The Catalans

by Patrick O'Brian

  Alain had gone on out of a kind of obstinacy, and, it must be said, out of stupidity, for he knew very well that although he went on talking his reason for being in that room, that horrible underground room, lit by the unshaded glare of the daylight lamp, had come to an end, and that all he had to do was to pay for his picture and go away. Yet he had stayed a good half-hour after he knew that it was hopeless, after he knew that he was deeply convinced that this man had no integrity left, that he was selfish to the ultimate degree, that he was shallow, callous, and a fraud, and that his only remaining quality was a kind of flabby charm. He was no longer concerned with the painting, true or false: for him the great fact was that buying this fellow back would be an impossible solution for Madeleine. Better, far better, to abandon her to Xavier.

  “The beefy, wicked lout,” he exclaimed in anger; and pressing on the accelerator to escape from the thought of the past he made the big car run faster and faster down the white road between the trees.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  BY ELEVEN O’CLOCK the great heat of the day had begun: in the enclosed valley the sun beat down from its height on to the sloping vineyards, tilted to receive its power, and the heat reverberated from the stone walls, the stony paths, and the crumbling, powdery earth that lay naked between the newer vines. Higher up on either slope, beyond the terraced vineyards, the hills were brown, light khaki brown, desiccated and parched beyond description; the bare soil that stood between the crackling, withered scrub blew up in acrid clouds whenever the breeze stirred over it. There had been no rain now for seven weeks, and it was hardly conceivable that in the spring those same higher grounds had been green, a brilliant living green, and that the goatherds had been afraid to let their flocks go up there, for fear of gorging.

  From the too-perfect sky, from the scorched and sun-drenched hills behind, and from the arid slopes above, the eye fell with gratitude to the vines: everywhere, on all the unnumbered terraces, there were the vines; and among the vines the vendangeurs, moving among the dark green rows; for now the grapes were ripe, and now the families were assembled, friends, cousins from as far as Marseilles and Toulouse, relations to the farthest point of kin. For them the vendange was a feast, a ritual, a time of strange excitement, more intense by far than the harvest of the corn in the north, more religious.

  These hillside vendanges were entirely different from the vendanges in the plains, where the enormous, dull, flat vineyards stretched in precise commercial rectangles to the horizon, and where the pickers, hired troops from the towns and mountain villages, labored under the driving of an overseer: here there was no hired labor, here there were no flat rectangles, for here the vineyards, cut by the loving hands of the generations, climbed in mad shapes up to the limit of fertility, hand-planted in basketfuls of carried earth, hand-grafted, hand-hoed; the evidence of hands, the uninterrupted generations for how many hundred years? They had found the pieces of a jar from Samos when they dug to enlarge the well some twenty years ago. Long enough, at all events, to have changed the face of nature, to have given the whole of the lower mountain the appearance of—Alain, though he straightened for a moment to regard the mountain, could find no term for his description. There was the valley: it was covered with vineyards, with tiny white box-like houses, rose-tiled and prim; it had been labored upon, cut, hewn, blasted, and piled into one vast coherent pattern: it was like nothing else, and there was no point in dragging for a simile.

  But the hands that had done this work had been harder hands than his: every year, every single year, those hands like his had been stained purple by the grapes, sticky purple hands, covered with dust; but under the stain and the dust they must have been horny, callused, protected against the use of tools, familiar with the rub and scratch of branches. Already there was one blister on his right forefinger, in the crook of the joint, where his minute sickle pressed for every cut, and there was probably another developing there where his left hand seized the bunches. Certainly there were no less than three gashes on that same left hand: at the beginning of the vendanges he always nicked that blind left hand as it groped darkly in the leaves for the main stem, which his right hand, equally blind, was to cut with the bright-edged sickle. Three certain gashes, if not four: in a spasm of professional dismay he remembered the case of tetanus that he had seen in Prabang—risus sardonicus. “That is the most perfect example of the risus I have ever seen.” He remembered the tone of Martin’s voice: yet Martin was the most humane of men, and he had struggled for that man’s life as though his own depended on it.

  Their backs, too; they must have been much more supple. For a long time now his own had been a broken bow, painfully mended with sinews, creaking as it straightened. It was not surprising: since half-past five it had been bending, straightening, bending. For these were not the high-trailed vines of the Georgics: these were bushes, waist-high or lower, and the bunches hung low to the ground. They were bushes that were cut right back to the stump, the black, gnarled, tortured stump, in the winter, and it was only the one year’s growth that stood now, shielding the grapes, tangling criss-cross in the older rows where the stony soil was rich; dusty and worn outer leaves, a few of them already scarlet.

  He was out on a little triangular apron of vineyard by himself: it was a patch of soil, poised over an enormous boulder, and there was no room for the main body of pickers, who were moving along the rows above him. They were laughing and talking still: the handkerchiefs on the women’s heads were brilliant in the sun. The Fajals were there, over on his right. Certainly they were there, helping to pick the Roiges’ grapes as they had done every year since Roiges and Fajals had begun in Saint-Féliu: they were neighbors, vineyard neighbors, and the Roiges picked the Fajals’ vineyard in their turn. Certainly they were there. Aunt Margot did not understand this: but neither did she understand the primordial importance of the vendanges. She did not see that the vendange was a truce of God: or rather she did not know the god whose truce it was; and if Alain had tried to make the explanation clear he would have had a very short answer, with “unhealthy mysticism” and “modern earthy nonsense” in it. Or she would have looked at him with an amused and cynical eye, saying nothing.

  They were laughing up there. The effect of breakfast must still be with them, he thought. That immense breakfast eaten down there by the little square white casot: sausage grilled over the embers of a fire made from last year’s vine cuttings, hard-boiled eggs and anchovies, sardines, ham, cold chops, black pudding, white pudding, and olives, Roquefort at nine in the morning and welcome, membrillo; bread, bread, bread, and a dozen skins of wine. Perhaps it was the last Hellenic touch that lingered with the Catalans, that feast on the brown earth in the morning.

  But nine o’clock was long ago. Longer ago still, removed to another time altogether, was the beginning of the day, that dewy beginning under a sky still green, when the grapes were exquisitely chilled by the night and the dust had not yet begun to fly.

  There was no more left on that vine. Half straightening with a grunt, he moved his basket and himself on to the next. This was a muscat; he recognized it with joy: the pale, indented leaves hid great swagging inverted pyramids of grapes. His left hand plunged in and found a tight and solid bunch: as the sickle cut the stem the bunch fell heavy in his palm. He bit a mouthful from it, huge golden grapes, cool still, despite the hours of sun. Kneeling, he devoured the whole cluster of them, and now his throat was clear of dust. There was a refreshment—nothing to equal it. For the last hour he had been picking the small, dark, fiery, thick-skinned Grenache, no good for thirst at all. A wonderful crop, big, firm bunches, a bucketful from a single vine, a deep satisfaction in the taking; but no good for thirst now that the sun was up. The muscat vine; he remembered it from former years. Once he had known where each one was, scattered up and down the vineyard for the relief of the people working there, but now he remembered them only when he reached them.

  The little solitary patch was done, and at the same time the party above h
im reached the end of their row, of their half-dozen parallel rows, and because they worked in a team they stopped for the stragglers. Alain clambered up the slope to join them, emptying his full basket into the waiting tub as he went. There was Madeleine, coming down with her grapes, looking at once quite suitable and madly out of place—suitable, because she was dressed in an old black overall with a spotted handkerchief on her head, and suitable, because she so obviously belonged there, knew exactly what to do, did not feel herself extraordinary; but utterly incongruous as well, for on that day of all days she was in looks, in the bloom of her looks and gilded with the sun; and as she came down, with the broad basket on her head, her hands filled with overflowing grapes, she moved with incredible distinction. Her fine head poised, her dazzling complexion, rising from that old and dusty dull black pinafore would have made an unaccustomed stranger stand and gape: the most romantic view of ancient Greece, seen through the haze of three thousand years, the Golden Age itself, the vases, sculpture, and the verse, promised nothing anywhere like this.

  She was in spirits too, that brilliant day: she carried the basket on her head from wantonness, and her face was alight with transient happiness.

  “Mare de Deu,” said Alain, and to interrupt his stare he began to crush the piled grapes down into the tub with a heavy stone, making room for these fresh baskets full.

  They began on the higher rows, working from one stone path across the vineyard to the next: Madeleine had the high row, and Alain coming up last took the top row, the row above hers. He was working faster now; he had to, to keep up with her; and all down on his right there was the steady snip-snip of the women’s secateurs and the murmuring of voices. Now the grapes fell into his hand, heavy, dusted with the bloom, bloom on purple, for now they were in the Carignan, grapes big as muscats, dark and perfect: the vines sprang up as the weight was taken from them.

  She was holding up an enormous bunch for him to see. “Oh wonderful,” he replied, and he was glad to have a reason for his smile.

  Below there was a shout of laughter: someone had left a bunch uncut, and they splashed the crushed grapes on his face. It was red, blood red, the juice that trickled down his cheeks.

  Along the row. Here the big Carignans had grown so high that when he crouched he was in their shade, green and comfortable; but he was not noticing his unhinged back any more, nor the heat, nor the dust in his shirt, on his face, in his throat. He had three newly grafted vines with nothing on them, and he was well ahead of Madeleine. Stepping across to her row he cut the grapes of her next two vines so that she could catch him up. The small boys ran between the rows, emptying the baskets, bringing empty ones.

  “At the end of the row we shall find a muscat vine,” he said, and she laughed as though what he said was witty. He had remembered that muscat: it was the old vine where they had buried a toad, to make the thief turn black and swell, if ever he came stealing in their grapes. Alain had gone in the night and released the toad, his heart beating high as if he were the thief under the moon, in the strangeness of the night; but the toad had died.

  They were at the muscat stock picking off the very best to eat, throwing the others into their baskets. “Té,” she said from the other side, throwing him two the size of little plums. She had never tutoy’ed him before; and when he spoke French to her he had said vous, though no doubt knowing her from a child (if he had but remembered her) he could very well have said tu. Xavier vou-voy’ed her, but so he did to the world in general.

  There was a renewed outburst lower down the slope: the little boys were piping; everyone was standing up. “There is no more room in the semal,” said the middling boy, his voice cracking with indignation. “The semals are full,” said the smallest boy. Several people cried “Pau has not taken away the full semals. En Laurens has left the empty ones down there. Pau has not taken the full semals away.”

  “The semals are full,” said Alain.

  Madeleine answered “Yes,” and they stood looking at the full tubs of grapes ranged at convenient points along the wall. The middle-sized boy was treading one in a vain attempt to make space for the baskets and pails that were cluttered at its foot.

  “En Laurens,” shrieked a woman, and some others shouted Pau. But both the men were far away, down behind the casot repairing a broken carrying strap, swearing and bawling instructions to each other so loudly that no distant cry could ever reach them.

  “This would never have happened if Monsieur Xavier had been here,” said an old woman, a poor and distant cousin, exasperated by the heat and dust. They all knew that dinner would not start preparing until they had reached the top of the piece of Carignan, and suddenly everybody grew cross and discontented.

  “Sitting down there. Lying in the shade. For shame, the idle, do-nought, selfish . . .” and they shrieked their names again.

  Côme was red with anger. “Why can’t they organize things?” he asked. “Why does Xavier have to choose this day to be away?”

  “They would not be sitting there playing if Monsieur Xavier was here,” said the old woman. “Pau. En Laurens.” “Pau,” screamed the little boys. “En Laurens Cortals.”

  “Why don’t we ever have a mule?” asked Côme. “They have a mule over there.” A mule was indeed threading its way down the steep vineyard next to theirs at that moment, charged with a tub on either side: it was a beautiful mule, with crimson harness thick-studded with brass nails.

  “Why do we never have a mule?” asked Côme. He turned in exasperation to his neighbor, but this was Jean Pou-naou, who could not very well reply: they were neighbors, not relations, and they could not criticize the absence of the mule. They were to keep silent, though the work was stopped; and silent they were, for that and other causes. Mimi and Thérèse were there, but all day they had been like ghosts, quite dumb, unnatural and constrained.

  Alain slid down over the wall: the semals were at the level of his shoulder, and when he had folded his handkerchief and his beret for a pad he slid the tub a half-length forward.

  “Take care, Alain.”

  “Monsieur Alain, you are not going to carry that semal?”

  “Alain, take care.”

  “He will drop it.”

  “It is too far.”

  “It is too heavy.”

  “He will rupture himself.”

  “Take care, Alain.”

  “Monsieur Alain, you are not going to carry that semal?”

  “Alain, take care.”

  “He will rupture himself.”

  “Joan Antoni ruptured himself, falling with a semal.”

  “You are not used to it, Monsieur Alain: leave it to the men.”

  “Take care, Alain.”

  “Take care.”

  “He will burst.”

  Madeleine was taking crushed bunches out of the tub to ease the weight.

  “I’ll carry it with you,” said Côme. “But there’s no need. They will be coming up presently. What we ought to have is a mule: they have got a mule over there.”

  Alain worked the tub forward on to his left shoulder: it was an oval tub with two downward-sloping handles, six inches of branch that the cooper left on the staves. One was in front of him, the other behind: with his right hand crossed over his bowed head he gripped the forward handle, straightened and walked off.

  He had done it before quite often when he was home from Paris or Montpellier: he knew how to do it. The tub was rightly balanced, leaning in against his head with its bottom edge cushioned by the folds of his beret: his right hand had hardly any work to do. Why had he remembered it as so big a load? And why did they make so much fuss?

  There was a dead silence as he walked off, but as he reached the first downward turn one said, in a low voice, “He will drop it,” and another, “He should have left it to the men.” They said, “En Laurens and Pau are just sitting there.”

  “A whole semal. It will be wasted.”

  “He is not used to it.”

  “He will do himse
lf an injury.”

  “He will burst.”

  The first piece had been easy. It was the flat, crossways traverse on the smooth, flattened earth leading to the first downward path. The weight was squarely above him, and it seemed as if he could carry it for half a mile. But now, here at the very turn, a long vine-shoot reached across his path: he put his right foot on it, but the vine grew on his left side, and his left foot caught in the arch of the doubly anchored branch. It broke, but not before he had staggered and nearly fallen. The jerk had canted the load forward on his shoulder, and though he hitched it back he could never get it rightly poised again.

  On the downward path he knew why he had remembered the carrying as a formidable task: he remembered, too, the strange pain of his blood-starved right arm, already drained of strength, though it had not been held up a full two minutes. How had he been able to forget it so completely? Now the recollection was so easy and complete; and he knew, too, that soon his breath would come short and the muscles of his thighs would tremble.

  The slope changed everything with the balance: now the fact that he had as much as his own weight fixed higher than his shoulders—that he was utterly top-heavy—meant that every unevenness, every tilting slab of stone, could move the burden those few inches out of true balance that would start a big sway sideways or backward, a sway that he could never control once it has passed more than a hand’s breadth either way.

  Why had he ever thought that his handkerchief and beret would make a sufficient pad? Or had they slipped out altogether? There were seventy kilos pressing into the bony top of his shoulder, all the weight concentrated into the sharp rim of the semal. Pau and En Laurens had thick pads of sacking and a strap.

  Lord, he said, what a stupid way of carrying grapes: one’s body is at an absurd mechanical disadvantage. Sweat ran into his eyes, and while he was blinking them clear his foot went down into a hole. With both knees bent he took the jar, forced the weight back to the upright: but too far, he had wrenched it back too far, and now it was slowly swaying backward, bearing him backward on his heels. He gripped with his toes, quite silent in his mind, deaf, and oblivious to everything but the necessity of mastering the sway.