Chocolat (3 page)

SIX

   Saturday, February 15

       School finished early today. By twelve the street was rampant with cowboys and Indians in bright anoraks and denim jeans, dragging their schoolbags — the older ones dragging on illicit cigarettes, with turned-up collars and half a nonchalant eye to the display window as they pass. I noticed one boy walking alone, very correct in grey overcoat and beret, his school cartable perfectly squared to his small shoulders. For a long moment he stared in at the window of La Celeste Praline, but the light was shining on the glass in such a way that I did not catch his expression. Then a group of four children of Anouk’s age stopped outside, and he moved on. Two noses snubbed briefly against the window, then the children retreated into a cluster as the four emptied pockets and pooled resources. A moment of hesitation as they decided who to send in. I pretended to be occupied with something behind the counter.

       “Madame?” A small, smudgy face peered suspiciously up at me. I recognized the wolf from the Mardi Gras parade.

       “Now, I have you down as a peanut brittle man.” I kept my face serious, for this purchase of sweets is serious business. “It’s good value, easy to share, doesn’t melt in your pockets and you can get”— I indicated with hands held apart — “oh, this much at least for five francs. Am I right?”

       No answering smile, but a nod, as of one businessman to another. The coin was warm and a little sticky. He took the packet with care.

       “I like the little gingerbread house,” he said gravely. “In the window.” In the doorway the three others nodded shyly, pressing together as if to give themselves courage. “It’s cool.” The American word was uttered with a kind of defiance, like smoke from a secret cigarette. I smiled.

       “Very cool,” I agreed. “If you like, you and your friends can come over and help me eat it where I take it down.”

       Eyes widened.

       “Cool!”

       “Hypercool”

       “When?”

       I shrugged. “I’ll tell Anouk to remind you,” I told them. “That’s my little girl.”

       “We know. We saw her. She doesn’t go to school.” This last was uttered with some envy..

       “She will on Monday. It’s a pity she doesn’t have any friends yet, because I told her she could ask them over. You know, to help me with the displays.” Feet shuffled, sticky hands held out, shoving and pushing to be first in line.

       “We can”

       “I can—”

       “I’m Jeannot ”

       “Claudine—”

       “Lucie.”

       I sent them out with a sugar mouse each and watched them fan across the square like dandelion seeds in the wind. A slice of sunlight glanced off their backs one after the other as they ran — red-orange-green-blue — then they were gone. From the shaded arch of St Jeromes I saw the priest, Francis Reynaud, watching them with a look of curiosity and, I thought, disapproval. I felt a moment’s surprise. Why should he disapprove? Since his duty visit on our first day he has not called again, though I have heard of him often from other people. Guillaume speaks of him with respect, Narcisse with temper, Caroline with that archness which I sense she adopts when speaking of any man under fifty. There is little warmth in their speech. He is not a local, I understand. A Paris seminarian, all his learning from books he does not know the land, its needs, its demands. This from Narcisse, who has had a running feud with the priest ever since he refused to attend Mass during the harvesting season. A man who does not suffer fools, says Guillaume, with that small gleam of humour from behind his round spectacles, that is to say so many of us, with our foolish little habits and our unbreakable routines. He pats Charly’s head affectionately as he says it, and the dog gives his single, solemn bark.

       “He thinks it’s ridiculous to be so devoted to a dog,” said Guillaume ruefully. “He’s far too polite to say so, but he thinks it’s inappropriate. A man of my age…” Before his retirement Guillaume was a master at the local school. There are only two teachers there now to deal with the falling numbers, though many of the older people still refer to Guillaume as le maitre d’ecole. I watch as he scratches Charly gently behind the ears, and I am sure I sense the sadness I saw in him at the carnival; a furtive look which is almost guilt.

       “A man of any age can choose his friends where he likes,” I interrupted with some heat. “Perhaps monsieur le cure could learn a few things from Charly himself.” Again that sweet, sad almost-smile.

       “Monsieur le cure tries his best,” he told me gently. “We should not expect more.”

       I did not answer. In my profession it is a truth quickly learned that the process of giving is without limits. Guillaume left La Praline with a small bag of florentines in his pocket; before he had turned the comer of Avenue des Francs Bourgeois I saw him stoop to offer one to the dog. A pat, a bark, a wagging of the short stubby tail. As I said, some people never have to think about giving.

       The village is less strange to me now. Its inhabitants too. I am beginning to know faces, names; the first secret skeins of histories twisting together to form the umbilical which will eventually bind us. It is a more complex place than its geography at first suggests, the Rue Principale forking off into a hand-shaped branch of laterals — Rue des Poetes, Avenue des Francs Bourgeois, Ruelle des Freres de la Revolution — someone amongst the town planners had a fierce republican streak: My own square, Place Saint-Jerome, is the culmination of these reaching fingers, the church standing white and proud in an oblong of linden trees, the square of red shingle where the old men play petanque on fine evenings: Behind it, the hill falls away sharply towards that region of narrow streets collectively called Les Marauds.

       This is Lansquenet’s tiny slum, close half-timbered houses staggering down the uneven cobbles towards the Tannes. Even there it is some distance before the houses give way to marshland; some are built on the river itself on platforms of rotting wood, dozens flank the stone embankment, long fingers of damp reaching towards their small high windows from the sluggish water. In a town like Agen, Les Marauds would attract tourists for its quaintness and rustic decay. But here there are no tourists. The people of Les Marauds are scavengers, living from what they can reclaim from the river. Many of their houses are derelict; elder trees grow from the sagging walls. I closed La Praline for two hours at lunch and Anouk and I went walking down towards the river. A couple of skinny children dabbled in the green mud by the waterside; even in February there was a mellow stink of sewage and rot. It was cold but sunny, and Anouk was wearing her red woollen coat and hat, racing along the stones and shouting to Pantoufle scampering in her wake. I have become so accustomed to Pantouffe — and to the rest of the strange menagerie which she trails in her bright wake — that at such times I can almost see him clearly; Pantoufle with his grey-whiskered face and wise eyes, the world suddenly brightening as if by a strange transference I have become Anouk, seeing with her eyes, following where she travels. At such times I feel I could die for love of her, my little stranger; my heart swelling dangerously so that the only release is to run too, my red coat flapping around my shoulders like wings, my hair a comet’s tail in the patchy blue sky.

       A black cat crossed my path and I stopped to dance around it widdershins and to sing the rhyme:

      
Ou va-t-i, mistigri?

      
Passe sans faire de mal ici
.

       Anouk joined in and the cat purred, rolling over into the dust to be stroked. I bent down and saw a tiny old woman watching me curiously from the angle of a house. Black skirt, black coat, grey hair coiled and plaited into a neat, complex bun. Her eyes were sharp and black as a bird’s. I nodded to her.

       “You’re from the chocolaterie,” she said. Despite her age which I took to be eighty, maybe more — her voice was brisk and strongly accented with the rough lilt of the Midi.

       “Yes, I am.”

       I gave my name.

       “Armande Voizin,” she said. “That’s my house over there.” She nodded towards one of the river-houses, this one in better repair than the rest, freshly whitewashed and with scarlet geraniums in the window boxes. Then, with a smile which worked her apple-doll face into a million wrinkles, she said, “I’ve seen your shop. Pretty enough, I’ll grant you that, but no good to folks like us. Much too fancy.” There was no disapproval in her voice as she spoke, but a half laughing fatalism.

       “I hear our m’sieur le cure already has it in for you,” she added maliciously. “I suppose he thinks a chocolate shop is inappropriate in his square.”

       She gave me another of those quizzical, mocking glances. “Does he know you’re a witch?” she asked.

       Witch, witch. It’s the wrong word, but I knew what she meant.

       “What makes you think that?”

       “Oh, it’s obvious. Takes one to know one, I expect,” and she laughed, a sound like violins gone wild. “M’sieur le Cure doesn’t believe in magic,” she said. “Tell you the truth, I wouldn’t be so sure he even believes in God.” There was indulgent contempt in her voice. “He has a lot to learn, that man, even if he has got a degree in theology. And my silly daughter too. You don’t get degrees in life, do you?” I agreed that you didn’t, and enquired whether I knew her daughter.

       “I expect so. Caro Clairmont. The most empty-headed piece of foolishness in all of Lansquenet. Talk, talk, talk, and not a particle of sense.”

       She saw my smile and nodded cheerily. “Don’t worry, dear, at my age nothing much ends me any more. And she takes after her father, you know. That’s a great consolation.”

       She looked at me quizzically. “You don’t get much entertainment around here,” she observed. “Especially if you’re old.”

       She paused and peered at me again. “But with you I think maybe we’re in for a ‘ little amusement.”

       Her hand brushed mine like a cool breath. I tried to catch her thoughts, to see if she was making fun of me, but ail I felt was humour and kindness.

       “It’s only a chocolate shop,” I said with a smile.

       Armande Voizin chuckled. “You really must think I was born yesterday,” she observed.

       “Really, Madame Voizin—”

       “Call me Armande.”

       The black eyes snapped with amusement. “It makes me feel young.”

       “All right. But I really don’t see why—”

       “I know what wind you blew in on,” said Armande keenly. “I felt it. Mardi Gras, carnival day. Les Marauds was full of carnival people; gypsies, Spaniards, tinkers, pieds-noirs and undesirables. I knew you at once, you and your little girl what are you calling yourselves this time?”

       “Vianne Rocher.” I smiled. “And this is Anouk.”

       “Anouk,” repeated Armande softly. “And the little grey friend — my eyes aren’t as good as they used to be — what is it? A cat? A squirrel?”

       Anouk shook her curly head. “He’s a rabbit,” she said with cheery scorn. “Called Pantoufle.”

       “Oh, a rabbit. Of course.” Armande gave me a sly wink. “You see, I know what wind you blew in on. I’ve felt it myself once or twice. I may be old, but no-one can pull the wool over my eyes. No-one at all.”

       I nodded. “Maybe that’s true,” I said. “Come over to La Praline one day; I know everyone’s favourite. I’ll treat you to a big box of yours.”

       Armande laughed. “Oh, I’m not allowed chocolate. Caro and that idiot doctor won’t allow it. Or anything else I might enjoy,” she added wryly. “First smoking, then alcohol, now this…God knows, if I gave up breathing perhaps I might live for ever.”

       She gave a snort of laughter, but it had a tired sound, and I saw her raise a hand to her chest in a clutching gesture eerily reminiscent of Josephine Muscat. “I’m not blaming them, exactly,” she said. “It’s just their way. Protection — from everything. From life. From death.” She gave a grin which was suddenly very gamine in spite of the wrinkles.

       “I might call in to see you anyway,” she said. “If only to annoy the cure.”

       I pondered her last remark for some time after she disappeared behind the angle of the whitewashed house. Some distance away Anouk was throwing stones onto the mud flats at the riverbank.

       The cure. It seemed his name was never far from the lip’s. For a moment I considered Francis Reynaud.

       In a place like Lansquenet it sometimes happens that one person — schoolteacher, cafe proprietor, or priest forms the lynchpin of the community. That this single individual is the essential core of the machinery which turns lives, like the central pin of a clock mechanism, sending wheels to turn wheels, hammers to strike, needles to point the hour. If the pin slips or is damaged, the clock stops. Lansquenet is like that clock, needles perpetually frozen at a minute to midnight, wheels and cogs turning uselessly behind the bland blank face. Set a church clock wrong to fool the devil, my mother always told me. But in this case I suspect the devil is not fooled. Not for a minute.

SEVEN

   Sunday, February 16

       MY MOTHER WAS A WITCH. AT LEAST, THAT’S WHAT SHE called herself, falling so many times into the game of believing herself that at the end there was no telling fake from fact. Armande Voizin reminds me of her in some ways; the bright, wicked eyes, the long hair which must have been glossy black in her youth, the- blend of wistfulness and cynicism. From her I learned what shaped me. The art of turning bad luck into good. The forking of the fingers to divert the path of malchance. The sewing of a sachet, brewing of a draught, the conviction that a spider brings good luck before midnight and bad luck after. Most of all she gave me her love of new places, the gypsy wanderlust which took us all over Europe and further; a year in Budapest, another in Prague, six months in Rome, four in Athens, then across the Alps to Monaco, along the coast, Cannes, Marseille, Barcelona…By my eighteenth year I had lost count of the cities in which we had lived, the languages we had spoken. Jobs were as varied; waitressing, interpreting, car repair. Sometimes we escaped from the windows of cheap overnight hotels without paying the bill. We rode trains without tickets, forged work permits, crossed borders illicitly. We were deported countless times. Twice my mother was arrested, but released without charge. Our names changed as we moved, drifting from one regional variant to another; Yanne, Jeanne, Johanne, Giovanna, Anne, Anouchka. Like thieves we were perpetually on the run, converting the unwieldy ballast of life into francs, pounds, kroner, dollars, as we fled where the wind took us. Don’t think I suffered; life was a fine adventure for those years. We had each other, my mother and I. I never felt the need for a father. My friends were countless. And yet it must have preyed upon her sometimes, the lack of permanence, the need always to contrive. Still we raced faster as the years wore on, staying a month, two at the most, then moving on like fugitives racing the sunset. It took me some years to understand that it was death we fled.

       She was forty. It was cancer. She’d known for some time, she told me, but recently…No, there was to be no hospital. No hospital, did I understand? There were months, years left in her and she wanted to see America: New York, the Florida Everglades. We were moving almost every day now, Mother reading the cards at night when she thought I was asleep. We boarded a cruiser from Lisbon, both of us working in the kitchens. Finishing at two or three every morning, we rose at dawn. Every night the cards, slippery to the touch with age and respectful handling, were laid out on the bunk beside her. She whispered their names to herself, sinking deeper every day into the mazy confusion which would eventually claim her altogether.

       Ten of Swords, death. Three of Swords, death. Two of Swords, death. The Chariot. Death.

       The Chariot turned out to be a New York cab one summer evening as we shopped for groceries in the busy Chinatown streets. It was better than cancer, in any case.

       When my daughter was born nine months later I called her after both of us. It seemed appropriate. Her father never knew her — nor am I sure which one he was in the wilting daisy-chain of my brief encounters. It doesn’t matter. I could have peeled an apple at midnight and thrown the rind over my shoulder to know his initial, but I never cared enough to do it. Too much ballast slows us down.

       And yet…Since I left New York, haven’t the winds blown less hard, less often? Hasn’t there been a kind of wrench every time we leave a place, a kind of regret? I think there has. Twenty-five years, and at last the spring has begun to grow tired, just as my mother grew tired in the final years. I find myself looking at the sun and wondering what it would be like to see it rise above the same horizon for five — maybe ten, maybe twenty — years: The thought fills me with a strange dizziness, a feeling of fear and longing. And Anouk, my little stranger? I see the brave adventure we lived for so long in a different light now that I am the mother. I see myself as I was, the brown girl with the long uncombed hair, wearing cast-off charity-shop clothing, learning maths the hard way, geography the hard way. How much bread for two francs? How far will a fifty-mark rail ticket take us? — and I do not want it for her. Perhaps this is why we have stayed in France for the last five years. For the first time in my life, I have a bank account. I have a trade.

       My mother would have despised all this. And yet perhaps she would have envied me too. Forget yourself if you can, she would have told me. Forget who you are. For as long as you am bear it. But one day, my girl, one day it will catch you. I know.

       I opened as usual today. For the morning only — I’11 allow myself a half-day with Anouk this afternoon — but it’s Mass this morning and there will be people in the square. February has reasserted its drab self and now it is raining; a freezing, gritty rain which slicks the paving and colours the sky the shade of old pewter. Anouk reads a book of nursery rhymes behind the counter and keeps an eye on the door for me as I prepare a batch of mendiants in the kitchen. These are my own favourites — thus named because they were sold by beggars and gypsies years ago biscuit-sized discs of dark, milk or white chocolate upon which have been scattered lemon-rind, almonds and plump Malaga raisins. Anouk likes the white ones, though I prefer the dark, made with the finest 70 per cent couverture…Bitter-smooth on the tongue with the taste of the secret tropics. My mother would have despised this, too. And yet this is also a kind of magic.

       Since Friday I have fitted a set of bar stools next to the counter of La Praline. Now it looks a little like the diners we used to visit in New York, red -leather seats and chrome stems, cheerily kitsch. The walls are a bright daffodil colour. Poitou’s old orange armchair lolls cheerily in one corner. A menu stands to the left, hand-lettered and coloured by Anouk in shades of orange and red:

      
chocolat chaud 10f;

      
chocolat espresso 15f;

      
chococcino 12f;

      
mocha 12f

       I baked a cake last night, and the hot chocolate is standing in a pot on the hob, awaiting my first customer. I make sure that a similar menu is visible from the window and I wait.

       Mass comes and goes. I watch the passers-by, morose beneath the freezing drizzle. My door, slightly open, emits a hot scent of baking and sweetness. I catch a number of longing glances at the source of this, but a flick of the eye backwards, a shrugging of the shoulders, a twist of the mouth which may be resolve or simply temper, and they are gone, leaning into the wind with rounded, miserable shoulders, as if an angel with a flaming sword were standing at the door to bar their entry.

       Time, I tell myself. This kind of thing takes time. But all the same, a kind of impatience, almost anger, penetrates me. What is wrong with these people? Why do they not come? Ten o’clock sounds, then eleven. I can see people going into the bakery opposite and coming out again with loaves tucked under their arms. The rain stops, though the sky remains grim. Eleven-thirty. The few people who still linger in the square turn homewards to prepare the Sunday meal. A boy with a dog skirts the corner of the church, carefully avoiding the dripping guttering. He walks past with barely a glance.

       Damn them. Just when I thought I was beginning to get through. Why do they not come? Can they not see, not smell? What else do I have to do? Anouk, always sensitive to my moods, comes to hug me. “Maman, don’t cry.”

       I am not crying. I never cry. Her hair tickles my face, and I feel suddenly dizzy with the fear that one day I might lose her.

       “It isn’t your fault. We tried. We did everything right.”

       True enough. Even to the red ribbons around the door, the sachets of cedar and lavender to repel bad influences. I kiss her head. There is moisture on my face. Something, perhaps the bittersweet aroma of the chocolate vapour, stings my eyes.

       “It’s all right, Cherie. What they do shouldn’t affect us. We can at least have a drink to cheer ourselves up.”

       We perch on our stools like New York barflies, a cup of chocolate each. Anouk has hers with creme Chantillyand chocolate curls; I drink mine hot and black, stronger than espresso. We close our eyes in the fragrant steam and see them coming — two; three, a dozen at a time, their faces lighting up, sitting beside us, their hard, indifferent faces melting into expressions of welcome and delight. I open my eyes quickly and Anouk is standing by the door. For a second I can see Pantoufle perched on her shoulder, whiskers twitching. The light behind her seems warmer somehow; altered. Alluring.

       I jump to my feet.

       “Please. Don’t do that.”

       She gives me one of her darkling glances. “I was only trying to help…”

       “Please.” For a second she faces me out, her face set stubbornly. Glamours swim between us like golden smoke. It would be so easy, she tells me with her eyes, so easy, like invisible fingers stroking, inaudible voices coaxing the people in…

       “We can’t. We shouldn’t.” I try to explain to her. It sets us apart. It makes us different. If we are to stay we must be as like them as possible. Pantoufle looks up at me in appeal, a whiskery blur against the golden shadows. Deliberately I close my eyes against him, and when I open them again, he is gone.

       “It’s all right,” I tell Anouk firmly. “We’ll be all right. We can wait.”

       And finally, at twelve-thirty, someone comes.

       Anouk saw him first — “Maman!” but I was on my feet at once. It was Reynaud, one hand shielding his face from the dripping canvas of the awning, the other hesitating at the door handle. His pale face was serene, but there was something in his eyes…a furtive satisfaction. I somehow understood he was not a customer. The bell tangled as he entered, but he did not walk up to the counter. Instead he remained in the doorway, the wind blowing the folds of his soutane into the shop like the wings of a black bird.

       “Monsieur.” I saw him eye the red ribbons with mistrust. “Can I help you? I’m sure I know your favourites.” I lapsed into my sales banter automatically, but it is untrue. I have no idea of this man’s tastes. He is a complete blank to me, a man-shaped darkness cut into the air. I feel no point of contact with him, and my smile broke on him like a wave on a rock. Reynaud gave me a narrow look of contempt.

       “I doubt that.” His voice was low and pleasant, but I sensed dislike behind the professional tones. I recalled Armande Voizin’s words — I hear our M’sieur le Cure already has it in for you. Why? An instinctive mistrust of unbelievers? Or can there be more? Beneath the counter I forked my fingers at him in secret.

       “I wasn’t expecting you to be open today.”

       He is more sure of himself now he thinks he knows us. His small, tight smile is like an oyster, milky-white at the edges and sharp as a razor.

       “On a Sunday, you mean?”

       I was at my most innocent. “I thought I might catch the rush at the end of Mass:” The tiny gibe failed to sting him.

       “On the first Sunday of Lent?”

       He sounded amused, but beneath the amusement, there was disdain. “I shouldn’t think so. Lansquenet folk are simple folk, Madame Rocher,” he told me. “Devout folk.” He stressed the word gently, politely.

       “It’s Mademoiselle Rocher.” Small victory, but enough to break his stride. His eyes flicked towards Anouk who was still sitting at the counter with the tall chocolate-glass in one hand. Her mouth was smeared with frothy chocolate, and I felt it again like the sudden sting of a concealed nettle — the panic, the irrational terror of losing her. But to whom? I shook the thought with growing anger. To him? Let him try.

       “Of course,” he replied smoothly. “Mademoiselle Rocher. I do apologize.”

       I smiled sweetly at his disapproval. Something in me continued to court it, perversely; my voice, a shade too loud, took on a ring of vulgar self-confidence to hide my fear.

       “It’s so nice to meet someone in these rural parts who understands.”

       I flashed him my hardest, brightest smile. “I mean, in the city, where we used to live, no-one gave us a thought. But here…”

       I managed to look contrite and unrepentant at the same time. “I mean, it’s absolutely lovely here, and the people have been so helpful…so quaint.. But it isn’t Paris, is it?”

       Reynaud agreed — with the tiniest of sneers — that it wasn’t.

       “It’s quite true what they say about village communities,” I went on. “Everyone wants to know your business! I expect it comes of having so little entertainment,” I explained kindly. “Three shops and a church. I mean—” I broke off with a giggle. “But of course you know all that.”

       Reynaud nodded gravely. “Perhaps you could explain to me, Mademoiselle…”

       “Oh, do call me Vianne,” I interrupted.

       “…why you decided to move to Lansquenet?” His tone was silken with dislike, his thin mouth more like a closed oyster than ever. “As you say, it’s a little different to Paris: His eyes made it clear that it was a difference entirely in Lansquenet’s favour. ‘A boutique like this’— an elegant hand indicated the shop and its contents with languid indifference — “surely such a specialist shop would be more successful — more appropriate — in a city? I’m sure that in Toulouse or even Agen…”

       I knew now why no customers had dared to come this morning. That word — appropriate held all the glacial condemnation of a prophet’s curse.

       I forked at him again, savagely, under the counter. Reynaud slapped at the back of his neck, as if an insect had stung him there.

       “I don’t think the cities have the franchise on enjoyment,” I snapped. “Everyone needs a little luxury, a little self indulgence from time to time.”

       Reynaud did not reply. I suppose he disagreed. I said as much. “I expect you preached exactly the opposite doctrine in your sermon this morning?” I ventured boldly. Then, as he still did not answer, “Still, I’m sure there’s room enough in this town for both of us. Free enterprise, isn’t that right?”