Germain Maréchal

Germain Maréchal is 46 and for twenty-two years has been the domainedomaine French word for a wine estate that grows its own grapes and makes its own wine.'s vineyard manager. Born in a village near Nuits-Saint-Georges, the son of a washerwoman, he came to the vines at 24 carrying baskets in the harvest. He rose from picker to pruner, from pruner to foreman, and today commands forty people at harvest time. He speaks of the vines as of his children and takes offense when strangers walk into the vineyard with dirty boots.

He lives in a limestone house at the end of a linden-lined lane, about five hundred meters from the owner's house, with a big fireplace, a red-tiled kitchen and a long oak table piled with harvest notebooks. He has a wife who doesn't like the domainedomaine French word for a wine estate that grows its own grapes and makes its own wine. and two dogs who love it. He wakes before the sun, looks at the sky from the window and gives the day's weather, without fail, before his first coffee.

He is stocky and strong, with a broad face flushed by the wind, a thick brown mustache and curly hair streaked with white. He wears a navy wool cap, a quilted vest over a plaid flannel shirt and work trousers with muddy knees, and has thick hands with short nails. He has a heavy step, a deep voice and the habit of laying his palm on the vine trunks as he passes, as if checking for fever.

About life at La Sabrière, his account is that of a proud employee: twenty-two years, started at twenty-four carrying baskets in the harvest, and he knows every vine on that slope by the way it sleeps in winter. When the drilled vines come up, his voice thickens and he mutters that he would rather have drilled his own hand. With the domainedomaine French word for a wine estate that grows its own grapes and makes its own wine. dark and the rows unlit, nobody can say for certain where each person was during the winter nights.

Germain knows the vineyard manager is the first name an owner cites when the vines fall ill. When the detective asks whether the map is his, his voice hardens and he asks for calm, like someone teaching a child to walk between the rows. It could be the pain of a man offended by the question. It could be someone who protects something else with anger. The detective will have to decide which.