drink wine and love women!” the writer said. “And believe in beauty and poetry, the only possible religions in this world.”
“You’re not Christian?” asked Petrus.
“Are you?” asked the writer, looking at him, amused.
“No, no,” said Petrus, “I’m—”
He broke off, at a loss to say what he was.
The writer looked at him, even more amused.
“Do you read?” he asked.
“Yes,” said Petrus, “as much as I travel.”
“We spend too much time in books and not enough in nature.”
“I learn a great deal from traveling, but mainly from books,” said Petrus.
“So, as I did not study, I learned a great deal,” answered the man. “I wrote that one day in a book no one will read anymore, once flowers wither on my tomb.”
“So there is no hope?” asked Petrus.
“It is because we believe in roses that we make them blossom,” said the writer. “The fact they end up dying does not change anything. There is always one war coming and another one ending, and so we must relentlessly start dreaming again.”
They were silent as they emptied their last glass.
“Do you know who is the first to die?” the writer asked at last, thoughtfully.
Petrus could find nothing to say.
“The visionary,” continued the writer. “It is always the visionary who dies, in the first exchange of gunfire. And when he falls in the snow, and knows he is dying, he recalls the hunts of his childhood, when his grandfather taught him to respect the deer.”
There was another moment’s silence.
“Farewell, friend,” he said at last. “May life bring you gaiety, which is the most amiable form of courage.”
Petrus often pondered this conversation, and had no trouble honoring its premise—wine and women—and he understood how one could learn without studying. That is the virtue of the novel, he thought, at least for the reader; writing one must be another kettle of fish.
That day, in addition to his meeting with the great writer, Petrus also received a surprising piece of information from his winemaker friend in la Côte, and he decided to look into it further.
“I recently went to Spain,” the winemaker (whose name was Gaston Bienheureux) told him suddenly.
As he said this, his expression grew wistful, which surprised Petrus, who was used to seeing him frank and talkative.
“In a place in Extremadura called Yepes,” continued Gaston. “There’s a castle there, with an extraordinary wine cellar, and all the winemakers in Europe go there.”
He fell silent, took a sip of his vin d’amitié, a vintage reserved for friends that he would never sell, and seemed to forget what he’d said. When at dinner Petrus raised the subject again, Gaston didn’t know what to say.
The next day, in Nanzen, the guardian shared the vision of a stony, arid plain, broken now and again by sun-baked trees and hills and, on the horizon, a village dominated by a fortress. One hour later, Petrus landed there. It was hotter than hell, and Petrus grumbled at having to wear a bamboo hat that felt itchy on his forehead. Need I tell you that thirty years—which amounts to barely four in an elf’s lifetime—had gone by since our hero became the Council’s special envoy to the human world? That there is not a trace, anywhere, of the two children of November and snow, and that the entire matter seems to be frozen in permafrost? Patience, however—for everything has been set in motion and is coming together, and one day soon Petrus will find out what to expect from Yepes. In the village, he didn’t meet a soul. He went into the inn and, after the torrid heat outside, it felt as cold as the grave, no one came. After a moment cooling down and growing impatient, he went back out and took the steep path that led to the fortress.
At the gates to the fortress, he came upon a young boy who waved at him.
“What fair winds bring you here?” he asked politely.
But the boy barred the way.
“I’ve come upon the recommendation of a winemaker friend,” said Petrus.
“Are you a winemaker yourself?” asked the boy.
“No,” said Petrus, who at the time was not prepared to lie.
“I’m sorry, but you must go on your way,” said the young guard.
Petrus looked up at the stone walls and studied the narrow windows. An eagle was flying very high in the sky and there was a sharp hardness to the air, but also the fragrance of wonder, a perfume of fury and roses which made him think of the poetry of his mists. Worlds are born because