The Discovery of Chocolate (20 page)

He was panting heavily and his eyes had lost their lustre. How could he possibly race again? He needed rest and looked to me for aid.

But Mr Green was insistent.

‘I’ve put five pounds on him,’ he said. ‘You could move into credit if he wins again.’

‘I do not think he has the stamina,’ I replied.

‘Nonsense,’ said Mr Green.

‘Look. He’s so weary.’

‘How old is your dog?’ asked the American.

‘I do not know,’ I replied, truthfully.

‘We must have him in the race,’ said Mr Green. ‘He has top billing, and the money’s pouring in.’

‘Do I have to?’ I asked.

‘Yes, if you want to avoid the debtors’ prison.’

My head was filled with confusion but it seemed that the only chance of redemption lay in placing Pedro in the traps once more.

His life too was doomed to repeat itself. The traps were lifted, the crowd roared, and the dogs raced away.

Pedro was hemmed in at the first bend. By the second they had bunched so tightly that it was hard to tell which greyhound was which and Pedro was straining every sinew, head to head with Sammy’s Day. Neck and neck, stride for stride, breath for breath, the pair raced towards the finishing line; it was impossible to tell which dog might win, so desperate were they both to gain the prize. At times Sammy’s Day edged ahead, his head low, mean, and determined, but as they neared the final bend, Pedro leaned to his left, taking the inside as sharply as he could, breathing hard and accelerating away. And, as they approached the finishing line, Pedro, with one last supercanine effort, seemed to take off and leave this earth. His whole body stretched and lurched, as if it had never been so long,
leaping over the line as if his body might never land, on towards the disappearing hare.

The crowd were wild with excitement, cheering Pedro’s achievements, and he stretched his legs as if he could run for ever. I truly believe that no one had ever seen a dog run so fast or stride so bravely, but, as Pedro rounded the track once more, bemused by the disappearance of the false rabbit, and as if engaged in a strange lap of honour, a sharp pain took hold of his being.

Desperate to continue, but unable to do so, he bravely ran for fifteen or sixteen more strides until finally, as if there were no more breath in his lungs, he lay down on his side, gasping, not only for air, but for life itself.

I was filled with terror.

Pushing my way through the heaving crowd, I raced across the track and threw myself against his frail body.

‘Pedro,’ I cried.

The crowd jostled around me.

‘Let me alone,’ I cried, looking down at the panting form beneath me. ‘Leave me alone with my dog.’

The American offered Pedro some chocolate, as if it were some kind of divine restorative.

Pedro licked it uncertainly, looking up at me for guidance, unsure that he could trust an act of such generosity. He seemed like a seven-year-old child in all his love and faith in me.

‘I’m very sorry,’ the American was saying. ‘He gave you his all.’

I spoke as if in a dream.

‘He was my only friend. He was all I had in the world.’

‘I know.’

I cradled Pedro in my lap. The American stroked his head.

‘It seems that I have known him all my life …’

‘I know … I know …’ The man leaned forward and kissed Pedro on the head. ‘But it’s time to let him go.’

There was nothing I could do but wait for Pedro’s breathing to cease. He looked up at me as if offering an infinite sense of forgiveness. Exhausted by life, perhaps now, at last, he had found comfort in death, and was ready to take his leave.

This was surely the beginning of the end for us both.

And then.

At last.

It was over.

I stood up, cradling Pedro in my arms, never having known such emptiness. Looking up at the dusky sky I wanted to howl with grief. I no longer knew where I was or what I was doing, and was possessed with blankness, as if I had lived a thousand years in which not a day had counted or made a difference. A wall of isolation wrapped itself around me. The crowd seemed to part, and I left the stadium, alone, with the only friend who had stayed with me across the centuries, as if he were the child I had never had.

I walked onto the Bristol downs and dug Pedro’s grave, making it as deep and as wide and as soft as I could. It was so hard to lift him and to hold him; he had never liked being carried, and now that I had his lifeless body in my arms, I could understand why he had resisted such dependency for so long.

Climbing down into the grave, I could not bear to place him in it, cover him with earth and leave him there. He felt so cold against my hands.

I recalled all the times we had shared. I remembered how we had lain side by side at Ignacia’s grave, unable to move. It seemed so distant a memory now; so much had crowded in upon our lives since that terrible discovery. Yet these two deaths now united to form one distinct feeling of loss, an intolerable absence of love.

I stood over Pedro’s grave and began to weep.

My life was bereft.

This, then, was mourning.

It was unbearable.

I decided that I could no longer stay in the city, for everywhere reminded me of the former happy times I had shared with Pedro.

Taking my leave of Mr Fry, and having been relieved of my debts to Mr Green, I boarded a railway train for London. There I thought that I might forsake all adventure and try my hand at the serious and sober profession of banking.

It was the seventh of May nineteen hundred and six.

Imagine my amazement, therefore, when I found myself seated on the train opposite the American who had shared my misery on the racetrack.

‘Sir,’ I said, ‘I am delighted to see you again.’

‘The pleasure is mine; although I am sorry to see that the marks of sorrow still lie heavily upon you.’

‘They do, but the sight of you enables me to ease my
pain, though I doubt it will ever disappear. What brings you to this train?’

‘I have business to attend to in London before my return to the United States.’

I knew that it was considered impolite to ask a man about his business and could think of nothing more to say. We sat in silence as the green of the English countryside passed before our eyes.

‘You know,’ the man said, ‘I owe you a great debt.’

‘I have no creditors,’ I said.

‘I mean, a debt of ideas …’

‘I think you must be mistaken.’

‘Indeed, sir, I am not.’

Although the man had a cheerful face he seemed reluctant, almost nervous, to continue our conversation.

‘I see you do not wish me to speak,’ he said. ‘I must leave you to your grief.’

‘No,’ I said quickly, ‘pray stay. I want for company and have always been afraid to be alone.’

‘We are all alone,’ he said sombrely. ‘We must have fortitude.’

I thought of asking him if he was a Quaker, but stopped myself, weary now of moral debate.

‘There is something that I must tell you,’ the American continued.

My attention lurched back into the present.

‘Something for which I must seek your permission,’ he was saying.

‘And what is it? Ask any favour, and if it lies within my power I will gladly give it, for I will always remember your act of kindness to my dog.’

‘It is your dog about which I need to speak with you.’

He reached into his pocket and placed a small lump of chocolate on the table.

‘This is chocolate from the bar I gave to your dog when he was dying. Look at it,’ he continued.

I was suddenly reminded of the mould of chocolate I had taken from Claudia’s nipple.

‘It has a strange shape,’ I said tactfully.

‘It marks the last lick of your dog.’

‘So it does.’

‘I think it should be preserved,’ he said.

‘How?’

‘I will make chocolate in that shape.’

‘You make chocolates?’

‘Indeed I do, sir, and I know you to be an employee of Mr Fry and a connoisseur of such matters. I confess that I have followed you for the past few days, learned of your plans, and wish to offer you employment in my company.’

‘This comes at a rush, sir,’ I replied. ‘Are you serious in your proposition?’

‘Never more so. Sooner or later there is likely to be a war in Europe and it is important that you, as a foreigner, leave England. Come and join me in my factory.’

‘And you will make chocolates in this shape?’ I asked.

‘The memory of Pedro will be preserved for ever. I will make the finest chocolate drops that have ever been made, solid at the base and rising to the narrowest of peaks.’

‘Then, sir, I will always be grateful to you. Please, make this chocolate. Your tender-heartedness to my dog will rest long in my memory. The stroke of your hand, that final kiss.’

‘A kiss,’ the American said quietly.

And then, as the train headed towards London, we gradually told each other the story of our lives.

My new companion lived in a large Pennsylvania town dedicated to chocolate. He possessed twelve hundred acres of dairy farm, and I was to be housed and fed according to my status. He then gave me a letter to provide to the immigration authorities and informed me that if I should take the
Mauretania
the following month he would be pleased to organise my future employment. I would work in his factory and be happy at last, for it was in labour, he believed, that the true definition of a man’s purpose and identity lay.

Although I was delighted to secure employment, it seemed too good to be true. I had learned to distrust such hopes, for it still seemed that whatever promises, allurements, and kindness might fall my way in this uncertain and lengthy life, traps, delusions, and false enticements still lay forever in my path.

Having passed through London I walked along the coast at Tilbury, where I thought once more upon my future. Heavy clouds formed around the weak glow of the setting sun, and a thick mist began to roll in from the sea as it met the River Thames.

I picked up a few shells, and reflected again on the length of my life, its slowness paced against the accelerating mortality of my friends.

If my life was a river, I thought, then my past must lie all upstream, rolling out to be lost in the sea. But the tide was on the turn. The Thames was full of whirlpools, eddies and strange currents, as though the future of the sea was
meeting the river of the past. Caught in that exact point of the turning tide, it then seemed that everything was held together in one conflicting moment, and that nothing in my life was simply past, present, or future. It was all one continual watershed.

A comet blazed in the distance.

Would I still be alive when it visited the earth again?

A
fter paying six pounds to travel in the steerage section of the
Mauretania
, I found myself sharing a cabin at the front of the ship with five boisterous men who smoked and spat profusely. This was far from ideal, and over the next few days I tried to avoid them wherever possible, making a lonely and secret trespass onto the higher decks.

The boat was a floating city, weighing some thirty-three thousand tons, and had become home to over two thousand passengers and eight hundred crew. There was a ballroom, a swimming pool, restaurants, promenades, and an Italian smoking room, all spread out over five decks, linked by a grand staircase.

It could not help but remind me of when I had first crossed the Atlantic, missing Isabella, sailing for over a month, fearful of my future and infatuated by my desire. How small such concerns seemed now, how distant those dreams. Did that past really belong to me? Did such memories have any meaning? I had spent so much time in a distracted state that I wondered again if I had perhaps been absent from my own life.

The journey lasted seven days. I managed to avoid the
temptation to gamble on the lower decks, and ventured frequently on the promenade, where I heard myself described as ‘the man who walks alone’.

There were so many people: gentlemen playing quoits; children swimming in the pool; yet more ladies with small dogs.

One morning I stood for hours watching a boy flying a kite over the sea.

It seemed so simple and so timeless.

I thought of the sounds of the words
kite
in English, and
Ewigkeit
in German: eternity.

On the very last evening, as I watched the richer diners proceed towards the grandest of the restaurants, anticipating their Chantilly soup, braised oxtail, or galantine of capon, I chanced upon two women who had observed my evening
paseo
. They were clearly intrigued by my demeanour.

‘Are you lost?’ the taller of the two inquired.

‘In life, or on this ship?’ I asked abstractedly.

‘Either,’ answered the taller.

‘Or both,’ said the smaller. ‘You look so alone.’

‘I was seeking a place of quiet and solitude …’

‘Well then, we must not disturb you …’

‘No, no, I would be glad of your company,’ I replied hastily.

The women had a comforting aura of kindness about them.

‘Then please join us for dinner. You have a detached but inviting air,’ insisted the taller woman.

‘I am not sure if I am permitted to join you.’

‘Nonsense,’ the smaller woman insisted. ‘We shall dine
with whom we please. And it pleases us’ – she fixed me sternly with her gaze – ‘to dine with you.’

‘Very well,’ I replied. ‘I would be delighted.’

The ladies could not have been. more different. The tall, willowy woman wore an exotic oriental dress and a cloche hat pulled low over her forehead. The smaller had her hair cut short and wore a long kimono with a heavy Chinese chain of lapis lazuli.

‘We are Miss Toklas, and Miss Stein,’ said the shorter woman. ‘Or Pussy and Lovey as we call each other.’

‘Although you may not do so,’ said the thin woman, whom I took to be Miss Toklas.

‘I am delighted to make your acquaintance,’ I replied as the waiter pushed in my chair.

We ordered the food and the women took great delight in the array of miniature mushroom tartlets, herrings in oatmeal, and caviar blinis on offer.

‘Very munctious,’ said Miss Stein.

‘This will be quite delicious,’ observed Miss Toklas.

‘Pussy collects menus. She is the most wonderful cook, aren’t you, my cherub? Lovely hard-boiled eggs with whipped cream, truffles, and Madeira wine. Chicken liver omelettes with six eggs and cognac. It’s all extremely goody.’

‘Don’t go on, fattuski,’ Miss Toklas replied.

‘I am also Mount Fattie,’ said Miss Stein. ‘That is what she calls me. And Alice is my lobster wifie.’

‘I will tell no one,’ I said, and smiled.

‘You do not seem happy,’ Miss Stein observed, laying out her napkin as if her remark was the most natural thing in the world.

‘I live a restless life,’ I replied.

‘Have you ever felt love?’

‘You ask very personal questions, Madame.’

‘They are the only ones that are interesting.’

‘Then I will try to answer them.’

‘Pray tell.’

‘It was a long time ago.’

‘And you were happy?’

‘I think that I can truly say that I was.’

‘Then you must go back. Go back to when you were last happy and start again.’

‘I am not sure if I can.’

‘Time moves on and people say that we should live in the moment, but I believe we can only define ourselves through love.’

I groaned. Yet another person was telling me to find happiness in love and work. If only it were that simple.

‘Mortality is nothing if it cannot stand the wear and tear of real desire,’ Miss Stein pronounced.

‘It is terrible to think of it,’ I shuddered.

‘Have you ever stopped thinking long enough to feel?’ asked Miss Toklas.

‘Someone to love is something to live for,’ said Miss Stein.

It was clear that these women were determined to proceed to the heart of things and that I could not escape their beady questions with mere politeness.

The main course was served.

I had chosen wood pigeon with chestnuts and cabbage; Miss Toklas ate a rabbit pie, while Miss Stein began her lobster with beurre blanc.

And gradually, as the meal progressed, I felt an extraordinary
calm fall upon me. It was similar to the slow enjoyment of chocolate, so smoothly and unexpectedly did this peace descend. I suddenly realised that I could trust these women with my life; they had such a likeness for loving. And so when they asked to hear my story for the second time, I felt that I could not refuse them.

It took an hour to tell. Others might have thought that the longer I spoke the more certifiable I must be, but these women listened attentively and with compassion throughout.

‘A sad tale’s best for winter,’ said Miss Stein when I had finished my story.

‘And yet I feel my life will never end,’ I said, quietly.

‘I am sorry to say this, but the solution is simple,’ argued Miss Toklas. ‘You must either kill yourself or return to where you will find love.’

‘I have tried both,’ I said sadly.

‘It seems that you live in a continuous present, and that your life is a hymn of repetition, endlessly encircling itself,’ observed Miss Stein. ‘Repetition. Repetition.’ Her thoughts seemed to drift. ‘We are condemned to repeat our lives and our mistakes until we improve ourselves.’

‘All that I have improved is chocolate.’

‘Yet that is no small thing.’

Miss Toklas looked at me sternly.

‘And how have you improved it? By loving it. By caring for it. You must do the same with life.’

‘Even when it wearies me?’

‘It is then that you must care for it most,’ concluded Miss Toklas.

‘Remember the volcano that you climbed in Mexico,’
said Miss Stein. ‘It seemed dead. Hollow. Exhausted. You mounted its sides. You saw the great city before you. It may have been destroyed but now it stands there again. The volcano can erupt at any moment; it can burst into life. Rekindle the flames. Erupt again. You have been dormant too long.’

She clasped my hand tightly, with a desperate urgency.

‘I see its dark gold. Feel the heat Be the volcano. Explode into being.’

The waiter was watching us.

‘Would you like dessert?’ he asked. ‘We have an excellent chocolate mousse.’

‘How do you make such a thing?’ I asked.

‘Alice makes a very good whip, with eggs, butter, chocolate, icing sugar, cream and Cointreau,’ proclaimed Miss Stein quickly, as if the intensity of our conversation had been but a moment.

‘Ours are made with the addition of coffee, and are so light and creamy that they melt in the mouth,’ the waiter pronounced in return.

‘And how do you adorn them?’ asked Miss Toklas suspiciously.

The waiter would not be outmanoeuvred.

‘They are decorated with rosettes of whipped cream and chocolate leaves.’

The women smiled at me, as if enjoying this culinary competition, and I felt, for once in my life, that I actually belonged to a new family.

‘Do you prefer whisky or Armagnac in a chocolate mousse?’ I asked.

‘Both must be at least ten years old, but I prefer the
Armagnac,’ the waiter observed solemnly. ‘Although sometimes we add banana and rum.’

‘The secret lies in the way you whisk the egg whites,’ observed Miss Toklas.

‘I agree entirely,’ I broke in. ‘The mountain peaks must be light and fluffy but contain a serious and aerated body.’

‘But I think my favourite,’ continued Miss Toklas, ‘is a chocolate mousse with passion fruit sauce and raspberry cream.’

‘I don’t know,’ said Miss Stein, sinking back into her chair. ‘A mousse is a mousse is a mousse.’

I looked at the rose on the table between us and said nothing.

Suddenly Miss Stein reached out, clasped my hand and stared into my eyes.

‘Say you love. Love what you love. Live with what you love.’

I did not know what to say in response.

‘We are tired,’ Miss Toklas told the waiter. ‘We will take coffee in our room.’

The waiter bowed and withdrew.

‘I must leave you,’ I said reluctantly.

I was to be alone once more.

‘What a pleasure it has been.’ Miss Toklas held out her hand for me to kiss.

‘I will never forget you,’ I said, and indeed it was true. I think that I had never seen such love between two people.

‘Repeat, repeat,’ said Miss Stein. ‘Go back, go back.’

I leaned forward to kiss her, but she waved me away. ‘Back you must go. Back to when you last found happiness. Back to Mexico.’

I rose from the table, and walked past the remaining diners, clutching their brandies and their ports against their terrors and their fears.

As I reached the door, I turned to look back at the small wise woman and her ethereal companion for one last time.

‘Thank you,’ I said simply.

Miss Stein smiled, and said sadly: ‘Love if you love. Live if you love. Love if you live.’

The
Mauretania
sailed into New York Harbor the following evening. Crowds of immigrants surged forward on the decks to have their first glimpse of the towering architecture before them: so much brick, iron and steel, and all so bold, magisterial and brave. Whereas I had previously found the natural terrain of mountain and sierra both humbling and daunting, it amazed me that humanity had found a means of competing with the environment, challenging its grandeur with an ambition of its own. It was as if a new scale of life had been invented, in which buildings would rise higher and higher and humankind would unwittingly, and at the very pinnacle of its achievement, make itself increasingly insignificant, dwarfed by its own creation.

We now sailed through a flotilla of small boats selling fresh water, poultry, bananas and rum, as the passengers on board set their sights on the land ahead, issuing great cries of
‘Statua Liberta, Statua Liberta’
. It was the fourth of July and fireworks lit up the night sky, filling the air with hope and expectation. Those like me who had travelled in steerage were now taken on a ferry to Ellis Island where we
were shown into a dark and cavernous building and ordered to line up for inspection.

It was a humiliating experience. Men and women were separated, families were dispersed, and the wait seemed interminable. The hall smelled of sickness. Children and adults alike began to sob with fear and anxiety, or looked bleakly across dark hallways, trapped in limbo between arrival and departure.

Guards asked us to strip and our clothes were removed for fumigation. Some people had letters of the alphabet chalked on their bodies if it was suspected that they had a poor heart, a hernia, a sexual infection or a mental illness. After I had taken a shower and been given a name-tag, my eyes were checked for cataracts, conjunctivitis and trachoma; my private parts were scrutinised for any signs of sexually transmitted disease, and my chest was inspected with a cold stethoscope, the doctor tapping away like a woodpecker.

Despite all my adventures it seemed that I had no more control of my destiny than when my travels had first begun. For I, Diego de Godoy, notary to the Emperor Charles V, who had first crossed the Atlantic as a glamorous conquistador, was now reduced to the status of immigrant worker waiting in line for an interview.

This proved to be a difficult encounter, for although the letter from my benefactor clearly put me at an advantage, the officials questioned why a Spaniard nearing retirement age (I think they took me to be a man of some fifty-six years old) should be indispensable to such a large organisation.