Writers in English, 10th March 2017.
With two objects, a grape-crusher trophy and a measure tape, mix with
three words (gold-fruit-adolescent), and shake…
The seafront was completely still, partially covered by a thick and
scary fog; the town was calm, nearly desert, except from two or three lights
and a dog barking. 9th of March, 1916 was the day, but the worst
happened during that night.
But let´s start from the very beginning.
He was still an adolescent, born with the century and working at his
parents grape yards near the village. They have owned lands since his
grandfather arrived from a rocky little town near the Pyrenees. Since then,
wine and trade had been their family issue. They produced a really good white
wine but mostly malvasia, and owned a boat, called NUESTRA SENYORA DEL VINYET, to
carry the wine in wooden and numbered barrels with a capital P marked to
Montevideo and Cumanà. Joan was the oldest of three brothers, so he was
supposed to inherit all the lands, houses and businesses abroad. His brothers,
aged thirteen and ten, were at school in Barcelone and later, they would attend
to the Palamos Navy Academy to become sailors and boat captains and run the
family interests in South America.
So everything was planned and mastered by the Planell vidow, Joan´s
mother, who had been left alone with two kids and one coming six years ago. But
fate is not controlled by anyone and that foggy night, everything changed and
turned their lives into a nightmare. In fact, nobody at the present time
remember about the Planell family, only a few letters from Montevideo recently
discovered in a wooden trunk, with a gold P capital letter, founded in an old
house now demolished.
From lands and sea, apart from grapes, the Planell widow had a very
ominous fruit. She lent money to the most brave business men and boat owners
going to trade with Cuba, Santo Domingo, Mexico, Argentina and Uruguay, and she
received with no mercy at all a high interest if the trip was a success, or
properties from the guarantors settled in the contract if not. She invested in
every king of trade, rum, cocoa, sugar, textile goods, even slaves. She was as
rough, more rough and sharp than any other “indiano” trader. She was eager to
her first son to become a man, to carry on with the family interests and every
birthday, she controlled and marked in a tree, with a measure tape used to
check the wine barrels, his young son height. Year after year, as the mosto
drops into the barrel with the bare feet and the pressure of the
grape-crushers, she was knitting his son life as a mythological Parca, still
unaware of fate tricks and human uncertainties.
The night Joan disappeared in the mist, they have been expecting the
Nuestra Senyora del Vinyet boat from the early down hours. The day before the
fire, as they were looking for Joan´s body along the coast, they acknowledged that
the pollacra had sunk in front of Vilanova´s coast with all the goods and the
money sent back to Sitges. The same night Joan had disappeared from the Planell
house, and started the family decline, one of the theatres of Sitges, the
Reytiro, was burnt. Land, sea, mist and finally, fire.
To be continued...
