Vintage (17 page)

“I don't know how I can repay you,” Bruno said.

“You might consider last night a down payment,” she said, blushing. “He's an old man now. His name is Gérard and this time of morning you'll find him in his vines . . . the first three rows in Les Charmots just to the east of the village.” She rose quickly and carried her plate to the sink. “It was delicious, thank you. Now you should go and speak to Gérard before it gets hot and he's finished for the day.”

“Would you like me to bring something back for lunch?”

“I have a busy day, Bruno,” she said, as dismissively as possible, though there was a tug in her chest that was heavy with regret. A large part of her would love to have him stay around for a few days, maybe a week. If he insisted, she'd allow him to stay another night.

“Of course, I don't want to be a bother,” he said cheerfully, and her heart sank just a little. But no matter . . . there was work to do. “Let me clean up and you can get started,” he said, kissing her on the back of the neck and taking the soap and dish rag
from her hands. She stood on her toes and kissed him on the cheekbone above where his beard ended and smiled, turning and heading to her room to put on her work clothes.

Later, as she tightened the oil filter in the Bobard and inspected the work that Claude had done the day before, Bruno ambled out, showered and trimmed. He'd evidently found her iron and pressed his shirt. His jacket was hooked on a finger and thrown over his shoulder. He whistled Debussy while alternately watching her work and scanning the hillsides, squinting at the sunlight streaming through the dissipating mist.

“Thank you for a lovely evening. And morning,” he said.

“Thanks for the
petit déj,
” she said without looking up from her work.

“I hope to see you again.”

She responded to this with a slight nod, a quick glance and a sliver of a smile. He beamed back in return.

As he left through the east gate she watched his head above the stone wall until it disappeared. She surprised herself by the fact that she didn't want him to leave. As charming as he seemed, though, she knew him for the type who would have disappointed her in the end. And the ease with which he had breezed in and out of her life only confirmed that fact, justifying the coolness with which she had dismissed him.

When she could no longer see him, she returned to the tractor. As she suspected, one of the bolts on the compressor was loose. If something was to be fixed properly, she had to do it herself.

In the places where humans eat and live the best, freshly baked bread is a religion. Leavened or otherwise, as a crust or wrapped around a shawarma, a steamed and chewy bao hiding a quail's egg or merely the fragrance cushioning the morning air of every side street in France—its qualities are sacred and its gift for creating community unparalleled. In this chapter, I will detail some of the more spiritual properties of this miraculous substance, and instruct the reader in a few techniques through which it can be employed in the meeting of strangers and fending off of loneliness and other such malaises.

—
B
RUNO
T
ANNENBAUM,
T
WENTY
R
ECIPES FOR
L
OVE

A
s Bruno left the Trevallier estate, he grew suddenly sad. He stopped and leaned on a rock wall, enjoying warmth from stones that had already absorbed the morning sun. Despite the lovely day and the promising turn of events, he was morose. He wasn't exactly sure if it was self-pity at being so far from his family or
leaving such a captivating woman behind. For the moment he was absolutely in love with Sylvie Trevallier. This morning he'd woken up ahead of Sylvie and had taken her cell phone from her nightstand while she slept and written down the number with a marker on the palm of his hand before placing it back exactly where he'd found it. Like a teenager, he was afraid that she wouldn't give it to him had he asked. Whether it was actual depth of emotion or just temporary infatuation was not immediately obvious to him. He had to admit that he'd imagined staying on longer, perhaps quite a bit longer. He could cook, clean the house, generally help out in exchange for a small room in the garret in which he could write, and maybe an occasional place beside Sylvie in bed. He guiltily recognized that he'd recently had the same plan for Anna. And he was technically still married to her, even if she had kicked him out. To fantasize about a new life with this Frenchwoman on the first stop on a trip that Anna was financing certainly ranked as a betrayal. A sense of duty drove him onward. He had discoveries to make, fresh leads to chase.

As for Sylvie, beneath the carefully cultivated frosty reputation was an enigmatic and fascinating woman. Her laugh was glorious and full-voiced when she chose to employ it. She was an enthusiastic lover and wickedly funny. And then add the fact that she made some of the most brilliant wines he'd ever tasted. It was obvious to him that she was the driving force behind everything that happened at the estate. She was no mere figurehead. With what he knew already, he could write a crackerjack profile. She might even become a central figure in his book.

As he walked upslope from the village, the church bell chimed the hour behind him with echoes passing in waves overhead and rolling out across the vineyards. Bruno had never truly expected to return to the Côte de Beaune. It seemed so
impossibly far away when he'd been on his mother's couch or hunched in his cubicle in the
Sun-Times
offices. Now he was here, he'd just made love to a very prominent and mysterious woman, tasted unfathomable wines and was walking over stones and soil that were singular on the planet. Life certainly was full of surprises, delightful and otherwise.

It was early in the season, and there were few people in the vines. Every so often he came across a van or car pulled into the edge of the vine alongside the road, with a hunched figure at work along manicured rows.

He reached the end of the block known as Les Charmots, and as Sylvie had described, there was an old Renault parked in the gravel and an ancient man in a tweed cap squatting between rows fifty meters upslope.

When Bruno reached him, the vigneron touched his cap and slowly pushed himself upright, releasing a clutch of young sucker shoots from his hands.

“Lovely morning.” Bruno smiled, finding that he was now not only speaking in French but even thinking in the language as well.

“Good morning. I saw you at the bacchanal last night.”

“I'm Bruno.” He extended his hand, and the old man took it, his firm grip dry and papery.

“I am Gérard.”

The old man walked slowly upslope and Bruno followed.

“How long have you lived here?”

“I've never lived anywhere else.”

“You've always been a vigneron?”

“These two rows belong to me. The next three, my brother. Before that, it was my father and grandfather. The Proulx family has always made wine.”

“Ah. I know your name well. Your wine, it's excellent.”

The old man stopped and shook his head, pointing at the ridge above, where the stony soil was more white than golden. “There, that is excellent. They say it is marginal the higher you go, but don't believe it. That belongs to the Trevalliers. They are the best.”

“Did you know Clement Trevallier?”

“Of course. He was a warm and generous man. And humble. So precise. A perfectionist. Everything that is done today, the research that comes from the wine institute: it's all what Clement was doing already. He knew it all by feel, by instinct.”

“I was speaking to Sylvie, his granddaughter, about him.”

“Ah,” said Gérard with surprise, squinting to get a better focus on him. Sylvie did not speak to just anyone.

“She shared with me some of her family's stories. From the war. You must remember the war?”

Gérard didn't respond and instead resumed walking.

“Can I ask some questions about it?” Given Gérard's silence, Bruno wondered if he'd played his hand too suddenly. He could tell that the old man was deciding whether or not he wanted to answer. His eyes grew glassy as they stared back across the years. He paused and knelt down slowly, and Bruno could almost hear the man's knees creak. One by one, he plucked suckers off a vine trunk, gnarled and twisted with age. After a minute, he grabbed a post and slowly pulled himself up. They walked farther in silence. Then the old man stopped and knelt again in slow motion, breathing heavily with exertion. He patted a knotted trunk down low on a bulge in the wood the size of a melon that hovered just centimeters above the yellow dirt. This indicated the graft, where a trunk of one varietal had been spliced to the rootstock of another to create a strange alliance that allowed a
vineyard its best chance of survival. In this case it had granted this vine at least a century in Burgundy's unpredictable climate.

“The Americans saved us twice,” Gérard said. Bruno squatted next to him, holding his breath, watching the man's hands, as gnarled as the old vine they caressed. “The first time was from the root louse. You see the rootstock here?” He patted below the knot. “It's American.
Vitis riparia
. There was a time when all of the vineyards of France began to die. My grandfather remembered it. Nobody knew the reason. Everywhere. In the valleys of the Rhône and Loire. In the Bordeaux Arrondissment. All the vines were dying. Vignerons burned their vineyards in desperation, replanting. The new vines died, too. Families went hungry. Men lost their minds. Hung themselves in their barns. They finally identified the louse, but they didn't know what to do about it.

“Then two Americans came with an answer. They were from a place called Missouri. It was their idea to graft our vines onto American roots, which could resist the louse. And it worked. This simple technique saved all of our great vineyards. The roots of every vine in France are now American. Imagine that! There is a statue dedicated to those men in Montpellier. If you're ever there, you should see it.

“That was the first time they came here to Pommard to help us,” Gérard said, rising again and walking on. “The second time was when we saw their trucks coming up the road. Earlier that morning, the Germans had fled. They'd packed up and left. They'd been here for so long, and we'd moved so carefully out of fear, out of terror, and suddenly the buildings they'd occupied were empty. The Nazi flags gone from the windows. It was like they'd never been here. I was a boy of twelve, and I went sprinting down to the Route de Beaune, my legs feeling light and
wobbling as if I hadn't run in years. I remember laughing. Unrestrained laughter. And the Americans were streaming through the village, laughing with us. Our girls kissed them and they blushed. These fellows had frightened the Nazis away. Without firing a single shot. That was the second time.” Gerard stopped. “So, you're American?”

Bruno nodded.

“Then go ahead, ask me your questions.”

“I'm looking for a vintage Trevallier. A specific '43 that hasn't been seen since the war.”

“I've heard the stories.”

“Are they true?”

Gérard shrugged. “Who knows? The Nazis took what they wanted in those days. They say Clement was working for
la Résistance française
, and he went underground. But he still managed his vines, working them in the dark of the night by candlelight while other vineyards were overgrown and untended. Clement's vintages were always perfect, even during the occupation.”

“Sylvie mentioned a name. Von Speck. Does that mean anything to you?”

Gérard nodded slowly, staring over the vines into the past. “He was not an unreasonable man. He oversaw the shipment of our wines to Germany. But he only took the best and most reputable wines. We put them in cases marked for Berlin and loaded them onto the trucks. I was a boy, but I worked with the others. So many of the older men were away. Von Speck, he made sure the workers had food. Others weren't so lucky. The officer, he was a connoisseur.”

“How do you know that?”

“Because some of the wines . . . the best of the best . . . were
not sent to Berlin. But we marked them for Naumburg, outside of Berlin, and sent them by train.”

“Why Naumburg?”

There was an amused glint in his eye. “You know, they make wine in Naumburg. Good wines. Some of them are like those from Alsace. I suppose they appreciate good Pommard there as well. You see, Naumburg was where Von Speck was from.”

As Bruno stopped and stood in contemplation while he watched Gérard labor uphill, he realized that he'd just uncovered the next stop on his journey.

*      *      *

Walking back to Beaune, Bruno skirted the highway and was nearly run down by drivers whose aggressiveness behind the wheel came in inverse proportion to the size of their cars, a distinctly European phenomenon.

Back at his hotel he greeted the lovely Lisette, who stood behind the counter. “You were out early this morning.”

“Or late last night,” he said with a wink.

“Oh, yes, the bacchanal.” She blushed.

“Hey, I've got a question. I need to find someone named Von Speck who lives in Naumburg. Do you know how to work the Internet? Can you show me?”

“Of course,” she said, leading him back into the tight little business office where there were stacks of receipts, telephone books and a wall of spare keys. It was close quarters, and she sat him down at the computer, then leaned over him and guided his hand on the mouse, reaching across his body to type. He felt her breath on his ear and heard her unconsciously grunt and groan as she explored blind alleys before finding a directory that listed names and addresses as if by magic. The Internet could be so
handy, and Bruno made a note to learn more about it. “Here's a list. Just use the mouse to scroll and click here to print.”