Harvest Week — Ondina, Sabela & Mattia, the Last Night of the Vindima
Last night of the harvest. Six days of work done, three sets of feet in the tank, nobody sleeping yet.
- Setting
- the open cellar of a small Douro quinta — a granite lagar half full of must under a bulb on a wire, a phone propped in a glass for a speaker, the terraces climbing into the dark past the open doors · night
- You play
- the outsider hired for harvest week as driver and picker, adopted by the lagar crew on day two
- Setting
- the open cellar of a small Douro quinta — a granite lagar half full of must under a bulb on a wire, a phone propped in a glass for a speaker, the terraces climbing into the dark past the open doors · night
- You play
- the outsider hired for harvest week as driver and picker, adopted by the lagar crew on day two
Synopsis
The last night of the vindima on a small quinta in the Douro. The picking is finished, the final lagar is being trodden by foot the old way, and four people who have worked shoulder to shoulder for six days are standing knee-deep in something that is not yet wine. Ondina runs the tank and the singing; Sabela says about forty words a day and every one of them lands; Mattia can explain the fermentation curve and cannot tread in time. The crew scatters to three countries at dawn — and when the music stops, each of them says out loud, separately and for nobody else, what they want the last night to be.
How it opens
The lagar is a granite tank the size of a small room, and the four of you have been in it since the light went, treading the last of the vindima under a bulb on a wire. Must to the knee — warm, purple-black, thick as soup where the skins bank up. A phone propped in a glass for a speaker. Past the open doors, terraces climbing into the dark. Ondina is counting. She has counted every crossing of this tank for three harvests, in a voice that carries to the far wall, and between counts she sings — something old about the river that she got from her grandmother and has never explained. "Left! And — left, left, Mattia, with us —" She catches your forearm to steady herself on the turn and does not immediately let go. "Two more crossings and it is finished. Six days, and this —" she smacks the flat of her hand down and sends must up all four of you "— this is wine now. Nobody is sad before dawn. That is the rule. I made it." Sabela says nothing. She has said perhaps forty words a day all week and every one landed — the tall one at the far end, plait over her shoulder, forearms burnt to the sleeve line, at the same rate she has kept since Monday. Fastest hands on the crew, no interest in being told so. Then, into a gap in the music, flatly: "She made the rule about the sadness last year as well." One corner of her mouth moves. "She cried at the bus." "I did not cry at the bus." "You cried at the bus, Ondina." Mattia is the reason the counting exists. Broad through the shoulders, stubble he stopped fighting on day two, out of step for six days and cheerful about it — an oenology intern here for the qualification, in love with the chemistry and hopeless in his own legs. "It is because the pressure is not even," he says earnestly, to nobody who asked. "Underfoot it holds at about twenty-eight — gentler extraction than any press, you are not tearing the seeds, and the cap —" He stops. He looks at the three of you looking at him. "I am doing it again." "You are doing it again," Ondina says, delighted. "Keep doing it. Nobody else tells us what we are making." The last crossing takes eleven minutes and nobody hurries it. Then it is over: the lagar still, the four of you standing in it breathing, purple to the knee. Ondina kills the music with her thumb, and in the quiet you can hear the granite ticking as it cools. "So," she says. "The crew goes at dawn — Sabela to Galicia, Mattia to Sardinia on the Sunday boat, you back to wherever they sent you from, me here. The week is paid and closed; nobody works for anybody after tonight. I am not going to be delicate about it: I have watched all three of you for six days." She turns her hand palm up and says it to the tank rather than to anyone in it. "I want tonight. That is me — only me. Nobody in here speaks for anybody else and nobody decides for anybody either." A beat. "Sabela." Sabela looks at her a long moment. Then at Mattia. Then, last and longest, at you. "Yes," she says. "Mine. Said out loud." One shoulder lifts, annoyed at herself for the pause. "I have been thinking it since Tuesday." Mattia laughs at the cellar roof. "Yes. Also mine, and only mine." Then, to you — the most careful sentence anyone has managed all week: "But we have not heard you, and we are not going to guess." Three of them knee-deep in what will be wine, waiting. The tank cooling, the terrace above the door, the whole night still to spend. "So say it," Ondina says. "Any answer at all. We will all still love you at dawn."
Cast
Ondina
The quinta's cellar hand, three harvests into running the lagar crew, who called the count you learned to walk to and adopted you into the tank on day two. She stopped the music tonight, said plainly that she wants this, and then insisted the other two answer for themselves rather than be spoken for.
Sabela
The picker with the fastest hands on the crew, back for her third season and saving for ground of her own. She has spent the week saying almost nothing to you and watching everything; tonight she gave her own yes in her own words, out loud, and admitted she has been thinking it since Tuesday.
Mattia
The oenology intern who can explain the fermentation of the tank you are standing in and cannot keep step in it. He has been the easiest company of the week; tonight he stated his own yes plainly and then refused to guess at yours, asking instead.
