The Chef's Apprentice: A Novel (44 page)

“Same thing you’re doing here.” Marco pushed his chin out. “When Domingo comes, I’m going with you. There’s a formula to make gold in that book. I know there is, and I want it. I go where that book goes.”

“Marco,” I said, “you don’t know what you’re doing.” The chef shook his head. “You really don’t, boy.”

“I’m staying. What are you going to do about it?”

I stepped toward him. “What about Rufina?”

Marco snorted. “If I haven’t found Rufina by now, I’m not going to. N’bali said what we’ve all known all along. My sister is dead.”

I nodded. I hadn’t realized that he had allowed himself to accept it.

“Anyway,” he went on, “even if she were alive, what could I do for her when I can barely feed myself? That book is my only chance.” His expression fluttered between rage and despair and I knew there was no way to make him leave.

I said, “All right, Marco.”

“Oh,
Dio
.” The chef sat down and put his head in his hands. “I have to think.”

Marco smirked. “Think all you want.” He scooted back to make himself comfortable on the crates. “The three of us will just relax and wait for Domingo. I hear we’re going to Spain.” He lay on his back with his feet against the wall and his fingers laced behind his head.

I didn’t want to look at Marco, and I didn’t want to know whether the chef was looking at me. I sat on a crate and closed my eyes. I struggled to go back to my breathing, but minutes later we all came alert at the sound of heavy boots scuffling on the wooden floor above us. The voices of the
Cappe Nere
sailed out the open back door of the bar and in through our high window. One said, “Keep your stolen wine. We want the people you’re hiding.”

“People?” The barkeep sounded bored. “What people?”

“That’s your business, isn’t it? Hiding people.”

“What are you talking about? I’m a barkeep.”

I took some comfort from hearing the barkeep remain so calm, as if this sort of raid was routine.

A
Cappa Nera
said, “They were seen coming in here.”

“
Boh
. Someone made a mistake. But since you’re here, how about a drink? On the house, of course.” The sound of breaking glass made us jump. The barkeep yelled, “What the hell are you doing? Are you crazy?”

A
Cappa Nera
said, “Crazy enough to cut your throat with this.”

“
Madonna mia!
What do you want? Money? Here, take it. What are you
doing
?”

I cringed under a horrendous crashing of glass. They must have pushed over all the shelves behind the bar. My heart leapt in my chest at the sound of upended tables and wood splintering against the walls. Marco jumped off his crate and stood staring up at the trapdoor. The chef took the purse from his pocket and stuffed the letters to his daughters inside it. The tread of heavy boots pounded overhead and a man shouted, “Hold him!”

Another said, “I’ve got him.”

“All right,” said the first voice, “this is simple. I take one finger for every question you don’t answer. Let’s start with a thumb. Like this …”

The barkeep screamed; it was a raw howl of pain and horror. He sobbed, “They’re in the cellar.”

“That’s it,” said the chef. “It’s over.” He pointed to the ladder and made a sweeping movement. I moved it away from the trapdoor and set it under the window. We heard boots above us clomp into the storeroom.

The chef picked up the oil lamp and smashed it against a crate of wine packed in straw. Slender flames leapt from the straw and blackened the wood. A spark jumped to another crate, and the chef pushed the burning crates together.

Marco yelled, “Are you crazy?”

Above us, we heard crates being moved to expose the trapdoor.

The oil-soaked wood exploded into a conflagration, and we
shielded our eyes as wine bottles burst and smoke rushed to the ceiling. Under the whoosh of flames I heard the chef say, “God forgive me.” He held up the book.

I shouted, “No, Maestro!”

“Fíglío dí puttana!”
Marco leapt forward and tackled the chef just as he flung the book into the blaze. As the trapdoor opened, Marco tried to reach into the fire but instantly pulled back with a hiss of pain.

The chef saw my horrified face and said, “The Guardians are more important than one book.”

The dry parchment caught immediately and curled away while the leather blistered and blackened. Orange light danced crazily on the rough walls as if the cellar had come alive with dancing shadow demons.
Hell
, I thought.
We’re in hell
.

A voice above us cried out, “Fire!”

“Get them out. Landucci wants them alive.”

“Get a ladder.”

The chef shoved his bulging purse into my pocket and prodded me toward the ladder under the window. Marco already had a foot on the bottom rung, and the chef grabbed him by the hair and threw him to the ground. “Continue the tradition,” he whispered fiercely. He pushed me roughly onto the ladder, slapped my backside as if I were a mule, and said, “Go!”

While the
Cappe Nere
cursed at the barkeep to hurry with the ladder, I crawled out through the high window, knelt on all fours, and peered down into the inferno. The cellar was filling with smoke and I barely made out the movement of another ladder dropping through the trapdoor.

Marco had climbed halfway to the window. He stretched out a hand to me, then his face opened in shock and he slid down into the roiling black smoke. I thought his foot might have slipped on a rung; it did not occur to me until later that the chef could have
plans for him. I watched Marco’s frightened face drop away from the window and disappear in the smoke.

I flattened myself against the side of the building and stood tight against the wall. The cellar was sludgy and damp; after the initial blaze, the burst wine bottles wetted the straw and there was more smoke than fire. The billows puffing out of the window were already diminishing. A
Cappa Nera
hollered, “Smother it!” Another one cried, “The boy’s on the ladder.” I heard a scream, the smack of a fist on flesh, groaning, and everyone coughing and coughing. …

Someone yelled, “
Merda!
I burnt my fingers for nothing. Nothing left but the binding.”

“I can’t breathe.”

“Get out now.”

I wanted to run, but I thought the chef and Marco might somehow still escape. Maybe I’d have a chance to help. I looked around for a place to hide and saw an overturned rowboat waiting for new caulking and paint, a derelict little vessel with gaps between the boards. It would do. I scrambled out to the dock, and as I started to raise the rowboat, a couple of fishermen, who’d left off mending their nets to watch the commotion, stared at me. I met their eyes, one at a time, and each of them nodded. They saw nothing; after all, it was Venice. I heaved the rowboat up and crawled beneath it.

Through the gaps in the boat, I watched men stumble out of the bar. They came out clawing at their throats, choking and coughing, and then they sat down or stood bent over while they sucked greedily at clean sea air. A few sailors and fishermen tossed buckets of seawater into the cellar, and the smoke dwindled. The wet, muddy cellar had kept the blaze from spreading,
grazíe a Dío
. One
Cappa Nera
kept a tight grip on the chef’s arm, and another held Marco by the nape of his neck. The barkeep knelt on the ground, cradling one hand wrapped in a blood-soaked bar towel.

The chef’s clean shirt was streaked with soot and splotched with wine. His face and hands were blackened, whether from dirt or burns I couldn’t tell, but he held his head up. Marco staggered in a daze, wiping a bloody nose. The
Cappe Nere
led them away with their hands bound behind their backs.

It would be many years before I learned the details of their fate.

CHAPTER XXXIII
T
HE
B
OOK OF
R
EVELATIONS

T
hey’d hunted for the chef and a boy, and they’d caught the chef and a boy. Fate was whimsical that day. With nowhere to go, I remained crouched under the overturned boat. I had no doubt the chef and Marco had been taken straight to the dungeons, and try as I might, I couldn’t think of any way to help them. If I’d had the book, I would have tried to trade it for their lives. That would have been foolish as well as pointless, and I’ve often felt thankful that I didn’t have that choice. I huddled under the boat and wondered whether only the
Cappe Nere
would interrogate them, or whether Landucci himself might take part. I don’t know which scenario horrified me more.

I imagined the chef, silent and stoic, and Marco, cringing and crying, swearing that he was the wrong boy. It had occurred to me by then that the chef had kept Marco in the cellar to take my place. In the dungeon, the chef would keep silent, and the
Cappe Nere
would laugh at Marco and call him a coward. Poor Marco. Torture and death seemed like a disproportionate punishment for ordinary human weakness. The chef knew what he was dying for, and he was willing. But Marco, my poor hungry brother, would never know that his death served a purpose. Did that purpose give his death
meaning even though he wasn’t aware of it? I wanted to think so, but that was no comfort for him. Oh, Marco, why did you have to follow me? It seemed monstrously unfair. They wanted
me
, and the notion to surrender myself and save Marco seemed right. But I knew they’d only take me and keep him, too. I remembered his face dropping away in the smoke, and I wept.

I had thought that losing Francesca was the worst that could happen, but under that boat, the pain of losing her merged with the pain of losing everything—the chef, Marco, the book, all our hopes and dreams—and I despaired. In that terrible moment, I remembered a corpse Marco and I had once found hanging under a bridge. The man had tied one end of a rope to the stone balustrade and the other around his neck, and then he had simply jumped. It looked as if his neck was broken, but he may have strangled to death. His tongue protruded from his mouth, his face was blotched purple and blue, and a putrid stench surrounded him.

Marco and I recoiled at the sight of him, but later we talked about it and wondered over it. Filled with plans for our future in the New World, we couldn’t understand how he could throw away everything in one quick leap. How could anyone stop hoping so utterly?

That day under the boat, I understood. It was possible to despair and to crave oblivion if for no other reason than to escape the crushing guilt. Why should I be allowed to carry on while the chef and Marco could not? Wasn’t it I who excited Marco with talk of alchemy? Wasn’t it I who brought Marco into the chef’s life? I considered filling my pockets with stones and jumping into the lagoon, but I knew I couldn’t do it, and I despised myself anew for cowardice.

I considered turning myself in to the
Cappe Nere
simply to let them do it for me, but I remembered the Judas Chair and I feared I might break under torture and betray the Guardians. I remembered the chef’s last words to me:
Continue the tradition
.

Perhaps that could be my redemption. I could carry the secret of the Guardians and find small ways to spread the chef’s respect for knowledge. I wouldn’t learn all the lofty things the chef could have taught me, but I could keep his message alive. Anyway, I wasn’t fit to be a Guardian. In that dark and cynical moment I castigated myself for having believed I could ever have been part of something so grand.

Then I remembered something else the chef had said:
You’re better than you think
.

This then would be my mission—to be better. I would be the man he wanted me to be. I would honor the chef’s belief in me by staying alive and becoming the best man I could be. And that was my moment of resurrection.

I stayed there, huddled under the boat, hoping Domingo would come to the bar as we’d arranged. I curled into a fetal position and waited. After a while, my legs cramped and my head ached, but any thought of crawling out to stretch was quashed by a frigid wind that swept in from the sea at dusk. It rocked my shelter and whistled through gaps in the boat. I saw a gondola caught in a squall; a sailor’s hat blew by, and wind ransacked the water. Then the rain came in sheets, in torrents. It pummeled the little boat, leaked onto my head, splashed around me, and soaked my clothes. It went on for hours. My teeth chattered, and my empty stomach gurgled. I wrapped my arms around myself and squinted through the gaps. I wasn’t sure I could trust my eyes when Domingo appeared, loping along the dock, holding a scrap of canvas over his head. He stopped in front of the burned-out bar and stood in the rain, staring at the blackened frame of the cellar window.

I crawled out from under the rowboat and darted up behind him. I said, “The
Cappe Nere—
”

He held up his hand. “We have to hurry. The captain is waiting.”

There were few people out in the storm—only a prostitute
with dripping hair huddled in a doorway and two sailors who buried their chins in their collars and hurried past us. Domingo’s black eyes flashed beneath his wet lashes, but he didn’t look at me. Rain streamed down our faces, wind whipped our hair, a jagged vein of lightning flashed, and a crash of thunder rolled over Venice like a lion’s roar.

We came to a massive old freighter rocking unsteadily, waves chopping at her barnacled hull. Domingo ran up the gangplank and waved me aboard. Just then, Bernardo appeared out of the rain, soaked and bedraggled but running straight at me. He pushed himself between my legs, purring, nudging me with his wet nose, and looking up at me with enormous eyes in his small, rain-slicked head. Bernardo had followed me faithfully into the kitchen, out of the kitchen, into the church, and now to the boat. He broke my heart. I folded him in my arms and trudged up the gangplank.

The captain couldn’t keep still. His head swiveled back and forth, and a muscle jumped spastically in one cheek; he made frantic gestures to hurry me along. He peered down the rain-darkened gangplank and asked, “Where’s the other one?”