The Hundred-Foot Journey (17 page)

Old Degeneret, in her gray wool tights and tatty sweaters, barely acknowledged their arrival while she fussed over a bag of feed, and Mallory was relieved to see the gnarled old woman still standing, still in hot pursuit of her ducks. Mallory impulsively told Leblanc he should pick the foie gras while she waited outside with Madame Degeneret.

This, of course, was highly unusual. Mallory always insisted on judging the livers herself, as no one else was ever competent enough. But before Leblanc could object, Mallory had taken a milking stool and was sitting alongside Madame Degeneret, watching the old woman’s arthritic, knobby hands gently slide a feeding funnel down a duck’s gullet. So—what else was there to say?—Leblanc disappeared into the barn, where the young work hand was plucking and bleeding a dozen ducks before removing the prized foie gras and the
magret.

“Are you well, Madame Degeneret?” Mallory asked, pulling a tissue from under her cardigan sleeve and discreetly wiping her nose.

“Can’t complain.”

The old woman pulled the funnel out of the duck’s crop and grabbed another squawking bird. But she suddenly stopped, looked at the mark on the bird’s leg, and let the bird go.

“Not you. Shoo. Get away.”

The bird flapped across the courtyard and a half-dozen ducklings waddled energetically after her. Mallory’s hands were calmly clasped on her lap, and the wintry sun felt good upon her face.

“Why not that one?” she asked mildly.

“Can’t.”

“But why?”

“A few weeks ago,” Degeneret said with a snort of contempt, “a no-brains tourist drove into the farm too quickly and killed the mother of those six ducklings. Usually that’s the end for the little ones. The others peck them to death. But that old bird took care of the motherless chicks. Let them join her brood.”

“Oh, I see.”

“
Non, non, madame
. That duck will live a full life. I will not kill her. For what? A liver? I wouldn’t be able to sleep at night. Imagine. A duck showing more kindness than a human being. I can’t have that.”

Just then Leblanc emerged from the barn with two plastic bags of foie gras, and Madame Mallory rose from her stool, unable to utter a word.

Papa picked me up from the hospital in the Maison Mumbai van, and before long we were pulling into the open gates of the Dufour estate, the crêpe-lined banners stretched across the courtyard welcoming me home. A crowd of well-wishers, not just my family but some fifty citizens of Lumière, stood under the banners and broke into raucous clapping and roars and piercing whistles at our arrival. And I, getting into the mood of it all, quite liking all this attention, opened the van door and waved like a returning war hero.

It was such a lovely homecoming. There was Monsieur Iten and his wife. And Madame Picard. And there, too, the mayor and his son, my new friend, Marcus.

And Madame Mallory.

She had come directly from Madame Degeneret’s farm, with urgent purpose.

Papa and I spotted her at the same moment, loitering as she was in the back of the crowd, and you could feel the mood of the homecoming change instantly. Papa was furious and he scowled, the crowd turning their heads to see what he was staring at. There were gasps. Whispers.

But Madame Mallory ignored them all and stepped forward, the crowd parting to let her pass.

“You are not welcome,” Papa roared from the van. “Leave.”

“Monsieur Haji,” Mallory called back, stepping to the front. “I came to ask for your forgiveness. Please. I beg you. Don’t leave Lumière.”

A murmur of excitement rippled through the crowd.

Papa stood magnificently on the running board of the van, above everyone, not looking at Mallory, but like a politician appealing directly to the crowd. “Now she want us to stay, yaar?” he bellowed. “But the time for that has passed. It is too late.”

“
Mais non,
it is not too late,” she said. He still wouldn’t look at her, although she now stood at his feet. “Please, I want you to stay. And I want Hassan to come work in my kitchen. I will teach him French cooking. I will give him a proper education.”

My heart skipped. It was, however, this request for me to come work for her that finally got Papa to look down at the famous chef.

“You are utterly mad. No. Worse. You are sick. Who you tink you are?”

“
Ah, merde,
don’t be so pigheaded—”

But Mallory stopped herself, visibly trying to stay in control of her temper. She took a deep breath and tried again. “Listen, you, listen to what I am saying. This is a chance for your son to become a truly great French chef, a man of taste, a proper artist, not just some curry cook working in an Indian bistro.”

“Aaaarrgh. You just don’t get it.”

Papa stepped down from the van, his great belly aggressively thrust forward.

“What is it with you?” he yelled, forcing her back through the crowd, step by step, back to the gates. “Can’t you hear what I am saying? Nah? We can’t stand you, you barren old woman. We want nothing to do with you.” And by the time he had finished his tirade, she was back in the cobblestone street.

Alone.

We in the courtyard, we were jeering.

Mallory smiled softly, pulled some stray hairs behind her ear, and walked back alone toward her restaurant. We turned our backs, too, and went inside. But I would not be telling you the truth if I did not also admit to a small lump of regret sitting in the pit of my stomach, as we turned from Mallory’s incredible offer to the fussing festivities of my homecoming.

But Madame Mallory was not alone, for Monsieur Leblanc had seen everything from behind the curtains of the restaurant, and he rushed forward to greet her at the door, tenderly taking her hand. And anyone who would have seen his tipped, balding head would have recognized his tender hand-kiss expressed nothing but the deepest respect and affection.

And in the instant when those lips brushed the back of her hand, Madame Mallory understood how deep was Leblanc’s love and devotion, and she caught her breath, a girlish hand on her chest. For Mallory finally understood her great fortune, understood how lucky she was to have such a good and decent friend at her side, and it was this, Leblanc’s tender support, that gave her the feeling she could suffer through anything in the name of justice.

So none of us noticed, cavorting as we were under flashing disco lights within the restaurant, the quiet turn of events taking place outside the front door of Maison Mumbai. But batty old Ammi did. She wandered out from the garage, talking to herself about goodness knows what, and almost walked straight into Madame Mallory.

Ammi circled, as the chef calmly placed a wooden seat in the middle of our cobblestone courtyard.

As three large bottles of Evian went under the chair.

As Mallory sat down and crossed her arms over her bosom, a tartan blanket on her lap. The sun was setting behind the Alps.

“Wah?” said Ammi, puffing on her pipe. “Wah you doin’ here?”

“Sitting.”

“Haar,” said Ammi, “good place,” and continued on her walkabout. But perhaps something did get through her muddled brain, for Ammi eventually made her way into the party, through the gyrating bodies, and tugged at Papa’s kurta.

“Visitor.”

“Wah you mean, visitor?”

“Outside. Visitor.”

Papa swung open the front door and a chilly wind rattled through the hall.

His roar, I tell you, stopped the party in its tracks.

“Are you deaf? Are you mad? I told you to get out.”

We all piled out onto the icy steps to see what was going on.

Madame Mallory stared straight ahead as if she had all the time in the world. “I will not move,” she said calmly. “I will not move until you let Hassan come work for me.”

Papa laughed, and many on the steps joined in his mocking laughter.

But not I. Not this time.

“Crazy woman,” Papa sneered. “Never will that happen. But do what you want. You are welcome to stay there. Until you rot. Bye-bye.”

He shut the door and we returned to our festivities.

In the early evening the party disbanded. Our guests left through the front door, chatting to themselves, startled to discover Madame Mallory still sitting in the middle of the courtyard.

“Bonsoir, Madame Mallory.”

“Bonsoir, Monsieur Iten.”

The excitement of the homecoming was too much, and I mounted the steps to my room while the rest of the family went about their duties for the evening meal. I was so pleased to finally be with my things again in my room up in the turret—my cricket bat and Che Guevara poster and my CDs. But the world could wait, and I lay down on the bed, too tired even to get under the duvet.

It was late evening when I awoke and the downstairs dining room was in full roar. I went to my window; water dripped from the roof’s gutter.

There she was, down below, bundled up in a heavy overcoat. Someone had since plied her with blankets, and she was buried under them like an ice fisherman, patiently waiting in the night. Her head was wrapped in a flannel scarf, and I remember how a column of steam roared from her face with each breath. Guests arrived at the restaurant, uncertain of the etiquette required in such an unusual situation, and stopped nervously to chat with her, moved on, wished her well again as they left near midnight.

“Is she still there?”

I turned. It was little Zainab in her pajamas, rubbing her eyes. I took her carefully in my arms and we sat on the windowsill, staring down at the forlorn figure in our courtyard. We sat there for some time, almost in a trance, until we heard an odd noise different from the restaurant din. It was an unpleasant sort of chattering. Ammi, we figured, having one of her dialogues with the past, and we went into the hallway to help her snap out of it.

Papa.

He was peeking out from the upper corridor window, hiding behind the curtains. “What am I to do, Tahira?” we heard him mutter. “What am I to do?”

“Papa.”

He jumped, dropped the corners of the curtain.

“Wah? Why you sneak up on me like dat?”

Zainab and I looked at each other, and Papa barreled past us down the stairs.

Madame Mallory sat on the chair all that night and all the next day.

The news spread and her hunger strike became the talk of the valley. By noon a three-deep crowd had gathered at the gates of Maison Mumbai; by four in the afternoon a local reporter from
Le Jura
was at the gates, his long lens stuck between the bars, snapping away at the squat figure resolutely sitting in the middle of our courtyard.

When Papa saw this—saw this from the upstairs corridor window—he went absolutely mad. We could hear him roar all the way through the house, heard him pounding down the central staircase and out the front door. “Get away,” he yelled. “Go. Shoo.”

But the townspeople wouldn’t budge from the other side of the gate.

“We’re not on your property. We can stay here.”

Local boys jeered him, chanted, “Haji is a tyrant. Haji is a tyrant.”

“Monsieur Haji,” the reporter called out. “Why do you treat her so shabbily?”

Papa’s face trembled with disbelief. “Me treat her shabbily? She try to ruin my business. She almost kill my son!”

“It was an accident.” It was Madame Picard.

“You, too?” he asked incredulously.

“Forgive her.”

“She is just a foolish old woman,” said someone else.

Papa scowled at the mob.

He turned around and marched up to Madame Mallory.

“Stop it! Stop it now. You will fall ill. You are too old for this nonsense.”

And it was true. The elderly woman was now quite stiff, and when she turned her head her whole torso had to twist with her.

“Let Hassan come work for me.”

“Go freeze to death. Please. Be my guest.”

*   *   *

I remember that night, before turning in, sitting again with my little sister Zainab at my turret window. We watched, in the moonlight, the elderly Frenchwoman in the courtyard, her arms folded, not budging. The moonlight and swirling clouds above were caught at her feet, reflected back up to us from the puddles of the uneven cobblestone court.

“What will happen to her?” Zainab asked. “What will happen to us?”

I stroked her hair. “I don’t know, little one. I don’t know.”

But that was when I crossed sides and secretly began rooting for the elderly woman. And I think little Zainab must have sensed this, for I remember she squeezed my hand and nodded, like she alone understood what had to be done.

Papa tossed and turned in his bed that night, thrice got up to look out the window. The thing that most galled him was the idea that Mallory was using passive resistance to get what she wanted. Of course, this was the very same method with which Gandhi had created modern India, and it was intolerable, so infuriating, that she would use the same methods against us. Papa, I tell you, he was the picture of a man in turmoil during this time, and all through the night he slid eerily in and out of consciousness, muttering to himself in broken sleep.

Around four in the morning the hallway filled with creaking.

I, in my room, Papa in his, woke instantly at the noise and we clambered out of bed to see what was going on. “You hear it, too?” he whispered as we crept down the corridor, our nightshirts rippling in the frigid air.

“Yes.”

Luminous figures hovered on the stairs.

“What are you doing?” Papa bellowed, snapping on the overhead chandelier.

Auntie and Ammi screamed and dropped a plate. It smashed on the steps and three pieces of naan and a bottle of Evian rolled to the bottom of the staircase. We looked back at the two offenders. Ammi clutched a chamber pot.

“Who dat for? Who dat for?”

“You’re an animal, Abbas,” yelled Auntie. “The poor woman. She is starving. You will kill her.”

Papa roughly grabbed Ammi and Auntie by the elbows and hauled them back upstairs. “Everyone go back to bed,” he roared. “Tomorrow I will have that woman removed. Finish. I will not have this. She is an insult to the memory of Gandhi, using these techniques on us.”

Of course, no one slept a wink after that and we were all up early, watching Papa pace back and forth in front of the telephone. Finally, the slow-dragging watch hands pointed at the allotted time and Papa rang his lawyer at the office, demanding the police cart Mallory away for trespassing.