Xas said, ‘I have his flesh under my fingernails. I said I’d kill him if he came near me again.’ He seemed stunned by what he’d said.
Sobran saw the angel’s throat work and his eyes get a faraway look. He put a hand on Xas’s arm. ‘Come back into the church.’
In the church there were dark corners.
‘I can’t stay with you. I can’t be with people. I should live in a cave.’
Sobran turned Xas, led him back up the street – keeping an eye out for the Englishman. But the Englishman had fled. They entered the church through its southern door, and stopped by Slander and Avarice. Sobran put his arms around Xas, who whispered, ‘I could have killed him. I thought he’d take me away from all of you.’
‘All of us?’
‘Yes. The family.’
Sobran saw they were in the line of sight of two old women in black who, naturally, were scandalised. He wondered how they knew Xas wasn’t his son. He let go of the angel and led him further along the side aisle. They stopped under Jacob Wrestles with an Angel.
‘Which angel was it?’ Sobran asked, looking up at the capital. Xas could always be distracted by a question.
‘That was Yahweh, I think,’ Xas said, ‘being obtuse.’
‘Are you feeling calmer?’
‘I’m afraid.’
‘Yes. When we get back to Jodeau shall we make you a list of names we know are nobody’s? For future use? You can use them by rotation, a new one every twenty-five years.’ Sobran straightened Xas’s collar and brushed off his coat.
‘What will you tell Antoine and Bernard?’
‘It’s none of their business.’
‘Treat me coldly for the rest of the trip. And I’ll be nervous and contrite. Otherwise they’ll think I’ve got off without a warning.’
‘That will be enough, probably.’
Xas nodded, submitted to Sobran’s kiss on either cheek. He said, ‘This can’t last, Sobran.’
And Sobran, with a kind of derisive triumph, said, ‘This will outlast me.’
The quiet months were, for Xas, a long reprieve, when it seemed he belonged, was necessary, would never leave.
1848 Ha (the French hectare, an abbreviation)
On a hot Sunday night in early September, at suppertime, when the light had gone but the family were all still up, it began to hail. They heard it first in the vineyard, then came a cry from one of the outbuildings.
The first wave hit the tiles, and a windowpane in the parlour cracked. Sobran hurried into the hall. The door was open, Antoine outside already, without a coat. There was a crush in the hall as coats and hats were snatched from a cupboard, and the men rushed out into the vines that began at the very edge of the narrow carriageway. Sobran’s daughters stayed in the porch but Céleste came up beside him with her fine silk shawl held above her head. Baptiste, who had been in the winery, was already halfway up the slope, turning and turning with his head raised and bare but his hands over his face. Antoine was on his knees at the beginning of the rows, crying in frustration.
The ripe fruit was knocked into pulp, the ground whitened by heaps of jagged hailstones. The hail thickened. Sobran covered his head with his jacket and Céleste called out to her sons, ‘Come in!’ She ran back herself, cried out as a large chunk of ice struck her shoulder.
Xas passed Sobran and went to Bernard, stood stooped over Bernard with the hail striking his back, bare neck and head. Suddenly he stood straight and shouted in that terrifying and compelling foreign tongue. Sobran watched the hail part in a wedge along the precious south-facing slope, perhaps five rows wide, hail still falling in walls either side of still emptiness where leaves glistened and wounded grapes glowed and dripped. Then the wedge filled with a wave of the same hard hail. Xas flinched, put his hand to his face then hauled Bernard up and led him back to the house. Sobran went with them into the porch. Then Antoine arrived and lastly Baptiste, bloodied, cursing, in tears.
Xas had a streak of blood on either cheek, like two fraternal kisses.
‘As soon as the hail stops, go and see Martin,’ Sobran told Baptiste. ‘If the storm crossed Vully, ask Aurora what she intends to do. If Vully was spared, come back and tell us. If not, bring Martin back with you and we’ll harvest tonight – here – see what we can do.’
Aline came out with a cloth for Baptiste to wipe his face. ‘There’ll be warm water in a few minutes,’ she said to her father.
‘Good girl.’
Baptiste wiped his face, then looked over the cloth, his mouth muffled, and said, ‘There’ll be a few economies next year, I expect.’ Pointedly, he didn’t look at the tutor.
‘One lost year won’t ruin us, Baptiste. Look, now it’s only rain, why don’t you get on your way.’
Baptiste went.
The women led Antoine and Bernard inside to wash. And Sobran was able to ask Xas what he’d said to God.
‘I wasn’t talking to God, I was talking to the hail. God heard me, though.’ Xas touched his own cheek, and his hand came away bloody and he put it to Sobran’s mouth. Sobran put out his tongue – and it was as though he made a childishly defiant gesture towards God – to taste, in the blood, the flavour that lay behind the grapes and before the oak in Vully’s best wine.
1849 Taché (stained; a malady of white wine)
On a cold March dawn, when the light was watery and sky a white like sheets washed threadbare, Paul and Agnès arrived at Jodeau. They’d been looking for Baptiste along the road between Jodeau and Vully. Baptiste had left them, very drunk and scarcely able to stand. He had refused a bed for the night, and hadn’t waited for the carriage to be readied. He’d pushed Paul, Agnès said. Paul and he had scarcely argued before, and had never come to blows. The couple had gone to bed, but got up after an hour and sent for the carriage to go and find him. ‘There wasn’t any sleep to be had, so we went ourselves, didn’t send a servant.’
They both seemed very distressed.
‘We couldn’t find him and it’s cold,’ Agnès said.
Bernard appeared at the library door. ‘Why is Paul’s carriage – oh, good morning, Paul, good morning, Agnès.’
‘Bernard, could you send in the maid to light the fire here, and then get dressed.’
Bernard went to do as he was asked. When he reappeared it was with his tutor, also dressed.
‘Has something happened to Baptiste?’ Bernard asked.
Sobran thought with some exasperation that Bernard really was the shrewdest of his children. He said, ‘Baptiste has probably fallen into a ditch somewhere between here and Vully. Could you two please help look for him?’
‘Shall we go on foot?’ Xas asked.
‘Perhaps you should. Wrap up warmly, Bernard.’
They left. Agnès was chafing Paul’s hand between her own. ‘We’ll get you both some breakfast,’ Sobran said, ‘and, if you wish, you can tell me what you and Baptiste argued about.’
‘His drinking,’ said Agnès.
‘Of course.’
Two hours later Bernard appeared in the parlour, blushing and pop-eyed and said Baptiste was being put to bed by Aunt Sophie and Aline.
‘Should I go to him?’ Céleste asked, with no real interest.
‘He’s not sober enough to tell off.’
Sobran wondered what Baptiste had said. Then he felt a small spurt of anxiety. ‘Where is Monsieur Cayley?’
Bernard’s face grew so red that his eyes appeared feverish. ‘I don’t know.’
‘He was with you when you found Baptiste?’
‘Yes. I’m cold and wet, Father. Can I go and change my shoes?’
Sobran waved him away. He waited for some time, during which his family tried to involve him in a discussion about what was to be done about Baptiste’s drinking. He was silent and could see they thought he was about to do something heavy-handed and ineffectual. After five minutes he said he’d just go ask Sophie for a report on Baptiste, then he went up to Bernard’s room – and pounced.
He closed Be
rnard’s door and leaned against it. ‘What happened?’
Bernard shook his head.
‘Forget your embarrassment. Just tell me.’
‘I’ll tell you if you sit down and I can stand up.’
Sobran found a chair, he sat and looked up at his son in what he supposed was a calm and reassuring manner.
In a rush Bernard told all. Baptiste had kissed Monsieur Cayley. He and Monsieur Cayley were supporting Baptiste between them, his arms over their shoulders, when Baptiste swung off Bernard and embraced the tutor.
‘And then what happened?’
‘They kissed. I mean they both did.’
Sobran looked down at his feet, shuffled them. Yes, those were his feet. ‘Will I dismiss him,’ he said. Then, ‘Why aren’t you asking me will I dismiss him?’
‘It’s too late. Monsieur Cayley said something to Baptiste. I don’t know what because he spoke softly. Then he walked away up the road.’
‘And?’
‘And we stood and looked after him. Baptiste called out a couple of times, the second time like he was sorry and it was all ridiculous. Then I chased Cayley.’
‘Did he stop?’
‘For a minute. But he didn’t say anything. He shook my hand.’
‘And walked off.’ Sobran wasn’t really asking.
Bernard nodded. ‘Then I got Baptiste home. By myself it was hard, cold going. Baptiste acted as if he thought it was all very funny. He kept laughing. So I dropped him a few times, or let him down hard, rather. But he only laughed more.’
Sobran nodded.
‘I don’t understand what happened, Father. I saw it all happen and I can’t make any sense of it.’
‘No,’ Sobran agreed. He thanked Bernard for his frankness, and left the room. He had his groom ready his calèche and drove himself to Aluze. There he discovered that Monsieur Cayley had been seen, without baggage, waiting at the coach stop.
Baptiste was in the winery early the following day. He and Antoine had out spades and hods and were about to put in some hours carrying the soil which had washed down the south slope that winter back up to the ridge so that it could lend its essences to the next crop. Baptiste regarded his father in a wary, sidelong way. He was red-eyed and pale. When Antoine saw Sobran he picked up his hod and went out, leaving them alone. Baptiste sat down on the step of the pressoir and met his father’s eyes.
‘Bernard told me what happened,’ Sobran said. ‘It appears that Monsieur Cayley has departed without his possessions – though it’s to be hoped he’ll send for them – and his wages.’
‘How maidenly he is,’ Baptiste said.
Sobran waited.
‘I thought I’d offended him. In as much as I was thinking at all. But then he said he was your lover.’
‘Bernard told me he whispered in your ear.’
‘He didn’t whisper in my ear. He looked me in the eye and said he was your lover.’
‘I’m an old man, Baptiste.’
‘You’ve professed old age since you were forty, Father.’ Baptiste shrugged. ‘I don’t know what came over me.’
‘Oh? So it came over you all at once?’
Baptiste admitted that it had been coming over him for some time. ‘I’d decided he was your son. The son of your lover, whoever she was, the lover people have speculated about for years. From Chagny to Chalon-sur-Saône they say it’s the Baroness – but she told me it wasn’t. When Mother is bad she goes on about Aline Lizet. Perhaps there are other possible candidates.’
‘So, you had decided he was your brother, and that was what stopped you from kissing him sooner – or when sober?’
Baptiste looked scornful. He muttered something and Sobran asked him to speak up.
‘I don’t know how you could bring your lover into your home as a tutor to your sons.’
‘You believed him?’
For a time Baptiste just sat, with folded arms and clenched teeth, then he said that although it wasn’t very clear in his mind, and he couldn’t work it out logically, with evidence, still he thought he believed Cayley’s mouth, his kiss, and that he thought Cayley gave him the only reason why he wouldn’t continue kissing him – apart from that Bernard was watching. ‘Why would he lie when there were so many reasonable objections he could make? He could have just said, “Have you gone mad?”
That would be sufficiently discouraging – once I sobered up.’ They were silent for a minute. Then Baptiste said that – well – after all, Antoine had finished his education and Bernard could probably manage the Sorbonne’s examination of entrance without Cayley’s coaching. And Cayley couldn’t be expected to teach the girls, Catherine and Véronique had their governess. Besides, it had always been rather like Aristotle teaching Alexander the Great, except Antoine and Bernard weren’t that great.
It was clear that Baptiste thought the tutor was good at his job, even too good for his brothers. Baptiste said he had hated Cayley because he was sure Cayley was Sobran’s son and that it was obvious Sobran loved Cayley more than he loved his other sons. ‘Anyone could see that. Everyone cared for him, but you looked at him as though he’d been given to you, the miracle of life itself – the same way Paul and Agnès gaze at Iris. And then –’ Baptiste spread his hands, the same hard, hairy, roped hands Sobran had at Baptiste’s age. Baptiste was thirty-three, as Sobran had been in the year of what he used to think of as ‘his trouble’. If Xas couldn’t have Sobran’s future, knew the fifty-nine-year-old intended, at sixty-five, to abstain from making love to his youthful angel, perhaps that angel thought he could take back what he’d first refused, the young man, the old man’s son.
‘Maybe I misheard him,’ Baptiste said. ‘I was very drunk.’
‘You have to drink less. Pull yourself together. Try to find yourself another wife.’
‘No.’
‘You’re a refuser, like me. Fortunately I always had your mother bringing me back to life.’
‘Not the Baroness?’
‘Aurora has too much respect for my feelings. Your mother carried on regardless. I could be secretive and full of sorrow but so long as I was physically sound I could be persuaded to father another child.’
‘Until the end,’ Baptiste said, held his father’s gaze.
‘Even then. I didn’t realise that Véronique was not my daughter till Aurora warned me what people were saying. Véronique could have been my daughter.’
Another lengthy silence. Baptiste stood, picked up the hod and spade. He said, rather mournfully, ‘I only wanted to kiss him. That’s all.’
‘Ha!’ Sobran said.
1850 Charnu (full-bodied)
I’ll visit you [the letter promised] not, at first, on our night or in our place because even Baptiste has sufficient wit to post himself there and wait. I’ll come to you. Do you remember how you told me about your cat? When you were a boy your bed was by the stove because your cough kept the household awake. You had a cat. You liked that cat to settle on your bed but never knew when it would arrive. Some nights you’d lie awake with your heart pounding waiting for that cat to jump on to your bed. It’ll be summer, one of the big doors at the end of the soldiers’ gallery ajar. I’ll come in like the cat did, soundless, blocking the light, then landing heavy on the cool side of your bed. If you want you can say, ‘Stop this.’ If you think you should. I only want to hold you.
Another letter said:
I won’t send any return addresses. Now you listen to me. Baptiste was your image. I’ve known other angels to lose their heads a little over a good likeness. I kept thinking, ‘What does this likeness signify?’ regardless of everything I know and believe about nature. It had disturbed me that he disliked me, and I didn’t like him, but as soon as he was breathing against my face I thought he was made for me – wasn’t born, didn’t grow that way. But it’s you I love. I loved you since the night I held you after your daughter died. It wasn’t only pity, or only your body. It was what I knew – the shame of what I knew. I had to give myself up to you
for your lifetime. What is faith when you feel you’ve lost something forever? I had to have you – someone I could lose forever.
1851 Marc de Bourgogne (a Burgundian digestif)
Xas wrote from Damascus, where he’d found Apharah’s house occupied by her heirs, remote relatives. He hadn’t expected to find her, but to visit her grave, lay flowers there. He was pleased to think she’d died imagining she had helped him back to Heaven.
Sobran, reading this letter, swore to himself that he would never tell Xas how, on the receipt of Xas’s first tormented letter to him, he had written to Apharah to tell her what had happened – Xas’s injury, death, resurrection, mutilation, wanderings. Sobran didn’t know if the letter had reached her before she died. But if it had he could imagine how she felt.
Agnès and Paul had a son, christened Armand after the old Comte. Because Agnès had chosen to confine herself at Vully rather than in Paris she wasn’t with Paul in December during the coup d’état, when Louis-Napoléon’s soldiers marched into the city in an orderly and jaunty way, camped at the Hôtel de Ville and began to drink. Like many other citizens, Paul sat tight through the days of drinking, of silent drills, when gunners stood by their cannons on street corners, with smoking slow-matches in their hands.
When the killing began Paul followed the soldiers, unmolested, a gentleman. He picked up a man shot in the courtyard of his own house. ‘They came in here,’ the man said. ‘What did I have to do to offer no offence, hide under my bed?’ Paul saw an officer with his hands over his ears order his men to use their bayonets because powder and shot were too noisy. He saw a woman shot. The child she carried as she ran fell from her arms and unfolded, shocked and bruised by the cobblestones – then it was knocked flat by bullets from more than one gun. Paul followed the soldiers into Montmartre and saw all the dead. Then he went back to the townhouse, lay low for two days, and left Paris for Vully.
The Vintners Luck Page 25