition looming so close? And if she failed to make altar wine,
how could she keep Montclair?

Siegfried must have seen her hesitating, for he said, "If, after crush, after the
vintage is sold to the Church, you still want me to go, I will honor your request for
an annulment. I will return to my grandmother, and you need never see me
again."

The scraper dropped from Alice's fingers. He was right. And there was
another, darker reason she had to keep him.

He was staring intently at the toes of his work boots when she capitulated. "All
right." Her face hot, she stumbled over the words in her haste to get them out.
"Tati would never, ever forgive me if you...left...so suddenly."

His sudden smile was blinding with happiness and relief, and Alice had to look
away, ashamed of her own cowardice.

As a soldier of the Enemy, she ought to hate Siegfried. Why, then, was it so
much easier to despise herself?

* * *

They returned to work. What else was there to do?

Sunday dinner was strained. Siegfried ate mechanically while Alice sat across
from him in icy silence. He felt distanced from his surroundings, as if the walls had
collapsed, and what remained was only an illusion. It was like the aftermath of an
artillery attack--he was alive, but had not yet begun to feel again. Peter had
enjoyed himself in convivial surroundings and dominated the conversation with a
slightly slurred monologue. Maria seemed sad. Afterward, Siegfried could not
remember what they ate.

Alice shut herself up in her office behind a rampart of ledger books which
Siegfried did not feel up to storming. He could think of nothing to say to her that
would improve her opinion of him.
All is lost.

He climbed the stairs slowly, each movement an effort. A hot bath failed to
disperse the chill gray cloud that had settled on his soul. He emerged clean but in
no better heart than he had started.

Too dispirited even to dress, he sat down at the little writing table in his room
to compose a dutiful letter to Oma Tati, but the only thing he had to say was
unacceptable:
I hope you are well. Today, Alice called me a Hun and tried to kill
me. Why did you lie to her about me?

He stopped chewing the pencil when he tasted black lead. Alice hated him. He
had been so close to winning her regard. So close. She had almost let him kiss
her before Hugh arrived. In those disastrous five minutes, Siegfried had gone from
hero to villain in her eyes. It was like coming home to Alsace, and finding himself
the Enemy.

He wanted to be the hero, to do right by Alice. He wanted her respect and
admiration. He wanted her to sparkle with that wicked grin. He wanted Alice.

Before Hugh spoke, there had been the possibility that she could be wooed.
Now Siegfried had no chance.

But he wanted Montclair as his home. The prospect of being merely a
caretaker here left him cold, so cold. He sagged to the foot of his bed, pulled the
quilt up and wrapped it around his bare shoulders.

He raked a hand through damp hair and shivered. Before she knew about his
past, Alice had been close to liking him. How could he restore Alice's regard?

What if he couldn't?

He curled up in a miserable ball, pulling the quilt over his head, and retreated
into sleep.

In his dreams, he lost every battle of the War.

He wrestled with corpse-shaped mold in the dark corners of the winery, hip-
deep in sucking trench mud. Reddish-brown redwood melted into reservoirs of
shed blood as his men died under fusillades of machine gun fire. He tried to shoot
back, but his broom had no ammunition. The fighting went hand-to-hand with
soldiers made of glass. A bayonet stabbed out of the mouth of a wine bottle,
aimed for his heart.