Short Story Sunday: The Devil's Locker (for CBY)

 

It was bittersweet for Eduard Boivin to see the bowlines thrown across the gap to the deck of the Napoleon III. It was a chilly day in February 1866, yet the sea birds saw the steamer off with their cacophony of farewell caws. He glanced at his pass again: Le Havre to Valparaiso. He had no idea of what he would find in this new world of which he had heard so much. He overhead a man comforting his daughter in German. He promised her that they would live in a big house at a lake, and that she would be able to play with all her dolls again in no time; for now they need to sleep in her trunk. He thought about his own luggage stowed somewhere in the bowels of the ship and instinctively patted his coat. His greatest treasure was still there, in his inside pocket. He only hoped it would survive the journey south. He breathed in the smell he would come to associate with his last moments in Europe: salt, smoke and snowdrops.

 

 

 

The tour director paused as the group gasped at his description of Eduard Boivon leaving Le Havre. 

"What you see here today, ladies and gentlemen, is the fruit of Monsieur Boivon's labour. You see, his greatest treasure was neither gold nor diamonds, but a single vine, taken in secret from his great grandfather's vineyard in Bordeaux. It survived the journey across the sea, and I am sure I do not need to remind you that it was a treacherous journey indeed, and when he arrived in Valparaiso, the locals say he was a man delirious with joy. He was given this land upon which to start his farm, here in the Casablanca Valley, and all his atheist prayers were heard because the vine took root." Vicente led the group to a dusty bottle in a glass enclosure. "This is the last remaining bottle of his first yield. We are lucky that it was saved by one of his labourers; apparently he was so unhappy with the mix of flavours that he smashed the barrels and bottles he had and resolved to try again the following year. It would take three more years before he had refined his recipe and," he step back, gesturing with flourish at a table laden with wine for the group to sample, "today we make the same wine that he approved in 1870." He stood back as the group descended on the free wine, proclaiming that it was delicious and special, and could they have more? He was spared from having to answer by the arrival of the guide for the next leg of the tour. 

"My name is Carmen." Her voice resounded over the din. "This way, please."

It was unusual for Carmen to finish Vicente's tours, but she was a promising guide and needed the training, so he'd given his slot to her. The last twenty minutes were usually the most exciting, and a masterful storyteller was required to enthral the groups to the point of opening their wallets and buying the wine. Not that it wasn't good wine; it was great wine by his estimation, but it was a production, a sales tactic, and although telling that story was his favourite part of the tour, he couldn't help but feel he was more of a hustler than a historian. But, with Carmen taking the last group of the day off his hands, he was able to spend more time on his research. 

Three weeks before, one of the cleaners had discovered a forgotten barrel in the cellar. Inside, rather than finding wine he had probably hoped to help himself to, was a stack of leather-bound notebooks. Since Vicente was the on-site historian in addition to be the chief tour leader, the books were brought to him, and the cleaner was rewarded with a bottle of last year's Carmenere for his trouble.

From Vicente's limited time with the notebooks, it appeared as if they had belonged to a direct ancestor of Eduard Boivin, who identified himself as Eduardo Rojas Martinez in the inside cover, and each book was dated. The first half of the first notebook from 1914 included his farming logs, instructions from his father, who, having been injured in the War of the Pacific with Bolivia and Peru in 1881 and lost his three older sons to the civil war ten years later, now depended on his youngest son, whose arrival was both unexpected and unplanned, to take over the farm and continue the wine-making tradition. It seemed that Eduardo was devoted to his father and determined to both please him and do his mother proud. Then, an abrupt change in tone appeared on 15 August 1914. Vicente had expected to read something about the opening of the Panama Canal or Eduardo's fears about Valparaiso no longer being needed as an important port city and what that would do to the trade in the region. He thought there might be European news on the death of Frans Ferdinand in Sarajevo. Instead, Eduardo had inscribed two sentences.

Aylen Soto Bravo. I cannot stop thinking about her.

"Hey." It was Carmen. "They loved the story, by the way. Thanks for helping me get it pitch perfect."

He looked up at her, feeling as though he'd just woken from a deep sleep. "Oh, uh, you're welcome. I'm glad they enjoyed themselves."

"Let's just say that the boss will be laughing all the way to the bank tonight." She regarded him and tapped her nails on the frame of his small office door. "Well, it's Friday night, so don't work too hard."

Vicente couldn't rise to the bait. "Yes, thank you. I've just got some reading to do. Are you working tomorrow?"

"No, it's Catalina and Andy's shift, I think."

He nodded. She hovered. He gasped as if preparing to say something else but then thought the better of it. Eventually, he came up with, "You're going to miss your bus if you stay any later." He noticed how Carmen shrank into herself as the words bridged the divide between them. He stood and touched her shoulder. "Good job today, Carmencita."

She nodded. He noticed her brushing her cheeks with her fingers as she walked, then ran, in the direction of her bus. He liked her, but he couldn't afford to get mixed up with a girl from work. He knew how that looked. He loaded the notebooks into his satchel, and locked his office for the night.

It took a while to make the journey into Santiago to visit his mother. He only went there when he had weekends off. The commute usually took about an hour, but there was a hold-up on the road, and it was almost dark when he finally stopped his car outside her house. As much as he loved his mother, he was impatient to get back to his reading. So he gobbled her empanadas, spilling bits of the hard-boiled egg filling down his front, fobbed her off with claims of exhaustion, and got into bed with Eduardo's notes.

For the next month, his entries were as disjointed and short as on 14 August. It seemed to Vicente that he was reading the words of a man for whom everything but the existence of Aylen ceased to be. He noted chance sightings in the village. He rejoiced at a dinner invitation he received from Aylen's father. As to whether Aylen knew of Eduardo's existence, Vicente could not be sure. It was November before any mention of the war reached his entries, and he expressed his fear that he would be drafted if Chile was drawn into the war following the defeat of the British by the Germans in the naval Battle of Coronel.

I dream of her with my eyes open. She smells of wildflowers in the dew. Last night we dined with her parents. Her father is all business talk. I could see she was bored. I asked her what she thought about the Panama Canal, and her father said she was a woman and did not need to have an opinion. I saw such fire in her then; she said that women were as clever as men if given the chance. Her mother merely cleared her throat. I could see her chest rising and falling as she tried to contain her fury. I commented on the food again. Her father asked about my ancestors from France and if I would be enlisting with the French regiment. She looked at me then, and said, "Then I suppose your light eyes must come from your European heritage?" It was a point on which I could see she and her father disagreed. I am from good European stock in his eyes, but I consider myself Chilean. Her eyes are black as coal, and they merely hint at the fire within her. I cannot help myself. I am in love. I am in love with Aylen.

An internet search of her name left Vicente empty handed. It was likely that she had married. There were not any other clues, such as her father's name or even the name of the business her father ran. He tried searching for her surnames and 1914, but he only found information about a family-run cobbler in Spain that was celebrating 300 years of shoemaking, repairing and dyeing. He sighed and resolved to carry on reading. Maybe he'd find more clues.

He awoke to the sound of his housekeeper placing a mug of coffee on his nightstand.

"Wake up, lazy boy," she said.

He could hear the smile in her voice. He knew he would never be too old for her call him "boy". He'd fallen asleep with the third notebook on his chest, and the page was open to a vivid description of Aylen's dress after he had seen her at mass. By modern standards, anyone reading these notebooks would have thought Eduardo was obsessed with Aylen, and not in a good way. He gulped his coffee, stood up and chucked the notebook at this backpack. As it hit the bag, he noticed a slip of white sticking out from the between pages. On closer inspection, he found a card with the petals of a pressed flower clinging to the exterior. Inside, in a crisp black ink declared, "My dearest Eduardo, you have my heart. Your Aylen."

The spike in adrenaline threatened to make Vicente faint. So Eduardo's love did not go unrequited. But, it still didn't explain what had happened. There was no record of anyone with the name of Aylen being involved in the farm. In fact, Eduardo had remained unmarried until his death, and his elder sister's son Carlos had taken over from him in the early 1940s, shortly after the Radical Party took power but before poet Pablo Neruda's exile. He remembered reading that there were rumours of Eduardo being a communist sympathiser, but none of the claims were ever substantiated, and Carlos had managed to win the favour of several important politicians, which meant that the estate was safe for as long as the wine was good and delivered on time.

As much as he wanted to keep reading, he knew his mother was expecting him, and the housekeeper was hellbent on getting him to leave the room given the rate at which she was vacuuming the square of carpet outside his bedroom door. He tucked his belongings into his bag and went downstairs.

I received a letter from Aylen today. She has answered my question and promised that she will be mine. It is more than I could ever have hoped for. I will speak to her father after mass on Sunday and ask for his blessing. I do not see how he could refuse. He has, on more than one occasion, expressed an interest in my lineage and my financial success. I will show him a copy of our ledgers. Even a greedy old man like him will be impressed.

*

I arrived at mass with my parents. We sat in the pew where we always sit. Aylen’s parents came in. Her father is basking in his new role as mayor, and he keeps reminding everyone of his importance, shaking hands and nodding like the bombastic politician he is. I was on tenterhooks waiting for Aylen to arrive. I remember that there was a commotion at the back of the church that made everyone turn and look. And when I looked back I thought my eyes were deceiving me. Aylen was being escorted by Jorge Alessandri Rodríguez, the son of Arturo Alessandri Palma, the charismatic  senator of the province of Tarapacá. Her father is using her to further his own political aspirations! I could not see Aylen’s face as she had hidden it behind a veil. I felt so unwell that I all but ran from the church. After composing myself, I waited outside for her, hoping to steal her away from Jorge and his clammy hands, but I did not have the chance. I wrote to her and sent the letter post post haste. Now all I can do is wait.

*

It has been three days. I have scarcely eaten. I have heard nothing from my beloved. I went to her father's house today, and he threw me out on my ear. He told me he was busy with mayoral business. I saw Jorge's car at the front of the house, and I heard her mother laughing in the parlour. I went around the back to the servant's entrance and paid the kitchen boy to tell me what was happening. I almost boxed his ears when he said that Miss Aylen and Master Jorge were engaged to be married. The wedding would take place in Iquique in the spring. I tried knocking on the front door again, demanding that her father see me. He told me that I was making a nuisance of myself. I told him I loved Aylen and wanted to marry her. I showed him my ledger. He laughed at me and shut the door in my face. I do not remember the last time I cried as I have today.

Vicente drove back to Valparaiso in silence. Eduardo's words haunted him. He could sense the anguish he felt from the way his pen pressed into the pages of the notebook. He expected another entry to follow but found the remaining pages empty; the sign of a man too heartbroken to go on. Now, armed with the information he had gleaned about Aylen’s husband, he was able to track her story. She had not had a happy marriage, and died during the birth of her second child in 1920. Jorge had remarried quickly, eager to prevent a shadow being cast on his father's presidential career, and pursued his own path in politics too. No further mention was made of Aylen’s parents, except to say that they had died within months of each other, supposedly from influenza, following the news of Aylen’s death. He found old news clippings with the announcement of the former mayor's funeral, and his eye snagged on a strange headline. "The Devil of Casablanca Valley".

The article claimed that there was a stealthy figure, seen only at night in the Casablanca Valley, who appeared to have horns and a forked tongue. Vicente almost dismissed it as an urban legend when he saw Eduardo's name. The reporter speculated that the devil was, in fact, Eduardo, who had taken it upon himself to guard his farm's wine cellar after a spate of attempted break-ins. Would-be thieves had reported seeing a horned figure who roared at them to leave. A spokesperson from Eduardo's estate had dismissed the allegations, saying that the cellar was deliberately heated to help enhance the flavours of the wines as they aged. He could not confirm or deny the presence of any wardens of hell, but he did say that Mr Rojas Martinez took the matter of security very seriously – especially when his own wine was concerned. 

Back in his flat, Vicente sipped his tea. It all started to make sense now. Eduardo had famously become a recluse, despite his parents begging him to find a bride who would give him an heir. He most likely took refuge in the cellar, and his attempts to ward off would-be thieves most likely birthed the legend that he and the other guides retold to every group of wine snobs and squibs they showed around. 

He opened the word processor on his laptop and began to type. It was dawn before he had finished. He printed ten copies and went to work.

"Good weekend, boss?" Carmen was leaning in the doorway to his office.

"It was all right. I made a discovery in those notebooks."

"Really? What did you find?"

He handed her a page. "Here, read this. We're all going to need to update our story on the devil's locker. There's more to it than we could ever have imagined." 

Carmen frowned and started reading. When she finished, she looked up, her eyes brimming. "But this is so sad. Our audiences love the story of the devil guarding the wine in the hot cellar."

"And we'll tell that one too. Right before we set the record straight. We owe it to Eduardo and Aylen."

"The star-crossed lovers of Casablanca Valley."

"Exactly."

She nodded. "I'll try and memorise this before my first group. I think they're coming in at ten."

"Great. Thanks. And send the other guides to me when you see them." He gestured at the pile of paper on his table. "I have enough copies to go around."

"Will do. Thanks, boss."

"Sure.” He steeled himself. She was turning to leave. It was time to alter the course of his destiny and prevent himself from turning into Eduardo. “Oh, and Carmen, one more thing. What are you doing for dinner on Thursday?"