The Chef's Apprentice: A Novel (26 page)

Everyone else thought amaranth was extinct, but apparently the chef had secret sources. Before I could ask where he bought his amaranth, a terrible pressure began to squeeze my chest, and my thoughts turned chaotic. My skin crawled, and I felt an urge to run. I said, “I don’t like small, dark places.” My breath had turned fast and shallow. I gasped, “Can we go now?”

“It’s only claustrophobia and, perhaps, a fear of the dark.” The chef seemed unconcerned. “It’s basically a fear of death arising from dread of the unknown. It’s the common but irrational fear that catastrophe will suddenly present itself for no other reason than you can’t see it coming. Don’t worry, you’re not dying.”

“Fear of death?” An invisible weight compressed my chest; it felt like a vise.

The chef said, “Most people fear death. That’s why they love food that gives the illusion of cheating death. Love apples, bones of the dead, anything black.”

“I have to get out of here, Maestro.” I felt light-headed. I began to sweat and tremble. “I think I
am
dying.”

“No. You’re panicked by the closeness and the dark. There’s no disgrace in fearing the dark. Many people do. A teacher named Plato warned us to beware only of those who fear the light.”

“What?” My heartbeat had escalated to an alarming gallop, my eyes watered, and my vision blurred.

The chef’s voice seemed to reach me from a distance. “Luciano. Pay attention. Right here, right now, there’s no danger. Take a deep breath.”

“I can’t.”

“Take one good breath, and we’ll leave.”

“I can’t.”

“Look at me.” He held my face in his hands, and his eyes steadied me. Even though my heart still raced, I managed one normal inhalation. Then the chef put his arm around me, and we walked out together. Safely out of the cellar, I sat on the ground until my heart slowed. I wiped the sweat from my face and asked, “How did you know I’d be able to do that?”

“I only wanted you to try. Remaining calm in the face of fear is an important skill, and one you’ll need. When we dig down into ourselves, we find unexpected strength. I want you to learn how to do that. That’s how you’ll grow.”

“
Sì
, Maestro.”

“Well then, what have you learned?”

“That I have untested strength in me.”

“Bene.”

For the second time in my life, I felt an urge to pray. I looked up, because that’s what people do, and thought:
Please, let me grow
.

CHAPTER XVIII
T
HE
B
OOK OF
B
ORGIA

O
ne morning, the majordomo glided from the service door to the chef’s desk, pursing his lips and holding his turquoise robes above silk-clad ankles. The glamorous, lilac-scented man delivered his message in a rush, fluttering his fan to ward off the kitchen’s heat and dabbing the base of his throat with a snippet of lace. He chirped, “The doge has been summoned to Rome. You shall accompany him and prepare your Sauce Nepenthes for His Holiness.”

“I’m honored.” The chef executed an elaborate bow, perhaps too elaborate. “I’ll need my apprentice to assist.”

The majordomo waved a soft hand and trilled, “As you wish.” He pirouetted on his beaded slippers and made his proud way back to the service door with quick, little steps.

“Maestro?” I stood motionless, holding a wet dishcloth that dripped onto my shoes. “Me? In Rome?”

The chef motioned me closer and spoke quietly. “You can be sure Borgia has some reason other than my sauce to invite the doge to his table.” The chef tapped the side of his nose.

“But to cook for the pope is still an honor, isn’t it, Maestro?”

The chef smiled. “It’s time to begin your education, Luciano. You need to see Rome.”

*

All that day I paid special attention to every morsel of food left on every plate. I collected the leavings carefully and saved all the bones with a scrap of meat on them; I gathered a mountain of bread crusts and foraged for every stray rind of cheese. Once assembled, it looked like a pile of garbage so I threw in some turnips and carrots, which were cheap and plentiful. I wasn’t sure how long we’d be in Rome and I wanted to leave as large a parcel as possible for Marco and Domingo.

That night, when I took out the trash, Marco was there, waiting. His eyes lit up when he saw the oilcloth slung over my shoulder and bulging with food. “What’s this?” He grabbed the cloth, peeked inside, and his face fell. “It’s mostly bones.”

“There’s some turnips and cheese, too. Give some to Domingo and tell him I said
ciao
.”

“Why the feast? If you’re trying to apologize for getting caught and not getting anything out of that cabinet, it won’t work. I still don’t know how you could be so clumsy. You used to be a good thief. If you really want to apologize you could try again.”

“I’m not apologizing for anything and I’m not going to try again. I’m going to Rome, and I don’t know how long I’ll be gone.” I gestured at the oilcloth. “This will have to last.”

Marco’s eyes narrowed. “Why Rome?”

“The chef has to cook for the pope.”

He sneered. “Why does he need you?”

“I’m his apprentice.”

“Boh.”
Marco shoved the oilcloth under his arm. “I’m sure you’ll eat well in Rome.” He turned to go. “I’ll just take my bones and get out of your way.”

“Marco, don’t be like that.”

He looked back at me. “Like what? Hungry?”

“Marco—”

“Have a nice trip, Luciano.”

And then he was gone.

*

The great cities of Italy are like different flowers in the same garden. Venice is a burst of pink azaleas turning brown at the edges, a carnival of decadence. Marble palazzi sink, centimeter by centimeter, while every winter, the sea floods the city ankle-deep and her citizens frolic and fornicate in her watery heart. Bacchus jeers at the Grim Reaper, and oblivious musicians in the Piazza San Marco play madly while a dried-up whore runs a lascivious tongue over her rouged lips.

After Venice, I thought I knew debauchery, but I wasn’t prepared for the two-faced tawny opulence of Rome, the Venus flytrap, an exotic beauty with a taste for flesh. Being much older than Venice, Rome had had centuries more to perfect the art of duplicity. While the rest of Italy sang folk tunes, Rome chanted in an ancient basso of contrived moral authority. The unchallenged image of a saintly Rome obscured the life-and-death power struggles festering beneath its gilded domes and embroidered vestments. If Venice was a slut, Rome was a murderer.

I’ve since come to believe that the illusion of Rome’s sanctity is aided by the sirocco that blows two thirds of the year. It’s a sultry southern wind that crowds the sky with low gray clouds. It makes mildew blossom in secret places, spreads leprous stains of humidity on stone walls, and makes people feel as if their heads and noses are stuffed with cotton so that they cannot smell the corruption under the incense.

Smell, always evocative, is the best way to describe some elemental differences between the Roman kitchen and ours. In Venice, Chef Ferrero hung leafy herbs to dry in the rafters, which tinged
the air with a hint of the garden, and sea breezes swept mouthwatering aromas from one end to the other.

The kitchen in Rome was below ground, and no fresh air lightened the accumulated odors. Instead of herbs, Borgia’s chef hung pungent Spanish hams covered in verdigris mold from his ceiling, and in one corner of the dim room, a sullen leopard huddled in its cage, gnawing on a hunk of raw meat. Its low, curdled growl and dull yellow eyes revealed no hint of the spirited creature it must once have been. Its demented pacing in that narrow cage depressed me and tweaked my claustrophobia. But Borgia often indulged his taste for exotic animals, and the leopard attracted little attention in that jaded kitchen. Aged meat and the leopard’s stench made Borgia’s kitchen reek of the wild and the dead.

Everything in Rome, even food, reached excesses unimaginable in other places. On our second day in the Eternal City, I accompanied the chef to the marketplace. I gaped like a rustic at a display of duck mousse and goose pâté sculpted over the carcass of a swan; it was garnished with quail feathers and roosted on a nest of ostrich eggs—five winsome birds killed and pillaged for a centerpiece. I studied a pale calf’s head in aspic with a carnation in its mouth, one blue eye staring and the other closed—death, the clown, winking. I contemplated tissue-thin prosciutto, the color of diluted blood, pooled around melon slices the color of flesh. In another stall, a vendor stood proudly over a bushel of truffles—big as apples and black as sin, warty lumps with a carnal musk, rooted out of the loamy soil of Périgord by pigs. I gasped at the mythic sight of fresh zebra meat, bloody slabs spread out on the animal’s own striped hide in a display that seemed somehow pornographic. The zebra meat reminded me of Borgia’s leopard.

I was eager to catch a glimpse of Borgia, the rich Spaniard who had purchased the title of Pope Alexander VI, but the chef told me to keep my head down and my mouth shut. I’d almost despaired of seeing the great man when Borgia’s Castilian chef, annoyed at our
presence in his kitchen, insisted that I make myself useful. He said, “Why is that boy here? He’s in the way.”

The chef nodded and snapped his fingers. “Luciano,” he said, “help the maids.”

I quickly relieved a maid of a luncheon tray and followed her up to the dining room. The Roman maids, mousy women with tense faces, were even more cowed than ours in Venice. Not surprising, really; after all, they worked for one of the most powerful and ruthless men in the world.

That day, Borgia would be dining with Herr Loren Behaim, and the maid nervously checked the tray twice before she carried it into the dining room. As was my custom, I hovered behind the dining room service door to listen and observe.

And in he came! The outer doors burst open, and Rodrigo Borgia barreled into the room like a lusty stallion. He greeted Behaim in a booming voice, bristling with energy. Broad and muscular, in he came with his pugnacious walk, his cleft chin shoved out, still in his riding clothes, his crop in his hand, muddy boots ringing on the marble floor, and on every finger gold and precious gems. In he came, a man’s man who liked horses and women—a swarthy, powerfully built man with square hands and a strong nose and nostrils flared open to life. A hirsute man with tufts of black hair sprouting on the backs of his hands, the perpetual shadow of a beard on his face, and a mass of springy hair graying obediently only at the temples. He had thick eyebrows over lively eyes, curious, intelligent eyes, hot brown eyes that could become suddenly penetrating. He flashed a dazzling, white-toothed smile—a pirate. In he came, laughing and easy, and why not? He was rich and powerful, and he filled the room like a charging bull.

Herr Behaim stood and dipped his head. “Your Holiness.”

“Sit, Loren.” Borgia straddled a chair and absently raised a hand toward the service door. Immediately, the maid rushed out to him with a tray of bread and olives and a carafe of Spanish sherry. Borgia
preferred the food and drink of his native land. He said, “Tell me, Loren, how shall I use this old Venetian?” Borgia dismissed the maid, poured two glasses of sherry, and handed one to the astrologer.

Behaim accepted the sherry with a gentleman’s nod. “Your Holiness, the doge believes, or wants to believe, that the book holds a formula for eternal youth.” Behaim smiled.

Borgia put his sherry down and bellowed, “But that’s marvelous!” He laughed with his mouth wide open and head thrown back. He slapped his knee and asked, “Does he even know about the Gnostic gospels?”

“I believe he’s heard of them. But he’s so haunted by his own mortality he doesn’t grasp their import. Also, he believes there’s only one book. There’s no doubt that copies exist, as well as a significant number of people who know about them. Still, the doge obsesses about one book with a formula for immortality.”

“Wonderful.” Borgia looked astounded and delighted. “How shall we proceed?”

Behaim leaned back in his chair and passed the sherry under his nose. “You can simply condemn the book as blasphemy. Tell the people the book is being protected by heretics and Satanists. Then offer a reward the doge can’t match. That will get his attention.”

“I don’t know.” Borgia swirled his sherry. “I can condemn anything I want, but people are harder to control than they used to be. It’s those troublemakers in Florence stirring people up, giving them ideas, making them curious. People are getting bold, thinking for themselves. It’s not like the old days. If the reward is too high, someone might actually find the damn gospels and try to use them against me.”

Behaim sat forward and lowered his voice. “Your Holiness, as your astrologer, I assure you there’s very little threat of exposure. This is the Age of Pisces, the age of secrets. Significant revelations
are not likely to become public until the Age of Aquarius. For now, the secrets are ours to use and control.”

“And when will we see the Age of Aquarius?”

“Not for five hundred years, Your Holiness. A new millennium.”

“Perfect.” Borgia leaned back in this chair and laughed.

That afternoon, Rodrigo Borgia stood on his public balcony and denounced the notorious book as a volume of dark arts and heresy. He raised his brawny arms in blessing and proclaimed, “Any man who brings me information leading to the recovery and destruction of this infamous book will be given a cardinal’s hat with all the properties, privileges, and monies that position entails.”

The crowd went wild with cheers, applause, and incredulous laughter.
Anyone
could be a cardinal, and why not? Borgia had already given the tall hat to several of his bastard sons before their thirteenth birthday. He, too, loved his sons.

*

My maestro demanded privacy to prepare his Sauce Nepenthes, and Borgia’s chef, a proud Castilian insulted at being displaced in his own kitchen, treated Chef Ferrero as a nuisance beneath his notice. He condescended to taste the sauce, and then made a great show of spitting it out and rinsing his mouth with wine. He made an eloquent gesture of disgust as he left the kitchen.