Chocolat (26 page)

THIRTY-NINE

       Monday, March 31, Easter Monday

       I SENT REYNAUD ON HIS WAY WHEN THE BELLS STOPPED RINGING. He never said Mass. Instead he ran off into Les Marauds without a word. Few people missed him. Instead we began the festival early, with hot chocolate and cakes outside La Praline while I quickly cleared up the mess. Fortunately this was little; a few hundred chocolates spilled onto the floor, but none of our gift boxes damaged. A couple of adjustments to the display window and it looked as good as ever.

       The festival was all we hoped for. Craft stalls, fanfares, Narcisse’s band — surprisingly, he plays the saxophone with rakish virtuosity — jugglers, fire-eaters. The river people are back — for the day, at least — and the streets were alive with their variegated figures. Some set up stalls of their own, hair-beading and selling jam and honey, tattooing in henna or telling fortunes. Roux sold dolls he had carved from pieces of driftwood. Only the Clairmonts were missing, though I kept seeing Armande in my mind’s eye, as if on such an occasion I could not imagine her being absent. A woman in a red scarf, the round curve of a bent back in a grey pinafore, a straw hat, gaily decorated with cherries, bobbing above the holiday crowd. She seemed to be everywhere. Strangely enough I found that I felt no grief. Merely a growing conviction that at any moment she might appear, lifting the lids of boxes to see what was inside, licking her fingers greedily or whooping with glee at the noise, the fun, the gaiety of it all. Once I was even sure I hard her voice — wheee! — just beside me as I leaned forward to reach a packet of chocolate raisins, though when I looked there was only space. My mother would have understood.

       I delivered all my orders and sold the last gift box at four-fifteen. The Easter-egg hunt was won by Lucie Prudhomme, but all the entrants had cornets-surprise, with chocolates and toy trumpets and tambourines and streamers. A single char, with real flowers, advertised Narcisse’s nursery. Some of the younger people dared start a dance under the severe gaze of St Jerome, and the sun shone all day.

       And yet, as I sit now with Anouk in our quiet house, a book of fairy tales in one hand, I feel uneasy. I tell myself that it is the anticlimax that inevitably follows a longawaited event. Fatigue, perhaps, anxiety, Reynaud’s intrusion at the last moment, the heat of the sun, the people…Grief too for Armande, emerging now as the sound of merriment abates, sorrow coloured with so many other conflicting things, loneliness, loss, disbelief and a kind of calm feeling of rightness. My dear Armande, You would have loved this so much. But you had your own fireworks, didn’t you? Guillaume called late this evening, long after we had cleared away all signs of the festival, Anouk was getting ready for bed, her eyes still filled with carnival lights.

       “Can I come in?” His dog has learned to sit at his command, and waits solemnly by the door. He is carrying something in one hand. A letter. “Armande said I was to give you this. You know. After.”

       I take the letter. Inside the envelope something small and hard rattles against the paper. “Thank you”.

       “I’ll not stay.” He looks at me for a moment, then puts out his hand, a stilted, yet oddly touching gesture. His handshake is firm and cool. I feel stinging in my eyes; something bright falls onto the old man’s sleeve — his or mine, I am not certain which.

       “Goodnight, Vianne.”

       “Goodnight, Guillaume.”

       The envelope contains a single sheet of paper. I pull it out, and something rolls with it onto the table — coins, I think. The writing is large and effortful.

      
Dear Vianne
,

      
Thank you for everything. I know how you must feel. Talk to Guillaume if you like — he understands better than anyone else. I’m sorry I couldn’t be at your festival, but I’ve seen it so often in my mind that it doesn’t really matter. Kiss Anouk for me and give her one of the enclosed — the other is for the next one, I think you’ll know what I mean
.

      
I’m tired now, and I can smell a change coming in the wind. I think sleep will do me good. And who knows, maybe we’ll meet again some day
.

      
Yours, Armande Voizin
.

      
P.S. Don’t bother going to the funeral, either of you. It’s Caro’s party and I suppose she’s entitled to it if that’s the kind of thing she likes. Instead invite all our friends around to La Praline and have a pot of chocolate. I love you all. A
.

  When I had finished I put down the sheet and look for the rolling coins. I find one on the table and the other on a chair; two gold sovereigns gleaming red-bright in my hand. One for Anouk and the other? Instinctively I reach for the warm, still place inside myself, the secret place I have not yet fully revealed even to myself.

       Anouk’s head rests gently on my shoulder. Almost asleep, she croons to Pantoufle as I read aloud. We have heard little of Pantoufle these past few weeks; usurped by more tangible playmates. It seems significant that he should return now the wind has changed. Something in me feels the inevitability of the change. My carefully built fantasy of permanence is like the sandcastles we used to build on the beach, waiting for a high tide. Even without the sea, the sun erodes them; by tomorrow they are almost gone. Even so I can feel a little anger, a little hurt. But the scent of the carnival draws me nevertheless, the moving wind, the hot wind from — where was it? The South? The East? America? England? It is only a matter of time. Lansquenet, with all its associations, seems less real to me somehow, already receding into memory. The machinery winds down; the mechanism is silent. Perhaps it is what I suspected from the first, that Reynaud and I are linked, that one balances the other and that without him I have no purpose here. Whatever it is, the neediness of the town is gone; I can feel satisfaction in its place, a full-bellied satiety with no more room for me. In homes everywhere in Lansquenet, couples are making love, children are playing, dogs barking, televisions blaring. Without us. Guillaume strokes his dog and watches Casablanca. Alone in his room, Luc reads Rimbaud aloud without a hint of a stammer. Roux and Josephine, alone in their newly painted home, discover each other from the inside out, little by little. Radio-Gascogne ran an item on the chocolate festival this evening, proudly announcing the festival of Lansquenet-sous-Tannes, a charming local tradition. No longer will tourists drive through Lansquenet on their way to other places. I have put the invisible town on the map.

       The wind smells of the sea, of ozone and frying, of the seafront at Juan-les-Pins, of pancakes and coconut oil and charcoal and sweat. So many places waiting for the wind to change. So many needy people. How long this time? Six months? A year? Anouk nestles her face into my shoulder and I hold her close, too hard, for she half-wakes and murmurs something accusing. La Celeste Praline will be a bakery once more. Or perhaps a canfiserie-patisserie, with guimauves hanging from the ceiling like strings of pastel sausages and boxes of pains d’epices with Souvenir de Lansquenet-sous-Tannes stencilled across the lid. At least we have money, more than enough to start again somewhere else. Nice perhaps, or Cannes, London or Paris. Anouk mutters in her sleep. She feels it too.

       And yet we have progressed. Not for us, the anonymity of hotel rooms, the flicker of neon, the move from North to South at the turn of a card. At last we have faced down the Black Man, Anouk and I, seen him at last for what he is: a fool to himself, a carnival mask. We cannot stay here for ever. But perhaps, he has paved the way for us to stay elsewhere. Some seaside town, perhaps. Or a village by a river with maize fields and vineyards. Our names will change. The name of our shop, too, will alter. La Truffe Enchantee, perhaps. Or Tentations Divines, in memory of Reynaud. And this time we can take so much of Lansquenet with us. I hold Armande’s gift in the palm of my hand. The coins are heavy, solid to the touch. The gold is reddish, almost the colour of Roux’s hair. Again, I wonder how she knew — exactly how far she could see. Another child — not fatherless this time, but a good man’s child, even if he never knows it. I wonder if she will have hair, his smoky eyes. I am already certain she will be a girl. I even know her name.

       Other things we can leave behind. The Black Man is gone. My voice sounds different to me now, bolder, stronger. There is a note in it which, if I listen carefully, I can almost recognize. A note of defiance, even of glee. My fears are gone. You too are gone, Maman, though I will always hear you speaking to me. I need no longer be afraid of my face in the mirror. Anouk smiles in her sleep. I could stay here, Maman. We have a home, friends. The weathervane outside my window turns, turns. Imagine hearing it every week, every year, every season. Imagine looking out of my window on a winter’s morning. The new voice inside me laughs, and the sound is almost like coming home. The new life inside me turns softly, sweetly. Anouk talks in her sleep, nonsense syllables. Her small hands clench against my arm.

       “Please.” Her voice is muffled by my jumper. “Maman, sing me a song.” She opens her eyes. The Earth, seen from a great height, is the same blue-green shade.

       “OK.”

       She closes her eyes again, and I begin to sing softly:

      
V’la l’bon vent, v’la l’joli vent

      
V’la l’bon vent, ma mie m’appelle

       Hoping that this time it will remain a lullaby. That this time the wind will not hear. That this time ? please, just this once ? it will leave without us.
THE END

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