The Vineyard

by Maria Duenas

  “They also reached Mexico.”

  “You’ll know, then, what kind of person I’m talking about: tenacious, hardworking men who came from nothing and started their own businesses. Some of them, like Don Matías’s grandfather, invested what they earned in vines and prospered. Once the family was settled in Jerez, with solid capital and his business on a sure footing, his heir asked on his son Matías’s behalf for the hand in marriage of Elisa Osorio, the daughter of the ruined Marquis of Benaocaz, a young Jerez beauty with a lineage as noble as her estate was poor. And so, as has become very common in these parts in recent years, nobility was allied to finance, as I’ve already explained.”

  “The prosperous wine bourgeoisie marrying into the impoverished local aristocracy, is that right?”

  “Exactly. I see you’ve already learned a lot, my friend. Another glass?”

  “Why not?” said Larrea, sliding his glass across the marble tabletop. And ten more if need be, if only Ysasi carried on talking.

  “To sum up: Don Matías followed in his predecessors’ footsteps. He worked his fingers to the bone, used his foresight and intelligence to multiply his investments and capital a hundredfold. But he made one huge mistake.”

  “He neglected his children,” Larrea concluded. And Nico’s shadow flitted through his mind.

  “That’s right. He was so obsessed with increasing his wealth that they escaped his control. By the time Don Matías realized this, they were both like stray bullets shooting off in directions it was impossible to correct. His wife, Doña Elisa, pinned her hopes on marrying them to two young women from prominent families, but they had neither dowries nor character to bring to their marriages. Luis and Jacobo never had houses of their own: to the end of their days they went on living in the mansion on Calle de la Tornería where you are currently staying. And it was pretty much the same with the daughter, the beautiful María Fernanda: a disastrous marriage with Andrés Zayas, one of her brothers’ friends from Seville whose pockets were empty but who lived the high life.”

  Go slowly, Ysasi, slowly. Gustavo Zayas and his affairs will require more time. Let’s do things in order and leave him until later. Fortunately, the doctor drank another sip of brandy and then took up the story again at the point Larrea was wishing for.

  “Well, eventually, having given up on his sons, Don Matías began to put his trust in the third generation. In the firstborn of his firstborn, to be precise, who was also called Matías—Matí. Despite being the son of a well-known rake, he appeared to be made of sterner stuff. As good-looking and friendly as his father, but with a great deal more brains. From an early age he liked to accompany his grandfather to the winery. He spoke English because he had been at school in England; he knew all the workmen by name and was starting to understand the secrets of the trade.”

  “I suppose he was also your friend.”

  At this, the doctor raised his glass toward the ceiling with a melancholy smile, as if making a toast to someone no longer in the land of the living.

  “Yes, my good friend Matí. In fact, we were as thick as thieves from infancy: we were more or less the same age, give or take a year, and I spent all my time with them. Matí and Luisito, the two brothers. Gustavo, too, whenever he came here from Seville. Inés and Soledad. I grew up without a mother and was an only child, and so either I was accompanying my grandfather to attend to Doña Elisa’s aches and pains, or my father to deal with any other health problems in the family. I used to stay to have lunch, dinner, even to sleep. If I counted the hours of my childhood and youth I spent with the Montalvos, they would be far more than in my own house. Until it all began to fall apart.”

  This time it was Mauro Larrea who picked up the bottle and poured them two more glasses. When he lifted the bottle, he saw they had already drunk more than half.

  “Exactly two days after Sol and Edward Clayton’s wedding.”

  Ysasi fell silent, as if mentally traveling back in time.

  “It was during a hunt in Coto de Doñana: a terrible accident. Either due to carelessness or simply a dark twist of fate, Matí ended up with a lead bullet in his stomach, and there was nothing anyone could do for him.”

  By all that’s holy, a son killed with his guts hanging out in the first flush of youth. Larrea thought of Nico, of Mariana, and choked. He would have liked to ask for more details, if it really was an accident, or if someone was guilty, but the doctor, with his tongue loosened by the brandy and also perhaps from nostalgia, continued to pour out his memories:

  “I’m not saying it all came crashing down at once, as if the family had been hit by one of those French time bombs, but following Matí the grandson’s burial, things started to slide toward a catastrophe. His father, Luis, became a complete hypochondriac. His uncle, Luis’s brother Jacobo, continued burning the candle at both ends, but only halfheartedly. Don Matías, the grandfather, aged as if crushed beneath a hundred-pound stone, and the women in the family shut themselves in to say the rosary and to occupy themselves entirely with their ailments.”

  “What about you and the younger generation?”

  “To cut a long story short, let’s just say we already had our paths marked out. As they had planned, Sol settled in London with Edward and started her own family; she used to come back to Jerez from time to time, but less and less often. For his part, Gustavo embarked for Cuba, and after that we heard very little from him. Sol’s sister Inés became a nun in a cloistered Augustinian order. I went on studying at the Faculty of Medical Sciences in Cádiz, then completed my qualifications in Madrid. In other words, our group disintegrated. And while Jerez prospered, that paradise where we grew up believing we were protected from the whole world gradually vanished.”

  “And little Luis was the only one who stayed.”

  “At first, following Matí’s death, Luisito was sent to the Naval College in Seville, but he soon returned, and he was the only one to witness the family’s fall. He ended up burying all the older generation, one after the other. Fortunately or unfortunately for Runt, they did not take long to start passing away. And when after a number of years he was left all alone . . . well, I think you know . . .”

  They were the last to leave the club that night. As they passed through the Puerta de Sevilla no one else was in sight. Ysasi insisted on accompanying him back to the mansion. When they reached it, he looked up at its façade as if wanting to take it all in.

  “When Luisito left for Cuba, I think he was well aware that there would never be a way back.”

  “What do you mean, Manuel?”

  “Luis Montalvo was dying, and he knew it. He was aware the end was near.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  “I was thinking of coming in my phaeton, as I said, but when I saw what a magnificent day it was, I changed my mind.”

  Soledad spoke without dismounting from her horse. She was sheathed in an exquisite black riding habit that, despite its masculine air, only served to make her look even more attractive. A short jacket with a narrow waist, a white high-collared shirt, an ample skirt to allow her to move freely, a top hat with a small veil over her pinned-back hair. She was tall, straight-backed, imposing. Next to her, a lad was holding the bridle of another splendid mount. For him, he presumed.

  They left Jerez behind, taking byroads, tracks, and paths under the midmorning sun as they headed for La Templanza, across bright hills filled with silence and fresh air. Hundreds if not thousands of vines were planted in row upon row, twisting in upon themselves, with no leaves or fruit, anchored to the ground. She told him that this kind of white, porous earth was known as albariza.

  “In autumn the vines look dead, their stocks are dried-out, they’ve lost their color. But they’re only sleeping, taking a rest. Gathering the strength that will rise from their roots. Gaining nourishment to bring forth new life.”

  They rode side by side as they conversed. Soledad did most of th
e talking.

  “They’re not just planted haphazardly,” she continued. “The vines need the blessing of the winds, the alternation of the sea breezes from the west and the dry, eastern ones. Looking after them is a complicated art.”

  Riding at a slow trot, they had reached what she called the “house of vines.” It, too, was in a precarious state. They dismounted and allowed their horses to rest.

  “You see? Our vines—or, more precisely, your vines—have had nobody caring for them for years, and now just look.”

  It was true. Dried leaves curled up on the branches, shriveled-up shoots.

  She was speaking without looking at him, with one hand shading her eyes as she scanned the horizon. He gazed again at her delicate neck and the line of her molasses-colored hair. Some strands had slipped out of her bun during the ride and shone in the near-noonday sun.

  “When we were children we loved coming here for the grape harvest. We often persuaded the adults to let us stay and sleep. At night we would steal out to the beds of straw where the grapes were left to dry so that we could listen to the laborers talking and singing.”

  It would have been polite of the miner to show more interest in the story she was telling him. In fact, he was intrigued to learn about vines and grapes, everything that grew aboveground that he knew nothing about. But he could not forget that Sol Claydon had brought him out of Jerez for another reason. And since he sensed he wasn’t going to like it, he wanted to hear what it was as soon as possible.

  “The harvest is usually at the beginning of September,” she went on, “when the temperature starts to ease off. But it’s the vine itself that establishes the time: its height, its foliage, and even its fragrance will indicate when the grapes are ripe. Sometimes the vintners wait until the moon is in the fourth quarter, because they think that’s when the fruit will be softer and sweeter. Or if there’s been rain, the harvesting is postponed so that the roots can fill with the cold again—that’s the white dust that gathers on them—because it helps speed up the fermentation later on. If the moment isn’t well chosen, the wine will be of lower quality. If the grapes are harvested too early, the wine will be weak; if the moment is right, they’ll turn out robust, strong, full-bodied.”

  She stood there, a striking image in her riding habit, with the light and the land enveloping her. She sounded nostalgic but also showed an evident wealth of knowledge about all that surrounded them. As well as a covert wish to delay for as long as possible her real intentions.

  “Apart from all the hard work at the grape harvest, even at quieter moments such as later in autumn there was always activity around here. The surveyor, the caretaker, the laborers . . . My friends in London always laugh when I tell them vines are looked after with almost as much care as English rose gardens.”

  She walked over to the front door of the house but did not even touch it.

  “My goodness, what a state it’s in . . .” she murmured. “Could you try opening it?”

  He did the same as with the winery, putting his shoulder to it. Inside, it smelled of desolation. Empty rooms, no water pitchers in their store, the larder empty of food. But this time Soledad didn’t get carried away by memories; only a pair of old, worn-out straw-bottomed chairs caught her attention.

  She went over and picked up one of them, intending to bring it with her.

  “Leave it, you’ll get dirty.”

  Mauro Larrea picked up both the chairs and carried them out into the sunshine. Dusting them off with his handkerchief, he placed them against the front wall, facing the vast area of bare vines. Two humble low chairs with fraying canes where once upon a time the hired hands must have sat beneath the stars after their long hours of toil, or the caretaker and his wife rested and chatted, or the children of the house on those magical nights perfumed with the smell of recently picked grapes that Soledad Montalvo remembered so well. Chairs that were witness to simple lives, to the relentless passage of time and the seasons in their eternal round. Now, incongruously, the two of them were occupying the chairs, with their fine clothes, their complicated lives, and their air of people who had little to do with the earth and its demands.

  She raised her face to the sky, eyes shut tight.

  “In London they’d think I was a lunatic if they saw me in Saint James’s or Hyde Park sitting out in the sun like this.”

  A dove was cooing, the rusty weathervane squeaked on the rooftop, and they prolonged for a few moments longer the unreal sensation of peace. But Mauro Larrea knew that, beneath this apparent calm, beneath the temperance that lent its name to the vineyard and behind which she was pretending to shelter, something was stirring. This disconcerting woman who only a few days before had slipped into his life had not brought him to this isolated spot to talk about the grape harvests of her childhood or asked him to bring out the chairs so that they could sit together admiring the countryside’s calm beauty.

  “When are you going to tell me what you want from me?”

  She didn’t shift her posture or open her eyes. She simply sat there, allowing the rays of the autumn sun to caress her skin.

  “Have you ever been completely wrong about an important decision in your life, Mauro?”

  “I’m afraid I have.”

  “One that dragged other people into it, put them at risk?”

  “That, too.”

  “And how far would you go to correct that mistake?”

  “Up to now, I’ve crossed an ocean and arrived in Jerez.”

  “Then I hope you’ll understand me.”

  She lowered her face and turned her slender figure toward him.

  “I need you to pretend to be my cousin Luisito.”

  At any other moment, Mauro Larrea’s immediate reaction would have been a rude remark or a bitter guffaw. But out there, in the midst of the silence of the parched land and bare vines, he immediately realized that her plea was not some extravagant whim but something she had carefully considered. He hid his bewilderment and let her go on.

  “A while ago,” Soledad said, “I did something I shouldn’t have, something that the persons affected never knew about. Let’s say I carried out some inappropriate commercial transactions.”

  She gazed out toward the horizon again, shielding herself from his intrigued look.

  “I don’t think it’s necessary to go into details. I only want you to know I did it in an attempt to protect my daughters, and to some extent myself.”

  She appeared to have collected her thoughts and pushed back a lock of escaped hair.

  “I was aware of the risk I was running, but I was confident that if in the unlikely event that now unfortunately seems to have transpired, I could count on Luisito. What I didn’t count on was that by then Luisito would no longer be with us.”

  Inappropriate commercial transactions, she had said. And she was asking for his help. Here was another woman he didn’t know trying to convince him to go behind her husband’s back. Havana, Carola Gorostiza, the garden at her friend Casilda Barrón’s mansion in El Cerro. A proud figure dressed in bright yellow seated in her carriage with the sea swaying gently in a bay filled with sailing boats, brigantines, and schooners. After that dreadful experience, he could have only one answer.

  “I’m very sorry to have to say this, Soledad, but I don’t think I’m the right person.”

  Her response came quick as a flash. Obviously she had already prepared it.

  “Before you refuse, bear in mind that in return I am in a position to help you. I have many contacts in the wine market throughout Europe. I can find you a much more reliable buyer than those that flabby old agent Zarco is likely to come up with. And without the exorbitant commission you offered him.”

  He twisted his mouth. So she was already well aware of his movements.

  “I see that news flies.”

  “In no time at all.”

  �
��Be that as it may, I must insist that it’s impossible for me to agree to what you’re asking. Over many years, life has taught me that it’s best for everyone to settle their own affairs, with no one else getting involved.”

  She raised her hand as a shield once more and scanned the chalky hills, pausing before her next sally. Larrea peered down at the white dust and scuffed it with his foot, not wanting to think. Then he stroked the scar on his hand. Above their heads the rusty weathervane creaked as it changed direction.

  “I am not unaware, Mauro, that you, too, have a somewhat shady past.”

  He stifled a hoarse, bitter laugh.

  “Is that why you invited me last night, to size me up?”

  “Partly. I’ve also been investigating here and there.”

  “And what did you discover?”

  “Very little, to be honest. But enough to raise some doubts in my mind.”

  “About what?”

  “About you and your circumstances. What, for example, is a rich Mexican silver miner doing so far from his concerns, working to fix the tiles on an abandoned mansion at the far ends of the earth?”

  Another guttural laugh remained stuck in his throat.

  “Have you sent someone to spy on me?”