Chapter Nineteen
Rosalyn riffled through the first group of letters, the ones Emma had carried with her on the flight to Paris. They seemed to be the earliest correspondence, most dating from late 1914 or the winter months of 1915.
Of course, back in the day of snail mail—mail that had to pass through a war zone, no less—Émile might well have been answering questions Doris had written in several previous letters. If he was writing a few times a week, there wouldn’t be a straightforward tie between letters received and letters answered. It would take weeks or even months for a letter to go from France to Australia, and back again.
After searching through stacks of envelopes, Rosalyn discovered one from Émile stamped December 28 that seemed to be his response to Doris’s first missive:
My esteemed Mrs. Whittaker,
I was so very pleased to receive your kind and fascinating letter. It is an amazing thing in our modern world, to be able tocorrespond with someone so very far away. Someone from another country, across the vast ocean, in Australia! My imagination is set afire just thinking of the voyages by carriage, train, and sea, the exploits and adventures through which our letters must pass to arrive in our hands!
Please rest assured that your French is very good. Perhaps better than my own. Though I enjoy reading, I cannot claim to be a well-educated man.
We are so grateful to have Australian troops fighting by our sides; I have met many, and they are always very cheery. Though I cannot understand their English, I have been led to believe that they, along with the British troops, are disappointed in the beer of the xxx region. If only we were in Reims, I would serve them our famous champagne. How I miss it—the bubbles, the effervescence, the effusive joy.
But enough about that. You asked about my home. My family has some land in Reims, on the outskirts of town. We have vines and sell our grapes to the large champagne houses of Pommery and Taittinger. I am also an apiarist, and I keep several beehives. My mother kept a kitchen garden as well, though it has long been abandoned, along with my hives.
I think of my bees often, and hope they have escaped the poison gases; I think perhaps they fled to the deep forests. Bees are far more intelligent than most people assume. Sometimes I think they are a good deal smarter than the humans I know.
I wonder if you have heard about the bombardment of Reims. The Germans entered the city in September, and held it for only ten days. But after being expelled from our city, they remained on the surrounding hills, shelling the city from the heights. It is a thing of horror, to see the buildings tumbling intothe streets in a great cloud of brick and plaster dust. They appear quite like living things as they moan and groan and fall to their knees, spilling their contents into the streets like viscera.
There are also snipers awaiting the citizenry. They make no distinction between soldier and civilian, between a legitimate target and an innocent child.
Everywhere the land is strewn with bodies, as neither side dare stop to bury their fallen soldiers. It is an atrocity, what is happening to my region. Trenches and barbed wire crisscross the once-green fields of xxx; there are mortar shells and gas, and corpses of human and animal alike poison the creeks.
But enough of that. I have not been back to Reims in many months; it is difficult from here. I prefer to think of my city as I left it. And of my loved ones safely tucked away in their homes.
I am so very pleased to know that you enjoy poetry. One of my favorite countrymen is Charles Baudelaire—in fact, he translated Edgar Allan Poe into my language. Do you know hisLes Fleurs du Mal? In it he wrote,je suis un cimetière abhorré de la lune. One of your countrymen has translated it into English for me: I am a cemetery shunned by the moon.
At night, trying to sleep in the trenches, I often feel like that, as though plagued by the gutted silence of a cursed cemetery whose ground is too cold for even the moon to plate with its silver light.
The savagery of this war is a thing of nightmares.
Thank you, my esteemedmarraine, for writing to me. The postal system has been disrupted in Reims, encircled as it is by the enemy, and we rarely receive mail from our families and loved ones. Your letter was a true balm to my soul, sweeter than the salve my mother used to concoct in her kitchen. She applied it to me once, after an accident with the thresher. It smelled of olive oiland thyme, honey and myrrh, and the arnica and herbs gathered in the high mountains.
Sometimes at night I imagine the scent lingers on my skin; I conjure it when my nostrils are filled with the noxious odors of death.
But again, I apologize for my baroque language, my tendency toward hyperbole. This must be why I am so drawn to Mr. Baudelaire’s writing. My fellowpoilusfind me difficult to comprehend, at times.
I sincerely hope you will not share their opinion of me!
Je vous prie d’accepter, Madame Whittaker,l’expression de mes sentiments distingués.
Émile Paul Legrand
Chapter Twenty
Although her countryside hermitage had been invaded by Emma and Blondine—and Emma’s assistant, André, who generally kept to himself—Rosalyn did not feel suffocated.
On the contrary, she rather enjoyed stumbling into the kitchen in the morning to find Emma slouched over a mug of steaming coffee, perusingLe Mondeand chuckling at the latest antics of French politicians. Or André materializing at just the right moment to open the door for her, nodding politely. Or Blondine dropping byChambre Chardonnay, rapping smartly on the door, and sharing a croissant and coffee before starting work in the office.
Rosalyn was at last able to connect with some of the growers and winemakers who were returning to the region and invited her in for tastings. She sampled their effervescent offerings, explained Small Fortune’s marketing plans, signed one producer, and arranged for a few others to send samples to Hugh in Napa.
Throughout, she could hear Hugh’s voice in her head: In any kind of business interaction, ongoing human-to-human contact waskey, and the small, family-focused wine growers of France, perhaps more than most, took relationships seriously.
It was certainly easier than trying to convince busy wine shop owners or restaurateurs in the Napa Valley to buy the wine she wasselling, Rosalyn reminded herself as she drove from village to village, parking alongside muddy, freshly plowed fields. Here, in Champagne, she was the buyer, the U.S. representative whom the wineries wanted to impress so that they might export their wine to the American market.
Still, each time Rosalyn pulled up to a new winery, she would take a long moment to take ten deep, slow breaths, psyching herself up for the interaction. She tried to remember what it was like to feel happy and carefree, to be her old self, friendly and outgoing, the affable American representative.
