The Lost Vintage

by Ann Mah

  Paul’s head snapped up. Chloé gasped. Aunt Jeanne stared at the floor.

  “Papa,” Chloé demanded of her father, “is this true?”

  “Oui.” His shoulders sank. “It’s true. After the Liberation, Hélène was accused of being a collaborator. She died shortly afterward.”

  “Why didn’t you tell us?” Chloé’s face had drained of color, except for two flaming spots in the center of each cheek. I’d never seen her so distressed.

  “I—” Uncle Philippe coughed and cleared his throat. When he spoke again, his eyes were hooded. “My father never talked of Hélène.”

  “But you knew about her,” Nico persisted. “How?”

  My uncle crossed his arms against his chest, but not before I saw that his hands were shaking. “I must have been about ten or eleven. There was a group of boys at school, an angry, tough gang who used to taunt me and Céline.” He nodded at me. “Your mother hated them. They called us collabos—said we had an aunt who was a Nazi whore. I told your mother to ignore them, but she insisted on telling our father. At first, Papa told us to forget them, said they would lose interest and stop. But it didn’t stop and when we complained to him again, he told us to never ever speak about Hélène. He said she had brought shame upon our house. For years the taunts continued and our father never did anything, never said anything. And that was how we knew that it was true.”

  My mother’s entire childhood, I thought, had been shadowed by this family ignominy, this indelible stain. Finally it made sense why every visit here had been so wracked with tension, why she had no desire to return. Finally I understood Uncle Philippe’s aversion to the most trivial things—his reluctance to open the domaine to visitors, his refusal to create a website. And yet by trying to hide the truth, our family had prevented itself from ever moving forward into the future.

  I stole a look around the room. Heather was fiddling with a tea strainer, her face pinched and tired though, also, perhaps, relieved. Nico was moving toward her, about to slip an arm around her waist. Chloé was gulping shallow breaths, her chest heaving. Paul stood with his arms crossed, head bowed to the floor. My aunt and uncle were motionless, guilt etched upon their features.

  A crash from the fireplace broke the spell—a disintegrating log releasing a shower of sparks—and Nico sprang forward to reposition the screen. When he stepped back again, he glanced around the room at our gloomy faces, his eyes coming to rest on his father’s wracked figure. “Should we . . .” His expression softened. “Let’s open some wine for everyone, shall we?”

  Uncle Philippe visibly relaxed. “Bonne idée,” he said, moving toward the cabinet that held the wineglasses.

  “I’ll fetch some bottles from the cellar,” Nico said. “What do you think—the 2011?”

  “A bit older, I think,” said Uncle Philippe.

  Nico raised his eyebrows. “The 2009?”

  “Older.”

  “1985?”

  “Mon fils”—Uncle Philippe clapped a hand on his son’s arm—“this evening we will drink the 1945.”

  I repressed a gasp—1945 was considered one of the most exceptional millésimes of the twentieth century. “Are you sure, Uncle?” I asked. “That’s really generous.”

  He squared his shoulders. “I am absolutely sure,” he said. “We will drink the 1945, to honor the end of the war, and all those who suffered. And we will drink to Hélène, our aunt. For too many decades, we have kept her hidden, indulging our shame.” His eyes sought Heather across the room, and he gave a nod. “It is time for us to acknowledge the truth, and our mistakes, both past and present, so that we may put them behind us. And also time to discuss the future, and the discovery of this secret cave. I hope, Katreen,” he turned to me and bowed, “that you will give us an overview of what you’ve found.”

  “Of course,” I said immediately.

  Heather offered her father-in-law a tiny smile. “Merci,” she said.

  I would never have thought it possible, but after spending so many hours in the cave, I had grown fond of the place. Whereas once the shadowy, underground chamber had seemed ominous, creeping with many-legged creatures, devoid of light and air, now its darkness felt peaceful—quiet and still. Each morning I descended the stairs and breathed in the atmosphere, appreciating anew the damp chill that was as much a part of the wine as the grapes, the sun, the soil.

  This morning I got to work straightaway, losing myself among the bottles, completely absorbed in counting and logging quantities in my green notebook, which Walker had finally returned to me. Yes, Walker stopped by the domaine a few days ago, and we had a brief exchange—he was sheepish and apologetic, I was brittle and skeptical—and while I wasn’t certain of his true motives, I decided to pretend to take him at face value while secretly nurturing a healthy suspicion.

  By the time I realized I was hungry, it was four o’clock, and there was just one more rack of bottles left to inventory. Wait a second. Only one more? In the whole cellar? After two months of work, was it finally possible? I walked carefully through the cave, inspecting the rows and double-triple-quadruple-checking my notes. But it was true—just one final rack and my inventory of the secret cellar would be complete.

  Holding my breath, I turned to the final bottles, my last chance to discover the precious cache of Les Gouttes d’Or. I plucked one from the rack and wiped it clean with a rag, angling it toward the light. At the sight of the first word—“Les” in ornate Gothic font—my heart caught in my throat. I swiped at the label to read the rest.

  Les Caillerets. Not Les Gouttes d’Or. Wherever those bottles were—hidden? stolen? sold?—they were forever lost to us. I sighed deeply, frustrated, stirring tufts of mold on the bottle in my hand. But then I looked down at it—Les Caillerets—and softened. It was still one of the greatest wines in the world, a legendary parcel of vines cultivated since the Middle Ages. In any ordinary circumstance, a rare cache of Les Caillerets would be an amazing discovery.

  In less than a week, I would fly home to San Francisco. I would reclaim my apartment from the visiting Japanese professors, and my rattletrap thirdhand Volvo from Jennifer’s driveway. I would spread the word among my former colleagues until I found a new job, in a new restaurant, once again working the floor as a sommelier. In a few months, I would take The Test and cross my fingers that the results would launch me to the next step in my career. I would miss Heather, Nico, and the kids, miss the crumpled, crumb-strewn affection of their household. Now that I’d found them again, I didn’t want to lose their friendship. But I would lure them to visit me in California with promises of Alcatraz tours and Ghirardelli chocolates. I knew I couldn’t come back to Burgundy. I had too many memories associated with this place, the specters of shame and ghosts of lost happiness swirling into a melancholy fog.

  I made my final notes, closed the notebook, and lingered in the cave for a moment, breathing in the combination of moisture, mold, and secrets. I had come to Burgundy to immerse myself in its wine, to finally understand what had eluded me for so long. But I feared the past weeks had only widened the gaps in my knowledge. After tasting and studying so many different appellations, the wines still seemed remote: elegant, supple strangers. I had hoped this time here would make me understand this place—at least enough to pass The Test. But now I knew there hadn’t been enough time. There would never be enough time.

  Part III

  Chapter

  13

  “Hey, Chef added an artichoke lemongrass carpaccio to the tasting menu.” Becky—or was it Betsy?—thrust a menu sheet in my hands. “Is that still cool with the wine pairings?”

  “Um, no,” I said, repressing a groan. “I’m going to have to redo them.”

  “Mmm’kay, well, service starts in five minutes—so you’ll take care of it now, right?”

  “Sure,” I said, and she flounced off.

  It was my third day at Pongo y Perdita, a new “Thaitalian” small plates café that had just opened at the Ferry Building. It was a comp
letely different scene from Courgette—loud, flashy, and cheffed by a reality cooking show winner who thought food paired best with Johnny Walker Red—although I had to admit a fondness for the kaffir-lime-green-curry-red-snapper cioppino.

  I’d been home in San Francisco for about two months—long enough to stop mentally translating everything into French before I spoke, but not enough time to lose my taste for unpasteurized cheese, whose soft, salty, lingering perfume I still craved after every meal. I had thrown away the open jars of condiments from the fridge, and unearthed the wineglasses from under the sink. I had gotten a library card and checked out a stack of books about occupied France and World War II, hoping they could add context to my recent experiences. And, at Jennifer’s urging, I had registered for The Test in June—only six months away. “If you’re not ready then, you’ll never be,” she had said. And though I didn’t feel ready, not even close, I knew she was right. It was time to take The Test, to face my destiny: glory and success or failure and reinvention.

  Service tonight jerked along in a left-footed quickstep. The restaurant had been open for only three weeks and the front of house staff still had a lot of rough edges to smooth before we achieved the gliding waltz of Courgette. By the end of the evening, the effort of avoiding my colleagues’ jostling elbows and trodding heels had left me more exhausted than usual. I stashed my clogs and apron in my locker and headed home, not stopping for a post-shift drink with my colleagues, even though Becky had told us to start “team building.” I’d pay for it later.

  The night was cloaked in a salty fog that bathed my cheeks and frizzed my hair. I shivered on the walk to my car, and when I climbed into the driver’s seat, the windows immediately clouded from the inside. I switched on the engine and blasted the fan, scrolling through my phone as I waited for the mist to disappear, smiling when I saw a long email from Heather.

  “Hi, Kate! How are you?” she began. I could almost hear her happy, high-pitched voice through the glowing screen. She wrote of Christmas: “For the first time ever it was just the four of us. We went skiing in the Alps—it was FAB!” Anna’s newest obsession: “She begged Père Noël for a sewing machine. I can barely thread a needle . . . is she seriously my child?!” Thibault’s latest accomplishment: “He can ride a bike! A two-wheeler! What’s next? A studio apartment?!” Nico’s recent fitness craze: “He’s taking a yoga class at the mairie, and greeting everyone with ‘ namaste.’” Even Jean-Luc got a mention: “He came over on New Year’s Eve and made us baked Alaska. The kids were so excited.” There was, I noticed, no mention of Louise—presumably Heather was trying to spare my feelings.

  “The biggest news,” she continued, “is that we are moving ahead with the B&B!” She and Nico had plans to overhaul the kitchen and install a couple of bathrooms upstairs; they were starting to file for permits. “Papi referred us to a couple of architects,” she wrote. “He’ll never admit it, but I think he’s secretly happy to see us breathing some life into this place. Of course, none of this would be possible without your discovery.”

  Uncle Philippe, Nico, and I had been in touch as we made quiet plans to sell the hidden cellar’s collection of wine. “As you know,” Heather wrote, “Jennifer’s contacts have been super helpful. If the auction takes place in London maybe you can come over! Oh, and you’ll be amused to learn that Walker—believe it or not—is still staying at Jean-Luc’s house, but reportedly moving to a chambre de bonne in Beaune this weekend!”

  The atmosphere in the car was suddenly stifling. Glancing up, I saw the windshield had cleared, so I switched off the heater before scanning the final paragraphs of Heather’s email.

  “One last bit of news,” she wrote. “It’s hardly anything, but you’re the only person I know who’d understand. Do you remember those letters we found in the box with Hélène’s schoolbooks?”

  I summoned up the memory of a thin packet of envelopes tied with a faded pink satin ribbon. Sent to Hélène by someone called Rose, they had revealed nothing more than a friendship between two girls who shared an interest in science that was ahead of their time.

  “I decided to find out more about Rose,” Heather wrote. “I thought maybe I could contact her family—maybe they still had the letters Hélène wrote to her. As it turned out, I didn’t have to dig too deep, because she and Hélène were classmates.” Her full name, Heather reported, was Rose Sara Reinach, and she graduated from the Lycée de jeunes filles in 1940, a small, slight girl with dark curls, according to the photograph in the annuaire. But something about her name felt significant to Heather. “Sara isn’t a common French name, unless you’re Jewish . . . well, given the time frame, I was nervous. I searched online, and nothing came up. But then I found the website of the Holocaust Museum, which included a database of Jews deported from France. When I typed in the name, two pages of Reinachs popped up. Rose was number seven. All her info was there. Date of birth: 3 Mar 1921. Place of birth: Beaune. Convoy number: 18. Date of convoy: 9 Sep 1942. Convoy destination: Auschwitz.”

  I thought back to Rose’s letters, recalling brittle stationery covered in round, girlish handwriting, and a lot of scientific talk about spontaneous combustion, or something. The letters hadn’t painted a very clear picture of her, but she had seemed clever and intense. And young. How horrifying that her life had ended so cruelly, her promise snuffed out and forgotten. Had Hélène known about Rose’s fate? Or . . . an awful thought emerged unbidden: Had Hélène turned her in? I had feared making a discovery like this, and now it appeared to be true. Despite the heat choking the car, a chill ran down my spine. For a few seconds, I stared out the windshield at the fuzzy halos of light surrounding the street lamps before returning to the email.

  I bit my lip as I read the rest of her message: “I’m starting to understand why Papi warned us about the skeletons in the closet. I know I was the one who pressed to learn more about Hélène, but the truth is, the implications are so awful, I’m losing my nerve. Don’t get me wrong—I don’t think Hélène should be a secret. I still feel we have a responsibility to tell Anna and Thibault about her when they’re older, just as they have one to tell their children. All the same, I’m ready to close this particular chapter of family history. At least for now.”

  She ended the email with a flurry of questions—“How are you? How were your holidays? How’s your new job?”—and signed off with a line of XOs.

  I dropped the phone into my lap, its light ebbing away, and rested my head on the steering wheel. I had dreaded a revelation like this one, but nothing could have prepared me for the way it twisted in my gut: My ancestors—they were anti-Semites. No, worse. They were Nazis. A bitter taste rose in my mouth, and I opened the car door and leaned outside, retching as if that could eject the poison from my family’s history. How could we ever move forward from something like this? I forced myself to breathe slowly, allowing the marine fog to cool my cheeks, and it occurred to me that we had the example of an entire nation before us: You just never talked about it.

  25 OCTOBRE 1942

  Cher journal,

  Vichy is censoring Radio Paris so heavily, people go about humming a little tune: “Radio Paris ment, Radio Paris ment / Radio Paris est allemande” (Radio Paris is lying, Radio Paris is lying, Radio Paris is German). The only reliable news of France comes via Radio Londres on the BBC, but the signal is blocked more and more. Last night I spent ages hunting for it, until finally I admitted defeat and crept to bed, deprived of one of the few bright spots of my day. Obviously, the newspapers are also filled with rubbish. Any military action is always favorable to the Germans—they are always saying things like “this withdrawal is a way to gain new impetus”—so we must read between the lines and guess at the actual situation.

  Papa has been missing for eight weeks and three days. We have had no news—neither from Stéphane and the circuit, nor from Madame’s circle of spineless collaborator friends—and so we are left to wait. Wait, and wend our way around the signs of Papa, which are everywhere. His p
lace at the table, empty. His winter boots in the hall, empty. His hat on the hook, empty. Only his grapevines are overfull—in desperate need of winter pruning, but I can’t manage it on my own. As for this year’s vendanges . . . well, with Papa gone, I couldn’t manage the harvest, either. We sold the grapes to Monsieur Parent up the road, and for the first time in the domaine’s history, someone else made wine from our fruit. Papa will be horrified, but given the summer’s meager sunlight, this year’s vintage is sure to be mediocre at best.

  3 NOVEMBRE 1942

  Madame’s crise de nerfs—if that’s what you call never leaving your room—continues. For several weeks, she has spent most of her time in bed with the curtains drawn, emerging only at night, when the house is still. In the morning, I find bits of food missing from the larder, crumbs scattered across the table.

  The atmosphere in this house is oppressive to the point of being unbearable, so that I have thought of leaving a thousand times. Another réseau has tried to recruit me—they need passeurs to guide people to and from the region’s hidden airstrips. I could live in a safe house with other résistants, speak my mind freely among them, fight openly for our cause. Yes, it would be dangerous—but oh, I would be free! Free from the responsibilities of this house! Free from Madame’s accusing glare! Only two things keep me here. First, the boys. Who would care for them? Madame flies into a rage at the slightest hint of fractiousness, so that they have learned to cower before her moods. If I were to leave, I fear they might go completely neglected. Second, there is my promise to Papa. I haven’t forgotten that I swore to stay and protect the domaine, no matter what happens—and with Madame unable (or unwilling) to shoulder any responsibility, this vow seems more important than ever. No, I am stuck here until Papa returns.