The Discovery of Chocolate (9 page)

‘I do not know what you mean,’ I answered in all truthfulness, but again she tightened her grip.

‘I have kept silent all this while, but now that such trouble has befallen us all, I will not let you go unless you tell me the secret. You must have drunk the true elixir. And your dog too,’ she added peremptorily as she kicked Pedro away from me.

It was then that I realised what she was talking about.

Perhaps because I was slow in the way I lived my life I must also be slow in thought. It had taken me all this time to understand what had happened.

Ignacia’s drink.

She had given me a liquid that could slow, or even halt, the process of ageing.

‘Well?’

I rocked my head to indicate that I could not speak, and at last Doña María lessened her grip. I gasped violently. What could I do? Even if I told no more than the truth, I knew that this woman, a vile poisoner whose advances I had spurned when I first came to the town, would never believe me.

‘A friend gave it to me long ago,’ I answered at last, my voice full of fear. ‘I do not know the recipe.’

Doña María pulled out a knife and held it at my throat. It was clear that I would either have to summon up a last reserve of strength, or deceive the woman by creating a false elixir and then run from the city with all possible speed.

‘Don’t lie to me,’ she hissed. ‘Our fathers perfected the art of slowing the pace of life. You know that you could live for a thousand years.’

‘What?’

‘I said a thousand years. Now tell me the recipe …’

‘I do not have it.’

‘Tell me, you bastard.’

At this point, and I do not know now why Providence should have aided me in such a fashion, the soldiers of the town arrived at the door below, and banged at it furiously, demanding that they speak with me immediately.

Four men strode manfully into the room. I turned my head as far as I could and saw that they had stopped in astonishment. Apologising for their interruption, thinking that Doña María and I were at the point of climax in a strange sexual love-game of lust and depravity, the soldiers told me that I was to be expelled from the town. Because I was well known for my chocolate sorcery, I must be, in part, responsible for the death of the Bishop.

Not knowing which was the greater of the dangers in which I found myself, I informed the soldiers that the tragic incidents in the town were not of my making, and that I had scarcely even met the Bishop.

But the soldiers were adamant, pulling Doña María away
from me, and hauling me before them. It was clear that since I had brought the recipe for death by chocolate into the town, I must now leave with it forthwith.

‘Take it,’ one cried, ‘take your vile drink away from this place so that we might never see it again.’

Another told me that although his wife had promised him that one sip of my chocolate would change his life and cure his boils, he had felt nothing. I was, according to him, nothing more than a quack, a false apothecary, a mountebank.

I explained that I had never made any great claims for my recipe, and had only been trying to bring a little pleasure into the world, but the soldiers were adamant.

I was to leave the city immediately.

They escorted both Pedro and myself to the town gate, and told me never to return, even if I lived to be a hundred years old.

Resisting the temptation to make a sardonic reply, I decided that silence, and an extremely speedy escape, would surely be the best course of action.

My life had been spared.

But what were we to do? My head was filled with unanswered questions. Had Ignacia really provided us with the elixir of life? Or was this simply a drug that made our lives far slower than those of any other mortal? Why had she not partaken of the drink herself? And how or why had she died, leaving me with Pedro to travel in solitude, without love, across the lonely desert of the future?

We had been cast into an endless drift across the chaos
of history. And if we were to live far longer than any person we might meet, with no one to share our fate, then we were surely destined to a life of loss and disappointment, constantly bidding farewell to all those we loved, unable to share the rhythm of their lives.

Was this to be a living death?

And then I wondered if the drink was not so much an elixir as a kind of sleeping draught, and that I was immersed in a dream from which I could not wake. How could I tell that everything that had happened to me had truly occurred?

Filled with such confusion, and uncertain as to where to go or what to do, we at last made our way to the coast and boarded
La Princesa
, a two-decker Spanish galleon that would take us back to Seville.

Perhaps if I returned home, life might revert to normal.

Once on board Pedro and I spent much of our time below decks in contemplation of our fate.

Around us, the Atlantic raged.

In the eye of a fierce storm, I clung to the sides of my bunk, as if its confined wooden space was already my coffin. Pedro tried to sleep by my side, but was too frightened by the unpredictability of the raging seas around us, and fell, like me, into something of a fever. Unclear whether it was night or day, and troubled again by confusion as to whether I lived or merely dreamed, my brain teemed with anxiety. I thought of Ignacia again, running through the fiery corridors of a labyrinth, unable to escape, impossible to rescue. The heat intensified through my dream, and the air was pierced by strange cries and distant gunfire. Then, as Ignacia disappeared down a long avenue of flames, my bed
shuddered violently, and tilted desperately to starboard under the weight of a terrible blast of explosive fire.

We were under attack.

Taking Pedro under my arm, I raced onto the fore-deck to see a French ship of some hundred and ten guns approaching us under fighting sail. The gale in which we found ourselves made both ships plunge heavily, but the French had begun by attacking our masts and rigging so that we were unable to manoeuvre. It was almost impossible to defend ourselves as the ship listed in the gale. Water began to flood the lower deck through the open gun ports, and it was clear that we might capsize at any moment. Our fore and main masts were carried away. Lines jerked and fell loose, yards hung in the slings, and canvas flew. All I could see before me was a chaos of canvas, cordage and broken spars. The air was alive with the crack of battle and the despairing cries of men engaged in a valiant struggle to conquer and survive.

Our crew were desperate to keep their gunpowder dry but, at half past three in the afternoon, the arms chest blew up in our faces and set light to the quarterdeck. Fire raced towards us, and men frantically poured water onto the raging flames. The lower parts of our heeled decks were awash, the gun crews wading waist deep in water as the ship rose and fell with the waves, a doomed wreck of flood and fire.

The French now turned to attack the body of
La Princesa
rather than its rigging, bombarding us with fierce broadsides. Whole pieces of plank flew off the ship and the French, having gained the higher water, rained so much fire down upon us that our starboard side was pierced like
a colander. The captain and some nine other sailors were killed, and although the fighting continued until darkness fell, it was clear that we could not possibly survive this great blaze and wash of battle.

The storm and conflict subsided with the oncoming night but our ship was a shattered wreck. Dismasted and disheartened, we had no choice but to surrender. As a pale grey dawn broke slowly across the sky, a boarding party arrived from the enemy, not so much to claim our ship as to rescue survivors.

The French captain informed us that this was ‘
fortune de guerre
’. We were his prisoners, and we were to return with him to France by the powers invested in him by his King Louis XVI.

I was taken aboard their ship, with Pedro clinging to me for dear life. The French sailors laughed at us uproariously, pointing at my fashionable garments with great mirth, jeering at our humiliation.

Fear struck at my heart.

On inquiring as to the year of the Lord in which we now found ourselves, I was informed, to my great amazement, that it was seventeen hundred and eighty-eight.

I stopped as if in a stupor. I could not believe that both Pedro and I had slipped out of time once more. How could we be nearly three hundred years old?

Perhaps this, too, was a dream from which I could not wake? Or perhaps I was persistently involved in one dream, with other dreams within it, like a succession of wooden dolls, each tightly encased, one within another? For there seemed to be no escape from the nightmare that was my existence, no anchor to steady the ship of my being, and
the memories of my former life seemed as fragile as the fragments of our wrecked galleon.

The winter journey across the Atlantic was long and arduous, and did nothing to aid my sanity.

On arrival at the frozen port of Honfleur I was taken to Paris. The sailors who held me captive did not know what to do with me, arguing amongst themselves that they would never achieve a good price, for who would want to take, even as a prisoner or slave, such a deranged Spaniard and such an unappealing dog?

I could do nothing to convince them otherwise and, indeed, it often seemed that the more I tried to explain myself the worse the resulting situation became. There was certainly no persuading them that I was sane, and I only regretted that they could not change their mind about Pedro who had proved himself to be the most noble, the most reliable, and the most loving of companions.

At last it was resolved that until clear orders were received from the Admiralty there was little choice but to keep me in an institution until my fate was decided.

And that is how I found myself in the Bastille.

E
ight round towers, some seventy feet high, with walls as much as five feet thick, now loomed above me. The portcullis was raised and guards searched me from head to foot. I was made to change into an ill-fitting pair of trousers, a long shirt and a large hooded dressing gown with a ludicrous cap. Although I knew for certain that I was not insane, I certainly looked so now.

The Governor, Bernard-René de Launay, a kindly man, allowed me to keep Pedro in my cell, and entered both our names into the Bastille register. A small, red-faced turnkey called Lossinote then led us to a room high in the Corner Tower.

The prison was, in truth, a dark and terrifying dungeon, filled with all manner of weapons of destruction. Climbing the narrow stairway, we passed a vast armoury in which were stored some two hundred and fifty barrels of powder. Pikes and axes hung on the walls and the prison reeked of dankness and disease. Each step we took through the gloomy building made me realise how impossible it must be to escape, and how crazed the prisoners must be.

My cell was octagonal in structure, perhaps twenty feet
wide, and rose to a vaulted and plastered ceiling. A high triple-barrelled window was the single source of light. The only furniture was a folding table, three cane chairs held together by a few remaining strings, and two aged mattresses.

‘How long will we be here?’ I asked.

‘No one ever knows the answer to that question,’ Lossinote replied mysteriously.

My bed was crawling with mites, my shirt itched with lice, and the gruel they provided for my evening repast was inedible. Pedro lay exhausted on the cold floor, and we fell into further despair.

It was several months before I discovered that each prisoner was entitled to a weekly allowance and could make certain requests. After placing Pedro’s needs first, acquiring a blanket, grooming comb, and dog bowl, I asked for a decent supply of clothes: twelve shirts, ten handkerchiefs, two coats, a double-breasted waistcoat, tight satin breeches, silk stockings, shoes, and even, at last, a peruke, which I hoped might make me seem more French.

Unfortunately, this was not a success and I decided it would be better to keep my hair long and dark in the Spanish style to which I was accustomed. But I was determined that I would no longer look like a clown, and shaved off my beard, taking pains with my appearance (there was so little else to do), and keeping myself and my dog as clean and as well groomed as we could possibly be.

It then occurred to me that the linen that had been supplied could be put to good use, and I began to unpick sections of my shirts, sheets and blankets, thread by thread, in order to construct a home-made ladder with which we
might plan our escape. I thanked God that I had spent so much time on ropes, ratlines, lanyards and dead-eyes during my first sea voyage, and I remembered, with fondness and regret, my friends and colleagues from those times: Cortés and Doña Marina, Montezuma and, of course, my beloved Ignacia. It seemed so long ago, but I knew that without memory I could have no real existence. These events had defined my life, and I must not forget them if I was to retain my sanity.

And yet, as I threaded and wove my way towards what I hoped would be my freedom, it was impossible not to feel inexpressibly lonely. I was cut off from my past, and uncertain of my future. My days were enlivened only by the perambulations in which I was allowed to exercise Pedro and by the opportunity to share meals, once a week, with any fellow inmate whom, it was felt, would benefit by my company.

It soon became apparent that none of the prisoners had actually committed any serious crime. There was a man who had been arrested for forging lottery tickets, and another who had been taken for a madman after he had tried to bottle clouds; there was a third with a feverish voice who claimed that he knew the location of a secret treasure but had refused to tell where it was; and there was a priest who had done nothing more than impregnate the daughter of a count. The only man I spoke to frequently was the oldest person I had ever seen, a Major Whyte. Nobody knew how long he had been in the prison. He could not remember himself and was even more detached from his past than I was myself, believing that he was Julius Caesar. The whiteness of his hair and the length of his beard amazed me. If this indeed was extreme old age, a mixture of infirmity,
delusion and amnesia, then perhaps I was fortunate in delaying its arrival for so long.

Yet there was also another person in the Bastille, a gentleman, who kept himself both solitary and aloof. I would see him between the hours of noon and one, a mysterious figure with sombre gait, walking on the ramparts, silhouetted against the sky. He was overweight and elderly, perhaps five feet and six inches tall, with a high forehead and an aquiline nose. His hair was powdered and coiffed, and he was dressed in a blue overcoat with a red collar and silver buttons. He was closely followed by a man whom I was later informed was his servant, Mérigot; employed, I was told, because the elderly gentleman had now grown so fat that he was unable to change even his shirt without assistance.

My gaolers told me that I should be advised to avoid all conversation since the gentleman was almost as mad as I was myself. Such a warning did not, however, concern me, since it was clear that if we were not mad when we entered this prison, we were certainly made so inside it, and that if I avoided lunacy altogether there would be no one to speak to at all. At times the gentleman looked up in my direction, as if I might be a distant friend or relative that he was attempting to recognise, but then turned his attention away, seeming to gaze far beyond me, into the distance, as if he had been touched by some great thought.

This made me all the more determined to speak with him, and I ventured to create an opportunity by which our paths might cross. Only after some three months could this be achieved when we met on a narrow stretch of the ramparts, unable to pass each other without at least some small exchange of words.

‘Sir,’ said the corpulent figure, stopping before me. ‘I admire your greyhound.’

‘He is my sole companion,’ I replied.

‘Although I prefer a setter or a spaniel myself.’

‘He was given to me a long time ago.’

‘He has a lean head and a spirited eye. What is his name?’

‘Pedro.’

The man began to circle round us, and my greyhound followed his movements with suspicion.

‘He has a strong well-coupled back, muscular thighs and a deep brisket. There is good length from hip to hock, and his feet look tight. His tail is like the lash of a hunting crop. He must cover good ground …’

‘He does.’

‘And I imagine he has plenty of stamina.’

No one had admired Pedro with such an appraising eye before, and I was pleased that this fine gentleman was taking such an interest in him.

‘You are Spanish,’ observed the man.

‘I am …’

‘Yet you speak excellent French …’

‘I have, it seems, a talent for languages.’

‘I have always maintained that the best way to learn a foreign language is to have an affair with a woman twice your age.’

I was startled by the boldness of his observation, but he spoke as if every phrase could not be doubted and as if each statement was an order to be obeyed.

‘You must visit me in my chambers.’

‘You are allowed visitors?’

‘I have guests among the inmates, and I am allowed certain foods. My wife brings me pâtés, hams and fruit preserves. I cannot abide the vomit that they provide here. Messengers come with almond paste, jellied quince and kumquats, cakes, spices and soaps. I want for nothing but company and freedom.’

‘I thought this was a prison,’ I observed, failing to understand how this most sombre of institutions could be the pit of hell for so many of its inhabitants and yet a visiting hotel for others.

‘It is.’

‘And you can eat whatever you choose?’

‘Whatever my wife brings me. There is only one thing I lack.’

‘And what is that?’

‘Chocolate. I have a most particular desire; and yet it is denied me as a punishment.’

‘On what grounds?’

‘Recalcitrance. Are you permitted such a thing?’

‘I do not know what I am allowed. I am told nothing.’

‘Then you must tell them. A man should not be made to suffer without understanding why. This is not the Spanish Inquisition.’

‘Indeed not.’

He eyed me beadily, but I kept my counsel, saying: ‘The guards have told me that these are difficult times for food of quality. There have been riots over bread …’

‘The people in the streets are restless. They shout for bread, yet it lies piled in Saint-Lazare. There is plenty if you know where to seek it. I have excellent connections, and can assure you, Monsieur, that the times are not so difficult
as to deny us chocolate. Perhaps you could ask for some in my place.’

‘I will try to do so.’

‘You know about chocolate?’

‘I do, my Lord.’

I hesitated.

No.

It was too ridiculous to begin my story.

‘And what is your favourite method of taking chocolate?’

‘It is as a drink, combining chocolate, cinnamon and vanilla.’

‘Vanilla?’ He smiled secretively. ‘I am very fond of vanilla. It can be put to excellent use. Yet have you not tasted a violet chocolate cream, a chocolate mixed with the petals of roses, or even a pastille?’

‘I have not …’

‘Then how can you have lived?’

‘I have spent many years travelling …’

‘And what have you done for money?’

‘I have taught Latin. I have worked as a notary and as a scribe. And I have even cooked …’

‘A cook?’ He stopped, suddenly excited. ‘Then you must come to my rooms as soon as possible. We will make chocolate together. Ask the gaolers to go to Monsieur Debauve in Rue des Saints-Pères; he is the purveyor of chocolate to the King.’

‘They think I am insane.’

‘But no more insane than the other inhabitants. Come with your dog, and come with chocolate. What is your daily allowance?’

‘Nine
livres
.’

‘That is ample. Monsieur Debauve has an excellent breakfast chocolate. He also sells a chocolate flavoured with salep for the fortification of muscle, an anti-spasmodic chocolate with orange blossom, and an almond-milk chocolate for the irritable. We shall need them all.’ The man was suddenly both animated and beneficent, as if the prospect of chocolate had sealed our friendship. ‘I will order the remaining ingredients: cream, syrup, raspberries and, of course, cognac. We shall have a feast, and tell each other the story of our lives; what, pray, is your name and title?’

I paused, but because he thought me to be already mad, such caution was no longer necessary.

‘I am Diego de Godoy, a notary for General Hernán Cortés, servant of the Emperor Charles V.’

The man in the overcoat made a low bow, as if trained in an age of manners now long past. On rising, he looked me in the eye, and said in a low voice, ‘And I am Donatien Alphonse François, Marquis de Sade.’

I returned to my room in a state of exhilaration; here at last was a man of distinction with whom I could converse. How much of life is improved by hope, by the introduction of new friendship, and by new possibilities. I was almost happy.

How long was it since I had last been content?

How quickly the mind can move from joy to despair. As if from nowhere, the memory of Ignacia entered my soul once more. I could not stop thinking about her, but now doubted not only my memory but also my feelings. Perhaps
I had begun to idolise her, just as I had worshipped Isabella. How could I test such emotion?

And what indeed was love? Had I really known it, or was it just a mirage, like everything else in my life? Would I ever understand that which was real, and that which was not? How could I trust anything?

All these questions needed answers, and I began to believe that the Marquis might be able to provide them.

I resolved to bring him chocolate as soon as I was able.

His room was fine indeed, and so opulent was the furniture that I could not believe that we were still in prison. Four family portraits hung on the walls; tapestries, decorated velvet cushions, and cotton fabrics were thrown about the chamber; and soft, clean, quilted mattresses lay in two corners. An open
nécessaire
revealed a lavish assortment of clothes: velvet coats, satin breeches, silk stockings; tricornes, broad-brimmed beaver hats and damask nightgowns; buckled shoes, jack boots, spatterdashes and Hessians. A roquelaure cloak and a surtout were strewn on the chaise longue. Books lay scattered on every surface, and the room was lit by a plentiful supply of candles. The Marquis had even perfumed the air with orange flower water.

‘My humble dwelling …’ He smiled.

Food was laid out all around us; there were fresh marigolds in a vase (he informed me that he received flowers every week) and a bowl of raspberries lay on an antique bureau.

‘You have brought the chocolate?’ he asked.

‘I have.’

‘Then let us drink some first. Mérigot’ – he snapped his fingers – ‘prepare the
chocolatière.
’