Yes, that’s it, I’m nearly there. Between the breast of Peking duck and the ointment in a jar, between the lair of a genius and the grocery store shelf, I would choose the latter, I would choose the horrid little supermarket where the guilty objects of my delight were lined up in dreary, uniform rows. The supermarket . . . Odd how this is stirring a wave of emotion . . . Yes, perhaps . . . perhaps . . .
(Paul)
Rue de Grenelle, the Corridor
Such a waste.He has crushed everything in his wake. Everything. His children, his wife, his mistresses, even his own creative work: now in his final hours he is rejecting them all, because of this request that he himself does not understand, but which is tantamount to a condemnation of his science and a denunciation of everything he once stood for, a request he has addressed to us like a beggar, like a ragged pauper by the roadside, deprived of any meaningful life, alienated from his own understanding—wretched, in the end, because he has realized in this moment among all others, that he has been chasing a chimera and preaching a false gospel. A flavor . . . What do you think, old madman, what do you think? That if you find a lost flavor you will eradicate decades of misunderstanding and find yourself confronted with a truth that might redeem the aridity of your heart of stone? And yet he had in his possession all the arms that make for the best duelist: a fine way with his pen, nerve, panache. His prose . . . his prose was nectar, ambrosia, a hymn to language: it was gut-wrenching, and it hardly mattered whether he was talking about food or something else, it would be a mistake to think that the topic mattered: it was the way he phrased it that was so brilliant. Food was just a pretext, perhaps even a way of escaping, of fleeing what his goldsmith’s talent might bring to light: the exact tenor of his emotions, the harshness and suffering, and the failure, in the end . . . Thus, where his genius might have enabled him to dissect for posterity and for himself the various feelings which were troubling him, he lost his way along secondary paths, convinced that he ought to say what was incidental, and not essential. Such a waste. Heartbreaking.
And as for me . . . obsessed as he was with his sham success, he did not see who I really am. Neither the striking contrast between my ambitions as a hotheaded young man and the life as a quiet notable that I lead against my will; nor my stubborn tendency to muddle our conversation, to hide the inhibitions of a sad childhood beneath a ceremonial cynicism, to join him in performing a farce that may have seemed brilliant but was really nothing more than an illusion. Paul, the prodigal nephew, the favorite child—favorite because he had dared to refuse, dared to break the tyrant’s laws, dared to speak loud and clear in his presence where others whispered: but, old madman, even the most turbulent, even the most violent, the most rebellious of sons cannot be all those things without the formal authorization of the father, and yet again it is the father who, for a reason unbeknownst to himself, needs this troublemaker, needs to have this spine planted in the heart of his home, needs this small refuge of opposition, a place where, in the end, all the oversimplified categories of will and character shall be proven wrong. I was your damned soul for the simple reason that it is what you wanted, and how many sensible young men could have resisted such a temptation—to become the flattered foil to a universal demiurge, taking on the role of opponent that he had created specially for them? Old madman, old madman . . . You scorn Jean, you praise me to the skies, and yet we are both little other than the product of your desire—with the only difference that Jean is dying because of it, whereas I delight in it and make the most of it.
But it is too late now, too late to speak truthfully, to save what might have been saved. I am not enough of a Christian to believe in conversion, let alone last-minute conversion, and for my expiation I will live with the burden of my cowardice, that of having played at being what I am not, until for me, too, death does ensue.
I’ll speak to Jean all the same.
The Illumination
Rue de Grenelle, the Bedroom
Then suddenly I remember. Tears flow from my eyes. I murmur frenetically a few words incomprehensible to those around me, I am weeping and laughing at the same time, I raise my arms and trace circles convulsively with my hands. Around me everyone is agitated, concerned. I know I must look like what I am, basically: a mature man on his deathbed, who has lapsed into infancy as he prepares to depart his life. With a Dantean effort I manage to restrain my excitement for a short spell—a titanic struggle against my own jubilation, because I absolutely must make myself clear.
“My . . . little . . . Paul,” I manage to utter, with difficulty, “my . . . little . . . Paul . . . do . . . something . . . for . . . me.”
He is leaning over me, his nose almost touching mine; his brows, frowning with anxiety, form an admirable motif around his distraught blue eyes, and his entire body is tense with the effort to understand me.
“Yes, yes, uncle,” he says. “What do you want, what do you want?”
“Go . . . buy me . . . some . . . chouquettes,” I say, realizing with horror that the exultation flooding my soul as I utter these marvelous words could usher me brutally out of this world before it is time. I stiffen, expecting the worst, but nothing happens. I catch my breath.
“Chouquettes? You want some chouquettes?”
I nod, smiling faintly. A trace of a smile forms gently on his lips.
“So that’s what you want, you old madman, some chouquettes?” He squeezes my arm affectionately. “I’ll go get some. I’ll leave right away.”
I can see Anna behind him, coming to life, and I hear her say, “Go to Lenôtre, it’s the closest.”
A cramp of terror seizes my heart. As in the worst nightmares, the words seem to take an endless amount of time just to come out of my mouth, whereas the movements of the human beings around me accelerate with dizzying speed. I can sense that Paul will vanish around the door before my words make it into the open air—the air of my salvation, the air of my final redemption. So I move, gesticulate, throw my pillow to the floor and, oh infinite mercy, oh miracle of the gods, oh ineffable relief, they turn to look at me.
“What is it, Uncle?”
In two steps—however do they manage to be so nimble, so quick, I must already be in another world, where they seem to me to be seized by the same frenetic gestures as in the earliest silent films, when actors had the accelerated, jerky gestures of dementia—my nephew is once again within earshot. I hiccup with relief, I can see him go tense with worry, I reassure them with a pitiful gesture while Anna hurries to pick up the pillow.
“Not . . . Lenôtre,” I croak, “anything . . . but . . . Lenôtre . . . Not . . . a . . . patisserie . . . I . . . want . . . choux . . . in . . . a . . . plastic . . . bag . . . from . . . Leclerc.” I gasp for breath. “Soft . . . choux . . . I . . . want . . . supermarket . . . choux . . . ”
And while I penetrate deep into his gaze, filling my own with all the strength of my desire and despair—because this is, for the first time quite literally, a question of life or death—I see that he has understood. I sense it, I know it. He nods, and in his nod a fleeting reminiscence of our former complicity is painfully reborn, with a pain that is joyful, calming. I need no longer speak. As he leaves, almost at a run, I let myself slide into the cottony bliss of memory.
They were waiting for me, in their transparent plastic wrapper. On the wooden display, alongside the wrapped baguettes, whole wheat breads, brioches and flans: the little bags of chouquettes, waiting patiently. Because they’d been tossed there, higgledy-piggledy, with no respect for the art of the patissier who had arranged them lovingly, with plenty of room, on a display in front of the counter; they stuck together at the bottom of the bag, squeezed one against the other like sleeping puppies in the tranquil warmth of the fray. Above all, they had been set all warm and steamy in their final resting place, giving off a decisive steam which, when it condensed on the sides of the wrapper, created an environment conducive to sogginess.
How can one betray oneself to such a degree? What corruption greater even than power can lead us to thus deny the proof of pleasure, to hold in contempt that which we have loved, to defile our own taste to such a degree? I was fifteen years old, I had just left the lycée for the day, famished the way one often is at that age, without discernment, quite wildly, and yet with a tranquility that I recall only today, and that is precisely what is so cruelly lacking in my entire oeuvre. My entire oeuvre—I would give it all this evening without regret, without a shadow of remorse or a smidgeon of nostalgia, for one single, final chouquette from the supermarket.
I opened the bag carelessly, yanked on the plastic and then tore coarsely at the hole my impatience had created. I thrust my hand into the bag, and I didn’t like the sticky contact with the sugar that condensation had left on the sides of the bag. Painstakingly I detached one chouquette from its fellows, carried it religiously to my mouth and swallowed it down, closing my eyes.
Much has been written about the first bite, the second, and the third. Many worthy things have been professed on the subject. All are true. But they do not attain, far from it, the ineffable nature of that sensation, of lightly touching then gradually crushing the moist batter in a mouth that has become orgasmic. The sugar had soaked in moisture and did not crunch; it crystallized as you bit into it, its particles broke up without violence, harmoniously, your jaws did not break the sugar, but scattered it gently, in an indescribable waltz of creamy and crunchy. The chouquette clung to the most secret membranes of my palate, it sensual softness embraced my cheeks, its indecent elasticity caused it to congeal immediately in a homogeneous and unctuous paste which the sweetness of the sugar enhanced with a hint of perfection. I swallowed it quickly, because there were nineteen more to explore. Only the last chouquettes would be chewed and chewed again with the despair of the imminent end. I found consolation in musing about the last offering of the divine little pouch: the crystals of sugar that remained at the very bottom, waiting for choux to cling to: using my sticky fingers, I would fill the last little magical spheres with this sugar, to conclude my feast in an explosion of sweetness.
In the almost mystical union between my tongue and these supermarket chouquettes, with their industrial batter and their treacly sugar, I attained God. Since then, I have lost him, sacrificed him to the glorious desires which were not mine and which, in the twilight of my life, have very nearly succeeded in concealing him from me again.
God—that is, raw, unequivocal pleasure, the pleasure which stems from our innermost core, cares for nothing other than our own delight, and returns to it in like fashion; God—that is, that mysterious region in our most secret self with which we are completely in tune in the apotheosis of authentic desire and unadulterated pleasure. Like the umbilicus nestled in our deepest phantasms, which only our deepest self can inspire, chouquettes were the assumption of my life strength, of my power to exist. I could have written about chouquettes my whole life long; and my whole life long, I wrote against them. It is only in the instant of my death that I have found them again, after so many years of wandering. And it matters little, in the end, whether Paul brings them to me before I expire.
The question is not one of eating, nor is it one of living; the question is knowing why. In the name of the father, the son, and the chouquette, amen. I die.
My thanks to Pierre Gagnaire, for his menu and for his poetry.
About the Author
Muriel Barbery was born in 1969 in Casablanca. She studied philosophy at the Ecole Normale Supérieure and worked for many years as a philosophy teacher in France. Her New York Times bestselling novel The Elegance of the Hedgehog (Europa Editions 2008) has been published in more than twenty languages. Barbery lives in Japan and is working on a third novel.
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