Brother Clément chuckled and rubbed his hands together with a glimmer of mischief in his eyes. His gaunt cheeks looked like they had been carved out of marble by a divinely inspired sculptor. “In the seminary during my youth, I was very interested in the theater. My superiors did not look upon that kindly, but I would often sneak out to see a play. That’s when I realized how much life is like a comedy. I still believe that, by the way. I read many articles by Tristan Bernard, who, as you surely know, was a big theater critic. One thing he wrote bothered me at the time and still bothers me today: ‘If it’s bad, it bores me, and if it’s good, I’m a bore.’ I always found that funny, and kind of pathetic.”
“I think he also said, ‘I never go to see plays that I have to talk about. It might influence me.’”
“At my age, I’m still not surrendering to boredom,” Brother Clément said. “I’m open to a surprise or two. Why settle for the predictable?”
“I can’t agree with that point of view,” Cooker replied. “For me, what’s predictable isn’t necessarily boring. I test, and I have to come to an understanding by experiencing for myself, by seeing for myself, and even more so, by drinking for myself. I don’t know why, but without that, it’s not real for me.”
“I’ve noticed! And what brings you here today, besides the pleasure of chatting with me, of course?”
“I’ve been meaning to pay you a visit, but I admit that I am here sooner than I expected. Some surprising things are happening in these parts.”
“I know,” the old man said as he rose painfully. “Burgundy will never cease to surprise us.”
“You know about the inscriptions they found in Vougeot and Gilly?”
“What do you think? Just because we are enclosed in this abbey, that we are ignorant of the world around us? Be aware, my dear Benjamin, that nothing that touches the world is unknown to us.”
“I’ve copied each of those phrases, and it all intrigues me,” the winemaker said, handing his notebook to the monk. “I translated them as best I could.”
Brother Clément went through the notes and took his time to weigh each word. He was wheezing, as if just breathing was a labor.
“You managed pretty well. It’s actually quite good, aside from a few turns of phrase.”
“I was surprised myself that I still remembered my Latin. I think I owe it more to my years as a child in the choir than to my high school teacher. At least it seems that way, because each time I see a Latin phrase, I can’t help but smell the incense.”
“In that case, I can refresh your memory.” The monk smiled.
“Exactly. I was counting on you. I have the feeling that I know these passages, but their origin escapes me. And who do you think could have painted all of that on the walls?”
“That’s another story! Follow me.”
They walked through the rhythmic shadows of the cloister before slipping under an entryway and following a dark corridor where a few rays of vapid light were trying to pierce the frosty stained-glass windows. Then they stepped through a small secret door and crossed a nearly empty room furnished with only a writing desk. Another door led to an antechamber that was just as deserted, and they finally came to the abbey library. The entire time, they did not speak a word. Brother Clément was walking slowly, forcing himself to control the wheezing and coughing fits that assailed him.
“I am moved to find myself here again,” Cooker said, raising his blue-gray eyes toward the high shelves. “I have nothing but fond memories of this place.”
The monk did not respond but turned toward the shelves containing hundreds of works bound in cracked leather, bundles of tied-up documents, and volumes of canon law probably no longer consulted. A fine film of dust rose up as the two men passed. Cooker felt rooted in centuries of history and timeless knowledge. At one corner of the maze, Brother Clément pulled from the stack the Breviarium Monasticum published in 1892 under the guidance of Father Paul Delatte from the Abbey Saint-Pierre de Solesmes. He placed the massive volume on a stand, paged through it quickly, and stopped at page ninety-four. He ran his index finger slowly down the page.
“Psalm 101 from the Book of David. This text is often called ‘Prayer in times of misfortune.’ It’s in fact the prayer of an afflicted person who has grown weak and is pouring out a lament before the Lord. The psalm is very well known and is often quoted, too. I am surprised that you didn’t remember it.”
“I have lapses, Brother Clément. I don’t mind admitting it. And it’s been quite a while since I have immersed myself in the Bible.”
“Sometimes the psalm is referred to as Psalm 102, especially in the Hebrew Bible, which predates the Greek Bible and the Vulgate by centuries. Let’s look at the New Jerusalem Bible, which most Catholics use today, where it’s Psalm 102.”
Cooker leaned over the narrow table to get a better look at the opened volumes. He put on his reading glasses and knit his brows.
“Indeed, my translation is not so bad,” he said without hiding a certain satisfaction.
“It’s well done. You did not suffer in vain on the school benches. The phrases you copied down in Vougeot correspond to the first verse of the psalm, and the ones from Gilly correspond to the fourth.”
“That could mean that two are missing. They might be scribbled on some other walls. Who knows? Maybe in another village.”
“Not necessarily. Maybe they were deliberately omitted.”
For my days are vanishing like smoke,
my bones burning like an oven;
like grass struck by blight, my heart is withering,
I forget to eat my meals.
From the effort of voicing my groans
my bones stick out through my skin.
Brother Clement whistled with excitement. “Read the next part. Very interesting.”
I am like a desert-owl in the wastes,
a screech-owl among ruins,
I keep vigil and moan
like a lone bird on a roof.
All day long my enemies taunt me,
those who once praised me now use me as a curse.
Leaning over the monk’s shoulder, Cooker read the words in a low voice. His lips were hardly moving, as if he were praying and absorbed in the soothing rhythm of the chant.
“There you go. This is the passage that intrigues me the most,” the monk said, straightening up with difficulty.
“This one?” Cooker asked. “Why a desert owl?”
“I suppose you wouldn’t have those in your native England,” the monk responded with amusement.
“I would have just translated that as a pelican.” The winemaker shrugged.
“That would not necessarily have been wrong. In medieval Europe, the pelican was thought to be particularly attentive to her young, to the point of providing her own blood by opening up her breast when no other food was available. Pelican or owl, that doesn’t change the problem.”
“I don’t know what to make of all this,” Cooker confessed in a vexed tone. “Why would someone be covering walls with verses from a psalm?”
“Maybe it should be seen as a plea, a way of addressing God or man. I don’t know. This is about someone who surely has serious reasons to complain.”
“Still, there are other ways to express your feelings.”
“It seems all our big cities are covered with graffiti,” the monk said between coughs. “Some people see it as a youthful protest, a cry for help, or even a cry of desperation. Some of it is even considered art. These days, people can find very absurd ways to express their discontent.”
“It’s true that the method, writing with spray paint, makes it seem similar to other vandalism, except the author knows Latin and refers to the Old Testament. You must agree, it is somewhat unusual.”
“I don’t know what to say, Benjamin. You’d have to study the text in order to decipher the code and uncover the hidden meaning. There must be one. At least I hope there is. In the body of the Psalter you find everything and its opposite
: threats, confessions of sin, petitions, vows of chastity, grievances, gratitude—everything.”
“You’re right. You’d need to deconstruct this psalm in order to—”
“Take this. It’s a gift,” the monk interrupted, handing him a hardback fabric-covered New Jerusalem Bible. “I suppose you don’t have one with you, since you’re traveling.”
“No, I don’t, I confess.”
“In that case, your penance will be to reread certain passages, even if it means you fall asleep doing so!”
The two men promised to see each other before the winemaker left town. Brother Clément stayed in the library, citing overdue research as an excuse, and did not offer to walk his visitor to the door. But he did point Cooker to a secret passage to use as a shortcut.
As soon as Cooker was outside the abbey, he took a deep breath and strolled among the poplars. Then he slid behind the wheel of his convertible and sat quietly, as though protected by the fog of condensation on the car windows. With his hands on the steering wheel, his eyes half-closed, and his lips moving over the verses of the psalm, he dwelled on the powerless lamentations. At last he took out his cell phone and pressed the contact button, where his assistant’s number was on his list of favorites.
“Hello, Virgile?”
“Yes, boss. Is something wrong?”
“Why do you ask?”
“You told me you would call tomorrow afternoon. I am surprised to hear from you so soon.”
“Do you know Burgundy, Virgile?”
“Not really, boss. Not at all, in fact. Just what I’ve read in books.”
“Okay, then come and get a taste of it,” Cooker said. “I’ll expect you tomorrow.”
“How do I get there?”
“Figure it out. Ask my secretary to get you a ticket.”
“By train? I’ll have to route through Paris. That’s a long way, boss!”
“And stop calling me ‘boss.’ You know how much that irritates me.”
“Yes, bo... uh, sir!”
4
He was dressed in a fine linen tunic and had Roman sandals on his feet as he climbed Mount Sinai on the back of a mule. Two shots rang out. In the distance, the half-nude Jesus, a chastely veiled Mary Magdalene, the faithful Emmaus, and half a dozen apostles were assembled in the shelter of an olive tree. The violent echo of the explosions faded into the night.
Cooker sat up suddenly in his bed, felt around for the light switch, and knocked the Bible off the night table. Outside, he could hear shutters banging open and several piercing screams.
Wearing a bathrobe made of wool from the Pyrenees and a pair of kidskin slippers, he walked down the steps of the annex, crossed the courtyard, and found himself on the main road of Vougeot. A group of villagers were gathered a few feet from the post office. An elderly man with a moustache was yelling from a window and brandishing a hunting rifle.
“Don’t mess with the Mancenot brothers! Don’t mess with us!”
Cooker cautiously approached the circle of people gathered on the sidewalk. He recognized the woman with the triple chin and her husband, as well as the owner of the Rendez-vous des Touristes, who was kneeling by a body. A rather lost-looking woman stood apart from another group of people he didn’t know, all motionless in the freezing wind.
“Go get a blanket!” a small bald man shouted to a young girl with a frightened expression. “The checkered one at the back of the linen closet! Hurry!”
Cooker drew closer. A boy was lying on the asphalt, his body curled on its right side, his eyes rolled upward, legs twitching and trembling. Blood from his abdomen was streaming slowly through his jacket. The steady flow was beginning to form a thick shiny puddle on the pavement.
“He’s done for, the little bastard!” the man with the moustache continued to yell, shaking his rifle.
“Have you called an ambulance?” Cooker asked as he leaned over the injured boy.
“Yes! They are coming from Nuits-Saint-George!” someone answered.
“It’s better not to move him,” one of the women said as she averted her eyes.
“Goddammit, is that blanket coming or not?”
“What happened?” Cooker asked, pulling his bathrobe tighter.
“One of the Mancenot brothers fired,” replied the café owner. “It’s that moron, Ernest!”
The man with the gun was still standing in the frame of the window, his weapon at arm’s length. He had the crimson face and bewildered look of lonely old men who drown their celibacy in cheap liquor and hatred of the world. Behind him, a furtive silhouette was pacing under the halo of a bare lightbulb.
“And Honoré does not dare show his face. Look at that!” shouted the fat woman’s husband.
“That’s the end of them pissing us off, those assholes!” the shooter yelled, sticking out his chest. “Two buckshots full blast. I didn’t miss!”
“Shut your mouth, Ernest!” the café owner yelled, his jaw tense.
Then Cooker saw another body lying a few yards away from the group. He approached the second victim, whose left cheek had been blown away by the volley of lead. The other side of his face was intact, his open eye looking dazed. The kid could hardly have been eighteen. His long hair was soaking in a bloody pile of flesh and bone shards. No one else dared to look at him. He was lying there, his head mangled, abandoned to the cold and wind. Cooker suppressed a gasp of disgust.
The girl arrived with the checkered blanket. Someone grabbed it to cover the boy whose blood continued to pool on the pavement. His legs were shaking faster and faster; a red dribble was beginning to flow from his nose.
Cooker heard the wail of sirens. An ambulance with a flashing blue light turned from the highway to cross the bridge and was speeding toward them. It was closely followed by a police car. Everyone moved aside when the paramedics and police officers leaped from their vehicles. Ernest Mancenot had disappeared from the window. The police officers walked around the victims without hiding their revulsion. The paramedics quickly decided to transport the wounded boy to the hospital in Dijon and to call for a second ambulance to take the dead boy to the medical examiner’s office. They carefully slipped the curled-up boy, his legs still shaking, onto a stretcher. As the speeding ambulance disappeared, the police officers started questioning members of the crowd.
The café owner spoke up and explained briefly that the two boys had been shot down by one of the Mancenot brothers while they were getting ready to spray paint the wall of the post office. Cooker turned and then saw the black inscription on the facade, near the mailbox: “In V...” in round, thick letters. The victims had not had the time to write any more than that. Old Ernest had shot them down in the middle of the act. The can of spray paint had rolled into the gutter. An officer recovered it and wrapped it in a plastic bag.
“Do you know the victims?” the captain inquired.
“Cedric and David Bravart, two cousins,” replied the woman with the triple chin. “One of them is from Vougeot, and the other is from Gilly. That one there is David.”
The policeman glanced at the body, frowned, and raised his head in the direction of the window, where Ernest was now standing again.
“Mr. Mancenot! Put down your gun, and get out here!”
“I did my job!” the old man barked.
“I am waiting for you, sir! Do not make us come and get you!”
All eyes were focused on the Mancenot brothers’ house, an austere and charmless building weighed down by its granular and graying stucco. Minutes ticked by. The police officers were waiting near the entrance. Cooker sneezed and crossed his arms to warm himself. His feet were freezing. He was thinking about going back to the hotel and putting on something warmer when the Mancenot brothers stuck their drunken faces through the half-open door. Ernest spat on the ground and looked around defiantly.
“Two cartridges, two targets! Gotta have balls, that’s all!”
He was summarily handcuffed and pushed into the police cruiser, while Honoré, looking
even more stunned than his brother, began to whimper. “Don’t worry, Ernest. I’ll take care of everything.”
While a police officer went upstairs to recover the gun and the cartridge cases, the second ambulance arrived, just ahead of a rattling Citroen 2CV. Out of this climbed a man in his fifties with salt-and-pepper hair in a ponytail. He was wearing a mauve scarf and had a camera around his neck. A reporter from Le Bien Public. He snapped a few photos of the stretcher as it was sliding into the van, the Mancenot’s still-open window, and the graffiti just barely begun. Then he questioned several of the bystanders he seemed to know well. Each one gave him more or less the same version of the story, some of them reveling in describing the state of the bodies in minute detail and reporting the old man’s deranged behavior.
Cooker was about to return to his room when he heard a man call out, “Mr. Cooker?”
The winemaker jumped and turned to see who was talking to him. “To whom do I owe the pleasure? Do we know each other?”
“Well, I know you,” the man responded. “My name is Bressel, I wrote the article on your induction into the brotherhood of the Chevaliers du Tastevin.”
“Ah, so you’re the one.”
If the moment had not been so tragic, Cooker would have smiled and commented on the ridiculous headline and unflattering photo.
“Yes, I’m the one who covered the Chapter of the Tulips,” Robert Bressel confirmed. “Do you intend to stay in the region for long?”
“I don’t know. Why?”
“I’d love to do an interview.”
“I’m supposed to leave in four or five days.”
“It would be great to have the opinion of an expert like yourself on the latest Tastevinage.”
Shivering, Cooker suddenly realized the incongruity of the situation. Here he was, standing in the middle of the street at five in the morning, in pajamas, bathrobe, and slippers.
“Maybe this is not the best time to discuss this,” he said, holding back a sneeze. “I need to get some more sleep.”
“I live in Saint-Bernard,” Bressel insisted. “Last house on the way out of town. You can’t miss it. If you feel like it and have the time, stop by and see me.”
Nightmare in Burgundy (The Winemaker Detective Series) Page 3
