Once he understood that the chair was hers he gave it up with an apology. She understood him even though he spoke rapidly. He assumed the chair had been abandoned. Many chairs had been abandoned at the station in this way and over the years he had claimed them for his collection. He apologized for causing her any inconvenience.
She said that it was an honest mistake. She understood that now and no harm was done. She apologized for shouting at him. He smiled at her, even though she could tell he didn’t understand a word she was saying.
He appeared to be such a nice man that she thought she could ask him for directions. She showed him the address and he understood immediately what she wanted. He told her that it was a fancy address, that most anybody in the city would know how to get there. He took a pencil stub from his pocket and tore off a flyer from a lamppost. It was a notice about a carriage accident looking for a witness.
He drew a little map on the back of the flyer, all the while describing the journey she was about to take. She was to wait across the street where a small crowd had been gathering and take the B omnibus, the brown one. He told her about the transfer at Malesherbes and a walk by a lake in a park. Outside the park gate there would be another boulevard and finally she would find her street on the left or maybe it would be on the right. She was to look for it. It wouldn’t be hard to find.
When he finished he handed over the map and she thanked him. Before he turned to go she handed him the chair. He lit up when he understood that it was to be his, then patted her elbow and wished her well.
In the three months that Lucia had been working in rue de Logelbach she had not once seen the inside of the house. She was allowed only in the basement kitchen, on the back stairs, and in the attic, but never where the family resided. Judging by the kitchen, the rest of the house must have been a marvel. A cold cupboard stood against one wall, valiantly keeping the butter and cream fresh. Against the opposite wall stood a gas stove, a stalwart monster of iron and chrome with four ovens, a griddle, and eight burners. Since the kitchen had only one window, a battalion of gaslight sconces ran all the way around the room and was kept burning day and night. The everyday dishes were kept in a cupboard that stretched from floor to ceiling. It was large enough to house the entire set of 126 pieces. Lucia knew the exact number because she had to wash every plate, bowl, cup, and saucer once a week whether they needed it or not.
It was the cook’s habit to emerge from her bedroom every morning at six o’clock and inspect Lucia’s work. Madame Clos was an attractive woman, a newcomer to middle age, whose features had been fresh and gauzy once but had since hardened like a butter cookie left in the oven a second too long. Lucia had just finished polishing the family’s boots and was ironing the laces when the cook appeared. Without a word of greeting she went about her business, peering up the flue and examining the stove to make sure it had been blacked properly. She checked the floor, particularly in the corners, and opened the cupboards. Lucia knew that the cook was satisfied when, without a word, she went to put on her hat by the back door. She adjusted it in the little mirror that hung over the coatrack, took up her umbrella, and left. Lucia knew that silence was Madame Clos’s highest compliment.
That afternoon Madame Clos called Lucia over to the chopping block where four dead hares lay with their eyes open and vacant. The animals had gray fur and black paws, and seemed to be from the same litter, although Lucia didn’t like to think of such things.
Madame Clos picked up a cleaver from a line of knives laid out on the table. “It’s not difficult if you know what you are doing. But it must be done with precision. These are special hares that deserve nothing less than our respect and our consideration.”
Lucia had noticed over the months that Madame Clos had the disconcerting habit of referring to the animals they were about to cook as if they were still alive and could get their feelings hurt. In any case, these were special hares and Lucia understood their importance. The other day she had witnessed an altercation between Madame Clos and Moreau, the hare lady, that had been so alarming Lucia had even written home to Babusia about it. This was the same hare lady who had been supplying the house for nearly a decade. They were the finest hares in all of Paris. She raised them on the slopes of Montmartre and fed them carrot tops and potato peelings from the best restaurants. But that was not the issue, as Madame Clos made abundantly clear on that eventful day when tempers flared and words were exchanged over two francs. Moreau protested, saying that the bill was correct and that she had never cheated anybody in her whole life, especially not the kindhearted Madame Babineaux, who had the misfortune of having a rodent for a cook. Needless to say, the woman was immediately banned from the kitchen.
After that Madame Clos could have gotten her hares at the covered market in boulevard des Batignolles near Place Clichy. It was close and it would have been nearly as convenient as having them delivered. Instead, she insisted on going all the way to les Halles, which meant she had to take two omnibuses and do a great deal of walking. Because she refused to waste even a sou of Madame Babineaux’s money, she always sat up on top in the imperial. That morning it had rained, so even though she came home with fine hares, she was soaked through and chilled to the bone. “If I catch a cold and die, you can tell Moreau she will burn in hell for it.”
Madame Clos hacked the head off the first hare and hung the carcass on a meat hook over the sink. While she worked she explained to Lucia the importance of a clean cut, a sharp knife, and how much force to use. Even though Lucia’s French had been passable from the start and getting better every day, Madame Clos spoke to her as if she didn’t understand, raising her voice unnecessarily and enunciating every word. She did this in protest to what she saw as an affront to her authority. Madame Clos would never have hired a foreigner and if she did, she would have paid her next to nothing, instead of the wage that Madame Babineaux insisted on. It was shameful to waste money on foreigners. You hired them only for cheap labor. In Madame Clos’s mind, Lucia was taking advantage of Madame Babineaux, probably laughing at her behind her back, and deserved nothing less than to be sent packing.
“It’s your accent,” Iris said, as they were getting ready for bed one night. Iris was the housemaid and knew practically everything there was to know about living in Paris. They shared a room in the attic up under the eaves.
“My accent?”
“You have a thick one, didn’t you know?”
“You understand me.”
“Most of the time. Sometimes I don’t. Sometimes I haven’t a clue what you are saying.”
“And for this I will see the door?”
“Be shown the door,” she corrected. “See what I mean?”
They climbed into the bed they shared and pulled the quilt up to their chins. It was late April and Paris was still cold and rainy. They could hear the fat drops falling on the rooftops and on the chimney pots outside their window, and the fancy carriages clopping down the cobblestones on their way home from the boulevards.
“She won’t let you go,” Iris said, yawning. She was small like a child, with dark frizzy hair that she wore in a bun under her cap. She had a pixie’s face that should have been pretty, except that her ears stuck out like vestigial bat wings. “She always talks that way. She’s been threatening to send me packing for years and I’m not even a foreigner.”
Iris was a funny girl. Sometimes she would give Lucia valuable advice and treat her as a friend. She taught her how to secure her cap so it wouldn’t slide down and how to pin up her hair. She took her around on the omnibuses and showed her the city on their afternoons off. She warned her not to speak to the dairyman because he might try and put his hands on her, but to be nice to the iceman, as he was a relation of Madame Clos and might put in a good word. At other times she pulled rank. She was the housemaid, after all, and Lucia was only the kitchen maid, nothing more than a servant to the servants. That meant that Lucia was expected to fetch hot water for Iris’s stand-up wash and was not allowed to us
e the armoire, making do with hooks on the wall.
Lucia wished she had a real friend, someone who didn’t mind she was a foreigner, who understood her despite her accent. She felt it more acutely at night, lying under her mother’s cross, listening to the creaks and groans of a sleeping house. She ached for Babusia and Tata, Bede and the baby. She missed Warsaw and the crowds that spoke Polish and everything that was familiar and safe. If she had a friend, she would tell her about walking to school with Ania and how she discussed books with Mademoiselle, and about all the unimportant, mundane ingredients of her life in Powiśle. Her months of loneliness and isolation had softened her memories of Dobra Street. She no longer thought of it as a life of deprivation and uncertainty, a future of unfulfilled potential, but simply as home.
Going to Mass for solace was out of the question, except on Thursdays when she had the afternoon off and could attend vespers. The rest of the week she would wait until Iris was asleep, until her breathing was quiet and regular, and then she would creep out of bed, kneel by the bedside, and pray to Mary the Holy Mother and to God Almighty Himself for comfort and relief. She always felt better for it, certain that her prayers were heard. Afterward, she would kiss her fingertips, touch her mother’s cross, and climb back into bed, sometimes muttering a good-night to Babusia, who was so far away.
Madame Clos had just cut the tail off at the base of the hares and was working on the forefeet. When she removed them she cut the pelt around the hock joints and severed one of the legs. She sliced the pelt away from the inside of the thigh and ran a cut all the way to the base of the tail. She did the same on the other leg until the two cuts joined up. Then she gripped the skin and pulled the fur away from the flesh like she was peeling off a glove. When she was done she handed the carcass to Lucia to wash thoroughly and told her to finish the rest.
The hares were full of blood, so it took a long time for them to drain. The worst part was pulling off the pelts. They were much harder to remove than rabbit pelts and Lucia had to be careful and not tear them so Madame Clos could sell them to the rag and bone man along with the ashes and cooking fat. As cook, it was Madame Clos’s right to earn a little pocket money on the side.
Later Madame Clos came to inspect Lucia’s work. “You have done this before?” she asked, running her fingers through the soft fur.
“Not hares. Only rabbits.”
The cook merely grunted in reply. She regarded the pelts for what seemed like a long time, aimlessly stroking the fur in one direction, then another. When she looked up she said: “Remove the sinew and the second skin and cut each hare into eight pieces.” Then she turned back to her work without another word.
Madame Clos was a remarkable cook and for that she could be forgiven her sour manner. She was an artist in the kitchen, precise, but widely inventive, and so had earned Lucia’s respect. She was rude, but rude to everyone, to the knife grinder on the boulevard, to vendors in the markets, even to her betters, even to Monsieur Babineaux. Lucia thought it showed integrity and admired her for that too. In the following weeks Lucia saw subtle but important changes in the kitchen. Now she was invited to sit down with Madame Clos for a cup of tea, sometimes with a plate of stale ladyfingers or a dry piece of cake. The cook was never one to waste Madame Babineaux’s food. Most of what the servants ate was left over from the meals abovestairs.
Once, while scraping the crumbs on her plate into a neat line, Madame Clos talked about her father, who worked in a bakery and was a Communard. He had been a Socialist in the revolution and had fought to defend the last barricade in the rue Ramponeau in Belleville. When the barricade was overrun he was dragged to a wall and shot. Madame Clos was fourteen at the time and sent to work in a wealthy household where she was a kitchen maid for a family who had fought against the revolutionaries and against her father. She relayed all this in a flat tone that made it sound as if the events had happened to someone else, someone who lived a long time ago in another country.
In the late spring after the trees had leafed out in the Parc Monceau, when the ladies were once again wearing muslin and the lawn chairs appeared in the park, Madame Clos made a startling announcement. She gave Lucia permission to make the sauce Nantua. It didn’t sound like much, considering Lucia had been making sauces on Dobra Street since she was ten years old. For this reason she had to explain to Babusia, the next time she wrote home, that kitchen maids never made sauces. They might make an omelet or throw together a green salad. They cut up vegetables, sorted legumes, grated ginger, and chopped garlic, but they never made anything as delicate as a sauce. It was a great honor and one that Lucia did not take lightly.
She was never taught how to make the sauce. Nevertheless, she paid close attention whenever Madame Clos made it, even making notes, recording ingredients and measurements and cooking time, getting it all down, step by step, until she had a recipe of her own making.
She went to work shelling the shrimp and cleaning the fish heads. When the water began to boil she dumped them in along with onions and their skins, parsley, carrots and carrot tops, bay leaves, and any other aromatic vegetable she happened to find in the pantry. Later, in a smaller saucepan, she melted the butter and added a tablespoon of flour, stirring it with a whisk and watching it carefully so it would not burn. When it was time she added the clear stock. In a bowl she blended an egg yolk and cream and added it to the sauce, a little at a time, stirring it slowly, her gaze never wavering, her stomach fluttering, because she was nearly finished.
When the time came to serve, Madame Clos took a taste with the silver tablespoon reserved for just this purpose. She swallowed the spoonful slowly and closed her eyes. She didn’t say anything of course, but a soft grunt of satisfaction escaped her lips before she could catch it. She dipped another spoon into the sauce and handed it to Lucia. Lucia blew on it and tipped it into her mouth, swirling it over her tongue.
Madame Clos watched her closely, waiting for a response.
Lucia nodded. “It is good, yes?”
“Good? Is that all you can say?”
Lucia blinked.
The cook gave her a heavy look and took the spoon back. “I want you to feel it. You are the cook, n’est-ce pas? You want to be a good cook? Then you must feel it.”
“Feel what?”
The cook looked to the heavens. Then she dipped the spoon into the sauce again and handed it back to her. “This time I want you to feel it inside.”
“Inside my mouth?”
“Inside of you. The places you cannot see. Inside your head and heart. I want you to let it wash over you,” Madame Clos whispered. “Let it flow to every part of you.”
Lucia sipped the sauce slowly this time.
“There, can you feel it now?” the cook asked, keeping a steady eye on her. “The salty wind. The sea. It’s like swimming at the shore.”
Lucia had never been to the shore and didn’t know what it felt like to swim there, but she had been to les Halles, to the great market, to the fish hall that sat under the soaring dome of iron lacework and glass. All around the great expanse were stalls displaying artful tiers of lobsters and crabs, mounds of mussels and oysters, snapper and halibut, and giant groupers laid out side by side still glistening with saltwater and ice.
She took another taste and this time she could smell the brackish air of the hall and the crates full of live prawns and shrimp, their antennae twitching, tails arching in their frantic attempt to get back to the sea. Another taste, and it was all around her, the hectic activity of the market, the bustle of the shoppers, the excitement; the heady surge that always came whenever she was sent to buy fish.
“Yes,” she breathed. “It’s all there.”
Madame Clos gave her a rare smile and handed her the ladle.
In July the family went off to their estate in the Loire Valley, leaving Paris to the factory workers and servants. Without the family around, Lucia, Iris, and Madame Clos settled into a routine of ease. Instead of rising at five they slept until seven. Lu
nch was early, dinner at six, and everything was put away by eight o’clock. Naturally, the chores still had to be done, but not with the usual zeal. The beds were changed every two weeks, the copper pots and pans polished every ten days, and the meals were simple.
One hot morning, as they were finishing their buns and coffee, Madame Clos announced that there would be no lunch or supper that day. She had been acting strange all morning—not exactly cheerful, but brighter somehow, and once Lucia thought she heard Madame Clos hum a tune, although she may have been just muttering to herself. She put down her cup, dabbed at the foamy milk on her upper lip, and with an uncommon smile gave them the day off.
Iris reached for another bun and, while spooning on a generous helping of jam, announced that she would go see her cousin, the one who worked for the Jews. Lucia didn’t know what she would do. She could do anything that didn’t cost too much money. She could go anywhere in the city. She knew the omnibuses. Iris had given her a map of the lines and taught her how to use it. The city was still frightening, but also exhilarating with its shops and parks, cafés and electric lights. She had been subsumed by it, but it wasn’t alarming or malefic, as she had feared, but intoxicating. The freedom was dizzying.
Subsumed.
After the breakfast dishes were put away Lucia went upstairs to change and came down wearing the only other dress she owned. She met Madame Clos at the door and they both seemed surprised by how well the other was turned out. Madame Clos was wearing a frothy skirt and a shirtwaist for summer. Her hair was piled up under a hat decorated with silk violets and a wide satin band. She looked happy, her eyes glittering, her cheeks ruddy from rouge and anticipation.
If You Are There Page 6
