by Roman McClay
He saw the gravity-feed system transition like speciation into stainless cone barrels, the black and tan of each transition from vertical to horizontal at oblique angles, from wood to steel to rubber runner of floor. He was impressed, it was so modern, but classic; it refused to use its money and engineering to look anymore forward than it must. Ah, he thought, and the grape-must . He found a chai -ladder and opened a vat-top to see if any must had been left that he could pull in -at least- through the nose. As he was doing this, he got a DM from a suite of bots in the vines asking if he wanted to pull anything before the DXsF-3 sprayed them down.
He said no but decided to re-read the soil composition reports and agreed that these Medoc soils were so poor as to be unsuitable for anything else but the best wine. He marveled at this paradox, it -the terrible soil- couldn’t produce anything except the most opulent wine grapes, as if a kind of food existed that couldn’t keep any animal alive except the four angels in medio aquae of Revelation. Ah, but there were five angels now , he thought to himself, with a smile and patted one of the fermentation casks.
222 acres of vines planted on flatlands and mothon from 5 to 38 meters high; gradient light and drainage like an organ designed by Dionysus himself were sprayed with the emulsified accelerant du flame , and -as at the other four château- the bots secured the required cutting of each varietal. At Mouton it was the Cab, Merlot, Cab-Franc and Petit Verdot . Armed with the soil, aggregate and substrate composition, the atmospheric data, the seasonal vagaries, and the DNA both digitally taken and organically secured -via grafts taken- the bots returned to the lot outside the long chai and remained in a holding pattern as the second truck was loaded with mise-en-boiutille wines. Mouton the first to begin such a practice in 1924.
It was all stuffed in the trucks with OWC and barrels totaling enough of the grape juice to fill glasses for all the sinners in Hollywood and each liar in Washington DC; not that any of that scum would get a drop , Jack Mouton-for-a-night , surmised with a grin as crooked as his designs.
He hung around the vat room and began following the imagined process from grape bursts to fermentation that -like a witch’s incantation- turns sugar into alcohol at 13.5%; then to the malolactic alchemy of Newton and his furnace that never went out, to the mercurial mixing of egg whites and the rotation of casks and the smelling of blackcurrant lees in the hand of men like -oh, he had forgotten the name of the cellar-master, he thought- but he didn’t feel like retrieving it via his PGC.
But, at any rate, the essential process unchanged over centuries, and in this vat room, this grand room, this magnificent air bubble caught in the cavitation of the eroding sea of commerce and modernity refusing to collapse under the hydrostatic pressure, was right here, he thought as his arms raised, his hands turned palms up as if he could hold it all just out in front and above him; a gesture of grandeur and humility both. It was he beneath she, he thought, but like Atlas was beneath the axis mundi . “Ponder that motherfuckers,” he said to the muses.
Blax had opened a bottle from each of the five château for them before the mission, and Jack Four remembered his PGC unweaving the rainbow of aroma and prehensile features like the floor of the forests of France and the captured smoke of tobacco brought to the old world from the new. He had relished the neveau-rich of Mouton , a laughable statement, he thought, since the estate had been making wine for over 500 years! He turned heel at that and walked out of the vat room, breathing deeply and deliberately as he left.
He returned to the façade of the building and stuffed a 1973, with Picasso’s homage label, the 1974, and a 1975, to make a little present of a vertical for Blax. The 1977 he had a bot pick up, saved for its part in the diorama with the Queen’s barrel from Lafite ; then the 1993, of course, with its Nymphet au Natural , banned by the ATF, for depicting a minor unclothed.
Balthus had been being French of course, nothing more or less, but the Americans were still pretending to give a shit about such things that had long ago cease to matter in actual life; child abuse by pedophiles was going on at the highest levels by even the president at the time, he thought, alongside rich billionaires -like Epstein- and functionaries of both the POTUS in 1993 and the media and Hollywood ghouls in attendance to his triangulating, right wing, government they all stupidly called Democratic.
And then appeared a 3-bottle OWC of magnums of the 2015 vintage with its Gerhard Richter label, the amalgam of fluid states representing, some say, the passing of Baroness Philippine de Rothschild , and the three younger generations in ascendance that year. Called, flux by Richter, to connote the “random and carefully prepared ,” the image is fixed in paint then photographed just as the ideal composition is achieved in the wet and fluid wash of the pigments, not unlike the process of oenology itself, Jack thought, no doubt , he thought as well, as the artist and viticulturists of Mouton would have thought too.
A bottle of the 2020 vintage -with the unsigned image of Charles Dickens in soft, prisma-color with ribbons of text from A Tale of Two Cities , and in the corner of the tableau, an open barrel, sloshing out Medoc wine as in the novel when it landed and cracked itself in the streets of pre-revolutionary France- was retrieved by a bot and held at a presentation angle to Jack.
With the 3-bottles of the vertical in each hand and under the left arm, he stared at it and -via DM- had the bot lift it slightly and rotate the image to reveal each detail: the National Razor, the oceanic transition of wind-swept hair, the black and grey beard and the brick-colored eyes all above a soft herringbone suit; then a mottled black tie clasped by the whitest of collars as the blue Jacobin was shouldered and the Bastille backdropped the curve of a clos du bois hacked into by the Woodsman himself. The scaffold mirrored the tree in placement and shape, the perfect wording and bunting of the inscription as it blew above and below the tableau and the shadows gave surface depth to it all.
That vintage -the 2020- was the year he -Jack Ravenel aka Jack Four- was born, and its label-art had been chosen by Julien de Beaumarchais de Rothschild from 1,090 submission as part of an open invitation to all unpublished artists.
The rules were simple: you could not be known, and the art must remain unsigned; with only the château knowing the identity of the artist until its unveiling in 2023. That one was picked as it accompanied an inscription from the artist who said that he had made it for this very purpose. That particular vintage and that year’s request had come to him -he said- in a dream. He, the artist, had pointed out the details of the tableau including the wine, and the French historical motifs -the red ball of yarn of Madam DeFarge as ear plug, and the crossed darning needles as barbells in an ‘X’ in Dickens’ ear. He had added the relevance of such thing for modern times. It was bold, even provocative, as it was warning the elites of an impending doom not unlike in the 18th century; and the nobles -like the Rothschilds themselves- might want to heed the warnings the Monsieur of the novel did not.
Julien had loved it, for all these reasons, and felt the composition was both modern and ancient, like Mouton . The bone white of Dicken’s face, the violence of the wind in his hair and beard, the bend of the guillotine, the thread count of the suit, it all added up to a two-to-one vote between Julien and Camille and Philleppe Sereys . And it was affixed in the autumn of 2023; 6-weeks before it was to be released when the artist’s name was deciphered by a French journalist -at the prompting of Camille - and the 11,006 bottles that had been already capsuled and corked were to remain at château .
A murderer as artist of the premier crus’ infant terrible labels was too much, even for the French; and so a new label was chosen from the batch of remaining artists and affixed to the remaining 388,000 bottles and released to the negociants and en premiuer purchasers, and sold to restaurants and dealers in France and abroad. The Chinese had managed to retrieve a 12-bottle OWC with the original portrait and 12 of the 24 bottles kept for posterity were of that same Dickens batch, but the remaining 10,982 bottles were stored in banded OWC down in the cellar untouched f
or now 13 years.
The bots had opened one case and brought to his attention this one example, which Jack was quite certain was perfect. That the vintage had scored a 99 by the scion of Robert Parker, for Wine Enthusiast magazine, Jack thought, was as perfect as imperfection gets . He took his thumbnail and scratched the label at the side marking it with a nick, just a small error now on the label. He took one last look at it, and commanded the bot to return it to the case, re-band it, and take all but one case of these taboo bottles to -and load in- the waiting mottled-grey truck outside .
The 1973 vintage was considered one of the worst ever for Mouton , it received an 83 score from Parker and has not improved with age. Jack Four loved this about it and after loading the cab of the truck with the other bottles of the vertical, laying them on the bench seat, he took the 1973 and smashed the neck and shoulder of the bottle on the jamb of the door, the ullage high enough that a few ounces spilled down the grey paint and onto the driveway. He opened his palm, cupped it and poured the wine onto the ground, sliding his hand in between the single red falls and the gravel and in this hand-well the wine thus pooled, splashed and then ran from all points of his leaking fingers and edges in four or five streams onto the ground beneath his feet.
He waited -watching the red stream- and pulled the bottle up so he could get his mouth and head in there and began drinking from his hand as it overflowed and splashed small pin drops on his face.
He slurped it and swallowed it and smelled its bouquet from the cataract that fell from above. After he had imbibed quite a bit, he stopped pouring with just a few ounces left in the bottom mixed in with the lees. He wiped his mouth with his black long-sleeve shirt and smiled at the cool finish of the Bordeaux ; he thought, it was not nearly so bad, and in fact, it was quite good.
“Second ne daigne , Jacques Mouton suis ,” he said with a face absent of any hint that it had ever been joking about anything. Ever.
42. God of Malice and Wrath
Hurry it up, you Hoosier bastard, I could hang a dozen men while you’re fucking around
[Panzram, Carl]
I am first a white man; and then a worker
[London, Jack]
Believe me man, I was thinking about what I was saying. Because he was watching me like a rough guy watches you. And a rough guy watches you like this: He thinks, if you say one thing that indicates contempt you’re gonna pay for it
[Peterson, Jordan]
I. 2018 e.v.
“Why don’t we start with your name,” the cop said.
“Why don’t we begin with a confession?” he retorted.
“Ok,” the cop was surprised by that; he had to admit. But this guy had been brought in by the desk sergeant, Detective Carr thought; hand delivered by some mucky muck in the Governor’s race. The narrow-shouldered fuck was standing in the next room with a whole bunch of assholes from the mayor’s office and not one of them looked like they could pass a polygraph . The cop hated them all. He scratched his neck and his elbow rested on his paunch.
“So, I’m a bit verbose, loquacious; if you promise to give me a bit of a long leash here, I promise to give you a clearance on these murders, ok? The names will go from red to black in one-hour flat, deal?” he said. He smiled without showing any teeth at all.
“Deal,” the cop was eager to hear this one. Another man came in with a piece of paper and laid it on the table for the short cop to read.
The cuffed man ignored this and spoke as the door closed behind the suited man who had come in and out quickly.
“Ok, so first of all I must insist that everyone, and I mean everyone fantasizes about killing and smashing and creating mischief at some level. If not, then why would a show like Westworld -for example- even exist? How would it make any conceptual sense -to the viewer- unless the characters, the civilians that go to the fictional Westworld to kill gunslingers and rape whores and drink themselves into a hammerheaded stupor, could do so without consequence in this fantasy world?
“In other words, it’s only because the guy watching TV -it’s only because he wishes he could behave badly like that too- it is only because the audience can relate to the horrible black-hatted fictional characters, that a show can have ostensibly normal people killing and robbing and acting like bandits just for kicks. If humans didn’t have fantasies about malice and murder, then a show like that wouldn’t make sense.
“That’s first. Now, most people are content to live vicariously through art like that; and the reason is that art is an essential part of human existence; it creates narratives that act as practice or,” he paused, “yeah, practice of what to do in a situation. So, religion and plays and movies and the story your side-partner told you this morning about how he handled his wife’s latest nonsense, right? all that shit is narrative. You follow?”
“Follow,” the cop was just listening for now. He could see this guy was going to admit to every bad thing he’d ever done in his life. He liked to talk, that was already obvious.
“All those stories help us all navigate in the world via practice in our heads first before we have to act it or re-enact it in the real world. We watch Ahab battle the whale and we watch Starbuck too. We watch Beckett drink and wench his way through all of London, thinking all the time.
“We watch Caius Marcius handle the hoi polloi and the Roman senate handle Coriolanus too; we watch him handle his mother and his foe in Aufidius . And as kids we watch Pinocchio and Dumbo and we observe Charlotte build her web. We watch the pigs of Animal Farm -as some are more equal than others - and we begin to learn how to act in the world before we confront these challenges, these problems, these enemies ourselves.
“So, a story, any story -from Job to Ishmael to Governor Stark - we watch and we place ourselves inside their heads and decide if we would act as they did, or differently; we take lessons right?” he paused.
The cops nodded. So far so good.
“And so, if a story has any staying power, any ability to remain in the public consciousness for more than a nanosecond, like the books of the Bible or the Illiad or Moby Dick or anything from Conrad or Mark Twain or Phillip K Dick; whatever, the reason any story lasts is because it helps people navigate the world. It imparts some wisdom or woe that is wisdom , and it gives people some construct, some scaffolding of meaning in their lives that they can use to handle the incessant chaos of life, man.
“I mean, fuck, you must feel it yourself, the incessant political and criminal and fraternal and amorous chaos of life; I can’t be the only one here. I mean I didn’t invent the phrase, if it ain’t one thing it’s another,” he held out his hands in a gesture of resignation to the vagaries of fate.
“If it ain’t one thing, it’s two,” the fat cop deadpanned in reply.
“Right?” he said with a genuine laugh. “Man, you got it. So, stories help us all and they help us in different ways, but the themes are human and universal and man, people -and men especially- fantasize, about rough justice a lot. As men, we have watched as the State, the government, watched as it has wrested our right and our responsibility to mete out justice ourselves; wrested it from our hands and patted us on the head like children and said, we got this kiddo, we’ll handle this justice rubric; this concept of right and wrong; go ahead and stand down , soldier ,” he paused; he let them absorb all that he held out in front of them as bait.
“And as men, we feel emasculated by this. Right? I mean how many times have you thought, man, I wish I could just punch that douche bag in the face , Right? I mean you in all likelihood are thinking it right now about me!” he smiled and the cops smiled back. He was not wrong yet , they both thought .
“I mean, we all want to teach assholes a lesson, and if we’re honest, we sometimes can understand why someone might wanna teach us , we ourselves , a lesson, right? I mean you know you’ve done wrong, insulted a waiter or maligned a co-worker or jilted a lover in an ungallant way. We’ve all got some sin in our past that we know that in a just world would get us an as
s beating; but instead we maybe paid a fine or lost a friend, but nobody got punched or stabbed or shot with a .45acp twice in the face,” he said with a quick turn from jocular phrasing to very curt and specific mention of violence in location on the body and in caliber of weapon; the Police took notice of that description of M.O. Their body issued just a slight elevation in heart rate and slickness to the skin. Detective Carr even felt slightly eager now; the saliva pooled in the mouth.
“We and our enemies,” he continued in the former relaxed tone, “have all got away with all manner of shit because the law has been too busy, too incompetent or just plain un-interested in our perfidy, our churlishness, or our low-level crimes. Our enemies have walked away with maybe a slap on the wrist or nothing -likely nothing- at all. The State doesn’t even punish liars anymore, even though in many cultures of past epochs lying was a capital offense, did you know that?”
“No,” the short cop said, then thought a bit, then said, “well, maybe I knew that in Biblical times. Yeah.”
“Right, you got it my man, and even before that in Persia or Sparta , lying was a punishable offense, but not anymore. The average man lies 11 times a day; all of it legal. And shit, you can lie, cheat and steal -as long as you call it business and have Wells Fargo or Google written on your building’s façade - even stealing is allowed as long as it’s done with a letter-of-marque from the State Department or the DoD.
“At any rate, because of this fact, man walks around being both corrupt himself and witness to corruption in others at a massive scale. I mean, it’s not as bad as Mexico here, that place is like some Datean Hellscape, but if we don’t get into comparisons, let’s just admit that America isn’t the perfect paradigm of untrammeled nobility and unblemished honor and honesty. Can we agree on that?”