Chocolat (6 page)

TWELVE

      Friday, February 21

       THE WEATHER TURNED COLD AGAIN LAST NIGHT. St Jerome’s weathervane turned and swung in anxious indecision all night, scraping shrilly against its rusted moorings as if to warn against intruders. The morning began in fog so dense that even the church tower, twenty paces.from the shopfront, seemed remote and spectral; the bell for Mass tolling thickly through wadded candyfloss as the few comers approached, collars turned against the fog, to collect absolution.

       When she had finished her morning milk, I wrapped Anouk into her red coat and, in spite of her protests, pushed a fluffy cap onto her head.

       “Don’t you want any breakfast?”

       She shook her head emphatically, grabbed an apple from a dish by the counter.

       “What about my kiss?”

       This has become a morning ritual.

       Wrapping sly arms around my neck, she licks my face wetly, jumps away giggling, blows a kiss from the doorway, runs out into the square. I mime appalled horror, wiping my face. She laughs delightedly, pokes out a small sharp tongue in my direction, bugles, “I love you!” and is off like a scarlet streamer into the fog, her satchel dragging behind her. I know that in thirty seconds the fluffy hat will be relegated to the inside of the satchel, along with books, papers and other unwanted reminders of the adult world. For a second I see Pantoufle again, jumping in her wake, and banish the unwanted image in haste. A sudden loneliness of loss — how can I face an entire day without her? — and, with difficulty, I suppress an urge to call her back.

       Six customers this morning. One is Guillaume, on his way back from the butcher’s with a piece of boudin wrapped in paper.

       “Charly likes boudin,” he tells me earnestly. “He hasn’t been eating very well recently, but I’m sure he’ll love this.”

       “Don’t forget you have to eat too,” I remind him gently.

       “Of course.” He gives his sweet, apologetic smile. “I eat like a horse. Really I do.” He gives me a sudden, stricken look. “Of course, it’s Lent,” he says. “You don’t think animals should observe the Lenten fast, do you?”

       I shake my head at his dismayed expression: His face is small, delicately featured. He is the kind of man who breaks biscuits in two and saves the other half for later.

       “I think you should both look after yourselves better.”

       Guillaume scratches Charly’s ear. The dog seems listless, barely interested in the contents of the butcher’s package in the basket beside him.

       “We manage.”

       His smile comes as automatically as the lie: “Really we do.”

       He finishes his cup of chocolat espresso.

       “That was excellent,” he says as he always does. “My compliments, Madame Rocher.”

       I have long since stopped asking him to call me Vianne. His sense of propriety forbids it. He leaves the money on the counter, tips his old felt hat and opens the door. Charly scrambles to his feet and follows, lurching slightly to one side. Almost as soon as the door closes behind them, I see Guillaume stoop to pick him up and carry him.

       At lunchtime I had another visitor. I recognized her at once in spite of the shapeless man’s overcoat she affects; the clever winter-apple face beneath the black straw -hat, the long black skirts over heavy workboots.

       “Madame Voizin! You said you’d drop in, didn’t you? Let me get you a drink.”

       Bright eyes flicked appreciatively from one side of the shop to another I sensed her taking everything in. Her gaze came to rest on Anouk’s menu:

       chocolat chaud 10f

       chocolat espresso 15f

       chococcino 12f

       mocha 12f

       She nodded approvingly. “It’s been years since I had anything like this,” she said. “I’d almost forgotten this sort of place existed.”

       There is an energy in her voice, a forcefulness to her movements, which belies her age. Her mouth has a humorous twist which reminds me of my mother. “I used to love chocolate,” she declared.

       As I poured her, a tall glass of mocha and added a splash of kahlua to the froth she surveyed the bar stools with some suspicion.

       “You don’t expect me to climb all the way up there, do you?”

       I laughed. “If I’d known you were coming I would have brought a ladder. Wait a moment.”

       Stepping into the kitchen I brought out Poitou’s old orange chair. “Try this.”

       Armande plumped into the chair and took her glass in both hands. She looked eager as a child, her eyes shining, her expression rapt.

       “Mmmm.” It was more than appreciation. It was almost reverence. “Mmmmmm.” She had closed her eyes as she tasted the drink. Her pleasure was almost frightening.

       “This is the real thing, isn’t it?” She paused for a moment, bright eyes speculatively half-closed. “There’s cream and — cinnamon, I think — and what else? Tia Maria?”

       “Close enough,” I said.

       “What’s forbidden always tastes better anyway,” declared Armande, wiping froth from her mouth in satisfaction. “But this”— she sipped again, greedily — “is better than anything I remember, even from childhood. I bet there are ten thousand calories in here. More.”

       “Why should it be forbidden?” I was curious. Small and round as a partridge, she seems as unlike her figure conscious daughter as can be.

       “Oh, doctors.” Armande was dismissive. “You know what they’re like. They’ll say anything.”

       She paused to drink again through her straw. “Oh, this is good. Good. Caro’s been trying to make me go into some kind of a home for years. Doesn’t like the idea of me living next door. Doesn’t like to be reminded where she comes from.”

       She gave a rich chuckle. “Says I’m sick. Can’t look after myself. Sends that miserable doctor of hers to tell me what I can eat and what I can’t. Anyone would think they wanted me to live for ever.”

       I smiled. “I’m sure Caroline cares very much about you,” I said.

       Armande shot me a look of derision. “Oh, you are?”

       She gave a vulgar cackle of laughter. “Don’t give me that, girl. You know perfectly well that my daughter doesn’t care for anyone but herself. I’m not a fool.”

       A pause as she narrowed her bright, challenging gaze at me. “It’s the boy I feel for,” she said.

       “Boy?”

       “Luc, his name is. My grandson. He’ll be fourteen in April. You may have seen him in the square.”

       I remembered him vaguely; a colourless boy, too correct in his pressed flannel trousers and tweed jacket, cool green-grey eyes beneath a lank fringe. I nodded.

       “I’ve made him the beneficiary of my will,” Armande told me. “Half a million francs. In trust until his eighteenth birthday.”

       She shrugged. “I never see him,” she added shortly. “Caro won’t allow it.”

       I’ve seen them together. I remember now; the boy supporting his mother’s arm as they passed on their way to church. Alone of all Lansquenet’s children, he has never bought chocolates from La Praline, though I think I may have seen him looking in at the window once or twice.

       “The last time he came to see me was when he was ten.”

       Armande’s voice was unusually flat. “A hundred years ago, as far as he’s concerned.”

       She finished her chocolate and put the glass back onto the counter with a sharp final sound. “It was his birthday, as I recall. I gave him a book of Rimbaud’s poetry. He was very — polite.”

       There was bitterness in her tone. “Of course ‘I’ve seen him in the street a few times since,” she said. “I can’t complain.”

       “Why don’t you call?” I asked curiously. “Take him out, talk, get to know him?”

       Armande shook her head. “We fell out, Caro and I…” Her voice was suddenly querulous. The illusion of youth had left with her smile, and she looked suddenly, shockingly old. “She’s ashamed of me. God knows what she’s been telling the boy.”

       She shook her head. “No. It’s too late. I can tell by the look on his face — that polite look — the polite meaningless little messages in his Christmas cards. Such a well-mannered boy.”

       Her laughter was bitter. “Such a polite, well-mannered boy.”

       She turned to me and gave me a bright, brave smile. “If I could know what he was doing,” she said. “Know what he reads, what teams he supports, who his friends are, how well he does at school. If I could know that—”

       “If?”

       “I could pretend to myself—” For a second I saw her close to tears. Then a pause, an effort, a gathering of the will. “Do you know, I think I might manage another of those chocolate specials of yours. How about another?”

       It was bravado, but I admired it more than I could say. That she can still play the rebel through her misery, the suspicion of a swagger in her movements as she props her elbows on the bar, slurping.

       “ Sodom and Gomorrah through a straw. Mmmm. I think I just died and went to heaven. Close as I’m going to get, anyway.”

       “I could get news of Luc, if you wanted. I could pass it on to you:” Armande considered this in silence. Beneath the lowered eyelids I could feel her watching me. Assessing.

       At last she spoke. “All boys like sweets, don’t they?”

       Her voice was casual. I agreed that most boys did. “And his friends come here too, I suppose?”

       I told her I wasn’t sure who his friends were, but that most of the children came and went regularly.

       “I might come here again,” decided Armande. “I like your chocolate, even if your chairs are terrible. I might even become a regular customer.”

       “You’d be welcome,” I said.

       Another pause. I understood that Armande Voizin does things in her own way, in her own time, refusing to be hurried or advised. I let her think it through.

       “Here. Take this.”

       The decision was made. Briskly she slapped a hundred-franc note down on the counter.

       “But—”

       “If you see him, buy him a box of whatever he likes. Don’t tell him they’re from me.”

       I took the note.

       “And don’t let his mother get to you. She’s at it already, more than likely, spreading her gossip and her condescension. My only child, and she had to turn into one of Reynaud’s Salvation Sisters.”

       Her eyes narrowed mischievously, working webby dimples into her round cheeks. “There are rumours already about you,” she said. “You know the kind. Getting involved with me will only make things worse…”

       I laughed. “I think I can manage.”

       “I think you can.”

       She looked at me, suddenly intent, the teasing note gone from her voice. “There’s something about you,” she said in a soft voice. “Something familiar. I don’t suppose we’ve met before that time in Les Marauds, have we?”

       Lisbon, Paris, Florence, Rome. So many people. So many lives intersected, fleetingly criss-crossed, brushed by the mad weft-warp of our itinerary. But I didn’t think so.

       “And there’s a smell. Something like burning, the smell of a summer lightning-strike ten seconds after. A scent of midsummer storms and cornfields in the rain.”

       Her face was rapt, her eyes searching out mine. “It’s true, isn’t it? What I said? What you are?”

       That word again.

       She laughed delightedly and took my hand. Her skin was cool; foliage, not flesh. She turned my hand over to see the palm. “I knew it!” Her finger traced lifeline, heartline. “I knew it the minute I saw you!” To herself, head bent, voice so low it was no more than a breath against my hand, “I knew it. I knew it. But I never thought to see you here; in this town.” A sharp, suspicious glance upwards.

       “Does Reynaud know?”

       “I’m not sure.”

       It was true; I had no idea what she was talking about. But I could smell it too; the scent of the changing winds, that air of revelation. A distant scent of fire and ozone. A squeal of gears left long unused, the infernal machine of synchronicity. Or maybe Josephine was right and Armande was crazy. After all, she could see Pantoufle.

       “Don’t let Reynaud know,” she told me, her mad, earnest eyes gleaming. “You know who he is, don’t you?”

       I stared at her. I must have imagined what she said then. Or maybe our dreams touched briefly once, on one of our nights on the run.

       “He’s the Black Man. “

       Reynaud. Like a bad card. Again and again. Laughter in the wings.

       Long after I had put Anouk to bed I read my mother’s cards for the first time since her death. I keep them in a sandalwood box and they are mellow, perfumed with memories of her. For a moment I almost put them away unread, bewildered by the flood of associations that scent brings with it. New York, hotdog stands billowing steam. The Cafe de la Paix, with its immaculate waiters. A nun eating an ice-cream outside Notre-Dame cathedral. Onenight hotel rooms, surly doormen, suspicious gendarmes, curious tourists. And over it all the shadow of It, the nameless implacable thing we fled: I am not my mother. I am not a fugitive. And yet the need to see, to know; is so great that I find myself taking them from their box and spreading them, much as she did, by the side of the bed. A glance backwards to ensure Anouk is still, asleep. I do not want her to sense my unease. Then I shuffle, cut, shuffle, cut until I have four cards.

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

       The cards are my mother’s. This has nothing to do with me, I tell myself, though the Hermit is easy enough to identify. But the Tower? The Chariot? Death? The Death card, says my mother’s voice within me, may not always portend the physical death of the self but the death of a way of life. A change. A turning of the winds. Could this be what it means? I don’t believe in divination. Not in the way she did, as a way of mapping out the random patterns of our trajectory. Not as an excuse for inaction, a crutch when things turn from bad to worse, a rationalization of the chaos within. I hear her voice now and it sounds the same to me as it did on the ship, her strength transformed to sheer stubbornness, her humour into a fey despair.