Ten Trees and a Truffle Dog by Jamie Ivey Read Free Book Online Page B

watched Manu work, monotonously, unyieldingly bending his back to the elements harvesting whatever the land offered. If I wanted to know whether the local producers would submit a representative wine to my blind tasting, Manu was the person to ask.
    Â Â The sound of metal grinding against metal meant that our landlord was at home. Whether it was a hobby or a business I was never quite sure, but Manu spent days dismembering and then reconstructing old cars. They wheezed up the drive or arrived on the back of trailers and a line of vintage Renaults and Citroëns now awaited his attention. Some of the cars had been around for so long that they had become part of the garden. In the summer wild flowers grew out of the windows, in the winter just weeds. I'd persuaded Tanya to view them as art installations, the type of stuff the Tate Modern would pay thousands for – a retrospective on the role of the car in French society.
    Â Â As I approached, Manu lifted his visor and extinguished the blowtorch. He did most of his mechanical work in an old barn which divided the two sides of the farmhouse. Various pieces of equipment hung from the beams – a yoke for a donkey, heavy iron chains and a plough. In one corner there was a rusty tractor and the barn as always smelt heavily of diesel. Nails, screws and other pieces of metal covered every surface. Rakes, hoes and a scythe fit for the Grim Reaper rested in a bundle against the wall. A severed finger or toe was only a misplaced hand or foot away.
    Â Â  'Bonjour!'
    Â Â  'Bonjour.'
    Â Â  'Tout va bien? Est-ce qu'Elodie est toujours sage?'
    Â Â Having a baby in his house hadn't been part of Manu's thought process when he rented it out to us. Although the walls were thick and the division between the two sides of the mas well constructed, he was still paranoid about Elodie's crying. Hence the first question every time we met these days was, ' Est-ce qu'Elodie est toujours sage?' – 'Is she still behaving and sleeping well?' Only once his mind had been put at rest could we continue.
    Â Â  'Toujours sage,' I reassured, catching a strong whiff of garlic, a foodstuff which Manu insisted was 'très bon pour la santé' . The smell was sometimes so overpowering that I wondered whether, in private, he chewed on raw bulbs.
    Â Â We moved outside into the bright sunlight. A small stream had sprung up outside our house. After years of drought this winter's rainfall had exceeded all records. Rocks in the hills wept and water played along forgotten riverbeds. Jumping over the stream, Manu opened the door to his chicken coop. Ten birds immediately huddled around his legs, clucking hungrily. As Manu tipped seed to the ground I explained my idea for a tasting. Ducking into the hen house he began collecting eggs; only the odd grunt reassured me that he was still listening.
    Â Â 'And so that's it – a blind tasting of an English rosé against a local French one. We'll hold it on market day for a bit of fun.'
    Â Â Thousands of small white snails clung to the fence which enclosed the chickens. Manu casually plucked them and tossed them to the birds. He still hadn't said a word.
    Â Â 'What do you think?' I prodded.
    Â Â Ten more snails met their end.
    Â Â 'You'll be wasting your time,' Manu finally confided. 'The people here know their own wines.'
    Â Â 'But you don't object.'
    Â Â Manu shrugged his shoulders, indicating indifference or perhaps even a little hostility to the idea. After the chickens it was the turn of the hunting dogs. Manu kept three of them in a large cage. In the season he would depart before dawn, and I often saw him returning home in the misty half-light, gun cocked over his arm, dead game slung over his shoulder and dogs circling adoringly around his ankles. Such was his command of the animals that he could silence them with a glance.
    Â Â 'We'll enter Christophe's wine,' Manu grunted as he forked leftover