“I told you I needed to buy a mule, and you told me about your cousin, a man who is a buyer of horses?”
“Oh, yes, my cousin, Eusebio Serrano. Lives in Castelldefels.”
“Yes, in Castelldefels. You spoke of a horse fair there. I was unable to go there then, but now…”
“The horse fair is held four times a year, and the next one is in three weeks time. It is always held on a Friday, market day.” He smiled. “Tell Eusebio I sent you. For a small fee he will help you buy a good mule.”
“Thank you, senyor.” But Josep lingered.
“Something else?” Rivera said.
“I’m a wine-maker. I have an old fermentation vat in which two of the staves are rotting and must be replaced. Can you make that kind of repair?”
Rivera looked pained. “Well…but you cannot bring the vat to me?”
“No, it is large.”
“And I’m a busy cooper, with orders to fill. If I were to go to you, it would be too costly.” He turned to the worker. “Juan, you can begin stacking the quartered logs…
“Besides,” he said, turning back to Josep, “I can’t spare the time.”
“Senyor…,” Josep hesitated. “Do you think you might advise me how to make the repair myself?”
Rivera shook his head. “No chance. You need long experience for that. You wouldn’t be able to get it tight enough, and it would leak. You can’t even use planks from sawn logs. The planks have to come from logs like these, split with the grain so the wood is impermeable.” He saw Josep’s face and set down the maul. “Here’s what we can do. You tell me exactly how to find your place. Some day when I happen to be in your area, I’ll drop by and do the repair on your vat.”
“It must be fixed by autumn, when I crush my grapes.”
Or I am lost. He said it silently, but the cooper seemed to understand.
“That gives us months. I’ll probably get there in time.”
The word probably made Josep uneasy, but he realized there was nothing else he could do.
“Can you use some good second-hand barrels, 225 liters? Used to contain herring?” Rivera said, and Josep laughed.
“No, my wine is bad enough without stinking of herring!” he said, and the cooper grinned.
Castelldefels was a medium-sized town that had become a large horse fair. Each place Josep looked there were four-legged animals surrounded by knots of talking men. He managed not to step in the horse dung that was everywhere, its stink sharp and heavy.
The horse fair started badly for Josep. He spotted a man limping away from him. His walk appeared familiar, and so did the man’s body structure, and the shape of his head, and the color of his hair.
Josep’s fear was so strong it surprised him.
He wanted to flee, but instead he forced himself to circle the group of horse traders the limping man had joined.
The fellow was the wrong age by fifteen years. He had a jovial red complexion and a large, coarse nose.
His face looked nothing like Peña’s.
It was a while before Josep calmed. He wandered through the fairgrounds, lost and anonymous in the crowds, and eventually he regained control of himself.
It was fortunate that it took him a good deal of time and inquiry to track down Eusebio Serrano.
He marveled that Serrano and Emilio Rivera were related, for in contrast to the bluff, workmanlike Rivera, his cousin was an assured and dignified aristócrato in a fine gray suit and dressy hat, his snowy shirt adorned with a black string tie.
Nevertheless Serrano listened to Josep politely and with close attention and quickly agreed to guide his purchase in return for a modest fee. Over the next few hours they visited eight mule-sellers. Though they closely examined thirteen animals, Serrano said he could recommend only three of them for Josep’s consideration.
“But before you decide, I want you to see one more,” he said. He led Josep through the mass of men, horses, and mules to a brown animal with three white stockings and a white muzzle.
“A bit larger than the others, isn’t he?” Josep said.
“The others are properly mules, out of female horses bred by male donkeys. This one is a hinny, out of a female donkey bred by an Arab stallion. I’ve watched him from the time he was born, and I know him to be gentle and able to outwork any two horses. He costs a bit more than the others we’ve seen, but I recommend that you buy him, Senyor Alvarez.”
“I must buy a wagon as well, and I have limited funds,” Josep said slowly.
“How much money do you have?”
Serrano frowned when Josep told him. “I think it would make sense to put most of it into the hinny. He’s real value. Let us see what we can do.”
Josep watched as Serrano engaged the hinny’s owner in a congenial conversation. Senyor Rivera’s cousin was friendly and quiet. There was none of the loud dickering that Josep had heard between other buyers and sellers. When a figure was mentioned by the dealer, Serrano’s face looked politely regretful, and then there was renewed calm conversation.
Finally Serrano came to Josep and told him the man’s lowest price—more than Josep had planned, but not a great deal more. “He’ll throw in the harness,” Serrano said, and he smiled when Josep agreed.
Josep handed over the pesetas, and a receipt was written and signed.
“There’s something else I can show you,” Serrano said and led Josep away to the section where equipment dealers displayed wagons and carts and plows. When he stopped before an object at the rear of one of the displays, Josep thought he was joking. The wooden bed sat flat on the ground. Once it had been a wagon of the kind he wanted, a rough hauling cart with low walls. But there was a long open space in the bed where a wide plank was missing, and the splintered plank next to that had two wide cracks.
“Just needs a couple of boards,” Serrano said.
“It has no axles or wheels!”
He watched as Serrano made his way to the dealer and spoke with him. The dealer listened and dispatched two of his assistants.
In a few minutes Josep heard a loud screeching, the sound of an animal in pain. The assistants reappeared, each of them bent over and pushing an axle attached to two wagon wheels that protested shrilly as they were turned.
When the men brought the two sets of wheels closer, Serrano reached into his jacket and took out a pocketknife. Snapping it open, he scraped the axle and then nodded. “Surface rust. Good sound metal underneath. It will last for years.”
The total price was within Josep’s budget. He helped a group of men lift the battered bed and bolt the axles fast and then watched them grease the wheels.
In a short time the hinny was between the shafts, and Josep sat on the seat, holding the reins. Serrano reached up and shook his hand. “Bring it to my cousin Emilio. He’ll fix it for you,” he said.
Senyor Rivera and Juan were working in the yard when Josep arrived at the cooperage. They walked to the wagon and inspected the ruined bed.
“Is there anything concerning your vineyard that is not broken?” Rivera said.
Josep grinned at him. “My faith in mankind, senyor. And in you, for Senyor Serrano said you would fix my wagon.”
Rivera looked annoyed. “He did, did he?” He motioned to Juan to follow him, and they went away.
Josep thought they had deserted him, but in a little while they came back carrying two thick planks. “We have boards that are bad for barrels, but good for wagons. I give a special price to all my old and treasured customers.” Juan measured the spaces and called out the numbers, and Rivera quickly cut them to size. Juan drilled the bolt holes, and they bolted the planks fast.
Soon Josep left the cooperage driving a sound wagon that he felt could carry any load, the wheels turning with only the softest grating sound, and the responsive hinny sweet and easy in the traces. His spirits rose. There was a difference between being a boy riding in a wagon loaned to his father as an act of charity and being a man driving his own wagon. It was, he thought, sim
ilar to the difference between being an unemployed youth with no prospects and a vineyard owner busily working his own land.
He was unhitching the wagon and introducing the hinny to the shading shelter beneath the overhung roof at the rear of the house, when Francesc appeared.
The boy watched him for a while.
“Is he yours?”
“Yes. Do you like him?”
Francesc nodded. “He is like ours. His color is different and his ears are a little longer, but mostly he is like ours. Can he be a padre?”
Josep scratched his chin. “No, he can’t be a padre.”
“No? My Mama says ours can’t be a padre either. What is his name?”
“Well…I don’t know. Does yours have a name?” he asked, though he had been plowing with Teresa’s mule for months
“Yes. The name of ours is Mule.”
“I see. Well, why don’t we name this one Hinny?”
“That’s a good name. Can you be a padre, Josep?”
“Hah…I believe I can.”
“That’s good,” Francesc said. “What do we do now, Josep?”
30
A Knocking
Early the next morning he drove the wagon into the countryside, searching for the Llobet goat farm. He heard and smelled the farm long before he could see it, led by the mass bleating and a faint, bitter whiff, both of which became pronounced as he approached. As he had been told, there was manure ready for the taking, and the farm’s proprietors were eager for him to do so.
At the vineyard, he unloaded the manure into the barrow and used a shovel to scatter it along the rows. It was aged and crumbly, fine stuff that wouldn’t burn his vines, but despite the plentitude of his supply, he spread only the thinnest layer. His father had taught him that it was good to nourish the plants, but even a small excess of fertilizer could ruin them, and he had heard Leon Mendes say that grapes required “a bit of adversity to build their character.”
At the end of a single workday he had fertilized his entire vineyard, and the following day he hitched Hinny to the plow and blended the manure into the dirt. Then he adjusted the plowshare so it would turn a ridge of soil against the lower portion of each vine as he plowed; frost came to Santa Eulália some winters, and his plants would be protected until warmer weather.
Only then, at last, Josep was able to devote himself to the pruning he loved, and as winter settled in, he was warm and secure in the feeling that he was making progress.
In the middle of a February night a banging wakened him from dreamless sleep, and when he stumbled down the stone steps in his underwear, Maria del Mar was outside the door with wild eyes and crazy hair.
“Francesc.”
A three-quarter moon made the world a jagged mixture of shadow and spilled light. Josep ran to her house the shortest way, through his vineyard and then Quim’s. Inside her house he went up stone stairs similar to his own and found the little boy in a small bedroom. Maria del Mar arrived behind him just as he knelt over Francesc’s sleeping pallet. The boy’s head and face were very hot, and Francesc began to quiver and thrash his limbs.
Maria del Mar made a strangled sound.
“It’s a convulsion, from the fever,” Josep said.
“Where did it come from? He seemed happy, ate a supper. Then he threw up his food and was sick all at once.”
Josep watched the quivering child. He hadn’t the slightest idea what to do to help him. There was no physician to be summoned. An animal doctor lived half an hour away and sometimes treated humans, but he was a grim joke; people said that every time he was consulted, the horse died.
“Get me wine and a cloth.”
When she brought them, Josep removed Franscesc’s sleeping shirt. He soaked the cloth in the wine and began to bathe the boy, who lay like a skinned rabbit. He poured some of the wine into his cupped hand and massaged Francesc, pulling his hands over Francesc’s arms and legs. The small, skinny body with its deformed hip filled Josep with sadness and trepidation.
“Why are you doing that?”
“I remember my mother doing it to me when I was sick.” He gently but briskly massaged Francesc’s chest and back with the wine and then wiped him dry and put his shirt back on. Francesc appeared to be sleeping normally, and Josep tucked the blanket around him.
“Will it happen again, the shaking?”
“I don’t know. I think that sometimes it does. I remember Donat had convulsions when we were little boys. We both had fevers several times.”
She sighed. “I have coffee. I’ll go and make some.”
He settled down next to the pallet. Francesc made a small noise twice, not moans, just quiet protests. By the time his mother returned, the second convulsion had begun to shake him, somewhat stronger and longer than the first, and she put down the coffee cups and picked up the little boy, kissing his face and head, holding him tightly and rocking him until his tremors passed.
Then Josep bathed him with the wine again and massaged him, and this time Francesc became submerged in sleep, with the total stillness of a cat or dog dozing by the fire with no restlessness or sounds.
The coffee was cold, but they drank it anyway and sat and watched him for a long time. “He’s going to be all sticky and uncomfortable,” she said, and she got up and went away, coming back with a bowl of water and more cloths. He watched her bathe her son and dry him and then change his shirt. She had long, sensitive fingers with dusky nails that were short and clean. “He can’t sleep on this sheet,” she said, and she went away again and he could hear her in the next room, taking the sheet from her own bed. When she was back he picked up Francesc, who didn’t waken, and held him while she put her sheet on the pallet. He put the boy down again and she knelt and tucked the blanket about him, and then lay down next to her son. She looked up at Josep.
Thank you, she mouthed silently.
“For nothing,” Josep whispered. He watched them for a moment and then, understanding that from then on he was an intruder, he murmured a goodnight and went home.
That day he waited for Francesc to come down to him through the vineyards, but the boy didn’t come.
Josep worried that he may have taken a turn for the worse, and that evening he walked the Vall house and knocked on the door.
It took Maria del Mar a little time before she responded to the knock.
“Good evening. I just wondered how he is doing.”
“He is better. Come in, come in.”
He followed into the kitchen.
“The fever is gone, and the shaking. I kept him very close at hand all day, and he napped several times. Now he is sleeping as usual.”
“That’s good.”
“Yes.” She hesitated. “I was about to make a new pot of coffee. You want coffee?”
“Yes, please.”
The coffee was in a clay jar on a high shelf. She went up on her toes and started to stretch for it, but he was one step behind her, and he reached up and took down the jar. As he handed it to her she turned; and without thought or plan, Josep kissed her.
It wasn’t much of a kiss, having been a surprise to each of them. He waited for her to shove him away and tell him to leave her house, but they looked at one another for a long moment. This time, knowing fully what he was doing, he kissed her again.
This time she kissed him back.
A few seconds later they were kissing frantically, their four hands were exploring, their breathing was loud.
In a little while they sank to the floor. He must have made some kind of sound. “Do not wake him,” she whispered fiercely, and he reassured her and went on with what he was doing.
They sat at her table and drank the chicory-tasting coffee.
“Why didn’t you come back to Teresa Gallego?”
He waited for a moment. “I couldn’t.”
“Oh? She went through hell, waiting for you. You can believe me.”
“I’m sorry I caused her pain.”
“Are you? And what kept you fro
m her, senyor?” Her voice was thin but controlled.
“I can’t tell you that, Maria del Mar.”
“Then let me tell you.” The words seemed to spring out of her.
“You were lonely. You met a woman—perhaps a lot of women, and they were prettier than she is, perhaps they had better faces, or better—” She shook her shoulders. “Or maybe it was just that they were close at hand. And you said to yourself, that Teresa Gallego, she is far away in Santa Eulália, and really, Teresa is nothing much. Why should I return to her?”
At least now he knew what it was about him that she resented. “No. It wasn’t that way at all.”
“No? So. Tell me how it was.”
He took a sip of his coffee and looked at her. “No, I won’t,” he said quietly.
“Look, Josep. I ran to you last night because you are my closest neighbor, and you helped my son. I thank you for that. I thank you so much. But what just happened…I ask you that you forget it forever.”
He felt quick relief; that was what he wanted too, he realized. She was like her coffee, too bitter to enjoy.
“All right,” he said.
“I want a man in my life. I’ve had bad ones, and I think next time I deserve a good one, who will treat me well. I think you are dangerous, the kind of man who can just disappear, like smoke.”
He saw no reason to defend himself to her.
“Do you know if Jordi is still alive?” she asked.
He wanted to tell her Jordi was dead. She deserved to know, but he realized it would lead to too many other questions, too many dangers.
He shrugged. “I’ve a feeling he’s not.” It was the best he could do.
“I think if he were alive he’d have come back to see the child. Jordi had a warm heart.”
“Yes,” he said, perhaps too drily.
“He didn’t like you,” Maria del Mar said.
I didn’t like him either, he wanted to tell her, but when Josep looked at her he knew he was seeing raw wounds, and he stood and told her gently not to allow anything to keep her from coming to him again if Francesc needed him.