the Republic, a practicing member of the Church of Justice. But you see, when I describe the French as vindictive and vengeful, I know what I’m talking about.”
The waiter served coffee, and Sackheim waited for him to leave the table before continuing.
His father, nonetheless, despite his family’s survival, died a bitter man. To honor his memory, his mother insisted Émile go to law school, but Sackheim was restless and quit after his first year.
“Why practice law if they can pass laws that make it illegal?” he asked sardonically. I had no answer. His mother died when she heard the news. “That’s a joke,” he said. “A Jewish mother dying when her son, how do you say, ‘drops out’ of law school. In fact, she had all along been ill, never completely recovering from her ordeal.”
Instead he joined the gendarmerie, and his natural abilities and ready intelligence made for swift advancement. Growing up under such circumstances, he felt himself to be an outsider; now he turned it to his advantage.
I didn’t know what to say.
“Never mind. It was a long time ago. Anyway, I received an excellent Catholic education. Alors!” he called to our waiter, “l’addition, s’il vous plaît.” He regarded me again with startling blue eyes. “I am an old man, nearing retirement. They are reorganizing the Police Judiciaire and have been trying to get rid of me for several years, but I am holding out until the end. This will probably be my last case. So what if I break a rule or two? What can they say? ‘You’re fired’? Eh, bien. Who cares?”
Once we were in the car I said, “Forgive me. I know it’s an impertinent question, but your name, Sackheim, it sounds so . . .”
“German?” he laughed. “My father was from Alsace. My mother was Lyonnaise. But my hair—it was red when I was a boy—and my blue eyes, they provided, how do you say, ‘protective coloration’ at the lycée. But you, Shtayrn, you’re a Jew, non?”
I nodded.
“I thought so. Your name. And, unlike me, you, my friend, look Jewish.” We both smiled. “So, do you need to check into your hotel? No? Excellent. First you need a geography lesson. This place, Bourgogne, is maddening.”
We drove south down the N74, turned off the highway at Fixin, and found ourselves on a narrow road.
“This is La Route des Grands Crus. It goes through Gevrey-Chambertin, Morey-Saint-Denis, Chambolle-Musigny.” We passed through one legendary village after another, and I remembered back to when I’d first attached these real places to the names I’d memorized as a young sommelier.
On the far side of Chambolle, we switchbacked by the Clos de Vougeot, and Sackheim pulled over to take in the legendary vineyard and domaine. The place floated on a sea of mist broken by the tips of vines that fanned out in unending rows, the château’s volumes of gray stone massed and fractured as if they had split and multiplied over centuries. He gazed at the place in awe.
“These wines, they are . . . incroyable, extraordinaire.” English was insufficient, obviously, and the wines, a few of which I had tasted in my glory days, were a luxury I could no longer afford on a bar-tender’s tips.
In Nuits-Saint-Georges, Sackheim pulled into a parking space across from a tabac, took the map I had in my hands, and ordered me out. He spread the map on the hood of the Citroën, overlooking a stream that passed through the south side of the town.
“In two months this river, le Meuzin, will be full, rushing . . .” He extended his arm to the west.
In broad strokes he explained the Côte d’Or, a patchwork of vineyards forming an irregular and inscrutable checkerboard of names—communes, premiers crus, grands crus—so complex in their array that I wondered how a worker found his way through the maze of plots and parcels and rows.
“But you know all this, non? Lieutenant Ciofreddi told me that you are a distinguished sommelier.” I thought I detected a touch of irony. No American could be the real thing in a Frenchman’s eyes. “Come, I will take you to your hotel.”
We turned off at the sign for Aloxe-Corton. The road passed through a corridor of ancient acacias and narrowed, winding its way through two small squares. Sackheim dropped me in front of the hotel. I stood at the curb, my bag at my feet. He rolled his window down.
“Tell me, is there a restaurant in town where guys like Feldman and Goldoni might