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use in the winter, that used to be called the morning-room . My father sits at the head, he is carving, Lina sits on his right, the dogs are beside us, expectant. What he is carving is a smoked leg of mutton – thin curly slices like raw ham. It is his invention, made from our sheep, killed and cured at home (we don’t have money to buy ham at the grocer’s), in our way, in his way, we live off the land. My father serves Lina first, though a good deal is whisked to the dogs, I come next. The smoked gigot is very good, even Lina admits. (The rest of the village look askance. South German farmers raise sheep only for wool, they do not touch the flesh of mutton or lamb.) We also have a hot dish, some potato or flour mess of Lina’s making, Pflutten, Knöpfli, Spätzli – her cooking is atrocious though my father politely directs her. He is a perfect cook, of simple things too (he must have been well ahead of his time); he had taught himself in his youth, watched the French and Italian chefs of the Eighties and Nineties, sat in their scalding commodious kitchens, made friends, drank iced champagne with them, straight swigs from the bottle (imperial pints: easier on the wrist), later simplifying, refining the dishes he had watched. Now alas he can no longer grill or fry, or cook anything over a range at all, ours burns wood and the fumes bring on his asthma. So he cooks by remote control or over a spirit lamp in his dressing-room – exquisite egg dishes, goose liver in foaming butter … I, too, am coming on nicely, he has taught me not to overcook vegetables.
    In front of each of us stands a large clear glass with a stem, my father lifts the decanter by his hand and pours precisely – each glass is one third full. Lina is about to add water to hers and mine, my father stops her, Water in Bordeaux, quelle horreur! I sniff mine, take a mouthful slowly, twirling the wine in the glass, as he has told me to do. He is serious about this as he is about anything involving ritual and skills, but he is not fussy or anxious. Enjoy your wine, he says, and I do. At midday we drink cider – cider made in an old wooden press from apples grown in the orchard; we drink claret at night. We don’t have to worry, he says, we have a decent amount left in the bins. He has taught me to pronounce the names on the labels and to look at the pictures of the châteaux, he has been to them, has met the owners. What shall we drink tomorrow? I am sent to fetch up the bottle. I am proud of the job, but when it’s late in the day it fills me with terror – two flights down from the morning-room, across the large dark hall filled with crucifixes and statues, down another flight into the cellar; in one hand I hold a candle, in the other I shall have a bottle ( bring it up gently ); I shall have no free hand to cross myself if the ghost appears. He is a bishop, Wessenberg was his name, and he is said to have done a foul deed in this very hall. Lina has taught me an incantation to use if, Heaven forbid, I should see him, a German jingle, All good ghosts praise God the Lord , yet crossing oneself is of the essence. When I’m home and safe upstairs in the lighted room with the right wine and the candle has not blown out, my father often gives me a piece of gingerbread or a few coins. Danger-money. For he professes to believe – believes? – in old Wessenberg as he off-handedly calls the ghost and claims to have found him occupying the chairs he is said to favour in the library and the Renaissance room, chairs I give a wide berth to, the dogs won’t go near them, I’ve seen their hackles rise. Well, once the wine is safely up, it is stood somewhere to settle – that room’s too warm, keep it well away from that stove! – and next day I am allowed to cut the seal and, unless the wine is very old, draw the cork, wipe the neck inside and out. The decanting is done by my father, my hands are not strong enough yet to do it properly.
    And what do we talk