The Catalans: A Novel (23 page)

The little solitary patch was done, and at the same time the party above him reached the end of their row, of their half-dozen parallel rows, and because they worked in a team they stopped for the stragglers. Alain clambered up the slope to join them, emptying his full basket into the waiting tub as he went. There was Madeleine, coming down with her grapes, looking at once quite suitable and madly out of place—suitable, because she was dressed in an old black overall with a spotted handkerchief on her head, and suitable, because she so obviously belonged there, knew exactly what to do, did not feel herself extraordinary; but utterly incongruous as well, for on that day of all days she was in looks, in the bloom of her looks and gilded with the sun; and as she came down, with the broad basket on her head, her hands filled with overflowing grapes, she moved with incredible distinction. Her fine head poised, her dazzling complexion, rising from that old and dusty dull black pinafore would have made an unaccustomed stranger stand and gape: the most romantic view of ancient Greece, seen through the haze of three thousand years, the Golden Age itself, the vases, sculpture, and the verse, promised nothing anywhere like this.

She was in spirits too, that brilliant day: she carried the basket on her head from wantonness, and her face was alight with transient happiness.

“Mare de Deu,” said Alain, and to interrupt his stare he began to crush the piled grapes down into the tub with a heavy stone, making room for these fresh baskets full.

They began on the higher rows, working from one stone path across the vineyard to the next: Madeleine had the high row, and Alain coming up last took the top row, the row above hers. He was working faster now; he had to, to keep up with her; and all down on his right there was the steady snip-snip of the women’s secateurs and the murmuring of voices. Now the grapes fell into his hand, heavy, dusted with the bloom, bloom on purple, for now they were in the Carignan, grapes big as muscats, dark and perfect: the vines sprang up as the weight was taken from them.

She was holding up an enormous bunch for him to see. “Oh wonderful,” he replied, and he was glad to have a reason for his smile.

Below there was a shout of laughter: someone had left a bunch uncut, and they splashed the crushed grapes on his face. It was red, blood red, the juice that trickled down his cheeks.

Along the row. Here the big Carignans had grown so high that when he crouched he was in their shade, green and comfortable; but he was not noticing his unhinged back any more, nor the heat, nor the dust in his shirt, on his face, in his throat. He had three newly grafted vines with nothing on them, and he was well ahead of Madeleine. Stepping across to her row he cut the grapes of her next two vines so that she could catch him up. The small boys ran between the rows, emptying the baskets, bringing empty ones.

“At the end of the row we shall find a muscat vine,” he said, and she laughed as though what he said was witty. He had remembered that muscat: it was the old vine where they had buried a toad, to make the thief turn black and swell, if ever he came stealing in their grapes. Alain had gone in the night and released the toad, his heart beating high as if he were the thief under the moon, in the strangeness of the night; but the toad had died.

They were at the muscat stock picking off the very best to eat, throwing the others into their baskets. “Té,” she said from the other side, throwing him two the size of little plums. She had never tutoy’ed him before; and when he spoke French to her he had said vous, though no doubt knowing her from a child (if he had but remembered her) he could very well have said tu. Xavier vou-voy’ed her, but so he did to the world in general.

There was a renewed outburst lower down the slope: the little boys were piping; everyone was standing up. “There is no more
room
in the semal,” said the middling boy, his voice cracking with indignation. “The semals are full,” said the smallest boy. Several people cried “Pau has not taken away the full semals. En Laurens has left the empty ones down there. Pau has not taken the full semals away.”

“The semals are full,” said Alain.

Madeleine answered “Yes,” and they stood looking at the full tubs of grapes ranged at convenient points along the wall. The middle-sized boy was treading one in a vain attempt to make space for the baskets and pails that were cluttered at its foot.

“En Laurens,” shrieked a woman, and some others shouted Pau. But both the men were far away, down behind the casot repairing a broken carrying strap, swearing and bawling instruc
tions to each other so loudly that no distant cry could ever reach
them.

“This would never have happened if Monsieur Xavier had been here,” said an old woman, a poor and distant cousin, exasperated by the heat and dust. They all knew that dinner would not start preparing until they had reached the top of the piece of Carignan, and suddenly everybody grew cross and discontented.

“Sitting down there. Lying in the shade. For shame, the idle, do-nought, selfish . . .” and they shrieked their names again.

Côme was red with anger. “Why can’t they organize things?” he asked. “Why does Xavier have to choose this day to be away?”

“They would not be sitting there playing if Monsieur Xavier was here,” said the old woman. “Pau. En Laurens.” “Pau,” screamed the little boys. “En Laurens Cortals.”

“Why don’t we ever have a mule?” asked Côme. “
They
have a mule over there.” A mule was indeed threading its way down the steep vineyard next to theirs at that moment, charged with a tub on either side: it was a beautiful mule, with crimson harness thick-studded with brass nails.

“Why do
we
never have a mule?” asked Côme. He turned in exasperation to his neighbor, but this was Jean Pou-naou, who could not very well reply: they were neighbors, not relations, and they could not criticize the absence of the mule. They were to keep silent, though the work was stopped; and silent they were, for that and other causes. Mimi and Thérèse were there, but all day they had been like ghosts, quite dumb, unnatural and constrained.

Alain slid down over the wall: the semals were at the level of his shoulder, and when he had folded his handkerchief and his beret for a pad he slid the tub a half-length forward.

“Take care, Alain.”

“Monsieur Alain, you are not going to carry that semal?”

“Alain, take care.”

“He will drop it.”

“It is too far.”

“It is too heavy.”

“He will rupture himself.”

“Take care, Alain.”

“Monsieur Alain, you are not going to carry that semal?”

“Alain, take care.”

“He will rupture himself.”

“Joan Antoni ruptured himself, falling with a semal.”

“You are not used to it, Monsieur Alain: leave it to the men.”

“Take care, Alain.”

“Take care.”

“He will burst.”

Madeleine was taking crushed bunches out of the tub to ease the weight.

“I’ll carry it with you,” said Côme. “But there’s no need. They will be coming up presently. What we ought to have is a mule: they have got a mule over there.”

Alain worked the tub forward on to his left shoulder: it was an oval tub with two downward-sloping handles, six inches of branch that the cooper left on the staves. One was in front of him, the other behind: with his right hand crossed over his bowed head he gripped the forward handle, straightened and walked off.

He had done it before quite often when he was home from Paris or Montpellier: he knew how to do it. The tub was rightly balanced, leaning in against his head with its bottom edge cushioned by the folds of his beret: his right hand had hardly any work to do. Why had he remembered it as so big a load? And why did they make so much fuss?

There was a dead silence as he walked off, but as he reached the first downward turn one said, in a low voice, “He will drop it,” and another, “He should have left it to the men.” They said, “En Laurens and Pau are just sitting there.”

“A whole semal. It will be wasted.”

“He is not used to it.”

“He will do himself an injury.”

“He will burst.”

The first piece had been easy. It was the flat, crossways traverse on the smooth, flattened earth leading to the first downward path. The weight was squarely above him, and it seemed as if he could carry it for half a mile. But now, here at the very turn, a long vine-shoot reached across his path: he put his right foot on it, but the vine grew on his left side, and his left foot caught in the arch of the doubly anchored branch. It broke, but not before he had staggered and nearly fallen. The jerk had canted the load forward on his shoulder, and though he hitched it back he could never get it rightly poised again.

On the downward path he knew why he had remembered the carrying as a formidable task: he remembered, too, the strange pain of his blood-starved right arm, already drained of strength, though it had not been held up a full two minutes. How had he been able to forget it so completely? Now the recollection was so easy and complete; and he knew, too, that soon his breath would come short and the muscles of his thighs would tremble.

The slope changed everything with the balance: now the fact that he had as much as his own weight fixed higher than his shoulders—that he was utterly top-heavy—meant that every unevenness, every tilting slab of stone, could move the burden those few inches out of true balance that would start a big sway sideways or backward, a sway that he could never control once it has passed more than a hand’s breadth either way.

Why had he ever thought that his handkerchief and beret would make a sufficient pad? Or had they slipped out altogether? There were seventy kilos pressing into the bony top of his shoulder, all the weight concentrated into the sharp rim of the semal. Pau and En Laurens had thick pads of sacking and a strap.

Lord, he said, what a stupid way of carrying grapes: one’s body is at an absurd mechanical disadvantage. Sweat ran into his eyes, and while he was blinking them clear his foot went down into a hole. With both knees bent he took the jar, forced the weight back to the upright: but too far, he had wrenched it back too far, and now it was slowly swaying backward, bearing him backward on his heels. He gripped with his toes, quite silent in his mind, deaf, and oblivious to everything but the necessity of mastering the sway.

It was true again. He was standing square on both feet, the weight perpendicularly above him. But that short moment of intense struggle had meant a prodigious expenditure of strength, and when he began to move again it was with an uncertain, shambling pace.

So soon: his knees were trembling already and he had not reached the bottom of the first stone path. How had he ever thought the tub was light? Now an easy stretch; but still the balance was not right; he had never got the semal well placed again from that first stumble, and now his right hand, instead of resting easily against the handle, just to steady it, had to be gripping, forcing the weight inward; and it had no strength in it.

The end of the first path: now two steps up to reach the second. The first step done: but at the second his knee would not straighten, could not raise the load. He paused a minute, breathing hard, bowed over the step, dripping sweat upon the stone: then, cautiously, he changed his feet: the other knee would do it, could just do it driven hard; and he was on the broader, smoother second path.

But the relief was too late: he had spent so much in getting there that it seemed as hard as the steep path down. How the world closed in: no sound, no sight, no sun: the whole world was made up of the load, the pain of his arm and his shoulder, and the three feet of path that lay under his eyes. Plod, plod, plod. He made fifty counted paces. He tried to hitch the semal to a better stance, but his hitch only jerked his breath out: the tub seemed rooted in his shoulder, would not shift.

On: on. His knees were bending now and he staggered on the path. He cast a haggard glance around for a wall against which he could rest the hateful tub. There was no wall. There was nothing in sight but green and the path: he was a long way from the casot; a terribly long way.

Another twenty. Could he manage another twenty?

They could see him now from the top: he appeared from that distance to be going quite well; his perpetual deviations from the straight line and his tiny shuffling paces could not be seen from there. His face could not be seen, either, deathly pale under the dust, fixed, eyes exorbitant, no conscious expression of any kind, a face of intense and beaten suffering.

“He has not dropped it yet.”

“He will drop it soon.”

“I wish he may not fall and do himself an injury.”

“Joan Antoni fell and ruptured himself with a semal.”

“If he falls he won’t have to pay any doctor’s bills, ha, ha,” said Côme.

“Why don’t you run down and help him?” said Madeleine, with uncommon anger in her voice. They looked curiously at her.

“Oh he’s all right,” said Côme.

Somehow he had come to the casot: he had not fallen yet, though his legs were ungovernably weak. He could see the casot coming and going through the blackness that swept to and fro—the flow of his blood was a torment of which he was dimly aware—but could he make ten paces more? And worse, the well-trodden, smooth, and beaten path narrowed when it reached the little house, dipped and curved in a sudden downward run as it went round to the loading place.

Now he was on the slope: the great oppression hurried his unwilling feet; now surely he was going. But the roaring in his ears was the voice of En Laurens on the one side and Pau on the other: they were lifting the semal off his shoulder. Oh the blessed, blessed relief: quite suddenly his humanity flooded back over him as he stood there trembling, shaking uncontrollably
.

“You should not have done it,” En Laurens was saying, in an excited voice.

“You should have left it to us,” said Pau.

“You might have dropped it.”