The disappearance of a friend and millions of Francs worth of wine interrupts David's buying trip in France when he pauses to assist and comfort his friend's wife, Catherine. Their lives are threatened, the intensifying circumstances draw them close...
I took the narrow D-109 from Vougeot, angled across to the D-116 at Villebichot and followed it past l'Abbaye de Cîteaux. "Have you visited the abbey?" I asked Catherine.
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We had been quiet since crossing from vineyard to wheat stubble a few kilometres back, and she craned her neck to examine it as we passed. "No, I haven't, I'm sorry to say. We seem to always be too busy to do much else than wine. It looks interesting – tell me about it."
"It was founded in the eleventh century, and it's the birthplace of the Cistercian Order. It's a wonderfully spiritual place to visit."
"I'm not religious. I stopped going to Mass when I left home; it had nothing for me. It had nothing for me long before that."
"Spirituality and religion aren't necessarily related; in fact, religion often subverts, even deadens true spirituality."
"You think that too?" She looked at me with a surprised expression. "I thought I was the only one who thinks that."
"There's a sentence inscribed in a stone in there in the abbey." I turned my head and nodded toward it. "Listen carefully, my son, to the master's instructions, and attend to them with the ear of your heart. I like that, listen with your heart, with your soul, as I like to say. Deep inside we know what's right. It's our minds that try to convince the other way."
"I've always known this, but the nun called me a blasphemer when I mentioned it as I questioned my need to memorise Catechism. She said I would burn in hell. I was still so young, and she scared me with evil thoughts and images."
I grimaced. "It's through our minds that religions trap us. Mohammed, Buddha, Christ, Krishna, none of them would like what so many of their professed followers have done and still do with their messages."
"It took me a long time to realise I wasn't evil, not a sinner, not born with sin. What a mind fuck ... Oops!" She giggled and reddened a bit. "But it's the truth; they've buggered our minds – buried our true spirit under layers of guilt and ritual and deceit."
"Guilt, ritual, deceit, exactly. When I was in Grade Two and being prepared for my first communion, the nun taught me to lie. Sister Mercedes, the school principal – we called her Mert. She told us everybody sins and that we are all guilty. When I told her I had no sins to confess, she took me aside and told me, 'You must confess your sins to the priest to receive forgiveness and penance.' She told me to make up some sins, told me I must confess; otherwise, I'll remain an unforgiven sinner and cannot receive communion."
"You too?" Catherine bounced in her seat with delight. "That sounds so similar to my story. When I was innocently young, I would rattle off the same list of sins. I lied three times, I disobeyed Papa twice, and I touched myself once. What sins did you create for the priest?"
"Almost the same, but without the touching."
"That was one of my lies – it was always more than just once." she giggled as she blushed.
When we arrived on the north side of Aiserey, I looked at my watch. "We have about twenty minutes to spare. Canal de Bourgogne is just across there." I pointed out through the windscreen. "About fifteen hundred metres. Do you want to go see it?"
"Oh, yes, I'd love to. I haven't looked at a canal for so long. I have such fond memories of my summer on the péniche ..." She trailed off.
"It's not an exciting stretch from the Saône across the plain to Dijon, straight as an arrow for thirty kilometres, except for one slight bend that's barely five degrees. Then it leaves the plain shortly before Dijon, and after it curves through the city, it becomes increasingly beautiful as it winds its way up a narrow valley across the northern end of the Côte d'Or."
I stopped in the middle of the little bridge, and we looked left and right, up and down the canal. "See, I told you it was straight." Below us, to our left was a lock. To the right, the canal tapered through the overhanging trees into the distance with a big brown and blue shape in its centre, quite close"
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When I saw a car in the mirrors, I drove forward and pulled into the start of the towpath downstream to watch the approaching péniche. "Looks unladen, very high in the water.
"I preferred being unladen on my uncle's péniche. There was a much better view over the banks. Sometimes when we were heavily loaded, I couldn't see beyond the banks at all, and I would climb up and stand on the hold covers." She pointed to the péniche alongside the quai. "Like that one. Deep in the water. This takes me back to that wonderful summer. I'm so glad we've come. We'll have to go exploring with your –"
"We need to be going. We still have thirteen and a half kilometres to Jean-Luc's office."
"Thirteen and a half? Not thirteen? Not fourteen? Thirteen and a half?" she asked with a wide impish grin.
"Look, the bourne over there." I pointed to the squat stone marker beside the towpath, just ahead of the car. "It shows 232. This is two hundred and thirty-two kilometres from the start of the canal in Migennes, across the pass on the Yonne," I explained as I reversed the car onto the road and started back across the bridge. "I'll zero the trip odometer, and we'll see how close I am."
"You still haven't explained the thirteen and a half."
"Then allow me to continue." I smiled at her. "At the end of the canal, just beyond the last lock is bourne 242, ten kilometres from here. But we can't drive down the canal, and we are fifteen hundred metres off the road that goes through Aiserey and then the road winds through Brazey and around Saint-Usage before we reach Jean-Luc's office on the quai in Saint-Jean-de-Losne. I figured the winding and bending and the distance through town to the office would add another two kilometres to the route, not much more, not much less, so I said thirteen and a half."
The odometer was trying hard to turn from thirteen point four as I parked in the empty slot a few cars short of the office. Catherine was grunting and rolling her hands in encouragement. "Come on, you can make it, just a bit more."
I pointed to the grey Citroën three cars ahead. "If there had been an empty space up there, my estimate would have been closer."
"You must have excelled in geometry and trigonometry in university," she said as I opened her door and offered my hand.
"No, I dropped out of school. I had trouble with math, but I'll explain this later. Right now, we need to focus on buying a barge."
