Léon was quite spent after the sea voyage, Sobran said, but they lodged at Nantes and nursed him, then took the journey home very slowly. ‘From when have you looked for me?’ he asked his angel.
‘This is the first night. I knew that six weeks was just you being hopeful.’ He passed Sobran a slender, dark green, glass bottle. ‘Some cordial for your brother. Apharah sends it – my friend in Damascus.’
‘Thank her for me,’ Sobran said. Xas was smiling at him sweetly and he felt his heart going up like a lark, startled and silly. He began to give what he was permitted to – to talk about Léon, the journey, Sabine’s suitor, things he hoped to do. He promised Xas a feast of celebration – next year, he wouldn’t miss their appointment. It would be twenty years, did Xas realise? They could try the 1806 again, ‘that vin bourru which I remember you gave the benefit of the doubt’.
‘Do you remember that I said it rained in 1812, the second year you were away?’
‘Yes.’
‘Your father’s last harvest. I want to taste that too. “It seldom rains at midsummer,” you wrote, but it did when you turned your back.’ Xas was smiling still, but meant something. Sobran tried not to see the remark as a reproach – then did understand it. ‘You remember everything,’ he said.
‘Yes.’
‘When will you bring me red wine, Xas?’
‘I said when you were forty.’
‘Three years.’
Xas nodded. ‘All Spanish and Italian, I’m afraid. The best reds are on your doorstep. You might yet make them, wine like the Citeaux monks made when they had – among other vineyards – Kalmann. Before the revolution, when Jodeau was a small clos and this slope was half in cherry trees and your great-great uncle – I think it was – raised cattle, made cheese and sold all his grapes to the château.’
‘Yes. You can still see the old wall along by the road. How did you learn all this?’
‘By speaking to the dead.’
Sobran nodded, calm. He thought and watched the fine filaments of lightning at play perhaps as far off as Autun. ‘I had forgotten or maybe never fully understood, that whenever you come I have to play host to an angel. Perhaps I’ve insulted you with talk of debts and impositions and advice. Well, I’m older now, and more gracious, I hope – although I think I still want both dignity and wisdom.’
‘I’m with you, Sobran,’ Xas said, ruffling his wings in a kind of shrug. ‘However you treat me.’
1828 Vin amer (bitter wine)
The host had set a table, had kicked away the mould-furred and fermenting windfall fruit from around its legs. He covered the table with a white cloth, brought soft cheese, peaches, pears, the bottles – Jodeau South 1806 and Jodeau 1812, plus a bottle of cognac, forty-five years of age – and a gift from his wealthy patron, Aurora de Valday. He set two chairs, at angles rather than opposite each other, facing the boundary stone on which the angel commonly perched.
Then the moon arrived, gold, dazzling and featureless. After another hour it was high in the sky, a pure wafer pressed with a holy image.
The angel came and settled, enveloped both his lower body and the boundary stone with his wings. The first bottle was over an hour uncorked, and mellow. Sobran poured it out, then proposed a toast, ‘Here’s to twenty years.’
They drank, passed an hour in conversation – Xas questioning and Sobran talking about Léon’s health and about the child Céleste was expecting, their last to be sure, another son, he hoped. Sabine was betrothed to a vintner, from a coterie near Chalon-sur-Saône, the other side of the river. ‘He has just inherited, and is a very well set up young man, though he’s closer in age to me than to Sabine. Céleste, Sophie and Sabine are all very busy sewing. Sophie has only boys, you see, so she’s enjoying the preparations.’ Sobran told how the cellars were being extended, and how, in winter, he and Céleste had spent a month in Beaune.
‘I’m prosperous, settled and very happy,’ he said. He paused to slap his thigh when he saw Josie, who had slipped her rope and come up the hill. The dog ignored him and went to the angel, rolled against the bolster of his crossed wings, from which an arm with a golden wrist-guard moved to fondle her head and sides. Xas whispered endearments to the dog, in some strange, supple language that caused every hair on Sobran’s body to lift and the breath in his throat to thicken. The dog writhed, delirious, mute, her ears in the dirt.
Sobran busied himself opening the second bottle. ‘The Comte died last Christmas, God rest his soul. He named his niece’s son as his heir, though he does have a daughter who lives in Venice – she was a lady-in-waiting to the Empress Josephine and never married. The boy is ten. His mother, Aurora de Valday, asked me to oversee Vully’s winemaking.’
‘Did you say yes?’
‘I did. I only need to spend half the week there. Léon is here now, and Baptiste does nearly a man’s share of work.’
‘Good. See where the cellar got you? And cultivated knowledge.’
‘And the Comte’s freely given friendship.’ Sobran leaned forward, offered the bottle. ‘Try it, this is the year I was in Russia. The year it rained.’
They tasted. Sobran set his glass down, looked at Xas. ‘I’m a very lucky man. Not wanting to tempt providence, but there are times I think I’m the luckiest man alive. I’m wealthy and healthy and have a loving family. I know you. But beneath all this, my happiness has a foundation. I mean, my luck is my knowledge. Whereas other men have faith, I have knowledge. Because I know you, I know that if I lead a good life, and surround myself with good people – all of us with a measure of piety – then, despite estrangements, like the quarrel that parted my brother and me, or long absences, even absences that last more than half my life, those of the dead – Baptiste Kalmann, my parents, Nicolette – no matter what my losses and my grief at them, I am certain I will be united in Heaven with those I love.’
The angel turned his head, looked towards the eastern horizon, the strip of violet sky that haloed the hills. He said, ‘You won’t see me in Heaven.’
There was a moment of blown silence, a rot of silence that seethed and was alive. Sobran stared at Xas, so bewildered that his body was numb.
‘Not all angels come from Heaven,’ Xas said. Then, ‘I’m a fallen angel.’
He was the same – an angel balanced on a boundary stone – but the world blinked, or lost consciousness for a moment. A chair fell, Sobran’s chair. He was standing. He held the table edge so hard that splinters lifted in stars around his fingertips. The face before him was exactly the same sober, watchful face he’d first looked into.
Xas put out a hand.
Sobran fled. He felt the flesh on his torso bouncing as his feet struck the slope, felt it as meat, mortality, age, ugliness. He ran indoors, bolted the door, then, as private as some mad men and most injured animals, he raised the hatch in the pantry floor and stumbled down into the little cellar, full of onions, potatoes, apples, bottled preserves. He sat in the dark, wept and struck his head against a beam. In the closed space he stuffed his hands into his mouth as if to smother himself.
His family found him with the marks of his fists on his own body, bruised stomach, thighs, face and chest. He didn’t speak, just sat and rocked. They put him to bed, brought in more family, a physician, Father Lesy, whose hand Sobran held as he prayed. The words of the prayer were handholds in a sifting pit of sand. ‘I waited patiently for the Lord; and he inclined unto me and heard my cry. He brought me up also out of an horrible pit, out of the miry clay.’ Sobran struggled, losing ground, the earth of his own grave pouring on him, waterless, the limestone at midsummer.
It was Antoine and young Baptiste who found the table set under the shade tree, the soured cheese, bird-pecked fruit, spilled bottle and two glasses – one with red tide lines and the other scarcely touched. Baptiste picked both up and turned them, saw the cheesy grease of a lower lip print he’d never thought he knew before, till he recognised it as his father’s. On the other glass was the print of a smooth-skinned, fu
ll lower lip.
‘Who was it?’ he asked his uncle.
The stonemason thought of Aurora de Valday, the madness between some men and women. He told the boy to clear the table away.
That day Antoine searched Jodeau and Kalmann for a corpse. He thought – he scarcely knew what. Then after two days Aurora de Valday sent a letter, inquiring after Sobran’s health; she’d heard he was ill. At the week’s end she came herself – in her carriage, veiled, slim-waisted in her grey silk. She pulled off her gloves when she came into the house, as if she meant to set to work in the sickroom. Sophie told her it was better she didn’t see him yet. He wasn’t himself. The priest was with him now.
Aurora’s hand went up to her mouth.
‘He should live,’ Sophie hurried to say, ‘if he has a will to. But he hasn’t eaten yet, only wants to pray.’ Sophie held Aurora’s gloves while the Countess retied her bonnet. Her hands were trembling. As they stood there, Sophie stolidly barring the foot of the stairs, Céleste appeared above them. Madame Jodeau offered the Countess no greeting, or any ordinary acknowledgement, but stared, and audibly ground her teeth. Aurora almost expected Madame Jodeau to begin to bark. She took her gloves from Sophie and hurried out.
A dark corridor. A long passage of horror. He couldn’t bear the touch of his own thoughts. Then, one morning, he woke and looked around at the bedchamber, at Céleste by the bed in a chair, mending a stocking. Was it red? One of Martin’s? Sobran found he did want to think about his second son, in his school clothes – but he couldn’t discern the colour of the stocking. He couldn’t see colour, and knew it at once, looking around himself at the dark grey of shadow and bright grey of sunlight on the quilt. Céleste started from her chair, called in a shrill voice for Sophie.
Sobran told the women he was hungry. He found his rosary in his hand.
To the sorrow of his family, and all his friends, to the secret sorrow of the aged Father Lesy, with whom he spent so much time, Sobran was a changed man. His family watched him, even in midwinter twilight, ride out to early Mass. He wore black and white, a cross buttoned in his shirt. Like a Protestant patriarch he read the Bible to his household in the evenings. He hated the hours of darkness – would call his sons to his side if the sun set while they walked from Kalmann to Jodeau. He was always shut away with lamps lit in his room at Vully – didn’t take wine with Aurora in the bailiff’s office, as had been their tradition in the months before his illness. He gave money to the Church. He slept with a candle lit – and Céleste learned not to quench it, no matter how its light rubbed at the lids of her closed eyes.
1829 Mutage (the process of arresting fermentation by adding alcohol)
Because he was colour-blind, Sobran’s night vision was poor. What he saw, the first time he looked through the shutters, was like a landscape through heat haze, but the swarming distortion was darkness.
Sweat ran on his body, his stomach was empty, his bowel empty, he was both fasting, and unable to eat. Sight impaired, he was slow to see what he dreaded to see – the figure waiting on the ridge. Yes, a cloud made a slight adjustment to the moonlight, and Sobran saw the white face, white shoulders, folded wings. His fingers climbed down the slats of the shutters like a ladder as he let himself down on to his knees.
Sobran prayed and the fallen angel waited, all night. Sobran’s prayer had more stamina than the angel’s patience. At last the hidden man observed the rising sun light the angel’s black hair, whitely, though Sobran recalled the vigil after Nicolette’s death, and how at that sunrise the sheen on the angel’s hair was robe, the purple of wine. Here Sobran met other recollections, and crushed his testicles in one fist till tears ran down his face.
Sunrise. The angel got up, his joints as oiled, and head as steady as a person’s who has paused only a moment, not camped all night. The wings spread slowly, as white as dry chalk, and he flew away. Sobran finished his prayer, then fainted with his head against the windowsill.
1830 Jaune (a malady of white wines when they turn yellow – not to be confused with vin jaune)
The following year Sobran intended to be somewhere else on what he thought of now as the anniversary of his damnation. Midsummer found him at Sabine’s husband’s vineyard near Chalon-sur-Saône – sober Sobran Jodeau, white-haired after his illness, a handsome man of middle age, who wore only black, who was pious, but unjudging, self-denying, but generous, respected by his friends and neighbours (and mourned by all). On the day after midsummer Sobran was quiet, but peaceful, playing with his first grandchild. And another day found him, more silent, but resolute – at Mass four times (it was Sunday), fasting, retiring early. The next day he walked the roads around the town, from breakfast to supper.
The following day he set out for home.
On the night of the rendezvous he bolted the doors of the house and posted himself by the shutters of his parlour – again. Céleste called him to bed. He said he had a letter to write. She asked him whether he and Sabine had quarrelled – stood in her shawl at the door of the room – big-bellied with, really, this time, their last child.
‘Of course we haven’t,’ he said. ‘You get some rest.’
She trimmed the lamp wick for him, and the light in the room bloomed. She said goodnight, and before closing the door, looked at the desk, the letters, looked for Aurora de Valday’s serpentine handwriting.
When Sobran heard the creak of Céleste’s footsteps overhead he put out the lamp.
After midnight the angel alighted. He stood against the tree – the fork above his head now – the sight of which hurt Sobran, like the ellipsis in his life between the mark he’d made on the parlour door frame to measure Sabine at fourteen, before she went to school in Autun, and at seventeen, when she was home again at a time he and Céleste remembered to measure their children. In this instance it was the tree, not the angel, who had grown. Sobran was at a loss as to what part of his body to harm to stop the memory of Xas’s head resting neatly against the fork – five years before?
They held their positions.
Shortly before dawn the angel got up and walked down the hill. He paused to look at the kennel, which was empty. Josie had disappeared during Sobran’s illness, which caused him little sorrow. The dog was disloyal and contaminated; she had failed to warn him of danger, and had given homage to a hellish being.
Xas came up to the house and studied in turn each window that faced the hill. The ground-floor windows shuttered, as always, and those on the top floor open to whatever breezes there were. Xas turned his attention to the shutters – four windows. He stared at them, one after the other.
Sobran took a step back, and another, then a third. He stood in the middle of the room and looked at the grey bars of light. No shadow, no hands, no stealthy white fingertips. Then he heard the drum strokes of wings, the hiss of grit against the stone walls, clatter of pebbles on the shutter, a rushing sound, then every ordinary dawn noise – cockcrow, birdsong, a dog barking on a nearby farm, wind livening up – all exact, familiar and despised.
1831 Cru (the soil in which vine is grown)
Sober Sobran Jodeau, in his white shirt, black waistcoat, black breeches and coat, white collar, gold collar stud, and gold crucifix, walked up between his vines to confront the fallen angel – who simply said his name, then was quiet as Sobran held up one hand. His other, a fist bunched at his side, held the blessed seeds of his rosary, hung with five holy medals from shrines he’d visited.
‘I have some questions for you. You can answer them, then go and never come back.’
‘Have you thought this through, Sobran?’ Xas was dry. ‘Which do you need more, your questions answered, or me gone?’
Sobran struck the angel with the fist that held the rosary, then looked with more satisfaction than anger on the angel’s profile, the face his fist had turned. Xas said, to the ground, ‘Don’t do that again.’
Sobran struck him again, backhand this time, vicious, fearless and meaning business.
Xas looked up
at him. ‘You’re striking God.’
‘You’re a liar.’
Xas stood up; wrapped in his wings, he was a figure as streamlined as a simple tombstone. ‘Ask your questions. And please don’t say you disbelieve my answers.’
Sobran felt tears, a pressing pain behind his incontinent eyes. He asked, ‘Did you really see Nicolette in Heaven?’
‘Of course,’ Xas said, sounding as though he hadn’t anticipated the question and now knew he should have. ‘I saw her, yes. In the far south there is a volcano whose blue sulphurous lake is a back way into Heaven. It is a journey that takes more than human hardihood. As far as I know it’s seldom used. I went through that lake. I’d allowed weeks before our scheduled meeting, for troubles I anticipated – but, unfortunately, not for the trouble I was too afraid to face. I knew I’d be crippled for a time after gaining Heaven. You see, I hadn’t been there for some time. I’m sorry, Sobran, to be telling you about me, not Nicolette, but I told you about her all those years ago – and didn’t trouble you with my story.’
‘You troubled me.’
‘Where I gained access, Heaven was like the volcano – not terrible to an angel – but with winds full of ice like powdered glass. Stealing into Heaven I’d eluded everyone but God. Whom I know I’ve never eluded. I went down in His arms. There was ice all around me, and silence, because He didn’t speak to me, just took me and held me in Heaven’s ice and – terrible – His sorrow. He didn’t release me, but after a time I just got up again and flew to find Nicolette. That was easy, in Heaven an angel can find whoever they want – whoever is there. I saw her and spoke to her, exactly as I told you. Heaven was how I described it – Heavenly. Then I left Nicolette and I left Heaven. Again.’
Xas fell quiet. After a long silence he asked, ‘What is your second question?’