The door is unlocked. I can hardly believe my luck. It shows her confidence, her insolent belief that no-one can withstand her. I discard the thick screwdriver with which I would have jimmied the door, and take up the heavy piece of wood — part of a lintel, pere, that fell during the war — in both hands. The door opens into silence. Another of her red sachets swings above the doorway; I pull it down and drop it contemptuously onto the floor. For a time I am disoriented. The place has changed since it was a bakery, and in any case I am less familiar with the back part of the shop. Only a very faint reflection of light gleams from the tiled surfaces, and I am glad I thought to bring a torch. I switch it on now, and for a moment I am almost blinded by the whiteness of the enamelled surfaces, the tops, the sinks, the old ovens all shining with a moony glow in the torch’s narrow beam. There are no chocolates to be seen. Of course. This is only the preparation area. I am not sure why I am surprised that the place is so clean; I imagined her a slattern, leaving pans unwashed and plates stacked in the sink and long black hairs in the cake mixture. Instead she is scrupulously tidy; rows of pans arranged on the shelves in order of size, copper with copper, enamel with enamel, porcelain bowls to hand and utensils — spoons, skillets — hanging from the whitewashed walls. On the scarred old table several stone bread pans are standing. In the centre, a vase with shaggy yellow dahlias cast a shock of. shadows before them. For some reason the flowers enrage me. What right has she to flowers, when Armande Voizin lies dead? The pig inside me tips the flowers onto the table, grinning. I let him have his way. I need his ferocity for the task in hand.
20 a.m
The chocolates must be in the shop itself. Quietly I make my way through the kitchen and open the thick pine door into the front section of the building. To my left, stairs lead up into the living area. To my right, the counter, the shelves, the displays, the boxes…The smell of chocolate, though expected, is startling. The darkness seems to have intensified it so that for an instant the smell is the darkness, folding around me like a rich brown powder, stifling thought. The beam of my torch picks out clusters of brightness, metallic paper, ribbons, sparkling puffs of Cellophane. The cave of treasures is all around me. A thrill runs through my body. To be here, in the witch’s house, unseen, an intruder. To touch her things in secret as she sleeps. I feel a compulsion to see the display window, to tear down the screen of paper and to be the first — absurd, as I intend to wreck the whole thing. But the compulsion will not be denied. I pad softly in my rubber soles, the heavy block of wood held loosely in my hand. I have plenty of time. Time enough to indulge my curiosity, if I want to. Besides, this moment is too precious to be squandered. I want to savour it.
30 a.m
Very gently I pull aside the film of paper which covers the window. It comes away with a small ripping sound, and I lay it aside, straining to hear any signs of activity from the floor above. There are none. My torchlight illuminates the display, and for a moment I almost forget why I am here. It is an amazement of riches, glare fruits and marzipan flowers and mountains of loose chocolates of all shapes and colours, and rabbits, ducks, hens, chicks, lambs gazing out at me with merry-grave chocolate eyes like the terracotta armies of ancient China, and above it all a statue of a woman, graceful brown arms holding a sheaf of chocolate wheat, hair rippling. The detail is beautifully rendered, the hair added in a darker grade of chocolate, the eyes brushed on in white. The smell of chocolate is overwhelming, the rich fleshy scent of it which drags down the throat in an exquisite trail of sweetness. The wheatsheaf-woman smiles very slightly, as if contemplating mysteries.
Try me. Test me. Taste me.
Its song is louder than ever, here in the very nest of temptation. I could reach out a hand in any direction and pick up one of these forbidden fruits, taste its secret flesh. The thought pierces me in a thousand places.
Try me. Test me. Taste me.
No-one would be any the wiser.
Try me. Test me. Taste?
Why not?
40 a.m.
I will take the first thing which falls beneath my fingers. I must not lose myself in this distraction. A single chocolate — not theft, precisely, but salvage; alone of all its brethren it will survive the wreck. My hand lingers in spite of itself; a hovering dragonfly above a cluster of dainties. A Plexiglas tray with a lid protects them; the name of each piece is lettered on the lid in fine, cursive script. The names are entrancing. Bitter orange cracknel. Apricot marzipan roll. Cerisette russe. White rum truffle. Manon blanc. Nipples of Venus. I feel myself flushing beneath the mask. How could anyone order something with a name like that? And yet they look wonderful, plumply white in the light of my torch, tipped with darker chocolate. I take one from the top of the tray. I hold it beneath my nose; it smells of cream and vanilla. No-one will know. I realize that I have not eaten chocolate since I was a boy, more years ago than I can remember, and even then it was a cheap grade of chocolat a croquer, 15 per cent cocoa solids — twenty for the dark — with a sticky aftertaste of fat and sugar. Once or twice I bought Suchard from the supermarket, but, at five times the price of the other, it was a luxury I could seldom afford. This is different altogether; the brief resistance of the chocolate shell as it meets the lips, the soft truffle inside…There are layersof flavour like the bouquet of a fine wine, a slight bitterness, a richness like ground coffee; warmth brings the flavour to life and it fills my nostrils, a taste succubus which has me moaning.
45 a.m.
I try another after that, telling myself it will not matter. Again I linger over the names. Creme decassis.Three nut cluster. I select a dark nugget from a tray marked Eastern journey. Crystallized ginger in a hard sugar shell, releasing a mouthful of liqueur like a concentration of spices, a breath of aromatic air where sandalwood and cinnamon and lime vie for attention with cedar and allspice. I take another, from a tray marked Peche au miel millefleurs. A slice of peach steeped in honey and eau-de-vie, a crystallized peach sliver on the chocolate lid. I look at my watch. There is still time.
I know I should begin my righteous work in earnest. The display in the shop, though bewildering, is not enough to account for the hundreds of orders she has received. There must be another place where she keeps her gift boxes, her stores, the bulk of her business. The things here are just for show. I grab an amandineand stuff it into my mouth to aid thought. Then a caramel fondant. Then a manon blanc, fluffy with fresh cream and almond. So little time, when so many morsels remain to be tasted. I could do my work in five minutes, maybe less. As long as I know where to look. I’ll take one more chocolate, for luck, before I go searching. just one more.
55 a.m.
It is like one of my dreams. I roll in chocolates. I imagine myself in a field of chocolates, on a beach of chocolates, basking-rooting-gorging. I have no time to read the labels; I cram chocolates into my mouth at random. The pig loses his cleverness in the face of so much delight, becomes a pig again, and though something at the top of my mind screams at me to stop I cannot help myself. Once begun it cannot end. This has nothing to do with hunger; I force them down, mouth bulging, hands full. For a terrible instant I imagine Armande returning to haunt me, to curse me perhaps with her own peculiar affliction; the curse of death by gluttony. I can hear myself making sounds as I eat, moaning, keening sounds of ecstasy and despair, as if the pig within has finally found a voice.
00 a.m.
He is risen! The sound of the bells jangles me out of my enchantment. I find myself sitting on the floor, spilled chocolates around me as if I have indeed, as I imagined, rolled in them. The cudgel lies forgotten, at my side. I have removed the restrictive mask. The window, cleared of its wrapping, gapes blankly with the fast pale rays of morning.
He is risen! Drunkenly I stagger to my feet. In five minutes the early worshippers will begin to arrive for Mass. Already I must have been missed. I grab at my cudgel with fingers slimed with melted chocolate. Suddenly I know where she keeps her stock. The old cellar, cool and dry, where flour sacks were once kept.
I can get there. I know I can.
He is risen! I turn, holding my cudgel, desperate for time, time…
She is waiting for me, watching from behind the bead curtain. I have no way of knowing how long she has watched me. A tiny smile curves her lips. Very gently she takes the cudgel from my hand. Between her fingers she is holding something which looks like a charred piece of coloured paper. A card, maybe.
* * * *
And that was how they saw me, pere, crouching in the ruins of her window, face smeared with chocolate, eyes haggard. From nowhere people seemed to come running to her aid. Duplessis with his dog-lead in one hand, standing guard at the door. The Rocher woman at the back door with my cudgel crooked in her elbow. Poitou from across the road; up early for his baking, calling the curious in to see. The Clairmonts, like landed carp, staring. Narcisse shaking his fist. And the laughter. God! The laughter. And all the time the bells are ringing He is risen across St Jerome’s square.
He is risen.
THIRTY-NINE
Monday, March 31, Easter Monday
I SENT REYNAUD ON HIS WAY WHEN THE BELLS STOPPED RINGING. He never said Mass. Instead he ran off into Les Marauds without a word. Few people missed him. Instead we began the festival early, with hot chocolate and cakes outside La Praline while I quickly cleared up the mess. Fortunately this was little; a few hundred chocolates spilled onto the floor, but none of our gift boxes damaged. A couple of adjustments to the display window and it looked as good as ever.
The festival was all we hoped for. Craft stalls, fanfares, Narcisse’s band — surprisingly, he plays the saxophone with rakish virtuosity — jugglers, fire-eaters. The river people are back — for the day, at least — and the streets were alive with their variegated figures. Some set up stalls of their own, hair-beading and selling jam and honey, tattooing in henna or telling fortunes. Roux sold dolls he had carved from pieces of driftwood. Only the Clairmonts were missing, though I kept seeing Armande in my mind’s eye, as if on such an occasion I could not imagine her being absent. A woman in a red scarf, the round curve of a bent back in a grey pinafore, a straw hat, gaily decorated with cherries, bobbing above the holiday crowd. She seemed to be everywhere. Strangely enough I found that I felt no grief. Merely a growing conviction that at any moment she might appear, lifting the lids of boxes to see what was inside, licking her fingers greedily or whooping with glee at the noise, the fun, the gaiety of it all. Once I was even sure I hard her voice — wheee! — just beside me as I leaned forward to reach a packet of chocolate raisins, though when I looked there was only space. My mother would have understood.
I delivered all my orders and sold the last gift box at four-fifteen. The Easter-egg hunt was won by Lucie Prudhomme, but all the entrants had cornets-surprise, with chocolates and toy trumpets and tambourines and streamers. A single char, with real flowers, advertised Narcisse’s nursery. Some of the younger people dared start a dance under the severe gaze of St Jerome, and the sun shone all day.
And yet, as I sit now with Anouk in our quiet house, a book of fairy tales in one hand, I feel uneasy. I tell myself that it is the anticlimax that inevitably follows a longawaited event. Fatigue, perhaps, anxiety, Reynaud’s intrusion at the last moment, the heat of the sun, the people…Grief too for Armande, emerging now as the sound of merriment abates, sorrow coloured with so many other conflicting things, loneliness, loss, disbelief and a kind of calm feeling of rightness. My dear Armande, You would have loved this so much. But you had your own fireworks, didn’t you? Guillaume called late this evening, long after we had cleared away all signs of the festival, Anouk was getting ready for bed, her eyes still filled with carnival lights.
“Can I come in?” His dog has learned to sit at his command, and waits solemnly by the door. He is carrying something in one hand. A letter. “Armande said I was to give you this. You know. After.”
I take the letter. Inside the envelope something small and hard rattles against the paper. “Thank you”.
“I’ll not stay.” He looks at me for a moment, then puts out his hand, a stilted, yet oddly touching gesture. His handshake is firm and cool. I feel stinging in my eyes; something bright falls onto the old man’s sleeve — his or mine, I am not certain which.
“Goodnight, Vianne.”
“Goodnight, Guillaume.”
The envelope contains a single sheet of paper. I pull it out, and something rolls with it onto the table — coins, I think. The writing is large and effortful.
Dear Vianne,
Thank you for everything. I know how you must feel. Talk to Guillaume if you like — he understands better than anyone else. I’m sorry I couldn’t be at your festival, but I’ve seen it so often in my mind that it doesn’t really matter. Kiss Anouk for me and give her one of the enclosed — the other is for the next one, I think you’ll know what I mean.
I’m tired now, and I can smell a change coming in the wind. I think sleep will do me good. And who knows, maybe we’ll meet again some day.
Yours, Armande Voizin.
P.S. Don’t bother going to the funeral, either of you. It’s Caro’s party and I suppose she’s entitled to it if that’s the kind of thing she likes. Instead invite all our friends around to La Praline and have a pot of chocolate. I love you all. A.
When I had finished I put down the sheet and look for the rolling coins. I find one on the table and the other on a chair; two gold sovereigns gleaming red-bright in my hand. One for Anouk and the other? Instinctively I reach for the warm, still place inside myself, the secret place I have not yet fully revealed even to myself.
Anouk’s head rests gently on my shoulder. Almost asleep, she croons to Pantoufle as I read aloud. We have heard little of Pantoufle these past few weeks; usurped by more tangible playmates. It seems significant that he should return now the wind has changed. Something in me feels the inevitability of the change. My carefully built fantasy of permanence is like the sandcastles we used to build on the beach, waiting for a high tide. Even without the sea, the sun erodes them; by tomorrow they are almost gone. Even so I can feel a little anger, a little hurt. But the scent of the carnival draws me nevertheless, the moving wind, the hot wind from — where was it? The South? The East? America? England? It is only a matter of time. Lansquenet, with all its associations, seems less real to me somehow, already receding into memory. The machinery winds down; the mechanism is silent. Perhaps it is what I suspected from the first, that Reynaud and I are linked, that one balances the other and that without him I have no purpose here. Whatever it is, the neediness of the town is gone; I can feel satisfaction in its place, a full-bellied satiety with no more room for me. In homes everywhere in Lansquenet, couples are making love, children are playing, dogs barking, televisions blaring. Without us. Guillaume strokes his dog and watches Casablanca. Alone in his room, Luc reads Rimbaud aloud without a hint of a stammer. Roux and Josephine, alone in their newly painted home, discover each other from the inside out, little by little. Radio-Gascogne ran an item on the chocolate festival this evening, proudly announcing the festival of Lansquenet-sous-Tannes, a charming local tradition. No longer will tourists drive through Lansquenet on their way to other places. I have put the invisible town on the map.
The wind smells of the sea, of ozone and frying, of the seafront at Juan-les-Pins, of pancakes and coconut oil and charcoal and sweat. So many places waiting for the wind to change. So many needy people. How long this time? Six months? A year? Anouk nestles her face into my shoulder and I hold her close, too hard, for she half-wakes and murmurs something accusing. La Celeste Praline will be a bakery once more. Or perhaps a canfiserie-patisserie, with guimauves hanging from the ceiling like strings of pastel sausages and boxes of pains d’epices with Souvenir de Lansquenet-sous-Tannes stencilled across the lid. At least we have money, more than enough to start again somewhere else. Nice perhaps, or Cannes, London or Paris. Anouk mutters in her sleep. She feels it too.
And yet we have progressed. Not for us, the anonymity of hotel rooms,
the flicker of neon, the move from North to South at the turn of a card. At last we have faced down the Black Man, Anouk and I, seen him at last for what he is: a fool to himself, a carnival mask. We cannot stay here for ever. But perhaps, he has paved the way for us to stay elsewhere. Some seaside town, perhaps. Or a village by a river with maize fields and vineyards. Our names will change. The name of our shop, too, will alter. La Truffe Enchantee, perhaps. Or Tentations Divines, in memory of Reynaud. And this time we can take so much of Lansquenet with us. I hold Armande’s gift in the palm of my hand. The coins are heavy, solid to the touch. The gold is reddish, almost the colour of Roux’s hair. Again, I wonder how she knew — exactly how far she could see. Another child — not fatherless this time, but a good man’s child, even if he never knows it. I wonder if she will have hair, his smoky eyes. I am already certain she will be a girl. I even know her name.
Other things we can leave behind. The Black Man is gone. My voice sounds different to me now, bolder, stronger. There is a note in it which, if I listen carefully, I can almost recognize. A note of defiance, even of glee. My fears are gone. You too are gone, Maman, though I will always hear you speaking to me. I need no longer be afraid of my face in the mirror. Anouk smiles in her sleep. I could stay here, Maman. We have a home, friends. The weathervane outside my window turns, turns. Imagine hearing it every week, every year, every season. Imagine looking out of my window on a winter’s morning. The new voice inside me laughs, and the sound is almost like coming home. The new life inside me turns softly, sweetly. Anouk talks in her sleep, nonsense syllables. Her small hands clench against my arm.
“Please.” Her voice is muffled by my jumper. “Maman, sing me a song.” She opens her eyes. The Earth, seen from a great height, is the same blue-green shade.
Chocolat Page 27
