Chocolat (5 page)

NINE

       Wednesday, February 19

       THIS IS OUR REST DAY. SCHOOL IS CLOSED AND, WHILE Anouk plays by Les Marauds, I will receive deliveries and work on this week’s batch of items.

       This is an art I can enjoy. There is a kind of sorcery in all cooking: in the choosing of ingredients, the process of mixing, grating, melting, infusing and flavouring, the recipes taken from ancient books, the traditional utensils — the pestle and mortar with which my mother made her incense turned to a more homely purpose, her spices and aromatics, giving up their subtleties to a baser, more sensual magic. And it is partly the transience of it that delights me; so much loving preparation, so much art and experience put into a pleasure which can last only a moment, and which only a few will ever fully appreciate. My mother always viewed my interest with indulgent contempt. To her, food was no pleasure but a tiresome necessity to be worried over, a tax on the price of our freedom. I stole menus from restaurants and looked longingly into patisserie windows. I must have been ten years old — maybe older — before I first tasted real chocolate. But still the fascination endured. I carried recipes in my head like maps. All kinds of recipes; torn from abandoned magazines in busy railway stations, wheedled from people on the road, strange marriages of my own confection. Mother with her cards, her divinations directed our mad course across Europe. Cookery cards anchored us, placed landmarks on the bleak borders. Paris smells of baking bread and croissants; Marseille of bouillabaisse and grilled garlic. Berlin was Eisbrei with Sauerkraut and Kartoffelsalat, Rome was the ice-cream I ate without paying in a tiny restaurant beside the river. Mother had no time for landmarks: All her maps were inside, all places the same. Even then we were different. Oh, she taught me what she could. How to see to the core of things, of people, to see their thoughts, their longings. The driver who stopped to give us a lift, who drove ten kilometres out of his way to take us to Lyon, the grocers who refused payment, the policemen who turned a blind eye. Not every time, of course. Sometimes it failed for no reason we could understand. Some people are unreadable, unreachable. Francis Reynaud is one of these. And even when it did not, the casual intrusion disturbed me. It was all too easy. Now making chocolate is a different matter. Oh, some skill is required. A certain lightness of touch, speed, a patience my mother would never have had. But the formula remains the same every time. It is safe. Harmless. And I do not have to look into their hearts and take what I need; these are wishes which can be granted simply, for the asking.

       Guy, my confectioner, has known me for a long time. We worked together after Anouk was born and he helped me to start my first business, a tiny pattisserie-chocolaterie in the outskirts of Nice. Now he is based in Marseille, importing the raw chocolate liquor direct from South America and converting it to chocolate of various grades in his factory.

       I only use the best. The blocks of couverture are slightly larger than house bricks, one box of each per delivery, and I use all three types: the dark, the milk and the white. It has to be tempered to bring it to its crystalline state, ensuring a hard, brittle surface and a good shine. Some confectioners buy their supplies already tempered, but I like to do it myself. There is an endless fascination in handling the raw dullish blocks of couverture, in grating them by hand — I never use electrical mixers — into the large ceramic pans, then melting, stirring, testing each painstaking step with the sugar thermometer until just the right amount of heat has been applied to make the change.

       There is a kind of alchemy in the transformation of base chocolate into this wise fool’s gold; a layman’s magic which even my mother might have relished. As I work I clear my mind, breathing deeply. The windows are open, and the through draught would be cold if it were not for the heat of the stoves, the copper pans, the rising vapour from the melting couverture. The mingled scents of chocolate, vanilla, heated copper and cinnamon are intoxicating, powerfully suggestive; the raw and earthy tang of the Americas, the hot and resinous perfume of the rainforest. This is how I travel now, as the Aztecs did in their sacred rituals. Mexico, Venezuela,-Colombia. The court of Montezuma. Cortez and Columbus. The food of the gods, bubbling and frothing in ceremonial goblets. The bitter elixir of life.

       Perhaps this is what Reynaud senses in my little shop; a throwback to times when the world was a wider, wilder place. Before Christ — before Adonis was born in Bethlehem or Osiris sacrificed at Easter — the cocoa bean was revered. Magical properties were attributed to it. Its brew was sipped on the steps of sacrificial temples; its ecstasies were fierce and terrible. Is this what he fears? Corruption by pleasure, the subtle transubstantiation of the flesh into a vessel for debauch? Not for him the orgies of the Aztec priesthood. And yet, in the vapours of the melting chocolate something begins to coalesce — a vision, my mother would have said — a smoky finger of perception which points…points…

       There. For a second I almost had it. Across the glossy surface a vaporous ripple forms. Then another, filmy and pale, half-hiding, half-revealing. For a moment I almost saw the answer, the secret which he hides — even from himself — with such fearful calculation, the key which will set all of us into motion.

       Scrying with chocolate is a difficult business. The visions are unclear, troubled by rising perfumes which cloud the mind. And I am not my mother, who retained until the day of her death a power of augury so great that the two of us ran before it in wild and growing disarray. But before the vision dissipates I am sure I see something a room, a bed, an old man lying on the bed, his eyes raw holes in his white face…And fire. Fire.

       Is this what I was meant to see? Is this the Black Man’s secret? I need to know his secret if we are to stay, here. And I do need to stay. Whatever it takes.

TEN

   Wednesday, February 19

       A WEEK, MON PERE. THAT’S ALL IT’S BEEN. ONE WEEK. BUT it seems longer. Why she should disturb me so is beyond me; it’s clear what she is. I went to see her the other day, to reason with her about her Sunday morning opening time. The place is transformed; the air perfumed with bewildering scents of ginger and spices. I tried not to look at the shelves of sweets: boxes, ribbons, bows in pastel colours, sugared almonds in gold-silver drifts, sugared violets and chocolate rose leaves. There is more than a suspicion of the boudoir about the place, an intimate look, a scent of rose and vanilla. My mother’s room had just such a look; all crepe and gauze and cut-glass twinkling in the muted light, the ranks of bottles and jars on her dressing-table an army of genies awaiting release. There is something unwholesome about such a concentration of sweetness. A promise, half-fulfilled, of the forbidden. I try not to look, not to smell.

       She greeted me politely enough. I saw her more clearly now; long black hair twisted back into a knot, eyes so dark they seem pupilless. Her eyebrows are perfectly straight, giving her a stern look belied by the comic twist to her mouth. Hands square and functional; nails clipped short. She wears no make-up, and yet there is something slightly indecent about that face. Perhaps it is the directness of her look, the way her eyes linger appraisingly, that permanent crease of irony about the mouth. And she is tall, too tall for a woman, my own height. She stares at me eye to eye, with thrown-back shoulders and defiant chin. She wears a long, flared, flame-coloured skirt and a tight black sweater. This colouring looks dangerous, like a snake or a stinging insect, a warning to enemies.

       And she is my enemy. I feel it immediately. I sense her hostility and suspicion though her voice remains low pitched and pleasant throughout. I feel she has lured me here to taunt me, that she knows some secret that even I- But this is nonsense. What can she know? What can she do? It is merely my sense of order which is offended, as a conscientious gardener might take offence at a patch of seeding dandelions. The seed of discord is everywhere, mon pere. And it spreads. It spreads.

       I know. I am losing my perspective. But we must be vigilant all the same, you and I. Remember Les Marauds, and the gypsies we ousted from the banks of the Tannes. Remember how long it took, how many fruitless months of complaints and letter-writing until we took the matter into our own hands. Remember the sermons I preached! Door after door was closed against them. Some shopkeepers co-operated at once. They remembered the gypsies from the last time, and the sickness, the thieving and the whoring. They were on our side. I recall we had to pressure Narcisse, who, typically, would have offered them summer employment in his fields. But at last, we uprooted them all: the sullen men and their bold-eyed slatterns, their foul-mouthed barefooted children, their scrawny dogs. They left, and volunteers cleaned up the filth they left behind them. A single dandelions seed, mon pere, would be enough to bring them back. You know that as well as I. And if she is that seed…

       I spoke to Joline Drou yesterday. Anouk Rocher has joined the primary school. A pert child, black hair like her mother’s and a bright, insolent smile. Apparently Joline found her son Jean, among others, playing some kind of game with the child in the schoolyard. A corrupting influence, I gather, divination or some such nonsense, bones and beads in a bag scattered in the dirt. I told you I knew their kind. Joline has forbidden Jean to play with her again, but the lad has a stubborn streak in him and turned sullen. At that age nothing answers but the strictest discipline. I offered to give the boy a talking-to myself, but the mother won’t agree. That’s what they’re like, mon pere…Weak. Weak. I wonder how many of them have already broken their Lenten vows. I wonder how many ever intended to keep them. For myself, I feel that fasting cleanses me. The sight of the butcher’s window appals; scents are heightened to a point of intensity that makes my head reel. Suddenly the morning odour of baking from Poitou’s is more than I can bear; the smell of hot fat from the rotisserie in the Place des Beaux-Arts a shaft from hell. I myself have touched neither meat nor fish nor eggs for over a week, subsisting on bread, soups, salads and a single glass of wine on Sunday, and I am cleansed, pere, cleansed. I only wish I could do more. This is not suffering. This is not penance. I sometimes feel that if I could only show them the right example, if it could be me on that cross bleeding, suffering…That witch Voizin mocks me as she goes by with her basket of groceries. Alone in that family of good churchgoers she scorns the Church, grinning at me as she hobbles past, her straw hat tied around her head with a red scarf and her stick rapping the flags at her feet. I bear with her only because of her age, mon pere, and the pleas of her family. Stubbornly denying treatment, denying comfort; she thinks she’ll live for ever. But she’ll break one day. They always do. And I’ll give her absolution in all humility; I’ll grieve in spite of her many aberrations, her pride and her defiance. I’ll have her in the end, mon pere. In the end, won’t I have them all?

ELEVEN

       Thursday, February 20

       I WAS WAITING FOR HER. TARTAN COAT, HAIR SCRAPED back in an unflattering style, hands deft and nervous as a gunslinger’s. Josephine Muscat, the lady from the carnival. She waited until my regulars — Guillaume, Georges and Narcisse — had left before she came in, hands thrust deeply into her pockets.

       “Hot chocolate, please.”

       She sat down uncomfortably at the counter, speaking down into the empty glasses I had not yet had time to clear.

       “Of course.”

       I did not ask her how she liked her drink but brought it to her with chocolate curls and Chantilly, decorated with two coffee creams at the side. For a moment she looked at the glass with narrowed eyes, then touched it tentatively.

       “The other day,” she said, with forced casualness. “I forgot to pay for something.”

       She has long fingers, oddly delicate in spite of the calluses on the fingertips. In repose her face seems to lose some of its dismayed expression, becoming almost attractive. Her hair is a soft brown, her eyes golden. “I’m sorry.”

       She threw the ten-franc piece onto the counter with a kind of defiance.

       “That’s OK.”

       I made my voice casual, disinterested. “It happens all the time.”

       Josephine looked at me for a second, suspiciously, then sensing no malice, relaxed a little. “This is good.” Sipping the chocolate. “Really good.”

       “I make it myself,” I explained. “From the chocolate liquor before the fat is added to make it solidify. This is exactly how the Aztecs drank chocolate, centuries ago.”

       She shot me another quick, suspicious glance.

       “Thank you for the present,” she said at last. “Chocolate almonds. My favourite.”

       Then, quickly, the words rushing out of her in desperate, ungainly haste, “I never took it on purpose. They’ll have spoken about me, I know. But I don’t steal. It’s them”— contemptuous now, her mouth turned down in rage and self-hatred — “the Clairmont bitch and her cronies. Liars.”

       She looked at me again, almost defiantly. “I heard you don’t go to church.”

       Her voice was brittle, too loud for the small room and the two of us.

       I smiled. “That’s right. I don’t.”

       “You won’t last long here if you don’t,” said Josephine in the same high, glassy voice. “They’ll have you out of here the way they do everyone they don’t approve of. You’ll see. All this”— a vague, jerking gesture at the shelves, the boxes, the display window with its pieces montees — “none of this will help you. I’ve heard them talking. I’ve heard the things they say.”

       “So have I.” I poured myself a cup of chocolate from the silver pot. Small and black, like espresso, with a chocolate spoon to stir it. My voice was gentle. “But I don’t have to listen.” A pause while I sipped. “And neither do you.”

       Josephine laughed.

       The silence revolved between us. Five seconds. Ten.

       “They say you’re a witch.”

       That word again. She lifted her head defiantly. “Are you?”

       I shrugged, drank. “Who says?”

       “Joline Drou. Caroline Clairmont. Cure Reynaud’s bible groupies. I heard them talking outside St Jerome ‘s. Your daughter was telling the other children. Something about spirits.”

       There was curiosity in her voice and an underlying, reluctant hostility I did not understand. “Spirits!” she hooted.

       I traced the dim outline of a spiral against the yellow mouth of my cup. “I thought you didn’t care what those people had to say.”

       “I’m curious:” That defiance again, like a fear of being liked. “And you were talking to Armande the other day. No-one talks to Armande. Except me.”

       Armande Voizin. The old lady from Les Marauds.

       “I like her,” I said simply. “Why shouldn’t I talk to her?”

       Josephine clenched her fists against the counter. She seemed agitated, her voice cracking like frostbitten glass.

       “Because she’s mad, that’s why!” She waved her fingers at her temple in a vague indicative gesture. “Mad, mad, mad.”

       She lowered her voice for a moment. “I’ll tell you something,” she said. “There’s a line across Lansquenet”— demonstrating on the counter with a callused finger — “and if you cross it, if you don’t go to confession, if you don’t respect your husband, if you don’t cook three meals a day and sit by the fire thinking decent thoughts and waiting for him to come home, if you don’t have children — and you don’t bring flowers to your friends’ funerals or vacuum the parlour or — dig -the — flowerbeds!” She was red-faced with the effort of speaking. Her rage was intense, enormous. “Then you’re crazy!” she spat. “You’re crazy, you’re abnormal and people — talk- about — you behind your back and — and — and—” She broke off, the agonized expression slipping from her face.

       I could see her looking beyond me through i1e window, but the reflection against the glass was enough to obscure what she might be seeing. It was as if a shutter had descended over her features; blank and sly and hopeless.

       “Sorry. I got a bit carried away for a moment.” She swallowed a last mouthful of chocolate. “I shouldn’t talk to you. You shouldn’t talk to me. It’s going to be bad enough already.”

       “Is that what Armande says?” I asked gently.

       “I have to go.” Her clenched fists dug into her breastbone again in the recriminatory gesture which seemed so characteristic of her. “I have to go.”

       The look of dismay was back on her face, her mouth turning downwards in a panicked rictus so that she looked almost dull witted. And yet the angry, tormented woman who had spoken to me a moment ago was far from that. What whom — had she seen to make her react in that way? As she left La Praline, head pushed down into an imaginary blizzard, I moved to the window to watch her. No-one approached her. No-one seemed to be looking, in her direction. It was then that I noticed Reynaud standing by the arch of the church door. Reynaud and a balding man I did not recognize. Both were staring fixedly at the window of La Praline.

       Reynaud? Could he be the source of her fear? I felt a prick of annoyance at the thought that he might be the one who had warned Josephine against me. And yet she had seemed scornful, not afraid, when she mentioned him earlier. The second man was short but powerful; checked shirt rolled up over shiny red forearms, small intellectual’s glasses oddly at variance with the thick, fleshy features. A look of unfocused hostility hung about him, and at last I realized I had seen him before. In a white beard and red robe, flinging sweets into the crowd. At the carnival. Santa Claus, throwing bonbons to the crowd as if he hoped he might take out someone’s eye. At that moment a group of children came up to the window and I was unable to see more, but I thought I knew now why Josephine had fled in such haste.

       “Lucie, do you see that man in the square? The one in the red shirt? Who is he?”

       The child pulls a face. White chocolate mice are her special weakness; five for ten francs. I slip a couple of extra ones into the paper cornet. “You know him, don’t you?”

       She nods. “Monsieur Muscat. From the cafe.”

       I know it; a drab little place down at the end of the Avenue des Francs Bourgeois. Half-a-dozen metal tables on the pavement, a faded Orangina parasol. An ancient sign identifies it; Cafe de la Republique. Clutching her cornet of sweets the small girl turns to go, reconsiders, turns again. “You won’t ever guess his favourite,” she says. “He hasn’t got one.”

       “I find that difficult to believe,” I smile. “Everyone has a favourite. Even Monsieur Muscat.”

       Lucie considers this for a moment. “Maybe his favourite is the one he takes from someone else,” she tells me limpidly. Then she is gone, with a little wave through the display window.

       “Tell Anouk we’re off to Les Marauds after school!”

       “I will.”

       Les Marauds. I wonder what they find there to amuse them. The river with its brown, stinking banks. The narrow streets drifted with litter. An oasis for children. Dens, flat stones flick-flacking across the stagnant water. Secrets whispered, stick swords and shields made of rhubarb leaves. Warfare amongst the blackberry tangle, tunnels, explorers, stray dogs, rumours, purloined treasures…Anouk came from school yesterday with a new jauntiness in her step and a picture she had drawn to show me.

       “That’s me.” A figure in red overalls topped with a scribble of black hair. “Pantoufle.” The rabbit is sitting on her shoulder like a parrot, ears cocked. “And Jeannot.” A boy figure in green, one hand outstretched. Both children are smiling. It seems mothers — even schoolteacher mothers — are not allowed in Les Marauds. The Plasticine figure still sits beside Anouk’s bed, and she has stuck the picture to the wall above it.

       “Pantoufle told me what to do.” She scoops him up in a casual embrace. In this light I can see him quite clearly, like a whiskered child. I sometimes tell myself I should discourage this pretence of hers, but cannot bear to inflict such loneliness upon her. Maybe, if we can stay here, Pantoufle can give way to more substantial playmates.

       “I’m glad you managed to stay friends,” I told her, kissing the top of her curly head. “Ask Jeannot if he wants to come here some day soon, to help takedown the display. You can bring your other friends too.”

       “The gingerbread house?” Her eyes were sunlight-on-water. “Oh yes!” Skipping across the room with sudden exuberance, almost knocking over a stool, skirting an imaginary obstacle with a giant leap, then up the stairs three at a time — “Race you, Pantoufle!” A thump as she slammed, the door against the wall — bam-bam! A sudden stabbing sweetness of love for her, taking me off guard as it always does. My little stranger. Never still, never silent.

       I poured myself another cup of chocolate, turning as I heard the door-chimes jangle. For a second I saw his face unguarded, the appraising look, chin thrust out, shoulders squared, the veins popping out on the bare shiny forearms. Then he smiled, a thin smile without warmth.

       “Monsieur Muscat, isn’t it?” I wondered what he wanted. He looked out of place, glancing, head lowered, at the displays…His gaze fell short of my face, flicking casually to my breasts; once, twice.

       “What did she want?” His voice was soft but heavily accented. He shook his head once, as if in disbelief. “What the hell did she want in a place like this?”

       He indicated a tray of sugared almonds at fifty francs a packet. “This sort of thing, he?” He appealed to me, hands spread. “Weddings and christenings. What’s she want with wedding and christening stuff?” He smiled again. Wheedling now, trying for charm and failing. “What did she buy?”

       “I take it you mean Joeephine.”

       “My wife.” He gave the words an odd intonation, a kind of flat finality. “That’s women for you. Work yourself senseless to earn money to live on and what do they do, hi? Waste it all on—” Another gesture at the ranks of chocolate gems, marzipan fruit garlands, silver paper, silk flowers. “What was it, a present?”

       There was suspicion in his voice. “Who’s she buying presents for? Herself?”

       He gave a short laugh, as if the thought was ludicrous.

       I didn’t see what business it was of his. But there was a kind of aggression in his manner, a nervousness around the eyes and the gesticulating hands, that made me careful. Not for myself — I learned enough ways to take care of myself in the long years with Mother — but for her. Before I could prevent it an image leaped out from him towards me; a bloodied knuckle etched in smoke. I closed my fists under the counter. There was nothing in this man I wanted to see.

       “I think you may have misunderstood,” I told him. “I asked Josephine in for a cup of chocolate. As a friend.”

       “Oh.” He seemed taken aback for a moment. Then he gave that barking laugh again. It was almost genuine now, real amusement touched with contempt. “You want to be friends with Josephine?” Again the look of appraisal. I felt him comparing us, his hot eyes flicking to my breasts over the counter. When he spoke again it was with a caress in the voice, a crooning note of what he imagined to be seduction. “You’re new here, aren’t you?”

       I nodded.

       “Perhaps we could get together some time. You know. Get to know each other.”

       “Perhaps.” I was at my most casual. “Maybe you could ask your wife to come too,” I added smoothly.

       A beat of time. He looked at me again, this time a measuring glance of sly suspicion. “She’s not been saying anything, has she?”

       Blankly: “What kind of thing?”

       A quick shake of the head. “Nothing. Nothing. She talks, that’s all. She’s all talk. Doesn’t do anything but, he? Day in, day out.” Again, the short, mirthless laugh. “You’ll find that out soon enough,” he added with sour satisfaction.

       I murmured something non-committal. Then, on impulse, I brought out a small packet of chocolate almonds from beneath the counter and handed them to him.

       “Perhaps you could give these to Josephine for me,” I said lightly. “I was going to give them to her, but I forgot.”

       He looked at me, but did not move. “Give them to her?” he repeated.

       “Free. On the house.” I gave my most winning smile. “A present.”

       His smile broadened. He took the chocolates in their pretty silver sachet. “I’ll see she gets them,” he said, cramming the packet into his jeans’ pocket.

       “They’re her favourites,” I told him.

       “You won’t go far in this job if you keep giving out freebies,” he said, indulgently. “You’ll be out of business in a month.” Again the hard, greedy look, as if I too were a chocolate he couldn’t wait to unwrap.

       “We’ll see,” I said blandly, and watched him leave the shop and begin the road home, shoulders slouched in a thickset James Dean swagger. He didn’t even wait to be out of sight before I saw him take out Josephine’s chocolates and open the packet. Perhaps he guessed I might be watching. One, two, three, his hand went to his mouth with lazy regularity, and before he had crossed the square the silver wrapping was already balled in a square fist, the chocolates gone. I imagined him cramming them in like a greedy dog who wants to finish his own food before robbing another’s plate. Passing the baker’s he popped the silver ball at the bin outside but missed, bouncing it off the rim and onto the stones. Then he continued on his way past the church and down the Avenue des francs Bourgeois without looking back, his engineer boots kicking sparks from the smooth cobbles underfoot.