Breath (9781439132227) by Napoli Donna Jo

Author:Napoli, Donna Jo
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Published: 2003-05-26T16:00:00+00:00

Beer

We’re pouring beer from barrels into jugs and sealing them good with wood pegs. The six of us work together while Ava perches on a bench watching, Kuh in her lap. Ava and I won’t get to drink it, of course, but the rest of us are growing happy at the very idea of the beer. And the smell of it alone makes me a little tipsy. We laugh, as though this is the start of a beer festival like any other, in any other year.

Only it’s totally different. Laughing these days feels like blasphemy. But even in the face of illness it should be no sin to recognize little pleasures. We should be allowed that much. We have to be allowed that much. Our laughing becomes almost defiant.

The beer smells clean and strong—just like it should. We still haven’t used this year’s grain harvest for our bread; we’re giving the fresh grain to the animals. But we had to use fresh grain for this beer. There was no other way—there simply wasn’t enough of last year’s grain left to make a whole year’s worth of beer and still have old grain for bread for all the farm families. Besides, the animals are dying in spite of the new grain. And the monasteries are using fresh grain for their beer. Yesterday the monastery pub started serving this year’s beer from fresh grain. So no one will buy our beer if it isn’t as tasty as theirs.

We finish the job and put the beer jugs on the wagon. We’ll drive them to market tomorrow. Our beer is so loved that it’ll all go in one day. It always does.

The beer for home consumption remains in barrels in the cellar beside the piles and piles of apples. There’s plenty left for our family and for any festivals we want to contribute to.

Then we sit down to the evening meal. Soup of so many different vegetables I can’t even guess at them all. Großmutter chopped them alone when she took a break from the beer work, but I stayed with my brothers and Father, working hard, and Ava stayed with us too. She never leaves me.

After the soup there’s pears, then the fresh beer and darkest bread. Großmutter has been adding extra molasses to the bread dough. She says it’s to cover the musty taste of the old grain, but I heard her ask Ava if she liked molasses, so I know better. Ava wouldn’t eat the bread before, but she gobbles it down now.

Ava and I drink cider. It’s cool and sweet. She sits on my lap at the table, and I lean out to the side so I can smile at my girl child. She never smiles back, but she looks at me now. She has a steady, soft gaze. Her face is framed in wispy, light brown hair. It’s clean now—I saw to that. It amazes me how easily she fit into our lives. At first I worried about her all the time—about what a responsibility I’d taken on.

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