A MIS-STEP IN TIME Part ll - 22 September 2001
22nd September 2011 Part II
We arrive at the last field of grapes to be harvested by hand, both the last of this season and perhaps the last, period, to be hand-picked in this region. Now the grapes are harvested by machine, for the same reason that machines have replaced man forever: time and money. In the vineyards, machines make night-harvesting possible. But here at Chateau La Canorgue, considered the best in the region, a combination of machine and hand is used. And this is an organic vineyard that has been in the same family for 5 generations. Nathalie, the daughter, has been kind enough on this busiest of days to take time out to show us the cellar, tell us a bit about the process and direct us to the last field about to be picked.
The pickers, who are from all over France as well as a few from Algeria, are taking their afternoon break and so our box of pastries and bag of cold sodas are much appreciated on this day that has a sun as hot as any in August. There is a slight dis-ease between us - us being the pickers and the photographer and writer, and I feel frustrated to not have enough language to break the barrier with a bon mot or bit of self-mockery.
Furthermore, my left big toe is f--king killing me. I've jambed the joint at least, if not broken it in my haste to get to this last available harvest in time. As if the success of this book rests on this one event. And so, in my Kamakaze suit, I failed to notice - and not for the first time - the one-inch concrete and tile step in the bathroom. It hurts like buggery, already as swollen and blue-black as the grapes themselves. I've done the ice thing, the arnica, anti-inflammatory, blah blah, but the book goes on, so here I am standing on one leg in the blazing heat at the end of 2 rows of vines where the pickers are carefully and steadily snipping bunches into their buckets.
Once full they empty them into the wagon and move on.
Some chatter. Most are silent, focussed, intent. In the course of these few paragraphs they have snipped half-way down the two rows with a rustle of leaves, the snip of clippers and a plop as each bunch of grapes hitting the bucket. Rustle, snip, plop. Rustle, snip, plop. And its not like the bunches hang in solitary uniform rows, no, they hang in clusters of bunches and each must be snipped in the right place to keep the bunch whole.
Every once in a while the rhythm is broken by an outbreak of chatter and laughter that has the tone of ragging - as on each other, or maybe us.
The toe is singing now and we decide to take it home. My darling husband piggy-backing me down the hallway until I collapsed in a puddle, he made me laugh that hard. And now I've taken to my bed for the evening. Out the window I see that same rosy gold light that I saw yesterday evening. It's so soft out there. And in here? Like a swallow in its cave.
As I type the passage about the harvest onto the iPad - I write by fountain pen - I realize I'd make a lousy journalist. I never get the facts. Funny. Fact. Is it truth? Or merely a truth upon which to found one's imagination?
And not 5 minutes later I read this from Lawrence Durrell's Alexandria Quartet:
Balthazar: "To imagine is not necessarily to invent."