As a Thief in the Night (26 page)

The cellar was cool and smelled all over of old oak and wine. The floors were concrete and cracked in places, but clean. Thick wooden beams lined the high ceiling. Harold Mignon was a wine maker of another day and, as such, he still used huge wooden casks made by a French Canadian copper on the mainland. Wooden casks of this type were expensive, and much more awkward to maintain, but Harold Mignon had aptitudes and intuitions for wine making, as alchemy and art, that spoke to him of a profound connection between the wine and the tree and the forest. For some reason he was unable to apply this aptitude to any other endeavor. Ezra marveled at the size of the casks, at their noble construction, and at the sight of them standing side by side. They walked through the cool, shadowy cellar without pausing, towards the back of the building where they entered a room with two light bulbs, naked and dim, that hung from the ceiling. The heavy bag was in the far corner, opposite the doorway. In the other corner were a set of weights, a bench press, and a few sets of dumb bells that did not match. Harold Mignon dropped his duffle bag on the bench.

"You have weights down here too?" Ezra asked.

"Sometimes we do a bit after we're done with our boxing."

Ezra looked over the dumb bells and the loose weights stacked against the wall.

"You use weights, do you Ezra?"

"We work out for football during the off season."

"That's good. Gordon got you started on that, did he?"

"Yeah. He coached Layne and I when we were younger, but we both play for our high school now."

"That's good," the old man said as he opened his bag.

Ezra walked over to the heavy bag and gave it a shove with both hands.

"So you've come to learn from your grandfather, have you?" Nectario said, coming in behind them. Ezra turned and waved at him.

"Not much he can learn from an old dog like me," Harold said without looking up from putting on his gloves.

"Don't let him fool you," Nectario said. "He's a master boxer."

Then the two men, one older and one younger, began a routine that was obviously familiar to them, for they performed it without speaking. Harold stepped up to the heavy bag, carefully placed one foot in front of the other, pushed his black leather gloves tight on his hands, and then tentatively popped the bag with his jab hand. He it hit once, twice, rattling the heavy chain from which it hung, and then threw an easy cross at it. Shaking his arms loose, he continued, slowly picking up his pace. Ezra noticed his feet moving and he watched them as he studied the length of his grandfather's body. Even with the bit of a belly he had, he still moved pretty well. His heavy shoulders strained against his t-shirt as he hit the bag harder. It swung out toward the wall, and the old man timed his punches to catch it, as soon as his reach would allow, on the back swing.

Behind Harold, Nectario wrapped his hands, slipped on his gloves, and began to shadow box and stretch. Ezra sat on the weight bench and watched both men. After four or five minutes they switched places. They focused on what they were doing and said nothing to him. When they had both done two sets on the bag, they took a quick drink from their water bottles and Harold gave Ezra his watch again to keep time. 

"Three minute rounds," his grandfather said, the sweat already dripping down the sides of his face. Then the two men, one old and wounded by his boyhood and time, and the other young and full of noble ideas and the words of poets, squared off in the center of the cellar. They touched gloves and put up their guards. Nectario started by throwing his jab out six inches or so from Harold's face. Right away Ezra saw that he was very fast. But his grandfather was taller, had a reach advantage, and kept Nectario's quick punches away by extending his guard. They moved around each other, each testing the other's hands, and their feet stirred up the dust on the floor.
  Toward the end of the round Harold put his right foot forward, facing Nectario's left, and baited him by dropping his right hand down to his side. Nectario stepped in fast with his jab, but as soon as he did the old man threw a long extended hook and hit him in the side of the head. Nectario swung out, stepped back, and got his hands back up. Harold dropped his right down by his waist again.  Every time the younger man stepped in, he threw out a straight right at his face, and Nectario was forced to keep his distance. Harold Mignon did this three, four, five times, and then, making as if he was coming with the long hook again, stepped in with a straight left cross and caught Nectario dead in the eye.

"Time!" Ezra called, realizing that he had lost track of the time and let the round go over.
  Both of the boxers came over for water.

"You see," Nectario said, a little breathless, "a master boxer of the old world."

Ezra watched them and kept time for the next five rounds. When they stopped for water again he walked over to the heavy bag, gave it a little push, and then hit it. It gave a bit behind the momentum of his fist, and he liked the way it felt. 

"We need you to stay out of the way," his grandfather said, returning to the center of the room. Nectario made a face behind Harold as if to indicate that there was nothing to be done about the old man's misery, and Ezra sat back down. During the later rounds Nectario was able to get the better of him, slipping under his extended arm and going first to the body and then to the head.
  For a moment, after Harold got hit, Ezra was worried he was going to lose his temper and lash out. His grandfather gave the impression of being a man that was always only a step, a word, or a look, away from snapping. But he did not snap; instead he backed up, attempted to even out his breathing, and started throwing his jab again. At the end of six rounds the two of them touched gloves, to indicate they were finished, and started to put their things away.

"Any weights?" Nectario asked.

"No, we have to get back to the house. I have to check a few thing before bed."

"Why don't you just admit you're too tired?" Nectario said, winking at Ezra.

"You see, Ezra? That's the kind of thing these Mexicans think is funny—making fun of an old man."

After his grandfather had finished putting his gloves back into his army bag Ezra followed him back through the cool cellar.
  Nectario stayed behind to work out for a while longer.  The sound of the weights banging off one another echoed behind them as they left.

Who is Emile Sinclair?

I knew I had a secret, a sin which I would have to expiate alone. Perhaps I stood at the parting of ways, perhaps I would now belong among the wicked forever, share their secrets, depend on them, obey them, have to become one of their kind... His upbraiding me for my muddy boots seemed pitiful. 'If you only knew,' crossed my mind as I stood there like a criminal being cross-examined for a stolen loaf of bread when the actual crime was murder.

Ezra looked up from his book, searched the corners and shadows of his room, and then checked the page beneath his pale blue eyes to make sure the words were real. But there they were. For a moment he felt as if something had been pried loose from him, from some locked chamber of his heart that he had always suspected was there but had never had the means to explore. The sensation that he was being watched spread over his warm skin and he put his feet on the floor and sat up sideways on his bed. He checked the cover of the book, then the picture of Hesse on the back, as if to make sure he was holding what he believed himself to be. With a strange and new current in his blood, Ezra continued reading.

We are the fortunate ones. We who the voices and songs of history haunt and inspire. The artist's words and images come to us on wings across whatever insignificant span of time, across whatever oceans and mountains from which our longing summons them. See the birds with them in the crimson sky! Their instinct seems to be functional, but could they not be messengers? Could the beating of their wings not hide the words and rhythms that descend upon us in these hours? Perhaps, as some poet, composer, or painter is grappling with his world, and trying with all the energies of his spirit to reveal the divine substance within the common costumes of the pale day, some small hope of a bird is grappling within the shell that conceals it, trying to bring forth the strength it needs to carry the artist's breath to us, the fortunate, who are vulnerable enough to receive it.

Ezra felt like the subterranean language of his guilt and sorrow, the language that he had kept hidden and pressed underneath his tongue, was finally being given a place in the open air.
  He recognized his own psychic tangles and traps in Hesse's young hero, Emile, and wondered if perhaps they were the only two in the world who knew the dangers of such snares. No, Robert Redford had been holding the book in the poster, so he must have had something of it in him too.  There could be others, he thought. And so, in this way, on a summer night at Canada's southern most tip, under the starry blanket of Pelee Island's rarified climate, Ezra Mignon communed with the dead, the dead who, for some of us, are more
real
and
close
than the stale clamor of voices that tell us the work and school day have begun, that tell us what is sensible, and that attempt to impose upon us the shape a world gone mad insists on. Outside, a flock of Wild Ganders flew over Harold Mignon's roof, made a few plain clear calls to one another, and then fluttered down into the still waters of Lake Erie.

He read for three hours. When he finished the third chapter he felt as if he could not bear anymore. The alarm clock on his nightstand read ten-thirty. Putting his book away, he changed his shirt, looked himself over in the mirror, and then walked across the night vineyard to the worker's quarters.

Yamilla made roast beef and potatoes for dinner. He sat across from his grandfather at the large dining table that had been in its place since the days when Olyvia, Elsie, Sarah, and his mother had sat there. Above them hung an equally old, cheap chandelier. It sounded like it had a short and Ezra listened to the crackle of the electricity coming from it. Here and there the sound was interrupted by the tapping of a fork on a plate, or the wine decanter against a glass. He missed the way Elsie always lit candles at dinner.

"I wanted to know if I could use the weights," Ezra said breaking the silence.

"The ones in the cellar?" Harold responded without looking up from his plate.

"I'll use them in the evenings, if it's okay. If you and Nectario are boxing, I'll wait until you're finished."

"I don't see why not, so long as you clean up after yourself."

"I will."

"Trying to build some muscle, are ya?"

"Well, football season starts in at the end of August."

"You're starting a little late, aren't you?"

"I suppose."

"You'll never get anything done that way." The old man shook his head slowly. Ezra did not respond to him. They ate in silence until Ezra got up to bring his plate into the kitchen. "I've got something a little different for you to work on tomorrow morning."

"Oh, what?"

"Wait on the porch for Ruiz after breakfast tomorrow, then meet me and Edward in the cellar."

When Ruiz and Ezra got down to the cellar the next morning, Harold and Edward were setting up a ladder against one of the huge wooden vats. Beside the ladder was a pile of canvas straps and a harness, like something a mountain climber might use. That morning the wine from the previous year's vintage had finished the fermentation process and had been drained out of the vat. Now, it was necessary to clean the inside of the vat, and that was the work that Ezra had been summoned to the cellar to do. His grandfather handed him a gas mask that looked as if it had been left behind during the gas attacks of the First World War.

"What's this for?" Ezra asked.

"During fermentation," Edward began, while running his hand over his bald head, "carbon dioxide is given off. That can be dangerous. Even after the wine has been drawn off, the vat is still full of fumes."

"And the straps and harness?"

"Just an unnecessary safety precaution young Ezra," his grandfather said while straightening the straps.

"In case you cannot stay awake inside the whale's belly," Ruiz interjected, patting the oak vat. "What is your word? Unconscious?"

"What?"
  Ezra looked at Edward.

"It'll be fine," Edward said, smiling at his surprise. "Just keep the mask on."

"And you keep it quiet," Harold scolded, pointing at Ruiz. "I don't know why I keep bringing you back every year." He turned and walked out of the room.

"Perhaps it is the company, sir!" Ruiz called after him, giving free reign to his accent. He smiled his toothless grin at Ezra.

"The cleaning supplies are already inside the vat, Ruiz. Call me if you need me." Then Edward the wine maker left too.

Ruiz helped Ezra with the harness and straps. The harness ran just under his butt and then across his chest and back. "You're going to lower me in from the top?" Ezra asked.

"No, no. There's a ladder inside to climb down. The harness is just for you if the smells put you to sleep."

"Does that happen often?"

"To me," Ruiz said, "twice."