Rossi and apple wine

Author: (English) Lorrie Lee
Translator: Zhou Yi
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2002-08-01
Features: For the first time in my short life, I left the sight of adults. For the first time in my life, I stood alone in a strange world, unable to imagine or understand its many wonders: In this world, birds chirped mournfully, plants emitted foul odors, and insects suddenly hummed and danced. I was lost, not knowing how others could find me. In this book, Lorrie Lee opens the door to memories with a cry from the slope of his hometown, guiding readers through time and space to revisit the grayish village shrouded in death and danger, and enter the various fantasies and nightmares of childhood. Through his poetic pen, those distant years and that no longer existing era and way of life are vividly recreated before our eyes, like a simple yet beautiful nostalgic movie fragment: The old grandmas in the wall panels were like two cold twin stars, living together in dependence and love. They refused to let each other forget their existence. To me, they were like the forever-living old witches in myths; they always lived in some place within the wall panels, so I couldn’t imagine what the world would be like without them.
Our house was built with stones from the 17th-century Cozwood Hills, and by general standards, it was quite beautiful. It had hand-carved windows, a golden appearance, moss-covered roofs, and thick walls; no matter the season or weather, the walls retained a damp chill. The attic and corridors of the house had many doors as tall as the walls, and our small hands always longed to open them—they once led to those special, echo-filled rooms, but they were now sealed shut, and we could never enter. The house was once a small country estate and later a famous beer tavern, but when we moved in, it was in ruins, just three small, dilapidated cottages connected together. The house was in the shape of a T, and we lived under the vertical part of the T, while the horizontal part extended to the edge of the slope, like a rusty, broken shell, divided into two households, with two old grandmas living in them, their territories overlapping. Triel Grandma and Valen Grandma were two opposing old women, and their eternal hostility toward each other, like the mice in the walls, attracted most of my childhood attention. They were very similar—bent like sickles, pale pink eyes, and wild, bushy hair, making me think they were witches. During their days of neighboring, they never spoke to each other directly; they communicated through boots and brooms—jumping around on the floor or tapping the ceiling. They called each other "the downstairs downstairs" and "the upstairs upstairs" or "that pest"; they both thought the other was a trivial, insignificant local. "The downstairs downstairs" lived on our floor and might have been the shorter of the two. Like a tiny white mole, she came from her garden, scratching at my kitchen window with her paws, whispering outside or sitting in the sun sucking bread. She always seemed mysterious and self-sufficient, her movements as light as feathers. She had two names, which she changed according to her mood that day. The adults told us that Valen Grandma’s name was "great," left over from her marriage to someone of high status in the past. According to rumors, in this、, she carried noble blood. But she never mentioned her background. Everyone knew she had borne many children. Everyone knew she was now poor. She lived on cabbage, bread, and potatoes—but she made excellent wine. Valen Grandma’s wine was very famous in the village, and she spent most of the year preparing for it. The first secret of winemaking was collecting the ingredients. In early April, she would set off with a basket, working in the fields and hedgerows, collecting plants all day in the valley until summer ended. In the evening, people would see her limping home, carrying many hard flowers; until buckets of lavender, daffodils, and elderflowers piled up in every corner of the house. Elderflower blossoms spread on the kitchen floor, drying gradually, like a foul carpet, with a layer of gray-green flowers peeling off and quickly fading in the summer haze. Soon, small, grape-like elderberries would bubble in purple barrels, and then daisies, orchids, and torn branches of dog rose would be added. Valen Grandma’s kitchen brewed an incredible season, the boiling juice bringing a fresh and beautiful summer. Soft flowers piled on the floor, and she picked them, dropping them into the rich wine—first the strong, sweet scent of lavender, then the foul, reddish-brown daffodils, the bitter, smoky poppy pollen, and the disgusting dark-green elderflowers. She picked all day in the wilderness, walking through several pastures, ransacking the flowers by the alleys and bushes—she brought them home, to her kitchen, sorted them, lit the fire, filled the large pots, added sugar and yeast. These large barrels boiled daily, bubbling with sugary juice, petals swirling in the boiling water, the air filled with a rich, steaming, and uniquely fragrant aroma. Hot water droplets and flower broth were distilled, and the wine trickled down the walls. Not only flowers but also European turnips, potatoes, blackberries, small apples, and various berries were added to the wine. In fact, she put everything she could find into it. Valen Grandma brewed wine like a madwoman, with any material; as long as there was enough sugar and yeast, she believed she could even brew old matches. She never opened or stored them too long, just letting them slowly go through the natural process. After boiling, they settled down, cooling and fermenting in the large barrels. Over the next few months, she used slices of bread to skim off the yeast residue. Then, she bottled the wine, labeled it, and prepared it for a year. Finally, when the wine was finally brewed, the day came to send it to others. Our window creaked. We saw this old woman smiling mysteriously, waving a large white bottle. "Hi, girls! Try this. It’s the lavender wine I brewed last year." Through the kitchen window, she poured the wine into our cups, stretching her neck to watch us drink. The wine in the cups was a calm golden color, crystal clear, like a pale spring morning. It smelled like ripe grass, the scent of distant fields carried by the wind, and it tasted like a gentle breeze, refreshing and delightful. It looked harmless. We happily drank it all down, even the smallest child gulping it down. Then, suddenly, we felt a strange dizziness; a tide rose from our feet, like a fever, the kitchen walls began to shake and shift, and we suddenly loved each other. Soon, we crowded together by the window, constantly waving the cups, asking for more. Our mother’s eyes shone brightly, and she happily murmured, "God bless you, Grandma. Such wonderful lavender and European turnips. Dear, you must give me the recipe for this wine."
Valen Grandma poured all the wine into our cups, shook the bottle, pouring out the last drop of flower juice, then, with a giggle, took small, quick steps along the garden path. Meanwhile, us inside the window were hugging each other gently. Valen Grandma was immersed in these little moments of life, which warmed her old age, while her neighbor, Triel Grandma, was completely different. "The upstairs upstairs" was as frugal as a sparrow and as monotonous as a maggot. She could sit for hours without moving, her eyes covered as if by a dark curtain, her fragile limbs frozen like frost, except for the slight tremor of her chin, it was hard to tell if she was even alive. The most striking feature of Old Triel Grandma that caught my attention was that she seemed to be chewing something all the time. She ground her collapsed jaw up and down, chewing food silently all day. I regarded this action as one of the games of the elderly, a slow feast, an extended enjoyment. I imagined someone bringing her a four-pound loaf of bread (for example, on Friday nights), and then she would stuff it into her tough mouth and chew it slowly for a whole week. In fact, she never ate bread, butter, meat, or vegetables; she lived on tea, biscuits, and bean porridge sent by the Skeels. Triel Grandma had a primal view of time, as if following some degenerate pattern. For example, she ate breakfast at 4 a.m., lunch at 10 a.m., afternoon tea at 2:30 p.m., and went to bed at 5 p.m. Whether in winter or summer, this routine never changed; this way of life was very similar to her childhood, when she lived in the forest with her father. To me, this way of life was almost monstrous, completely disrupting the roots of life order. But Triel Grandma’s schedule belonged to God or to the birds. Although she had a clock, she kept it just to hear the ticking, because its hour and minute hands had fallen off long ago. Triel Grandma was the exact opposite of "the downstairs downstairs" Valen Grandma. Valen Grandma lived a life almost as deep as a cave, but Triel Grandma’s front door was always open, her living room always welcoming us in. This wasn’t because she couldn’t avoid us but because she was completely at the mercy of these agile children. Her house was just outside our gate. Her doorway was filled with pots of elderflowers, and the small room faced the slope, clearly visible like last year’s bird nests. Her house was filled with the smell of dried cloth and tea cans, mixed with the rich sweetness of an old body. "Triel Grandma, are you there? Are you inside? Grandma." Of course, she was—where else would she be? We heard her sighing from the house. "Well, I can’t go anywhere. It’s always you mischievous kids." "We came to see you, Grandma." "Be careful not to touch those flowerpots, or I’ll crush you." We three crowded together and walked inside. Triel Grandma sat crouched on the low windowsill, combing her thin white hair. "What are you doing? Grandma."