Aristocratic Thieves
Page 17
Chapter 17 – Deneuve in the Vineyard
The first of the Bordeaux estates they visited, Chateau Palmer, is one of the loveliest. Its vineyards sit on chalky, minerally stone and are raised on a series of low hills. The house and wine-making buildings sit between these hills, surrounded by gardens, and hidden from roads and neighbors, while the vineyards are separated by lines of columnar cypress trees along which run dirt pathways used by the vineyard workers. Over the span of the last five hundred years, storage caves have been carved into the hills below the building complex. The present owner of the estate measured the square footage of these caverns, and was astounded at the result: 90,000 square feet. A good portion of this area contains barrels of Palmer wine. Most of the barrels are filled with juice from the last vintage, but also there are barrels holding wine made from the last several vintages, aging away. Other cavern rooms hold hundreds of racks of Palmer wine in bottles, labeled with dates of every year going back to 1843.
One room in the far back of the labyrinth contains a small cot, an armchair, and a table, and this is the place to which the present owner of the property retires when the screams of the grandchildren get to be too much. He doesn’t retire here very often, because he loves his children and their children, but he does so every once in a while. Here he usually he sips an older vintage of his wine, and thinks about the future. He wonders about the lives his grandchildren will lead, how they will deal with the threat of weapons of mass destruction, and the people intent on using them. He doesn’t dwell on this subject very long, and usually turns his thoughts to which of the kids will come to manage the estate in his place. He hopes it will be Perette, his favorite girl, now eleven years old, and a holy terror around the house. She is eleven going on twenty-one: smart, gay, and without fear of expressing herself in front of people.
This man greeted the battleship Mercedes and its occupants. He did a fine job of pretending to be interested in Roger and Gwen, and even Little Jinny. He managed to not look at The Deneuve for about thirty seconds during introductions, and then nature took its course, with him devoting his attention to her. When he suggested going to the tasting room, Deneuve begged off, asking for a bottle of water and if she might visit the gardens. With water in hand she took Gwen’s arm and led the way away from the house. Monsieur Palmer was chagrined, but he knew his duty now was to Stephan and Roger (instinctively he knew Jinny didn’t count for much of anything). He hoped he would again get close to Deneuve before she left, and thought if he didn’t he might retire to his private cavern room and open a really old bottle of wine, as psychological compensation.
The tasting and dealing went smoothly for Roger and Stephan, taking about an hour to reach an agreement. During this time another unusual event took place with The Deneuve. The woman generates events, situations, and occurrences seemingly every minute of every day. She and Gwen walked slowly through the gardens, talking or not talking. They were aware of several people following them, both adults and children, all trying to hide behind border hedges and ornamental shrubs and the odd piece of sculpture. The women paid them no mind other than to direct the occasional smile in their direction. They walked farther away from the house and edged into the vineyards themselves, hallowed ground for Bordeaux lovers, the actual place from which came the elixir.
The grounds were still and quiet, reflecting only the sound of the women’s footsteps on the gravel pathways and the calls of a few nesting birds. Then, human voices reached them from ahead, and the two women could tell the voices were raised and unnatural. There were adult voices and childish voices. If only adult voices had been involved the women would have turned away, but the unnatural voices of children drew them forward. Coming around the side of a small hill the voices became louder and embodied, and came from a small group of men and boys at a corner of the vineyard. Gwen and Catherine immediately saw and understood the nature of the voices. Two young men were fighting, and several others, including two very young boys, were watching. The men were on the ground, rolling around, landing the odd and mostly ineffectual blow. One man had blood on his mouth, and the shirt of the other was torn.
Instinctively Gwen and Catherine moved towards the group, Gwen out of curiosity, Catherine out of concern. As the women neared, and the group saw them, the watchers stopped watching the fighters and looked at the women. The fighters kept fighting. The women approached closer. While still 100 feet away, The Deneuve issued a command: Arretez! Unmistakably, it was a command. There was no s’il vous plaît attached to it, and the sound was issued with remarkable affect. It was loud. It was firm. And it was powerful. But there was something more to it - there was unmistakable feminine authority. It was the kind of authority commanded by that woman in the Hemingway novel set in Spain. What was her name? This command issued in the French vineyard and heard by the French men and boys was startling. The watchers straightened, and their arms dropped to their sides. The fighters stopped fighting, and from their positions on the ground, looked in the direction of the sound. As they saw the women, and as the women came closer to them, and they saw the demeanor of Deneuve, they fell apart on the ground and stood up. The other men and the two young boys also looked at the women, and the women looked at them. No one moved, no one talked, the men hardly breathed.
Deneuve let them stand that way, and waited. She looked at the fighters, and then at the boys. Gwen stood looking at her, knowing another lesson was coming. Gwen was sure that the dog that had followed them from the house and now was on the other side of the hedge, still and quiet, was waiting for the lesson, too. Slowly Deneuve removed the enormous hat she was wearing, and handed it to Gwen. Then shook her head, her chestnut hair swirling for seconds and then failing perfectly into its haloed place. She walked forward ten steps and stood in front of the two fighters. They were sweaty, the dirt mixing with the sweat to form muddy patches on the men, and there was dirt mixed with blood on the mouth of the one man. They still breathed heavily, but they didn’t move. No one moved. Deneuve looked into the eyes of one man, and then into the eyes of the other. She spoke, “You fight in front of boys. That is not all bad, but we must take care. Is the reason you fight worthwhile, or is it silly? These boys are learning now, are they not? Is this a good thing to teach them? Maybe it’s a good thing to teach, because after talking and after law, some things still cannot be decided, then is the time for fighting, no? We must be careful of this thing, as most of the time it is not good.” She moved closer to the two dirty men, very close to these strangers, and looked at them again, silently creating a covenant with them to act well in front of children.
The fighters didn’t understand what was happening cognitively, but they understood intuitively, and they knew they had learned something important.
Catherine turned to the two boys, and motioned to them to come. She touched the one on the right cheek with her left hand, she touched the other on the left cheek with her right hand, and she smiled.
That was what happened at the Palmer estate. Not much, really, just another Deneuvian moment. Gwen understood, and the men understood, and the boys understood. Even Blistov would have understood if he had witnessed this instead of getting plastered on the great Palmer wines in the tasting room with Roger and Stephan.
Tasting and talking at the next estate, and then the next, occupied the remainder of that day and the following day, one success following another. Cheerfulness was omnipresent as they spent time with the French families in their homes and offices. Little Jinny felt comfortable, and as the novelty and strangeness of being around Deneuve and the French countryside lessened, Jinny developed an affinity for the kids they found at every estate. He liked the wine in the tasting rooms, but he gave that up in favor of hanging out with the kids, who found him pretty weird, but they liked him. Here was this dark and rather swarthy guy, built like a granite tombstone, that didn’t speak any French, yet wanted to be with them. He had a har
d face and really big arms and hands, but a warm smile, and his eyes danced with the kid’s play. They kept asking him where he lived, and he keep asking them if they’d ever been to Russia. Neither understood the other, but they were communicating, nonetheless.
Jinny did have a problem with one little girl, about four years old. She hardly spoke French, much less Russian, but she ran around and around Jinny at the side of a great estate house, laughing and screaming. Then she came close to him, stood on one of his shoes, grasped her little arms around the stubby tree trunk that was one of his legs, and wouldn’t let go. At first he was afraid he would hurt her, and stood perfectly still. But she continued to laugh, and then she took to stomping on his foot, which he understood meant GO, like when a coach driver snaps a whip near a horse. So he went, carefully, around the garden and around the house and around the other children watching and playing. The more he went, the happier the child became. She shrieked, she banged, she stomped her tiny feet on his. He went a little faster, then a little faster. He stopped to see if she wanted off. She did not. She banged some more, so he went some more. When he stopped again, she screamed, so on he went. The kid was having so much fun with this, having her own horse, moving the horse at her command, and Jinny was having so much fun, being a silly adult, formerly a Russian criminal and quasi-mobster. Finally he took her back to the front of the house and into the foyer of the interior, where she dismounted, looked up at his face, shrieked a smile, and ran off down the hallway. So much for French kids mingling with heavy Russian dudes.
The Mercedes hauled the group back to the hotel where they debriefed the next morning at breakfast. Stephan reported that all twelve estates had agreed to supply small quantities of wine at very favorable rates and financial conditions, over the next three vintages. Deneuve said, “Why would they not?” Roger explained that the quantities should be enough to supply three dozen people (in addition to the Junes) over the course of each year, assuming they were not a bunch of drunken sloshheads. He looked at Jinny to confirm that the Russians he was targeting were not a bunch of drunken sloshheads, and Jinny looked a bit uncomfortable. It took a few seconds for him to say, “Russians are like everyone else, no? Some are disciplined, some are not.” Gwen now did the Deneuve thing with Jinny (she was a very quick learner), verbally saying that the wine supply obviously was limited, and non-verbally saying that if these Russian folks turned out to be a bunch of sloshhead trouble-makers, Little Jinny would pay a price. He smiled back with his usual air of confidence, so Gwen had to let it go.
Then it was time to say goodbye to The Deneuve. The tour was over and the mission was accomplished. The wine had been procured, the group had experienced the greatness of Burgundy and Bordeaux, Stephan had performed the task given him by his boss, Jinny had made friends with French kids, and Gwen had learned how to elevate the art of female persuasion. She had learned from the best. She had made a great friend in Deneuve, and Deneuve had made a great friend in Gwen. They had bonded, and the bond would be renewed in the future. Deneuve in Paris is magic. Deneuve in the French countryside is a wonder. Deneuve in Charleston would be a spectacle.
The big car pulled up in front of the hotel, and the commotion in the lobby and on the street commenced. With dozens watching, Catherine first kissed Stephan goodbye, then she kissed Roger goodbye (his knees perceptibly buckled, and several on-lookers snickered), then she kissed Jinny goodbye, whispering something in his ear. Lastly, and with the greatest affection imaginable, she kissed Gwen goodbye. The small crowd roared its approval. With a wave to them, she disappeared and was gone.