Dirt

by Bill Buford

  The word originated in Italy, I assumed, like most other early items of French culinary diction.

  Italian dictionaries tend to be vague on its origins but emphasize its importance: that a ragù is one of the most famous Italian dishes in the world (“sicuramente uno dei piatti italiani più famosi sia in Italia che nel mondo”), that it is as old as antiquity but didn’t appear in print until the end of the eighteenth century (“nascita alla fine del 1700”). In fact, it is possible to date the word’s origins exactly: 1682, the year when Le Cuisinier françois was published in Italian in the city of Bologna as Il cuoco francese.

  Ragoût doesn’t come from ragù. Ragoût is a word that the Italians borrowed from the French. It is the turning point.

  In the culture of the kitchen, the moment marks a monumental shift, like a river reversing. Until then, culinary words (zabaglione → sabayon, becamele → béchamel, pasta → pâte), ingredients (artichokes, shallots, melons, citrus, green beans, asparagus), preparations (mortadella → rosette), service (forchetta → fourchette), and the profoundly Renaissance sense of convivium (festa → fête) entered France from Italy. With La Varenne—and in particular via the word ragoût—the culinary discoveries began emanating from France.

  * * *

  —

  The test duck preparation for Jessica and her wine colleagues: once again, not a disaster but not quite as planned, if only because it was not quite planned. I was, in effect, still revising. (I also cheated, I admit, and added a couple extra legs to the ragoût—it was otherwise so ungenerous.)

  I rehydrated the prunes with Calvados. Then, finding the pie’s filling too sweet, I added salty olives to compensate: olives and duck, almost as old as duck and turnip—why not?

  I set out to cook the mushrooms, but decided to sauté them in poitrine fat instead of butter, because I was also now adding lardons, in addition to the couenne, to my ragoût (for the fat, for the salt, because it seemed to be needed), and then, feeling liberated, decided to toss in a little cinnamon (because of its apple associations) and vanilla (ditto), and then more apple vinegar to compensate for the sweetness associations.

  Then, running late, wanting to get the food to the table, because the longer the meal took arriving, the more everyone drank of the bottles they had brought with them to celebrate earning their diplomas, I swung from the stovetop with my sauce in its saucier just as one of the guests (the already impressively very drunk Olivier) popped into the kitchen to see if he could help, and the carefully curated sweet-sour-salty-umami-heady liquid flew out of its container and splattered on Olivier en route to landing glisteningly on the kitchen floor.

  I stared at it, crushed.

  Olivier wiped himself off, picked up the saucier, and cheerfully said, “There’s still some sauce left!” (And there was, just.)

  How drunken was dinner? In itself, not excessively, except that no one lasted until dessert, because, by then, no one was at the table. They were in the living room, where the sofa, two armchairs, and a footrest were each draped, like a bulky, heavy blanket, by a comatose guest.

  I needed one more test run—with Bob—and then I would cook for Têtedoie.

  * * *

  —

  EARLIER, IN THE SUMMER, WE HAD TAKEN BOB OUT. The invitation had been too long in coming. I now understand that he would have preferred the community of a meal in our home, that it was a Lyonnais rite of friendship, but he was happy to be asked. He picked the day: a Tuesday—i.e., not a school night (Bob closed on Wednesdays, like the schools, so he could be with his daughter, and had both bathed and shaved, a radical sight). He also determined the itinerary, which began with his friends at L’Harmonie des Vins, because he knew they had just taken delivery of the new Saint-Péray, a small-production white wine made by Alain Voge. Bob taught us that, where we lived, a wine sometimes has a release date, like a theatre’s opening night, and excitement surrounds your being among the first to taste it.

  Bob talked and talked and talked. About his father, still alive, a farmer’s son (“My grandfather, my great-grandfather, my great-great-grandfather, all of them, for generations, were paysans”), who became a renowned town baker, a patriarch whom his many children sought advice from before making major decisions, and who, for no reason that anyone understood, no longer spoke to Bob’s mother. He hadn’t uttered a word to her in five years. (“It was strange. He spoke to the rest of us.”)

  About his mother, eighty-five, who pretended not to be distressed that her husband of fifty-nine years and the father of her seven children no longer spoke to her.

  About his wife, Jacqueline, a single mother with one child when he met her on a holiday he took to Cuba on his own, with whom he fell in love, and to whom he eventually proposed marriage, which she accepted but only if blessed by her priest, a disciple of Santería, the Caribbean slave-era religion.

  About the effort to bless the marriage, returning to Cuba to attend a ceremony, people dancing and chanting, many falling into a trance, until the priest stopped the proceedings: “He held my face between his hands, and looked into my eyes, and declared: ‘Your family traded in the flesh of our ancestors. You cannot marry Jacqueline. Leave my sight.’ ”

  About his return to France, heartbroken, but his then being told by his mother that there had been merit in the priest’s declaration, strange as it might sound, and that there had been a terrible rupture in the family, because one branch traded in slaves from West Africa and the other found the practice unacceptable, and there was an acrimonious split, and the two sides never spoke again.

  About how Bob returned to Havana and explained his history to the priest, who then blessed his marriage, and Bob and Jacqueline (along with a child from Jacqueline’s first marriage) made their way to Lyon.

  About his six siblings—by then we were at Les Oliviers, another restaurant, another friend—Bob talking faster and faster, with even more urgency, there being so much that he wanted to say: Marc, the lawyer in Paris who got Bob a job in the law library (which he loved); Jacques, who lived in Geneva, doing this and that; a couple sisters, I didn’t get their names, because of Bob’s hurry; another brother, and then Philippe, dear Philippe, the second youngest in the family, a year older than Bob, and the one he talked to the least because he thought about him the most. Every member of the family worked in their father’s boulangerie at Christmas and Easter. Only Philippe became a baker, a great one, who had opened half a dozen bakeries, worked the ski resorts in the winter, the Caribbean during the spring, cruise liners if the pay was good enough. Bob said: “Philippe is my greatest friend. He is half of my soul.”

  Bob knew plenty about us. He now wanted us to know about him.

  It was late when we drove slowly back to the Quai Saint-Vincent. The heart of the evening, I reflected, was the story of Bob’s cleaved family and the message implied by it—that, in Bob’s view, his branch had an imperative in its moral DNA to be on the side of the just and good. It was his origin myth and how he explained himself, the youngest member of the family, the seventh child, “the baby,” with a mission: There are not many people with a deeper sense of selfless justice. He made bread. It was just bread. And it wasn’t.

  Bob told us to drop him off at the boulangerie—he had something to pick up—but in the rearview mirror I saw that he went straight into the Potager bistro for another drink and—who knows?—maybe another dinner. There was poignancy in the sight, caught in reverse, of Bob’s needing to fill every possible minute of a nonworking evening, his only time off. There seemed to be loneliness.

  Two weeks later, Bob’s father died.

  * * *

  —

  “It wasn’t unexpected,” he said, and left to attend the funeral in Rennes.

  “He told us to buy the boulangerie,” Bob reminisced when he returned. His brother Jacques had been in Lyon and came upon the property for
sale, situated in front of the footbridge across the Saône, and on the ground floor of the very building where the history of the city was painted, La Fresque des Lyonnais. It was where three roads met, the quai, the rue de la Martinière, and the Roman Rhine road. It had been inhabited for millennia, at least since the Allobroges, the indigenous Gallic tribes.

  Jacques summoned the father, Bob (who was living in Paris), and Philippe. They came immediately by train.

  “My father looked at the property from the outside and said, ‘Yes, this is a good boulangerie.’ ” There were two floors, old stone walls, a worn stone staircase. “He said, ‘Bread has been made here for a long time.’ ” There was a wood-burning oven. Philippe wiped off the soot. It said 1805.

  Roberto Bonomo, the chef-owner of the quartier’s Italian restaurant, describes the space as “spiritual.” “You walk into it. You feel you are connecting to something bigger than yourself.”

  The family bought the boulangerie for 60,000 francs, about $11,000 at the time.

  Philippe said, “Bob, come help me open it.” Bob served notice at the law library, and the two brothers got the place ready. It was probably—I couldn’t keep myself from thinking—the last time the floors were cleaned. (I have since learned that my suggestion is defamatory. The floors were cleaned—once a year, when the boulangerie closed—although there were at least three years during our stay when it never closed.)

  At Bob’s insistence, a sign went up—PHILIPPE RICHARD ARTISAN BOULANGER. It seems unlikely that Philippe intended to remain. He had a family and a business in Rennes, eight hours away. He was experienced at start-ups. The occasion, this time, was different. He was training his little brother: “une formation.” He was helping him to find his calling.

  Philippe stayed. How long? Bob can’t remember—“Six months? A year?” Eventually, Philippe announced that he needed to return to Rennes; his wife insisted. But he’d be back, he said.

  So far, Philippe hasn’t returned, not yet. It has been fifteen years. On paper, the brothers are partners. In fact, the boulangerie is Bob’s. But the sign hasn’t changed. “I will never take it down.”

  One bright morning in the early summer, with a mountain breeze coming off the Saône, the windows open, I stood out on our balcony, taking in the smells of the boulangerie, only a hundred feet away. When you live here, you have no choice: Bob’s bread enters your living space and then your lungs and then your heart. There were many reasons for our liking where we found ourselves, but Bob was high among them. The boulangerie was the village equivalent of a campfire. It held the restaurants together. It united chefs and diners. It made the quartier a gastronomic destination.

  I wondered: Is there any chance that we can buy our apartment?

  Then, without warning, Bob’s beloved brother Philippe died.

  * * *

  —

  I was the first person Bob told.

  I had popped into the boulangerie in the late morning. Bob was in the back. No one else was there. I waited several minutes before he walked out to the front.

  “I was on the phone with my mother. My brother Philippe. He had an aneurysm this morning. He is dead.”

  Il est mort.

  Bob was pale, flat eyes, no affect, and able to relay the news of his phone call, repeating a construct in language, but seeming unable to understand what he was saying. “He is forty-seven. He was forty-seven. An aneurysm. This morning. I spoke to him last week. Philippe is dead.”

  Bob left to attend the funeral. He returned four days later. He was changed. He was ponderous, in manner and movement, in everything. One morning, he didn’t show up at the boulangerie. Another time, I watched him standing by a streetlight at the end of the rue de la Martinière, seeming to stare at nothing. The light changed. He didn’t cross. It changed to red. It changed to green. He didn’t cross. Once, he was headed directly to the front of our apartment. He often parked his car on a street behind us. I waited for him. He didn’t see me. “Bob,” I said, and he walked past. “Bob,” I repeated, and he stopped, and turned, and looked at me as if he had just been slapped awake.

  “Bonjour, Bill,” he said softly and walked away.

  His thoughts were like a black tide moving back and forth inside his head. He didn’t seem to be mourning; he seemed to be in a depression. I feared for him.

  “Without Philippe,” Bob said, “I would be nothing.”

  He shared his distress with Jessica. “I am working too much. I have to change my life. I must make Lucas a partner.” Lucas was the first baker Bob had employed whom he trusted, who “got it” and had the Bob-like lightness of touch. “I have to share the workload.”

  On another occasion: “I will take vacations.”

  He seemed to have instantly gained weight. It wasn’t alarming—he had always been heavy—but it was evident. He wasn’t sleeping, which, since he scarcely slept anyway, meant he had to be suffering physically, minute by minute. The nights, Bob said, were the hardest. “That’s when I think of him. I have never been closer to a human being, those nights, making bread.”

  One morning, Bob told me, “I talk to him at night.”

  Our Liverpool friend, Martin, walking by the boulangerie late, on his way home, heard Bob sobbing.

  One Saturday night, a kid threw a rock at the window in the back room, shattering it. On Saturday nights, everyone comes into Lyon—it is the only city in the Rhône Valley—and the traffic on the quai always backs up and remains backed up until dawn. It is noisy, and drunken, and stuff happens. And on this particular Saturday, Bob was in the back, thinking of his brother. The broken window was an affront. Bob gave chase down the Quai Saint-Vincent.

  Did Bob really think he could chase down the vandal? By what impulsive leap of the imagination did Bob regard himself as a sprinter?

  The fact that he tried seemed a symptom of his desperation and his aloneness. The quai there was badly lit, the curb stacked with long irregular boards left over from a construction project never completed. Bob ran a hundred feet and tripped and fell and badly broke his leg, a complete break, in two places. He had to pull himself back onto the narrow sidewalk to get out of the way of the traffic. Bob, whose work means standing on his feet, had to give up the boulangerie for an inconceivably long ten weeks.

  He needed some love and affection. He would, I was sure, really like a piece of duck pie.

  * * *

  —

  Roberto was in touch with Bob and provided updates. He was still mainly supine, Roberto told us, although the breaks seemed, finally, to be healing. Bob had attempted walking with crutches.

  The boulangerie continued with impressive consistency—Lucas’s bread was flawless—with one persistent problem: The flour kept running out. Lucas didn’t know how often Bob ordered it. In most bakeries, flour is an inventory staple. You buy it in bulk, you get the best price, it is always there, you don’t think about it. But Bob got his flour from that small farmer who valued its freshness. Bob might get some at the beginning of the week. On Friday, he would ask for more. Or on Wednesday. The deliveries would be stacked by the staircase, or, when there was no threat of rain, just outside the back entrance. Not a lot. Forty big dusty sacks, fifty. Lucas, suddenly without flour, had to close.

  Roberto, meanwhile, was moving his restaurant out of the quartier to the other side of the Rhône. We would now have to drive there and find a place to park and remember not to drink too much, because then we would have to drive back and find another place to park. Also, he was the first in the quartier to leave, which seemed philosophically incorrect.

  “You’ll come,” he said. “The food will be just as good.”

  On Sunday, when he was normally closed, Roberto was hosting a farewell party, only his regulars, his best food, the best wine. “Bob promised to be there. He’ll still be on crutches, but he’ll come.
”

  It was time to begin my prep for the Bob duck dinner.

  I wasn’t going to do the duck as if it were an MOF submission, the ticking clock, everything made on the spot. This was for Bob; I’d do my Têtedoie time-trials against a stopwatch later. I resolved, like any restaurant chef, to do as much as possible in advance, beginning with the puff pastry. I took my duck stock (I had plenty in the freezer), mixed it with a liter of cider, and reduced it to what I regarded as my “all-purpose jus” (it would be added to the ragoût, the sauce, and the turnips). I also made the ragoût ahead of time and froze it. But I put off the garniture—the Calvados-soaked prunes, the mushrooms, the Escoffier turnips—until the day of, when I would prepare each separately and add them at the end.

  * * *

  —

  We arranged a sitter, even though we were only crossing the street to Roberto’s. We also wore winter coats, even though we were only crossing the street. It was the first of the season’s Alpine gales, and the restaurant was warm to step into. Roberto had removed the tables and lined up chairs along the wall like on New Year’s Eve. He gave us a bruschetta with tomatoes and fresh garlic and a glass of good wine.

  “Bob probably won’t be coming,” he said. “He couldn’t find a sitter.”

  I regretted that we hadn’t been in the loop. Suzanne, Bob, and Jacqueline’s lovely child could have stayed with our boys and our sitter.

  “But I saw him!” Roberto said. “Yesterday, at Potager. It was his first time out. On crutches, but mobile. He will be back soon.”