The Chef's Apprentice: A Novel (19 page)

The bubbling froth subsided to a gently bumpy surface, and to my horror those damnable pockmarks began to appear with oil percolating in the tiny craters. The nuts completed the disruption
of the creamy texture and gave the whole thing a crude curdled look.

If only this cross-breed concoction would cohere, it might yet be cut up into squares and served on a plate with some appealing garnish, perhaps strawberries and mint leaves for color. I took the pan out and stared at it as it cooled, willing it to stand up, pull itself together,
be firm
. When the pan was cool enough to touch, I dipped my spoon into the mixture and it came out dripping and coated in something with the consistency of buttermilk. It didn’t taste bad at all, in fact I licked the spoon clean, enjoying the balance of sweetness and almond, but it wasn’t anything I could present to the chef. It was like a sweet, cheesy soup into which someone had accidentally dropped nuts. Why was the cheese breaking down? Why wasn’t it holding together like cake or custard?

Discouraged, I didn’t even try to interest Bernardo in this latest disaster. I dumped it into the garbage pail, noticing that honey had scorched the bottom of the pan, forcing me to scrape and scrub with a stiff brush, and I went to bed angry. This one had been promising. It had tasted good; I had come so close. Somehow, I had to find out what would make it hold together.

CHAPTER XIII
T
HE
B
OOK OF
M
ARCO

T
he following morning dawned clear and cool, and the chef decided to send me to the Rialto to buy pears and Gorgonzola. It was a culinary test, and I was ready. I’d accompanied him on other shopping trips when he instructed me on how to judge pears by scent and color and touch. They must be bought at the absolute peak of ripeness, with no hint of green or bruising. They must be firm, though not hard, and well perfumed, ready to be eaten the same day but overripe the next. The cheese must be
dolce
, not
piccante
, because it would be served with the pears for dessert. The ripeness of Gorgonzola is more forgiving than pears. Already veined with a pungent mold, it will last a good while, although even molded cheeses have their limits. When I lived in the streets I once scavenged Gorgonzola with worms peeking out of their crumbly blue caves.

Chef Ferrero gave me a handful of coppers to buy two dozen pears and two kilos of cheese. It was a show of trust in my honesty, as well as my ability to select correctly and negotiate well. I dropped the coins in my pocket, grabbed a market basket, and bounded down the length of the kitchen. Near the back door, I
picked up a bulb of fennel for Domingo and hurried out through the courtyard. I was eager to get to the Rialto and catch a glimpse of
la mia bella
Francesca.

The Rialto has always been the great marketplace of Venice, her thumping commercial heart. The docks of the Grand Canal are always jammed with ships, and the quays are crowded with porters. I loved to watch the bustle of buying and selling—spices and gold, oil and emeralds, tigers and teakwood—the constant hum of haggling and barter, the swarm of languages, the people talking with hands and feet.

And the colors! Since most of the people in the Rialto were foreign—or illiterate like me—craftsmen hung out multicolored signs in picture language: a cluster of purple grapes for the vintner, green bottles for the apothecary, a gilded unicorn for the goldsmith, a stippled mare’s head for the harness maker … the marketplace was a gaudy picture book come to life.

In addition to the shops of craftsmen, the greater Rialto spread out through a tangle of narrow alleys lined with food stalls. In the butchers’ quarter, slaughtering was done on the spot and blood dried in the sun amid piles of offal swarming with iridescent flies. That was my least favorite area. I felt slightly nauseated by the lowing of frightened animals and by the butchers with bloody smears on their hands and clothes. Sometimes, even their hair was matted with brown clots of drying blood. Ugh. It was almost enough to make me lose my taste for meat. Almost. My maestro transformed meat into appetizing creations that bore no resemblance to those doomed animals.

The other stalls were cheerier. Near the harbor, fish merchants presided over tables heaped with black mussels and silvery fish from Brittany glittering on ice. In December, great blocks of snow were brought from the Alps packed in straw and then stored underground in thick-walled ice houses where they easily kept for a year or more. Domingo’s fishmonger was never stingy with his
ice, which is why his catch stayed fresh and brought him some of Venice’s wealthiest clients, like the doge’s chef.

As I ran past the fishmongers, Domingo waved and called out, “Hey, Luciano.
Ciao
, eh.” He nudged the fishmonger. “There goes Luciano. My friend.”

I felt too hurried to stop that day. I threw him the bulb of fennel and called out, “Eat it with trout.”

At the poultry stall, geese honked and gabbled, and I flapped my arms and honked back. Amputated chicken feet (excellent for soup) hung in bunches, and ducks with trussed legs squawked in twig cages. Sometimes I tossed stale bread crumbs into their cages. The duck merchant loved that; fatter ducks meant fatter profits.

Even the narrow canals around the Rialto teemed with floating shops—a small barge piled with jumbled green grapes, a boat heaped with oranges and limes, and another listing under a mountain of melons. I jogged along, drunk on all the colors and smells of the known world: pyramids of blood oranges from Greece, slender green beans from Morocco, sun-ripened cherries from Provence, giant white cabbages from Germany, fat black dates from Constantinople, and shiny purple eggplants from Holland. I hurried through this edible maze, my old home, fighting the urge to pinch something whenever a vendor turned his back. I no longer needed to steal food, but habits of survival die hard.

I passed a stall offering pears picked that morning on the mainland; they were still warm from the sun, their leaves still fleshy and alive. I noted the location for later, after Francesca.

A popular cheese merchant stood in his stall behind a barrel of hand-tied balls of mozzarella floating in buffalo milk. He called to passersby, “Come,
sígnorí
. Smell my perfectly aged Parmigiano. Look at my beautiful Manchego, just in from Spain. Try some. You’ll fall in love.” But his great wheel of Gorgonzola
dolce
overpowered the aroma of everything else. I’d come back for it after I bought the pears. First, though, I’d find Francesca.

At that time of the morning, I’d often seen her in the street of olives, so I took a shortcut through the dark, smoky street of copyists. The copyists, who served as secretaries for the illiterate, were solemn old men sitting in straight-backed chairs with wooden writing boards laid across the chair arms. Many wore long beards and girlish curls along the sides of their faces. Some wore skullcaps on the backs of their heads; others wore prayer boxes strapped to their foreheads; a few wore fringed shawls and amulets around their necks. But they all looked alike to me. The copyists were Jews. Forbidden to own property, Jews turned to merchandising, money lending, and academics. The copyists were some of the most scholarly men in Venice.

Their implements lay spread out before them: a razor for scraping crude parchment clean, a pumice stone to smooth it, a long narrow ruler, and a boar’s tooth for polishing the finished product. Each writing board held ox horns with different colored inks to dip their well-seasoned quills into, and all the copyists kept a basin of hot coals at their feet to dry the ink. Those braziers created the dense, smoky air that made me hold my breath as I ran a zigzag around their little islands of literacy.

When I lived in the streets, I seldom went near the copyists. I only used their street as a shortcut or a place to hide. The sooty air scratched my throat, and there was nothing to steal but an occasional scrap of gold leaf that, with gentle handling, might be traded for bread, but more often disintegrated in my sweaty fist. Near the end of the street of copyists, a figure ran toward me at high speed. His shape and gait were familiar, and then I spotted the red hair—Marco. He’d stolen something and was running for cover, as we’d so often done together. We saw each other at the same moment, and instinctively I ran with him into a cul-de-sac full of trash and alive with rats.

We squatted next to a heap of garbage and Marco, breathing hard, looked me over. He let out a low, sneering whistle and said,
“You look softer every time I see you.” He pulled a carrot from under his filthy shirt and ignored me while he devoured it. There were rings of dirt around his neck, his oily hair stood out from his head in russet clumps, and an open sore festered on his arm. His eyes were red rimmed and oozing something sticky. The sight of him made me feel guilty and slightly ashamed of my clean clothes.

That morning, preoccupied with seeing Francesca, I’d only grabbed the bulb of fennel for Domingo, knowing I’d pass his stall. I hadn’t expected to run into Marco. I sat back and let one protective hand fall over the pocket weighted with the chef’s coppers. A fly buzzed my face but I didn’t swat it, fearing the sudden movement might alert Marco to the jingle of coins. Food scraps were good, but money would be much better.

Marco finished eating his carrot and then rummaged in the garbage heap. He asked, “Did you bring me anything?”

“Sorry, I have nothing today, but I’ll put something out tonight.”

He pulled a heel of bread from the trash, brushed off a coating of dirt and mold, and then bit down, but it was too hard.
“Merda.”
He threw the hunk of bread at a wall and it clunked against the brick as if he’d thrown a rock. Then he turned to me and brightened. “Hey, I might have seen Rufina last night. There was a girl about the right age with red hair, just like mine, right outside the brothel where my mother worked. But she went inside with a sailor before I could talk to her. I’m going back tonight.” He hitched up his baggy pants. “Why are you out of the kitchen?” He appraised my shopping basket and then said, “You’re going to the Rialto, aren’t you? You’re shopping for the chef. Do you have money?”

I barked a short incredulous laugh and hoped that a grain of truth would make the whole story believable. Crouched together as we were, his face was close to mine and I forced a look of boredom. “Money? Do I look like the king of Spain? I’m going to the street of olives to look for Francesca.”

“I don’t believe you. What’s the basket for?”

“To
look
like I’m shopping. I can’t just stand around and stare at her.”

“A nun.” He shook his head. “You’re wasting your time.”

“What do you know?” I jumped up and flicked a contemptuous thumb off my front teeth. Too late, I heard the jangle of coins in my pocket.

Marco stared at my pocket. “You
do
have money.”

“I have to buy pears for the chef.” I stepped back.

He jutted his chin in the direction of the palace. “You’re becoming like them.”

“I can’t give you any money, Marco.”
Marrone
, I hated to hear myself. I ate three good meals a day and slept warm and dry every night, and poor Marco still had nothing. I wanted to offer him something, anything, to ease my guilt and also to distract him from the money. I squatted back down, moved closer to him, and lowered my voice. “Listen, I really can’t give you this money, and I’m sorry I have no food today, but I’ll tell you a secret.”

Marco sulked. “I can’t eat secrets.”

“I know something about the book.”

Marco flicked a grimy hand in dismissal, but a glint of interest flashed in his eyes. He said, “Tell me how to get the reward. That’s all the book is worth to me.”

“The book is more valuable than the reward. The doge is killing people to find it, and”—I paused for effect—“Landucci wants it.”

“Landucci? Is he dying of syphilis, too?”

“There’s no formula for immortality, Marco.”

“
Merda
. I know that. Why does Landucci want it?”

I would never repeat what the chef had confided, but gospels wouldn’t interest Marco anyway. I knew what he wanted to hear. “You were right, big brother. Old Riccardi said it might be possible to make gold.” I stood and leaned against the wall, crossing my arms with nonchalance and hoping to look worldly-wise. Marco
and I would never see that reward, but if I couldn’t feed his stomach at least I could feed his fantasies.

Marco jumped up and began pacing the cul-de-sac, kicking at bits of rubbish, clenching and unclenching his hands. “I
knew
it! Gold is what this world is about.” He faced me and I flinched at the sight of his pink eyes inflamed with excitement. He said, “We have to get it.”

“The book? Us?” I should have seen that coming, but it was preposterous. “Marco, we can’t even read.”

“You live in the palace. You can know what they know. As soon as they find the book, we steal it.” He dusted off his hands. “Easy.”

Marrone
. “Marco, these are dangerous people. Landucci has the
Cappe Nere
out looking for this book. They’re ready to torture and kill anyone—everyone. You want to steal from
them
?”

“It’s worth the risk.” Marco was almost vibrating with excitement.

“No. It isn’t. Listen, I don’t know for sure that the book has the secret of alchemy. Old Riccardi only said it was
possible
. But it’s too dangerous—”

“Selfish!” Marco moved his face close to mine, and I held my breath against his rank odor. “You risk nothing bringing me scraps of food. But when it really matters, when you have something to lose, you’re a coward. I took plenty of risks to train you, to keep you alive.”

“I know, but—”

“But nothing. You’re one of us, not them.” Marco pushed his chin toward the palace again. “Come on, Luciano. With you on the inside, we have a chance.”