ELTWeekly Newsletter Vol. 3 Issue#91 | June 27, 2011
- A likeable man
- A truly full-bodied Bordeaux
- The grape-pickers
The aim of this paper is to analyze the syntactic and stylistic features of Josef Essberger’s short story The Winepress. Theory followed to study the features of language in this story is the theory as propounded by Leech et al.(1981). The paper first of all gives a brief introduction to the author, a brief account of the story, and then it presents an overview of stylistics and the tools to be applied in the analysis. On the basis of the proposed theory a comprehensive analysis of the story in terms of Lexis, Grammar, Figures of Speech, Context and Cohesion is to be carried out. Finally it summarizes the analysis, discusses the limitations of the research and also scope for further research. This paper is not written with a view to depict an overall picture of the writing style of Josef Essberger as a writer, for even those text linguists as eminent as Geoffrey N. Leech and Michael H .Short (1981) maintain that it is difficult to generalize about the style of an author. The main objective of this paper is, therefore, to find out the artistic beauty of the story through the writer’s choice of language.
Stylistic Analysis of Josef Essberger’s ‘The Winepress’
Introduction: An overview of Stylistics
Stylistic analysis which focuses on role of the linguistic codes of the text contributes much to the development of literary criticism. This is widely accepted by the critics that a literary text can be comprehended better if it is studied in parallel with stylistic analysis. The aim of stylistic study is to interpret the literary meaning and aesthetic effect of literary texts linguistically. M. A. K. Halliday sees ‘grammar’ as a network of systems of relationships which account for all semantically relevant choices in language, which is as well the standpoint of stylistic analysis. In Cohesion in English (1976), Halliday maintains that there are three major components in linguistic system: THE IDEATIONAL, THE INTERPERSONAL and THE TEXTUAL (p. 22-23). The Ideational component is related to the expression of ‘content’. It is divided into two parts: the Experimental and the Logical. The ‘experimental’ reveals the context of culture while the ‘logical’ expresses the abstract logical relations. The Interpersonal reveals the speaker’s angle in a particular situation. It expresses the motive of the speaker in saying anything at all. The Textual component helps in forming the text. It tries to find out the resources that make a text coherent whether they are textual or situationally conditioned.
Halliday makes an analysis of the language of William Golding’s novel The Inheritors, in the light of what he calls the ideational function of language – “His analysis is revealing in the way it relates precise linguistic observation to literary effect” (Leech & Short, 1981, p. 32).
Eminent German linguist-critic Leo Spitzer (1887-1960), known as the father of literary stylistics, maintains that the smallest detail of language can unlock the “soul” of a literary work. According to him, the task of stylistics is to provide a hard-and-fast technology of analysis. The image used by Spitzer of the “philological circle”, the circle of understanding, however, seems to suggest that there is no logical starting point. Halliday and Spitzer may vary in their approaches to the analysis of literary texts, the stylistic studies carried out by both, nevertheless, bear solid evidence.
Literary stylistics explains the relation between language and artistic function but as far as the issue of presenting a satisfactory and reliable methodology for prose style analysis is concerned, both Spitzer and Halliday seemed helpless. The only way out of this state of unproductivity is to read and reread. Two text linguists: Geoffrey N. Leech and Michael H. Short; in the year 1981, who with combined strenuous effort, bravely stepped into the breach and published Style in Fiction: A linguistic Introduction to English Fictional Prose. The book later became well established as a course text book for both students of English language and English literature. The book covers all those things which previous studies lacked. It is in this work that an overall “theory” or “model” of prose style is put forward. This book provides such tools of analysis which can be applied to any text.
The Author
Josef Essberger is better known as E-learning resource provider rather than as a writer of literary corpus. Founder of Englishclub.com, Essberger is a British born author. Since 1990, his EnglishClub.com, My.EnglishClub.com, TEFL.net, EslAdmin.com, EslDepot.com, EasyEnglish.com, SmallWorldFriends.com are the best seller websites devoted to English teaching and learning. He founded the EnglishClub for ESL learners and teachers in 1997, and the following year founded TEFL.net, a site dedicated to English teachers. In 2009, EnglishClub reinvented with a background in publishing and photography. Josef is the author of several articles, short stories (The Chapel, The Metro and The Winepress) and books, including a travel guide entitled Monopoly London. In association with EnglishClub and TEFL.net, which provide free resources and materials for English teaching and learning, Josef Essberger also owns and operates eslDepot.com. This website sells books, games, videos and other resources for English learners and teachers.
Brief account of the story
Charles Jousselin de Gruse, a French diplomat and the narrator of the story, one day while entertaining his ‘The Dutch’, ‘The German’ and ‘The English guests’, being an amusing raconteur, started narrating the story of a young man named Pierre who while in Madagascar, fell for a girl named Faniry. Within five months, they got married and started living happily. After a happy life of three years in Madagascar, Pierre got a telegram informing him about the death of his parents and brother. He returned to France and settled there to look after his ancestral wine yard. Being jealous of all the females working for Pierre, with many accusations against him, Faniry began to quarrel with him and a wide gap was created between them. One Friday evening, Faniry, heavily drunk, entered the winery and flung her arms around Pierre’s neck but he didn’t show any love. In the heat of anger and desire, she attacked him with a knife. Somehow, escaping from her, he pushed her off. Accidently, a screw of the press caught at her hair and dragged her in. Pierre didn’t pay any heed to the screams of Faniry. When he made sure that the game was over, he switched the current off. “Faniry’s blood had mixed in the wine.” He told everyone that she had left for Madagascar. The wine of Pierre got award after award and it was declared to be the best vintage. Now the guests interpreted that they were drinking that damned woman in their cups. The host, clearing the doubt, told them that ‘Everyone knows that the best vintage should come first.’
The story is really a tragedy, an irony of fate. It does explain a lot, sometimes about life, about marriage, especially the importance of selecting a better partner and also feelings like jealousy and anger etc. which never give happiness but make people weak, both physically and intellectually. The story shows terrible things about drinking; wine is so bad that in its intoxication people feel helpless to make decision and to control themselves. Intoxicated people do the horrible deeds that Pierre and Faniry did.
Methodology
Leech and Short (1981, p. 75-82) provide us a checklist of stylistic categories which enable us to collect data on a fairly systematic basis. The categories are placed under four general headings: lexical categories, grammatical categories, figures of speech, cohesion and context. Under each rubric, smaller-scaled categories are placed to give a range of data which may be examined in relation to the literary effect of the text.
A: Lexical categories
General
Nouns
Adjectives
Verbs
B: Grammatical categories
Sentence Types
Sentence Complexity
Clause Types
Clause Structure
Noun Phrases
Verb Phrases
Other Phrase Types
C: Figures of speech
Grammatical and Lexical Schemes
Phonological Schemes
D: Context and cohesion
Cohesion
Context
But even Leech and Short themselves accept the incompleteness of this overall model, for “these are attempts to give shape and system to a field of study in which much remain unclear, and hidden beneath the threshold of observation.” (Leech &Short, 1981, p. 33) The study of the relation between linguistic form and literary function can not be reduced to mechanical objectivity. In both the literary and linguistic spheres much rests on the intuition and personal judgment of the reader. Therefore, in order to bring into the spotlight what appears to be the most significant linguistic features of The Winepress, necessary adaptation is to be made of the model above, which is going to be applied in the actual analysis that follows.
Analysis
The story is divided into two types of text: narrative and the direct speech. We find that Charles Jousselin de Gruse is the narrator of the story of Pierre and Faniry. While drinking, the gossiping among the host and the guests is almost in the direct speech with a minimal narration, while the story that is told by Charles Jousselin de Gruse is almost made up of narrative. The story told by the host consists of six paragraphs. Paragraph one, two, three, four and five are entirely made up of narrative. The only mixed paragraph is six, where the first sentence is in direct speech. Apart from this, there is a little dialogue between paragraph four and five.
Lexis
There are 1484 words in this story of which 585 words are unique and 391 words are non-repeated. The largest word is of fifteen letters. Three letter words are the most frequent i.e. 24.6%. 18.1% words contain four letters, 15.4% words contain two letters and the percentage of five letter words and of six letter words is 11.8 and 11.2 respectively. The average of letters per word is 4.41, average of syllables per word is 1.52 and the average of words per sentence is 10.91. If we look at the frequency of words, we find that the most frequently used word is the third person pronoun ‘he’ which occurs 38 times creating a cumulative effect. The third person pronoun ‘she’ is repeated 21 times. Other most frequent pronouns are: ‘his’-27 times, ‘me’ – 2 times, ‘herself’- 4 times’, ‘you’-11 times, ‘him’-11 times, ‘her’-14 times, ‘it’- 18 times and ‘I’-11 times. Some other words which have been repeated most frequently are: ‘and’-37 times, ‘guests’-10 times, ‘said’-12 times, ‘wine’-8 times etc.
Above statistical analysis shows that, in keeping with the subject, the vocabulary is simple and homely but slightly literary or archaic flavor here and there. No slang word is found throughout the story. We find only one profane word ‘screw’ which occurs two times in the story. The word ‘screw’ can be treated as a slang word also as it refers to ‘an act of having sex’ and ‘a partner in sex’ also. Some of the words which occur in the story do not convey the dictionary meaning. For example the word ‘game’ as defined by Oxford Dictionary is ‘an activity or a sport with rules in which people or teams compete with each other’ but in The Winepress, this word refers to the ‘hunted birds’.
If we examine verbs, we find that most of the verbs are in the past and continuous forms. The verb ‘said’ has been repeated twelve times, ‘made’ –five times, ‘looked’, ‘agreed’, ‘asked’, ‘like’, ‘drinking’, ‘came’, ‘paused’, ‘took’, ‘told’, ‘married’ etc. have been repeated three times and ‘lived’, ‘convinced’, ‘turned’, ‘picked’, ‘continued’, ‘started’, etc. occur twice. The simple use of vocabulary suggests Josef’s style, especially in the context of his short story The Winepress, is restricted. He does not use abstract terms for the things to be described.
To create visual imagery and sensuousness, the author uses many adjectives like ‘bulbous’, ‘ravishing’, ‘idyllic’, ‘grief-stricken’, ‘fathomless’, ‘elegant’ etc. Most of the adjectives have been used to characterize Pierre and Faniry. For example
He was a likeable man, cultivated of course, with a well deserved reputation as a generous host and an amusing raconteur.
The adjectives used in this sentence tell about the personality and nature of Charles Jousselin de Gruse. Look at another example which gives a beautiful description of the physical beauty of Faniry, creating an atmosphere of sensuousness giving the sense of gazing:
‘At seventeen she was ravishing. In the Malagasy sunlight her skin was golden. Her black, waist-length hair, which hung straight beside her cheeks, framed large, fathomless eyes.’
Other examples of sensuous imagery follow:
“bulbous, winey nose “ and “little white eyes” – sense of eye
“enjoy a decent red wine” – sense of taste
“the fumes from the pressed wine” – sense of smell
“flung her arms around his neck” – sense of touch
These phrases remind us of the sensuousness of John Keats.
Grammatical Categories
The diction of this short story is quite simple and so is the case with the syntax. One notices a degree of simplicity in syntax. There are 137 sentences in this short story where minimum sentence length is one word only. For example Bags! The longest sentence consists of 38 words i.e. Faniry had no family, but Pierre’s parents came out from France for the wedding, even though they did not strictly approve of it, and for three years the young couple lived very happily on the island of Madagascar. Such long sentences are very rare in the story. Average sentence is only 10.91 words long. The average sentence length is significantly short due to the fact that this short story is specially written for the teaching purpose. Most of the corpus by Josef Essberger is written keeping in mind the classroom setting.
The major types of tenses used in this story are the simple past and simple present. The simple present tense has been used predominantly in the conversation among the guests and the host while in the story of the life of Pierre and Faniry; we find that the simple past is predominant. The present tense provides a setting which includes the present movement and with the present tense one looks both forward and backward from within the present period. It is in this sense that the past tense has been used in the story within the story. It has also been noticed that most of the sentences are in active voice. The predominance of the active voice in the main story indicates that the agent (story teller) is very important.
Majority of the sentences found in the text is simple. The overall simplicity is apparent. It is also interesting to note that most of the complex sentences have only one subordinate clause. Sentences with two or more subordinate clauses are exceptions. Most of the simple sentences are in the form of SVA, SVO, ASVO, and SVOA (where S= Subject, V=Verb, O=Object and A = Adverbial). For example
SVA
Faniry followed two weeks later.
SVO
Charles Jousselin de Gruse and his wife exchanged glances.
ASVO
Within two weeks, he had fallen for a local girl called Faniry or ‘Desire’ in Malagasy.
SVOA
The other guests looked around uneasily at each other.
The above structures are predominant in the story probably due to the fact that both the transitive and intransitive verbs along with the adverbials are used to present the information to the reader.
As mentioned earlier, most of the complex sentences found in the story have one subordinate clause and the subordinate clause is usually ‘that’. For example
This evening’s guests were all European and all equally convinced that immigration was at the root of Europe’s problems.
To make the sentences complex, Essberger, in this story, has used coordination also generally signaled by the conjunction ’and’, ‘or’ or ‘but’. For example
De Gruse leaned forwards, took another sip of wine, and dabbed his lips with the corner of his napkin. This is the story he told them.
In this short story, there are many sentences which, in the strict sense of grammatical rules, are not complete at all: they have no verb and are simply noun phrases preceded by preposition. For example
Of the maids.
Of the secretary.
And with the white woman.
Of course, they can not be called sentences and have no meaning in isolation but if we look at them in the context of the story, we find that the author has used such sentences to retain the original flavor of the discourse.
To retain the flavor of spoken discourse, Essberger, especially in dialogic forms, has used elliptical sentences. In literature, ellipsis in not merely a grammatical means to make the work compact but it is a stylistic device to express the meaning or message of the work. For example
Personally, before I uncork a bottle I like to know what’s in it.”
“But how?
Such elliptical sentences have the same expressive effect as a whole.
As far as noun phrases are concerned, one notices that in the story very simple type of noun phrases have been used by the author. For example
D Adj. N.H.
D Adv. Adj. N.H.
D N.H.
Coming to the adverbials, we find that the author has made frequent use of time and place adverbials due to the fact that the story within the story is presented in the simple past to indicate activities or states in the past.
Figures of Speech
Phonological Schemes
Essberger, in this short story, leaves impression on us by creating different sensory qualities. In the story within the story when Faniry came to the winery and charged Pierre with new accusations, see what an alliterative effect has been created by the author:
And with white women. But the women in France, the white women, they were the tarts, and he was welcome to them.
Here the repetition of the consonants /w/ and /D/ certainly create auditory imagery evoked by words which are intrinsically alliterative: “white”, “women”, “welcome” start with same consonant /w/: “the” and “them” alike with the sound /D /. More interesting to observe is the coupling of “white” and “women”. Another notable example occurs when the screw of the press caught the hair of Faniry and dragged her in. She is crying for help:
She screamed, struggling to free herself. The screw bit slowly into her shoulder and she screamed again.
The characteristic of this posture of Faniry, to a certain degree, derives from the four successive occurrences of the beginning sound / s / in “screamed”, “struggling”, and “screw”, “slowly”. These juxtaposed words create an impression of the pitiable condition of Faniry. Other examples of alliteration and assonance, indeed, exist in fairly large numbers in the remaining parts of the story. And occasionally, consonant and vowel repetitions are employed in a way which lends force to semantic connections.
Similes and Metaphors
Another distinctive feature of Essberger’s writing style, as is revealed by a scrutiny of The Winepress, is her generous use of figurative language, metaphors and similes in particular. The metaphorical language used for the physical description of Faniry is noteworthy:
In the Malagasy sunlight her skin was golden. Her black, waist-length hair, which hung straight beside her cheeks, framed large, fathomless eyes.
In the above example two things of distinctly different categories are compared—the shining skin and the golden colour, the seriousness of the eyes and the fathomless sea. These metaphors are justifiable because of their defining similarities. Such types of metaphors are very common, especially for the description of beauty of the heroine of a fiction.
Another thing that we notice is the onomatopoeic effect. For example
“Darling,” she sighed, “what shall we do?”,
“She screamed”,
Context and Cohesion
It has been found, with the help of analysis that cohesive ties in The Winepress are established mostly through reference and lexical cohesion and partly through conjunction, ellipsis and substitution. On the basis of analysis, it can be presumed that Essberger, to maintain cohesion and coherence in this story, has used different types of referential items in abundance. The author has used text references (words referring to surrounding text, like ‘he’, she’ and ‘it’), situation references (words referring to the real world such as ‘I’ and ‘we’), personals like ‘I’, ‘you’, ‘he’, ‘she’, ‘it’, ‘we’ and ‘they’ along with their object forms like ‘me’ and ‘him’ etc. and their possessive forms like ‘my’ and ‘you’ etc., demonstratives like ‘this’, ‘that’ etc, and comparatives.
A number of words are found that creates lexical cohesion making identical references, for example, ‘gusts’, ‘wine’, ‘Bordeaux’, ‘wife’, ‘red’, ‘wine yard’, ‘drunk’, ‘jealous’, ‘knife’, ‘screamed’ and so on are repeated referring back to the same lexical item. Besides repeating the identical words, synonyms and hyponyms, there are other relationships also between words that can be used as cohesive devices. The words that collocate with other words in any way, also contribute to the texture of the novel. Essberger has employed such words very effectively..
Generally in a fiction, the events described in one sentence often follow the events described in the previous sentence. Sometimes this connection is shown by conjunctive elements and sometimes readers have to mark out the connectivity. The author, in this short story, has employed both the techniques to make the style of the story more effective.
The movement of discourse in the story is smooth because there is a great deal of anaphoric references and ellipses and the readers get involved. Ellipsis is an important part in the development of the theme. An utterance does not function in isolation. It functions as a part of discourse in actual situation. There is a great deal of information available in the earlier utterances to the speaker/hearer for interpreting an utterance.
The context of telling the story of the tragedy of Pierre and Faniry is quite appropriate as the host, through this story, wants to reveal the misuses of drinking in the context while he is entertaining his guests with the specific wine which Pierre used to make and that specific wine became the cause of the tragedy of his life.
Conclusion
On the basis of analysis we may conclude that Essberger’s writing style, as is revealed by an examination of the most prominent linguistic features in The Winepress, does not have anything unique. Very common types of stylistic features of short story writing have been found. Essberger’s style, especially with reference to The Winepress, is by no means aphoristic like that of Frances Bacon; neither is it similar to that of Dickens’s, which is universally recognized as being pompous, filled with sharp-edged irony, together with criticism so direct and forceful. This is due to the fact that this short story is written especially for teaching vocabulary and grammar. One can claim that his style is sensitive, delicate, poetic, seemingly impersonal yet emotional. In the last it can be said that the analysis of the stylistic features of The Winepress, in relation to the analysis of other literary corpus of Josef Essberger, will certainly bring out some specific features of his writing style.
References
Essberger, Josef ( N.A.). The Winepress . Retrieved from
http://www.englishclub.com/reading/story-winepress.htm
Halliday, M.A.K. and Hasan R. (1976). Cohesion in English. London, LD: Longman.
Halliday, MAK. (1985). An introduction to functional grammar. London, LD: Edward Arnold
Publishers.
Leech, G. Deuchar, M. and Hoogenraad, R., (2006). English grammar for today. New York, NY:
Palgrave Macmillan.
Leech, G. and Short, M. 1981). Style in fiction: A linguistic introduction to English fictional
prose foreign language. London, LD: Longman.
Sharma, D.D. & Kumar, Ashok. (Eds.). (2000). Issues in stylistics. Lucknow, LK: Gurukul
Publication.
Wright, L., & Hope, J. (1996). Stylistics: A practical coursebook. New York, NY: Routledge.
Appendix
The Winepress by Josef Essberger
“You don’t have to be French to enjoy a decent red wine,” Charles Jousselin de Gruse used to tell his foreign guests whenever he entertained them in Paris. “But you do have to be French to recognize one,” he would add with a laugh.
After a lifetime in the French diplomatic corps, the Count de Gruse lived with his wife in an elegant townhouse on Quai Voltaire. He was a likeable man, cultivated of course, with a well deserved reputation as a generous host and an amusing raconteur.
This evening’s guests were all European and all equally convinced that immigration was at the root of Europe’s problems. Charles de Gruse said nothing. He had always concealed his contempt for such ideas. And, in any case, he had never much cared for these particular guests.
The first of the red Bordeaux was being served with the veal, and one of the guests turned to de Gruse.
“Come on, Charles, it’s simple arithmetic. Nothing to do with race or colour. You must’ve had bags of experience of this sort of thing. What d’you say?”
“Yes, General. Bags!”
Without another word, de Gruse picked up his glass and introduced his bulbous, winey nose. After a moment he looked up with watery eyes.
“A truly full-bodied Bordeaux,” he said warmly, “a wine among wines.”
The four guests held their glasses to the light and studied their blood-red contents. They all agreed that it was the best wine they had ever tasted.
One by one the little white lights along the Seine were coming on, and from the first-floor windows you could see the brightly lit bateaux-mouches passing through the arches of the Pont du Carrousel. The party moved on to a dish of game served with a more vigorous claret.
“Can you imagine,” asked de Gruse, as the claret was poured, “that there are people who actually serve wines they know nothing about?”
“Really?” said one of the guests, a German politician.
“Personally, before I uncork a bottle I like to know what’s in it.”
“But how? How can anyone be sure?”
“I like to hunt around the vineyards. Take this place I used to visit in Bordeaux. I got to know the winegrower there personally. That’s the way to know what you’re drinking.”
“A matter of pedigree, Charles,” said the other politician.
“This fellow,” continued de Gruse as though the Dutchman had not spoken, “always gave you the story behind his wines. One of them was the most extraordinary story I ever heard. We were tasting, in his winery, and we came to a cask that made him frown. He asked if I agreed with him that red Bordeaux was the best wine in the world. Of course, I agreed. Then he made the strangest statement.
“‘The wine in this cask,’ he said, and there were tears in his eyes, ‘is the best vintage in the world. But it started its life far from the country where it was grown.'”
De Gruse paused to check that his guests were being served.
“Well?” said the Dutchman.
De Gruse and his wife exchanged glances.
“Do tell them, mon chéri,” she said.
De Gruse leaned forwards, took another sip of wine, and dabbed his lips with the corner of his napkin. This is the story he told them.
At the age of twenty-one, Pierre – that was the name he gave the winegrower – had been sent by his father to spend some time with his uncle in Madagascar. Within two weeks he had fallen for a local girl called Faniry, or “Desire” in Malagasy. You could not blame him. At seventeen she was ravishing. In the Malagasy sunlight her skin was golden. Her black, waist-length hair, which hung straight beside her cheeks, framed large, fathomless eyes. It was a genuine coup de foudre, for both of them. Within five months they were married. Faniry had no family, but Pierre’s parents came out from France for the wedding, even though they did not strictly approve of it, and for three years the young couple lived very happily on the island of Madagascar. Then, one day, a telegram came from France. Pierre’s parents and his only brother had been killed in a car crash. Pierre took the next flight home to attend the funeral and manage the vineyard left by his father.
Faniry followed two weeks later. Pierre was grief-stricken, but with Faniry he settled down to running the vineyard. His family, and the lazy, idyllic days under a tropical sun, were gone forever. But he was very happily married, and he was very well-off. Perhaps, he reasoned, life in Bordeaux would not be so bad.
But he was wrong. It soon became obvious that Faniry was jealous. In Madagascar she had no match. In France she was jealous of everyone. Of the maids. Of the secretary. Even of the peasant girls who picked the grapes and giggled at her funny accent. She convinced herself that Pierre made love to each of them in turn.
She started with insinuations, simple, artless ones that Pierre hardly even recognized. Then she tried blunt accusation in the privacy of their bedroom. When he denied that, she resorted to violent, humiliating denouncements in the kitchens, the winery, the plantations. The angel that Pierre had married in Madagascar had become a termagant, blinded by jealousy. Nothing he did or said could help. Often, she would refuse to speak for a week or more, and when at last she spoke it would only be to scream yet more abuse or swear again her intention to leave him. By the third vine-harvest it was obvious to everyone that they loathed each other.
One Friday evening, Pierre was down in the winery, working on a new electric winepress. He was alone. The grape-pickers had left. Suddenly the door opened and Faniry entered, excessively made up. She walked straight up to Pierre, flung her arms around his neck, and pressed herself against him. Even above the fumes from the pressed grapes he could smell that she had been drinking.
“Darling,” she sighed, “what shall we do?”
He badly wanted her, but all the past insults and humiliating scenes welled up inside him. He pushed her away.
“But, darling, I’m going to have a baby.”
“Don’t be absurd. Go to bed! You’re drunk. And take that paint off. It makes you look like a tart.”
Faniry’s face blackened, and she threw herself at him with new accusations. He had never cared for her. He cared only about sex. He was obsessed with it. And with white women. But the women in France, the white women, they were the tarts, and he was welcome to them. She snatched a knife from the wall and lunged at him with it. She was in tears, but it took all his strength to keep the knife from his throat. Eventually he pushed her off, and she stumbled towards the winepress. Pierre stood, breathing heavily, as the screw of the press caught at her hair and dragged her in. She screamed, struggling to free herself. The screw bit slowly into her shoulder and she screamed again. Then she fainted, though whether from the pain or the fumes he was not sure. He looked away until a sickening sound told him it was over. Then he raised his arm and switched the current off.
The guests shuddered visibly and de Gruse paused in his story.
“Well, I won’t go into the details at table,” he said. “Pierre fed the rest of the body into the press and tidied up. Then he went up to the house, had a bath, ate a meal, and went to bed. The next day, he told everyone Faniry had finally left him and gone back to Madagascar. No-one was surprised.”
He paused again. His guests sat motionless, their eyes turned towards him.
“Of course,” he continued, “Sixty-five was a bad year for red Bordeaux. Except for Pierre’s. That was the extraordinary thing. It won award after award, and nobody could understand why.”
The general’s wife cleared her throat.
“But, surely,” she said, “you didn’t taste it?”
“No, I didn’t taste it, though Pierre did assure me his wife had lent the wine an incomparable aroma.”
“And you didn’t, er, buy any?” asked the general.
“How could I refuse? It isn’t every day that one finds such a pedigree.”
There was a long silence. The Dutchman shifted awkwardly in his seat, his glass poised midway between the table and his open lips. The other guests looked around uneasily at each other. They did not understand.
“But look here, Gruse,” said the general at last, “you don’t mean to tell me we’re drinking this damned woman now, d’you?”
De Gruse gazed impassively at the Englishman.
“Heaven forbid, General,” he said slowly. “Everyone knows that the best vintage should always come first.”
Statistics (Sample)
Text Statistics
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