Chocolat (9 page)

       “I mean.” He made an expressive gesture, “I mean, just look at this place.” He glanced at me as if about to say something else, then his gaze slid past me to the door.

       “He!” I gathered he was addressing someone just out of my field of vision. “Don’t you people listen? I’m closed!”

       I heard a man’s voice say something indistinct in reply. Muscat gave his wide, cheerless grin. “Can’t you idiots read?” Behind the bar he indicated the yellow twin of the card I had seen at the door. “Get lost, go on!”

       I stood up to see what was happening. There were five people standing uncertainly at the cafe entrance, two men and three women. All five were strangers to me, unremarkable but for their air of indefinable otherness; the patched trousers, the workboots, the faded T-shirts which proclaimed them outsiders. I should know that look. I had it once. The man who had spoken had red hair and a green bandanna to keep it out of his face. His eyes were cautious, his tone carefully neutral.

       “We’re not selling anything,” he explained. “We just want to get a couple of beers and some coffee. We’re not going to be any trouble.”

       Muscat looked at him in contempt. “I said, we’re closed.”

       One of the women, a drab, thin girl with a pierced eyebrow, tugged at the redhead’s sleeve. “It’s no good, Roux. We better —”

       “Wait a minute.” Roux shook her off impatiently. “I don’t understand. The lady who was here a moment ago your wife she was going to—”

       “Screw my wife!” exclaimed Muscat shrilly. “My wife couldn’t find her arse with both hands and a pocket torch! It’s my name above the door, and I — say — we’re — closed!” He had taken three steps from behind the bar, and now he stood barring the doorway, hands on hips, like an overweight gunslinger in a spaghetti western. I could see the yellowy gleam of his knuckles at his belt, hear the whistle of his breath. His face was congested with rage.

       “Right.” Roux’s face was expressionless. He flicked a hostile, deliberate glance at the few customers scattered about the room. “Closed.” Another glance around the room. For a moment our eyes met. “Closed to us,” he said quietly.

       “Not as stupid as you look, are you?” said Muscat with sour glee. “We had enough of your lot last time. This time, we’re not standing for it!”

       “OK.” Roux turned to go. Muscat saw him off, strutting stiff-legged, like a dog scenting a fight.

       I walked past him without a word, leaving my coffee half-finished on the table. I hope he wasn’t expecting a tip.

       I caught up with the river-gypsies halfway down the Avenue des Francs Bourgeois: It had begun to drizzle again, and the five of them looked drab and sullen. I could see their boats now, down in Les Marauds, a dozen of them — two dozen — a flotilla of green-yellow-blue-white-red, some flying flags of damp washing, others painted with Arabian nights and magic carpets and unicorn variations reflected in the dull green water.

       “I’m sorry that happened,” I told them. “They’re not an especially welcoming lot in Lansquenet-sous-Tannes.”

       Roux gave me a flat, measuring look.

       “My name is Vianne,” I told him. “I have the chocolaterie just opposite the church. La Celeste Praline.” He watched me, waiting. I recognized myself in his carefully expressionless face. I wanted to tell him — to tell all of them — that I knew their rage and humiliation, that I’d known it too, that they weren’t alone. But I also knew their pride, the useless defiance which remains after everything else has been scoured away. The last thing they wanted, I knew, was sympathy.

       “Why don’t you drop in tomorrow?” I asked lightly. “I don’t do beer, but I think you might enjoy my coffee.”

       He looked at me sharply, as if he suspected me of mocking him. — “Please come,” I insisted. “Have coffee and a slice of cake on the house. All of you.” The thin girl looked at her friends and shrugged. Roux returned the gesture. “Maybe.” The voice was non-committal.

       “We got a busy schedule,” chirped the girl pertly.

       I smiled. “Find a window,” I suggested.

       Again that measuring, suspicious look. “Maybe.”

       I watched them go down into Les Marauds as Anouk came running up the hill towards me, the tails of her red raincoat flapping like the wings of an exotic bird. “Maman, Maman! Look, the boats!”

       We admired them for a while, the flat barges, the tall houseboats with the corrugated roofs, the stovepipe chimneys, the frescoes, the multicoloured flags, slogans, painted devices to ward against accident and shipwreck, the small barques, fishing lines, pots for crayfish hoisted up against.the tidemark for the night, tattered umbrellas sheltering decks, the beginnings of campfires in steel drums on the riverside. There was a smell of burning wood and petrol and frying fish, a distant sound of music from across the water as a saxophone began its eerily human melodious wail. Halfway across the Tannes I could just make out the figure of a redheaded man standing alone on the deck of a plain black houseboat. As I watched he lifted his arm. I waved back. It was almost dark when we made our way home. Back in Les Marauds a drummer had joined the saxophone, and the sounds of his drumming slapped flatly off the water. I passed the Cafe de la Republique without looking in.

       I had barely reached the top of the hill when I felt a presence at my elbow. I turned and saw Josephine Muscat, coatless now but with a scarf around her head and half covering her face. In the semi-darkness she looked pallid, nocturnal.

       “Run home, Anouk. Wait for me there.”

       Anouk gave me a curious glance, then turned and ran off obediently up the hill, her coat-tails flapping wildly.

       “I heard what you did.” Josephine’s voice was hoarse and soft. “You walked out because of that business with the river people.”

       I nodded. “Of course.”

       “Paul-Marie was furious.” The stern note in her voice was almost admiration. “You should have heard the things he was saying.”

       I laughed. “Fortunately I don’t have to listen to anything Paul-Marie has to say,” I told her blandly.

       “Now I’m not supposed to talk to you any more,” she went on. “He thinks you’re a bad influence.” A pause, as she looked at me with nervous curiosity. “He doesn’t want me to have friends,” she added.

       “Seems to me I’m hearing rather too much about what Paul-Marie wants,” I said mildly. “I’m not really all that interested in him. Now you—” I touched her arm fleetingly. “I find you quite interesting.”

       She flushed and looked away, as if expecting to find someone standing at her shoulder. “You don’t understand,” she muttered.

       “I think I do.”

       With my fingertips I touched the scarf which hid her face.

       “Why do you wear this?”

       I asked abruptly. “Do you want to tell me?”

       She looked at me in hope and panic. Shook her head. I pulled gently at the scarf. “You’re pretty,” I said as it came loose. “You could be beautiful.”

       There was a fresh bruise just beneath her lower lip, bluish in the failing light. She opened her mouth for the automatic lie. I interrupted her. “That’s not true,” I said.

       “How can you know that?”

       Her voice was sharp. “I hadn’t even said ?”

       “You didn’t have to.”

       Silence. Across the water a flute scattered bright notes among the drumbeats. When she spoke at last her voice was thick with self-loathing. “It’s stupid, isn’t it?”

       Her eyes were tiny crescents. “I never blame him. Not really. Sometimes I even forget what really happened.”

       She took a deep breath, like a diver going under. “Walking into doors. Falling downstairs. St-stepping on rakes.” She sounded close to laughter. I could hear hysteria bubbling beneath the surface of her words. “Accident-prone, that’s what he says I am. Accident-prone.”

       “Why was it this time?” I asked gently. “Was it because of the river people?”

       She nodded. “They didn’t mean any harm. I was going to serve them.”

       Her voice rose shrilly for a second. “I don’t see why I should have to do what that bitch Clairmont wants all the time! Oh we must stand together,” she mimicked savagely. “For the sake of the community. For our children, Madame Muscat”— breaking back into her own voice with a stricken intake of breath — “when in normal circumstances she wouldn’t say hello to me in the street — wouldn’t give me steam off her shit!” She took another deep breath, controlling the outburst with an effort.

       “It’s always Caro this, Caro that. I’ve seen the way he looks at her in church. Why can’t you be like Caro Clairmont?”

       Now she was her husband, his voice thick with beery rage. She even managed his mannerisms, the thrust-out chin, the strutting, aggressive posture. “She makes you look like a clumsy sow. She’s got style. Class. She’s got a fine son doing well at school. And what have you got, he?”

       “Josephine.”

       She turned towards me with a stricken expression. “I’m sorry. For a moment I almost forgot where ?”

       “I know.” I could feel rage pricking at my thumbs.

       “You must think I’m stupid to have stayed with him all these years.” Her voice was dull, her eyes dark and resentful.

       “No, I don’t.”

       She ignored my reply. “Well I am,” she declared. “Stupid and weak. I don’t love him — can’t remember a time when I ever loved him — but when I think of actually leaving him—” She broke off in confusion. “Actually leaving him,” she repeated in a low, wondering voice.

       “No. It’s no use.” She looked up at me again and her face was closed, final. “That’s why I can’t talk to you again,” she told me in calm desperation. “I couldn’t leave you guessing — you deserve better than that. But this is how it has to be.”

       “No,” I told her. “It doesn’t.”

       “But it does.”

       She defends herself bitterly, desperately, against the possibility of comfort. “Can’t you see? I’m no good. I steal. I lied to you before. I steal things. I do it all the time!”

       Gently: “Yes. I know.”

       The clear realization turns quietly between us like a Christmas bauble.

       “Things can be better,” I told her at last. “Paul-Marie doesn’t rule the world.”

       “He might as well,” retorted Josephine mulishly.

       I smiled. If that stubbornness of hers could be turned out instead of in, what could she not achieve? I could do it, too. I could feel her thoughts, so close, welcoming me in. It would be so easy to take control…I turned the thought aside impatiently. I had no right to force her to any decision.

       “Before, you had no-one to go to,” I said. “Now you do.”

       “Do I?” In her mouth, it was almost an admission of defeat.

       I did not reply. Let her answer that for herself.

       She looked at me in silence for a while. Her eyes were full of river lights from Les Marauds. Again it struck me, with what small a twist she might become beautiful.

       “Goodnight, Josephine.”

       I did not turn to look at her, but I know she watched me as I made my way up the hill, and I know she stood watching long after I had rounded the corner and disappeared from sight.

FIFTEEN

       Tuesday, February 25

       STILL MORE OF THIS INTERMINABLE RAIN. IT FALLS LIKE A piece of the sky upended to pour misery onto the aquarium life below. The children, bright plastic ducks in their waterproofs and boots, squawk and waddle across the square, their cries ricocheting off the low clouds. I work in the kitchen with half an eye to the children in the street. This morning I unmade the window display, the witch, the gingerbread house and all the chocolate animals sitting around watching with glossy expectant faces, and Anouk and her friends shared the pieces between excursions into the rainy backwaters of Les Marauds. Jeannot Drou watched me in the kitchen, a piece of gilded pain d’epices in each hand, eyes shining. Anouk stood behind him, the others behind her, a wall of eyes and whisperings.

       “What next?” He has the voice of an older boy, an air of casual bravado and a smear of chocolate across the chin. “What are you doing next? For the display?”

       I shrugged. “Secret,” I said, stirring creme de cacao into an enamel basin of melted couverture.

       “No, really.” He insists. “You ought to make something for Easter. You know. Eggs and stuff: Chocolate hens, rabbits, things like that. Like the shops in Agen.”

       I remember them from my childhood; the Paris chocolateries with their baskets of foil-wrapped eggs, shelves of rabbits and hens, bells, marzipan fruits and marrons glaces, amourettes and filigree nests filled with petits fours and caramels and a thousand and one epiphanies of spun-sugar magic-carpet rides more suited to an Arabian harem than the solemnities of the Passion.

       “I remember my mother telling me about the Easter chocolates.” There was never enough money to buy those exquisite things, but I always had my own cornet surprise, a paper cone containing my Easter gifts, coins, paper flowers, hard-boiled eggs painted in bright enamel colours, a box of coloured papier-mache — painted with chickens, bunnies, smiling children amongst the buttercups, the same every year and stored carefully for the next time encasing a tiny packet of chocolate raisins wrapped in Cellophane, each one to be savoured, long and lingeringly, in the lost hours of those strange nights between cities, with the neon glow of hotel signs blink-blinking between the shutters and my mother’s breathing, slow and somehow eternal, in the umbrous silence.

       “She used to say that on the eve of Good Friday the bells leave their steeples and church towers in the secret of the night and fly with magical wings to Rome.” He nods, with that look of half-believing cynicism peculiar to the growing young.

       “They line up in front of the Pope in his gold and white, his mitre and his gilded staff, big bells and tiny bells, clochettes and heavy bourdons, carillons and chimes and do-si-do-mi-sols, all waiting patiently to be blessed.”

       She was filled with this solemn children’s lore, my mother, eyes lighting up with delight at the absurdity. All stories delighted her — Jesus and Eostre and Ali Baba working the homespun of folklore into the bright fabric of belief again and again. Crystal healing and astral travel, abductions by aliens and spontaneous combustions, my mother believed them all, or pretended to believe.

       “And the Pope blesses them, every one, far into the night, the thousands of France’s steeples waiting empty for their return, silent until Easter morning.”

       And I her daughter, listening wide-eyed to her charming apocrypha, with tales of Mithras and Baldur the Beautiful and Osiris and Quetzalcoatl all interwoven with stories of flying chocolates and flying carpets and the Triple Goddess and Aladdin’s crystal cave of wonders and the cave from which Jesus rose after three days, amen, abracadabra, amen.

       “And the blessings turn into chocolates of all shapes and kinds, and the bells turn upside-down to carry them home. All through the night they fly, and when they reach their towers and steeples on Easter Sunday they turn over and begin swinging to peal out their joy.”

       Bells of Paris, Rome, Cologne, Prague. Morning bells, mourning bells, ringing the changes across the years of our exile. Easter bells so loud in memory that it hurts to hear them.

       “And the chocolates fly out across the fields and towns. They fall through the air as the bells sound. Some of them hit the ground and shatter. But the children make nests and place them high in the trees to catch the falling eggs and pralines and chocolate hens and rabbits and guimauves and almonds…”

       Jeannot turns to me with vivid face and broadening grin. “Cool!”

       “And that’s the story of why you get chocolates at Easter.”

       His voice is awed, sharp with sudden certainty. “Do it! Please, do it!”

       I turn deftly to roll a truffle in cocoa powder. “Do what?”

       “Do that! The Easter story. It’d be so cool — with the bells and the Pope and everything — and you could have a chocolate festival — a whole week — and we could have nests — and Easter-egg hunts — and —” He breaks off excitedly, tugging at my sleeve imperiously. “Madame Rocher, please.”

       Behind him Anouk watches me closely. A dozen smudgy faces in the background mouth shy entreaties.

       “A Grand Festival du Chocolat.”

       I consider the thought. In a month’s time the lilacs will be out. I always make a nest for Anouk, with an egg and her name on it in silver icing. It could be our own carnival, a celebration of our acceptance in this place. The idea is not new to me, but to hear it from this child is almost to touch its reality.

       “We’d need some posters.” I pretend hesitation.

       “We’ll make those!” Anouk is the first to suggest it, her face vivid with excitement.

       “And flags — bunting —”

       “Streamers—”

       “And a chocolate Jesus on the cross with —”

       “The Pope in white chocolate —”

       “Chocolate lambs —”

       “Egg-rolling competitions, treasure hunts —”

       “We’ll invite everyone, it’ll be —”

       “Cool!”

       “So cool —”

       I waved my arms at them for silence, laughing. An arabesque of acrid chocolate powder followed my gesture.

       “You make the posters,” I told them. “Leave the rest to me.”

       Anouk leaped at me, arms out flung. She smells of salt and rainwater, a cuprous scent of soil and waterlogged vegetation. Her tangled hair is barbed with droplets.

       “Come up to my room!” she shrieked in my ear. “They can, can’t they, Maman, say they can! We can start right now, I’ve got paper, crayons —”

       “They can,” I said.

       An hour later the display window was embellished by a large poster — Anouk’s design executed by Jeannot. The text, in large shaky green letters, read:

       GRAND FESTIVAL DU CHOCOLAT

       AT LA CELESTE PRALINE

       BEGINS EASTER SUNDAY

       EVERYONE WELCOME

       !!! BUY NOW WHILE STOCKS LAST!!!

       Around the text capered various creatures of fanciful design. A figure in a robe and a tall crown I took to be the Pope. Cutout shapes of bells had been pasted thickly at his feet. All the bells were smiling.

       I spent most of the afternoon tempering the new batch of couverture and working on the window display. A thick covering of green tissue-paper for the grass. Paper flowers — daffodils and daisies, Anouk’s contribution — pinned to the window-frame. Green-covered tins which once contained cocoa, powder, stacked up against each other to make a craggy mountainside. Crinkly Cellophane paper wraps it like a covering of ice. Running past and winding into the valley, a river of blue silk ribbon, upon which a cluster of houseboats sit quiet and unreflecting. And below-a procession of chocolate figures, cats, dogs, rabbits, some with raisin eyes, pink marzipan ears, tails made of licorice whips with sugar flowers between their teeth…And mice. On every available surface, mice. Running up the sides of the hill, nestling in corners, even on the riverboats. Pink and white sugar coconut mice, chocolate mice of all colours, variegated mice marbled through with truffle and maraschino cream, delicately tinted mice, sugar-dappled frosted mice. And standing above them, the Pied Piper resplendent in his red and yellow, a barleysugar flute in one hand, his hat in the other. I have hundreds of moulds in my kitchen, thin plastic ones for the eggs and the figures, ceramic ones for the cameos and liqueur chocolates. With them I can recreate any facial expression and superimpose it upon a hollow shell, adding hair and detail with a narrow-gauge pipe, building up torso and limbs in separate pieces and fixing them in place with wires and melted chocolate. A little camouflage — a red cloak, rolled from marzipan. A tunic, a hat of the same material, a long feather brushing the ground at his booted feet. My Pied Piper looks a little like Roux with his red hair and motley garb.

       I cannot help myself; the window is inviting enough, but I cannot resist the temptation to gild it a little, closing my eyes, to light the whole with a golden glow of welcome. An imaginary sign which flashes like a beacon COME TO ME. I want to give, to make people happy; surely that can do no harm. I realize that this welcome may be in response to Caroline’s hostility to the travellers, but in the joy of the moment I can see no harm in that. I want them to come. Since we last spoke I have glimpsed them occasionally, but they seem suspicious and furtive, like urban foxes, ready to scavenge but not to be approached. Mostly I see Roux, their ambassador — carrying boxes or plastic bags of groceries — sometimes Zezette, the thin girl with the pierced eyebrow. Last night two children tried to sell lavender outside the church, but Reynaud moved them on. I tried to call them back, but they were too wary, watching me with slant-eyed hostility before pelting off down the hill into Les Marauds.

       I was so absorbed in my plans and the layout of my window that I lost track of the time. Anouk made her friends sandwiches in the kitchen, then they disappeared again in the direction of the river. I put on the radio and sang to myself as I worked, carefully placing the chocolates into pyramids. The magic mountain opens to reveal a bewildering, half-glimpsed, array of riches: multicoloured piles of sugar crystals, glace fruits and sweets which glitter like gems. Behind this, and shielded from the light by the concealed shelving, lie the saleable wares. I will have to begin work on the Easter goods almost straight away, anticipating extra custom. It is a good thing there is storage space in the cool basement of the house. I must order gift boxes, ribbons, Cellophane paper and trimmings. I was so absorbed that I barely heard Armande as she came in through the half-open door.

       “Well, hello,” she said in her brusque manner. “I came for another one of your chocolate specials, but I can see you’re busy.”

       I manoeuvred carefully out of the window. “No, of course not,” I told her. “I was expecting you. Besides, I’ve nearly finished, and my back is killing me.”

       “Well, if it’s no trouble…” Her manner was different today. There was a kind of crispness in her voice, a studied casualness which masked a high level of tension. She was wearing a black straw hat trimmed with ribbon and a coat — also black — which looked new.

       “You’re very chic today,” I observed.

       She gave a sharp crack of laughter. “No-one’s said that to me for a while, I’ll tell you,” she said, poking a finger at one of the stools. “Could I climb up there without breaking a leg, d’you think?”

       “I’ll get you a chair from the kitchen,” I suggested, but the old lady stopped me with an imperious gesture.

       “Rubbish!” She eyed the stool. “I used to be quite a climber in my youth.” She drew up her long skirts, revealing stout boots and lumpy grey stockings. “Trees, mostly. I used to climb up them and throw twigs onto the heads of passersby. Hah!” A grunt of satisfaction as she swung herself onto the stool, grabbing hold of the counter-top for support. I caught a sudden, alarming swirl of scarlet from under her black skirt.

       Armande perched on the stool, looking absurdly pleased with herself. Carefully she smoothed her skirts back over the shimmer of scarlet petticoat. “Red silk undies,” she grinned, seeing my look. “You probably think I’m an old fool but I like them. I’ve been in mourning for so many years — seems every time I can decently wear colours someone else drops dead — that I’ve pretty much given up wearing anything but black.”

       She gave me a look fizzing with laughter. “But underwear — now that’s a different thing.” She lowered her voice conspiratorially. “Mail order from Paris,” she said. “Costs me a fortune.” She rocked with silent laughter on her perch. “Now, how about that chocolate?”

       I made it strong and black, and, with her diabetic condition in mind, added as little sugar as I dared.

       Armande saw my hesitancy and stabbed an accusing finger at her cup. “No rationing!” she ordered. “Give me the works. Chocolate chips, one of those sugar stirrer things, everything. Don’t you start getting like the others, treating me as if I didn’t have the wit to look after myself. Do I look senile to you?”

       I admitted she didn’t.

       “Well, then.” She sipped the strong, sweetened mixture with visible satisfaction. “Good. Hmm. Very good. Supposed to give you energy, isn’t it? It’s a, what do you call it, a stimulant?”

       I nodded.

       “An aphrodisiac too, so I heard,” added Armande roguishly, peeping at me from above the rim of her cup. “Those old men down at the cafe had better watch out. You’re never too old to have a good time!” She cawed laughter. She sounded shrill and keyed-up, her crabbed hands unsteady. Several times she put her hand to the brim of her hat, as if to adjust it.

       I looked at my watch under cover of the counter, but she saw my movement.

       “Don’t expect he’ll turn up,” she said shortly. “That grandson of mine. I’m not expecting him, anyway.” Her every gesture belied her words. The tendons in her throat stood out like an ancient dancer’s.

       We talked for a while of trifling matters: the children’s idea of the chocolate festival — Armande squawking with laughter when I told her about Jesus and the white chocolate Pope — and the river-gypsies. It seems that Armande has ordered their food supplies herself, in her name, much to Reynaud’s indignation. Roux offered to pay her in cash, but she prefers to have him fix her leaky roof instead. This will infuriate Georges Clairmont, she revealed with an impish grin.