Roar of the lion, p.19
Death at the Bodega, page 19
“That’s too bad you missed it,” said Gael. “I heard it was really good last year.”
“Yes. We were about to go, but then Gustavo got a call and had to go to Villa Gorda to attend to some urgent matter. My son was home from university that week and he didn’t feel well, so I stayed home with him.”
“Villa Gorda,” Gael said. Didn’t Don Toledo have operations in Villa Gorda? Of course he did; Don Toledo had operations everywhere. To Alexandra, he said, “You didn’t go to the Half Moon later, like, in the evening?”
“It was too late by the time Gustavo came home.”
They walked on.
“How are you enjoying the vintage?” she asked after a moment, tugging a sleeve of her gown.
“I’m having a great time, despite some ups and downs. Things were a bit rough earlier this week when half the staff got thrown in the slammer.”
“For one day only, thank God. We are so lucky to have you.”
“I think that was when my body felt the full effects of the vintage, but like they say, what doesn’t kill you is good for you. For the first time in my life, I have biceps!” Gael flexed an arm and grinned.
Alexandra laughed. “I see the campo suits you. You look so much different than when you first got here.”
“I do? In what way?”
“You looked so tired and pale back then. Gustavo and I wondered how you were going to make it. And now look at you! You’re glowing.”
“Clear air, bright sunlight, absence of light pollution, and silence make a good combination I believe, in addition to all the physical labor. Add to that all the farm-to-table cuisine served up by Florencia, and it’s quite a recipe!”
“Will you come back for the next vintage?” Alexandra’s face changed as soon as she said this, and she looked at the ground and added, more quietly, “If there is a next vintage.”
“I’d like to, but let me get through this one first and we’ll see. This three-month bodega challenge isn’t for sissies.”
Alexandra grinned and nodded. They continued walking in a comfortable silence.
“It’s too bad Eder didn’t get to finish his vintage,” Gael said.
Alexandra appeared contemplative. “I miss Eder. He was such a sweet man. He had the most beautiful smile.”
“Didn’t he come on this march last year?”
“He did! I’ll never forget it. He wore the most colorful Peruvian hat with ear flaps and marched right alongside us. Here, I’ll show you.” Alexandra reached for her phone, manipulated it, and handed it to Gael.
“Wow,” he said, swiping through the photos. There was Alexandra at the head of the procession, wearing the same billowy white dress and hugging the cross on her shoulder with passion. Next to her stood a short beaming man with joyful eyes and a gleaming smile. His head reached only to her shoulders, and he wore a white button-up shirt open at the lapel to reveal rich brown skin. On his head was an Andean hat with side flaps and a pompom, striped in brilliant bands of fuchsia, violet, turquoise, and marigold. Gael couldn’t help but feel the magnetism of this man, and he realized this was the first time he was laying eyes on Eder.
“Wow,” he said again, his breath catching in his throat.
He swiped to zoom in on the man’s handsome, chiseled face, and laughing eyes that complemented his radiant smile. Black hair protruded from beneath his hat and graced his forehead, which caught the twilight and emitted an aura. He appeared to be at one with the world and the people around him, and having the time of his life.
“These pictures are beautiful. Would you mind sending me some? I never met Eder, but I feel like I know him somehow. After all, I’m living in his old rooms, and—”
Alexandra nodded. Taking her phone back, she said, “I’ll send them to you right now. What’s your WhatsApp?”
He told her, and she got so busy with her phone that they nearly walked past the next prayer point.
“I’ll send you some from Easter Sunday as well. He was such a darling at chapel that morning.”
The sky had become a brilliant smear of orange fading into twinkling blue-black. As they marched on, their shadows appeared in the dust ahead, generated by the headlights of cars behind, driven by men crawling through the dirt with grinding tires. The sensation of ambling along in a worshipful fashion while being tailed by a line of bright heavy automobiles was unsettling to Gael, along with the sharp barks of the endless dogs that came out to harass the pilgrims as they passed. These unpleasantries, combined with Gael’s fervent religion free-ness and the fact that once you’ve seen one roadside table you’ve seen them all, made him begin to look for an exit.
His opportunity came when the group amassed at yet another table. By then dusk had deepened enough so that Gael could saunter ahead, then accelerate and break free with scarcely anyone noticing. Soon he was alone on the empty road, hiking briskly beneath a just-past-full moon and evening stars. He'd gotten a dose of the march, collected some interesting information, and now he had bodega work to do.
He reached his rooms, changed clothes, and grabbed Gustavo’s keys from his dresser top. Crossing beneath the vines, he felt his way through low-bay, where he noticed Osvaldo had cleared things out somewhat to make room for the next night’s rock band. On reaching the double doors to fermentation, he unlocked, opened one of them a crack, and slid through.
Someone had forgotten to turn off the overhead lights, so it was a good thing there were no fines today. The gentle white dome-backed lights way up by the ceiling cast their glows in pyramid shapes to illuminate the hall in an eerie and mesmerizing effect, quite different from daytime. Gael had to admit it was beautiful, the way the half-light played on the shiny stainless steel vessels set beneath ancient dark wood beams of a soaring ceiling that long predated them, bound by thick adobe walls. And then there were the aromas, the inimitable rainbow mix of wine-smell from grapes in all stages of aerobic decomposition! And the sounds—or the lack thereof—as trillions of invisible organisms performed their work in near silence, converting grape sugar to alcohol, froth, and foam.
Before beginning the pushdowns, he walked towards the other end of the hall to inspect the green placards on the tanks and confirm what remounts he had in store.
As he walked, a guttural growl emerged. He froze.
Ahead, a dark muscular beast stepped into a pyramid of light.
Terrified, Gael jumped backwards, which was not a good move because the creature’s growl intensified and it advanced. It bared its teeth and rumbled through jowls dripping in saliva beneath a shiny black nose. On each side of its flashing, fierce eyes, little ears folded forward and pointed down like black diamonds. Gael nearly turned and ran, prevented only by the surety that such a move would result in the loss of a significant portion of buttock. Instead he attempted to stand his ground. As adrenaline coursed through his body, he tried to make himself look bigger by standing taller and holding out his arms. The beast continued advancing, its torso like a wrestler’s, powerful front haunches that could easily knock him down and pin him to the floor while it ripped out his throat.
“Crap,” Gael breathed. “Crap.”
“Luissón, be nice to the young man.”
The voice Gael heard was airy and nasal, and came from somewhere above him to the left.
He looked up to see a gray-haired man sitting cross-legged on the platform between tanks nineteen and twenty. His arms rested on his thighs, and in one hand he held what looked like a glass marijuana pipe. It took Gael a few seconds to subtract all this context in his mind and realize he was staring at the individual he had gazed at so many times before, presiding over the barrels in the central vault.
“Luissón! Mind your manners. Go and greet.”
As its master said this, the formerly terrifying hound’s entire disposition changed and it became a wiggling, slobbering, friendly mess of a creature. It jumped and planted both paws on Gael’s shoulders, indeed nearly knocking him down, and proceeded to slather his face with its drenching pink tongue.
“Luissón! That’s enough.”
The creature hopped down and rammed its nose into Gael’s crotch, then sniffed his feet. Now Gael could see that it was not entirely black in color. The lower parts of its legs were brown, as was the lower half of its face. Two brown dots graced its forehead above the eyes. The hound continued checking Gael out, all the while wiggling, smiling, and wagging a tail Gael noticed wasn’t actually there. It was only a stump.
“What happened to his tail?” Gael asked.
“Got it slammed in a Mercedes door as a youngster. While driving down the main street at Lake Como, no less. Caused quite a scene, I should say.”’
Gael struggled to equate this vapidly nasal, somewhat high pitched, slightly lisped voice with the booming, mature, resonating baritone he’d imagined issuing from the man in the portrait, one that could be paid handsomely for voiceovers in advertisements for Chilean wine tourism. Gael had imagined a video of sweeping vistas of vineyards spread beneath snow-caked Andes, and a soothing authoritative voice crooning, “Experience the heritage, the true taste of Chile,” or something to that effect. Then the scene would shift focus to crystal wine glasses being splashed into by divine scarlet fluid, clinked together, and swirled from stems held in manicured fingertips. The sort of weasel-like voice Gael now heard didn’t match up with this at all.
“Are you Count Luzzago?” he asked.
“In person. And you are?”
“Gael. Gael Novoa. I’m a seasonal worker.” He glanced at the doors leading to the dock, which stood ajar. The Count and his hound must have entered from that end.
“Welcome to Imago! Where are you from, my lad?”
“The United States.”
“Aha! I thought I detected an accent. And which state do you hail from?”
“Oregon.”
“In the beautiful Pacific Northwest! I know the region well. What part of the Beaver State are you from specifically, may I ask?”
“Portland,” Gael said uneasily, before he’d had the chance to think of something else.
Fortunately the Count moved on. “Aha. City boy comes to the campo. Not the first time such an event has occurred. How goes it for you here, my lad? Have they taken the proverbial boy out of the city, but not the city out of the boy?”
“I’m loving it here, despite some challenges. The air, the stars, the silence. Maybe it’s all the quartz in the ground, but the moment I arrived in Pasqual’s pickup I felt a connection with this place.”
The gentleman looked at him through narrowed eyes and nodded. “You and I are similar. We are birds of a feather. In a past life, if there is such a thing, I was most certainly Corucalílean.” He tapped his translucent pipe against the tank top, and held it up. “Would you like to smoke?”
“Sure,” said Gael, which was a total lie. Earlier in life he had experienced success as a pot smoker for exactly two years. This was in high school, a period during which he’d ramped up into being a veritable stoner. Then, just when he’d achieved what he thought was the pinnacle of better living through cannabis, something shifted in his body chemistry and marijuana became a very, very bad drug for him. In place of laughter and munchies came extremely unpleasant sensations of paranoia and self-doubt. Over the years since, he’d occasionally dipped his toe back in and tested the stuff anew when offered, only to confirm that, yes, the intense discomfort engulfed him after only a few puffs. Time slowed to a crawl while his mind raced a zillion miles an hour, and not in a good way, but in one full of anxiety, fear, and the complete certainty that everyone regarded him as an idiot—and a high one at that. But the heck with all that for now, Gael decided. There was no way he was going to miss out on this opportunity to hang out with the Count.
He climbed the ladder as the gent scooted over and patted the space next to him. “Welcome to my laboratory,” he said, gesturing across the tank tops as Gael slid to sitting. “My País Glorioso laboratory.”
In addition to the voice, several other things about the Count did not square with what Gael had imagined from viewing the portrait. One was the dimension of his tummy, which in the picture had been camouflaged by the slimming effect of the dark tapered sports jacket and the way he leaned into the barrels. Now it protruded as a genuine potbelly as he sat cross-legged wearing a blousy, cream-colored French-looking shirt. The neck of the shirt was embroidered in yellow and had the keyhole shape of an Arabesque tunic, complete with string lacing, between which sprigs of grayish hair stuck through from his fleshy chest. Another thing that was different from the portrait was his beard, or chin, rather—actually the lack thereof. His real-life beard was just as manicured as in the portrait, but Gael could see that its function was to create the illusion of a chin and not to actually grow from one.
More adhering to Gael’s portrait impression was the gentleman’s hair: sleek, full, silver, and combed back. This, when combined with his pointy nose, created an authentic debonaire effect. His lineless face came across as younger than in the portrait. It looked to Gael like he might be in his early fifties, possibly late forties. He wore no jewelry, curiously; no watch, no rings, no chain. His sole accoutrement was a gold ankle bracelet, visible on one ankle between its sandaled foot and the expensive-looking, baggy black trousers he wore gathered at his calves. His calves were massive in the way of a person born that way. If he wore any cologne Gael was not able to detect it, so taken over was the airspace by the aroma of pot.
“Thank you!” said Gael. “I feel welcome here. And I’ve had a great time concocting things in your laboratory.” He accepted the pipe and lighter and thought, easy does it. He lit and inhaled, alternating between drawing smoke and holding the pipe away from his mouth to get some fresh air in. He hoped he wouldn’t erupt into an insane fit of coughing.
“These are my babies,” the Count said, gesturing his arm across the tanks again. “I love nothing more than to sit here and watch them do their work.”
“Does winemaking run in your lineage?” Gael asked, tightly, through held breath and clenched teeth. He blew out, all the way out, and felt free and clear.
“No. Our seat has historically been in the Dolomites, where scarcely a grape can grow. We are a mountain stock, which may explain my affinity for Chile. Nonetheless, you are looking at the renegade, the black sheep of the House of Luzzago, at home in his second home. When I first arrived on this continent I knew there would be challenges, but I have persevered, all the while knowing in my soul that I am a man of the New World and not the old.” The Count accepted the pipe back from Gael, took a toke, and held it in.
“It feels old here as well. Is old,” said Gael. “That’s what attracts me so much about this place I think, and about this particular bodega. Aside from all the stainless steel, everything looks and feels like it’s from a different age.”
“Right you are, my lad.” The Count exhaled a gray plume that wafted across the passage and over the tank tops on the other side, where it hung. “Winemaking is an old profession in Chile, one of the oldest. It was initiated by the Jesuits. And my bodega and its shambolic vines are central to this long running heritage. Imagine!” He swept his arm again across the hall. “Imagine this chamber, one hundred and seventy years in the past. Gone are the stainless steel tanks, and in their place are capacious wooden vats. There is no electricity, my lad, no pumps, no machinery and so on. Only hand tools forged of copper.”
Gael squinted and tried to picture the scene.
“Of course, the nature of the industry was entirely different back then. All wine was produced solely for local consumption.” The Count turned the pipe over and tapped it on the grill of the platform, sending ashes to float down and land near a curled up Luissón. “It was that way for hundreds of years, right up until recent times. That is why I needed to upgrade. In order to accomplish my mission of bringing País to the world, I needed a more state-of-the-art facility. And now you see it: a modern bodega, housed within ancient walls. Contemporary yes, but still operated with the essential human touch.”
As the Count filled another bowl from his clear baggie of deep green and maroon hairy dripping buds, Gael detected a whiff of embellishment. Chile had indeed undergone a wine renaissance, but that had begun in the 1980s with the industry-wide conversion to steel tanks and oak barrels. All that must have been in place long before the Count came on the scene. Perhaps he had helped purchase a new de-stemmer, and maybe some stainless steel tubs? Those looked pretty new.
The Count handed Gael the pipe and lighter. As he lit up, Gael found inhaling the stuff was getting easier. As he drew in smoke, he observed the Count take out a sleek forest green iPhone and tap on it with his thumbs. He was still involved with his phone when Gael exhaled his own gray plume across the aisle to the opposite tank tops. Gael sat and waited, and felt the effects begin to kick in.
Soon the gentleman had put away his phone and was ready to resume talking. “Yes, País is my mission, my mission is País. The People’s Grape!”
“I thought the mission was to make it the Euro nightclub’s grape. The discerning New York restaurant’s grape.”
The Count grinned and accepted the pipe. “My País can, and has, achieved such deserved notoriety, now that it has spent so many centuries in the ground. Every great wine has a great story, my lad, and País is no exception. No exception! When you drink a glass of my País, you are drinking nothing less than a part of Chile itself.” He flicked the lighter and held the pipe in his teeth. ‘In a moment, I shall relate to you the story.”
When he finished, he passed the pipe to Gael and cleared his throat.
“It began in the 1500s, when the Jesuits arrived and needed wine to perform Eucharist. They could find no grape-like berry growing in Chile, so for a number of years they were forced to serve oxidized fermented grape juice shipped in barrels from Spain, a beverage so totally revolting that it hardly served as a proxy for the blood of Jesus. Now, let me see…” He stroked his faux-chin. “The year was 1548 I believe, when a shipment of raisins arrived on a Spanish galleon from the Canary Islands. The raisins were planted right here in the Maule, near to Concepción.”
