The Winemaker by Noah Gordon Read Free Book Online Page A

of day in lazy conversation that shortened the trip. He said he was Emilio Rivera, whose cooperage was in Sitges.
    “Fine barrels,” Josep said, glancing at the load behind him. “Bound for winemakers?”
    Rivera smiled. “No.” He did not sell to winemakers, he said, though he supplied barrels to the vinegar trade. “These are slated for fishfolk on the Barcelona waterfront. They fill my barrels with hake, bream, tuna, herrings…sometimes sardines or anchovies. Not very often with eels, for mostly they sell their entire catch of eels fresh. I do like young eels.”
    Neither of the men mentioned the civil war; it was impossible to tell whether a stranger was a Carlist conservative or a government-supporting liberal. When Josep admired the horses, the conversation turned to draft animals.
    “I’ll be looking to buy a strong young mule soon, I think,” Josep said.
    “Then you must come to the horse fair in Castelldefels, which will be held in only four weeks. My cousin Eusebio Serrat is a buyer of horses, mules, and such. For a small fee he will help you select the best offered there,” the cooper said, and Josep nodded thoughtfully, tucking away the name in his head.
    Rivera’s horses moved well. It was not long after midday when they reached the place where the textile factory was located, just outside the walls of Barcelona; but, since Josep had arranged to meet Donat at the mill at five o’clock, he rode beyond the mill village with Senyor Rivera. As he jumped from the cooper’s wagon at the Placa de la Seu, the bells in the Cathedral tower were sounding the news that it was two o’clock.
    He strolled through the basilica and vaulted galleries, and ate his bread and cheese on a bench in the cloisters, throwing a crust to a gaggle of geese grazing beneath the medlars, magnolias, and palm trees of the Cathedral garden. Then he sat
    outside on the stone steps, enjoying the thin sun that warmed the cool air of early spring.
    He knew he was a short walk from the neighborhood where, according to Nivaldo, Teresa’s husband had a shoe repair shop.
    He was nervous about the possibility of meeting her in the street. What could he say to her?
    But she did not appear. He sat and watched the people entering and leaving the Cathedral—priests, members of the upper classes in fine clothes, nuns in several differenthabits, working people with worn faces, children with dirty feet. The shadows were lengthening as he left the Cathedral and made his way through narrow streets and courtyards.
    He heard the mill before it came into his sight. At first the roar was like a distant surf that filled his ears with dull and muffled sound and left him uneasy and strangely apprehensive.
    Donat embraced him, happy and eager to show Josep where he worked. “Come,” he said. The mill was a large presence of flat red brick. In the entryway the roar was more insistant. A man in a finely-cut black jacket and gray waistcoat looked at Donat. “You! There is a bale of spoiled wool near the carders. It is rotten and cannot be used. You will dispose of it, please.”
    Josep knew his brother had been working since four a.m., but Donat nodded. “Yes, Senyor Serna, I will attend to it. Senyor, may I present my brother, Josep Alvarez? I have finished my shift and am about to show him our mill.”
    “Yes, yes, show it to him, but then dispose of the bad wool…Is your brother seeking employment then?”
    “No, senyor,” Josep said, and the man turned away dismissively.
    Donat paused at a crate filled with raw wool and showed Josep how to take some of the material and stuff it into his ears. “To protect against the noise.”
    Despite the ear plugs, sound burst over them as they went through a set of doors. They entered a balcony overlooking the vast concrete floor on which limitless rows of machines raised a clacking pandemonium that pounded against Josep’s skin and filled the hollows within his body. Donat tapped his arm to gain his