“La fraîcheur !” “Quelle couleur!” The standard banalities I’d been accustomed to hearing in my former life.
Goldoni sensed me at the doorway. His nonchalance seemed forced. Business as usual, but with an edge. It bugged me. I pretended not to see him, at the same time wondering if he could have had anything to do with Feldman’s disappearance. His mentor had been murdered, and his main competitor was nowhere to be found. Why wasn’t he scared? I was.
Everyone, including Bayne, had started in on the food. I assembled a plate of ham and cheese and a bunch of grapes and headed outside for another break. I sat in the courtyard on a stone ledge in the shade. A light breeze rustled a flowering plum that stood at the center of the courtyard. Swallows swooped, gulping insects in violent arcs, and a butterfly careened against invisible barriers above a patch of grass—the manic pattern language of the natural world against which man plays out his own sordid little dramas, I thought to myself.
The tasting wore on into the afternoon. I wandered up and down the table, sampling randomly. Even though I spat religiously, the wine began to seep into my bloodstream. I felt sodden and sluggish. Sometime after two, Pitot’s mother showed up. She was poorly dressed and carried a terrine wrapped in tin foil. From what I could see, the other wives shunned her, whispering and smirking behind her back. I couldn’t tell if they resented the late hour of her arrival or the fact that she’d shown up at all. Her presence struck even me as odd. Rosen had nothing to do with Domaine Pitot. Nonetheless, Gauffroy’s wife dutifully made a place for her contribution. Still, no one touched the food she’d brought.
I decided to take another break, and as I passed her, Madame Pitot beckoned me, encouraging me to sample her dish.
“Bonjour, Monsieur,” she said. “Please try my pâté de campagne. It’s an old family recipe.” Her knife was poised and ready.
“No, thank you, I’ve eaten. Maybe later,” I said politely. Then I wandered outside, crossing the yard to examine the church and have a cigarette. I could see a young man in the parking area at the far corner of the abbey who was waving his arm and arguing vehemently. I walked a little farther, merely to see to whom he was talking. The scene was dreamlike, weird: No one was there. As I crossed back to return to the tasting, the figure I’d been watching heard my footsteps on the gravel and turned suddenly. It was Jean Pitot. He held a bottle of wine in his other hand and had a peculiar look on his face. I did a lousy job of disguising my shock.
“What are you doing here?” was all I could get out.“I just saw your mother.”
“Il fait beau aujourd’hui,” he said. “A beautiful day.” His smile was offset by the light in his twitching eyes, which were focused on nothing. The effect disturbed me.
“You following me?” I said.
“Why would I?” he said. “C’est bizarre, ça.”
“You tell me. Why did you try to crush me in the cellar the other day? Was that you behind me in the car? What the fuck is going on?”
Pitot backed up, slowly at first, then turned and ran toward the abbey. People were mingling in the courtyard, eating and visiting and smoking. They ignored him as he entered the doors, which had been thrown open. I followed him inside.
He stopped at the food table, and the women stopped what they were doing, watching him. He and his mother were staring at each other. They seemed engaged in intense conversation without saying a word. The tension was palpable. No one knew what to do.
Pitot broke off from his mother, and as he walked the length of the tasting room, the vignerons all stopped talking, glancing at each other nervously. He hesitated at the threshold of the lower cellar, Bayne following some ten feet behind him as if sensing trouble. Rosen, suddenly aware of the hush that had fallen on the adjoining room, looked up, and Goldoni stopped midsentence. Monique appeared panic-stricken. Then Pitot bounded down the steps.
“You have to taste my wine,” he shouted at Goldoni.
“I . . .” Goldoni stammered and turned to Rosen.
“Who the hell are you, barging in here like this? I don’t even know who you are,” Rosen said.
“Je m’appelle Jean Pitot. I am a vigneron, too,” Pitot said, gesturing to the winemaker standing between