The Lost Vintage

by Ann Mah

  “Ça va, Kat?” he said, walking over to greet me. Both of us performed a sort of awkward jig, so that we managed not to embrace.

  “I’m sorry,” I apologized. “I didn’t mean to disturb you here.”

  “It’s okay. I was just getting ready to leave.”

  “Do you come here a lot?”

  He flushed. “It’s my father’s birthday. I woke up this morning thinking about him. He would have been sixty-seven today.” He spoke simply, but his grief was palpable.

  “I’m so sorry, Jean-Luc.”

  “Yes, well. C’est comme ça, alors.” He shrugged. “And you? What brings you here today?”

  I hesitated. “I’m, um, trying to learn more about my family’s genealogy.” I gazed out at the rows of headstones. “Though I guess I’m not really sure where to look. This place is bigger than I remembered.”

  “I think your family is over there.” He pointed toward a far corner, shaded by a chestnut tree. “I can show you, if you like.”

  I followed him across the cemetery, trying not to stare at his long legs striding on the path.

  “Here it is.” Jean-Luc indicated a modest mausoleum in grey stone. The plaque on the front read “CHARPIN” and the pointed roof was capped with a prominent cross.

  “We have a mausoleum?”

  He shrugged. “Your family has been here a long time.”

  The structure’s sides were covered with rows of plaques commemorating Charpins from two centuries past, dating all the way back to Jean-Pierre Auguste, who died in 1865.

  “Are you looking for someone in particular?” Jean-Luc asked.

  “My great-grandparents. Well, not my great-grandfather, Edouard. He died in a work camp during the war and the family never recovered his remains. But I thought maybe my great-grandmother . . .”

  Jean-Luc touched a plaque. “Here? Marie-Hélène? Beloved wife of Edouard. Born in 1903, died in 1926.”

  I swallowed a gasp. “What about . . . do you see anyone named . . . Virginie? Or, Hélène? Or my grandfather? Benoît?”

  “Hmm. Non.” He stepped back from the crypt and began examining the surrounding markers.

  My thoughts were churning so fast I felt dizzy. Where was Virginie? Where was Grandpère Benoît? I knew my great-grandmother had died after the war, and I remembered my grandfather’s passing when I was twelve. But why were some members of my family here, and not others? None of it made any sense.

  “Hey!” Jean-Luc called from beside the chestnut tree, waving at me.

  When I reached him he pointed me to a bench with a simple silhouette, its dark blue paint cracked and flaking. On the back, a memorial plate bore the inscription:

  Hélène Marie Charpin

  12 Septembre 1921–4 Novembre 1944

  “Was this what you were looking for?” Jean-Luc asked.

  I drew a shaky breath, blinking away tears that had gathered with surprising force. “I guess it was.” It had seemed impossible that she had survived, but now the certainty was like a punch in the gut.

  “Poor girl. She died just a few months after the Liberation.” He touched the dates with his index finger. “Was she a relation?”

  I nodded. “My great-aunt. She was . . .” I considered the best explanation. She was a collaborator. She was a shorn woman. She was a disgrace. But the words stuck in my throat, and I found myself mute. Instead, I allowed the sentence to dangle in midair, as awkward as a broken bough on a Christmas tree.

  Beside me, Jean-Luc’s expression had darkened. “What?”

  I winced at the flatness of his tone. But before I could form a response, he continued: “You know, I was just being polite. Expressing interest. That’s what friends do, n’est-ce pas?”

  My cheeks were growing hot. “I wasn’t trying to imply that you were prying. But this is complicated,” I said, more sharply than I intended.

  “Why did you come back here, Kat?” he challenged me, and I knew from his tone that he didn’t mean the cemetery—he meant Meursault. Burgundy. France. “Did you ever stop to consider what happened after you left? You just disappeared.” He snapped his fingers. “Without a single concern for anyone left behind, least of all me.”

  “That’s not true,” I protested. “Anyway, I’m sure you now see it was the right decision. Look at how well your domaine is doing.”

  “No.” A muscle moved in his cheek. “Now I see that I was an idiot to think that love was enough to make a relationship last. Now I see that it takes compromise. Sacrifice. Commitment. All the things you were unable to give me.”

  “Me?” My voice rose. “What about you? You’re more attached to this place than anything or anyone, least of all me. To the terroir,” I spat the last word.

  He shook his head in disgust. “If you still can’t understand that, then nothing I say will ever explain it.”

  I stared furiously at the horizon. The days were growing short, and the sun had already begun its creeping descent. “You know what? Forget it. I need to get home before dark and this is pointless.”

  He opened his mouth to continue arguing, but watching me button my jacket, his expression softened. “Let me give you a ride home, at least,” he said.

  “I prefer to walk.”

  “C’mon, Kat. It’s far. You won’t make it home before twilight.”

  “Don’t underestimate me,” I snapped, turning on one heel and marching briskly away.

  About one thing, at least, Jean-Luc was right. By the time I reached Heather and Nico’s house, the sky had deepened to cobalt and the first stars glimmered. In the driveway, I saw my friends’ parked cars, and squared my shoulders for yet another difficult conversation. My argument with Jean-Luc had temporarily distracted me from the situation with Walker. But now I knew I had to confess my mistake.

  Opening the kitchen door, I heard the kids arguing about the best shape of pasta: “Spaghetti!” “No, spaghetti’s totally stupid!” “Moommmmmm, she called me stupid!” “Owww!” Their voices faded as they raced to the living room.

  Heather’s face lit up at the sight of me, and I felt a fresh stab of guilt. “Kate, hey! We haven’t seen you all day!”

  “Hi!” I busied myself hanging my coat and bag on a hook.

  “Kate!” Nico slid into the kitchen on socked feet. “We missed you at lunch!”

  I flushed. “Yeah, I got caught up in the cave and decided to skip it.”

  “Ahh!” He brightened. “Find anything good? Les Gouttes d’Or, peut-être?”

  “Not yet.” I bit my lip. “I have something to tell you,” I said quietly. “I completely screwed up.”

  Heather lowered the orange she was holding to the counter. Nico crossed the kitchen and placed a hand on my arm. I took a deep breath and, as quickly and accurately as possible, told them about Walker and the missing notebook. “It’s totally my fault,” I finished. “I am so sorry this happened.” I forced myself to meet their gazes.

  “Did he hurt you?” Nico demanded. “Because if he did, I swear, I’ll—” He balled his hands into fists.

  “No, no, it wasn’t like that,” I said. “Honestly, I’m still not sure if he took it on purpose.”

  Heather slid past her husband and put her arms around me. “Like you said, you don’t know the full story. It might have been an accident.” She patted my back with a gentle rhythm.

  “Bruyère is right,” said Nico. “Don’t speculate until you’ve talked to Walker again. Do you need the notebook to continue downstairs?”

  “Not really.” I stepped away from Heather and swiped a finger under each eye. “I’ve been transcribing the information into a spreadsheet. Like we talked about.”

  Nico heaved a sigh, visibly relieved. “Then we will worry about Walker when the time comes.” Opening the fridge, he produced a bottle of wine. “Here.” He reached for a glass and poured me a slug. “This’ll make you feel better.”

  And the funny thing was, after a few sips of chilled chardonnay, I did feel a little better.

&
nbsp; “I should start dinner,” Heather said, opening a cupboard. “Pasta?” she asked, staring listlessly within.

  “I’ll help you.” I moved toward the sink and began to fill a pot with water.

  “We need to tell Kate what we discovered,” Nico said, lifting a sagging bag of trash from the can. “We went to the mairie this afternoon and looked up Hélène’s documents. Unfortunately, the clerk couldn’t find her acte de décès. Apparently there was a fire in the ’70s, and they lost a lot of records.”

  Heather chimed in: “So, it might even be possible that she’s still alive!”

  I shook my head. “No. I was at the village cemetery this afternoon. I saw Hélène’s memorial. She died in 1944, soon after the Liberation.”

  “Ah. Too bad.” Heather shrugged.

  “Hélène’s mother is there, too,” I added. “But the weird thing is, none of our other relatives are buried there. Not Virginie, and not Benoît either.”

  “C’est vrai,” Nico said. “Grandpère Benoît died when I was twelve and he was buried in Mâcon—next to his mother, Virginie. I still remember the funeral procession. Hours in a hot car, and Maman wouldn’t let us roll down the windows.”

  “Grandpère Benoît . . .” I rubbed my eyes, remembering. I hadn’t gone to his funeral. My mother had come back for it alone.

  “The other day,” Heather said musingly, “you said Benoît never talked about the war, because his childhood was so unhappy. But did he ever mention Hélène?”

  Nico shook his head. “Never. Did your mother?” he asked me.

  “No.”

  The three of us fell silent. In the background blared the sugary voices of children’s television.

  “I suppose”—Nico reached for the bottle of wine and poured a small glass for himself—“we could ask my father.”

  “Yeah, right.” Heather laughed. “Because our last conversation with him went so well.”

  Nico ran a hand through his hair and frowned at the cellar door. “Actually, I think the time has come to tell the rest of the family about the secret cave.”

  It took me a long time to fall asleep that night and when I did I dreamed of The Test, that old recurring nightmare in which the tasting glasses multiplied every time I started answering a question. “Bordeaux, Right Bank,” I scrawled and when I raised my head to swirl and sniff the sample, five more wines had appeared on my desk, then there were ten, fifteen, thirty, sixty. The hands of the clock sped round to the hour as my frantic swirling became swilling, drops of wine scattering across the test papers. On the desk, my cell phone vibrated with a text from Jennifer: It’s Bordeaux, Left Bank!

  Sweat prickled across my palms. Why was my phone out? Had the proctor seen it? Was he going to accuse me of cheating? The phone pulsed with another message; Jennifer again: Hint: C’est pas Graves!;) I snatched it off the desk and shoved it into my back pocket, but it hummed with messages, so that I could scarcely concentrate. Buzz, buzz, buzz! Would she please just stop? I squeezed my eyes shut. Jennifer, I thought. Stop. STOP!

  BUZZ BUZZ, BUZZZZZZZZ!

  I awoke, soaked with sweat. The sound of my pounding heart filled my ears, so loud it took me several seconds to realize that some of the noise was actually coming from my cell phone, which was vibrating on the bedside table. I picked it up and pressed the button to illuminate the screen.

  Missed call from Walker.

  Missed call from Walker.

  Text from Walker:

  Hey—Sorry, didn’t see this til now. I just looked and think I do have the wrong notebook—no MW essays inside. WHA’?! Not sure if it’s green or red because . . . did I mention that I’m color-blind? I can drop it off as soon as I get back from Paris. More soon!

  Color-blind? Was he being honest, or covering his tracks? For a long moment, I stared at his words, the screen burning artificially in the dark room, and then I pressed a button on the phone until it went black and silent. Flipping my pillow over, I smoothed my cheek against the cool cotton. I tried to go back to sleep, but my thoughts kept returning to the events of the day, first Walker’s duplicity, and then that confrontation with Jean-Luc. I tossed and turned, and when I closed my eyes, strange bright shapes floated before them. Without even knowing why, I found my face wet with tears.

  16 JUILLET 1942

  Cher journal,

  Saltpeter. Charcoal. Sulfur. Just three things, but when combined in the proper proportions, they need only a flicker of fire to cause destruction. Rose and I decided to make gunpowder because of her romantic attachment to it. “It’s the earliest known chemical explosive!” she said. “The Chinese had it in the ninth century!” But truthfully, it was also the simplest.

  We had initial success with a tiny quantity and, looking back, I think that was the problem—it gave us too much confidence. Madame Grenoble had granted us small amounts of various common elements and compounds, among them sulfur and saltpeter (which she insisted on calling by its scientific name, potassium nitrate). And while she never left us completely unattended in the laboratory, there was the odd moment when she stepped away to chat with another teacher or collect papers from the main office. At these opportunities, Rose and I leapt into frantic activity, weighing out precise quantities of sulfur and saltpeter, tapping the powders into glassine envelopes. Later, at the cabotte, we used my belle-mère ’s mortar and pestle to grind a lump of charcoal, saving the black dust in a small tin box and weighing it out during our next laboratory session. All told, given the constraints of time and equipment, it took us three weeks to produce a lump of gunpowder the size of a sugar cube. We tested it one afternoon in a clearing behind the cabotte: Rose touched a match to the wick, and both of us ran to a safe distance. The sparks shot high enough to make us leap onto our bicycles and pedal like fury—for fear the Boches had seen them, too, and were sending a patrol to investigate.

  After this, our problem became not “if” but “how.” Specifically, how can we obtain enough sulfur to produce a useful amount of gunpowder? Somehow, Stéphane had gleaned saltpeter from a local charcutier, a disgruntled man who has little use for his supply now that there’s scarcely any meat left to cure. Our success rested in finding the sulfur.

  “We could try stealing the key to the supply cabinet,” I said one day as we were walking toward the lycée.

  “Impossible,” Rose moaned. “She never lets it out of her clutches.”

  It’s true. Madame G. holds on to that key like a warden at Fresnes, the prison where the leaders of the Résistance are locked up to rot.

  “Anyway,” Rose said, “have you noticed how she has to record every single thing she removes from the cupboard? Down to a tenth of a gram? If we steal anything, she’ll get in trouble. It’s hopeless.”

  “It’s not,” I insisted through clenched teeth. But we couldn’t find a way around it.

  Though Stéphane was initially pleased with our progress, in the past few weeks, he has grown more impatient. A number of problems have beset our circuit—a series of cloudy nights that we hoped would be clear, a set of forged papers gone missing, and, most distressing of all, Bernard’s arrest. Yes, Bernard, my black marketeer. He was last seen two weeks ago, led from his mother’s apartment in handcuffs. Ever since, we have been on a knife edge for fear that the Gestapo would torture him into informing on us. So far, nothing has happened, Dieu merci. But our group has turned jittery. Irritable. All of us, but especially Stéphane, who has hatched an elaborate plan to help Bernard escape from the local prison—one that centers on a gunpowder bomb.

  “Just steal the sulfur,” Stéphane commanded us. “We need to act before he’s sent to Drancy, or worse—Poland.” Everyone shuddered. Poland means work camps. Poland means death.

  And yet, what about Madame G.? Every time she left the laboratory, I checked the door of the supply cabinet to see if she had left it unlocked. Always, the answer was no—she was meticulous with the key.

  Yesterday afternoon we arrived for our regular laboratory session, but as s
oon as we entered the room, I knew something was wrong. Madame G. was behind her desk, staring intently at a piece of paper, barely glancing up when we walked in. Rose and I began arranging our equipment; we had decided to experiment with hydrolysis of salts.

  “Mince!” Rose swore. “We need ammonium for one of the weak bases.” She glanced uncertainly at Madame G.

  “I’ll ask.” I slid off my stool and moved toward our professor. But so absorbed was she that even when I was a meter behind her, she didn’t notice me. My eyes slid to the sheet before her, a letter of some sort.

  We, the undersigned teachers of history, literature, and science who believe it our duty to instill in our students a love of freedom and tolerance, hereby state that we consider it unworthy of our mission to take our students to the film Le Juif Süss . . .

  Before I could read further, she thrust a notebook over the paper, her head whipping around to fix me with a glare.

  “Uh, excusez-moi, Madame. We were hoping for some ammonium from the supply cabinet?”

  “J’arrive,” she said in an irritable tone and I sidled back to my seat.

  A couple of minutes later, Madame rose and I joined her at the cabinet, waiting at a respectful distance as she unlocked the doors. She had just placed the bottle in my outstretched hand when Madame Bernard, our former literature professor, popped her head through the door. “Eugénie, did you have a chance to read the petition—” She caught sight of me standing next to the cupboard. “Pardon, je m’excuse,” she apologized. “I thought you were alone. I’ll come back later.”

  “Non, non, c’est bon,” Madame G. snatched the paper off her desk and hurried after her colleague. “Let’s talk in your classroom.” I heard their voices hissing down the hall.

  “It’s a letter of protest,” I told Rose quietly. “Refusing to take their students to see that horrible anti-Semitic propaganda film.” But she was stabbing the air with her index finger.

  “The cabinet,” she said urgently. “She left it unlocked.”

  For a second I couldn’t move. Then I forced my limbs into action, easing open the door, searching frantically among the shelves in search of the bottle marked “sulfate.” Where was it? Finally, near the top, I spotted a jar half-filled with a chalky powder the jaundiced color of egg yolks. I snatched it up, but before I could return to my desk and slip the bottle in my bag, I heard Madame G. in the hallway. “Merci!” she called. The slam of a door. The click of her heels returning to the laboratory.