The Harvest Supper

The bell hung under the eaves, to the right of the kitchen door. Bernard's father had salvaged it from a school that had shut down. A crack ran along the rim, and when you pulled the chain it gave off a sound more like a saucepan than a church bell. Odile had rung it at noon for twenty-one harvests.

That Monday, she gave it three sharp tugs and watched the crew climb back up from the bottom row, empty buckets hanging from their hands. Eight of them this year. The two Pernot sisters, who had come up from the village for as long as anyone could remember and cut faster than everyone else; a Belgian couple in a camper van; a law student who had spent the whole morning complaining about wasps; and three guys who had shown up the night before in a gray Clio with its bumper held on by wire.

Under the shed, she served the terrine, the parsleyed ham, the potatoes. The three of them ate fast, hunched over their plates. The tall dark one with the buzz cut was Yanis, twenty-three, studying physical therapy in Dijon, and he told everyone. Bastien, the chubby one, twenty-one, had broken a glass before he even sat down and apologized four times. The third, Hugo, a skinny blond whose forearms were already scratched up by the vines, had barely said a word.

"Are you the boss?" Bastien asked, holding out his plate for seconds.

"I'm the one who serves. The boss is the vineyard."

They laughed, louder than the line deserved. At the end of the table, Bernard didn't look up from his bread.

That afternoon, she tried to lift a twenty-kilo crate onto the tractor's trailer and her back stopped her dead, a blade driven in just above her kidneys. She stayed bent double, one hand on the tire.

Yanis came up behind her. "Don't move."

He put his thumbs on either side of her spine, through her T-shirt, and pressed. Hard. She grunted.

"There?"

"Lower."

He moved down a centimeter. The heat of his palms came through the sweat-soaked cotton. After a while, the pain let go. His hands stayed a little longer, and she didn't say anything.

"Bend your knees," he said. "And keep the load close to you."

"Thank you, doctor."

He went back to his row with his basket on his back. Two vines down, Bastien whistled through his teeth, and Hugo elbowed him. Farther up, on the track, Bernard was starting the tractor. She didn't know how long he'd been there.

That night, he went down to the cellar around eleven to check the temperature in the vats, like every night during harvest. The pickers' dormitory was right above it. His grandfather had put up those walls with rubble stone and not much money, and the floorboards let everything through.

When he came back up to bed, Odile was reading. He sat on the edge of the bed to take off his socks, his back to her.

"They were talking about you up there."

"Who?"

"The three of them. The fat one mostly."

He folded his socks one into the other, something he never did.

"Saying what?"

"That you had a nice ass in those jeans. That you must be gagging for it, stuck with an old man who never says a word."

Odile put her book down. She waited for him to get angry. He didn't get angry.

"And you didn't go up there and tell them to shut it?"

"No."

He lay down. He switched off his lamp. In the dark, after a while, he asked:

"The physio this afternoon. Where did he touch you?"

"My back. You saw, didn't you?"

"Did he keep his hands there long?"

She turned toward him. All she could see was the shape of his shoulder. He moved closer, and against her thigh she felt that he was hard, harder than he'd been in months. He didn't touch her any more than that. He stayed pressed against her without moving, and it took her a long time to fall asleep.

Tuesday and Wednesday, he didn't ask any more questions. But at meals she caught him watching the guys when they watched her, and filling Yanis's glass before it was empty.

On Thursday it rained from five in the morning, a thick, cold rain that glued the dirt to your boots. At seven, Bernard went out to look at the sky, came back soaked and said, "We're not cutting." Wet grapes would rot in the crates.

The Pernot sisters went home. The Belgians went off to tour the wine cellars in Beaune. The law student was asleep. The three guys drifted around the shed; Bastien had pulled out a deck of cards, Hugo was reading a paperback swollen with damp.

After coffee, while she rinsed the bowls, Bernard stayed at the kitchen table, turning his spoon.

"They look at you, you know."

She turned off the tap. "Who?"

"The young guys. All three of them."

He set the spoon down.

"I don't mind."

He was out the door before she could answer. She stood at the sink, her hands wet, watching the door still swinging.

That afternoon, she went down to the vat room to punch down the cap. Twice a day you had to push the crust of grape skins back under in the open vats, with a long pole that ended in a disc, and above all you never leaned over them: the fermentation gas killed a man somewhere in Burgundy every year. Bernard told every crew on the first night. Nobody ever listened.

She was bearing down on the pole, arms straight, when Yanis walked in.

"Can I help?"

"You can prop the door open. Get some air in here."

He wedged the door with a cinder block and stayed in the draft, arms crossed. The vat smelled of warm grape must, sugar and rising alcohol. Odile's eyes stung.

"How's your back?"

"Fine."

She leaned the pole against the vat. She wiped her hands on her pants. He was looking at her and didn't lower his eyes, and she thought about what Bernard had said, I don't mind, and about his hard body against her thigh in the dark.

She was the one who stepped closer. He put his hand on the same spot as on Monday, the small of her back, under her T-shirt this time, and kissed her. She let him. His hand slid up her ribs, found her breast through her bra and squeezed it, clumsily, too hard. She moaned into his mouth. Then a car went by on the road behind the wall, and she pulled back so fast her elbow banged the vat.

"Stop. Not here."

"Sorry, I..."

"You didn't do anything wrong."

She went out into the rain without her jacket and ran across the yard. Bernard was under the eaves, next to the bell, fixing a pair of electric pruning shears on a makeshift workbench. He looked up at her, drenched, then at the door of the vat room, where Yanis was coming out too, hands in his pockets. He went back to his shears.

That evening, she didn't tell him anything. He didn't ask. In bed, she lay with her eyes open for a long time, and she knew he wasn't sleeping either.

Friday was clear and they cut from sunrise to sunset.

On Saturday the last crate came in at five, and that evening they held the paulée, the end-of-harvest feast, under the shed. Bernard brought out two magnums of 2015, the Belgian sang a Flemish song where everyone had to join in pounding on the table, the Pernot sisters danced together, and the law student kissed Bastien and then burst into tears over something about her exams.

Odile put on a blue dress she hadn't worn since a niece's wedding three years before. It was a little tight at the waist. She hesitated in front of the mirror and kept it on. When she came downstairs, Bernard looked her up and down and went to get a third bottle.

Around midnight, Bastien, drunk, yanked the bell chain as hard as he could, and the saucepan clang rang through the whole yard.

"Quit it, you'll wake up the whole village!"

The neighbors' dog started barking on the other side of the wall and kept at it a good while.

By one o'clock the Pernot sisters had gone home, the Belgians had climbed into their camper van, and the law student was asleep on a bench with her head on her jacket. It was cold under the shed. The three guys were getting up to go to the dormitory.

"Stay," Bernard said. "There's still some bottles left. We'll finish them where it's warm."

In the living room, he turned on a single lamp, the one on the sideboard, and put another log on the fire. He opened a Corton he'd been saving for the birth of nothing at all, as he liked to say, a bottle he refused to open even at Christmas. Odile watched him without a word. The guys sat in a row on the sofa, Bastien in the middle, Hugo on the armrest. She took the chair by the fireplace.

Bernard poured. He poured for everyone, and he poured for his wife more often than for the others. When the Corton was gone, he brought out the marc, the old Burgundy brandy his father had made, in the bottle with no label.

"Now this'll warm you up."

Bastien started telling nightclub stories from Dijon, girls he'd had or hadn't, and Yanis kept contradicting him, laughing. Hugo said nothing. He looked at Odile's legs, then at the fire, then at her legs again. The marc burned Odile's throat. Her cheeks were hot. She was laughing too much, and she knew it.

"What about you, madame?" Bastien asked. "What were you like at our age?"

"She was wild," Bernard said, before she could answer. "Worse than you."

The guys whistled. Odile looked at her husband. His eyes were shining. He was hardly drinking anymore; he held his glass without touching it.

She got up to put on another log. She bent down in front of the fireplace and her back pulled, just above her kidneys. She winced.

"Your back?" Bernard said.

"It's fine."

"Yanis, why don't you take a look? She's been hurting since Monday and she won't hear of seeing a doctor."

There was a silence. Bastien looked down into his glass. Yanis looked at Bernard, then at Odile.

"If she wants."

"She wants," Bernard said. "Lie down on the sofa, Odile. Guys, make some room."

She could have said no. She opened her mouth to say it. Then she lay face down on the old sofa, still warm from the three of them, her cheek on a cushion that smelled of dust and smoke. Bastien and Hugo got up and stood on either side, not knowing what to do with themselves.

Yanis knelt beside the sofa. He set his thumbs on the small of her back, through the dress, and pressed. She grunted, the way she had in the vineyard. He worked her lower back for a good while, moving up her spine, then back down. His hands spread over her hips. They went a little lower, onto the top of her ass, and stopped there, waiting.

"Not much use through the fabric," Bernard said from his armchair.

Nobody moved. The fire crackled.

Odile turned her head toward her husband. She had been drinking, a lot, more than she usually drank in a month, but she was seeing clearly. She saw the bottles opened one after another, the Corton for nothing at all, his father's marc, the questions in the dark, what he'd said on Thursday over the sink.

He looked at her. He gave a small nod.

She reached back blindly. She found Yanis's hand on her hip and guided it under the hem of her dress, onto the back of her bare thigh, then higher.

It took Yanis a second to understand. Then his fingers climbed on their own, up to the cotton of her panties, and she spread her legs a little.

"Oh, fuck," Bastien said under his breath.

Hugo knelt at the head of the sofa. He found the zipper of her dress and drew it down to the small of her back; his fingers were shaking. She rose up on her knees so they could take it off her. The dress went over her head and dropped onto the rug. She had on white cotton panties and a beige bra, the only ones she owned, and for a second she was ashamed. Then she saw Bastien's face, his mouth hanging open, and she burst out laughing, and the shame went with it.

Yanis unhooked her bra one-handed. He rolled her onto her back and kissed her breasts, took a nipple between his lips and nibbled it until she arched. Hugo slid his hands under the waistband of her panties and pulled them down her legs. She was naked on her own sofa, between three guys who still had their clothes on, and her husband was watching from the armchair where he fell asleep every night in front of the eight o'clock news.

Yanis knelt on the rug, spread her thighs and put his mouth on her pussy without warning. She jumped, then grabbed the back of his neck. He licked her in long, broad strokes, no finesse at first, then more precise once she took his hand to show him where. He learned fast. She heard herself moan and didn't try to hold it in: the three guys were all here, the dormitory was empty.

Hugo undressed beside the sofa. He was slim, almost hairless, and so hard his cock lay flat against his belly. She reached out and took hold of it. She pulled him by the hip to her lips.

She came the first time like that, Hugo in her mouth, Yanis's tongue between her thighs, one hand clenched on the armrest. It took her low in the belly and her legs clamped around Yanis's shoulders. Hugo pulled out just in time, swearing through his teeth so he wouldn't come right then.

Bastien couldn't get anywhere. He'd undressed last, tripping over his jeans, and he stood there stroking himself with nothing to show for it, red all the way down to his chest.

"It's the marc," he mumbled. "This never happens to me, I swear."

Hugo laughed nervously. In the corner, Bernard coughed.

"Come here," Odile said.

He came over, shoulders hunched. She took him in her hand and stroked him without hurrying, telling him quietly not to worry, that they had all night and nobody was waiting for him anywhere. He finally got hard between her fingers, and he looked so relieved she wanted to kiss him on the forehead.

Yanis stood up and stripped. He got between her thighs on the sofa and drove into her in one thrust. She cried out. He fucked her hard, right away, his hands under her ass to lift her to him, and the old sofa scooted ten centimeters across the floorboards.

She turned her head. Hugo and Bastien were standing on either side. She took one in each hand. Yanis's thrusts ran all the way up into the back of her neck. She took Bastien in her mouth, then Hugo, then Bastien again, no longer sure which one she was holding, and both of them groaned above her.

Yanis came first, speeding up all at once, fingers digging into her hips, with a short cry that set the neighbors' dog barking. He stayed inside her a few seconds, his forehead against her shoulder, then pulled out and dropped onto the rug in front of the fireplace.

She looked for Bernard. He was leaning forward, elbows on his knees. His glass of marc sat on the floor, full. He had unbuttoned his shirt down to his belly, and his hand rested on the front of his pants, flat, motionless.

Bastien didn't want to wait anymore. She got on all fours on the rug in front of the fireplace, knees on the scratchy wool, and he came up behind her. It took him a while to find his way in; he mumbled an apology, and she guided him with her hand. Then he took her by the hips and started moving in and out of her, clumsy at first, then in big strokes, his thighs slapping against her ass. The heat of the fire scorched one side of her face. She could see Bernard's feet in his old slippers, two meters away.

Hugo knelt in front of her. She took him between her lips again. He put his hands on her head, gently, without pushing. She looked up at him, and he looked away.

Bastien lasted longer than she'd expected. When he came, he announced it, "I'm coming, I'm coming," so seriously that she wanted to laugh in the middle of it all, and he emptied himself into her, holding her so tight she'd have bruises the next day. He collapsed onto the rug next to Yanis, and the two of them started laughing, staring up at the ceiling.

That left Hugo.

On his knees on the rug, he looked at her, and he looked at Bernard.

"I don't know if..." he started.

"Do you want to or not?"

"I want to. Just not like them."

She lay back on the rug and pulled him down on top of her. He slid into her looking her in the eyes, and stayed still for a long moment, buried all the way. Then he moved, small deep strokes that carried her up before she knew it. She wrapped her legs around his skinny hips. She could feel his ribs under her palms. He kissed her on the mouth, unhurried, and murmured her name. Nobody had said it like that in years.

In the corner, the armchair creaked.

Bernard was suddenly on his feet. He stood there, arms hanging, shirt open. Hugo froze inside her. Bastien and Yanis propped themselves up on an elbow.

"Bernard?" Odile said.

He didn't answer. He was looking at Hugo, at Hugo's hand on his wife's cheek. He stayed like that three seconds, maybe five. Then he sat back down. He put his hands back on the armrests.

"Keep going," Odile told Hugo, without taking her eyes off her husband. "Keep going."

Hugo started moving again. Odile kept her head turned toward the armchair. Bernard didn't look away anymore. She came the second time looking at him, at Bernard, while a blond twenty-two-year-old held her down against the rug, and she saw him close his eyes at that exact moment, for a second, his jaw clenched.

Hugo came almost at the same time, with a small strangled sound, his face in her neck. He stayed on top of her. After a while, she realized he was crying a little, silently, and she didn't ask.

The fire burned low. Bastien had fallen asleep on the rug, an arm over his eyes. Yanis got dressed, picked up the beige bra and laid it, folded, on the arm of the sofa.

At three, they went up to the dormitory. Bernard switched off the lamp on the sideboard. He poured his glass of marc into the sink without having touched it. They lay down side by side, not touching. She listened to him breathe in the dark. He didn't take her in his arms. She didn't ask him to.

The guys left on Sunday at eleven. Bastien had trouble looking at her and called her "madame" three times. Yanis kissed her on both cheeks, the way you would an aunt. The gray Clio started on the second try.

Hugo came running back across the yard as the car was already turning around. He handed her the dormitory key, which he'd forgotten in his pocket.

"Thank you," he said. He didn't dare look toward the cellar, where Bernard was rinsing buckets. Then he ran off again.

Bernard said nothing on Sunday. Or on Monday. He racked the wine, cleaned the vats, ate fast and went back down. He got up at five and she heard him pacing the yard in the dark. She had finger-shaped bruises on her hips. She looked at them in the bathroom mirror every morning and didn't hide them.

On Tuesday evening she broke a plate doing the dishes and started shouting. That he had no right to sulk, that he was the one who'd set the whole thing up, the Corton, the marc, her back, the physio, all of it.

"You got me drunk."

Bernard picked up the pieces. He dropped them in the trash one by one. Then he sat down.

"You knew."

She opened her mouth. She closed it. She sat down across from him.

"Yes. I knew."

He rubbed at the oilcloth with his thumb, at a wine stain that hadn't come out in years.

"I'm not blaming you," he said. "I wanted to see you with them."

He looked up at her.

"Not see you with him."

The dishwater was going cold in the sink. She could have told him that Hugo was gone, that he was twenty-two, that he'd probably never come back. She didn't. She reached across the table and put her hand on his. He didn't pull away.

By Wednesday there was nobody left. The shed was empty, the long table folded against the wall, the crates stacked.

At noon, Odile stepped out onto the kitchen doorstep. She pulled the chain three times. The saucepan clang echoed off the cellar walls, and the neighbors' dog barked.

Bernard came up from the cellar wiping his hands on his apron. He stopped under the eaves, next to her.

"Who'd you ring it for?"

She didn't answer. She went inside to set out two plates.

He came in behind her.