Bruno 02 - The Dark Vineyard

States. And in Australia, where I studied winemaking.” She was wearing jeans tucked into tall boots, and carrying what looked like an army surplus shoulder bag.
    “Okay, Jacqueline. I could come back and pick you up here in the café at about eleven, but you might want to change into working clothes. Or I could entrust you to my Communist friend, council member Jules Montsouris, whom we’ll find in the bar. He’s a fierce revolutionary who wishes Stalin were still alive. He’ll probably be heading to Joe’s before me, and I’m sure he’d be delighted to escort you.”
    Fauquet’s was already filled with the usual market crowd. Fauquet himself, brisk and dapper in his white chef’s jacket and little white cap, came from behind the zinc counter to shake Bruno’s hand and inform him that the latest batch of croissants was still piping hot from the oven.
    “Not today,
mon vieux
. Just a quick coffee. I know what’s coming at Joe’s feast.” Bruno passed along the counter shaking hands with the usual crowd, introducing Jacqueline as the new
stagiaire
from Hubert’s wine shop. The men greeted her with ponderous gallantry, bowing over her hand as they shook it. Pierrot instantly ordered a
petit blanc
for the new arrival and Pascal from the insurance office offered her a
café crème
. Fauquet swept off his chef’s hat, and Montsouris used a paper napkin to wipe the seat of a bar stool for the young woman to perch on amid the circling admirers.
    Laughing, she took her place on the stool and chatted agreeably. But Bruno noticed that she kept glancing out the window. Following her gaze he saw Max appear at Alphonse’s stall. Jacqueline began to step off her stool as if to leave. Then Bruno saw Dominique walk across from her father’s stall to embrace Max and steer him off behind one of the columns that supported the
mairie
for what looked like a private and urgent conversation. Probably talking about the fire, thought Bruno, or perhaps the demonstration, wishing he could overhear them. Jacqueline had sat down again. A lovers’ tiff seemed to be brewing. Bruno watched the assured way that Jacqueline drew the men at the bar back into her orbit.
    “I gather this is the day Joe picks his grapes and makes his cassoulet,” she said.
    “The day
we
pick his grapes, you mean,” grumbled Pierrot. “Joe’s pretty clever, getting everybody else to pick his grapes while he just stays at home and cooks.”
    “You can’t complain, Pierrot,” said Fauquet, with a wink atJacqueline. “You drink Joe’s wine, which is more than most of us can say.”
    “Be fair,” said Bruno. “We all use Joe’s wine for the
vin de noix
, and for the eau-de-vie. Where would we be without him?”
    Bruno was accustomed to the chorus of amiable jeers that met his defense of Joe, his predecessor as police chief of Saint-Denis. Joe’s vineyard, tucked between the town’s rugby field and its tennis club, was small and poorly drained. But it was the first piece of land that Joe had ever owned, and his wine was no worse than the
pinard
Bruno had been given to drink as a young recruit in the French army, the daily liter of rough red wine that had sustained the tricolor throughout the ups and downs of French history.
    “Don’t be naïve, Bruno,” said Montsouris, a big and burly railway man. “Joe’s just hanging on to that plot of land to force the rugby club to pay more to get the second pitch. He knows he can force a higher price so long as he claims it’s a vineyard, whatever crap he makes.”
    “And here’s another North American who’s visiting our town, Monsieur Bondino,” Bruno said as the American walked into the bar, loaded down with shopping bags. He stopped in his tracks when he saw Jacqueline. She gave him a cool appraising look, and then her face broke into a broad smile, almost as if she recognized him. They shook hands and exchanged bursts of English too fast for Bruno’s limited command of the language, though he heard the words “wine” and “Bondino,” so she evidently knew the family name and business.
    From the doorway, Bruno smiled his farewells, his smile becoming all the broader as he saw Montsouris’s wife heading with her usual determined stride through the market toward the café, where her husband was paying court to Jacqueline. Madame Montsouris, far more rigid in her Communist ideologythan her husband, held equally strict views on marital fidelity. Bachelor though he was, Bruno could not