Chocolat (23 page)

       I could not have known of the sleepers in the houseboat, I tell myself. Wrapped so tight in their drunken darkness that even the fire failed to waken them. I dreamed of them later, charred one into the other, melded like perfect lovers. For months I screamed in the night, seeing those arms reaching longingly towards me, hearing their voices — a breath of ash — mouthing my name from whitened lips.

       But you absolved me, pere. Only a drunkard and his slattern, you told me. Worthless flotsam on the filthy river. Twenty Paters and as many Aves paid for their lives. Thieves who had desecrated our church, insulted our priest, deserved nothing more. I was a young boy with a bright future ahead, with loving parents who would grieve, who would be terribly unhappy if they knew. Besides, you said persuasively, it might have been an accident. You could never know, you said. God might have meantit this way.

       I believed it. Or pretended to. And I am still grateful.

       A touch on my arm. I start, alarmed. Looking into the pit of my memories I am momentarily dizzied by time. Armande Voizin stands behind me, her clever black eyes fixing me. Duplessis is at her side.

       “Are you going to do something, Francis, or are you going to let that bear Muscat commit murder?” Her voice is crisp and cold. One claw grasps her stick, the other beckons witchlike at the closed door.

       “It isn’t…” My voice is high and childish, not my own at all. “It isn’t my business to interv?”

       “Rubbish!” She raps my knuckles with her stick. “I’m going to put a stop to this, Francis. Are you going to come with me, or are you going to stand there all day gawping?”

       She does not wait for my answer, but pushes at the cafe door.

       “It’s locked,” I say feebly.

       She shrugs. A single tap with the handle of her stick breaks one of the panes of the glass door.

       “The key’s in the lock,” she says sharply. “Reach it for me, Guillaume.”

       The door swings open as the key turns. I follow her up the stairs. The sounds of screaming and breaking glass are louder here, amplified by the hollow shell of the stairway. Muscat stands in the doorway of the upper room, his thick body half-blocking the landing. The room is barricaded shut; a small gap shows between the door and its frame, throwing a narrow edge of light onto the stairs. As I watch Muscat throws himself again at the blocked door; there is a crashing sound as something overturns, and grunting in satisfaction he thrusts his way into the room.

       A woman screams. She is backed against the far wall of the room. Furniture — a dressing-table, a wardrobe, chairs — have been stacked against the door, but Muscat has managed to push his way through at last. She could not move the bed, a heavy wrought-iron thing, butt the mattress still shields her as she crouches, a small pile of missiles to hand. She held out through the entire service, I tell myself with some wonder. I can see the signs of her flight; broken glass on the stairs, the marks of leverage against the locked bedroom door, the coffee-table he used as a battering-ram. On his face too, as he turns it towards me, I can see the marks of her desperate fingernails, a crescent of blood on his temple, nose swollen, shirt torn. There is blood on the stairs, a drop, a skid-mark, a dribble. Bloody hand-prints against the door.

       “Muscat!” My voice is high, shaking. “Muscat!”

       He turns towards me blankly. His eyes are needle-marks in dough.

       Armande is at my side, her stick held out like a sword. She looks like the world’s oldest swashbuckler. She calls to Josephine “Are you all right, dear?”

       “Get him out of here! Tell him to go away!”

       Muscat shows me his bloody hands. He looks enraged but at the same time confused, exhausted, like a small child caught in a fight between much older boys. “See what I mean, pere?” he whines. “What did I tell you? See what I mean?”

       Armande pushes past me. “You can’t win, Muscat.” She sounds younger and stronger than I, and I have to remind myself that she is old and sick. “You can’t put things back to what they were. Back off and let her go.”

       Muscat spits at her, looks astonished when Armande spits back with cobra speed and accuracy. He wipes his face, blustering. “Why, you old?”

       Guillaume steps in front of her, an absurdly protective gesture. His dog yaps shrilly, but she steps past them laughing. “Don’t try to bully me, Paul-Marie Muscat,” snaps Armande. “I remember when you were still a snot-nosed brat, hiding in Les Marauds to get away from that drunken father of yours. Haven’t changed that much, ‘cept you got bigger and uglier. Now back off!”

       Looking dazed, he stands back. For a moment he seems ready to appeal to me.

       “Pere. Tell her.” His eyes looked as if he’d rubbed them with salt. “You know what I mean. Don’t you?”

       I pretend not to hear. There is nothing between us, this man and I. No point of comparison. I can smell him, the rank unwashed odour of his filthy shirt, the stale beery breath. He takes my arm. “You understand, pere,” he repeats desperately. “I helped you out, with the gypsies. Remember? I helped you.”

       She may be half-blind but she sees everything, damn her. Everything. I see her eyes flick to my face. “Oh, you did?” She gives her vulgar chuckle. “Two of a kind, eh, Cure?”

       “I don’t know what you’re talking about, man.” I make my voice crisp. “You’re drunk as a pig.”

       “But pere”— struggling for words, his face contorting, purple — “pere, you yourself said?.”

       Stonily: “I said nothing.”

       He opens his mouth again like a poor landed fish on the mud-flats of the summer Tannes.

       “Nothing!”

       Armande and Guillaume lead Josephine away, one old arm tucked around her shoulders. The woman throws me a strange, bright glance which almost frightens me. Dirt streaks her face, and her hands are bloody, but in that moment she is beautiful, disturbing. She looks at me as if for a second she is able to see straight through. I try to tell her not to blame me. I’m not like him; not a man, but a priest, a different species…but the thought is absurd, almost a heresy.

       Then Armande leads her away and I am alone with Muscat, his tears staining my neck, his hot arms around me. For a moment I am disoriented, drowning with him in the soup of my memories. Then I pull away, trying for gentleness but in the end with increasing violence, pushing at his flabby belly with palms, fists, elbows. And all the time shouting above his pleading, in a voice not my own, a high, bitter voice: “Get away from me, you bastard, you’ve spoiled everything, you’ve?”

       Francis, I’m sorry, I?

       “Pere?”

       “Spoiled everything — everything- get away!” Grunting with the effort and finally breaking his thick hot grasp, pulling loose with sudden, desperate joy — free at last! — then running down the stairs, turning one ankle over on the loose carpet, his tears, his stupid wailing following me like an unwanted child.

       Later there was time to talk to Caro and Georges. I will not speak to Muscat. Besides, rumour has it that he has already left, has packed what he could into his old car and driven off. The cafe is closed, only the broken pane to show for what happened this morning. I went down there when night fell, stood for a long time in front of the window. The sky across Les Marauds was cool and sepia, green with a single milky filament on the horizon. The river was dark and silent.

       I told Caro the Church would not back her campaign against the chocolate festival. I would not back it. Can’t she see? The Committee can have no credibility after what he has done. It was too public this time, too brutal. They must have seen his face as I did, flushed with hatred and madness. To know a man beats his wife — to know in secret — is one thing. But to see it in all its ugliness…No. He will never survive it. Already Caro is telling the others that she saw through him, that she always knew. She disassociates herself as best she can — Was ever a poor woman so deceived! — as do I. We have been too close, I tell her. We used him when it was expedient. We must not be seen to do so now. For our own protection we must stand back. I do not tell her about the other business, that of the river people, but that too is in my mind. Armande suspects. Out of malice she might talk. And that other matter, forgotten for so long but still alight in her old head. No. I am helpless. Worse, I must even be seen to look upon the festival with indulgence. Otherwise the gossip will start, and who knows where it might end? Tomorrow I must preach tolerance, turn the tide which I have begun and change their minds. The remaining leaflets I will burn. The posters, due for display from Lansquenet to Montauban, must also be destroyed. It breaks my heart, pere, but what else can I do? The scandal would kill me.

       It is Holy Week. A single week before her festival. And she has won, pere. She has won. Only a miracle could save us now.

THIRTY-FOUR

   Wednesday, March 26

       STILL NO SIGN OF MUSCAT. Josephine stayed at La Praline for most of Monday, but yesterday morning decided to return to the cafe. Roux went with her this time, but all they found was the mess. It seems the rumours are right. Muscat has gone. Roux, who has finished Anouk’s new bedroom in the attic, has already begun work on the cafe. New locks on the door, the old linoleum pulled up and the grimy curtains stripped from the windows. He thinks that with a little effort — a coat of whitewash on the rough walls, a lick of paint on the battered old furniture, a lot of soap and water — the bar could be made into a bright and welcoming place. He offered to do the work for free, but Josephine will not hear of it. Muscat has of course cleaned out their joint account, but she has a little money of her own, and she is sure the new café will be a success. The faded sign which has read Cafe de la Republique for the last thirty-five years has at last been pulled down. In its place, a bright red-and-white awning — the twin of my own — and a hand-painted sign from Clairmont’s yard which reads Cafe des Marauds. Narcisse has planted geraniums in the wrought-iron window boxes and they trail down the walls, their scarlet buds opening in the sudden warmth. Armande watches with approval from her garden just down the hill.

       “She’s a good girl,” she tells me in her brusque way. “She’ll manage now she’s got rid of the sot she married.”

       Roux is living temporarily in one of the cafe’s spare rooms, and Luc has taken his place with Armande, much to the annoyance of his mother.

       “It’s not a fit place for you to stay,” she snaps shrilly. I am standing in the square as they come out of the church, he in his Sunday suit, she in another of her innumerable pastel outfits, a silk scarf knotted over her hair.

       His reply is polite, immovable. “Just until the p-party,” he says. “There’s no-one there to look after her. Sh-she might hhave another f-fit.”

       “Rubbish!” Her tone is dismissive. “I’ll tell you what she’s doing. She’s trying to drive a wedge between us. I forbid you, I absolutely forbid you to stay with her this week. And as for that ridiculous party?”

       “I don’t think you should f-forbid me, M-maman.”

       “And why not? You’re my son, damn it, you can’t just stand there and tell me you’d rather obey that crazy old woman than me!” Her eyes fill with angry tears. Her voice wavers.

       “It’s all right, Maman.” He is unmoved by the display, but puts an arm around her shoulder. “It won’t be for long. Just until the party. I p-promise. You’re invited too, you know. It would make her happy if you c-came.”

       “I don’t want to go!” Her voice is spiteful and teary, like a tired child’s.

       He shrugs. “Don’t go, then. But d-don’t expect her to listen to what you want, afterwards.”

       She looks at him. “What do you mean?”

       “I mean, I could t-talk to her. P-persuade her.” He knows his mother, this clever boy. Understands her better than she knows. “I c-could bring her round,” he says. “But if you don’t want to t-try?”

       “I didn’t say that.” On a sudden impulse she puts her arms around him. “You’re my clever boy,” she says, her poise regained. “You could do it, couldn’t you?”She plants a ringing kiss on his cheek and he submits patiently. “My good, clever boy,” she repeats caressingly, and they walk off together, arm-in-arm, the boy already taller than his mother and looking across at her with the attentive look of a tolerant parent to a volatile infant.

       Oh, he knows.

       With Josephine busy with her own affairs I have had little help with my Easter preparations; fortunately most of the work is done now, with only a few dozen remaining boxes to make. I work in the evenings to make the cakes and truffles, the gingerbread bells and the gilded pains d’epices. I miss Josephine’s light touch with the wrapping and the decoration, but Anouk helps me as best she can, fluffing out frills of Cellophane and pinning silk roses onto innumerable sachets.

       I have hidden the front window as I work on Sunday’s display, and the face of the shop looks much as it did when we arrived, with a screen of silver paper covering the glass. Anouk has decorated the screen with cut-outs of eggs and animals in coloured paper, and there is a large poster in the centre announcing:

       GRAND FESTIVAL DU CHOCOLAT

       Sunday, Place St Jerome

       Now that the school holidays have begun the square is abuzz, with children, pressing their noses to the glass in the hope of catching a glimpse of the preparations. I have already taken more than eight thousand francs in orders some from as far as Montauban and even Agen — and still they come, so that the shop is rarely empty. Caro’s leaflet campaign seems to have ground to a halt. Guillaume tells me that Reynaud has assured his congregation that the chocolate festival has his absolute support, despite rumours spread by malicious gossips. Even so I sometimes see him watching me from his small window, and his eyes are hungry and hateful. I know he means me harm, but somehow his poison has been drawn. I try to ask Armande, who knows far more than she is telling, but she simply shakes her head.

       “All that was a long time ago,” she tells me, deliberately vague. “My memory isn’t what it was.”

       Instead she wants to know every detail of the menu I have planned for her party, relishing everything in advance. She is brimming with suggestions. Brandade trufflee, vol-aux-vents aux troischampignons, cooked in wine and cream with wild chantrelles as a garnish, grilled langoustines with rocket salad, five different types of chocolate cake, all her favourites, homemade chocolate ice-cream…Her eyes are bright with delight and mischief.

       “Never had parties when I was a girl,” she explains. “Not a single one. Went to a dance once, over in Montauban, with a boy from the coast. Whee!” She made an expressive, lewd gesture. “Dark as treacle, he was, and as sweet. We had champagne and strawberry sorbet, and we danced…” She sighed. “You should have seen me then, Vianne. You wouldn’t believe it now. He said I looked like Greta Garbo, the flatterer, and we both pretended he meant it.” She gave a low chuckle. “Course, he wasn’t the marrying kind,” she, said philosophically. “They never are.”

       I lie awake almost every night now, sugarplums dancing before my eyes. Anouk sleeps in her new attic bedroom and I dream, awake, doze, wake, dream, doze until my eyelids glitter with sleeplessness and the room pitches around me like a rolling ship. One more day, I tell myself. One more day.

       Last night I got up and took my cards from the box where I promised they would stay. They felt cool between my fingers, cool and smooth as ivory, the colours fanning across my palms — blue-purple-green-black — the familiar pictures sliding in and out of my line of vision like flowers pressed between black sheets of glass. The Tower. Death. The Lovers. Death. The Six of Swords. Death. The Hermit. Death. I tell myself it doesn’t mean anything. Mother believed it, but where did that get her? Running, running. The weathervane above St Jerome’s is silent now, eerily calm. The wind has stopped. The lull disturbs me more than the screeching of the old iron. The air is warm and sweet with the new scents of approaching summer. Summer comes quickly to Lansquenet in the wake of the March winds, and it smells of the circus; of sawdust and frying batter and cut green wood and animal shit. My mother inside me whispers: Time for a change. Armande’s house is lit; I can see the small yellow square in the window from here, throwing out chequered light across the Tannes. I wonder what she is doing. She has not spoken to me directly about her plan since that one time. Instead she talks about recipes, the best way to lighten a sponge cake, the sugar-to-spirit ratio for the best cherries in brandy. I looked up her condition in my medical dictionary. The jargon is another kind of escape, obscure and hypothetical as the images on the cards. Inconceivable that these words could apply to real flesh. Her sight is diminishing, islands of darkness floating across her vision so that what she sees is pied, dappled, finally all but obscured. Then the dark.

       I understand her situation. Why should she struggle to preserve for any longer a condition doomed to this inevitability? The thought of waste — my mother’s thought, born from years of saving and uncertainty — is surely inappropriate here, I tell myself. Better the extravagant gesture, the blowout, bright lights and sudden darkness after. And yet something in me childishly wails unfair! Still hoping perhaps for the miracle. Again, my mother’s thought. Armande knows better.

       In the last weeks — the morphine was beginning to take over every moment and her eyes were a perpetual glaze — she would lose touch with reality for hours, drifting between fantasies like a butterfly between flowers. Some were sweet, dreams of floating, of lights, out-of-the-body meetings with dead movie stars and beings from ethereal planes. Some were back-shot with paranoia. The Black Man was never far in these, lurking at street corners, sitting at the window of a diner, behind the counter of a notion’s store. Sometimes he was a cab driver, his cab a black hearse like the ones you find in London, a baseball cap drawn down over his eyes. The word DODGERS was written on his cap, she said, and that was because he was on the lookout for her, for us, for all the ones who had dodged him in the past, but not for ever, she said, shaking her head wisely, never for ever. During one of these black spells she brought out a yellow plastic wallet and showed it to me. It was stuffed with newspaper-cuttings, mostly dated from the late sixties and early seventies. Most were in French, but some were in Italian, German, Greek. All dealt with kidnappings, disappearances, attacks on children.

       “So easily done,” she told me, her eyes huge and vague. “Big places. So easy to lose a child. So easy to lose a child like you.” She winked at me blearily. I patted her hand in reassurance.

       “It’s OK, Maman,” I said. “You were always careful. You looked out for me. I never did get lost.”

       She winked again. “Oh, you were lost,” she said, grinning. “You were lo-ost.” She stared into space for a while after that, smiling-grimacing, her hand like a bunch of dry twigs in mine. “L-ooo-ssstt,” she repeated forlornly, and began to cry. I comforted her as best I could, stuffing the clippings back into the file. As I did I noticed that several dealt with the same case, the disappearance of eighteenmonth-old Sylviane Caillou in Paris. Her mother left her strapped in her car-seat for two minutes while she stopped at a chemist’s, and when she returned the baby had gone. Gone too were the changing-bag and the child’s toys, a red plush elephant and a brown teddy bear.

       My mother saw me looking at the article and smiled again. “I think you were two then,” she said in a sly voice. “Or nearly two. And she was much fairer than you were. Couldn’t have been you, could it? And anyway, I was a better mother than she was.”

       “Of course not,” I said. “You were a good mother, a wonderful mother. Don’t worry. You wouldn’t have done anything to put me at risk.”

       Mother just rocked and smiled. “Careless,” she crooned. “Just careless. Didn’t deserve a nice little girl like that, did she?”

       I shook my head, feeling suddenly cold.

       Childishly: “I wasn’t bad, was I, Vianne?”

       I shivered. The pages felt scaly beneath my fingers. “No,” I assured her. “You weren’t bad.”

       “I looked after you all right, didn’t I? Never gave you up. Not even when that priest said — said what he said. I never.”

       “No, Maman. You never did.”

       The cold was paralysing now, making thought difficult. All I could think of was the name, so similar to mine, the dates…And didn’t I remember that bear, that elephant, its plush worn down to the red sailcloth, carried indefatigably from Paris to Rome, Rome to Vienna? Of course it might have been one of her delusions.

       There were others, like the snake under the bedclothes and the woman in the mirrors. It could have been make believe. So much of my mother’s life was just that. And besides…after so long, what did it matter?

       At three I got up. The bed was hot and lumpy; sleep a million miles away. I lit a candle and took it into Josephine’s empty bedroom. The cards were back in their old place in Mother’s box, shifting eagerly beneath my grasp. The Lovers. The Tower. The Hermit. Death. Sitting cross-legged on the bare floor I shuffled them with something more than mere idleness. The Tower with its falling people, its walls crumbling, I could understand. It is my constant fear of displacement, the fear of the road, of loss. The Hermit with his hood and lantern looks very like Reynaud, his sly pale face half-hidden in shadows. Death I know very well, and I forked my fingers at the card — avert! — with the old automatic gesture. But the Lovers? I thought of Roux and Josephine so alike without knowing it, and could not suppress a prick of envy. And yet behind it I felt a sudden conviction that the card had not yet given up all its secrets. A scent of lilac spilled across the room. Maybe one of Mother’s bottles had a broken seal. I felt warm even in spite of the night chill, fingers of heat reaching into the pit of my stomach. Roux? Roux?

       I turned the card over, in haste, with trembling fingers.

       One more day. Whatever it is can wait one more day. I shuffled the cards again, but I do not have my mother’s deft touch and they slipped out of my hands onto the wood. The Hermit fell face-up. He looked more like Reynaud than ever in the flickering candlelight. His face seemed to grin viciously in the shadows. I’ll find a way, he promised slyly. You think you’ve won, but I’ll still find a way. I could feel his malevolence at my fingertips.

       Mother would have called it a sign.

       Suddenly, on an impulse I only half understood, I picked up the Hermit and held him up to the candle flame. For a moment the flame flirted with the stiff card, then the surface began to bubble. The pallid face grimaced and blackened.

       “I’ll show you,” I whispered. “Try to interfere and I’ll?.”