Шоколад / Chocolat

The nurse is trying to catch my eye. She thinks I tire you. How can you bear them, with their loud voices and nursery manner? Time for our rest, now, I think. Her archness is jarring, unbearable. And yet she means kindly, your eyes tell me. Forgive them, they know not what they do. I am not kind. I come here for my own relief, not yours. And yet I like to believe my visits give you pleasure, keeping you in touch with the hard edges of a world gone soft and featureless. Television an hour a night, turning five times a day, food through a tube. To be talked over as if you were an object – Can he hear us? Do you think he understands? – your opinions unsought, discarded… To be closed from everything, and yet to feel, to think. This is the truth of hell, stripped of its gaudy mediaevalisms. This loss of contact. And yet I look to you to teach me communication. Teach me hope.

4

Friday, February 14, St Valentine

The dog-man’s name is guillaume. He helped me with the delivery yesterday and he was my first customer this morning. He had his dog, Charly, with him, and he greeted me with a shy politeness which was almost courtly.

“It looks wonderful,” he said, looking around. “You must have been up all night doing this.”

I laughed.

“It’s quite a transformation,” said Guillaume. “You know, I’m not sure why, but I’d just assumed it was going to be another bakery.”

“What, and ruin poor Monsieur Poitou’s trade? I’m sure he’d thank me for that, with his lumbago playing up the way it is, and his poor wife an invalid and sleeping so badly.”

Guillaume bent to straighten Charly’s collar, but I saw his eyes twinkle.

“I see you’ve met,” he said.

“Yes. I gave him my recipe for bedtime tisane.”

“If it works, he’ll be a friend for life.”

“It works,” I assured him. Then, reaching under the counter I pulled out a small pink box with a silver valentine bow on it. “Here. For you. My first customer.”

Guillaume looked little startled.

“Really, Madame, I-”

“Call me Vianne. And I insist.” I pushed the box into his hands. “You’ll like them. They’re your favourite kind.”

He smiled at that. “How do you know?” he enquired, tucking the box carefully into his coat pocket.

“Oh, I can just tell,” I told him mischievously. “I know everyone’s favourite. Trust me, this is yours.”

The sign wasn’t finished until about noon. Georges Clairmont came to hang it himself then, profusely apologetic at his lateness. The scarlet shutters look beautiful against the new whitewash and Narcisse, grumbling halfheartedly about the late frosts, brought some new geraniums from his nursery to put in my planters. I sent them both away with valentine boxes and similar expressions of bemused pleasure. After that, barring a few schoolchildren, I had few visitors. It is always the case when a new shop opens in such a small village; there is a strict code of behaviour governing such situations and people are reserved, pretending indifference though inwardly they burn with curiosity. An old lady ventured in, wearing the traditional black dress of the country widow. A man with dark, florid features bought three identical boxes without asking what was inside. Then for hours, no-one came. It was what I expected; people need time to adapt to change, and though I caught several sharp glances at my display window, no-one seemed inclined to go in. Behind the studied unconcern however, I sensed a kind of seething, a whispering of speculation, a twitching of curtains, gathering of resolve. When at last they came, it was together; seven or eight women, Caroline Clairmont, wife of the signmaker, amongst them. A ninth, arriving somewhat behind the group, remained outside, her face almost touching the window, and I recognized the woman in the tartan coat.

The ladies eyed everything, giggling like schoolgirls, hesitant, delighting in their collective naughtiness.

“And do you make them all yourself?” asked Cecile, who owns the pharmacy on the main street.

“I should be giving it up for Lent,” commented Caroline, a plump blonde with a fur collar.

“I won’t tell a soul,” I promised. Then, observing the woman in the tartan coat still gazing into the window, “Won’t your friend join us?”

“Oh, she isn’t with us,” replied Joline Drou, a sharp featured woman who works at the local school. She glanced briefly at the square-faced woman at the window. “That’s Josephine Muscat.” There was a kind of pitying contempt in her voice as she pronounced the name. “I doubt she’ll come in.”

As if she had heard, I saw Josephine redden slightly, lowering her head against the breast of her coat. One hand was drawn up against her stomach in an odd, protective gesture. I could see her mouth, perpetually downturned, moving slightly, in the rhythms of prayer or cursing.

I served the ladies – a white box, gold ribbon, two paper cornets, a rose, a pink valentine bow – amidst exclamations and laughter. Outside Josephine Muscat muttered and rocked and dug her large ungainly fists into her stomach. Then, just as I was serving the last customer she raised her head in a kind of defiance and walked in. This last order was a large and rather complicated one. Madame wanted just such a selection, in a round box, with ribbons and flowers and golden hearts and a calling card left blank – at this the ladies turned up their eyes in roguish ecstasy, hihihihil – so that I almost missed the moment. The large hands are surprisingly nimble, rough quick hands reddened with housework. One stays lodged in the pit of the stomach, the other flutters briefly at her side like a gunslinger’s swift draw, and the little silver packet with the rose – marked ten francs – has gone from the shelf and into the pocket of her coat.

Nice work. I pretended not to notice until the ladies had left the shop with their parcels. Josephine, left alone in front of the counter, pretended to examine the display, turned over a couple of boxes with nervous, careful fingers. I closed my eyes. The thoughts she sent me were complex, troubling. A rapid series of images flickered through my mind: smoke, a handful of gleaming trinkets, a bloodied knuckle. Behind it all a jittering undercurrent of worry.

“Madame Muscat, may I help you?” My voice was soft and pleasant. “Or would you just like to look around?”

She muttered something inaudible, turned as if to leave.

“I think I may have something you’ll like.”

I reached under the counter and brought out a silver packet similar to the one I had seen her take, though this one was larger. A white ribbon secured the package, sewn with tiny yellow flowers. She looked at me, her wide unhappy mouth drooping with a kind of panic. I pushed the packet across the counter towards her.

“On the house, Josephine,” I told her gently. “It’s all right. They’re your favourites.”

Josephine Muscat turned and fled.

5

Saturday, February 15

I know this isn’t my usual day, mon pere but I needed to talk. The bakery opened yesterday. But it isn’t a bakery. When I awoke yesterday morning at six the wrapping was off, the awning and the shutters were in place and the blind was raised in the display window. What was an ordinary, rather drab old house like all the others around it has become a red-and-gold confection on a dazzling white ground. Red geraniums in the window boxes. Crepe-paper garlands twisted around the railings. And above the door a hand-lettered sign in black on oak:

LA CELESTE PRALINE CHOCOLATERIE ARTISANALE.

Of course it’s ridiculous. Such a shop might well be popular in Marseille or Bordeaux – even in Agen where the tourist trade grows every year. But in Lansquenet-sous-Tannes? And at the beginning of Lent, the traditional season of self-denial? It seems perverse, perhaps deliberately so.

I looked into the display window this morning. On a white marble shelf are aligned innumerable boxes, packages, cornets of silver and gold paper, rosettes, bells, flowers, hearts and long curls of multicoloured ribbon. In glass bells and dishes lie the chocolates, the pralines, Venus’s nipples, truffles, mendiants, candied fruits, hazelnut clusters, chocolate seashells, candied rose-petals, sugared violets… Protected from the sun by the half-blind which shields them, they gleam darkly, like sunken treasure, Aladdin’s cave of sweet cliches. And in the middle she has built a magnificent centrepiece. A gingerbread house, walls of chocolate-coated pain d’epices with the detail piped on in silver and gold icing, roof tiles of florentines studded with crystallized fruits, strange vines of icing and chocolate growing up the walls, marzipan birds singing in chocolate trees… And the witch herself, dark chocolate from the top of her pointed hat to the hem of her long cloak, half astride a broomstick which is in reality a giant guimauve, the long twisted marshmallows that dangle from the stalls of sweet-vendors on carnival days.

From my own window I can see hers, like an eye closing in a sly, conspiratorial wink. Caroline Clairmont broke her Lenten vow because of that shop and what it sells. She told me in the confessional yesterday, in that breathless girlish tone which goes so ill with her promises of repentance.

“Oh, mon pere, I feel so dreadful about it! But what could I do when that charming woman was so sweet? I mean, I never even thought about it until it was too late, though if there’s anyone who should give up chocolates… I mean, the way my hips have absolutely ballooned in the last year or two, it makes me want to die-”

“Two Aves.”

God, that woman. Through the grille I can feel her hungry, adoring eyes.

She feigns chagrin at my abruptness. “Of course, mon pere.”

“And remember why we fast for Lent. Not for vanity. Not to impress our friends. Not so that we can fit into next summer’s expensive fashions.”

I am deliberately brutal. It is what she wants.

“Yes, I am vain, aren’t I?” A tiny sob, a tear, blotted delicately with the corner of a lawn handkerchief. “Just a vain, foolish woman.”

“Remember Our Lord. His sacrifice. His humility.”

I can smell her perfume, something flowery, too strong in this enclosed darkness. I wonder whether this is temptation. If so, I am stone.

“Four Aves.”

It is a kind of despair. It frets at the soul, reduces it piece by piece, as a cathedral may be levelled over the years by the erosion of flying dust and fragments of sand. I can feel it chipping away at my resolve, my joy, my faith. I should like to lead them through tribulation, through wilderness. Instead, this. This languid procession of liars, cheats, gluttons and pathetic self-deceivers. The battle of good and evil reduced to a fat woman standing in front of a chocolate shop, saying, “Will I? Won’t I?” in pitiful indecision. The devil is a coward; he will not show his face. He is without substance, breaking into a million pieces which worm their evil ways into the blood, into the soul. You and I were born too late, mon pere. The harsh, clean world of the Old Testament calls to me. We knew then where we stood. Satan walked amongst us in flesh. We made difficult decisions; we sacrificed our children in the Lord’s name. We loved God, but we feared Him more.

Don’t think I blame Vianne Rocher. Indeed I hardly think of her at all. She is only one of the influences against which I must fight every day. But the thought of that shop with its carnival awning, a wink against denial, against faith… Turning from the doorway to receive the congregation I catch a movement from within. Try me. Test me. Taste me. In a lull between the verses of a hymn I hear the delivery-van’s horn as it pulls up in front. During the sermon – the very sermon, mon pere! – I stop mid phrase, certain I hear the rustle of sweet-papers.

I preached with greater severity than usual this morning, though the congregation was small. Tomorrow I’ll make them pay. Tomorrow, Sunday, when the shops are closed.

6

Saturday, February 15

School finished early today. By twelve the street was rampant with cowboys and Indians in bright anoraks and denim jeans, dragging their schoolbags – the older ones dragging on illicit cigarettes, with turned-up collars and half a nonchalant eye to the display window as they pass. I noticed one boy walking alone, very correct in grey overcoat and beret, his school cartable perfectly squared to his small shoulders. For a long moment he stared in at the window of La Celeste Praline, but the light was shining on the glass in such a way that I did not catch his expression. Then a group of four children of Anouk’s age stopped outside, and he moved on. Two noses snubbed briefly against the window, then the children retreated into a cluster as the four emptied pockets and pooled resources. A moment of hesitation as they decided who to send in. I pretended to be occupied with something behind the counter.

“Madame?”

A small, smudgy face peered suspiciously up at me. I recognized the wolf from the Mardi Gras parade.

“Now, I have you down as a peanut brittle man.” I kept my face serious, for this purchase of sweets is serious business. “It’s good value, easy to share, doesn’t melt in your pockets and you can get”– I indicated with hands held apart – “oh, this much at least for five francs. Am I right?”

No answering smile, but a nod, as of one businessman to another. The coin was warm and a little sticky. He took the packet with care.

“I like the little gingerbread house,” he said gravely. “In the window.”

In the doorway the three others nodded shyly, pressing together as if to give themselves courage.

“It’s cool.”

The American word was uttered with a kind of defiance, like smoke from a secret cigarette. I smiled.

“Very cool,” I agreed. “If you like, you and your friends can come over and help me eat it where I take it down.”

Eyes widened.

“Cool!”

“Hypercool”

“When?”

I shrugged.

“I’ll tell Anouk to remind you,” I told them. “That’s my little girl.”

“We know. We saw her. She doesn’t go to school.”

This last was uttered with some envy…

“She will on Monday. It’s a pity she doesn’t have any friends yet, because I told her she could ask them over. You know, to help me with the displays.”

Feet shuffled, sticky hands held out, shoving and pushing to be first in line.

“We can”

“I can-”

“I’m Jeannot ”

“Claudine-”

“Lucie.”

I sent them out with a sugar mouse each and watched them fan across the square like dandelion seeds in the wind. A slice of sunlight glanced off their backs one after the other as they ran – red-orange-green-blue – then they were gone. From the shaded arch of St Jeromes I saw the priest, Francis Reynaud, watching them with a look of curiosity and, I thought, disapproval. I felt a moment’s surprise. Why should he disapprove? Since his duty visit on our first day he has not called again, though I have heard of him often from other people. Guillaume speaks of him with respect, Narcisse with temper, Caroline with that archness which I sense she adopts when speaking of any man under fifty. There is little warmth in their speech. He is not a local, I understand. A Paris seminarian, all his learning from books he does not know the land, its needs, its demands. This from Narcisse, who has had a running feud with the priest ever since he refused to attend Mass during the harvesting season. A man who does not suffer fools, says Guillaume, with that small gleam of humour from behind his round spectacles, that is to say so many of us, with our foolish little habits and our unbreakable routines. He pats Charly’s head affectionately as he says it, and the dog gives his single, solemn bark.

“He thinks it’s ridiculous to be so devoted to a dog,” said Guillaume ruefully. “He’s far too polite to say so, but he thinks it’s inappropriate. A man of my age…”

Before his retirement Guillaume was a master at the local school. There are only two teachers there now to deal with the falling numbers, though many of the older people still refer to Guillaume as le maitre d’ecole. I watch as he scratches Charly gently behind the ears, and I am sure I sense the sadness I saw in him at the carnival; a furtive look which is almost guilt.

“A man of any age can choose his friends where he likes,” I interrupted with some heat. “Perhaps monsieur le cure could learn a few things from Charly himself.”

Again that sweet, sad almost-smile.

“Monsieur le cure tries his best,” he told me gently. “We should not expect more.”

I did not answer. In my profession it is a truth quickly learned that the process of giving is without limits. Guillaume left La Praline with a small bag of florentines in his pocket; before he had turned the comer of Avenue des Francs Bourgeois I saw him stoop to offer one to the dog. A pat, a bark, a wagging of the short stubby tail. As I said, some people never have to think about giving.

The village is less strange to me now. Its inhabitants too. I am beginning to know faces, names; the first secret skeins of histories twisting together to form the umbilical which will eventually bind us. It is a more complex place than its geography at first suggests, the Rue Principale forking off into a hand-shaped branch of laterals – Rue des Poetes, Avenue des Francs Bourgeois, Ruelle des Freres de la Revolution – someone amongst the town planners had a fierce republican streak: My own square, Place Saint-Jerome, is the culmination of these reaching fingers, the church standing white and proud in an oblong of linden trees, the square of red shingle where the old men play petanque on fine evenings: Behind it, the hill falls away sharply towards that region of narrow streets collectively called Les Marauds.

This is Lansquenet’s tiny slum, close half-timbered houses staggering down the uneven cobbles towards the Tannes. Even there it is some distance before the houses give way to marshland; some are built on the river itself on platforms of rotting wood, dozens flank the stone embankment, long fingers of damp reaching towards their small high windows from the sluggish water. In a town like Agen, Les Marauds would attract tourists for its quaintness and rustic decay. But here there are no tourists. The people of Les Marauds are scavengers, living from what they can reclaim from the river. Many of their houses are derelict; elder trees grow from the sagging walls.

I closed La Praline for two hours at lunch and Anouk and I went walking down towards the river. A couple of skinny children dabbled in the green mud by the waterside; even in February there was a mellow stink of sewage and rot. It was cold but sunny, and Anouk was wearing her red woollen coat and hat, racing along the stones and shouting to Pantoufle scampering in her wake. I have become so accustomed to Pantouffe – and to the rest of the strange menagerie which she trails in her bright wake – that at such times I can almost see him clearly; Pantoufle with his grey-whiskered face and wise eyes, the world suddenly brightening as if by a strange transference I have become Anouk, seeing with her eyes, following where she travels. At such times I feel I could die for love of her, my little stranger; my heart swelling dangerously so that the only release is to run too, my red coat flapping around my shoulders like wings, my hair a comet’s tail in the patchy blue sky.

A black cat crossed my path and I stopped to dance around it widdershins and to sing the rhyme:

Ou va-t-i, mistigri?

Passe sans faire de mal ici.

Anouk joined in and the cat purred, rolling over into the dust to be stroked. I bent down and saw a tiny old woman watching me curiously from the angle of a house. Black skirt, black coat, grey hair coiled and plaited into a neat, complex bun. Her eyes were sharp and black as a bird’s. I nodded to her.

“You’re from the chocolaterie,” she said.

Despite her age which I took to be eighty, maybe more – her voice was brisk and strongly accented with the rough lilt of the Midi.

“Yes, I am.”

I gave my name.

“Armande Voizin,” she said. “That’s my house over there.” She nodded towards one of the river-houses, this one in better repair than the rest, freshly whitewashed and with scarlet geraniums in the window boxes. Then, with a smile which worked her apple-doll face into a million wrinkles, she said, “I’ve seen your shop. Pretty enough, I’ll grant you that, but no good to folks like us. Much too fancy.” There was no disapproval in her voice as she spoke, but a half laughing fatalism. “I hear our m’sieur le cure already has it in for you,” she added maliciously. “I suppose he thinks a chocolate shop is inappropriate in his square.” She gave me another of those quizzical, mocking glances. “Does he know you’re a witch?” she asked.

Witch, witch. It’s the wrong word, but I knew what she meant.

“What makes you think that?”

“Oh, it’s obvious. Takes one to know one, I expect,” and she laughed, a sound like violins gone wild. “M’sieur le Cure doesn’t believe in magic,” she said. “Tell you the truth, I wouldn’t be so sure he even believes in God.” There was indulgent contempt in her voice. “He has a lot to learn, that man, even if he has got a degree in theology. And my silly daughter too. You don’t get degrees in life, do you?”

I agreed that you didn’t, and enquired whether I knew her daughter.

“I expect so. Caro Clairmont. The most empty-headed piece of foolishness in all of Lansquenet. Talk, talk, talk, and not a particle of sense.”

She saw my smile and nodded cheerily.

“Don’t worry, dear, at my age nothing much ends me any more. And she takes after her father, you know. That’s a great consolation.” She looked at me quizzically. “You don’t get much entertainment around here,” she observed. “Especially if you’re old.” She paused and peered at me again. “But with you I think maybe we’re in for a ‘ little amusement.”

Her hand brushed mine like a cool breath. I tried to catch her thoughts, to see if she was making fun of me, but ail I felt was humour and kindness.

“It’s only a chocolate shop,” I said with a smile.

Armande Voizin chuckled.

“You really must think I was born yesterday,” she observed.

“Really, Madame Voizin-”

“Call me Armande.” The black eyes snapped with amusement. “It makes me feel young.”

“All right. But I really don’t see why-”

“I know what wind you blew in on,” said Armande keenly. “I felt it. Mardi Gras, carnival day. Les Marauds was full of carnival people; gypsies, Spaniards, tinkers, pieds-noirs and undesirables. I knew you at once, you and your little girl what are you calling yourselves this time?”

“Vianne Rocher.” I smiled. “And this is Anouk.”

“Anouk,” repeated Armande softly. “And the little grey friend – my eyes aren’t as good as they used to be – what is it? A cat? A squirrel?”

Anouk shook her curly head. “He’s a rabbit,” she said with cheery scorn. “Called Pantoufle.”

“Oh, a rabbit. Of course.” Armande gave me a sly wink. “You see, I know what wind you blew in on. I’ve felt it myself once or twice. I may be old, but no-one can pull the wool over my eyes. No-one at all.”

I nodded.

“Maybe that’s true,” I said. “Come over to La Praline one day; I know everyone’s favourite. I’ll treat you to a big box of yours.”

Armande laughed.

“Oh, I’m not allowed chocolate. Caro and that idiot doctor won’t allow it. Or anything else I might enjoy,” she added wryly. “First smoking, then alcohol, now this… God knows, if I gave up breathing perhaps I might live for ever.” She gave a snort of laughter, but it had a tired sound, and I saw her raise a hand to her chest in a clutching gesture eerily reminiscent of Josephine Muscat. “I’m not blaming them, exactly,” she said. “It’s just their way. Protection – from everything. From life. From death.” She gave a grin which was suddenly very gamine in spite of the wrinkles. “I might call in to see you anyway,” she said. “If only to annoy the cure.”

I pondered her last remark for some time after she disappeared behind the angle of the whitewashed house. Some distance away Anouk was throwing stones onto the mud flats at the riverbank.

The cure. It seemed his name was never far from the lip’s. For a moment I considered Francis Reynaud.

In a place like Lansquenet it sometimes happens that one person – schoolteacher, cafe proprietor, or priest forms the lynchpin of the community. That this single individual is the essential core of the machinery which turns lives, like the central pin of a clock mechanism, sending wheels to turn wheels, hammers to strike, needles to point the hour. If the pin slips or is damaged, the clock stops. Lansquenet is like that clock, needles perpetually frozen at a minute to midnight, wheels and cogs turning uselessly behind the bland blank face. Set a church clock wrong to fool the devil, my mother always told me. But in this case I suspect the devil is not fooled.