The Vineyards of Champagne

by Juliet Blackwell

  “You’re not half bad, Monsieur Comtois,” Emma said, raising her glass in a toast.

  “Call me Jérôme. Please. Otherwise I think you’re talking about my father.”

  “Here’s to your father,” Emma said, holding her glass high.

  Rosalyn noticed Jérôme’s mouth tighten, as though he wasn’t sure that he wanted to drink to his father. But he joined them nonetheless. They chatted companionably for a long while, Emma describing the wine business in her region of Australia, Rosalyn comparing it to Napa, and Jérôme comparing it to Champagne.

  After a while, the muffled sounds drifting down the corridor suggested the party was winding down.

  “Okay, I suppose it’s time to bribe some hale young men to hoist me back up one hundred and sixteen stairs,” said Emma, rising and hopping on one foot, careening slightly to one side before getting her bearings on her crutches. “Either that or we steal the key to the freight elevator again.”

  Rosalyn stood up and felt the champagne go to her head.

  “Are you sure you’re okay on those crutches, Emma?” Jérôme asked as Emma led a slightly crooked path down the corridor.

  “Oh, sure,” said Emma. “You know, F. Scott Fitzgerald said that too much of anything is bad, except too much champagne is just right.”

  Jérôme let out a low chuckle and met Rosalyn’s eyes. “Let’s just hope that holds true in the morning.”

  Chapter Thirty-five

  On the way home, Emma sat in the front passenger seat while André drove, and Rosalyn sat in back. Emma lowered her seat and tilted her head back to make eye contact.

  “So, you’ve been holding out on me,” said Emma in a gently teasing tone. “You let me think you and your husband had split up. Not that he’d died.”

  “I wasn’t keeping it a secret, exactly. It’s just . . . hard to talk about. It’s been nice not having to carry that weight for a while.”

  André met Rosalyn’s eyes in the rearview mirror. He didn’t say anything, but she read sympathy and understanding in his steady gaze.

  Emma blew out a long breath and looked out the windshield for a moment. “Did you know the word ‘grief’ comes from an old French word, grever, which means ‘to burden’?”

  “I didn’t know that.”

  Emma nodded. “From the Latin word gravare, meaning ‘to make heavy.’ Something impossible to carry, and yet carry it we must.”

  “You just happen to know the etymology of the word ‘grief’?”

  “Long story, not worth going into. The point is, losing someone you love, such as your husband . . . that can be a crushing burden. Do you want to talk about it?”

  Rosalyn felt tears well up, but otherwise was surprisingly composed. Perhaps it was the lingering effects of the champagne; perhaps she felt safe with Emma, and André, too.

  “It was cancer, caught too late. We tried everything, from chemo to power smoothies to acupuncture. He didn’t last long. Only ninety-seven days.” Her breath caught in her throat. “Ninety-seven days, from diagnosis to death.”

  “Tell me something about Dash.”

  “Dash was . . . larger than life. He found joy in everything; everything was a cause for celebration. I’d never met anyone like him. He was older than I was, and a lot more worldly; we married right after I graduated from college. He had made money in an Internet start-up, and invested in a small winery in Napa. That’s how we met. I was a marketing intern in his company.”

  “Married an older man, eh? The boss, no less.”

  “I know people thought the age difference was strange, but it was lovely. He taught me so much.”

  Rosalyn remembered that while her mother had been overjoyed that Rosalyn had “found a good man to take care of her,” a few of her friends had voiced concerns about their different levels of life experience. Such arguments bounced off Rosalyn like water droplets off a waxed finish. She wanted Dash with a kind of mania, studied his fingers and thought of what they could do, inhaled deeply of his scent whenever he was near. She desired him not only physically but with her whole heart; she wanted to cleave to him, to go through the world with him boisterously inviting fellow patrons to dine with them, creating a party everywhere they went, taking care of hotel rooms and rental cars and tickets. Dash had taken care of her, taken care of everything. Except he hadn’t.

  “He taught you about wine?” Emma asked.

  “Wine and the world, and . . . everything, really. I’m from the Central Valley of California, and my father left when I was young, so it was just my mother and me. She had to work, of course, but never made much money, so we just scraped by. I had never been to a nice restaurant, never traveled anywhere. I didn’t know much about anything except what I’d read in books. Dash opened up new worlds for me.”

  “Sounds lovely.”

  Rosalyn nodded. “I used to paint in the vineyard while he worked, and it was . . . heaven. You know that saying ‘You never appreciate what you have until you lose it’? That wasn’t true for me. I knew how lucky I was, every moment. I felt like I was living in a fairy tale. Everyone in Napa knew Dash. He was larger than life.”

  “A ‘great man’?” Emma asked.

  Rosalyn was startled by the idea. “I . . . He . . . I mean, I suppose so, in some ways.”

  “What was your relationship with your dad like?”

  “Look, just because Dash was older doesn’t mean I was working out daddy issues.” Rosalyn felt a surge of annoyance. Emma hadn’t known Dash, much less her deadbeat father. Emma didn’t understand. She couldn’t understand.

  “Did I say you were?” said Emma. “I was just asking.”

  Rosalyn blew out a breath. The flash of irritation ceded to frustration that she couldn’t find the words to describe all she had lost. Even those who had known and loved Dash hadn’t known him the way Rosalyn had, hadn’t experienced the relationship she’d had with him. They couldn’t know. She couldn’t put it into words; she couldn’t explain it.

  “Dash brought the joy, that’s all,” Rosalyn said. “And when he died, he took it with him. He took everything with him.”

  They drove in silence for a long while.

  Then Rosalyn added: “He took everything with him. But he didn’t take me.”

  * * *

  Although it was late when they returned, Rosalyn didn’t even try to sleep. Instead, she dove back into translating Émile’s letters. She no longer tried to find the correct order, but enjoyed the roulette of picking up letters no matter their date.

  August 16, 1917

  My dearest marraine, Mrs. Whittaker,

  I am sending you sincerest thanks for the lovely package! I don’t have to tell you my comrades were jealous at the sight of my new scarf, and the tobacco has, I believe, saved my sanity. The playing cards were put straight to use, and my pal Rémy was so moved, he began to sing and play on a funny little fiddle he made from scrap metal.

  We left the trenches at xxx on August 5, and marching back nine or ten miles, we eventually reached a village called xxx for the purpose of allowing us a brief respite from the trenches. The signalers thought an orchard would be very convenient to erect our bivouacs in, but an old man appeared at the scene, raising objections. It seems his orchard had been in his family for generations, and he feared the blood and trenches that he had seen marring the fields of others.

  After much discussion, we were able to work something out, and traded some tins of confiture for a little fresh milk and a bit of cheese, and the old fellow sold us some apples from his cellar. The fruit was old and slightly soft, but the sweetness most welcome. And after too many months of soup and bread, the cheese was heaven, indeed.

  We are back in the trenches now. In fact we seem to spend about three times as much time in them as we do out, and at the moment, we expect heavy fire. It was this area toward the end of last summer tha
t witnessed some of the fiercest fighting of the war. The countryside is now a veritable maze of trenches, and sometimes we are only about twenty yards from the Boches. The air is thick with bombs, grenades, and trench mortars. These last are a diabolical kind of toy. Their explosion feels like ten earthquakes rolled into one.

  I hesitate to tell you this story, my dear marraine, but you insist that I should tell you all and in truth it has been worrying my mind. The fighting at one time was so fierce that there was only time to bury the dead in the sides of the trenches, but due to rain and bombardment the trenches sometimes start to collapse. So now one is constantly seeing not only boots but the bones of men’s legs or even skulls sticking out from the sides of the trenches. It is not the sight itself that so disturbs me but rather the sense that this has begun to seem normal. I have ceased to see those bones as the sign of a mother’s agony or a wife’s despair or a child’s lifelong anguish, but as the building blocks of the trenches in which I live.

  [xxx whole paragraph censored]

  I wonder whether these poor fallen poilus will be given proper burial one day, when our collective nightmare is over. Otherwise, how will families come to know of the fate of their loved ones? Even now, as we are live men, there are mistakes made. Apparently I look a lot like a man—a boy, really—who comes from Belval-sous-Châtillon; thrice now the officer in charge has mixed us up. When we correct him, he seems to think it is a thing of conceit, but believe me when I say it is not. I simply want my remains to be sent back to my loved ones, if the worst happens. I suppose this is the business of war; perhaps those who are running things have a plan. It is hard to believe from here, just now.

  With respectful affection, your “godson,”

  Émile Legrand

  * * *

  February 1, 1917

  My dear Mrs. Whittaker,

  This day I fear I have nothing much of optimism to say; please be forewarned! You may not wish to read this letter at all; none could find blame if you burned it, sight unseen.

  Here in the trenches we poilus descend to primal man. There is no time or water to wash or shave, and the most basic demands of nature are answered as quickly as possible in the handiest shell hole. We are beset by lice and rats, and even trench mouth, where the gums rot and teeth become loose. And of course there are unburied bodies, not only men but also horses, everywhere.

  I try to think of pleasant things: of Lucie’s face, the clicking of her mother’s knitting needles. I think of the scent of the lavender sachets the good lady makes for those too sensitive to the acrid smells of the caves. I remember the scent of the ointment Lucie made for me, concocted of rosemary and thyme. But of course, any mental transport I can achieve is soon overrun by my hideous reality.

  At present we are billeted in a ramshackle barn, and negotiate a sea of mud to get in and out. We have no boards, so sleep on straw on the wet ground. Fires are not allowed and at night the cold cuts through our winter fur coats. We huddle together like puppies in an attempt to keep warm and, I believe, to hear the beat of another human heart.

  Lately in the trenches we have stood knee-deep in water for days at a time, our gum boots filling with water and offering little relief. With every moment we all fear the dreaded trench foot; many so afflicted lose their feet and legs altogether.

  xxx found ourselves under assault, and as it was impossible to make any advance in our quarter, I dug myself in and awaited events. It was a horrible suspense; I recited poetry to myself, but it hardly calmed me. As the hours passed with aching slowness, I seemed to be the only man untouched; all around me were dead and wounded. Being personally acquainted with each man made the loss that much worse.

  In fact, it’s wrong to call them men, as they are mostly boys. Rémy xxx is quite fit and, now, the only pal I have left in the platoon. We have been resting since getting information about the xxx but by all reports we shall be up again soon.

  No rest for the wicked, as they say; if true, we must surely be a wretched lot.

  Within two days we were back out digging trenches at night when the Boches let us have it for five hours with trench mortars and gas shells. We wore our masks to protect from the poison, but two poor souls were hit directly with the gas shells and dropped just that easily. Another eight were put out by mortars in the first ten minutes, reducing our number from twenty-two to ten.

  The sights and smells are awful, as the bodies of the poilus lie just as they fell during the advance. It is impossible to stop and bury them. Also there are a dozen dead horses in the mud, killed by shell fire while bringing up ammunition for the guns.

  As we started forward again, one young boy fell at my side. I heard him call, “Maman!” as he dropped. Then on the other side a boy of eighteen had both legs blown away at the knee. I bound up his wounds as best I could and ran with him on my back to the nearest dressing station.

  “Émile,” I heard him say as we neared the medics, “don’t leave me, will you, pal?” And with that he was gone. I became so enraged I do believe I went a little mad. With the next advance I ran amok in the enemy’s trench and with rifle, bayonet, and mortars took the lives of at least twenty Huns. My savage rage has earned me a medal.

  I hope you understand, my dear marraine, that I write this last not with the least bit of pride, but with a dull, trembling fear for my own humanity.

  Your war godson and doomed friend,

  Émile Legrand

  * * *

  May 18, 1917

  Dear Mrs. Whittaker,

  In the midst of horror come strange tales—some strange enough even for our beloved Monsieur Edgar Allan Poe, I do believe. A British engineer who spoke very decent French told me a story, and I wonder if it might be true.

  There was intense fighting, and many of his comrades had fallen from bullets and gas when, out of the mist, walking across No Man’s Land, came a figure. The man walked straight through the poison cloud, though he wore no mask. Indeed, he was clad in the uniform of the British Royal Army Medical Corps.

  The engineer remembered that the stranger spoke English, but with what seemed to be a French accent. He carried a bucket of clear liquid and on his belt hung a number of tin cups. As he joined the men down in the trench he began filling the cups and passing them out to the soldiers, urging them to drink.

  The engineer said the potion was almost too salty to swallow, but he and his friends obeyed the stranger. When the gas cloud had blown over and things calmed down, they found that not a single one of the soldiers dosed with the elixir suffered injury from the gas. No explanation for the strange visit could be given, and the Royal Medical Corps claimed they knew of no such man. But thousands died or were gravely injured in that terrible attack, save the soldiers who took the cup from the stranger.

  Do you believe it? It seems it could hardly be true. But I have to say that sometimes there seems to be a strange pause—not in the shooting or shelling, because that is unceasing. But sometimes it feels that all the noise quiets, and I wait, scarcely breathing, for something. It seems to be long minutes, but it might be mere seconds. And then it comes—invisible, intangible, but nevertheless very real. Something comes to that place of desolation, stops a moment beside me, comforting as a mother placing her hand on a child’s head, and then it passes on again.

  I know you are not a priest, my dear marraine, but I believe you are a wise woman who does not suffer fools. Do you think what I see and feel could possibly be real?

  Could it be a spirit or a sign, do you think? Or could it be that the desire for godly interference is so strong that it affects our eyes and ears?

  How do the angels stand it? I wonder.

  As always, I am your affectionate

  Émile Legrand

  * * *

  The next morning Rosalyn encountered André as she left the Chambre Chardonnay.

  “Bonjour,
” said Rosalyn.

  “Bonjour, madame.” André hesitated, as though he wanted to say something more.

  Rosalyn waited.

  “I lost a brother, when I was a teenager.” André spoke slowly in French, as though to make sure she could understand. “He was killed in a car accident.”

  “I’m so sorry.”

  “He was my big brother, and I idolized him. It was very hard for me, for my family. I don’t think my parents ever recovered. I went off to university. I know I did things, but I have almost no memory for more than two years after he died.”

  Rosalyn nodded. They stood together in the foyer of the gîte for a long moment, neither speaking, neither making a move to leave or to force the moment to pass. Allowing the kindred knowledge of loss and pain to fill the space, the slightest delicate comfort found in the sharing of it.

  “I just wanted you to know that in some small way, I understand,” André said. “As Emma says, it is very heavy to carry.”

  “André, would it be all right to give you a hug?” Rosalyn asked.

  “Of course.”

  They held each other for another long moment, and then they each went on with their day.

  When Rosalyn made her way into the kitchen for coffee, she found Blondine and Emma sitting at a table, eating breakfast.

  “Bonjour.” They traded hellos.

  “Rosalyn, Emma told me your news, about your husband,” said Blondine, rising to face her.

  “News travels fast in small towns.” She meant it as a joke, but there was a bitter tinge to her words. Not that her widowhood was a secret; it just hurt to deal with it, even at this level.