The Winemaker (19 page)

Josep wondered what else his father had known about the land that he had failed to absorb while coming of age.

He had no inclination to become a hunter himself, but the next time he met up with Jaume he recalled Nivaldo’s lecture about his need to eat better.

“Can you get me a rabbit?” he asked, and Jaume smiled his slow smile and nodded. He came to the casa the next afternoon with a young rabbit he had shot in the neck, and he seemed pleased by the coins Josep gave to him in return. He showed Josep how to skin and dress the animal.

“How do you like to cook them?” Josep asked.

“I fry them in lard,” Jaume said, and departed with a bonus, the head and the pelt. But Josep remembered how his father had dealt with rabbit. He went to the grocery and gathered garlic, a carrot, an onion, and a long, red picant pepper. Nivaldo raised his eyebrows as Josep paid him.

“Doing some cooking, are we?”

Back home, he drenched a cloth in his sour wine and scrubbed the little carcass inside and out, then quartered it. He placed the pieces into a pot with wine and olive oil, added half a dozen crushed garlic cloves, and cut the vegetables into the pot before setting it above a small fire to simmer.

When he ate two of the pieces hours later, the meat was so tender and good he felt sanctified. He sopped up the spicy gravy, allowing it to soften chunks of stale bread until they became semi-liquid and luscious, so that he almost sucked them down.

When he was finished eating, he carried the pot to the grocery, where Nivaldo was chopping up a cabbage for the stew.

“Something for you to taste,” he said.

While Nivaldo ate, Josep read
El Cascabel.

Despite himself, the events that had enmeshed him had resulted in making him more interested in politics and the monarchy. He always read the newspaper carefully, but he almost never found the kind of information he was looking for. Soon after he had returned to the village,
El Cascabel
had published a story about General Prim on the fourth anniversary of his assassination. The article had revealed that following the murder several people had been taken into custody, but after questioning them, the police had let them go.

Nivaldo chewed and swallowed busily. “I haven’t read the paper yet. Is there anything of interest?”

“There is still bitter fighting. We may be thankful it has not come nearer to us. In Navarre, the Carlists attacked a force and seized arms and artillery pieces and took three hundred prisoners. Déu!” He rattled the newspaper. “They nearly captured our new king.”

Nivaldo looked over at Josep. “So? What was King Alfonso doing with the troops?”

“It says that he attended Sandhurst, the British military college, and he will take an active part in quelling the civil war.”

“Oh? That is interesting,” Nivaldo agreed. He ate the last bit of meat, and to Josep’s satisfaction he began to suck the bones.

Francesc was left to amuse himself alone much of the time while Maria del Mar labored nearby, and frequently he appeared at the Alvarez vineyard to follow after Josep like a shadow. At first they rarely had conversations; when they did, it was always about simple things, the shape of a cloud, the color of a flower, or why weeds were not allowed to prosper and grow. Most often Josep worked in silence, and the little boy watched raptly, though he had seen his mother doing similar tasks again and again in her own vineyard.

When it was clear that Josep was reaching the end of a task, the boy always spoke the same words.

“What do we do now, Josep?”

“Now, we hoe some weeds,” Josep would say.

Or, “We oil the tools.”

Or “We dig up this rock.”

Whatever his reply, the child would nod as though giving his permission, and they would move to the next chore.

Josep suspected that as well as the need for company, Francesc was drawn to the sound of a man’s voice, and at times he spoke comfortably and softly about things the boy was too young to absorb, the way a person may sometimes talk to himself while working.

One morning he explained why he was transplanting wild rosebushes in front of and behind each row of grapevines. “It’s something I saw in France. The flowers are beautiful but they also do a job, they give warning. The roses aren’t as strong as the vines, so if something goes wrong—if a problem develops with the soil, for example—then the roses will show signs of the trouble first, and I can think about how to fix it before it hurts the vines,” he said. The boy soberly watched until the transplanting was finished.

“What do we do now, Josep?” he asked.

Maria del Mar grew accustomed to the fact that when she did not see her son at home, he most likely could be found at the Alvarez vineyard. “You must send him home when he becomes a bother,” she told Josep, but he meant it when he replied that he enjoyed Francesc’s company. He sensed that Maria del Mar harbored a resentment toward him. He didn’t understand the reason, but he knew the distrust made her hesitate
to accept any favors from him. He had settled into an identity as her neighbor, a relationship which each of them seemed to accept.

Nivaldo was right, he told himself. He needed a wife. There were widows and unmarried females in the village. He should begin to pay attention until he found a woman who would share the work of the vineyard, keep the house, cook him real meals. Give him children, share his bed…

Ah, share his bed!

Lonesome and wanting, he walked into the country one day, to the lopsided house of Nuria, but the house was deserted, the door left open to the wind and any animal or bird. A man spreading fertilizer in a nearby field told him that Nuria had died two years before.

“And the daughter, Renata?”

“Set free by the mother’s death. Gone away.” He shrugged.

The man said he raised beans in the field. “The soil is thin, but I have plenty of goat-shit from the Llobets. You know their farm?”

“No,” Josep said, suddenly interested.

“Llobet goat farm. Very old farm.” He smiled. “Very big, many goats, they are drowning in goat shit, old goat shit, new goat shit, piled in their fields. No place to store it any more. They know that in the future they will have a lot more goat shit. A
lot
. They kiss your hands when you take away a load.”

“Where is the farm?”

“An easy walk south, over the hill.”

Josep thanked the bean grower, whose information, he knew, was a stroke of fortune, better for him than if he had found Nuria and Renata still living in the house.

29

Hinny

On the rare occasions when Padre had found a source of fertilizer, he had borrowed a horse and wagon to carry it home, but Josep didn’t have the kind of relationship with his father’s friends that allowed for such presumption. He knew he couldn’t go on using Maria del Mar’s mule indefinitely, and his first successful harvest had given him the cautious courage to spend some money, so one morning he made his way to Sitges and sought out the cooperage of Emilio Rivera. The barrel factory was a long low building with peeled logs stacked in the yard. Near the stacks he found the red-faced barrel-maker, Rivera, and an elderly worker with whom he was quartering logs, using steel wedges and heavy mauls. Rivera didn’t remember Josep until he was reminded of the morning when he had been kind enough to give a stranger a ride to Barcelona.

“I told you I needed to buy a mule, and you told me about your cousin, a man who is a buyer of horses?”

“Oh, yes, my cousin, Eusebio Serrano. Lives in Castelldefels.”

“Yes, in Castelldefels. You spoke of a horse fair there. I was unable to go there then, but now…”

“The horse fair is held four times a year, and the next one is in three weeks time. It is always held on a Friday, market day.” He smiled. “Tell Eusebio I sent you. For a small fee he will help you buy a good mule.”

“Thank you, senyor.” But Josep lingered.

“Something else?” Rivera said.

“I’m a wine-maker. I have an old fermentation vat in which two of the staves are rotting and must be replaced. Can you make that kind of repair?”

Rivera looked pained. “Well…but you cannot bring the vat to me?”

“No, it is large.”

“And I’m a busy cooper, with orders to fill. If I were to go to you, it would be too costly.” He turned to the worker. “Juan, you can begin stacking the quartered logs…

“Besides,” he said, turning back to Josep, “I can’t spare the time.”

“Senyor…,” Josep hesitated. “Do you think you might advise me how to make the repair myself?”

Rivera shook his head. “No chance. You need long experience for that. You wouldn’t be able to get it tight enough, and it would leak. You can’t even use planks from sawn logs. The planks have to come from logs like these, split with the grain so the wood is impermeable.” He saw Josep’s face and set down the maul. “Here’s what we can do. You tell me exactly how to find your place. Some day when I happen to be in your area, I’ll drop by and do the repair on your vat.”

“It must be fixed by autumn, when I crush my grapes.”

Or I am lost. He said it silently, but the cooper seemed to understand.

“That gives us months. I’ll probably get there in time.”

The word
probably
made Josep uneasy, but he realized there was nothing else he could do.

“Can you use some good second-hand barrels, 225 liters? Used to contain herring?” Rivera said, and Josep laughed.

“No, my wine is bad enough without stinking of herring!” he said, and the cooper grinned.

Castelldefels was a medium-sized town that had become a large horse fair. Each place Josep looked there were four-legged animals surrounded by knots of talking men. He managed not to step in the horse dung that was everywhere, its stink sharp and heavy.

The horse fair started badly for Josep. He spotted a man limping away from him. His walk appeared familiar, and so did the man’s body structure, and the shape of his head, and the color of his hair.

Josep’s fear was so strong it surprised him.

He wanted to flee, but instead he forced himself to circle the group of horse traders the limping man had joined.

The fellow was the wrong age by fifteen years. He had a jovial red complexion and a large, coarse nose.

His face looked nothing like Peña’s.

It was a while before Josep calmed. He wandered through the fairgrounds, lost and anonymous in the crowds, and eventually he regained control of himself.

It was fortunate that it took him a good deal of time and inquiry to track down Eusebio Serrano.

He marveled that Serrano and Emilio Rivera were related, for in contrast to the bluff, workmanlike Rivera, his cousin was an assured and dignified aristócrato in a fine gray suit and dressy hat, his snowy shirt adorned with a black string tie.

Nevertheless Serrano listened to Josep politely and with close attention and quickly agreed to guide his purchase in return for a modest fee. Over the next few hours they visited eight mule-sellers. Though they closely examined thirteen animals, Serrano said he could recommend only three of them for Josep’s consideration.

“But before you decide, I want you to see one more,” he said. He led Josep through the mass of men, horses, and mules to a brown animal with three white stockings and a white muzzle.

“A bit larger than the others, isn’t he?” Josep said.

“The others are properly mules, out of female horses bred by male donkeys. This one is a hinny, out of a female donkey bred by an Arab stallion. I’ve watched him from the time he was born, and I know him to be gentle and able to outwork any two horses. He costs a bit more than the others we’ve seen, but I recommend that you buy him, Senyor Alvarez.”

“I must buy a wagon as well, and I have limited funds,” Josep said slowly.

“How much money do you have?”

Serrano frowned when Josep told him. “I think it would make sense to put most of it into the hinny. He’s real value. Let us see what we can do.”

Josep watched as Serrano engaged the hinny’s owner in a congenial conversation. Senyor Rivera’s cousin was friendly and quiet. There was none of the loud dickering that Josep had heard between other buyers and sellers. When a figure was mentioned by the dealer, Serrano’s face looked politely regretful, and then there was renewed calm conversation.

Finally Serrano came to Josep and told him the man’s lowest price—more than Josep had planned, but not a great deal more. “He’ll throw in the harness,” Serrano said, and he smiled when Josep agreed.

Josep handed over the pesetas, and a receipt was written and signed.

“There’s something else I can show you,” Serrano said and led Josep away to the section where equipment dealers displayed wagons and carts and plows. When he stopped before an object at the rear of one of the displays, Josep thought he was joking. The wooden bed sat flat on the ground. Once it had been a wagon of the kind he wanted, a rough hauling cart with low walls. But there was a long open space in the bed where a wide plank was missing, and the splintered plank next to that had two wide cracks.

“Just needs a couple of boards,” Serrano said.