The Cheffe

by Marie Ndiaye

  If the Cheffe didn’t like being called out to the dining room at some customer’s request, if more generally she wanted nothing to do with the eater once he’d finished his meal, I myself loved nothing so much as discreetly slipping out of the kitchen to hear the people talk over the dishes we’d served them, to study the effects of our work on their faces, I’ve always liked watching others eat something I helped to make, or sometimes something I made all on my own, I liked that more than I liked eating it myself, and to me the taste of the dishes was more interesting and instructive when I imagined it being judged by a palate that wasn’t mine, just by looking at him I could become any one of the customers: his lips, his tongue, his teeth, I understood his every organ, I deeply respected his biological functions, in every way one with my own.

  And whatever a customer’s personality, whatever his reputation, whatever I might vaguely feel about him, I never gave that a moment’s thought as I watched him eat, I tried only to feel in myself what was happening in him.

  Yes, those were the years when La Bonne Heure became a haunt for all Bordeaux’s VIPs.

  There was no question it was happening, but the Cheffe was slow to face it, not because she had some grudge against the upper classes (she never forgot what she owed the Clapeaus), but because she didn’t want to see that even if she didn’t take reservations and kept her prices within reach of any budget the chic, well-heeled crowd was driving away everyone who wasn’t like them, not that they wanted that or dreamt it was happening, but simply by the inertial force of their authority, of their innate right, of everything that was exclusive and closed about them, everything cliquish and disdainful, the Cheffe knew it, yes, but she was slow to face it.

  And when she did admit to herself she was cooking only for a certain type of customer, she felt a loss that would play a considerable role in the decisions she later made.

  Because she feared nothing more than so thoroughly mastering her craft that she could get along nicely without the grace that was bestowed on her the summer she turned sixteen, without the inspiring fervor that had lifted her far above herself, that had allowed her to look on herself with surprise and a twinge of terror, that was what she was in danger of losing if she cooked for people who couldn’t understand her, people who couldn’t imagine Sainte-Bazeille or her happily backward, broke parents, people who would feel only scorn or condescension for Sainte-Bazeille, for her parents.

  The Cheffe didn’t want to be spared that scorn, that condescension, she didn’t want to abandon Sainte-Bazeille and leave it exposed to those stares, she wanted no special privileges, and she didn’t want to compromise herself.

  In the end, she didn’t care if she was scorned, so long as she was scorned along with Sainte-Bazeille, but she would have been ashamed to be pardoned, her alone, on the grounds that she was a magnificent cook.

  She knew how to cook, she knew how to create, how to inspire a craze for her restaurant, and she was proud of that, but that pride was hollow compared to her need to feel possessed and grateful for it, with a gratitude that nothing would ever make her forget or neglect.

  So how could she make humble gratitude for what she’d been given coexist with the knowledge that her gift now served only to please a privileged clientele, people who in a sense didn’t need her or Sainte-Bazeille, people who would have no great difficulty finding their pleasures elsewhere?

  The first time the mayor of Bordeaux and his wife came for lunch at La Bonne Heure—they had their picture taken in the dining room, they proclaimed their delight to anyone who would listen—the Cheffe stoutly, almost rudely refused to go out and greet them, and she stood clutching the counter with both hands, as if to stop anyone from dragging her out to meet those two people who, claimed the mayor, had never eaten anything like this, it was amazing, it was incredible—but wasn’t there anywhere else that crowd could go to find the agent of the inexpressible revelation they were looking for?

  How, the Cheffe wondered, to remain decent, detached, rigorous, and honest when you’re working for those people, not that you want to be but you are, those people who in their naïveté, in their undeserved eminence, so quickly won you to their side, so soon corrupted you?

  They could be demanding, they could be difficult, even more than others, more than the undiscriminating Sainte-Bazeille, but any praise coming from them should, thought the Cheffe, be a cause for concern, should make you tremble, make you feel very slightly ashamed.

  I’m troubled to learn that my daughter, this woman so visibly taller and heavier than I am, whose name is Cora for reasons I don’t know and by virtue of a decision made without asking my opinion, this Cora doesn’t seem to be looking for a father, not even a relative. She talks to me, sometimes she asks questions, as if chance had thrown us together as roommates, her questions are always friendly, always impersonal, and I get the feeling there’s nothing about me that interests her but if we knew each other a little better we might get along. I’m not her father, I’m a guy she’s just met, she’s waiting to see what will come of it with genuine but, for politeness’ sake, discreetly exaggerated curiosity. We go out to eat in little restaurants on the beach. I don’t want to cook for Cora, I wouldn’t be able to pretend I don’t know how, and I’m not ready to start cooking again. Cora shows no surprise, at that or at anything she’s seen here. She’s so different from her mother I can scarcely believe it.

  Even if, more and more, she was questioning her fidelity to her own choices, we had some beautiful years at La Bonne Heure, the Cheffe and I.

  She couldn’t have failed to see how I loved her, and even if that didn’t interest or move her in any way I believe she grew attached to me in spite of herself, precisely because she felt no love for me and in some way wanted to make that up to me, as if my love were a present, an offering, even a sacrifice, and as if even as she declined it she thought it her duty to thank me.

  She often sought out my eye when she spoke to her gathered employees, which gave me the wonderful feeling that I’d been quietly singled out, and in those days that was all I needed to be happy, hopeful, and confident, since her silently choosing me was, I thought, the first step toward her accepting my love.

  Yes, those were beautiful, very hardworking years.

  The Cheffe had begun to make money, and although it was only later, when she took to confiding in me, that I realized what she was doing with it, even back then I noticed she never abandoned her sober, almost ascetic habits, less out of duty than because she didn’t want much of what there was to buy, she had no taste for clothes or jewels or any sort of gewgaws, and she found furniture as boring as rugs, paintings, or cars, and since she’d never learned to want distraction, much less fun, she looked at outings and amusements the way you might gaze on the extraordinary native costumes of peoples you can’t imagine belonging to.

  In short, when she wasn’t cooking, the Cheffe did nothing but think about cooking—and look deep into herself to find a sincerity that forced her to ask herself unflinchingly if she wasn’t betraying her own rules, if with all her ingenuity she’d managed to hide from her own eyes the death of the impalpable, flickering spirit inside her. “I have to be able to feel it in here,” she used to tell me, rubbing the space between her breasts.

  Then I learned that the Cheffe was sending huge sums to Québec, to her daughter, and it’s true that her daughter was always nagging her for more, but even if she hadn’t been, the Cheffe would have showered her—smothered her, it sometimes seemed—with gold for the clear purpose of keeping her quiet in her distant Québec, where the daughter had supposedly started a mysterious public relations firm, and where the mother could justifiably hope she would stay as long as the money from La Bonne Heure kept coming, keeping even the least profitable, most preposterous business afloat, and so the Cheffe heaped jewels and trinkets on her daughter to keep her where she was, to stop her coming back.

  Sti
ll, she did miss her daughter, not the real, exhausting, insatiable, whining, vicious creature she was but the character the Cheffe pretended to believe in, so talented and so loving, she missed that girl, the made-up girl, almost real when the Cheffe was talking to someone who hadn’t met her daughter and showed a friendly interest in her, then she could blind herself with her own creation, and for the space of a few sentences, a few falsely modest answers to admiring questions, keep the wool pulled over her own eyes.

  The Cheffe would gladly have bankrupted herself if it meant she could deprive her daughter of a reason to come back and torment her in person—she was indeed hurt by the daughter’s letters and later her emails, but she could bear that, it weighed on her, it saddened her, but it didn’t destroy her.

  For that matter, she would have bankrupted herself for her parents if they’d let her, although with something very different in mind: she wanted them as near her as possible, living as close as possible to La Bonne Heure, in a beautiful house she would buy them, but as I’ve already told you the car was all they would take from her, the car they were killed in, did they sense it was time they were dead, and discover the perfect modus operandi for the crime?

  It was a morning in autumn, as we were getting ready for lunch, that the telephone rang in the dining room.

  Unusually for her, the Cheffe went out and answered it.

  When she came back I understood that a great sorrow had come to her.

  She looked at us with that odd smile of hers, that delicate twist of her lips, but her eyes were far away, there was an angry crease in her forehead but she was trying to smile, she wanted to see us happy, she gracefully lifted one hand to her forehead, blushed faintly, looked away, and told us that Le Guide had awarded La Bonne Heure a star that morning in 1992.

  And she dissolved into tears, shocking no one but me, my coworkers naturally blaming those tears on happiness and surprise, and then, going to her and encircling her with their arms but not daring to actually embrace her, they congratulated her loudly and earnestly, and their pride was the very image of the affection they felt for the Cheffe: deep, serious, and devoid of any real understanding.

  Maybe even the Cheffe was deluded, maybe even she thought she was weeping from an excess of happiness.

  But I saw at once it was nothing of the sort, I don’t think she was capable of fooling herself long enough to bask in that honor with no second thoughts getting in the way.

  She reached one arm out toward me, invited me to come take my share of the delight, the sudden, well-earned fame she deserved and never sought, the Cheffe didn’t network, had no friends, no connections, she reached out to me and I came forward, telling myself I’d have to show I could not rejoice and applaud her but come to her rescue, because the deep, paralyzing, boundless shame that everything in me sensed she’d been feeling from the moment a stranger’s voice on the phone had honored her work was something she couldn’t bear alone, without someone beside her who genuinely knew and understood all that, who knew and understood her.

  Because a great sorrow had come into her life.

  The Cheffe managed to hide what she was feeling from everyone who congratulated her, and although she could never answer with the warmth and sensitivity expected of the only woman of her generation with a star, although strange words sometimes sprang to her lips, such as when a journalist spoke of the pride her poor parents would be feeling if they were still with us and in a desperately impassioned voice she shot back, “Oh no, they wouldn’t have liked this at all, they would have been sorry for me!” Still, she generally kept up a good front, and it was only to me, only to my eyes, which knew and understood, that she showed her real face.

  That first night I stayed behind after the others had gone, and she told me, “It’s all over.”

  And her face was transformed by sadness, shame, disbelief, I scarcely recognized her, but the gestures were hers, the delicate hand drifting dreamily up to her forehead, the quick, gliding footsteps, so light that they made no sound, her face had changed, and I stood silent, afraid I might say the wrong thing.

  I saw her shame, even if I didn’t quite understand it, even if I thought it perverse and misplaced.

  “If they’re rewarding me, that means I’ve slipped,” the Cheffe told me.

  “But why?” I whispered, with a little edge of revolt, almost annoyance, I don’t think the Cheffe heard, and just next to my sadness at thinking or knowing she couldn’t simply enjoy an unexpected pleasure there rose up in me the rampart of distrust, doubt, impatience, and I thought I had to take care not to let the tangled gloom in the Cheffe’s heart spread to me, I thought I had to take care not to let my love so corrupt me that I too would become incapable of pleasure.

  Joy was one thing, I grumbled to myself, and pleasure was another, and why should pleasure always have to take a backseat to joy?

  But I was very young, I understood the Cheffe only up to a point, which at the time I thought was the furthermost, it was much later that I started down the road that my twenty-five years stopped me from seeing stretching onward, it opened up before my eyes, before my feet, which hesitantly consented to go forward, and I caught up to the Cheffe late, when she had given up hoping to be rescued or heard, and so I missed my moment, my chance to be needed by her, I could only be useful, bringing her repose, relief, and intense, unspoken love.

  Eventually I understood that the star confirmed something the Cheffe had begun to feel not long before, a sense that she’d compromised her standards.

  She hated the thought that her cooking pleased and charmed people, not that she hoped or imagined it repelled them, since so many came back to La Bonne Heure again and again, but the Cheffe needed to think that her regulars were returning to a place where they’d come face-to-face with a mystery.

  Often she was perfectly happy to see a plate angrily sent back to the kitchen, she balanced on that rugged crest where one small misjudgment, one act of carelessness, one excess of exuberance might send her dishes tumbling into the abyss of the unacceptable or the ridiculous, but she balanced on that crest, drawing the eaters to her by her inflexibility, even if it sometimes made for an experience that wasn’t exactly appealing—because that wasn’t and couldn’t be all there was to it.

  Given all that, the Cheffe didn’t see how it mattered if she accepted or turned down the star, either way she’d been judged worthy of it, and that meant she’d failed.

  Still, she played the game, as you know, answering questions from the occasional journalist, thanking Le Guide, though always in her own way, evasive, guarded, tight-lipped, and ambiguous, and there were many who decided she wasn’t very bright, her thought was slow to stir, she had no vocabulary.

  No one ever knew she was being gnawed at by shame.

  And that, I guarantee, is what she meant by “It’s all over,” because she couldn’t have foreseen what was coming, she had every reason to think it couldn’t happen, since the money now pouring into La Bonne Heure more copiously than ever went straight off to Canada, the Cheffe bedecked her daughter with finery, like a lavishly adorned young elephant.

  My colleagues and I did our jobs, never looked up, with an enthusiasm and a devotion that had little do with the fat raise the Cheffe bestowed on us, and she worked with her usual deftness and efficiency, but also, I sensed, with a new sadness, a disillusionment that she tried to mask by smiling more than she used to, at anything, mechanically.

  The star brought us so many new customers that the Cheffe had to relent and begin taking reservations like everyone else, and as it happens I’d seen fit to encourage that, telling her it was simply a question of respect for our regulars, because otherwise there were days when we’d have to turn them away or force them to wait, and there the Cheffe agreed, she agreed to all my suggestions, but I could see it was with a lost, downcast gait that she walked down the road of inevitable changes, and that her i
ntuitive, penetrating mind, her uneasy sixth sense, violently refused everything her reason was urging her to accept.

  Which is why I was deeply surprised, not long after she’d taken my advice and replaced the little straw-seated chairs with standard wooden bistro chairs, to hear her announce that she was closing La Bonne Heure for three days to repaint the walls and replace the lighting, she wanted to take out the fixtures with the bronze-green metal branches and put in hanging lamps of white opal glass.

  I praised the idea, closely watching her face, her gestures, which seemed to me tenser than usual, while the Cheffe smiled, even laughed with no real call for it, she who was so reserved, and her beautiful brown eyes jumped too quickly from one of us to the next, as if taking care not to fully meet our gaze.

  I thought it strange it should put her so on edge to tell us she was having La Bonne Heure repainted, in that same deep blue what’s more, and putting in new lamps, until I saw what was really behind it when, almost by the bye, the Cheffe told us she was going to have to raise her prices.

  There too, I vigorously approved, I told her I had been thinking the same thing but hadn’t dared bring it up.

  “You know I don’t like this,” she murmured, “you know there’s not one thing about this I like.”

  And when I protested, too brightly, resolutely upbeat, hoping to convince her to find a little pleasure in it all, telling the Cheffe fewer obligations came with the star than reasons to be happy, the Cheffe suddenly turned grave, became herself again, she lost that ridiculous smile, she gave me an unsteady, almost desperate stare and said, “It’s not that…not just that. My daughter heard about the star, she’s coming back.”

  “Oh, well, that’s good,” I said cautiously.

  “Yes,” said the Cheffe, “it’s good news, isn’t it?”

  And I could tell from her voice that it really was a question, she was genuinely asking, as if she weren’t sure of the answer, and as if my thoughts on the matter would carry an unquestionable weight in the view of all this she’d have to come up with.