Vintage (22 page)

The absurdity of it overwhelmed him. He glanced at the sky, the sun covered by a layer of haze and wood smoke rising from the meager hovels of this wretched little town. He looked at the bleak road ahead. He couldn't take another step. What was the point? He set his suitcase down in the mud and sat on it, propping his elbow on his knee and his chin on his fist. He'd come far enough. He'd lost the will to continue.

It was then that he heard the faint sound of accordion music.

It came from beyond the rows of stone and plaster houses, rickety wooden fences and rusted wire chicken coops. He sniffed and wiped his nose on his sleeve, trying to locate the source of the happy noise.

And then, somewhere in this desolate village, there came another sound: the tinkle of laughter mingling with the chords of the accordion. It was the bright, hopeful sound of human existence. Next: a fiddle. Clarinet. Clapping of hands.

It drew closer.

From a side street, a lone accordionist emerged, rounding the corner, heading toward Bruno. The musician was dressed in a round embroidered hat with a tassel, a white blouse and colorful vest, billowy trousers and curled-toe shoes. He seemed to be an artifact, some kind of random gnomish figurine sold in a tourist stall, with a white beard and the widest, toothiest grin Bruno had ever seen.

Bruno watched in wonder as other musicians and now dancers emerged from the side street, in an eclectic mix of embroidered blouses and secondhand clothing. A man carrying a tambourine and wearing a pale blue tracksuit came spinning around the bend, his arm hooked in that of an elderly woman in a red brocade dress.

A line of churning, dancing revelers followed the musicians into the street, snaking their way toward Bruno. He now saw a large stone amphora inlaid with a grape and vine design, carried by two men who were pausing to pour what looked to be wine into jars and cups. Others carried bottles, and for a moment Bruno thought it was a wine festival, but then a woman in a veil and white dress spun around the corner, followed by a sheepish young man in a tie, and he understood the reason for the occasion.

It was a wedding party, and it surged around Bruno, parting around him like a wave of mirth and revelry. People clapped and sang and slapped Bruno on the back. When the man in the tracksuit and the elderly woman reached him, they hooked his arms between them and dragged him into the fray.

The river of people washed down the bleak street, illuminating everything now, and Bruno noticed things about the village that he hadn't before: colorful flags, bright blue paint on windowsills, red and black hens and window boxes of brilliant flowers.

He discovered that someone had tucked a flower behind his ear and pressed a cup of wine into his hand. It was dark, oxidized, heavy and tannic, like the Hungarian blends known as “bull's blood,” though not quite as strong and sweet. It warmed him as it sloshed into his empty belly, and he soon found himself spinning with the bride on his arm.

They zigzagged up the street and then climbed a small hill where flowers were laid at the foot of a monument, a sooty, squared Stalinist statue of a peasant couple marching to the fields with scythes over their shoulders.

The party filed into an empty lot that had been transformed
into a lovely bower through flowered arbors, flags and tables laden with bowls of stewed lamb, pilaf, aubergines, cabbage rolls, fresh fruit, pastries and buns, and Bruno grinned so hard his cheeks hurt. He sampled everything, all of which made the jug wine come alive. His favorite dish was the fried
pelmeni,
small dumplings filled with minced lamb and pork that were flavored with cinnamon and mint, dusted with paprika and freshly made sour cream. The wedding party joined him at the table, eating directly from the large bowls with their hands, continuing to churn and spin, though it was clear that some sort of structured ceremony was beginning to emerge.

He was already composing a new postcard to Anna in his head as a small, graying man in an ill-fitting suit stood on a chair and began to speak to the revelers. Without grasping a word of the language, Bruno soon understood this to be the father of the bride. As the man spoke at length, both he and his daughter looked intently and openly into each other's tear-filled eyes, and in Bruno's head the words began to arrive:

Dear Anna, sometimes in life we take the indirect route. I thought I'd lost my way in Moldova, but when I left the train at some forgotten village on a whim, I found a wedding party. Or rather . . . the wedding party found me.

Maybe it was the smiles, hugs and dancing, but Bruno was suddenly tempted to stay. With what he had in his pocket, maybe he could buy his own little cabin with a chicken coop and a feral dog to go with it. He could live here for at least as long as it took him to write a book, which at his current pace meant ten years or more.

He danced with both the bride and the groom, many of the dances separating the genders into groups. He was fortunately light-footed for a big man, and a small boy in a suit and tie was able to teach him many of the basic steps of a traditional dance where the men carried the bride on their shoulders and paraded her around the groom, who stood in the center with his arms folded, feigning arrogance and indifference though blushing underneath.

Few beyond this lost corner of the world have even heard of this village. Although the families earn their livings from the surrounding vineyards, no wine magazine has ever written about it. Still, it's never been so clear to me what wine means to our species.

An old man stood up to speak with Bruno in halting German, and after a brief chat Bruno was mistaken for a long-lost Austrian relative and invited to make a speech. He stepped onto a small wooden riser bordered with flowers. The father of the bride hugged him, squeezing Bruno until he was about to pop. Bruno raised his cup and spoke in German. Mostly he recited “Zum Einschlafen Zu Sagen,” an old Rilke poem he'd memorized in college that had nothing to do with anything. Perhaps it was the rhyme and meter, but as he looked across the sea of faces there were smiles and eyes heavy with tears. The bride sobbed through a grin and her father was openly weeping. Bruno finished with a rambling story in English about his daughters and how much he missed his whole family cooking together, which had him in tears, and as he stepped down, the families cheered and the father embraced him once more, and they all resumed dancing.

The wedding ended with the bride seated in an ornately carved chair with the musicians playing a lovely, slow tune while the villagers laid flowers at her feet. I should have been taking notes for the book, but I must admit at that moment all I could think about was you . . . and our two remarkable daughters.

The rest of the afternoon and evening was a blur, save for a spectacular sunset on the hillsides beyond the town.

He awoke on a mattress in a simple single-room house. Lying next to him was the man in the blue tracksuit and a crown of flowers who'd carried the tambourine, and an attractive woman about his own age who wore entirely too much mascara and was stuffed into a yellow dress that might have fit her better twenty years earlier. On her other side was the clarinet player, and a white-haired woman slumbered on a dining table. Bruno vaguely remembered dancing with the woman next to him and possibly kissing her briefly. He checked and was thankful that he was fully clothed.

They all awoke together and stumbled about the house in a polite, hungover silence, preparing a meal together. The men sat in the doorway smoking while Bruno helped the old woman boil some corn porridge for
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liga
. As he watched her work he took notes this time, recording how much rock salt she used and also how once the mixture solidified she used a piece of thread to cut it rather than a knife. She carefully lifted the slices into a pan and fried them in lard on the top of the woodstove.

They ate the
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quietly with a tart, fresh ewe cheese on the side.

The woman in the yellow dress walked him to the train. She was quite a talker, only pausing to drag on a cigarette until
the train arrived. He understood nothing she said, but her language was like a kind of music. They embraced and what Bruno expected to be a quick kiss actually came with a tobacco-flavored tongue that was not unpleasant. She slapped him on the butt as he ascended the stairs and the conductor winked at him.

That was Moldova.

I have always thought of Moscow as the City of Bread. While a baguette may protrude from every bag and backpack in Paris, it's the Russians who devour bread on a Tolstoyan scale. Whether it's the earthy black borodinsky loaves served with mountains of soft butter or my favorite, the lepeshka—Russian by way of Uzbekistan, round and indented in the center, sprinkled with sesame and a butter crust, dense and chewy, passed around the table in whole circles to be torn off in chunks—breaking bread in Russia is simultaneously a physical and spiritual act. Perhaps the most satisfying sensation in all of dining is the ripping of a chunk of lepeshka passed to you from the hands of your neighbor.

—
B
RUNO
T
ANNENBAUM,
“B
AKING
B
EYOND THE
I
RON
C
URTAIN,
”
C
HICAGO
S
UN-
T
IMES

B
runo mailed his next postcard to Anna on his way back through Chi
ș
in
ă
u, and through some benevolence of the mail gods or maybe
a bureaucratic accident, it appeared in her mailbox three days later. Anna had, on a whim, left her office early and accidentally intercepted the mail. This was a rarity. Fetching mail had always been Claire's job, a tradition that had persisted since she was four when she dragged a stool onto the stoop of the brownstone and climbed up to the box, playing the game of “Mail Munchkin” delivering royalty checks to Bruno and bills to Anna. Her mother had only collected the mail a few times since then, when Claire was bedridden with the flu or sleeping over at a friend's.

And on this day Anna would have left it in the box for Claire again, but she met the mailman at the steps. She admired his muscled, tan calves. He was much younger than she and attractive despite the silly shorts and uniform, or maybe because of them. When he smiled as he handed her the rubber-banded bundle, she blushed. She carried it in without thinking, and only when she set it on the counter did she realize that she probably should have just stuck it in the box herself and left it for Claire. It was one of the few remaining ways that her older daughter still acted like a little girl, and Anna worried that once Claire realized this she'd probably stop doing it. Wouldn't it be nice if she kept up the tradition until she left for college?

Anna unsnapped the rubber band, leafed through the stack, and the postcard from Moldova caught her attention. She'd seen plenty of Bruno's cards over the years, before his career imploded. The postcards were a tradition that she appreciated and it always made her think fondly of her estranged husband.

She knew of his harebrained scheme to scour Europe in pursuit of the story for his next book, a potential bestseller, or so he claimed. She hadn't quite believed him but she was hopeful. She could use a little financial help, especially with Claire starting college and Carmen in need of braces after her
dentist recommended a visit to the orthodontist. Most likely, though, he was blowing whatever little money he had left. Classic Bruno.

She flipped the card over, not knowing what to expect. She hadn't heard a word from him since he'd left weeks ago. When she saw the date and the Moldovan postage stamp, her curiosity was piqued. Then she noticed that the card was addressed to her. She read it twice, and from the familiar tone and cadence it felt not like a single postcard, but one of a series. Where were the others? Were the mail systems in Eastern Europe so screwed up that this card made it through before all the rest? She was tempted to call Harley and get to the bottom of this, but then she remembered Claire's secret box of postcards. Mothers always know where such things are hidden.

And this was how Claire found Anna when she came home after visiting a friend: seated at the dining room table with the shoe box open, Bruno's postcards spread out on the tablecloth. She'd obviously been crying. Claire was furious, her voice the timbre of a shriek.

“What are you doing?”

“I found a postcard in the mail from your father, and I needed to figure it out.”

“I get the mail.”

“I got it today.”

“Why are you going through my stuff?”

“Why is your father in Moldova?”

“That's none of your business.”

“Actually, it is.” She wearily plucked one of the postcards from the table, her forehead propped in her hand as she read, “ ‘Dear Anna, sometimes in life we take the indirect route . . . In closing, I assure you that I'm now confident that enough of our funds remain for me to find the end of this strange and wonderful tale.' ”

“Mom, that's—”

“
Our
funds? What does he mean,
our funds
?”

“He's doing research for his next book.”

“I checked your college savings. It's gone. All of it.”

“I loaned it to him.”

“That was money
we
were saving for college. For you.”

“It was
my
college savings and
I
loaned it to him. He's going to pay it back.”

“What kind of father would steal from his daughter to finance some European bender?”

“He didn't steal it! I gave it to him.”

“Even so, how dare he take money from you?”