The Telling Room: A Tale of Love, Betrayal, Revenge, and the World's Greatest Piece of Cheese (25 page)
Authors: Michael Paterniti
“¡Puta madre!”
he said, dropping the packet back in the refrigerator case.
Scenes like this triggered my indignation, too, even though as a boy of suburbia I grew up on plastic-wrapped singles of Kraft American cheese and Steak-umms. Nonetheless: What was up with this lame ham? What was up with these less-than-magical, half-assed cheeses? Didn’t anybody respect tradition, making food by hand, the slow way? Hadn’t anyone frittered away a Sunday afternoon at the
bodega
gorging themselves on the bounty of the land—the sparkling wine, the beautifully constructed chorizo? What was it with humanity, what secrets had we lost by disrespecting the Old Castilian and embracing Slurpees of otherworldly fluorescent colors? “When you put something alive in your mouth, it makes you more alive,” Ambrosio declared. And I had repeated it to my wife, to friends, to whoever would listen. For a while there, I became Ambrosio’s mini-me, espousing the simple sayings and irreverent gospel of the big man, repeating his nuggets of wisdom. And somewhere along the way, he must have sensed more than my interest, he must have intuited my malleability. He was going to make me the eighty-first citizen of an eighty-person village, and I would tell his story to the world.
And for a moment I wanted it more than he did.
*
Eventually I would sort out some of the names for the land, and I offer one last refresher here: The land above—what was identified as
arriba
by those in the village—was also the
páramo
, the high flatland. The undulating land below the village was called the
coterro
, but also where it dipped was called the
ribera
, which also described the previously mentioned
barcos
.
†
He was a doomed Yankees fan living in Red Sox territory back home, and I could never get over how often people, old and young, went out of their way at the doughnut shop to disparage the Yankees cap of a three-year-old, as if the kid were the conglomerated reincarnation of Babe Ruth/Joe DiMaggio/Mickey Mantle/Bucky Dent and every other reminted Yankee who’d at one time or another eviscerated the dreams of Red Sox Nation. Here in Spain, he refused to remove the plastic Yankees batting helmet that had become his signature. He ate in it, played in it, tried to sleep in it—and no one cared, or knew what team it was. They just treated him like a three-year-old.
‡
The frontón
was a relic from the times of Franco. It was said that El Caudillo had provided these handball courts for all the northern towns—and most especially in Basque country—in hopes that people would forget some of the atrocities that had been done unto them during the Civil War. One can almost imagine the Caudillo’s line of thinking:
Remember the bombing of civilians by the Luftwaffe at Guernica, the rubbled town, the hundreds of innocent dead? Well, it’s time for amends, folks …
The
frontón
in Guzmán stood at the base of the village, to the south, about halfway between Abel’s soldering shed and Ambrosio’s long metal
caseta
. It was L-shaped, with high green walls. No one really played handball here anymore, but the shepherds kept their sheep in its penned-off area, which meant the ground was covered at all times with little pellets of sheep shit.
§
Writes Henry David Thoreau in his famous essay “Walking”: “I think I cannot preserve my health and spirits, unless I spend four hours a day at least—and it is commonly more than that—sauntering through the woods and over the hills and fields, absolutely free from all worldly engagements.” He also advises one to “walk like a camel, which is said to be the only beast which ruminates when walking.”
‖
Well, no, in fact, they didn’t. We would come to find out that in most of the homes there existed an abbreviated kitchen downstairs, just a galley space for the making of food. This was to keep the cooking—and especially the heat, for nothing was air-conditioned—well away from the living area. Eventually, Clemente shared this insight with us, too, though again, we did not take his advice, cooking in the kitchen on the second floor, which led to the eventual violation of another sacred rule: Because of the heat, we switched our
comida
(the Spaniard’s big lunch-dinner) with our
cena
(the Spaniard’s smaller dinner-lunch), usually eating the less labor-intensive meal at midday, while our neighbors stuck to their big meal at lunch. Our secret shift represented classified information that we promised not to share with anyone, though I suspect Clemente knew from the first, just by sniffing the air around our abode. One day, when he could stand it no longer, he came to our door, knocked while walking in, and summoned me to behold the cavelike room on the bottom floor that was meant for cooking. “This is where you move your stove, hombre,” he said, exasperated, but he knew we were hopeless, and I think something broke in him, then, in regard to us. He summoned his usual goodwill when he saw us and still offered advice—because he was genetically programmed to do so—but he never again let himself believe that we might actually take it.
a
He pronounced my name
My-kull
, dragging out the
L
sound, giving it ululation and lullaby.
My
, for I was his, and
kull
, conjuring “skull,” or “my empty one,” which he filled with words and axioms.
b
As luck had it, I’d first met Carlos because my wife was best college friends with Carlos’s wife, Melissa. In fact, the two were part of a five-woman posse known as the “Dzawns” (short for “Dzawns”) and each bore a tattoo on her ankle of a tiny fish blowing bubbles, as part of some secret Skull-and-Bones pact their husbands would never find out—as if their husbands cared to find out, because they didn’t. Might the number of bubbles signify the number of people they’d killed? Probably, but who cared, really. There was so little care about this that I’m ending the footnote now. And now. Unless the bubbles stood for something stranger than murder. Like the digging up of graves. Or the interstate transfer of spleens. How many bodies did they leave in hotel rooms, in tubs packed in ice? We’ll never know, but for the tattoos that no one cares about. At all.
Now
.
c
Ambrosio’s great-uncle was known for his good wine, which he sold out of his
bodega
(Ambrosio’s
bodega
now) in this strategic way: Some shepherds or field hands might come knocking at the door, and great-uncle would happily greet them. His clientele was often strapped for cash, so he had to devise a way to make them pay more for the wine than they might otherwise. He started by having them taste an admittedly weak wine, while disparaging it. “It’s a pity you don’t have a little more for the good wine, it’s
very
good,” he would say, then: “Would you like a taste? It costs nothing to taste.” Great-uncle would disappear to a cask deeper in the cave, then materialize with a
porrón
, and the shepherds would drink, agreeing that yes, it was a very excellent wine. But when great-uncle named the price, it was four times the amount of the first. The shepherds would appear crestfallen, and Ambrosio’s great-uncle would let a beat pass, then light up with an idea, snapping his fingers. “I have just the thing,” he would say. “Come with me.” Then he would lead them outside, following a trail that circled the hill. He would walk slowly, saying, “I think you will be very pleased. A nice wine, in between the two others.” Partway around he would stop, and if the day was hot, mutter the words
“¡Puta madre!,”
wipe his brow, then pull from his pocket a piece of cheese—the family cheese—and offer his clients a piece, and then another. The cheese was buttery and tangy, setting off a flood of taste. Then great-uncle quickly led the shepherds into another telling room, one actually connected through the hill to the antechamber of the first telling room, where the wine casks were kept. He disappeared, poured the cheap wine all over again, and this time the shepherds, or field hands, would shake their heads, yes, yes, more than we wanted to spend but for this wine, very nice, very fine. Great-uncle would charge half of what he’d asked for the expensive wine and double the cheap wine, which now posed as the sensible, tasty median. And in this way, thanks to the cheese, great-uncle sold cask after cask of dreggish wine for double the cost.
THE LAWSUIT
“… 42 percent potato …”
I
T WAS SPRING IN THE DARK TIME AFTER THE DEATH OF HIS CHEESE
—and another night atop Mon Virgo, drinking and cursing, psyching himself to kill. Ambrosio Molinos was like the jilted lover, the bereft, boozy father gazing upon his taken child through the fence of the state orphanage. The story couldn’t be rewritten, for it was always the same: the same betrayal, the same loss, the same grudge.
*
What they were doing to his cheese was unconscionable. The introduction
of inferior milk meant an essential molecular change in the milk that made the cheese, but more, it gave the name Páramo de Guzmán an empty lyricism. Soon there was nothing of the
páramo
, or Guzmán, in the cheese, which meant to Ambrosio that the cheese was officially deceased. “The dead cheese,” he called it, or “the soulless cheese.” The whole operation, to his mind, was an empty front, a
desastre ateo
, a godless disaster.
He also knew, or assumed, that the workers—he would never dignify them with the sobriquet “cheesemakers,” those who had replaced his happy brood at the factory—were clock punchers, like everyone these days, there to do their time and collect a paycheck. How could such automatons make something remarkable, let alone create a delirious, sublime cheese of memory and strength? They, too, were thieves, if unconscious ones, afflicted with the disease of mediocrity. After all, why were you put on this earth, to serve humanity or the
jefe
’s bottom line?
All of this lamenting could bring nothing back now. Ambrosio spit in the wind and resolved himself to it. He fell into his Pathfinder, torqued the ignition, dropped a heavy foot on the accelerator, and the car jumped, shooting loose gravel from underneath the back tires. The
puta
, the unworthy sot—it would feel so good to crush him. It was the hour just before dawn, and the road to Julián led past his own house. Though he had misgivings, he entered one last time, to say goodbye. So here was the dividing line between everything that he could have been and everything he was about to become, between a virtuous life and one of calumny. Or maybe they weren’t that far apart, really, and there was no dividing line.
When he came through the front door, he could hear the deep breathing of his sleeping children chorusing through the house. In the dim light, he could see the certificates and medals hung over the desk, all won by his faithful cheese. He walked the long hallway to the back bedrooms, pushed open the door on his twelve-year-old daughter’s room, and saw her eyes tracking beneath the lids in some dream that had nothing to do with cheese—or his rage. Her art covered the walls,
but it was one earlier drawing that caught his eye that morning, one of her first. This daughter of his, Asunita, had dutifully painted a tin of the cheese, then written in her best hand: “Páramo Guzmán.” Yes, the iconic sheep looked a little like a turtle with table legs, but it was so true and heartfelt, rendered in her eight-year-old hand, full of such promise, and the word at the bottom scrawled in script said “Artesano.”
Ambrosio regarded this daughter, drooling slightly in sleep, then gazed at the painting again. Here in this house, nothing stood between him and his daughter, or his sons, or wife. Here no cage or fence or signed contract separated him from what he loved most. It was important to differentiate: The cheese embodied an ideal of love, and he’d loved the ideal. He’d poured himself into that ideal, and animated the cheese with it. But it was his family that loved
him
.
The realization was both profound and inconsequential, for in that moment he wasn’t suddenly freed of grief or sadness. Nor his mourning, or pain. He still wanted to kill—yes, he very much did—but what seeped in was this notion of belonging to a collective, his family, and the fear of losing them. After all, this was the same family who’d given everything to the cheese, too.
†
Minutes earlier he’d been resolved to kill a man, and now he unresolved himself.
He made no promises for tomorrow, that he might not try again, but for this morning, at least, Julián would live.
