The Chef's Apprentice: A Novel (7 page)

Still, Signora Ferrero had been right. I’d stolen the pomegranate because I could. If moldy bread had been handier, I’d have taken that instead. The chef was a naturally generous man who allowed people the benefit of the doubt, and, as his wife observed, his wish for a son may have confused him. She was more realistic, like most women, more practical. She spread her motherly warmth over her
family like a brood hen on her nest, but her wingspan did not reach far enough to touch the likes of me. She loved her family and I was a threat to their innocence. She knew perfectly well that street boys were not noble in the face of hunger, and though this was a sad fact of life, my base character could not be allowed to taint her daughters.

Despite their differences, the chef loved her unconditionally—and he respected her as well. He respected all women. I remember his remarks on the subject, one afternoon in the kitchen when work was slow and the staff languished in an uncommon lethargy. Pellegrino and Enrico were lounging by the brick oven, complaining about their wives. Wishing to join them—wishing to act like a regular member of the staff—I remembered Marco’s cynical refrain about women and thought to make them laugh over it. I smiled crookedly, imitating Marco’s sardonic bravado, and said, “Women,
boh!
A necessary evil.”

“How dare you!” The chef marched over, roaring. “I will not have disrespectful talk about women in my kitchen.” Pellegrino scurried off to his chopping block, and Enrico busied himself with a bread paddle. In a lower voice the chef said, “A woman is no trivial matter, Luciano. Choose well and you’ll have a complete soul.”

“Forgive me, Maestro,” I answered meekly. “I know you’re right.” Then I told him about Francesca.

He said, “She’s in a convent?”

“Yes, Maestro. But she doesn’t want to be.”

“How do you know that?”

“I can tell.”

“Oh,
Dio
.”

“But I love her!”

He rubbed his chin. “Does she love you?”

“Not yet, but she might.”

“Oh,
Dio
.” He walked away shaking his head, mumbling to himself. “A nun in the marketplace.
Dío mío
. Boys.”

At that time, I’d been in the kitchen about a month and I’d spoken to Francesca once, in the Rialto, on a shopping trip for the chef. But before that, I’d worshipped her from afar many times. I had often stood at a distance—ashamed of my ragged clothes, but besotted and yearning—and watched her walk in the sunlight behind Mother Superior. I studied her face, so soft and full of rosy light, and I was bewitched. I knew her name because the older nun often reprimanded her: “Francesca, stop dawdling.” “Francesca, don’t daydream.” “Francesca, did you hear me?”

Mother Superior’s nagging managed to dim the light in her face but did not extinguish it. Francesca would look momentarily chastened, but as soon as the older woman turned away, she lit up again and resumed gobbling up the sounds and sights around her.

Mother Superior billowed through the market in a starched white wimple and voluminous robes, like a ship sailing into port, while Francesca followed with small, chaste steps, carrying a wickerwork basket and sneaking looks at everyone and everything. Francesca wore the simple brown habit of a novice, with a rope tied around her waist. She dressed like a nun, but anyone could see her heart was not in it. A veil set carelessly back on her head allowed a glimpse of pale blond hair brushed away from her tawny brow, and a few loose wisps always danced joyously around her face. She had the wide eyes of an antelope.

I’d seen eyes like those on a hunting tapestry in one of the palace’s public rooms, and the chef had told me what the animal was called. In the tapestry, hunters with eager faces pursued the graceful animal on horseback. The antelope seemed, like its name, a gentle creature, and I didn’t understand the hunters’ passion to kill it. The doomed animal looked out from the tapestry pleading for rescue, and the eyes disturbed me so much that I learned to walk past it with my head down.

Lost in the memory of Francesca’s antelope eyes, I startled when a maid tapped my shoulder. She’d come to collect the sacks
of goose feathers, and seeing the light flurry of down still settling around me she pulled a face and wrenched the last sack out of my hands. She muttered, “Wasteful boy.”

“Sorry.”

“Boh.”
She gathered up the other sacks and stalked off.

Her contempt brought me back to the kitchen. Most days, I thought about Francesca obsessively, but on that long, strange day, after I’d witnessed a murder and peeled an onion, curiosity about the doge’s motives consumed thoughts of Francesca like goose feathers in the fire. I was keen to understand what the doge had done, and it came to me like an epiphany that the chef would confide everything to the other half of his soul—his wife, Rosa. It wasn’t every day that the doge poisoned a peasant at his table, and I felt confident the chef would tell her about it. All I had to do was go to his house that night and eavesdrop.

One errant feather tickled my nose like a warning, but I brushed it off and made my plans.

CHAPTER VI
T
HE
B
OOK OF
C
ATS

I
t astounds me now that the doge’s palace, which was already venerable when I was born, retains its original elegance; the patina of youth still blooms on the ancient stones. It’s a massive palace, taking up an entire side of the vast Piazza San Marco, yet it looks fragile. An arcade of fluted white pillars supports upper stories of rose marble pierced by the keyhole windows of Byzantium. Now, as an old man, I sometimes visit Venice simply to marvel at that precarious balance of strength and delicacy. But on that seminal night so long ago, young and consumed by curiosity, I raced to the chef’s house, blind to glorious architecture and ignorant of so much more.

I had to wait until the last cook hung up his apron, wished me
buona notte
, and walked out with a leftover lamb shank wrapped in oilcloth. It was
my
lamb shank. Or at least the one I’d intended for Marco and Domingo. I had put off claiming it and now it was gone. The chef’s constant admonition echoed in my mind—
Pay attention, Luciano
.

When I felt sure no one would return, I shed my apron and escaped. In the Piazza San Marco, I glanced at the clock tower and
saw that I’d probably arrive just in time to listen in on the chef’s dinner conversation. That clock also shows the date, the phases of the moon, and the position of the sun in the zodiac; astrology was then, and is still today, a serious science employed by the upper classes. I’d heard that we lived in the Age of Pisces, an age of mystery and becoming, and that it would be another five hundred years, a new millennium, before we entered the Age of Aquarius, the apocalyptic age of upheavals and revelations. The Age of Aquarius sounded like an interesting time to be alive, and I felt vaguely disappointed that I would not see it.

I loped along the Grand Canal, feeling the night’s damp breath on my face. Behind the palace, I turned onto a side street leading to the Bridge of Sorrows, a marble arch that spanned a canal to join the secret passageways of the palace to the inquisitors’ dungeons. Over that bridge, the
Cappe Nere
conducted criminals and heretics to dark underwater caves where the poor wretches lay chained in dank cells listening to the plash of oars as gondolas passed freely overhead. Shivering and starving, they waited for apish louts to drag them off to the rack or to the blood-crusted spikes of the Iron Maiden. The prisoners’ despair upon taking their last look at the sky had given the bridge its name. That night, the Bridge of Sorrows was deserted but for a cat slouching in the shadows.

There have always been too many cats in Venice. In moments of fanciful speculation, I regard the cats of Venice as a death motif. Everyone knows the myth of nine lives, the bad luck associated with black cats, and their reputation as familiars for witches. Cats and their dark myths are so much a part of the city that we’ve built fountains with small indentations, like tiny stairs, to make it easier for them to climb up for a drink. Cats and all they suggest are thoroughly Venetian, and I wonder: Should all these cats remind hedonistic Venetians of their mortality? Should the nine lives make us ponder the concept of resurrection? Do these cryptic creatures hint at the possibility of magic in the world?

I paused briefly on the bridge to note the reflection of stars twinkling in the canal’s black water; the white marble bridge appeared suspended in a tarry night sky with pinpoints of light glittering above and below, and only now do I ponder the ominous implications of a city that floats in darkness. That night I crossed the bridge propelled by the exuberance of youth. My long days in the kitchen had made me dull, but that night the old thrill of risk quickened in my chest. Joking, I gave the lurking cat a warning that mothers used to subdue unruly children—“Watch out! The
Cappe Nere
will get you.” The cat hissed its own warning. I laughed and ran on.

I’ve often revisited Venice since my youth if only to smile at the irony, the enduring illusion of her nobility. The water still whispers tales of death as it laps against decaying
palazzi
. Men in capes still appear out of the darkness and dissolve back into it. Venice has always been a perfect setting for secrets, seduction, and the melancholy thoughts of a poet. Tainted by iniquity, Venice invites moral surrender not with a playful wink, but with the understanding that she is, and always has been, sluttish under her regal disguise.

Venice is a city of illusions, and only one raised on her streets can find his way through her dreamlike convolutions in the dark. Having explored her thoroughly when I lived by her grace, that advantage was mine. It took only minutes to find the narrow
río
of the chef’s house.

It was a tall home with a blue front door, arched windows, and a long stone balcony running the entire length of the
píano nobíle
, that middle floor comprised of a dining room, kitchen, and sitting room. As was typical, the ground floor was used for washing and storage, and the topmost floor was made up of bedrooms. Each bedroom had a middle-sized balcony with a potbellied iron railing that overlooked the cobbled footpath and the green canal. Stone steps led from the chef’s front door directly into the water, where his private gondola, moored to a striped pole, rocked easily. It was a comfortable
home, appropriate for a respected citizen like the doge’s chef. It was exactly the sort of home I wanted for Francesca and me.

I paused in the deep nightshade of the
piano nobile
’s long stone balcony, and my excitement waned with the advance of guilt. Until then, I’d always come to that house as a welcome guest. The chef had put a paternal arm around me, fed me, smiled on me, and welcomed me into his family. Now, prowling like a criminal, I felt the pinch of disloyalty. I thought about leaving, but I was young and burning to know …
everything
. I crept up the stairway to the
piano nobile
and slithered along the balcony’s smooth stone floor, careful not to disturb the flowerpots lining the wall, until I reached the brightly lit window of the dining room. Blood pounded in my ears.

Adolescent ignorance regarding the natural complexity of life led me to imagine that the chef and his wife would be conveniently situated, near enough to facilitate my eavesdropping, but not near enough to detect my presence. Of course, they’d begin discussing the doge the moment I came within earshot. I anticipated the chef telling his wife all that had happened, explaining the reasons and consequences in clear detail, and signaling the end of the story by going directly to bed. Ha!

I snatched a look into the cheerful dining room and saw that it was warmly lit by at least a dozen chunky beeswax candles. The chef and his family sat around their long chestnut dining table, bathed in mellow candlelight, relaxed and chatting after their evening meal. Pressed against the wall, I listened. Smells of lamb stew and fresh bread wafted out to me, and I remembered that I’d not eaten my own evening meal. My stomach contracted, and I willed it to be quiet.

Signora Ferrero spoke of an altercation with the butcher. She never referred to him by name, but called him
il ladro—
the thief. She said, “It’s not my imagination. He cheats my sister, too. The man has a fickle scale and a heavy thumb.”

The chef murmured something vaguely agreeable.

The daughters spoke of teachers and school friends. As members of the gentry, the girls would never become fluent in Latin and Greek like aristocratic children, such as the pope’s daughter, Lucrezia Borgia, but they’d learn to read and write and do their sums. Elena said she wanted to study astrology, but the chef said, “Better to study the work of that young teacher from Poland, Copernicus. He has an interesting theory that the earth revolves around the sun, although you shouldn’t bring his name up in public, eh?” The room went silent, and I peeked in. Elena stared at her father with a perplexed look, and little Natalia laid her cheek on the table and yawned. The chef said, “Never mind. We’ll talk about Copernicus when you’re older.”

I listened to the mundane details of the family’s day and waited for the chef to mention that there’d been a murder in the palace, but he only sympathized with his wife’s complaints and listened to his daughters’ reports. After a while, I realized he was, of course, waiting to be alone with his wife. What father would discuss murder in front of his young children? The girls would go to bed, and then he would tell her—
everything
.

Eventually, I heard the scraping of chairs, the clink of forks, and the clash of dishes as Camilla cleared the table. I pictured the old servant’s bony hands piling up the plates, her long dour face with its humped nose, her thin gray hair twisted into a diminutive knot on top of her head. I’d watched Camilla clear that table many times. Once again, guilt intruded. How could I spy on these people? Apart from La Canterina, they were the only family I’d ever known. Shame on me. If I crept away immediately, it would be as if I’d never come. I started to back away from the window—and that’s when they began to sing.