The Winemaker

by Noah Gordon

  “It didn’t turn out that way.”

  Josep offered no explanations, but he told them about his four years of work in Languedoc. He poured a taste, the last from the wineskin he had brought from France, and they complimented the vin ordinaire, though it had long since lost its edge.

  “So you’re working in a cloth factory? Is the work all right?”

  “I like it enough. There’s money twice each month, whether there is hail or drought or any other calamity.”

  Josep nodded. “Steady money is good. And what is your job?”

  “Helper to a worker who keeps watch over the spools that feed the looms. I’m learning things. If the thread or yarn breaks, we rejoin it with weavers’ knots. Before the spools run out of thread, I replace them with fresh spools. It’s a big mill, lots of looms, driven by steam. There is opportunity to advance. I hope some day to be a mechanic of the looms or the steam engines.”

  “And you, Rosa?”

  “I? I examine the cloth and mend faults. Take care of stains and such. Sometimes there is an imperfection or a tiny hole, and I use needle and thread to fix it so it can’t be seen.”

  “She’s very skilled,” Donat said proudly, “but they pay skilled women less than unskilled men.”

  There was a momentary lull.

  “So what shall you now do?” Donat asked.

  Josep knew they would have noted at once that the FOR SALE sign was gone.

  “Grow grapes. Make wine for vinegar.”

  “Where?”

  “Here.”

  They were both looking at him with horror. “I earn less than two pesetas a day,” Donat said. “I will be on half-pay for two years, while I learn the trade, and I am in need of money. I’m going to sell this land.”

  “I am going to buy it.”

  Donat’s mouth was open and Rosa’s lips were pressed tight, making her mouth a worried line.

  As patiently as possible, Josep explained. “Only one person is willing to buy this land—Casals, who would pay piss-money for it. And of the alcalde’s piss-money, one-third would come to me, as the younger son’s share.”

  “Padre always made it clear. The entire vineyard was to go to me!”

  Padre had always made that clear. “The land was to go to you unbroken because only one family can survive on it by growing grapes and making vinegar wine. But Padre didn’t leave the land entirely to you so you could sell it. As you know. As you well know. As you absolutely and positively, know, Donat.”

  They glared at one another, and it was his brother who looked away.

  “So the rule must apply: two-thirds to the eldest son, one-third to the younger son. I will pay you a good price, a better price than Angel Casals. From that sum we will deduct one-third, because I won’t buy what I already own.”

  “And where will you get the money?” Donat asked too quietly.

  “I’ll sell my grapes, as Padre always did. I’ll make payment to you every three months, until the entire sales price is paid.”

  The three sat silently, looking at one another.

  “I saved most of my wages, four years of hard work in France. I can give you the first payment at once. You’ll get extra money every three months for a long time. On top of what the two of you earn, it will make things easier for you. And the land will stay in the Alvarez family.”

  Donat looked at Rosa, who shrugged. “You must sign a paper,” she said to Josep.

  “Why a paper? This is a thing between brothers.”

  “Still, there is a proper way to do it,” she said, sounding determined.

  “Since when do brothers need a paper?” Josep asked Donat. He allowed himself to become very annoyed. “Why should brothers give good money to a law merchant?”

  Donat was silent.

  “It is the way to do such a thing,” Rosa insisted. “My cousin Carles is a lawyer, he will provide the legal paper for us for very little money.”

  They gazed at him stubbornly, and now it was Josep who looked away and shrugged.

  “Very well. Bring me the God-damned paper,” he said.

  They were back the following Sunday. The document was crisp and white, important looking. Donat held it as if it were a snake and handed it over to Josep with relief.

  He tried to read it, but he was too nervous and irritated; the words on the two pages swam before his eyes, and he knew what he must do.

  “Wait here,” he said curtly, and he left them sitting at what he still thought of as his father’s table.

  Nivaldo was in his apartment above the grocery, his newspaper, El Cascabel, spread out before him. On Sundays he didn’t open the grocery until the church service let out, when the worshipers came in to buy staples to last them for the week. His bad eye was closed, and he squinted fiercely at the newspaper with his good eye, the way he read anything. He always reminded Josep of a hawk.

  Nivaldo was the smartest man Josep had ever met. Josep felt he could have been or done anything. He had once told Josep he couldn’t remember ever having been in a schoolroom. In the same week in 1812 in which the British had forced Joseph Bonaparte to flee from Madrid, Nivaldo had fled the sugar fields of his native Cuba. Twelve years old, he stowed away on a boat bound for Maracaibo. He had been a gaucho in Argentina and a soldier in the Spanish army—from which, Padre once revealed, Nivaldo had deserted. He had served on sailing ships. From enigmatic things he had said from time to time, Josep felt sure he had been a privateer before settling down as a storekeeper in Catalonia. Josep didn’t know where Nivaldo had learned to read and write, but he did both well enough to teach Josep and Donat when they were young, giving lessons at his little table, which were interrupted anytime someone came into the shop for a hunk of chorizo or a few slices of cheese.

  “What is happening, Nivaldo?”

  Nivaldo sighed and folded El Cascabel. “This is a bad time for the government’s army, one of its worst defeats, two thousand troops taken prisoner by the Carlists after a battle in the north. And there’s trouble in Cuba. The Americans are giving weapons and supplies to the rebels. The Americans can practically piss on Cuba from Florida, and they won’t be happy until they own it. They can’t stand to see a jewel like Cuba being run by a country as far away as Spain.” He folded El Cascabel. “So what’s on your mind?” he asked, somewhat grumpily, and Josep held out the lawyer’s paper.

  Nivaldo read it through in silence. “…Ah, you’re buying the vineyard. That’s very good.” He started anew at the beginning and studied it again. Then he sighed. “You have read this?”

  “Not really.”

  “Jesús.” He handed it back to Josep. “Read it carefully. And then read it a second time.”

  He waited patiently until Josep had done so, and then he took the paper. “Here.” His splayed forefinger pointed out the paragraph. “Their lawyer says if you miss a single payment, the land and the masia revert to Donat.”

  Josep grunted.

  “You must tell them this part has to be changed. If they must squeeze you, it should at least say that you won’t forfeit the land unless you’ve missed three payments in succession.”

  “To hell with them. I’ll sign the damned thing as it is. It makes me feel dirty to bargain and squabble with my brother over our family land.”

  Nivaldo leaned over and grasped Josep’s wrist hard, and looked into his eyes. “Listen to me, Tigre,” he said gently. “You aren’t a child. You are not a fool. You must protect yourself.”

  Josep felt like a child. “What if they won’t accept a change?” he asked sullenly.

  “They surely will not. They expect you to haggle. Tell them if ever you are late with a payment, you agree to add ten percent to the sum of the next payment.”

  “You think they will accept that?”

  Nivaldo nodded. “I believe they will.”

  Josep thanked him and got up to leave.

  “You must write in that change, and you and Donat must sign your name next to the changed part. Wait.” Nivaldo
got the wine and two glasses. He took Josep’s hand and shook it. “I give you my blessing. May you have only good fortune, Josep.”

  Josep thanked him. He downed the wine quickly, the way wine never should be drunk, then he returned to the masia.

  Donat guessed that Josep had consulted Nivaldo, whom he respected as much as his brother did, and he was not inclined to argue with the requested change. But, as Josep expected, Rosa objected at once. “You have to know that you must pay without fail,” she said severely.

  “I do know,” he growled. When he countered with the offer of the ten percent penalty, she thought for a long and painful moment before she nodded.

  They watched while he laboriously wrote out the changes and then signed both copies of the agreement twice.

  “My cousin Carles the lawyer told us that if there were changes, he must read them before Donat signs,” Rosa said. “Will you come to Barcelona to collect your paper?”

  To pay us our money, Josep knew that she meant. He had no desire to go to Barcelona. “I have just walked home from France,” he said coldly.

  Donat looked embarrassed. He clearly wished to mollify his brother. “I’ll return to the village every three months to collect your payments. But why don’t you come to visit us next Saturday night?” he said to Josep. “You can pick up your signed copy of the paper, give us the first payment, and we will have a real party. We will show you how to celebrate in Barcelona!”

  Josep was fed up. He wanted only to have them out of his sight, and he agreed that he would come to see them at the end of the week.

  When they were gone, he continued to sit at the table in the silent casa, as if stunned.

  Finally he got up and went outside and began to walk the vineyard.

  It was as if suddenly he had been transformed into the eldest son. He knew he should feel excitement and joy, but instead he was made leaden by doubt.

  He walked up and down the plantings of vines, studying them. The rows were not as carefully spaced as the immaculate rows at the Mendes vineyard, and they were curved and contorted like snakes instead of bring reasonably straight. They had been planted carelessly, a jumble of varieties—his eyes picked out small and large groups of Garnacha, Samso, and Ull de Llebre, all mixed in among one another. Generations of his forebears had made wine from them, to be turned into a raw, indifferent vinegar. His ancestors hadn’t cared about varieties, so long as they grew black grapes that gave sufficient juice.

  That’s how they had survived. He should be able to survive in the same way, he told himself. But he was troubled; it seemed to him that his change of fortune had happened too easily. Would he be able to meet the challenges of this responsibility?

  He wasn’t supporting a family, he told himself, and he had few personal needs save for the simplest of foods. But there would be expenses for the vineyard. He wondered if he could afford to buy a mule. Padre had sold his mule when his two sons became old enough to do a man’s work. With three men in the vineyard, they could handle the work without having to fuss with the care of an animal.

  But now he had only his own labor, and a mule would be a godsend.

  Over the years, all of the easily useable land had been planted with vines, but as he walked, he saw the last of the late afternoon sun still striking the top of the hill that composed the rear border of the property. Only half of the slope was planted with vines; the steepness was very close to the angle Leon Mendes had told him was more than forty-five degrees. That was too steep to work with a mule, but Josep had spent many hours planting and tending vines in France, working with hand tools on similarly steep hills.

  Most of the older vines were Ull de Llebre. But one section of the hill was planted with Garnacha, and he climbed to where the vines were beautiful and aged, perhaps a hundred years old, with gnarled lower portions as thick as his thighs. There were a handful of hard raisins clinging to the dried tendrils, and when he picked and ate them, he found them still full of lingering flavor.

  He went higher, several times going down on one knee as his feet failed to gain sufficient purchase on the roughness of the hill, here and there pausing to pull gorse and weeds. A lot of vines could be planted here! He could considerably increase the production of grapes.

  He realized that perhaps he had learned some things that his father hadn’t known. And he was willing to work like a farm animal, and to experiment in ways his father wouldn’t have tried.

  That night he would begin to sleep in his father’s bed.

  He understood that what had occurred was miraculous, as important to him as the day the king and General Pedro Pablo de Aranda had given the land to Sergeant Jose Alvarez. In that moment all doubt left him, and he was flooded with the happiness that had been eluding him. Filled with thanksgiving, he sat on the warmed earth of the slope and watched as the sun smeared the horizon with redness before disappearing between two hills. In a short time, dusk settled on the small, vine-filled valley of Santa Eulália, and night began to fall on his land.

  6

  A Trip to Barcelona

  On Saturday morning Josep hoed and dug for two hours, breaking the ground along a poor row where very old Ull de Llebre vines were scraggly and the hardpan earth chipped like rock. But he stopped working while the day was still early, not knowing how long it would take him to reach the textile mill where Donat worked. He made his way to the Barcelona road; the long walk from France was still fresh in his memory, and he had no desire to go to the city on foot. Instead he stood and waited for a likely vehicle, allowing several private coaches to pass; then, sighting a large wagon laden with new barrels and pulled by four huge draft horses, he held up his hand and pointed down the road.

  The driver, a red-cheeked man built as generously as his horses, pulled on the reins long enough for him to clamber aboard and affably wished him a fine morning. It was a fortunate ride. The horses clopped briskly, and the driver was an even-tempered soul content to spend the time of day in lazy conversation that shortened the trip. He said he was Emilio Rivera, whose cooperage was in Sitges.

  “Fine barrels,” Josep said, glancing at the load behind him. “Bound for winemakers?”

  Rivera smiled. “No.” He did not sell to winemakers, he said, though he supplied barrels to the vinegar trade. “These are slated for fishfolk on the Barcelona waterfront. They fill my barrels with hake, bream, tuna, herrings…sometimes sardines or anchovies. Not very often with eels, for mostly they sell their entire catch of eels fresh. I do like young eels.”

  Neither of the men mentioned the civil war; it was impossible to tell whether a stranger was a Carlist conservative or a government-supporting liberal. When Josep admired the horses, the conversation turned to draft animals.

  “I’ll be looking to buy a strong young mule soon, I think,” Josep said.

  “Then you must come to the horse fair in Castelldefels, which will be held in only four weeks. My cousin Eusebio Serrat is a buyer of horses, mules, and such. For a small fee he will help you select the best offered there,” the cooper said, and Josep nodded thoughtfully, tucking away the name in his head.

  Rivera’s horses moved well. It was not long after midday when they reached the place where the textile factory was located, just outside the walls of Barcelona; but, since Josep had arranged to meet Donat at the mill at five o’clock, he rode beyond the mill village with Senyor Rivera. As he jumped from the cooper’s wagon at the Placa de la Seu, the bells in the Cathedral tower were sounding the news that it was two o’clock.

  He strolled through the basilica and vaulted galleries, and ate his bread and cheese on a bench in the cloisters, throwing a crust to a gaggle of geese grazing beneath the medlars, magnolias, and palm trees of the Cathedral garden. Then he sat

  outside on the stone steps, enjoying the thin sun that warmed the cool air of early spring.

  He knew he was a short walk from the neighborhood where, according to Nivaldo, Teresa’s husband had a shoe repair shop.

  He was nervous abo
ut the possibility of meeting her in the street. What could he say to her?

  But she did not appear. He sat and watched the people entering and leaving the Cathedral—priests, members of the upper classes in fine clothes, nuns in several different habits, working people with worn faces, children with dirty feet. The shadows were lengthening as he left the Cathedral and made his way through narrow streets and courtyards.

  He heard the mill before it came into his sight. At first the roar was like a distant surf that filled his ears with dull and muffled sound and left him uneasy and strangely apprehensive.

  Donat embraced him, happy and eager to show Josep where he worked. “Come,” he said. The mill was a large presence of flat red brick. In the entryway the roar was more insistant. A man in a finely-cut black jacket and gray waistcoat looked at Donat. “You! There is a bale of spoiled wool near the carders. It is rotten and cannot be used. You will dispose of it, please.”

  Josep knew his brother had been working since four a.m., but Donat nodded. “Yes, Senyor Serna, I will attend to it. Senyor, may I present my brother, Josep Alvarez? I have finished my shift and am about to show him our mill.”

  “Yes, yes, show it to him, but then dispose of the bad wool…Is your brother seeking employment then?”

  “No, senyor,” Josep said, and the man turned away dismissively.

  Donat paused at a crate filled with raw wool and showed Josep how to take some of the material and stuff it into his ears. “To protect against the noise.”

  Despite the ear plugs, sound burst over them as they went through a set of doors. They entered a balcony overlooking the vast concrete floor on which limitless rows of machines raised a clacking pandemonium that pounded against Josep’s skin and filled the hollows within his body. Donat tapped his arm to gain his attention.

  “Spinners…and…looms,” he mouthed silently. “And…other…things…”

  “How…many?”

  “Three…hundred!”

  He led Josep and they swam through the sea of sound. Donat’s gestures indicated how draymen poured coal directly from delivery wagons into a chute that dropped it close to two boilers into which four half-naked stokers shoveled fuel without pause, creating steam that ran the great engine powering the looms. Down a brick corridor was a room where the raw wool was taken from bales and sorted for quality and staple length—Donat signified that the longer lengths were better—before being fed onto mechanized tables that shook the wool to allow dirt to sift through a screen onto a container below. Scouring machines washed the fleece and shrank it, and carding machines straightened the fibers and prepared them for spinning. In the carding room, Donat smiled at a friend and touched his arm.