I make a pot of hot chocolate. I pour a cup and I take it to the saxophone player – who is surprisingly young, no more than eighteen – with a slice of chocolate cake on the side. It’s a gesture that Vianne Rocher would have made without thinking—
‘On the house.’
‘Hey, thanks!’ His face lights up. ‘You must be from the chocolate shop. I’ve heard about you. You’re Zozie. Right?’
I begin to laugh, a little wildly. The laughter feels as bittersweet and strange as everything else on this strange day, but the saxophone player doesn’t seem to notice.
‘Got any requests?’ he says to me then. ‘Anything you like, I’ll play. On the house,’ he adds with a grin.
‘I—’ I faltered. ‘Do you know “V’là l’bon vent”?’
‘Yeah. Sure.’ He picks up his sax. ‘Just for you, Zozie,’ he says.
And as the sax begins to play, I shiver with something more than the cold as I walk back to Le Rocher de Montmartre, where Rosette is still playing quietly on the floor among a hundred thousand spilt buttons.
12
Tuesday, 18th December
I WORKED IN the kitchen for the rest of today, while Zozie dealt with the customers. We’re getting more customers than ever now; more than I can deal with alone, and it’s good that she is still happy to help, because as Christmas approaches it seems that half Paris has developed a sudden appetite for hand-made chocolates.
The supplies of couverture that I thought might last me until the New Year were exhausted within a couple of weeks, and we are getting deliveries every ten days just to keep up with increasing demand. The profits are above anything I could have dared to hope for, and all Zozie can say is: I knew business would look up before Christmas, as if such miracles happened every day . . .
And once more I find myself wondering at how very quickly things have changed. Three months ago, we were strangers here; castaways on this rock of Montmartre. Now we are part of the scenery, just like Chez Eugène or Le P’tit Pinson; and locals who would never have thought to set foot in a tourist shop now pass here once or twice a week (and in some cases almost every day) for coffee, cake or chocolate.
What has changed us? The chocolates, of course; I know that my hand-made truffles are far better than anything out of a factory. The décor, too, is more welcoming; and with Zozie here to help me, there is time to sit and talk awhile.
Montmartre is a village within the city – and remains deeply if dubiously nostalgic with its narrow streets and old cafés and country-style cottages, complete with summer whitewash and fake shutters at the windows and bright geraniums in their terracotta pots. To the folk of Montmartre, marooned above a Paris simmering with change, it sometimes feels like the last village; a fleeting fragment of a time when things were sweeter and simpler; when doors were always left unlocked and any ills and injuries could be cured with a square of chocolate—
It’s all an illusion, I’m afraid. For most people here, those times never existed. They live in a world of part-fantasy, where the past is so deeply buried beneath wishful thinking and regret that they have almost come to believe their own fiction.
Look at Laurent, who speaks so bitterly against immigrants, but whose father was a Polish Jew who fled to Paris during the war, changed his name, married a local girl and became Gustave Jean-Marie Pinson, Frencher than the French, sound as the stones of the Sacré-Coeur.
He does not speak of it, of course. But Zozie knows – he must have told her. And Madame Pinot, with her silver crucifix and her tight-lipped disapproving smile and shop window full of plaster saints—
She was never a Madame in her life. In her younger days (so says Laurent, who knows these things), she was a cabaret dancer at the Moulin Rouge, and would sometimes perform in a nun’s wimple, high heels and a black satin corset so tight it would make your eyes water – hardly what you’d expect of a seller of religious memorabilia, and yet—
Even our handsome Jean-Louis and Paupaul, who work the Place du Tertre with such expertise, seducing the ladies into parting with their money with swashbuckling compliments and broad innuendo. You’d think at least they were what they seemed. But neither one has ever set foot in a gallery, or been to art school, and for all their masculine appeal, both of them are quietly though sincerely gay, and are planning a civil ceremony – perhaps in San Francisco, where such things are more common and less harshly judged.
So says Zozie, who seems to know everything. Anouk, too, knows more than she tells me, and I find myself increasingly worrying about her. She used to tell me everything. But recently, she has grown restless and secretive; hiding for hours at a time in her room, spending most of her weekends in the cemetery with Jean-Loup, and her evenings talking with Zozie.
It’s natural, of course, for a child of her age to want a little more independence than she had. But there’s a kind of watchfulness in Anouk – a coldness of which even she may be unaware – that makes me uneasy. It’s as if some pivot has shifted between us, some relentless mechanism that has begun to move us slowly apart. She used to tell me everything. Now everything she says seems oddly guarded; her smiles too bright, too forced for comfort.
Is this because of Jean-Loup Rimbault? Don’t think I haven’t noticed the way she hardly mentions him now; the cautious look when I speak of him; the careful way she dresses for school when once she hardly brushed her hair . . .
Is it because of Thierry, perhaps? Is she anxious because of Roux?
I’ve tried asking her outright if there’s something wrong; something at school, perhaps, some trouble I don’t know about. But she always says no, Maman, in that clipped little good-girl voice, and trots off upstairs to do her homework.
But from the kitchen later that night, I hear laughter coming from Zozie’s room, and I creep to the bottom of the stairs to listen, and I hear Anouk’s voice, like a memory. And I know that if I open the door – to ask, perhaps, if she wants a drink – then the laughter will stop, and her eyes turn cool, and the Anouk I heard from far away will be gone like something in a fairytale . . .
Zozie was rearranging the Advent window, where a new door has opened today. A Christmas tree, cleverly made from sprigs of pine, now stands in the hallway of the little house. The mother stands at the door of the house, looking out into the garden, where a choir of carol-singers (she has used chocolate mice) are gathered in a semicircle, looking in.
As it happens, we put up our tree today. It’s only a small one, from the florist’s down the road, but it smells wonderfully of needles and sap, like a story of children lost in the woods, and there are silver stars to hang on the branches, and white fairy-lights to drape all around. Anouk likes to dress the tree herself, and so I have deliberately left it bare so that when she gets home from school, we’ll be able to decorate it together.
‘So, what’s Anouk up to these days?’ The lightness in my tone is forced. ‘Seems like she’s always running off somewhere.’
Zozie smiled. ‘It’s nearly Christmas,’ she said. ‘Kids are bound to get excited around Christmas.’
‘She hasn’t said anything to you? She’s not upset about Thierry and me?’
‘Not that I know of,’ Zozie said. ‘If anything, she seems relieved.’
‘So there’s nothing on her mind?’
‘Just the party,’ Zozie said.
That party. I still don’t know what she expects to achieve. Since the day she first mentioned it, my little Anouk has been wilful and strange; making plans; suggesting dishes; inviting all comers with lavish disregard for the practicalities of seating and space.
‘Can we invite Madame Luzeron?’
‘Of course, Nanou. If you think she’ll come.’
‘And Nico?’
‘All right.’
‘And Alice, of course. And Jean-Louis and Paupaul—’
‘Nanou, these people have homes of their own – families – what makes you think—’
‘They’ll come,’ she says, as if she has arranged
it personally.
‘How do you know?’
‘I just do.’
Maybe she does, I tell myself. She seems to know a great many things. And there’s something else – some secret in her eyes – a hint of something from which I am excluded.
I look into the chocolaterie. It looks warm in there, almost intimate. Candles are burning on the tables; the Advent window is lit with a rose glow. It smells of orange and clove from the pomander hanging above the door; of pine from the tree; of the mulled wine that we are serving alongside our spiced hot chocolate, and of fresh gingerbread straight out of the oven. It draws them in – three or four at a time – regulars and strangers and tourists alike. They stop at the window, catch the scent, and in they come, looking a little dazed, perhaps, at the many scents and colours and all their favourites in their little glass boxes – bitter orange cracknell; mendiants du roi; hot chilli squares; peach brandy truffle; white chocolate angel; lavender brittle – all whispering inaudibly—
Try me. Taste me. Test me.
And Zozie at the centre of it all. Even at the busiest times – laughing, smiling, teasing, giving out chocolates on the house, talking to Rosette, making everything a little brighter just because she is there . . .
It feels as if I’m watching myself; the Vianne I was in another life.
But who am I now? I lurk behind the kitchen door, unable somehow to look away. A memory of another time; a man standing in a similar doorway, peering suspiciously inside. Reynaud’s face; his hungry eyes; the hateful, haunted look of a man half disgusted by what he sees – but who must look in, nevertheless.
Could this be what I have become? Another version of the Black Man? Another Reynaud, tormented by pleasure, unable to bear the joy of others, crushed beneath his envy and guilt?
Absurd. How could I be envious of Zozie?
Worse still, how is it that I am afraid?
At four-thirty Anouk blows in from the misty streets, a light in her eyes and a telltale glimmer at her heels that might be Pantoufle, if he existed. She greets Zozie with an exuberant hug. Rosette joins in. They spin her round, shouting bam-bam-bam! It becomes a game, a kind of wild dance that ends with the three of them collapsing, laughing and breathless, on to the furry pink armchairs.
And as I watch from the kitchen door, a sudden thought occurs to me. There are too many ghosts in this place, of course. Dangerous ghosts; laughing ghosts; ghosts from a past we cannot afford to see reborn. And the strange thing is, they look oddly alive; as if I, Vianne Rocher, might be the ghost and the little threesome in the shop the real thing, the magic number, the circle that cannot be broken—
That’s nonsense, of course. I know I’m real. Vianne Rocher is just a name I wore; perhaps not even my real name. She can have no purpose beyond that; she can have no future outside of me.
But I still can’t stop thinking about her, like a favourite coat, or a pair of shoes, given on impulse to some charity shop, to be loved and worn by someone else . . .
And now I can’t help wondering—
How much of myself have I given away? And if I am no longer Vianne – who is?
PART SEVEN
The Tower
1
Wednesday, 19th December
WHY, HELLO MADAME. Your favourite? Let me see – chocolate truffles, to my special recipe, marked with the sign of Lady Blood Moon and rolled in something that teases the tongue. A dozen? Or shall we make it two? Packed in a box of crinkly gold paper and tied with a ribbon of brightest red—
I knew she’d come eventually. My specials tend to have that effect. She came just before closing-time; Anouk was upstairs doing her homework and Vianne was in the kitchen again, working on tomorrow’s sales.
First, I see her catch the scent. It’s a combination of many things; the Christmas tree in the corner; the musty aroma of old house; orange and clove; ground coffee; hot milk; patchouli; cinnamon – and chocolate of course; intoxicating, rich as Croesus, dark as death.
She looks around, sees wall-hangings, pictures, bells, ornaments, a dolls’ house in the window, rugs on the floor – all in chrome-yellow and fuchsia-pink and scarlet and gold and green and white. It’s like an opium-den in here, she almost says, then wonders at herself for being so fanciful. In fact she has never seen an opium-den – unless it was in the pages of the Arabian Nights – but there’s something about the place, she thinks. Something almost – magical.
Outside the yellow-grey sky is luminous with the promise of snow. Forecasters have been announcing it for several days, though to Anouk’s disappointment it has so far remained too mild for anything but sleet and this interminable mist.
‘Lousy weather,’ says Madame. Of course, she would think so; seeing, not magic in the clouds, but pollution; not stars, but lightbulbs in the Christmas lights; no comfort, no joy but the endless, anxious grind of people rubbing together without warmth, searching for last-minute gifts that will be opened without pleasure, and in a rush to go to some meal that they will not enjoy, with folk they have not seen for a year, and would not choose to see at all—
Through the Smoking Mirror I look at her face. It’s a hard face in many ways, the face of a woman whose personal fairytale never had a chance of happy-ever-after. She has lost parents, lover and child; she has made good through sheer hard work; has wept herself dry years ago and has no pity now for herself or for anyone else. She hates Christmas, despises New Year—
All this I see through the Eye of Black Tezcatlipoca. And now, with an effort, I can just glimpse what stands behind the Smoking Mirror – the fat woman sitting in front of the television, eating choux from a white patisserie box while her husband works late for the third night running; the window of an antiques shop, and a china-faced doll under a cloche; the chemist’s where she once stopped to buy nappies and some milk for her baby girl; her mother’s face, broad and harsh and unsurprised, when she came to tell her the terrible news—
But she has come so far since then. So very far – and yet there’s something inside her, this void, still wailing for something to fill it again—
‘Twelve truffles. No. Make it twenty,’ she says. As if truffles could make a difference. But somehow these truffles are different, she thinks. And the woman behind the counter, with her long dark hair with the crystals braided into it and the emerald shoes with the shining stack heels – shoes made for dancing all night, for leaping, for flying, for anything but walking – she looks somehow different too, not like everyone else around here, but strangely more alive, more real—
There’s a scatter of dark powder on the counter where the truffles have shed cacao on to the glass. It’s easy, with a fingertip, to sketch the sign of One Jaguar – the feline Aspect of Black Tezcatlipoca – into the powdered chocolate. She stares at it, half mesmerized by the colours and scent, as I wrap the box, taking my time with ribbons and paper.
Then Anouk comes in – right on cue – all wild-haired and laughing at something Rosette has done, and Madame looks up, her face going suddenly slack.
Does she recognize something, perhaps? Could it be that the vein of talent that runs so richly in Vianne and Anouk has left some vestige here at the source? Anouk gives her beaming smile. Madame smiles back, hesitantly at first, but as the conjunction of Blood Moon and Rabbit Moon joins the pull of One Jaguar, her doughy face becomes almost beautiful in its longing.
‘And who’s this?’ she says.
‘It’s my little Nanou.’
That’s all I need to say. Whether or not Madame can see something familiar in the child, or whether it is simply Anouk herself, with her Dutch-doll face and Byzantine hair, that has captured her, who can say? But Madame’s eyes have grown suddenly bright, and when I suggest that she stay for a cup of chocolate (and perhaps one of my special truffles on the side), she accepts the invitation without a murmur, and, sitting at one of the hand-printed tables, she stares with an intensity that is far beyond mere hunger at Anouk as she goes in and out of the kitchen; greets Nico as
he passes the door and calls him in for a cup of tea; plays with Rosette and her box of buttons; talks about the birthday tomorrow; runs outside to check for snow; runs back inside; peers at the changes to the Advent house; rearranges a key figure or two, then checks for snow again – it will come, it must come at least for Christmas Eve, because she loves snow almost more than anything . . .
It’s time to close the shop. In fact, it’s twenty minutes past our closing time when Madame seems to shake herself free of some daze.
‘What a sweet little girl you have,’ she says as she stands up, brushes the chocolate crumbs from her lap and looks wistfully at the kitchen door, through which Anouk has already gone, taking Rosette with her at last. ‘She plays with the other one just like a sister.’
That makes me smile, but I don’t put her right.
‘Got any kids of your own?’ I say.
She seems to hesitate. Then she nods. ‘A daughter,’ she says.
‘Going to see her this Christmas?’
Oh, the anguish such a question may inadvertently cause – I see it in her colours, a pure streak of brilliant white that cuts like lightning across the rest.
She shakes her head, not trusting the words. Even now, after so many years, the feeling still has the power to surprise her with its immediacy. When will it fade, as so many people have promised it will? So far it has not – that grief that overrides everything else, sending lover, mother, friend plunging into insignificance in the face of the desolate chasm that is the loss of a child—
‘I lost her,’ she says in a quiet voice.
‘I’m so sorry.’ I put my hand on her arm. I’m wearing short sleeves, and my charm-bracelet, laden with its tiny figures, makes its heavy chinking sound. The shine of silver catches her eye—
The little cat charm has gone black with age, more like the One Jaguar of Black Tezcatlipoca than the cheap shiny bauble it once was.
The Lollipop Shoes Page 32
