Without warning, he got to his feet, picked up the syringe from the table, and walked over to the barrels. Max watched as he knocked out the bung from one of them, inserted the syringe, and drew off several inches of wine. Coming back to the table, he squeezed the bulb carefully and half-filled both glasses, holding one of them up to the light.
“Bon. Go ahead. Taste it. Remember that it’s still young.”
Max picked up the glass, conscious of Roussel’s intent stare and his own shortcomings as a wine connoisseur. But once the wine was in his mouth, sending powerful and delightful signals to his palate, even he could tell that it was a different drink altogether from ordinary Luberon wines. He wished he could remember some of Charlie’s ornate vocabulary, and was so impressed he forgot to spit.
“That’s amazing,” he said, raising his glass to Roussel. “Congratulations.”
Roussel seemed hardly to hear him. “Nobody down here makes wine like this,” he said. “And yet I realized that there was a problem: I couldn’t sell it-not legally, at any rate, because the Cabernet and Merlot vines hadn’t been declared. So I went to Maître Auzet for advice, thinking that she could find a petite lacune in the law. She’s clever like that.” He took a mouthful of wine and chewed on it for a few seconds before spitting it into the drainage channel. “That’s when it started. Instead of a loophole, she found a buyer; someone who would take all of it, every year, and pay cash-good money, no paperwork, no tax, no questions asked. I couldn’t resist. My wife, my daughter, my old age…” He looked at Max with the mournful, guilty expression of an old hound caught in flagrante with an illicit lamb chop.
Max leaned back in his chair while he took in what Roussel had just said: Nathalie Auzet, notaire and négociant. No wonder she looked so prosperous. “Who does she sell it to?”
“I don’t know. I’ve never met the buyer. Nathalie said it wasn’t necessary.”
“Well, where do you send it? Paris, Germany, Belgium?”
Roussel shook his head. “Who knows where it goes? The truck comes once a year-in September, just before I start the vendange, and always at night. The wine from the previous year is transferred from the barrels, and I get my cash the following week. From Nathalie.”
“But the truck. Surely it has a name on the side? A company, an enterprise of some sort?”
Roussel’s hand dropped down to fondle Tonto’s ear. “No. That’s not normal, I know, but in an affaire like this, one doesn’t ask too many questions. All I can tell you is the truck that picks up the wine has license plates with a 33 registration.” He cocked his thumb over his shoulder, in a vague northerly direction. “The Gironde.”
Max shook his head. “How long has this been going on?”
“Seven or eight years, maybe a little longer. I don’t remember exactly.”
“What I don’t understand,” said Max, “is why you’re telling me all this. I might never have found out.”
Roussel stared at the shimmering horizon through the half-open doors of the cave, his eyes narrowed, his dark brown face immobile, etched with deep lines. His head might have been cast in bronze. He turned back to Max.
“Your uncle was more interested in his books and his music than the vines. Even so, there were many times I almost told him, but-well, I paid for the vines, I planted them, I nursed them. I buy new oak barrels-the best French oak-every four years. No expense is spared. Everything is correct. And your uncle never suffered; it wasn’t like stealing. It seemed fair. Not strictly honest perhaps, but fair. And now it’s all changed, with you wanting to improve the vines, bringing in all these oenologues…” He finished the wine, swallowing this time, and put the glass down carefully. “To tell you the truth, Monsieur Max, I knew someone would find out. I thought it best to tell you myself.” He resumed the mournful expression as he waited to see how his confession had been received.
Max was silent for a few moments. And then: “You say it was Nathalie Auzet’s idea?”
Roussel nodded. “She’s no fool, that one. She took care of everything.”
Two surprises for Max in the space of half an hour. The vineyard was not what it seemed. The glamorous notaire was not what she seemed. As for Rousseclass="underline" Was he genuine, or was he playing some game of his own? Could the wine be sold legally, or would there be horrendous penalties? There were complications galore, far too many for any kind of instant decision.
“Well,” said Max, “I’m glad you told me. I know it wasn’t easy. Let me think about it.”
The afternoon had drifted into a still, warm evening under a lavender sky shot through with streaks of pink, promising another glorious day tomorrow. The tantalizing whiff of cooking came through the open windows of houses in the village. Christie had managed to find a three-day-old copy of the International Herald Tribune, and was giving Max belated news of the outside world, mostly the summer antics of politicians, as they walked toward Fanny’s. Passing the boules court, they paused to watch the next throw. As always, it was an all-male event.
Christie found this puzzling, coming as she did from a country where women’s participation in sports now extended to boxing-and soon, no doubt, to sumo wrestling. “You’ve been coming down here a long time,” she said. “Do you know why it is that you never see women playing?”
“Never thought about it,” Max said. “You just don’t. Hold on.” He went over to an old man, dark and wrinkled as a well-cured olive, who was waiting his turn to throw, and repeated the question. There was a cackle from the old man, and he said something to Max that provoked a ragged chorus of cackles from the other players.
Max was smiling when he came back to translate. “You’re not going to like this. But he said women should be home cooking dinner. Oh, and he said he could teach his dog to play boules better than any woman.”
Christie’s face, her shoulders, her whole body stiffened with indignation. “We’ll see about that. Watch this, buster.”
She stepped onto the court, taking a boule from the startled old man, and went up to the pitching mark drawn in the dust. The players fell silent. She crouched down, took long and careful aim, and let fly, scattering the other boules and scoring a direct hit on the cochonnet.
Turning to the old man, now even more startled, she tapped herself on the chest. “ St. Helena junior bowling champion, 1993.” Reversing the direction of her hand, she then tapped him on the chest. “And you can tell your dog to eat his heart out.” The old man watched her leave the court, raising his cap to scratch his head. How times have changed, he thought to himself. How times have changed.
As soon as they reached the restaurant, Christie went to wash the dust from her hands, giving Fanny the chance to ask Max a question that had occupied her for several days: “The little American girl-she’s your copine?”