“You what? You want me to repeat the name of the house? All right, I see, the computer’s taking its time. It’s the Lilies, as in the flower.”
Once again the cap of the pen began to wander over the book’s cover, tracing around the gilded letters, pressing into the leather’s smooth furrows, before going over the side and down the edges of the pages, where it ran into something that was sticking out: the sheet of paper Karel Pligh had hidden in the book after finding Nestor’s body.
“No, number 10B on Oleander Road. There’s an a and a b and this is 10B, got it? That’s right, it’s off Rockrose Road . . .”
Teldi toyed with the protruding sheet, plucking at it with his finger like a guitar string, but nobody was watching him. They had better things to do. Serafin Tous suggested that someone open a window, while Chloe Trias shrugged her shoulders (after a pointed look from her boyfriend, Karel) and decided to go upstairs and put on a pair of slacks. Meanwhile, Adela was using the opaque glass of a window (the kindest of mirrors) to adjust her hair before looking at Carlos, who was the only one thinking about the dead man. He had taken off his jacket to cover Nestor’s face.
What a pity it isn’t big enough to cover his whole body, thought Carlos. Nestor’s body, spread-eagled on the floor, seemed larger now, as if his limbs in thawing out had uncurled like the petals of a funerary flower. Even his fingers had opened, although his blue-stained right thumb was still very stiff. Poor Nestor, Carlos repeated again (it was becoming a litany). Perhaps, before the accident, he had used that pen Teldi was playing with to make some notes. Perhaps in the quiet of the small hours he had taken the time to jot down a few lines in that moleskin notebook he always carried with him. Where could he have left it? It must be around somewhere, on the kitchen table or near the stove. I’ll have a look for it when Teldi gets off the phone, thought Carlos. He would have liked to keep it as something to remember Nestor by.
“What?” fumed Ernesto Teldi. “You don’t know Rockrose Road either? I don’t believe this. The village idiot knows where it is, and you’re telling me . . . Very well, young lady, it comes off the Coín-Ojén Road, near the twenty-four-kilometer post . . . That’s right, now we seem to be getting somewhere. What other information do you need? So you didn’t get that down either? Well, I’ll just have to tell you again, won’t I? My name is Ernesto Teldi. No, not Seldi, I said Teldi, T E L D I . . . yes, that’s right, t for tortoise.”
Carlos looked at him with a sad smile: his tone of voice, the way he was carrying on, that pathetic wisecrack. It was just the sort of thing that would have made Nestor laugh.
Poor Nestor. Carlos looked around the kitchen again, but he wasn’t thinking about the notebook or Teldi and his telephone call. The others were right: there were more important things to do. Yet that voice filtered back into his thoughts, and it sounded almost as if Teldi the Spaniard had become Teldi the Argentine, improvising the lyrics to a weird sort of tango:
“Frozen to death, what a way to go. It’s the luck of the draw, life’s a bitch.”
Part Two
SIX DAYS IN MARCH
Soothsayer: Beware the ides of March.
Caesar: He is a dreamer, let us leave him: pass.
SHAKESPEARE, Julius Caesar, Act 1, Scene 2
THE FIRST DAY
NESTOR’S NOTEBOOK
A FEW WEEKS before Nestor’s body was found in the Teldis’ house, before Madame Longstaffe proffered her highly oracular (some might say fraudulent) prediction of the events that were to take place, the characters in this story were leading their separate lives, and it might have seemed unlikely that their paths would cross. “Coincidences do occur,” Madame Longstaffe had said that afternoon when Carlos and Nestor went to see her. “The gods are fond of practical jokes.” But that was just part of her witch’s patter. Both Nestor and Carlos soon forgot what she had said. Not all of it, though: they remembered the spell for finding the girl in the picture, or her double, and although Carlos didn’t carry out the instructions with the recommended blind faith, he did take four drops of the prescribed love potion each full-moon night. You never know.
In any case, what with all the little tasks involved in the day-to-day running of Mulberry & Mistletoe, the rest of what they had heard that afternoon at Madame Longstaffe’s house was soon forgotten. And the management of that catering business was an unpredictable affair, with months of frenetic activity, especially in summer and spring, followed by months of dead calm, like February and March. There were only three permanent employees: Nestor, Carlos Garcia, and Karel Pligh, the Czech bodybuilder, although Chloe Trias had recently joined the team—a rather eccentric helper perhaps, but also very cheap, since she hadn’t asked for any pay at all.
Mulberry & Mistletoe somehow managed to survive from peak season to peak season, through the months of hibernation (as Nestor called them), mainly thanks to the owner’s consummate skill in making desserts and tarts, which famous Madrid restaurants bought and passed off as their own. So when business was slow and the telephone wasn’t ringing, when there was really no point in them all just hanging around, Nestor Chaffino would pull down the metal grille over the shop-front, muttering, “Porca miseria,” give his employees the afternoon off, and sit there looking at the white tiles on the wall.
Everything was dazzlingly white at Mulberry & Mistletoe: a bright, well-located establishment consisting of two rooms. The main room was the kitchen, at the back. It was spacious and had the better exposure, with three windows onto the street, so that all the passersby could see how spotless the food-preparation area was. Looking in, you saw a large room completely lined with white tiles—even the walls and the little benches—waiting to be transformed into a hive of creative activity. Copper pots and pans hung on one wall, and laid out on the large stainless steel table in the middle was an array of the finest kitchen accessories, each patiently waiting its turn, accompanied by a little instruction card. Cleanliness, order, irreproachable hygiene: these were the fundamental principles of Nestor Chaffino’s realm, which also extended to the smaller front room, used as a waiting room or reception area for clients. There, the ambience was more bohemian. Nestor, who had spared no expense in fitting out the premises, had decided to give the waiting room a certain Ritorna a Sorrento feel, or that, at least, is what he used to tell his clients. And although they didn’t quite understand what he meant, they had the impression of having stepped into a scrupulously prepared theater set, part Sicilian villa, part trattoria (minus the tables but still with a gastronomic feel), and subliminally, the convivial atmosphere of the room set them dreaming of the delicious things that might emerge from the adjoining kitchen. While the kitchen at Mulberry & Mistletoe was spotless, the waiting room was charming. While the back room was scented with raspberry syrup and one of those upmarket cleaning products named after a fairy, the front room smelled of the most expensive wood and metal polishes, and the expense was justified, given the quality of the furniture. The waiting room was decorated with objects and souvenirs from trips to exotic lands: a model ship with SOLE MIO inscribed on the poop deck, a poncho draped artlessly—or so it seemed—over a sofa for the clients, a collection of Murano glass paperweights over to the left, and over to the right, a collection of seashells, little boxes, and pictures of saints. And watching over all these objects was a sizable collection of photo portraits autographed by more or less famous people, more or less forgotten now, more or less dead, all of whom had one thing in common: at least once in their lives they had enjoyed Nestor Chaffino’s marvelous cooking.
THE PHOTOS IN the waiting room at Mulberry & Mistletoe smiled down from the walls at the clients who came in to arrange a meal (when there were clients, that is; at the moment there were none). There was a photo of Aristotle Onassis inscribed with the words “Epharistos, dear Nestor, epharistos. Your Churchill sorbet is a splendid invention.” And one of Ray Ventura: “Ah, ton bavarois, mon cher, ça vaut bien mieux que d’attraper la scarlatine, dis donc.” And María Callas: “Bravo
, Nestor, bra-vo!” Now, there was someone who appreciated my chocolate fondant, thought Nestor as he sat there alone in the afternoon at Mulberry & Mistletoe, checking the accounts after his employees had gone home, faced with the fact that February had been an even slower month than January. He put the calculator back in its case and sighed. Hopefully, the good weather wouldn’t be long in coming, and then the First Communions would begin, and the outdoor parties, and soon it would be Easter (Callas loved to be surprised with an Easter egg, and Nestor’s eggs were quite exquisite), but Easter, alas, was still a good way off. Porca miseria, he muttered again.
IT MUST HAVE been at such an idle moment in the off-season, while he was thinking nostalgically about his favorite clients, that the idea came to him: he would write down a little compendium of culinary secrets in his moleskin notebook. At that point no one even knew about the notebook except his employees. In a tiny, impeccably neat hand, he started writing—three secrets per page and diagrams where necessary—and this is how the text began:
LITTLE INDISCRETIONS
(A BOOK OF CULINARY SECRETS)
By Nestor Chaffino, Master Pastry Cook
PROLOGUE
All around the world, chefs will tell you that there’s no point in giving out recipes, because it’s not the recipe that makes an excellent dessert, it’s the chef’s talent. You have to have “a feel for it,” and when the recipe says a pinch of ginger or vanilla, it might just as well say a dash or a smidgen. Let me be perfectly frank: pastry cooks, like chefs, always keep something to themselves, a tiny but crucial secret that makes all the difference to the result, and these little tricks of the trade are what I propose to reveal to the world.
PART ONE: COLD DESSERTS
Special tricks for the preparation of cold desserts and how to avoid the errors most commonly made by novice pastry cooks.
You must remember that to make a perfect île flottante, it is absolutely essential to use fresh eggs. You can beat them by hand or with an electric beater. To make the whites stiffen into peaks, some people use a pinch of salt, but the truly infallible method is to use a coffee bean. This is how to do it
Having got that far, however, Nestor interrupted the composition of this curious opus to write a letter to an old friend.
Don Antonio Reig
Pensión de Los Tres Boquerones
Sant Feliu de Guíxols
Madrid, 1st of March . . .
Dear Antonio,
No doubt you will be surprised to receive this letter after so many years, and especially when I tell you that by the time you read it, I will be dead . . . or almost.
Nestor bit the cap of his old fountain pen, a 1954 Parker made of blue Bakelite with gold plating, which he had bought on a whim at the San Telmo market in the company of Antonio Reig, his friend and colleague, back in the days when they were both living and working in Buenos Aires. It wasn’t easy for him to write this letter; he had been putting it off for weeks. “By the time you read it, I will be dead . . . or almost.” It sounded like something out of a novel, especially the “almost,” but there was nothing fictional about his lung cancer, and all he could do was prepare himself and try to tidy things up a bit before the time came. In a way, this eccentric cookbook he had begun to compose was his last will and testament. No doubt it would have been considered an act of high treason by the secretive freemasonry of chefs—and pastry cooks in particular—who never provide exact recipes for their creations. He had thought of calling his compendium Little Indiscretions. The title had a literary ring to it that appealed to him, and it suggested the treachery of his enterprise. The idea was to go public with the tricks of the trade: the little touch that makes the difference between a proud, upstanding soufflé and a flop, the closely guarded secrets that transform the pleasures of confectionery into a veritable art.
. . . Since I don’t know how long I have left to live, given the state of my health, I would like to send you this little culinary testament in installments. At the moment I’m writing it in my spare time, in a notebook, but I plan to send you ten to twelve tips in each letter. I would be grateful if you could compile them for posthumous publication. Don’t you think it’s a delicious way of taking revenge on those famous colleagues of ours who’ll do anything to get their fourth star in the Michelin guide, but won’t give the public even a glimpse of the simplest tricks that you and I use every day? Little Indiscretions . . . it’s a splendid title, don’t you think? The other day I was talking to my employees about it and they got completely the wrong idea, poor lambs. “So you’re going to reveal the shameful secrets of all those famous people you worked for before setting up your own business?” That’s what Chloe asked (she’s the new girl I’ve got working for me), and I let her think she’d guessed right. Given the highly sensitive nature of my subject, it’s not a bad idea, as I’m sure you’ll agree, to keep people in the dark about what I’m really up to, which is something far more significant (and dare I say it, yes I do: heroic) than gossiping about the foibles of Mr. X or Mrs. Y. Can you imagine what would happen if you and I started coming out with all the things we’ve seen and heard in our careers? Just think of the scandal that would create! For instance, you remember back in Buenos Aires . . . what was the name of that couple you used to work for? Seldi? Teldi? I wonder what’s become of them. Funnily enough, I was thinking of them only yesterday, not because I was planning to write to you, but because I was trying to remember the recipe for that magnificent summer pudding I used to make for them. You must have a copy of it. Would you mind sending it to me in full? I’ve forgotten some of the ingredients. So there I was racking my brains when this Chloe girl I was telling you about came and interrupted me: “Go on, Nestor, tell us what you’re writing, tell us one of those shameful secrets.” Then I remembered that we happened to have a catering job to do that day for the Seldis or whatever they’re called, and that gave me an idea. I said: “That’s right, dear. My Little Indiscretions is a book about people’s shameful secrets, but not famous people, no, it’s not like the gossip you get in the glossies. When you’re a bit older, you’ll learn that people who seem utterly normal on the surface often have something far worse to hide than those who are trying to shake off the paparazzi: poke around in their closets and you may get a nasty surprise.”
You’re probably wondering why I lied to her like that, saying I was writing a book full of scandal and gossip when the thought had never crossed my mind. Well, I only did it to conceal my secret plan. Young people can’t help blabbing . . . But the thing is, once I started lying, I just went on, making my story more and more elaborate. I couldn’t help myself. Maybe it’s because I’m a pastry cook: you start something, even if it’s just telling a fib, and next thing you know, you’re decorating it as artistically as you can, as if it were a big wedding cake: a few flakes of caramel here, a raspberry coulis there. Meanwhile, Chloe’s hanging on my every word, so I look her gravely in the eye and add, “You’re still very young, but someday soon you’ll find out that there are many people in the world who have done something shameful in their lives. I don’t mean anything heinous: a little affair on the side, say . . . a betrayal of trust . . . a minor theft . . . maybe even a one-off homosexual experience. In other words, an act they’re ashamed of but which is really perfectly forgivable . . . The problem is that often, later on, sometimes many years later, in order to keep their shameful secret hidden, they have to do something far worse. They have to commit a real crime, do you see what I mean, my dear? Oh, you’d be surprised how often it happens: I’ve come across several cases myself.” You should have seen the look on her face. She was absolutely convinced that this little notebook of mine was full of juicy secrets instead of dessert recipes. So much the better. That way she won’t suspect what I’m really up to, and I can string her along, promising to tell her about some old scandal that no one cares about anymore and no one will remember after I’m dead.
But how to make a perfect chocolate fondant—now, there’s a secret
I’m duty-bound to hand on to posterity, don’t you think, Antonio? So will you accept my offer? If you agree, I’ll start sending you recipes in the next letter.
Anyway, you might be amused to hear what happened with this Chloe girl: she just went on and on at me, so in the end I had to tell her a little secret, and since I was already thinking about you and the time when we were both in Buenos Aires, the first shameful secret that occurred to me was one that you know all too well: that business with Mrs. Teldi. I tell you, Antonio, I felt like that character in Tintin, Oliveira da Figueira, whose storytelling creates a diversion, keeping a crowd of listeners spellbound with a juicy morsel of old gossip. There I was, yours truly, telling the tale of Mrs. Teldi or Seldi or whatever the hell she’s called. My audience consisted of the wide-eyed Chloe, Carlos Garcia, my trusty sidekick, and Karel Pligh, the Czech boy who’s been helping out with the deliveries. There’s been hardly any work the last few days, unfortunately, so I could take my time, and I have to admit I was rather proud of the realistic way I described that accident, shall we call it, that happened at the Teldis’ house back in ’82 or thereabouts, when Mrs. Teldi’s younger sister came to visit with her husband. Of course I didn’t mention any names—as you know, I’ve always preferred to err on the side of discretion—but I did tell them in some detail about the visit of your employer’s sister-in-law and her husband from Spain, beginning with a little description of the visitors themselves: she was beautiful, I said, but with a melancholic air about her, yes, that was the word that sprang to mind, almost mournful . . . and her husband seemed to be one of those rare specimens: a man who is handsome but doesn’t know it.
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