Collages (7 page)

She wore a long jersey swathe striped black and
white, with a turtle neck which accentuated the Ubangi length of her neck, and
black tights which gave her the air of a medieval page.

When she finished her song, she rushed to
embrace Renate:

“You didn’t recognize me! I’m Leontine!”

“You’ve changed so much!” said Renate.

“Do you remember the first time we met?”

“Of course I remember. It was at Canada Lee’s
New Year’s party. You were fifteen years old. You had a humorous, turned up
nose…”

“I changed that, for the photographers,” said
Leontine.

“I remember you danced Haitian dances. It was
my first year in America. I did not feel at home yet. It was my first meeting
with the dead pan faces of New York City, a Greek play with masks, and all the
dead pans seemed to say: ‘We don’t know you. We don’t see you. We don’t like
you.’ This New Year’s party was my first one in New York, and when Canada Lee
greeted me at the door with his warm melting voice and his joyous smile and
said: ‘Come in, hang up your coat’ as if he meant it and were addressing me
personally, I wept. It was my first personal, intimate, friendly welcome. And
then you came and put your arms around me, and took me to meet your father. But
he was formal and impressive, as if carved of wood. He had all the Haitian
dignity and formality. His stiff silver-gray hair was cut short like the
bristle of a hard brush. Immediately he began to tell me a story I never
forgot.”

“It was always the same story,” said Leontine.
“About his youth in Haiti and his revolutionary activities, how he was
sentenced to life imprisonment and sent to Guiana. How he was tied by a chain
to another prisoner.

“The unendurable heat, the sadism of the
guards. The same place and the same conditions as for Dreyfus. He was only
seventeen and condemned for life. I forgot how they managed to escape.

“They worked at it "o years. They
planned well, and found themselves in the jungle, miles from the sea where a
boat with friends awaited them. They fed on fruit, and slept in caves, or
inside dead trees. They were bitten by insects. The chain binding their arms
made walking difficult. They had no way to cut the chain. It was too heavy to
wear down by scraping against a stone. On the third day my father’s companion
drank polluted water and on the fourth day he died. And my father was chained
to a dead man.”

“At this point I told your father I did not
want to hear any more. His story and the gaiety of the New Year’s party all
around us was too violent a contrast. I covered my ears. The room was filled
with laughter and jazz dancing. The New Year was being greeted with
firecrackers and shouts and kisses. Your father sat impervious, unmoved by all
the agitation and continued his story. How he had freed himself by cutting the
arm off at the shoulder with a small knife. But he had to carry the dead man
all the way to the boat.”

“Covered with ants,” said Leontine. “I’m sorry
if I sound callous, Renate, but my father told this story so many times that I
couldn’t feel any emotion any more.”

“You were dancing Haitian dances. Don’t you
dance any more?”

“I was too lazy to be a dancer. I hated
rehearsals. I took up singing instead, which came naturally to me. It didn’t
require so much discipline.”

“And what happened to all the wishes you made?
You wanted a life like Josephine Baker’s. You wanted to live in France, and
marry a French count and have a palace in Marrakesh.”

“I did travel with Catherine Dunham. I did get
to France, and I did find my French count. He was not handsome, but he was tall
and blond. He thought I was not intelligent and so he invented a language for
me, half-baby-talk, half monkey-chatter, which he thought I would understand
better. He had a sadistic sense of humor. Once he called for me at the Hotel de
Crillon in an Arab costume, a poor soiled one, as if he had slept in it for
weeks. The manager was entertaining Arab royalty. The secret service men wanted
to arrest him. Then they found out he was the son of a deputy. Another time he
rented a beautiful apartment for me but gave me no furniture. Then he gave a
party for me. We entertained in leotards and jewelry. The fabulous jewelry he
had ‘borrowed’ from his mother who alerted the police.

“He never told me where it came from and I wore
it at the night club and the same secret service men came to my dressingroom.
He had to explain where it came from. Another time we sat for hours in a
crowded cafe and insulted each other. People who were concerned over the racial
equality were so shocked by what he said they wanted to interfere, until they
heard what I was saying to him. Another time he told me to wear my loveliest
dress, we were going to Maxim’s. He left me sitting at our table and went to
the coat room to leave his overcoat. He was wearing the jacket of his formal
suit over leotards. He insisted on taking me out to dance. Because his father
was a deputy, no one interfered with him. Another time I had a jealous tantrum
at the Ritz bar, and I began to break glasses. My Count calmly called the
headwaiter and said: ‘Bring me a tray with a dozen of your best glasses. If
Madame feels like breaking glasses she must have the best.’ This embarrassed me
so much I left the place. He always wanted the upper hand; he always won and I
enjoyed that. He spread the rumor that I had a neurotic fear of automobiles and
made me go about in a horse and carriage, and insisted I ride in it dressed in
jeans. That was the time a man stopped the carriage and said to me: ‘You must
be Leontine. I am Cocteau.’ With my Count, it was not so much a physical
fascination as a mental one. We were both absurd. No, he never did marry me,
and I never did live in a palace in Marrakesh, but he made me laugh for three
and a half years.”

“I remember your mother too,” said Renate. “She
worked in a factory stuffing woolly animals with sawdust. She smuggled out the
best ones for you, bears, camels, donkeys. Your mother was very worried about
your infatuation for your cousin, who was much whiter than you. She was afraid
he would take advantage of you and then not marry you. She asked me to find out
how things were, and I didn’t want to pry. So I invented a charade in which you
had to act a woman being made love to, and the cooing, dove sounds you made
were so realistic I knew your mother’s fears were justified.”

“I remember the day I came to get you to go to
the beach. I found you bathing in tea, you were ashamed of being so white.”

“I also remember the day you mentioned a
Haitian national party you were going to and I said I would love to come, too,
and you looked at me wistfully and said: ‘Renate, white people are not
invited.’”

Leontine laughed, and her long gold earrings
tinkled, and her bracelets tinkled, and her long chain of beads, and the
spotlight found her lighting up her eyes and smile. She went back to the piano
to sing for Renate, and Renate could find no trace of the little girl with
tight curls and a turned up nose who played in the streets of Brooklyn with
lions, kangaroos and monkeys stuffed and sewn by her mother in a nearby factory
which looked like a prison.

HENRI THE CHEF WAS THE ADOPTED SON of the
famous Escoffier. No one knew why he had settled in Paradise Inn, in a kitchen
where his historic copper pans and kettles looked like those of a giant. He had
hung them all on the wall and kept the copper shining like mirrors in which he
could read of his past splendors and victories.

Henri was tall, but with his chef’s bonnet he
seemed to touch the ceiling. He was also sumptuously upholstered by rich
eating, and when he moved between the carving board and the stove, he had to
pull in his vast stomach.

When he had finished cooking, the guests wanted
to hear his anecdotes. Late in the evening he would bring small roses to the
ladies and a profusion of biographical stories.

All the people he had cooked for bore famous
names, from Queen Victoria to Diamond Jim Brady. He described them in a decor
of crystal chandeliers, candlelight, lace tablecloths, attended by armies of
assistants. He recalled the exact compliments he had received from kings,
famous actors, society women, and later, from tycoons, gangsters and business
dictators.

He had been a child prodigy in the kitchen,
later a dictator ruling over his own culinary inventions.

His monumental figure and red face seemed
composed of all the delicacies he had cooked, an attrition of sauces, flavors,
spices and wines.

All the stories he served with the dishes were
of ancient vintage. He had invented the Crepe Suzette for Prince Edward, the
charcoal broiled steak for Diamond Jim Brady.

Dazzled by the past, he seemed near-sighted
about present celebrities. Perhaps he felt that in the past he had played a
major role, and that the visitors who came now were witnessing his aging. At
one time his dinners could influence the atmosphere of a political discussion
and affect history; they could decide the course of a love affair.

Perhaps he felt reluctant to admit that among
today’s diners there might be one future celebrity who might usher in an
equally brilliant era but an era he would not be there to feed.

As he was past eighty, many of his anecdotes
ended in funeral orations. Some of his flambes, accompanied by a list of the
missing, seemed like cremations.

He had two passions: one for the art of
cooking, one for the celebrities who had enjoyed his cooking.

In the art of cooking he was a perfectionist.
It would take him days to concoct a sauce. He did his own marketing and waged
an unremitting war on all synthetic, frozen, or canned foods.

But in the matter of names he was not so
snobbish. He did not question the composition of a famous name. He loved
titles, decorations, prizewinners, publicity’s favorites.

In Europe he acquired an obsession for quality.
In America he acquired gigantism. His dinners grew Gargantuan. His diners had
to take walks or dance or swim between dishes.

He took his diners on an Elysian journey of
high flavors. His stories poured out like the most suave of his sauces.

As he was as much interested in dishes as in
personalities, he gave his dishes the names of people he met. Strawberry
Pudding Carole Lombard, Naked Butterfly Irvin S. Cobb, Broiled Oysters George
Eastman, Tutti Frutti Edna May Oliver.

Had these personalities flavors which he
translated into delicacies? Was Greta Garbo like a flambee, and Julius
Bloomfield like borsch? Was William Vanderbilt a creme de France? And Marlene
Dietrich a Grenade d’Amour? Was Henry James only capable of evoking shirred
eggs, and Sara Delano Roosevelt cinnamon apples, and did Charles Hackett
deserve a panache?

But drinks he did not baptize with names of
people. They deserved enduring abstractions such as Justice, Liberty, Courage,
Democracy.

In the early days of his difficult start in New
York he carried home every night some empty bottle of Chateau d’Yquem which
retained its fragrance, and slept on a bench at Long Island station holding the
bottle to his nose to make himself dream again of the days when he was serving
royalty on the French Riviera. Whereupon he was arrested for alcoholism and
vagrancy.
One night he sat in the Paradise Inn kitchen, like a souffle which had not succeeded.
It was late and he was eating some of his own dinner. Renate saw him, and
smiled at him through the open partition. He was talking to himself, grumbling.

“Anything troubling you?” asked Renate.

Henri said: “People have lost their palate. All
they say is ‘More.’ It is all those fiery cocktails. They kill the taste. And
then they never say the right thing, the kind of thing that puffs me up like a
souffle, the kind of compliment which makes me cook each day better.”

“They haven’t lost their palate,” said Renate,
“they have lost their tongue. They haven’t lost the power to appreciate your
cooking; what they have lost is the power of words. They have never learned
culinary language. We live in an Era of Basic English.”

“Basic, basic, what is more basic than
excellent cooking. You console me, but I still need words, you know, as actors
need applause.”

“Words have grown scarce. Is that why you so
often think of the past? Was it better then?”

“Yes, people had a literary appreciation of
cooking. They could describe their sensations and they were eloquent about
them. Poor Henri. He does see too many empty chairs. The people who come now
are of a different breed. They are sulky and half-mute. They say: ‘It is good
Henri.’ But how good, how does it compare with other recipes, there are so many
nuances!”

“It’s only language that has grown poor.”

“You may be right. Did I ever tell you about
Diamond Jim Brady and the twelve oysters? He once ordered me to serve twelve
oysters in each of which I was to place a pearl. He was giving a dinner for
twelve Ziegfeld girls. He wanted me to do my very best. While I prepared the
oysters I noticed I had only eleven pearls, and I got very worried. I called
him up and he said: ‘Don’t worry, Henri. It was done on purpose. The girl who
does not get the pearl in the oyster will get a marriage contract from me. You
announce it. I can’t bring myself to make such a silly announcement as a
marriage proposal. I just can’t bring myself to say the words.”’