The Vintners Luck

by Elizabeth Knox

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then drink some more to dull your aches. I want to tell you some things, without, I hope, offending against the Scripture you hold so dear.’

  ‘If you offend me I’ll go. I’m only here now because I refuse to cower behind shutters the whole night.’

  ‘You couldn’t just close your eyes and forget all about me?’

  Sobran pointed his gloved hand at the angel. ‘Talk quickly.’

  Xas was silent for a moment, then began: ‘Of what you call the Fall – the bad end, for us, of a riot in Heaven: of the War, the chase, who I stood by, our imprisonment in a horrible sanctuary – I will not tell you. Of our engineering, our shelters, cities, governments, I will not tell you. Imagine a very long time passing – and I find my way out, following someone who already knows how to leave Hell. And God says to me, on Earth for the first time, “Xas!” in a tone of discovery, as if I’m a mis-placed pair of spectacles or a stray dog. And he puts it to me that he wants me in Heaven. But Lucifer has doubled back – it was him I followed – to find me, where I am, in a forest, smitten, because the Lord has noticed me, and I’m overcome, as hopeless as your dog Josie whom you got rid of because she loved me.’ Xas glared at Sobran. Then he drew a breath – all had been said on only three. He went on: ‘Lucifer says to God that He can’t have me. And at this I sit up and tell Lucifer that I didn’t even think he knew my name, then say to God no thank you – very insolent this – and that Hell is endurable so long as the books keep appearing. I’ll explain the books later, Sobran. Lucifer says, “Xas reads everything first, as if he’s tasting my food for poison.” I say that I read because I want to know how people think, not about us, but about themselves. Lucifer says, disgusted, that I should go back to Heaven then, to earn human love and learn nothing. And I say, to God, although he’s not asked me, “I followed him to finish hearing what he had to say.” Then God says, “Xas should go freely – he has his study.” Should, as though it’s only a proposal. God almost always speaks as if everything is already accomplished. His manner of speaking isn’t translatable. I can’t even report these events in the past tense – they were momentous and feel, to me, like they’re still happening. Lucifer is sneering because he thinks God means my study is humankind. I think God means that Lucifer is my study – and I decide to keep quiet about this, and have, till now.’ Xas stopped and touched his own mouth. The fog had come up around them and his hair was veiled with drops of condensation.

  ‘Then God covered my ears so that He could speak to Lucifer without my hearing Him. And when I put my own hands up to my deaf ears Lucifer knelt on the ground before me and pulled my hands down. He was shouting – though I couldn’t hear him – at God, like a parent who thinks their child is being hurt. Like that, angry and protective. Or perhaps he was defending my right to hear. Whatever, it didn’t last. He listened, then he put his own palms over my ears and pulled my face against his chest, so I couldn’t read his lips.

  ‘And they made their pact. Then they signed me – and one signature gave me pain and the other gave me pleasure. Then they left me to myself.’

  Sobran had closed his eyes and was quietly saying the words of a psalm: ‘My soul waiteth for the Lord more than they that watch for the morning: I say, more than they that watch for the morning.’

  ‘Are you?’ Xas asked.

  Sobran opened his eyes and found the fog, not dead against them but soft and semi-solid, a phantom fleshiness, aquatic. Xas came closer to him, sat beside him and extended a damp wing behind Sobran’s shoulders. ‘Lean on me,’ he invited.

  Sobran got up, stiff and pained. He stamped his feet and clapped his arms against his sides. His fingertips prickled then grew heavy with chilled blood. Xas got up too, with Sobran’s lamp. He lengthened its wick. They stood within a pearl, whose lustrous inner walls were the limit of the lamplight. The bottle had fallen and the wine was lost in the dirt. Xas gave Sobran the lamp.

  ‘If you gave me time, and I knew how, I’d tell you about my millennia; my few friendships; how I went about like a botanist; or I’d tell you about my garden sheltered by a wall of black glass. I will tell you, next year.’

  When Sobran didn’t answer him and had begun to turn away, Xas said, ‘I wish you believed me.’

  Sobran swung back. ‘That you’re benign? That you are not telling lies?’ He lifted the lamp between them. Xas’s face was youthful, relaxed, unfathomable. ‘If I could, I’d break this lamp and burn you where you stand.’ Sobran was in a rage.

  ‘Why did you shave off your beard again?’ Xas asked, silencing the man. He went on: ‘You grew it to cover the scars when you came home from campaigning, after you had shown me the scars as part payment for your sins, or so you thought. The beard came off again in ’22 – it had gone the night you dressed so carefully for me. And you remained clean shaven for only two years, till deciding to hide the last of your youth, perhaps. Now the handsome old man is clean – but not freshly – shaven. I wonder why.’

  Sobran waited till Xas had finished, then went on as if nothing had interrupted him: ‘You are a curse I have to endure. If you said you’d never come again and I was able to believe you – even then I could never be a happy man. I lost all chance of happiness – for ever – the moment I took you into my confidence about Céleste …’

  Xas started. It was the most wholly discomposed movement Sobran had ever seen him make.

  ‘Any happiness I’ve had since was only illusion and intoxication,’ Sobran added. He felt as if he’d stabbed the angel. He lowered the lamp, and as the shadow fell over Xas’s face the angel said, ‘I’m sorry.’ He sounded stupid.

  Sobran lit his own way down the hill, but looked back – did turn – and saw the dark vortex of clear night air strike back through the mist as the angel left the ridge.

  In his office in the winery at Vully, Sobran was paying the cooper’s apprentice. The young man counted, while Sobran locked the strongbox. Then the light went – Aurora de Valday was in the doorway. She dropped her hem. There was mud on her boots. The man with her touched his hat. They came into the room; Aurora stood waiting, didn’t find her own chair, as usual, or put her hands to the small of her back and stretch, or step up to the desk and begin turning papers to read. Instead she folded her hands together, in lace gloves, fussy and diminish-ed by the bells of her leg-of-mutton sleeves. Sobran put his pen down and stepped over to the chair by the wall, carried it to Aurora, then went for another chair for the gentleman. Aurora sat and Sobran saw her crane her neck to look at the floor plans on his desk.

  The cooper’s apprentice, hat in hand, nodded to everyone in turn then went out.

  Aurora introduced Baron Lettelier. The Baron did not stand, but did take Sobran’s hand for a moment. (A reverse of the concessions Sobran would make in the man’s position – but, of course, to the Baron, there was nothing between them but a difference in stations.) ‘Monsieur Jodeau – my vintner,’ Aurora said, ‘and an old friend.’ Aurora asked if Sobran could spare half an hour. She thought the Baron would enjoy a tour of the cellars.

  Sobran said it would be a pleasure. And she, teasing, ‘I know how you like to boast.’ Then she frowned at his courteous nod.

  It was warmer in the cellar. The first frost making its lacework in the angles of outside walls hadn’t yet penetrated the stone. ‘It’s like last week in here,’ Aurora said, old enough now to notice the progress of slow tides in each season, how winter came in unevenly, as the sea on a rugged coast – not yet old enough, though, no longer to bother to communicate what she’d noticed. Her remark seemed only to puzzle the Baron. He said, ‘I had no idea your cellars were so extensive.’ Then ‘Ah!’ at the fresh stonework and paler oak barrels.

  ‘We built in from the back,’ Sobran explained. He stopped on the steps under the angled doors that led to the courtyard, pond, waterlilies that Aurora so loved. She turned away, said, ‘Shall we view the southern transept?’

  ‘So, your cellar is a cathedral, Aurora?’ The
Baron made a point of getting her joke. ‘In the worship of what?’

  ‘Our southern transept is dedicated to Vin de Réserve. Come and choose for tonight’s table.’

  In their racks the bottles farthest from Sobran’s lamp gave back light like eyes, with dust like cataracts or the white bloom on black grapes.

  Aurora smudged her glove, wiping away dust. ‘Monsieur Jodeau,’ she said, ‘do you remember Jodeau North and South?’ Without letting him answer she turned to the Baron. ‘My uncle sat me down one afternoon when I was twelve and had me taste, as he said, “anything creditable from the pays”. He wanted me to make a distinction between Jodeau North and South. Uncle said, “It’s only twenty years since they were selling us all their grapes, then the son” – meaning your father, Sobran – “began to make wine and had the wit, at once, to distinguish the difference in his vines.”’ She lifted a bottle, turned it to Sobran. ‘Jodeau South 1808.’

  Sobran felt his face stiffen.

  ‘It’s the last year the grapes were pressed separately,’ she said to the Baron. Who gave a single nod of acknowledgement – all manners, no sympathy or interest. Aurora looked back at her friend. ‘Why was that?’

  ‘Father lost interest. He doted on Sabine. He was with her constantly – she had a minion: Grandpapa do this and that.’

  Aurora laughed; she could imagine.

  ‘Besides, the wine came right when we combined the north and south slopes – it was better. Especially the 1812, the year it rained at midsummer, father’s final vintage.’

  ‘I like the 1806 Jodeau South. We have two bottles left.’

  ‘I have fifteen,’ Sobran said, ‘and they’re yours if you want them. It never came up to our expectations.’

  ‘It’s a blessing that it’s kept,’ the Baron remarked. ‘What’s your best vintage?’ He too was dusting bottles.

  ‘Vully’s?’ Aurora and Sobran asked together.

  The Baron again gave his single nod.

  Sobran thought, ‘He’s cultivated that, probably stood before a mirror working on shades of meaning.’ He said: ‘1810, but it’s all gone from here, someone might have a bottle. 1812, 1818, 1820, 1822 …’ Sobran paused to cross himself, and even Aurora looked startled. ‘1822 is the very best. Then 1827, the first year I worked for the château. 1830 looks good now too.’

  ‘Shall we have some of the ’22, Aurora?’ the Baron said, then to Sobran, ‘Were you thanking God or warning the devil? Perhaps I need to know if I plan to drink it.’

  ‘I was thanking God.’

  The Baron took in Sobran’s sober dress and silver crucifix. ‘Piety is a fine thing when it secures a premier cru.’

  ‘Henri, the influence might have been my impiety. I first came to live here in ’21.’ Aurora said this smiling and the Baron took her hand. He looked again at Sobran. ‘And your own vintages – we’ve settled on your 1806 and the château’s ’22, so …?’

  ‘Jodeau-Kalmann 1820. Or the ’22, or ’27. They are all represented here. The château still buys a fair share of our wine.’

  ‘And Sobran takes orders from people who have tasted it at my table – so I’m his agent as he is mine,’ Aurora said.

  ‘A happy arrangement,’ the Baron said, then to Sobran, ‘Have the bottles sent. And thank you for your trouble.’

  *

  Sobran and his sixteen-year-old son were strolling through the old carousel in Beaune, among the stalls, the outdoor dentists, junk shops and dog sellers. The pup Sobran picked up and tucked in his coat was a mastiff, black and tan, his hide as soft as moleskin. Baptiste took hold of his father’s arm as Sobran put his hand into his pocket for his purse.

  ‘I thought you said we’d keep no more dogs.’

  Sobran lifted the pup, showed its toffee-drop eyes. ‘We’ve room for this fellow.’

  Baptiste took the pup from his father’s hands and put it back in the basket. The youth led his father several steps away before Sobran dug in his heels. ‘You had better explain.’

  Baptiste wouldn’t meet his eyes but looked to either side of his father’s shoulders as if at something growing there.

  ‘Baptiste?’

  Baptiste said, ‘Mother killed Josie.’

  Sobran took his son by the arms. Baptiste shook himself free. ‘Don’t hold me. Why do you always have to take hold of people?’ Baptiste continued walking and Sobran followed him.

  ‘She said the bitch had failed you. That’s what she said.’

  Céleste would always send one of the boys to wring the necks of fowl. Sobran couldn’t imagine how she had dispatched a lively full-grown dog – so he asked.

  ‘She hung Josie. We all heard the sounds Josie made. But Mother wouldn’t let us near. She held a hot poker at us. Antoine said to let her have her way, and Sophie took the children out. Father?’ Baptiste said, for his father had stopped, his face in his hands.

  The youth looked about in embarrassment as Sobran collected himself and walked on.

  ‘I’m ashamed,’ Baptiste said. ‘I try very hard to feel pity, and compassion – as Léon instructed me.’

  ‘You’ve spoken to Léon about this?’ Sobran was appalled.

  ‘You were unwell, father.’

  ‘I’m not a weakling.’

  Baptiste was silent and Sobran saw that the silence was embarrassed dissent. Unfortunate boy – two parents not quite sane.

  1833 Arôme (the aroma of wine)

  Sobran, on a chair under the shade tree, saw the angel first when he dropped to hover on an updraught well above the vineyard, then spiralled down over the foundations of the new house. Xas took a good look then rolled over on his back in the black air, wings out at an angle to the ground, to glide slowly to the ridge. The nearer he came the faster he seemed to move. Sobran fought the urge to close his eyes and turn his head, then Xas braked as a hawk does, stopped still in the air and fell on to his feet in front of Sobran. He was empty-handed. ‘The house looks commodious,’ he said.

  ‘Two storeys, attics and stables.’

  ‘How many servants?’

  ‘A cook, a maid, and a nurse to help with the younger children. And one groom. A barouche, but no carriage yet. Next year.’

  ‘Where are the family?’

  ‘The younger children, Antoine, Aline and Bernard, are with Sabine and her family. Agnès is at the convent in Autun, Martin at school in Chalon-sur-Saône, near Sabine. Céleste has been ill and is with my sister at a bathing resort. Baptiste is with me at Vully. However, tonight I’m Antoine’s guest.’ Sobran looked down at the solitary end walls of his house. ‘The bricklayers are camping on site. I thought it best to be here. I had to be surly to Antoine to dissuade him from accompanying me on my night walk. He was disgusted that I’d “started all that again”.’

  Xas shifted his weight and crossed his wings behind his body. In this pose he had more the appearance of a church window seraph, but he wore only supple, scaled, leather trousers with an armoured belt. Sobran saw the belt was decorated with precious stones, and one pearl, on the tip of a gold linchpin that threaded through flanges at either end and held it joined below Xas’s navel. Sobran wondered how he had never noticed that this garment was both martial and lubricious. Sobran said, ‘Cover yourself up.’ He was too tired to feel indignant. He ran his hand over his chin. ‘Beards are out of vogue for gentlemen. They have been for many years.’

  Xas laughed. ‘You waited a whole year for that?’

  ‘What were you accusing me of?’

  ‘Trying to make yourself beautiful.’

  Sobran’s mouth became more straight and level, but his hands left the arms of the chair and came together. He twisted his signet ring.

  Xas adjusted his wings, flexed them full stretch, the light they reflected making his bare skin gleam. Then he sat on the boundary stone and cloaked himself. ‘What have you there?’ he asked, of the book in Sobran’s lap.

  ‘A novel, Indiana, by George Sand – an authoress. It was light when I came up here. Last month
Aurora de Valday laughed to find me reading Caylus the antiquarian. And when I recommended that she read Charles Napoléon’s Rêveries politiques – well,’ he shrugged, then held up the book. ‘She sent this from Paris, where she is on her honeymoon.’

  ‘Oh.’

  Sobran looked at Xas sharply. ‘Aurora is a friend. Like Antoine, but more treasured. She is interested in books and ideas. Antoine isn’t. Besides, a female friend is, not surprisingly, more tender of the friendship.’

  ‘Is her husband interested in books and ideas?’

  ‘Her husband is a gentleman.’ Sobran pressed the book between his palms. ‘I am sorry that her marriage will alter our friendship. It’s been a joy and comfort to me.’ After a time he looked up at the silent angel. ‘Tell me something, Xas.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Tell me about something.’

  Xas told Sobran about his garden. He had needed something to occupy him, faced with that journey, the lethal unmarked snowfield of a treaty between God and Lucifer. Faced with his life, he needed some heroic, all-consuming task. He decided to garden in Hell.

  ‘I found a place behind a ridge in the mountains, where the air was thin and cool – that is, only as hot as this hilltop at noon in midsummer. Then I built the ridge up, stole tools from the masons, the angels who built that dark, thick-walled citadel that is the only other bearable place in Hell. Where all the books are kept. I carried molten glass, poured and sculpted it, till I had a wall that rose between my slope and the prairies of fire, a wall of black glass, translucent for half its height, thinner towards the top. You must imagine my garden in light that arrives through imperfections, distorted, like sunshine through smoke.

  ‘Next I made soil. I carried it from earth and I made it. I grew lichen, little creeping plants. I carried soil then water. Carried water every other day for a thousand years.

  ‘Yes, it was remarked on. They came and looked. Lucifer recommended that they didn’t interfere with me, either to help or hinder. They were busy anyway, herding the damned into their ghettos, shutting them away like wine in barrels to let them express themselves.