The Hundred-Foot Journey (12 page)

“Disgusting,” hissed Uncle Mayur. “Pig eaters.”

And I found myself unable to confess what I was really thinking. That I had seen few things so beautiful. That few things spoke to me so eloquently of the earth and where we come from and where we are heading. How could I tell him, moreover, how could I tell him that I found myself secretly and passionately wanting to be a part of this pig-butchering underworld?

Aiee, Abbas. Guess who book a table? The woman from across the road. Table for two.”

Auntie sat behind the antique desk at the main entrance taking reservations, carefully entering the seating in a black ledger. Papa yelled, “Nah? You hear that, Hassan? The old woman from across street come try our fantastic concoctions.”

And there, clutching the banister, Ammi descending the stairs, so bewildered. Auntie had closed the ledger and was now examining herself in a compact mirror. “Stop looking at yourself, you vain girl,” Ammi screeched. “When does Hassan get married? What do I wear? Who has my tings?”

They brought her down to the kitchen and gave her a simple task—that sometimes helped. Of course, Ammi in the kitchen was all I needed; the kitchen on the opening day was already a chaotic mess. I was terribly nervous and had just thrown handfuls of cubed lamb and okra into pots, squeezed in some lemon, dropped in some star seed and cardamom, cinnamon, and crushed grapefruit. Green peas, too. It was a blur of bubbling vats, spicy fumes, nervous yelling.

Mehtab helped, of course, chopping onions in the corner, but she was always somewhere in between tears and uncontrollable giggles. And Papa was driving me mad, nervously pacing back and forth, past the stove, where bubbling sauces spat so hard they spattered the floor.

“Wah?” said grandmother. “Why am I here? What I doing?”

“It’s all right, Ammi. You’re washing—”

“Doing the washing?”

“No. No. Pears. I want you to wash the pears.”

And then the woolly heads of Arash and Mukhtar appeared between the swinging doors. Little bastards. “Hassan is a girl,” they chanted. “Hassan is a girl.”

“If you little rascals bother your brother again,” Papa yelled, “I’ll make you sleep in the garage tonight.”

Auntie slammed through the doors.

“It’s full! It’s full! We book every table.”

Papa grabbed my shoulders in his big hands and turned me around so I would look into his eyes, eyes brimming with emotion. “Make us proud, Hassan,” he said with a quivering voice. “Remember, you are a Haji.”

“Yes, Papa.”

We were, of course, all thinking of Mother. But there was no time for sentimentality, and I quickly turned back to the pan to sauté vanilla pods with chanterelle mushrooms.

Meanwhile, at Le Saule Pleureur across the street, Madame Mallory stood at her spotless steel kitchen counter examining hors d’oeuvres of pike carpaccio and fricassee of freshwater oysters. Behind her the staff wordlessly, efficiently, prepared the night’s fare with a rat-tat-tatting of knives, the hissing of meat seared under a flame grill, the scraping of steel utensils, and the constant back-and-forth thudding of wooden clogs on tile.

Mallory let nothing out into the dining room without her explicit approval, and she checked that the oysters in front of her were hot with the back of her knuckle, dabbing a spoon into the carpaccio’s truffle-and-asparagus vinaigrette. Not too salty, not too tart. She nodded her approval and dabbed a tea towel in a bowl of water to her side, carefully wiping the fingerprints and slopped sauce from around the plates’ rims.

“Pick up,” she cried, “table six.”

Mallory needed everything to be clear, transparent, controlled. A waiter stood before the board—on which a miniature plan of the dining room tables outside had been re-created—ticking in blue felt-tip under the first course box, table six. This board on the wall allowed Mallory to know, at a glance, precisely who was at what stage of their meal and where.

“Hurry up. The oysters are getting cold.”

“Oui, madame.”

The waiter came around to the other side of Madame Mallory’s steel counter and slid the dishes onto a tray lined with a linen cloth. He settled a silver dome over the steaming oysters, bent his knees, and suddenly it was all up in his arms and out through the swinging doors in one graceful move.

Madame Mallory spiked the order for table six and checked her gold watch. “Jean-Pierre,” she cried over the kitchen din. “Take over. Two orders for duckling. Table eleven.”

Mallory untied her apron, examined her hair in the mirror, and then pushed through the swinging doors. Le Comte de Nancy Selière was taking his usual seat near the bay window. The gourmet banker came from Paris every year at this time, for two weeks. A good customer—always Suite 9 and the full meal plan—and Madame Mallory overcame her shyness to greet him warmly and sincerely as he looked up from the menu.

Mallory instantly had the impression the aristocrat was more wistful than normal, saddened by the turmoil of middle age, but perhaps that was because he usually came to Le Saule Pleureur with a much younger woman. This year the gourmet was alone.

Mallory’s favorite painting, a nineteenth-century oil of the Marseille fish markets, stood to the side of the count, and she discreetly straightened the painting’s light after another guest had brushed against it, knocking it slightly askew as he took his seat. A bread boy in gold buttons and cotton gloves magically appeared at her side, a basket of homemade breads on his shoulder.

“We’ve just created this spinach-and-carrot semolina,” Madame Mallory informed the count, pointing with silver tongs at a two-toned bread roll. “Slightly sweet. Particularly good with tonight’s chilled
terrine de foie gras,
served under a white truffle and port
gelée
.”

“Ah, madame,” said Le Comte de Nancy, a playful smile on his lips. “What painful decisions you force me to make.”

Mallory wished him
bon appétit
and continued across the room, nodding at familiar guests, straightening a drooping stalk in the centerpiece of orchids, stopping briefly to furiously whisper in the ear of the wine steward. The steward’s sleeve was stained with wine and she ordered him to change his tunic.

“Immédiatement,”
she hissed. “I shouldn’t have to tell you this.”

At the front desk, Monsieur Leblanc and his assistant, Sophie, took the coats of arriving clients, weekenders from Paris, and Mallory waited discreetly to the side until Leblanc was free. “Let’s get this over with,” she said. “And you, Sophie. The Satie tape is a fraction too loud. Turn it down. It should be very faint, in the background.”

The night was as black as a
boudin noir,
and the stars, I recall, appeared to me as clots of blood-pudding fat. The owls too-wooed deep in the branches of linden and chestnut, and the birch trunks under the moon stood out like solid bars of silver in the night.

But not so still, our street. The brightly lit windows of the Dufour mansion, the festive chatter of arriving guests, the comforting smell of birch smoke drifting through the night.

Our restaurant was already half-full and cars from all over the region jammed our street when Madame Mallory and Monsieur Leblanc crossed the short distance between our restaurants, wading through the inky night, standing their turn at Maison Mumbai’s door, just behind Monsieur Iten and his family of six.

Papa’s massive silhouette appeared in the light-flooded door frame, his immense bulk squeezed into a raw silk kurta, his bosom and hairy nipples pressed unattractively against the shiny tan material. “Good evening,” he boomed. “Welcome, Monsieur Iten. And your lovely family. My, what beautiful boys you have, Madame Iten. Come, bring the rascals in. We have a wonderful table for you near the garden. My sister will show you.”

Papa stepped forward again once they had passed, to peer down the stone steps at the dimly outlined night shapes. “Aah,” Papa said, finally recognizing Mallory and Leblanc. “Our neighbors. Good evening. Good evening. Come.”

Without another word Papa turned and slowly waddled in his white slippers across the restaurant. “We’re completely booked,” he yelled over the din of the crowded restaurant. They passed the plastic roses, the Air India posters, the trumpeting elephant, and Mallory protectively pulled her shawl tighter over her shoulders.

Papa dropped two plastic menus on a table for two. Suresh Wadkar and Hariharan wailed in Urdu from speakers overhead, and the wall visibly vibrated as the sarangi and
tabla erupted during a particularly passionate passage.

“Very good table,” Papa yelled above the music.

Monsieur Leblanc quickly pulled out Madame Mallory’s chair, hoping to head off an acerbic remark. “Yes, Monsieur Haji, I see,” he said. “Thank you very much. Congratulations on your opening. We wish you great fortune.”

“Thank you. Thank you. You are most welcome.”

Madame Mallory closed her eyes in horror as Papa bellowed, “Zainab,” so loudly across the room it made several of the guests jump in alarm. My seven-year-old sister dutifully came over to Madame Mallory’s table with a clutch of pansies. Zainab wore a simple white dress, and even Madame Mallory had to admit her cinnamon-colored skin looked beautiful in the light, against the clean cotton. Zainab handed Madame Mallory the flowers and shyly looked at the floor. “Welcome to Maison Mumbai,” she said softly.

Papa beamed and Mallory leaned over and patted Zainab’s head, which had been recently oiled with one of Mehtab’s hair tinctures.
“Charmant,”
Mallory said stiffly, wiping her hand under the table on the linen napkin over her knees.

She turned her attention back to Papa. “Help us, Monsieur Haji,” she said, pointing at the menu. “We have little understanding of your food. You order for us. Bring us your house specialties.”

Papa grunted and plunked a bottle of
vin rouge
down on the table. “On the house,” he said. Madame Mallory knew the label well. It was the only truly bad wine in the valley.
“Non,”
she said. “
Merci.
Not for us. What do you drink with your food?”

“Beer,” said Papa.

“Beer?”

“Kingfisher beer.”

“Bring us two beers, then.”

Papa waddled back into the kitchen, as I was cooking ground corn and coriander on the tawa, and he spat out their order. I could tell by his ruddy cheeks his blood pressure was rising, and I raised my finger at him, a warning to stay cool.

“Kill them,” he said. “Just kill them.”

The restaurant was now roaring with life, and Madame Mallory must have been surprised to see so many of the townsfolk from Lumière helping us celebrate our opening. Madame Picard, the fruitier, with a friend, getting drunk on the house wine; and the mayor, with his entire family, even his brother the lawyer, roaring off-color jokes at each other around the corner table. As she was peering around the room in this way, Uncle Mayur waddled over and opened, with a hiss, Mallory’s bottles of beer.

Mukhtar and Arash, my younger brothers, suddenly ran hollering through the tables until my uncle grabbed Arash by his nape and boxed his ears. His howl sliced through the restaurant. And shortly thereafter Ammi wandered out of the kitchen, annoyed at all the people in her house, and she went right to the corner table and pinched the mayor hard. The man was rather surprised—he swore, actually—and Papa rushed over to apologize and explain Ammi’s condition.

But it was all right. The first few dishes emerged from the kitchen, dishes rattling in the inexperienced French boy’s hands, and there was great oohhing and aahing as the steaming, prattling iron platters passed through the dining room. The mayor recovered his good humor when a stack of prawn samosas and another bottle of wine arrived at his table—on the house. And that was when Madame Mallory abruptly stood and made her way to the back of the restaurant.

There I was, my back to the kitchen door, my hands and forearms discolored by a mixture of chili powder and grease. I shook some garam masala into a vat of mutton. A pot of clarified butter exploded over the counter, and I rather excitedly ordered Mehtab to spoon the runny butter—which had congealed with onion skins, spilled salt, and saffron—into a frying pan.

“Don’t waste it. Never mind. Still taste good.”

I looked over at the door.

I cannot describe the feeling that made me turn around like that, as if a great force of negative energy was at my back, shoving me forward.

But the glass portico in the door was empty.

Madame Mallory had seen what she wanted to see, and she returned to the dining room to take her seat opposite Leblanc. She sipped her beer and contentedly pictured the scene that was unfolding in her own restaurant across the street.

Stravinsky orchestrations softly playing in the background. The drama of silver domes over delicious dishes lifted simultaneously. The polite sipping of a bouillabaisse. The fecund aroma of orchids and roast suckling pig. Precision, perfection, predictability. “To Le Saule Pleureur,” Mallory said, holding up her glass of beer to Monsieur Leblanc.

Our pimply young waiter arrived with their food. Not very experienced, I’m afraid, and he just banged the pots down on the table. There was an urn of Goa fish stew, thick and gooey. Chicken tikka marinated in pink spices and lemon, grilled until the edges were black and curling. A skewer of yogurt-marinated lamb liver, sprinkled with crunchy pine nuts, was barely contained on a chipped dish. Mushrooms that thickened a masala
appeared as unidentified lumps under the film of tarka oil floating atop the dish. There was a copper pan of okra and tomatoes, and cauliflower heads in, I admit, an unattractive brown sauce. Yellow rice was fluffily heaped in a ceramic bowl, with pungent bay leaves buried under the kernels of basmati. Then came a confusing array of side dishes—pickled carrots, cool yogurt and cucumber, unleavened bread blistered with black boils and garlic.

“What a lot of food,” said Mallory. “I hope it is not too hot. The only other Indian food I’ve had, in Paris, was awful. Burned for two days.”

But the smells of the restaurant had made her hungry, as they had Monsieur Leblanc, and they spooned out the rice and fish and cauliflower and crispy liver onto their plates.