The Republic of Wine

the nests from the rats. In the meantime, he rested his already weakened body. They were surprised and pleased when my mother-in-law appeared. In a scolding voice, her father asked why she’d entered the cave on her own. She said she was afraid to be alone outside the cave. My mother-in-law said that as soon as she uttered the word afraid,’ her father’s expression changed abruptly. He slapped her and said, Shut up. She said she learned later that no one was allowed to use words like ‘falling,’ ‘slipping,’ ‘death,’ or ‘afraid.’ Otherwise, they would meet with a great calamity. She started to cry from being slapped. Her youngest uncle said, Don’t cry, Yanni. I’ll catch a swallow for you later.
    The men smoked a pipeful, wiped their sweaty bodies with the bags at their waists, then stuck the torches between their teeth and went back into the depths of the cave. Her father said, Now that you’re here, guard the nests while I go up to work through another torch.
    My mother-in-law said her father went off with a torch held between his teeth. She saw running water on the cave floor, and snakes swimming in the water; the floor was littered with rotten bamboo stalks and vines. Layers of swallows’ droppings covered the rocks on the cave floor. Her eyes followed her youngest uncle, since he had promised to catch a live swallow for her. She saw him climb up several green bamboo stalks and, as if on flying feet, quickly reach a height of a dozen or more meters. He found a foothold on a crack in the cliff, then bent down, lifted up the bamboo stalk under his feet and stuck it into the crack; then he lifted up another one, which he laid sideways, and another to prop up the others. Now three bamboo stalks formed a profoundly scary scaffold. Stepping on this tottering overpass, her youngest uncle approached the arched firmament, where a dozen extra large, white swallows’ nests hung from a mushroom-shaped stalactite. When the other swallows were fleeing their nests, these swallows, seemingly undisturbed, stayed where they were. Maybe they knew their nests were built in an absolutely safe spot. The heads of two sprightly swallows stuck out from one of the nests. Several more of the birds were hanging upside down from the stalactite, their heads moving rapidly as they pulled the snowy white, crystal-clear threads to weave their delicate, elegant nests. They probably didn’t know that her youngest uncle’s hands and feet were negotiating the cold, slippery cliff like a large, scary lizard, inching closer and closer to them. My mother-in-law said the swallows used their forward-facing talons to grip the rocks, toiling and suffering the hardships of building a nest. Their short beaks were like a nimble weaver’s shuttle, moving swiftly back and forth on the arched surface. After pulling the shiny threads for a while, they would tense their bodies, flap their wings, jerk their tail feathers, and cough up more of the precious saliva from their throats, which they held in their beaks to pull into shiny threads again. In an instant, the threads crystallized to form transparent, white jade. My mother-in-law said that the process was a rare sight in nature, but those dignitaries and eminent personages could never understand the nests’ true value, unaware of the hardships the birds endured; nor did they know the difficulty undertaken by the nests’ gatherers.
    My mother-in-law’s youngest uncle was hanging nearly upside down on an outcropping of the mushroom-like stalactite. It was incomprehensible that, using only his feet, he could hold on to a grooved surface that was so slippery. The torch hung sideways, its flame burning bright above his head. The bag around his waist also hung upside down, like two torn flags drooping shyly in the rain. Obviously, he couldn’t open his mouth to speak, but his situation also made it impossible for him to put the nests into his bag. My mother-in-law said that her father, who had already slid down from the cliff, was now holding the torch and looking up at his youngest brother, whose very life was suspended upside down from the ceiling, ready to pick up the nests as soon as they hit the ground.
    My mother-in-law said she’s never seen nests that big since, not once. They were ancient nests. She said that all swallows instinctively build their nests on top of previous ones. As long as the nests aren’t damaged, the birds can build a new one the size of a conical hat. And,