by Noah Gordon
It was hard, traveling through the small trees and overgrown brush. He had to crawl under and over fallen trees and circle around cliffs. Several times he passed deep, rocky chasms, all twisted earth and ragged rock. His arms became scratched by brambles, and he grew short of breath and by turns cranky and fearful.
But finally the brook entered a wooden pipe, a long hollowed log.
And the pipe ran under a road.
It was a good highway, deserted at the moment but—it led somewhere! Feeling vastly relieved, he stood in the middle of it and noted signs of life, the ruts made by wagon wheels, and hoof marks in the dust. To stroll on the road unimpeded was a luxury after fighting all the brush and the trees. He walked only a while, perhaps ten minutes, before he came to proof of his presence in France, a sign nailed to a tree.
VILLE de ELNE
11 km
In small letters at the bottom of the sign it said,
Province de Roussillon
24
Fellow Travelers
He found the railroad tracks in Perpignan, a city with imposing buildings, many of them medieval and colored a dusky red from the narrow bricks used in their construction. There was a neighborhood of fine houses next to squalid sections of narrow littered streets hung with washing, the warrens of gypsies and other poor people. It also had an imposing cathedral in which Josep spent a night sleeping on a bench. The following day he spent an entire morning stopping in shops and cafés to inquire about the possibility of work, each time without success.
In the early afternoon he followed the railroad tracks out of the city to a likely spot and then waited. When the freight train appeared, the ritual felt natural. He picked a car with a partially open door, ran along, and hoisted himself inside.
As he got to his feet, he saw there were already four men in the car.
Three of them were clustered around a fourth man on the floor.
Two of the standing men were big, with large, round heads; the third was of medium size, thin, and rat-faced.
The man on the floor was on his hands and knees. One of the large men, whose trousers were lowered, gripped the back of the kneeling man’s neck in one hand, while the other hand was underneath, lifting the bared buttocks.
In that first second, Josep saw them as a tableau. The standing men stared at him in astonishment. The man on the floor was younger than the others, perhaps Josep’s age. Josep saw that his mouth was open and his face contorted, as if he were screaming silently.
The one holding the younger man didn’t drop him, but the two others turned toward Josep, who also turned...
And leaped out the door.
It was not a jump for which he had prepared. He was already unbalanced when his feet touched the ground, and it was as if the earth leaped up at him, hard. He went to his knees and then smacked down on his stomach and slid on cinders, the fall knocking the wind from his body so that for a short, frightening time he had to struggle for air.
Then all he could do was lie there in the dirt as the cars clattered past.
The whole train went by him and away as he mentally cursed Guillam for leaving him alone and vulnerable. First he lost the noise of the locomotive, and then the clacking sounds softened and faded into distance.
25
Stranger in a Far Land
After that, he gave no thought to riding the trains but began a frozen, dreamy meandering northward on foot, asking for work wherever he went. He became accustomed and inured to rejection, almost not hearing the expected refusals. His hopes ceased to be centered on self-support and a sound future and instead quickly became fixed on meeting his daily need for food and a safe place to sleep. Every day he felt more like an alien. When he had entered the province of Roussillon, people had spoken Catalan almost as they did in Santa Eulália, but as he moved north, he heard more and more French words and expressions in the language. After he crossed into the province of Languedoc, he could still understand others and be understood, but his accent and halting speech marked him at once as an émigré.
People readily accepted his Spanish money, but he was driven by the cold understanding that he had to stretch his few pesetas, and he never considered paying for lodging. He sought out cathedrals, which were apt to be open to worshipers all night, offering him gloomy illumination and a bench to stretch out on. He slept in several large churches as well, though he found that many churches were locked at night. In one church the pastor took him to the parish house the next morning and fed him gruel, while in another a furious young priest woke him, shaking his shoulder roughly, and ordered him into the darkness. When he had to, he wrapped himself in the blanket and slept on the ground in the open, but he tried to avoid this, having a lifelong fear of snakes.
He made an early decision to buy only bread, seeking out bakeries that were likely to sell stale baguettes cheaply. The loaves quickly became hard and tough as wood, and he sawed pieces off with his knife and gnawed bread like a bone as he walked.
On a street in the city of Béziers he was brought up short by the sight of a large group of dull-eyed men wearing clothing that bore the wide stripes of prisoners. They were chained at the ankles, so they shuffled and clanked when they walked, and they used shovels, mauls, and heavy hammers, some of them smashing rocks to produce small stony pieces that others spread and firmed into a roadbed.
Uniformed guards carried large shotguns with a greater range than anything Josep had fired with the hunting group; he thought that a blast from such a weapon could cut a man in half. The hard-eyed guards seemed bored, while their prisoners, constantly under their gaze, worked steadily but deliberately, faces blank, their upper bodies active, but moving their feet as little as possible because of the thick chains.
Josep stood and watched them, transfixed. He knew something like this would be his fate if he were caught.
It was while sleeping that night in the Cathédrale de St. Nazaire, in Béziers, that he began having the dream. Here was the great man entering the coach; Josep saw his features clearly. Here was the hunting group trailing the carriage along dark, snowy boulevards; whenever they turned onto a new street, Josep struck a match. Then one of the shooters stood next to him, firing, firing, and Josep saw the balls impacting, sinking into the flesh of the horrified man in the carriage.
Josep was shaken awake by an old man whose prayers had been interrupted by his groans.
That day he moved beyond Béziers into the mountainous countryside. In rural places food could be bought only in small groceries, which often didn’t have any kind of bread, so he had to buy cheese or sausage, and his money seemed to melt. Once, a small dirty inn gave him permission to wash dishes and paid him with three meager sausages and a plate of boiled lentils, but he was always tired and hungry.
Each day merged with the next, and he became confused, walking in whatever direction his feet took him. Eleven days after crossing the border he had only one peseta left in his sock, a wrinkled bill with one corner missing. Finding work before having to spend that last peseta became the most important thing in his life.
At times he became dizzy from lack of adequate food, and he felt a growing terror that hunger finally would cause him to snatch something for which he couldn’t pay, a baguette or a piece of cheese, the inevitable desperate theft that would put the chains on his ankles and the stripes on his back.
The sign had two directions on it, an arrow pointing east that read Béziers, 16 km., and an arrow pointing west that read Roquebrun, 5 km.
He knew that village name.
He recalled the two Frenchmen who had come to Santa Eulália to buy bulk wine. One of them had said he came from the village of Roquebrun.
It was the man who had liked the way Josep worked. Fontaine? No, that was the name of the taller man. The other man was shorter, stocky. What was his name?
Josep couldn’t remember.
But half an hour later, it came to him and he said it aloud.
“Mendes. Leon Mendes.”
He saw Roquebrun before he came to it, a village nestled comfortably on the slope of a small mountain. As Josep drew nearer, he saw that it was surrounded on three sides by a loop of river, which eventually he crossed on a hump-backed stone bridge. The air was mild and the foliage was strongly green. The river banks were lined with orange trees. The village was clean and well-kept, with winter-blooming mimosa everywhere; some of the feathery flowers still looked like pink birds, but most had already aged into small blizzards of white.
A man in a leather apron was sweeping the cobblestones in front of a shoe repair shop, and Josep asked him if he knew Leon Mendes.
“Of course I do.”
The cobbler said the Mendes vineyards were located in the valley plain, a bit more than a league outside of Roquebrun. He pointed out the lane that would take Josep there.
The winery was as well-maintained as the village, three good-sized outbuildings and a residence, all of stone and each with a tile roof. The home and one of the outbuildings were softened by ivy, and the land that stretched from the house—two steep hillsides and a flat valley—was all in grapevines.
He knocked, perhaps too timidly, for no one answered. He was trying to decide whether to knock again, when the door was opened by a middle-aged woman with white hair and a round red face.
“Oui?”
“I would like to see Leon Mendes, if you please, Madame.”
“Who are you?”
“Josep Alverez.”
She regarded him coolly. “Please to wait.”
In a few moments he came to the door exactly as Josep remembered, a small plump man, neatly—perhaps even fussily—dressed, hair perfectly combed. He stood at the door and looked at Josep inquiringly.
“Monsieur Mendes, I am Josep Alvarez.”
There was a long moment.
“Do you perhaps recall me, monsieur? Josep Alvarez? Son of Marcel Alvarez of Santa Eulália?”
“In Spain?”
“Yes. You visited our vineyard in the fall. You told me I was a very good worker, an excellent worker. I asked you for employment.”
The man nodded slowly. He didn’t invite Josep in, instead coming outside himself and closing the door firmly behind him. He stood on the wide, flat stone that served as the front step of the house, eyes veiled.
“I do remember that. Now I remember you. I told you I had no work for you. Did you come all this distance in the expectation that appearing here would cause me to change my mind?”
“Ah, no, monsieur! I—I had to leave, you see. I assure you I am here…really by chance…”
“You had to leave? Then…you…made a mistake, did something wrong that forced you to flee?”
“No, monsieur. I did nothing wrong…”
Another long moment.
“I did nothing wrong!”
His hand closed on the small man’s arm, but Leon Mendes did not flinch or step back.
“I witnessed others doing something wrong. I saw something very bad, a crime, and those who committed it knew I had seen. I had to leave for my life.”
“Truly?” Mendes said softly. He removed Josep’s hand from his arm and took a tiny step toward him. The stern, dark eyes seemed to bore into Josep’s.
“Are you a good person then, Josep Alvarez?”
“I am!” Josep cried. “I am. I am…”
Suddenly, to his horror, to his great and overwhelming shame, he was weeping hoarsely and wildly, like a small child.
It seemed to last years…forever. He was dimly aware that Leon Mendes was patting his shoulder.
“I believe that you are,” Mendes said gently.
He waited for Josep to gain control.
“First, I would guess that you must have food at once. Then you will be allowed to sleep. And finally…” He wrinkled his nose and smiled. “I shall give you a piece of the strongest brown soap we can find, and the river contains a great deal of water for rinsing.”
Two mornings later, Josep stood on the steep slope of one of the hills. He had a new landlady, an attractive widow whose late husband had owned the worn but clean work clothes Josep now wore, though they were too large for him at the waist and too short at both the ankles and the wrists.
He had a pruning knife at his belt and a hoe in his hand, and he was studying the long rows of grapevines. The earth here was redder than his father’s but just as stony. Leon Mendes had told him the stubs of the pruned vines could be expected to send out leaves and tendrils earlier than his father’s plants, because of the milder climate of the Orb valley. He knew they were not varieties of grapes that were familiar to him, and he was impatient to see the differences in the leaves and the fruit.
He felt newly made.
It was not only due to the fact that he was fed and had slept well, he thought. Strength came to him directly from the soil, as it had in Santa Eulália. He was standing in a vineyard under the benevolent sun doing familiar things that he did well, and sometimes—if he didn’t hear anyone speaking their Frenchy language, or dwell on the fact that there were no furry Small Ones feeding these vines under the rose-colored loam—he could relax long enough almost to be able to imagine that he was home.
PART FOUR
The Alvarez Land
Village of Santa Eulália
Catalonia
October 2, 1874
26
Painted Vines
The first autumn after Josep returned home he felt a new gladness as the leaves on the vines of Santa Eulália began to change. It didn’t happen every year, and he didn’t know what triggered the transformation—the warm Spanish afternoons of late fall coupled with cooler nights? Certain combinations of sun, wind, and rain? Whatever it was, it happened again that October, and something within him responded. The Ull de Llebre leaves were suddenly a variety of hues from orange to bright red, the shiny green leaves of Garnacha turned yellow with yellow-brown stems, and the Samso leaves became a richer green with red stems. It was as if the vines were defying their coming death, but for him everything was part of a new beginning, and he walked the rows gripped by a quiet excitement.
His first crop on his own land was larger and heavier than usual for his father’s crowded vines, many of the grapes half as big as a man’s splayed thumb and darkly purple, and all the varieties bursting with juice from too much rain at exactly the wrong times. That the fermented juice would be less than wonderful didn’t matter to growers who sold their new wine cheaply and in bulk. Business at Nivaldo’s grocery was good, and the people Josep met in the village seemed to smile more than usual, and walk with a spring in their step.
Josep talked with Quim Torras about pooling their labor for the harvest, and his neighbor shrugged. “Why not?”
After much reflection and indecision, he also ventured beyond Quim’s to the Valls vineyard, and made the same proposition to Maria del Mar. It took only a moment for her to agree, and Josep knew from her eagerness and from the way her face cleared that the prospect of harvesting and crushing the grapes without help had burdened her.
So the three of them picked their berries as a team, cutting cards to see the order in which the crops would be taken. Quim won with the jack of hearts, Maria del Mar got the nine of spades, and Josep the seven of diamonds, giving him the most risk that a late storm with hail or pounding rain could ruin his fruit before it could be pressed.
But the weather held, and they began to take Quim’s grapes. Though all three of them had equal amounts of land, Torras had the lightest crop. He was a poor and lazy husbandman. Weeds choked his vines, and he always had something to do that prevented him from using his hoe—walking and playing games with his good friend Father Ricardo or wading in the river to see how low the water was becoming or sitting in the placa and arguing about how to fix the unsightly door of the church. Half his vines were Garnacha, very old vines that produced small black grapes. When Josep took some to allay his thirst, he found their flavor deep and delicious, but he saw Maria del Mar masking her scorn when she lo
oked at them. The three neighbors ignored the choking wildness of weeds; they cut the bunches of grapes and then muscled too few tumbrels of fruit to the communal press, but Quim was satisfied.
Maria del Mar’s vineyard looked even better than it had when Ferran Valls had worked it, though her late husband had been a good worker. Josep had plowed her lanes with the mule, and Maria del Mar’s hoeing had kept the rows mostly free of weeds. She had a large grape crop, and they worked hard to bring it in. Francesc was too young to remember much about the previous year’s harvest, and he hovered about them, watching everything. Several times his mother spoke to him sharply.
“The boy is fine, Marimar. I like it that he’s here,” Quim Torras told her, flashing his easy smile as he emptied his filled basket into the tumbrel.
But she didn’t smile in return. “He must learn not to get underfoot.”
She didn’t baby Francesc, but Josep had watched her hugging the child and talking to him tenderly. He thought she did very well, raising the little boy without a father while at the same time working hard and constantly.
A short time later, when Quim went off to his outhouse, Josep turned to her.
“I hear the wine buyer cheats you.”
Straightening up from bending over a laden vine, she looked at him without expression.
Josep stumbled on. “So. When Clemente Ramirez comes to Santa Eulália with his empty vinegar barrels, I’d like to tell him I’ve bought the Valls land as well as my father’s vineyard. That way, he’ll have to pay the regular rate for your wine.”
“Why do you want to do that?”
He shook his head and shrugged. “Why wouldn’t I?”
Her eyes stared directly into his, making him uncomfortable.
“I want nothing in return,” he said roughly. “Not money, or…anything. Clemente is mean. It would give me satisfaction to make him pay.”
