The Telling Room: A Tale of Love, Betrayal, Revenge, and the World's Greatest Piece of Cheese (47 page)

With nothing to lose, I thought I’d try one more time: What would happen now if Julián came to the door? Would they let him in?

Asun and Ambrosio blurted their answers at the same time, then Asun deferred momentarily.

“After twenty years, I’d let him in,” he said.

“And I would beat him,” said Asun. “For everything he did to our family.”

Ambrosio clarified. “I’d let him tell his side of the story. After twenty years, I’d like to hear his version.”

“He’s a really bad person, Ambro,” said Asun. “An asshole. He used to come here every Wednesday with Nacho, and I would prepare the food for
comida
. After 1990, he never came again. Why? What happened to Julián?”

“We knew each other from 1962,” said Ambrosio, explaining to his wife as much as to me. “It was an intense friendship, a gorgeous
one, almost the same as mine with Angel. I saved thirty years of our pictures, letters, and cards in a box. All the arguments he’s used so far aren’t correct. I’d like to hear him explain it.”

We’d been here before, to no end. As long as a meeting was hypothetical, it was conceivable and nonthreatening—but I guessed that if the issue were forced, as I’d forced it before, history suggested intractability. Still—who knew with this Ambrosio?

Asun turned to me. “As you can see,” she said, “it’s complicated. Money and these feelings—it’s a very explosive mix.”

All these years later, he and Asun still seemed to suffer from PTSD. The death threats, the
guardia civil
at the door to collect what they could, the rock-bottom loss of everything. It was only while discussing the cheese that I saw them bicker. When I asked how much debt they had left to pay, they engaged in a testy debate as Ambrosio tried to write down some numbers, then seemed overwhelmed by the math.
“Mira,”
he said, “I will
still
die without so much as owning this pen.”

It was a profound realization, to know your lot like this, and in both their minds, Julián would be forever to blame. Acceptance, for them, was knowing they’d never accept another version, another telling, for what had been done to them.

There was one last thing we’d never discussed, and I brought it up abashedly. Why did they think it had taken me so long to finish Ambrosio’s book?

They looked at each other as if they’d discussed the topic before, and then Asun blinked quickly and said, “I think you came here and found an incredible story, and that’s what it was at first, a great story that you thought might make a book. But then you developed feelings, these feelings of friendship, and you found something here, in this friendship, more than you wanted a book.”

Ambrosio was nodding now. “You were fascinated by
everything
, not just the cheese,” he said. “The most important thing is that we met each other, the great satisfaction of meeting, and we’re in this conversation. We’ve entered this big joy of being together.”

How right they were! How divided I’d been! And how I’d feared
the consequences of having to cross-check Ambrosio’s story—and therefore reveal him for being less than a god—or of trading on various village secrets, asking so many intimate questions to reveal them to the world. What had made me feel queasy was this thought that the village, and Ambrosio, may not have wanted to have anything to do with me after reading this book of mine/his/theirs.

And yet this is what I’d come to do, tell a story. And if this was the cost, perhaps I’d be forgiven, if not by Guzmán, then by myself.

“The storyteller,” wrote Benjamin in his infinite wisdom, “is the man who could let the wick of his life be consumed completely by the gentle flame of his story.” But I’d take it out of the conditional: He
is
consumed by the flame, and it ain’t gentle, friend. If everything around him catches fire, and he still owes England some sterling, then so be it: His arsonist’s job is complete.

M
Y FAMILY CAME TUMBLING
through customs at Barajas airport on the Monday afternoon before Thanksgiving. Leo, almost thirteen now, with a shaggy mane of hair, nearly reached nose-high on Sara, while May, wearing a stylish red hat as if she’d come directly from the Champs-Élysées (again!), emerged on the gangly legs of a ten-year-old. Nicholas, who was seven, rode on the cart stacked with luggage, then leaped off, sprinted ahead, spun around, ran back, and leaped on again, yelling, “Cowabunga!”

“We’ve already had some adventures,” Sara said with a mirthful eye roll, delighted to have both feet planted in Spain again. “Where are the
jamón
sandwiches, anyway?”

It seemed surreal, the five of us … 
here
.

The ride to Guzmán under cloudy skies, once the backseaters had survived some early motion sickness, was ecstatic. The questions came in overlapping waves: Who lives in that castle? How do you say “beautiful” in Spanish? Where’s the king around here? Can you tell the story of that knight guy again? Does it snow in November? Will Real
Madrid play this week? What time is it back home? Would pigs and hogs live on this mountain?

We shot out through the last pass of the Guadarrama, and there was the Meseta below—again and again and again—and the kids all sucked in their breath at once, as if on a roller coaster. When we finally found the road leading to Guzmán, Leo said, “I think I remember this,” and whether he did or not didn’t matter, for it was a first act of repossession.

This belongs to us
.

We came into the village just before twilight, the sun sinking beneath the ceiling of clouds to light the land, the thin green murk of day giving way to a brilliant golden glow. We drove to the
palacio
, where we were staying, and when we parked, the children went sprinting off in the direction of the fields and
frontón
, eager to explore and play soccer. Sara and I unloaded the bags and then went ambling along the road down to meet them, one we’d traveled many times that summer long ago.

I half expected to see Honorato watering his lawn or Clemente springing a surprise hello, Fernando the Mute under his tree or Carlos the Farmer in his tractor, but there was no one around for this particular homecoming. Not a soul. And perhaps this was most fitting of all. The houses were shuttered, and not a single window was lit from within. The air was cool and clean. The village was all ours, and we held hands, walking past Pinto’s ruined house—he’d closed the bar and moved north, Ambrosio said, doing carpentry or something—until we came to the track that led to
the frontón
and the Molinos barn.

Which is when we heard a low rumble.

As we approached, a huge figure loomed over Nicholas, talking rapid-fire in that gravelly baritone. Nicholas was looking up at him, head cocked, laughing, uncertain what to make of the giant he’d just met in the twilight of a Castilian village five thousand miles from home.

Am-
bro
-zee-
oh
.

There were hugs, and that overwhelming pleasure of reacquaintance. Sara looked bewildered at the first onslaught of Ambrosio’s high-octane Castellano, but she slowly started picking out the tune, responding as best she could. Already, the kids couldn’t believe this place, the freedom and the sky and the colors, the miniature soccer goals set up at the
frontón
. “Awesome,” they kept repeating. May, ever intrepid, took off running into the fields, flapping her arms, and the boys played soccer, Nicholas wearing a white Real Madrid jersey (#9, Ronaldo), while Leo, having graduated to the Premier League, wore his Chelsea blue (#9, the Spaniard, Torres), playing like the same little kid he’d once been, but now the ball coming off his foot soared, dipped, and clanked hard off the crossbar. Soon everything fell into shadow as the sun dropped beneath the earth’s curvature, everything except the church tower as it caught the last errant rays of day and shone ivory. And if I had died on the spot with my children flapping and singing, kicking balls and running in those fields, and my wife with that smile, and Ambrosio with a tender hand on her shoulder, the mayor detailing plans for new, energy-saving lights in the village, I would have died a happy man.

A very happy man.

Soon we were all piled in Ambrosio’s car, headed to his house for dinner. Asun met us at the door, having prepared a minor feast, oohing and aahing over the children. She remembered May as the wriggler and Leo as the boy who ate only white food. In no time Ambrosio had both his guitar and his
charango
out, singing for them, teaching them a song. And it went on—and on.

At midnight we piled back into the car, transecting the fields, in contentment, on our way to sleep in a palace, and as we climbed the hill to Guzmán, Ambrosio veered the car to the side of the road and abruptly leaped out.
“Sigame,”
he said. Follow me. And then we were out in the vineyard, in the dirt that filled our shoes, what had once been a field of sunflowers before Josué had replanted it. “His love,” said Ambrosio, “is right here with us. In every vine.”

He turned to the children.
“Escuchad,”
he said, in a hoarse whisper.
“El silencio.”
He placed the wide-brim hat he wore on Nicholas’s head, which had the effect of both settling him and provoking awe again. “Listen to the silence.” We are not a quiet people, but there we stood in a loose circle around Ambrosio as he pointed a finger at the moon. Nicholas tilted the hat up so he could see the giant, and the universe beyond. Ambrosio paused a long moment, then said, “In the city, there are so many loud noises, and here in the country we have church bells. Church bells and this silence. It’s the most important thing: Learn to listen to this silence, because it will tell you many things, unimaginable things, things of great beauty and meaning.”

The kids were rapt as Sara and I tried to translate, but sinking together into that earth, I had a feeling I’d had at least a hundred times here. It was that feeling of being a child again, of being told the story that would never die. Ambrosio pointed up the hill to Guzmán and said, “I think there’s something a little bit magical about this place.”

And then we left the vineyard, picking our way back to the car. As we did, Ambrosio draped an arm around me, saying nothing. Maybe it was goodbye, or maybe what he said in silence was something he’d told me one September.

I had returned to Guzmán for the
cosecha
, the grape harvest, and on this day the whole Molinos brood—including Ambrosio’s mother and father, his brothers and their families—could be found in the field, slicing bunches from the vine with their
garillos
, placing the grapes in cane baskets and dumping them into a trailer attached to the tractor. Everyone worked hard, in wordless rhythm. At one point Mika cut her finger, blood pooling darkly on the ground, and as she gasped, Ambrosio took a grape and squeezed it until the juice ran over the cut, sterilizing it. Then a bandage was applied, she held her hand above her head for a while, and eventually, with that bloody bandage, went back to work.

At the end of the day Ambrosio had leaped up on the tractor, gesturing for me to ride behind on the trailer, atop the overflowing pile of grapes, back to the barn. The first chill of fall brushed the air,
and the sky was molten, burbling with dark oranges and reds, and my heart was racing.
So this is joy
. We parked at the barn, lingered, then said our goodbyes, and I started walking the dirt path back up to the village, where I’d parked my car. On my way I heard his voice calling me from behind. “My-kull,” he boomed. When I turned, I saw his hulking figure standing atop those mountains of grapes. He was pointing—he was always pointing!—at all those invisible kingdoms in the sky, at all that life-giving land spread across the
coterro
below.

“¡Recuérdalo!”
he was yelling.

“Remember it!”

But for the energy, support, karma, and humbling generosity of those named here, this book would have remained a dream:

Sara Corbett, true north,
always
.

Andy Ward, the
majo
who made it happen.

Susan Kamil and Sloan Harris, believers.

Random Housers who brought it to life: Kaela Myers, London King, Benjamin Dreyer, Allison Pearl, Evan Camfield, Robbin Schiff, Anna Bauer, Noah Eaker, Giselle Roig, Chris Jerome, and the rest of the team.