by Ann Mah
“You know,” Jennifer said now, training the flashlight on a bottle of Pommard Rugiens. “I’m no expert on rare wines—and I dislike making broad generalizations—but I think someone put a fair amount of thought into this selection. These are some of the very top prewar vintages—they weren’t just chosen at random.” She closed her eyes, breathing in the cool, damp air. “And obviously the conditions down here are perfect for storing wine—even with decades of neglect.” She moved further along the row. “Have you found any of Les Gouttes d’Or?”
“No, not yet, though according to the cellar list, there’s a small stash.”
In fact, Les Gouttes d’Or covered just a single line of Hélène’s notebook, only one vintage—the 1929, widely considered one of the best millésimes of the twentieth century.
“You should start looking for it. This collection alone is worth a fortune, there’s no doubt about it. But with Les Gouttes d’Or, it would be an enormous fortune. Like a tell-your-frenemies-to-go-to-hell type of fortune.”
We lingered in the cellar, companionably poking around in a desultory search for the missing Gouttes d’Or. Every so often, Jennifer emitted small gasps of astonishment as she glimpsed various labels—“Sorry, sorry,” she always apologized. “It’s like seeing a celebrity”—but we found no sign of the elusive white wine.
“Jennifer, what did you think of the cave?” Nico said a few minutes later as we emerged from the cellar door, blinking like moles in the bright light of the kitchen. He handed us each a slender flute of crémant, the sparkling wine’s bubbles shooting to the surface.
She placed the glass on the counter and raised both hands to her cheeks. “Amazing,” she said. “In all my years in the wine industry, I have never seen anything like it. I’ve never even heard of anything so completely and utterly extraordinary.”
“What would you say our next steps should be?” asked Nico.
“Well, after the inventory is complete—and you’ve spoken to the rest of your family—you could think about contacting the major auction houses.”
They began discussing the pros and cons of New York versus London, and I moved toward the oven to check on a tray of chicken vols-au-vent that was filling the kitchen with an irresistible buttery aroma.
“Thanks again for doing this,” I said to Heather, who was arranging lettuce leaves in an earthenware bowl.
“Hmm? Oh, don’t be silly—I love having people over. Anyway, you did all the cooking.”
“Ah, you mean Picard did all the cooking.” Earlier in the afternoon, Nico and I had gone to a nearby branch of the French supermarket chain, filling a cart with the most elegant frozen food I’d ever seen—tiny squares of brioche topped with truffled foie gras mousse, filets of beef slathered with mushroom duxelles and wrapped in puff pastry, dainty chocolate éclairs and raspberry tarts—all of it ready to be baked, microwaved, or merely left on the counter to defrost.
“Oh, yeah, Picard. Love it.” Heather absently fluffed the salad greens.
“Are you okay?”
“I’m fine. Why?”
“Nothing—it’s just that usually any mention of Picard sends you into a rapture.” I examined her more closely. Her eyes looked tired, pinched at the corners.
“I’m fine,” she insisted.
Before I could question her further, Jean-Luc stepped through the back door, followed by Louise and Walker.
“I still can’t believe you invited them!” I whispered to Heather under the flurry of introductions.
“I didn’t have a choice!” she hissed back. “Nico said Jean-Luc really wanted to meet Jennifer, and you know Louise sticks to him like shampoo with conditioner. Besides,” she said, wrinkling her nose, “you’re the one who asked Walker.”
“I know, I know! But like I said, we ran into him at Picard and he seemed really apologetic.” In fact, he had expressed his complete bafflement at Louise’s behavior in the charity shop. I still wasn’t sure if I could trust him or not, but he had looked so wistful gazing at the contents of my shopping cart—“Having a party?” he had asked—that I had softened, inviting him to join us.
“Hey,” Walker said a few minutes later, sidling up to the counter, where I was opening wine for dinner. “You need any help?” He spoke without a trace of his usual irony.
I cradled a bottle, showing him the label. “Do you think I should decant this?”
He whistled. “Aloxe-Corton, 2008? Nice. And, yes, absolutely, it needs air.”
I peered through the thick glass at the dark liquid within. “Are you sure? I don’t think it’s throwing a lot of sediment.”
“When in doubt, decant—at least, that’s always been my philosophy.”
“And an excellent philosophy it is.” Jennifer appeared beside us. “Hello.” She nodded at Walker.
“Ms. Russell,” he said. “It is an honor to meet you. I’m such an admirer of your work.”
“And which work is that?” Jennifer, ever wary of sycophants, fixed him with a gimlet eye.
“Your blog at Cost Club’s website,” he said without skipping a beat. “I always tell people that’s where the best wine tips are. Forget Robert Parker!”
“Oh gosh, I don’t think anybody reads that old thing.” Jennifer said with a girlish trill.
“Not true! I’ve made a point of subscribing so that I never miss a post. I particularly liked your analysis of the Portuguese market.” He launched into a recital of the finer points as Jennifer nodded with an intense look on her face. Neither of them noticed as I moved into the dining room to search for a decanter.
In the end, the puff pastry crusts of the individual beef Wellingtons took a lot longer to bake golden brown than the box had indicated, so we were all very jolly by the time we finally sat down to eat.
“Nico, this wine is delicious,” said Jennifer, breathing from her glass. “And Kate, the pairing is beautiful,”
“Thanks.” My knife slid into the meat. “But you can’t really go wrong with beef and red Burgundy, can you?”
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Louise take a sip and make a face.
“C’est le 2008?” Jean-Luc craned his head toward the sideboard, where I’d left the bottle.
I nodded, my mouth full.
“You decanted it,” he observed.
I finished chewing, and swallowed. “Yeah, I wasn’t sure if I should, but . . .”
“I always decant,” Walker spoke up beside me. “Obviously, the older reds need it because of sediment. But I really think the aeration benefits any wine, young or old.”
“Ah bon?” Jean-Luc frowned as he balanced his knife and fork on the edge of his plate. “I actually find that decanting can make a wine fade too fast. You get plenty of exposure to oxygen simply by swirling in the glass.”
“So you never decant?” The incredulity in Walker’s voice suggested that Jean-Luc had just revealed he’d cryogenically preserved a long-lost pet hamster.
“Well, no, not never.” Jean-Luc spoke with an edge. “Obviously, like you said, sediment can be a problem for aged reds, and decanting is necessary. But I do think a lot of sommeliers decant too aggressively, without any consideration for the delicacy of the wine.”
“Yeah, we’re such brutes, us somms,” Walker said with a mocking lilt.
“I wouldn’t have put it quite so bluntly, but . . .” Jean-Luc picked up his cutlery and sliced through an artichoke heart.
Louise, who was sitting next to Jean-Luc, cleared her throat and placed a possessive hand on his thigh just as Heather slugged the remaining liquid in her glass, stood, and announced: “Looks like we could use more wine. No, no”—she waved us all back in our seats as she moved around the table—“I’ll do it.” She grabbed a bottle off the sideboard.
“Oh, chérie, that’s just a simple vin de pays,” Nico protested. “Why don’t we open something more special?”
“Nope.” Heather ripped off the foil and dug in the corkscrew. “I officially proclaim the wine club adjourned for the
evening.” She yanked the cork from the bottle and splashed wine into the nearest empty glass, which happened to be Jennifer’s.
My mentor took a large swig. “Perfect!” she declared with a twinkle in her eye.
Heather moved around the table pouring wine for everyone. Only Louise placed a hand over her glass. “Non, merci,” she said, with an almost indiscernible twist of her lips.
“Louise drinks nothing less than premier cru,” Walker explained in dry tones.
I thought he was joking until Louise gave a careless shrug and said without a hint of embarrassment: “Anything else gives me terrible headaches.”
In the end, Heather’s distraction served its purpose. By the time we were passing around the miniature éclairs and berry tarts, our guests were chatting with renewed cheer. Heather and Louise finally found a subject of mutual interest—the market fishmonger.
“Have you seen him fillet a daurade?”
“Smo. King. Hot.”
Jennifer and Jean-Luc had their heads bent over a lunar calendar for grapevines, which he had whipped from his pocket, and she was asking how it differed in the southern hemisphere. Nico and Walker were debating with great animation the best route for driving across the United States. I seized the opportunity to sneak into the kitchen and put the kettle on for coffee.
Heels clicked across the wood floor, then Jennifer spoke behind me: “Such a lovely evening, darling!”
I turned from the cupboard, where I’d been rummaging for the French press. “Thanks.” I saw she had her coat slung over one arm. “Are you leaving already?”
“Afraid so. I’ve got an early start to Bordeaux. You know how these trips are—death march travels. But this has been a wonderful respite. I shall go forth completely fortified to endure six more days of excruciating small talk.”
“I’m really glad you had a chance to meet Heather and Nico.”
“Me, too.” Jennifer eyed me. “And you, Kate? How are you doing?”
“I’m fine.” I flushed under her gaze. “You were right. I’ve made progress here.” There was so much I wanted to tell her—about Hélène, and all the horrible family secrets that I wished we had never uncovered. But when I opened my mouth, I found myself unable—or unwilling. Instead, I stepped forward and hugged her. “Thank you for coming.” I gave her a quick kiss on the cheek.
“My dear, it was a pleasure.”
“And I’m sorry about that weird interaction between Jean-Luc and Walker earlier,” I added.
She patted my shoulder. “They’re both very loyal to their principles. I admire that.”
“I guess I didn’t realize that decanting was such a divisive topic.”
“Oh, Kate.” Her face creased with mirth. “My dear girl, that was never about decanting.”
“Désolée, mesdames.” The woman behind the counter shook her ash blond head. “I cannot help you.” Her regret was evident—as was her determination not to transgress the official regulations by a single millimeter.
“Please,” I pleaded in French. “I know I don’t have my birth certificate with me, but I swear that I am a direct descendant of the Charpin family. Are you sure you can’t release the file of my great-aunt?”
“Her mother was born right here in Beaune,” Heather added in her most persuasive tones.
“Mesdames.” The clerk’s voice sharpened. “As I said, I would love to be able to help you. But without the proper paperwork, I can do absolutely nothing. Désolée. Merci. Bonne journée!” Her message was clear—we were dismissed.
“Stuffy old fonctionnaire. Stupid French bureaucracy,” Heather huffed as we exited onto the mairie steps.
As if in response, a bolt of lightning cracked the sky, followed by a clap of thunder, and then rain began bucketing to the ground.
“Shit!” Heather shouted above the deluge. “We forgot the umbrella.”
“Should we wait it out?” I yelled back.
She slumped into her coat. “Looks like we don’t have a choice.”
We huddled beneath the portico, watching the rain cascade into oceanic puddles.
“We knew it was a long shot,” I pointed out.
“Still, everything is so impossibly rigid in this damn country. It’s a wonder anything ever gets done at all,” she fumed. A gust of wind blew straight into our faces, and the rain shifted suddenly to hail.
Beside me, Heather fingered the strap on her handbag. “I’ve been doing some reading about France after the Liberation,” she said. “I ordered a couple of books online. The punishment of these horizontal collaborators—it was absolutely brutal. And not just the head shavings—that was only the beginning. These women were stripped half-naked, smeared with tar, marched around town, kicked and beaten, spat upon. It was complete misogyny. Yes, a lot of them were prostitutes. But some of them were raped by the Nazis. Some of them were forced into liaisons so they could get food or medicine for their children. And some of them were falsely denounced out of petty jealousy. At least twenty thousand women had their heads shaved—it happened in pretty much every single town and village in France. Women used as scapegoats.” Her voice had risen with the storm so that she was practically shouting. “And do you know what happened to the men who collaborated? Nothing! In fact, do you know who usually did the head shaving? Men! A lot of them were just trying to divert attention away from their own collaboration during the war!” A blast of wind tore the words from her lips.
But before I could respond, a deep voice boomed from overhead. “Who was collaborating during the war?”
My head whipped around, and my heart began thundering in my chest. For there, looming on the step above us, was Uncle Philippe. He wore a black rain jacket, its deep hood pulled over his head so that his face was cast in shadow.
“Bon—Bonjour,” I stammered, glancing at Heather. She had snapped her mouth shut, as if she didn’t trust herself to speak.
“Bonjour,” he said shortly. “What, may I ask, are you girls doing here?”
Quickly, I tried to gather my wits. “We could ask the same of you,” I replied, even as my mind spun. Had he followed us here? How long had he been there? How much of our conversation had he heard?
“I was dropping off the renewal of my car’s registration,” he said. Was I imagining things, or did his eyes flicker?
“Soccer club,” Heather croaked. She cleared her throat. “I was registering the kids for soccer club.”
Uncle Philippe descended a step, so that he stood directly above us. “I thought, Katreen,” he said, “that I had made myself clear the other day. But I forgot that your mother spent too much time in America. Clearly, she neglected to teach you to respect your elders. Or to respect the past!”
“I do respect the past,” I insisted. “But I also have the right to know about it.”
“I don’t think you understand,” he said icily, “that for my generation, the Second World War is always present; it is touching every aspect of our lives. You will never comprehend what it was like to grow up in its shadow. Do you have any idea how easy you have it? How ridiculous your problems are in comparison? How trivial? Whatever you and my daughter-in-law are doing here, I am telling you now to stop. Leave it alone! There are things you do not need to know. Things that are better left forgotten.” His eyes bored through me, dark pools of fury. “Do you hear me?”
I crossed my arms so he wouldn’t see me shaking. “Oui—Oui,” I stammered.
“Good.” He descended the rest of the steps and, with a final glare, disappeared around the corner of the building.
“How much of our conversation do you think he heard?” I asked Heather several minutes later. We were in her car with the heat blasting, having finally made a run for it through the abating storm.
“Seems like it was just the tail end.”
“I hope so.” I chewed the inside of my lip. “So what do we do now? It seems impossible to continue.”
She turned to me, her face filled with astonishment. “Are you joking? We ha
ve to keep going now.”
“But what about everything he said about respecting the past, and—”
“Don’t you get it, Kate?” Her voice collided with mine. “I have to know the truth. If she was a collaborator, how far did it go? What if she got people sent to the gas chambers?” She took a deep breath, and I saw that she was steeling herself against crying. “I have to know,” she said more calmly. “You understand that, right? Because it could have been my family. It could have been me.”
Even as she spoke, I felt a weight settling upon my shoulders. For weeks it had been hovering above me, this cloak of family responsibility, heavy with unanswered questions of obligation. I had tried to sidestep it, but now with Heather’s anguished eyes upon me I realized the consequences of this truth reached far beyond my own conscience. I had told her that our family’s past would never repeat itself, but now I knew there was only one way to ensure that it never would: sharing the truth. All of it.
I shifted in my seat, pressing a hand against my heart, which was beating with a strange rhythm. Taking a deep breath, I spoke as calmly as I could. “We will find out the truth,” I promised.
3 AOÛT 1941
Cher journal,
The scrap metal dealer is called Bernard, but I don’t know if that’s his real name or a nom de guerre. Our first meeting was at a café in Beaune, an establishment with dirty windows where no one seems to make eye contact. If I had to guess, I would say Bernard is a couple of years younger than I—his cheeks are spattered with acne—and he speaks in boastful tones that remind me of the boys at the lycée. Though Bernard appears full of swagger, Rose’s brother swears he is trustworthy, so against my better judgment, I proposed the exchange of wine and copper. He has made two deliveries to the cabotte. Both times, the burning wood of the gazogene engine wouldn’t fuel his car up the slope, so we had to get out and push. I almost had a nervous breakdown for fear that the Boches would stop and search us, but thus far we have escaped notice. I have not asked where he obtains the copper scraps, nor what he does with the wine I give him. I take care that our bottles go unlabeled.