By Saad Z Hossain

COLD light filtered through the wooden shutters and joined the mosquitoes in assaulting my sleep. It was freakishly chilly. The bungalow, built during the British Raj, was light and airy, without any thought towards insulation. A house on a hill, with the adjoining tea gardens fanning out below. Picturesque. I had made several additions to ruin the once elegant structure; now a wide open deck commanded the heights over the interior of my property, giving me a commanding view, my labourers a terrible eyesore.
   Pekinous, my Garo servant, had laid out my best black suit for me. It was tailored in Hong Kong by a family of Mandarin dwarves. Once a man wears a suit crafted by dwarves, it’s very hard to go back to regular designers. Pekinous spoke gibberish, not fit for human cognisance. Somehow, he had figured out that today was special. I left the tie and sauntered to the terrace, making enough noise to alert the Garo of my advent. It was a point of interest to me to avoid any conversation with him, for he took a childish delight in misunderstanding simple Bengali.
   He was up and ready with some tea. I sniffed hesitantly. The bastard often tried to slip me some poisonous Garo mixture. Worse even, he might give me tea from my own garden, which is unfathomably bad. Today the liquor was a good blend of Darjeeling and Ceylon, so I sat and sipped as the sky lightened. On the left, the tea garden stretched below almost to the horizon, dark green hedges in ordered rows. It was an utter waste of space. In a few hours the pickers would start pouring into the trenches, but now it was blissfully empty, the air woody and tinged with the smoke of distant burning leaves. In a country where it’s hard to breathe without imbibing the exhalations of several hundred people, the greatest luxury of all is probably an empty piece of land.
   Old mango trees lurked below me, their canopy cupping my deck. Once it had been an overgrown orchard, and it looked the same still; now, however, it was a hoax, a hollow phalanx meant to keep people out. I had cleared the woods inside with my trusty Garos, the tribe with the dubious honour of being led by Pekinous. Several metres from the line was a discreet chain-link fence, covered by creeper. There was one gate into this box, and I carried the key around my neck.
   Inside was my private Eden, the most audacious, illicit, ridiculous venture in the country, the first and only vineyard in Sylhet, the most distinguished Shiraz anywhere in the world. I put off breakfast and decided to proceed with my morning tour. I would have two visitors today, Albert and Hanif, buyer and seller, and I had preparations to make.
   I stepped onto the railing in the far corner of the veranda. A rope ladder was folded into the leaves, one of two secret ways into the vineyard. A touch dramatic, perhaps, but I had my reasons. A short descent and I was inside the vineyard, walking the fat red soil, the grapes already heavy in the vine, almost black in the morning light.
   I had learned the wine trade in Napa, during university. They told me I was a wastrel, a gambler, an immoral degenerate with no discernable virtue. Yet, I had a one-in-a-million palette. An obnoxious talent, for a Muslim, and as it turned out to be my only skill, I was obliged to remove that tenet from my commandments. I spent several years rooting around Napa, but the California Appellation did not approve of my methods, and I was forced to decamp, trailing rather forceful letters from the attorneys of Messrs Beringer Vineyards.
   Feeling the pull of the Rhone valley, I blundered my way through France, where the folks at La Maison Jaboulet took the opportunity to expound their contempt for anyone using California and wine in the same sentence. They were also quick to disabuse me of the idea that the grape called Shiraz had anything to do with Persia. They further said that I had a tongue like a camel’s, rounding off the whole with a pungent hypothesis on my lineage, most of which I thankfully did not understand.
   I worked there for six months. Afterwards, I made my way around the Hermitage for the next three years, picking up the nuances of ‘Terroir’, the art of the soil. By this time I was firmly in love with Shiraz, infused with the dark flavour, incapable of leaving it alone. Whispered in dark corners, I learnt that while the Rhone Valley had birthed the grape, the new masters of Shiraz toiled in Australia. It was an easy decision to move to the Barossa Valley, Southern Australia. The Australians were more welcoming, and certainly more willing to experiment. I strove with them for many months, and more than one masterpiece was barrelled with a hint of my touch in it. In the end though, even they were not willing to take the final few steps. I returned home then, learned and unfulfilled.
   Home, to find this perfect little patch of malnourished soil, where the grapes were forced to grow small and potent, roots thirsting for whatever liquid they could find. Here, to settle definitively all questions of terroir and the master’s art. It had been posited by some that mastery of the soil was more important than the final mixing of grapes, that, in fact, the desired flavours could be injected into the infant fruit via the subtle manipulation of the earth; a far more elegant solution than the frenzied bashing of grapes and muddling of distillations. This I had proven, and more.
   Albert interrupted my reverie with a fanfare of travel dust and irritation. He was a fat, bald, fastidiously dressed Belgian gentleman, and his rage was comic; I had chosen him partly for his acumen in Shiraz, partly because he was a born criminal. Pekinous had blindfolded him, and now terrorised him with sinister Garo pronouncements. He had visited me 12 times over the years, taking away my entire mature stock. My Shiraz went for collectors’ prices underground. Albert was by now a millionaire.
   As was the norm, he insisted on touring the lines, leaving fat footprints on the red earth. At the end of the vineyard were two low-slung concrete sheds, camouflaged by a generous amount of forest life. Two doors, one black, one green. The green door was the business end of the vineyard, where the Garos pulped the grapes which, through various painstaking, shamanistic rituals, became the most valuable wine in the world. The black door, on the left, was a modified grinding mill where I made my special K fertiliser. I hesitated at the entrance, as I always did when I brought Albert here. Pekinous took the decision out of my hands by opening the green door, and so we entered the distillery.
   ‘Monsieur, it is magnificent.’ Albert said wisely, as his eyes took in the gleaming oak apparatus. ‘Everything is tip-top. Why we could be in any vineyard in France…’
   ‘I trust your journey was comfortable?’
   ‘It was terrible.’ His face trembled like a baby’s. ‘Mon vieux, I don’t know why you don’t just move lock stock and barrel to somewhere civilised. Why if le monde knew that you were the author of this…this genius, why, every great house would open their doors. You would name your price, and I, I would walk proudly in the sun instead of skulking in the night!’ A fine performance, ending with full facial pout, hands outstretched, eyebrows arched towards divine supplication.
   ‘Calm yourself, my friend.’ My lips twitched as I choked back a smile. ‘Believe me when I tell you that my methods would not be approved by, er, all the big houses.’ I let my face harden. ‘You have been keeping quiet, no?’
   ‘Of course, of course.’ Albert fluttered his hands. ‘I would never endanger you, my friend. They seek everywhere, but no one could ever guess this birthplace.’
   ‘Ok. Now for the 08 vintage, I have one thousand cases, at our usual prices. I know I promised more, but I had some problems with the soil.’
   ‘Mon Dieu, I have pre-sold over 3,000 cases already!’ Albert turned puce. ‘Do you want me to die? The Chinese alone will kill me.’
   ‘Hold an auction.’
   ‘My friend, I already have, I sold 900 cases between 7 and 8 o’clock this morning in your shitty airport through telephone alone! The lowest price per bottle was three thousand. Euro, you understand, not shitty dollar. If you needed fertiliser, why on earth didn’t you just tell me? Merde, at these prices I could make you fertiliser out of caviar.’
   I patted his fat arm. ‘I don’t think you want to be involved with my, er, fertiliser.’
   Albert became sly. ‘What is your secret, eh? Extra potassium? The drip system? Or have you gone organic? But it must be something unique. That flavour, that unnatural bouquet, that, that remarkable belligerent air…I am curious, it is idle to say that I am not curious. I hate to say it, but this vintage is a little bit weaker. You know, a little bit faint, that divine flavour. Still fantastic, of course, worth every penny the Chinese swine pay. Why, I would give my left arm to find out your secret.’
   ‘Up to the shoulder, Albert, or just the elbow?’
   ‘Your humour, my friend, is so odd…’
   ‘Do you know, Albert, that for almost a decade, the champagne producers of France used the garbage of Paris as their fertiliser?’ I asked sweetly.
   ‘Truly?’ Albert stared in astonishment. ‘Truly? You are using French garbage???’
   ‘In a manner of speaking.’ The wine-soaked atmosphere was making my head spin. I wanted to cut this short, for Hanif was due soon. ‘Now, the special reserve is also ready, I believe. Aged 8 years. You should get a pretty price for that, eh Albert?’
   I could see greed rise up in his eyes and snuff out idle curiosity like a candle in a sandstorm. ‘My dear boy, I could kiss you! I must make arrangements to move this quantity on the diplomatic pouch. It will take several days. Pah! What a barbaric country you live in. What cretins impose sanctions on wine?’
   He continued in this vein as the Garos loaded the wine into the UN trucks loaned to Albert courtesy of the EU consulate. The sheer level of corruption involved in this venture always filled me with joy, and I took a moment to savour it. Albert, for all his childish bonhomie, was a ruthless and cunning bastard underneath. While he was an integral part of the machine, I was just as confident that he was ripping me off. It was the nature of the man, after all, and one day it would no doubt lead him down a dark path. Today, he allowed himself to be chivied up to the bungalow without any further hassle.
   Hanif drove in minutes after the dust settled. His dilapidated bus held twenty wretched looking men in their mid-twenties. Vomit trailed the sides of the vehicle, yellow rivulets against the scarred tin sides. It had not been an easy journey. Hanif got out from the driver’s seat, and limped around, lining up the boys. He was rail thin, with a pocked face disguised somewhat by an extravagant moustache.
   ‘Eighteen only.’ He said. ‘I know you wanted at least 25, but you’re so picky…’
   ‘No family, no fixed address, no previous work experience. My eyes flickered over the decrepit crew. ‘Shouldn’t be too hard in this country. You’re getting lazy, Hanif.’
   ‘What do you do with this labour, anyway?’ He scratched his head and circled nervously around me and the inscrutable Pekinous. ‘And where are the last bunch I brought you?’
   ‘They moved on.’ I snapped. ‘That’s what day-labourers do.’ I moved towards the black door. ‘Send them in one by one. Keep it orderly. The ones I like, I’ll put to work inside.’
   There was an interview table inside, to the immediate left of the door, with a lamp and oilskin apron, both of which I appropriated. The rest of the room was murky, the grinding machines rusty and hulking in the shadows. I flipped the buzzer for the door, and the first volunteer came in, hesitant. I flashed the lamp in his eye and he flinched, stepping back into Pekinous’s embrace. The Garo yanked his head back and sawed at his neck, an altogether clumsy effort that left the man gurgling and kicking. I grabbed his legs and we quickly hoisted him into the hydraulic pressing tank, before everything precious drained out. He flopped about in there, emitting little wheezing noises. I was tempted to lower the press right away, but checked myself to conserve power. We spent the next few minutes practising Pekinous’s knifing technique.
   I buzzed in the next, and then again and again. Pekinous’s performance improved marginally, and we took turns with the knife. After seven we started the press and took a tea break. The sludge from the press pumped automatically into the main mixer, where I would later add other fertilising agents such as potassium. I was in a hurry because of Albert, so we resolved to push on. The stench was unbearable now, even with the twin exhaust turrets on the roof. Luckily the flies hadn’t arrived yet. Eighteen in all, and the penultimate one was practically a cripple, further proof of Hanif’s perfidy, since our contract clearly stated healthy, strapping labourers. There are aesthetic issues at stake here, after all.
   ‘We might as well do 19 today, eh Pekinous? We can always find another Hanif.’ I took his garbled squawk as assent, and buzzed for my contractor. He came in cautiously, and quicker witted than the others, almost immediately discerned that everything was not quite right. He tried to escape, so I stunned him with the lamp and heaved him into the tank. He floundered around in there, cursing, but the sides were too high and by now too slippery for him to climb out. I was about to press the crusher when Albert’s dulcet tones wafted through, his peculiarly effeminate ’Allo somehow penetrating my corklined walls.
   This was an interesting dilemma. ‘Now Pekinous, observe, if you will, you imbecile. Albert is an excellent distributor, yet we really did need at least 23 this time. The last vintage was weak, very weak in flavour. You know the ground must be soaked, absolutely soaked in the stuff. And we have 20 now, and Albert clearly counts as two, so that’s almost an irrefutable argument…’
   It was pathetically easy to lure him inside, with the promise of secrets revealed. He went into a kind of shock, hardly protesting as Pekinous bent him backwards. Of course, the cretin Garo did the job too far away from the press, and we had a terrible time flopping around with the body. By the time we reached the press, I was winded, weak kneed, barely standing upright. As I recuperated on the rim of the tank, I heard the soft click of the door locking. A shadow fell across me, and the cold whisper of steel barely missed me as I just managed to roll away. Pekinous lurched towards me.
   ‘Now back, you traitorous bastard!’ I swerved around, putting the tank between us.
   ‘23.’ Said he with an imbecile grin.