by James Runcie
‘A kiss,’ the American said quietly.
And then, as the train headed towards London, we gradually told each other the story of our lives.
My new companion lived in a large Pennsylvania town dedicated to chocolate. He possessed twelve hundred acres of dairy farm, and I was to be housed and fed according to my status. He then gave me a letter to provide to the immigration authorities and informed me that if I should take the Mauretania the following month he would be pleased to organise my future employment. I would work in his factory and be happy at last, for it was in labour, he believed, that the true definition of a man’s purpose and identity lay.
Although I was delighted to secure employment, it seemed too good to be true. I had learned to distrust such hopes, for it still seemed that whatever promises, allurements, and kindness might fall my way in this uncertain and lengthy life, traps, delusions, and false enticements still lay forever in my path.
Having passed through London I walked along the coast at Tilbury, where I thought once more upon my future. Heavy clouds formed around the weak glow of the setting sun, and a thick mist began to roll in from the sea as it met the River Thames.
I picked up a few shells, and reflected again on the length of my life, its slowness paced against the accelerating mortality of my friends.
If my life was a river, I thought, then my past must lie all upstream, rolling out to be lost in the sea. But the tide was on the turn. The Thames was full of whirlpools, eddies and strange currents, as though the future of the sea was meeting the river of the past. Caught in that exact point of the turning tide, it then seemed that everything was held together in one conflicting moment, and that nothing in my life was simply past, present, or future. It was all one continual watershed.
A comet blazed in the distance.
Would I still be alive when it visited the earth again?
XI
After paying six pounds to travel in the steerage section of the Mauretania, I found myself sharing a cabin at the front of the ship with five boisterous men who smoked and spat profusely. This was far from ideal, and over the next few days I tried to avoid them wherever possible, making a lonely and secret trespass onto the higher decks.
The boat was a floating city, weighing some thirty-three thousand tons, and had become home to over two thousand passengers and eight hundred crew. There was a ballroom, a swimming pool, restaurants, promenades, and an Italian smoking room, all spread out over five decks, linked by a grand staircase.
It could not help but remind me of when I had first crossed the Atlantic, missing Isabella, sailing for over a month, fearful of my future and infatuated by my desire. How small such concerns seemed now, how distant those dreams. Did that past really belong to me? Did such memories have any meaning? I had spent so much time in a distracted state that I wondered again if I had perhaps been absent from my own life.
The journey lasted seven days. I managed to avoid the temptation to gamble on the lower decks, and ventured frequently on the promenade, where I heard myself described as ‘the man who walks alone’.
There were so many people: gentlemen playing quoits; children swimming in the pool; yet more ladies with small dogs.
One morning I stood for hours watching a boy flying a kite over the sea.
It seemed so simple and so timeless.
I thought of the sounds of the words kite in English, and Ewigkeit in German: eternity.
On the very last evening, as I watched the richer diners proceed towards the grandest of the restaurants, anticipating their Chantilly soup, braised oxtail, or galantine of capon, I chanced upon two women who had observed my evening paseo. They were clearly intrigued by my demeanour.
‘Are you lost?’ the taller of the two inquired.
‘In life, or on this ship?’ I asked abstractedly.
‘Either,’ answered the taller.
‘Or both,’ said the smaller. ‘You look so alone.’
‘I was seeking a place of quiet and solitude …’
‘Well then, we must not disturb you …’
‘No, no, I would be glad of your company,’ I replied hastily.
The women had a comforting aura of kindness about them.
‘Then please join us for dinner. You have a detached but inviting air,’ insisted the taller woman.
‘I am not sure if I am permitted to join you.’
‘Nonsense,’ the smaller woman insisted. ‘We shall dine with whom we please. And it pleases us’ – she fixed me sternly with her gaze – ‘to dine with you.’
‘Very well,’ I replied. ‘I would be delighted.’
The ladies could not have been. more different. The tall, willowy woman wore an exotic oriental dress and a cloche hat pulled low over her forehead. The smaller had her hair cut short and wore a long kimono with a heavy Chinese chain of lapis lazuli.
‘We are Miss Toklas, and Miss Stein,’ said the shorter woman. ‘Or Pussy and Lovey as we call each other.’
‘Although you may not do so,’ said the thin woman, whom I took to be Miss Toklas.
‘I am delighted to make your acquaintance,’ I replied as the waiter pushed in my chair.
We ordered the food and the women took great delight in the array of miniature mushroom tartlets, herrings in oatmeal, and caviar blinis on offer.
‘Very munctious,’ said Miss Stein.
‘This will be quite delicious,’ observed Miss Toklas.
‘Pussy collects menus. She is the most wonderful cook, aren’t you, my cherub? Lovely hard-boiled eggs with whipped cream, truffles, and Madeira wine. Chicken liver omelettes with six eggs and cognac. It’s all extremely goody.’
‘Don’t go on, fattuski,’ Miss Toklas replied.
‘I am also Mount Fattie,’ said Miss Stein. ‘That is what she calls me. And Alice is my lobster wifie.’
‘I will tell no one,’ I said, and smiled.
‘You do not seem happy,’ Miss Stein observed, laying out her napkin as if her remark was the most natural thing in the world.
‘I live a restless life,’ I replied.
‘Have you ever felt love?’
‘You ask very personal questions, Madame.’
‘They are the only ones that are interesting.’
‘Then I will try to answer them.’
‘Pray tell.’
‘It was a long time ago.’
‘And you were happy?’
‘I think that I can truly say that I was.’
‘Then you must go back. Go back to when you were last happy and start again.’
‘I am not sure if I can.’
‘Time moves on and people say that we should live in the moment, but I believe we can only define ourselves through love.’
I groaned. Yet another person was telling me to find happiness in love and work. If only it were that simple.
‘Mortality is nothing if it cannot stand the wear and tear of real desire,’ Miss Stein pronounced.
‘It is terrible to think of it,’ I shuddered.
‘Have you ever stopped thinking long enough to feel?’ asked Miss Toklas.
‘Someone to love is something to live for,’ said Miss Stein.
It was clear that these women were determined to proceed to the heart of things and that I could not escape their beady questions with mere politeness.
The main course was served.
I had chosen wood pigeon with chestnuts and cabbage; Miss Toklas ate a rabbit pie, while Miss Stein began her lobster with beurre blanc.
And gradually, as the meal progressed, I felt an extraordinary calm fall upon me. It was similar to the slow enjoyment of chocolate, so smoothly and unexpectedly did this peace descend. I suddenly realised that I could trust these women with my life; they had such a likeness for loving. And so when they asked to hear my story for the second time, I felt that I could not refuse them.
It took an hour to tell. Others might have thought that the longer I spoke the more certifiable I must be, but these women li
stened attentively and with compassion throughout.
‘A sad tale’s best for winter,’ said Miss Stein when I had finished my story.
‘And yet I feel my life will never end,’ I said, quietly.
‘I am sorry to say this, but the solution is simple,’ argued Miss Toklas. ‘You must either kill yourself or return to where you will find love.’
‘I have tried both,’ I said sadly.
‘It seems that you live in a continuous present, and that your life is a hymn of repetition, endlessly encircling itself,’ observed Miss Stein. ‘Repetition. Repetition.’ Her thoughts seemed to drift. ‘We are condemned to repeat our lives and our mistakes until we improve ourselves.’
‘All that I have improved is chocolate.’
‘Yet that is no small thing.’
Miss Toklas looked at me sternly.
‘And how have you improved it? By loving it. By caring for it. You must do the same with life.’
‘Even when it wearies me?’
‘It is then that you must care for it most,’ concluded Miss Toklas.
‘Remember the volcano that you climbed in Mexico,’ said Miss Stein. ‘It seemed dead. Hollow. Exhausted. You mounted its sides. You saw the great city before you. It may have been destroyed but now it stands there again. The volcano can erupt at any moment; it can burst into life. Rekindle the flames. Erupt again. You have been dormant too long.’
She clasped my hand tightly, with a desperate urgency.
‘I see its dark gold. Feel the heat Be the volcano. Explode into being.’
The waiter was watching us.
‘Would you like dessert?’ he asked. ‘We have an excellent chocolate mousse.’
‘How do you make such a thing?’ I asked.
‘Alice makes a very good whip, with eggs, butter, chocolate, icing sugar, cream and Cointreau,’ proclaimed Miss Stein quickly, as if the intensity of our conversation had been but a moment.
‘Ours are made with the addition of coffee, and are so light and creamy that they melt in the mouth,’ the waiter pronounced in return.
‘And how do you adorn them?’ asked Miss Toklas suspiciously.
The waiter would not be outmanoeuvred.
‘They are decorated with rosettes of whipped cream and chocolate leaves.’
The women smiled at me, as if enjoying this culinary competition, and I felt, for once in my life, that I actually belonged to a new family.
‘Do you prefer whisky or Armagnac in a chocolate mousse?’ I asked.
‘Both must be at least ten years old, but I prefer the Armagnac,’ the waiter observed solemnly. ‘Although sometimes we add banana and rum.’
‘The secret lies in the way you whisk the egg whites,’ observed Miss Toklas.
‘I agree entirely,’ I broke in. ‘The mountain peaks must be light and fluffy but contain a serious and aerated body.’
‘But I think my favourite,’ continued Miss Toklas, ‘is a chocolate mousse with passion fruit sauce and raspberry cream.’
‘I don’t know,’ said Miss Stein, sinking back into her chair. ‘A mousse is a mousse is a mousse.’
I looked at the rose on the table between us and said nothing.
Suddenly Miss Stein reached out, clasped my hand and stared into my eyes.
‘Say you love. Love what you love. Live with what you love.’
I did not know what to say in response.
‘We are tired,’ Miss Toklas told the waiter. ‘We will take coffee in our room.’
The waiter bowed and withdrew.
‘I must leave you,’ I said reluctantly.
I was to be alone once more.
‘What a pleasure it has been.’ Miss Toklas held out her hand for me to kiss.
‘I will never forget you,’ I said, and indeed it was true. I think that I had never seen such love between two people.
‘Repeat, repeat,’ said Miss Stein. ‘Go back, go back.’
I leaned forward to kiss her, but she waved me away. ‘Back you must go. Back to when you last found happiness. Back to Mexico.’
I rose from the table, and walked past the remaining diners, clutching their brandies and their ports against their terrors and their fears.
As I reached the door, I turned to look back at the small wise woman and her ethereal companion for one last time.
‘Thank you,’ I said simply.
Miss Stein smiled, and said sadly: ‘Love if you love. Live if you love. Love if you live.’
The Mauretania sailed into New York Harbor the following evening. Crowds of immigrants surged forward on the decks to have their first glimpse of the towering architecture before them: so much brick, iron and steel, and all so bold, magisterial and brave. Whereas I had previously found the natural terrain of mountain and sierra both humbling and daunting, it amazed me that humanity had found a means of competing with the environment, challenging its grandeur with an ambition of its own. It was as if a new scale of life had been invented, in which buildings would rise higher and higher and humankind would unwittingly, and at the very pinnacle of its achievement, make itself increasingly insignificant, dwarfed by its own creation.
We now sailed through a flotilla of small boats selling fresh water, poultry, bananas and rum, as the passengers on board set their sights on the land ahead, issuing great cries of ‘Statua Liberta, Statua Liberta’. It was the fourth of July and fireworks lit up the night sky, filling the air with hope and expectation. Those like me who had travelled in steerage were now taken on a ferry to Ellis Island where we were shown into a dark and cavernous building and ordered to line up for inspection.
It was a humiliating experience. Men and women were separated, families were dispersed, and the wait seemed interminable. The hall smelled of sickness. Children and adults alike began to sob with fear and anxiety, or looked bleakly across dark hallways, trapped in limbo between arrival and departure.
Guards asked us to strip and our clothes were removed for fumigation. Some people had letters of the alphabet chalked on their bodies if it was suspected that they had a poor heart, a hernia, a sexual infection or a mental illness. After I had taken a shower and been given a name-tag, my eyes were checked for cataracts, conjunctivitis and trachoma; my private parts were scrutinised for any signs of sexually transmitted disease, and my chest was inspected with a cold stethoscope, the doctor tapping away like a woodpecker.
Despite all my adventures it seemed that I had no more control of my destiny than when my travels had first begun. For I, Diego de Godoy, notary to the Emperor Charles V, who had first crossed the Atlantic as a glamorous conquistador, was now reduced to the status of immigrant worker waiting in line for an interview.
This proved to be a difficult encounter, for although the letter from my benefactor clearly put me at an advantage, the officials questioned why a Spaniard nearing retirement age (I think they took me to be a man of some fifty-six years old) should be indispensable to such a large organisation.
‘Why do they want you, spic?’
‘Spic?’
‘Answer the question.’
‘I know something of chocolate …’
I had been told to do nothing to annoy these people, no matter how provoking they became, because they controlled the destinies of thousands and could change a man’s future with the sweep of a hand.
‘You think the American people need a spic like you to tell us about chocolate?’ the man continued.
‘My benefactor seems to think so.’
‘What’s your name?’
‘Diego de Godoy.’
‘Age?’
‘About fifty. I think.’
‘Are you married?’
‘No.’
‘What is your calling or occupation?’
‘Notary. No. Chocolate-maker.’
‘I’m going to write Confectioner. Can you write?’
‘Yes.’
‘Have you ever been in prison or almshouse, insane asylum, or supported by charity?’ the man co
ntinued.
‘No,’ I lied.
‘Are you a polygamist?’
‘No.’
At least I thought I wasn’t.
‘Are you an anarchist?’
‘No.’
‘Do you believe in or advocate the overthrow by force of the US Government?’
‘No.’
‘Are you deformed or crippled?’
‘No.’
‘Country of birth?’
‘Spain.’
‘Town?’
‘Seville.’
The man met my eye briefly. Perhaps I would be arrested as some kind of impostor?
‘On your way then,’ the immigration officer said suddenly, and, it appeared, arbitrarily.
To this day I have never been able to anticipate the distracted moods of men at checkpoints. The officer even yelled after me, in a positively friendly manner: ‘Don’t forget to send me a few bars when you get there.’
‘Sure,’ I called back.
I had already begun to speak American.
Three days later I found myself at the gates of the factory in Pennsylvania.
The settlement had been built on its own rural site of one hundred and fifty acres and stretched as far as the eye could see. This was not the city centre community of Joseph Fry but an attempt at an earthly paradise where home and work were intermingled.
The town was dedicated to chocolate, with two main avenues named Chocolate and Cocoa signposting its importance; and with street names of Java and Caracas, Areba and Granada, it was impossible to escape the fact that the strange bean that I had first encountered with Ignacia was now responsible for the livelihood of an entire community.
There were houses with front lawns and back yards, toilets that flushed and showers that gushed, and it seemed that there was equal space for all. I felt as if I had entered a strange and fantastical utopia in which the threat of death had been removed.
Yet the factory for the production of chocolate was indisputably real. Here were machines for boiling, mixing, cooling, rolling, pulling, shaping, cutting, coating, and surfacing. There were instruments of which I had never heard: a triple-mill melangeur, a refiner conch, and a temperature controller. There were mould spinners, paste mixers, batch rollers, and enrobing machines; dryers, roasters, coolers, rotoplasts, crystallising machines, milk condensers, powder fillers and paste mixers. Women in white bonnets and white dresses sat behind batteries of dragée pans and sorting boxes, making chocolate in every form I could possibly imagine. Each stage of the process involved the employment of hundreds of people: cleaning and grading, roasting, blending, grinding, mixing, refining, conching, tempering, moulding, cooling, packaging and dispatching.
