The Winemaker Read Online Free PDF

volunteers, the crowd pressing in on them, propping them, holding them in place with dozens of hands to provide a firm baixos, a base. Four additional strong men climbed atop the bottom four, their bare feet on the lower men’s shoulders. Then four more climbed up, and four more on top of them. And so on, until there were eight layers of men, each layer lighter than the preceding one because it would have to bear less weight.The upper levels were youths, and the last to ascend the castell was the small boy who was the anxaneta, the pinnacle.
    Little Teresa Gallego was strong and nimble as a monkey, by far a better climber than any boy in the village. She attended every practice of the castellers because her father, Eusebi, lent his invaluable strength in the fourth layer of men. Though a female could not be the pinnacle, little Teresa was admired and loved, and sometimes she was allowed to climb to the fifth row during rehearsals, over four bodies as if each were a ladder, stepping on calves, buttocks, backs, outstretched arms, and shoulders, until she stood on her father. She climbed carefully and smoothly, making no frantic moves that would cause the castell to sway, but often it swayed anyway and shuddered while she climbed. A quick escape command yelled from the coach below could send her sliding down again over all the backs and legs as the castell trembled and twisted. Once in a practice climb it broke beneath her, and she fell to earth, a small piece of human fruit dropping among the thudding, hard adult bodies. There were minor injuries from the fall, but God protected her from harm.
    Though she was acknowledged to be the best child climber, when there were splendid times of public success during the castellers’ scheduled appearances at festivals, always it was a slower and less accomplished boy who clambered upward and achieved completion as the ninth layer, stepping across a final back to raise one arm in victory as he became the pinnacle, like the cherry on a tall layer cake, while the crowd cheered wildly. In those moments, Teresa stood on the firm earth and gazed upward in frustration and longing, as the music of the drums and the grallas sent shivers through her, and theentire human castell triumphantly unfolded itself earthward in victory and in perfect order, layer by layer.
    She climbed in practice for only two years. By the middle of the second season her father began to show early signs of flagging health and had trouble carrying his weight in the tower. He was replaced and Teresa stopped going to the castellers’ drills. She became less cute as she grew older, and she stopped being everyone’s darling, but Josep continued to study her from afar.
    He had no idea what made her so interesting. He watched her change from a child as she grew tall and strong. The year she turned sixteen she was small-breasted, but her body was womanly, and he began to stare when he thought he wasn’t noticed, gazing quickly at her legs when she tucked the hem of her skirt into her waistband to keep it from the vineyard dirt. She knew he was watching her, but they never spoke.
    Then on Santa Eulália’s Day that year, they both found themselves by the blacksmith shop, watching the church procession.
    There was controversy about the saint’s day, because there were two saints named Eulália—Santa Eulália, patron saint of Barcelona, and Santa Eulália of Merida—and people couldn’t agree from which of them the village took its name. Each of the saints was a martyr who had died in agony for her faith. The day of Eulália of Merida was December 10, but the village celebrated on February 12, the saint’s day observed by Barcelona, because they were closer to Barcelona than to Merida. Some of the villagers eventually merged the estimable powers of both saints in their minds, making their combined Santa Eulália more powerful than either of the other two. Their village’s Eulália was the patron saint of a number of