Шоколад / Chocolat

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.

Not for a minute.

7

Sunday, February 16

My mother was a witch. at least, that’s what she called herself, falling so many times into the game of believing herself that at the end there was no telling fake from fact. Armande Voizin reminds me of her in some ways; the bright, wicked eyes, the long hair which must have been glossy black in her youth, the- blend of wistfulness and cynicism. From her I learned what shaped me. The art of turning bad luck into good. The forking of the fingers to divert the path of malchance. The sewing of a sachet, brewing of a draught, the conviction that a spider brings good luck before midnight and bad luck after. Most of all she gave me her love of new places, the gypsy wanderlust which took us all over Europe and further; a year in Budapest, another in Prague, six months in Rome, four in Athens, then across the Alps to Monaco, along the coast, Cannes, Marseille, Barcelona… By my eighteenth year I had lost count of the cities in which we had lived, the languages we had spoken. Jobs were as varied; waitressing, interpreting, car repair. Sometimes we escaped from the windows of cheap overnight hotels without paying the bill. We rode trains without tickets, forged work permits, crossed borders illicitly. We were deported countless times. Twice my mother was arrested, but released without charge. Our names changed as we moved, drifting from one regional variant to another; Yanne, Jeanne, Johanne, Giovanna, Anne, Anouchka. Like thieves we were perpetually on the run, converting the unwieldy ballast of life into francs, pounds, kroner, dollars, as we fled where the wind took us.

Don’t think I suffered; life was a fine adventure for those years. We had each other, my mother and I. I never felt the need for a father. My friends were countless. And yet it must have preyed upon her sometimes, the lack of permanence, the need always to contrive. Still we raced faster as the years wore on, staying a month, two at the most, then moving on like fugitives racing the sunset. It took me some years to understand that it was death we fled.

She was forty. It was cancer. She’d known for some time, she told me, but recently… No, there was to be no hospital. No hospital, did I understand? There were months, years left in her and she wanted to see America: New York, the Florida Everglades. We were moving almost every day now, Mother reading the cards at night when she thought I was asleep. We boarded a cruiser from Lisbon, both of us working in the kitchens. Finishing at two or three every morning, we rose at dawn. Every night the cards, slippery to the touch with age and respectful handling, were laid out on the bunk beside her. She whispered their names to herself, sinking deeper every day into the mazy confusion which would eventually claim her altogether.

Ten of Swords, death. Three of Swords, death. Two of Swords, death. The Chariot. Death.

The Chariot turned out to be a New York cab one summer evening as we shopped for groceries in the busy Chinatown streets. It was better than cancer, in any case.

When my daughter was born nine months later I called her after both of us. It seemed appropriate. Her father never knew her – nor am I sure which one he was in the wilting daisy-chain of my brief encounters. It doesn’t matter. I could have peeled an apple at midnight and thrown the rind over my shoulder to know his initial, but I never cared enough to do it. Too much ballast slows us down.

And yet… Since I left New York, haven’t the winds blown less hard, less often? Hasn’t there been a kind of wrench every time we leave a place, a kind of regret? I think there has. Twenty-five years, and at last the spring has begun to grow tired, just as my mother grew tired in the final years. I find myself looking at the sun and wondering what it would be like to see it rise above the same horizon for five – maybe ten, maybe twenty – years: The thought fills me with a strange dizziness, a feeling of fear and longing. And Anouk, my little stranger? I see the brave adventure we lived for so long in a different light now that I am the mother. I see myself as I was, the brown girl with the long uncombed hair, wearing cast-off charity-shop clothing, learning maths the hard way, geography the hard way. How much bread for two francs? How far will a fifty-mark rail ticket take us? – and I do not want it for her. Perhaps this is why we have stayed in France for the last five years. For the first time in my life, I have a bank account. I have a trade.

My mother would have despised all this. And yet perhaps she would have envied me too. Forget yourself if you can, she would have told me. Forget who you are. For as long as you am bear it. But one day, my girl, one day it will catch you. I know.

I opened as usual today. For the morning only – I’11 allow myself a half-day with Anouk this afternoon – but it’s Mass this morning and there will be people in the square. February has reasserted its drab self and now it is raining; a freezing, gritty rain which slicks the paving and colours the sky the shade of old pewter. Anouk reads a book of nursery rhymes behind the counter and keeps an eye on the door for me as I prepare a batch of mendiants in the kitchen. These are my own favourites – thus named because they were sold by beggars and gypsies years ago biscuit-sized discs of dark, milk or white chocolate upon which have been scattered lemon-rind, almonds and plump Malaga raisins. Anouk likes the white ones, though I prefer the dark, made with the finest 70 per cent couverture… Bitter-smooth on the tongue with the taste of the secret tropics. My mother would have despised this, too. And yet this is also a kind of magic.

Since Friday I have fitted a set of bar stools next to the counter of La Praline. Now it looks a little like the diners we used to visit in New York, red – leather seats and chrome stems, cheerily kitsch. The walls are a bright daffodil colour. Poitou’s old orange armchair lolls cheerily in one corner. A menu stands to the left, hand-lettered and coloured by Anouk in shades of orange and red:

chocolat chaud 5f

chocolat cake 10f

I baked a cake last night, and the hot chocolate is standing in a pot on the hob, awaiting my first customer. I make sure that a similar menu is visible from the window and I wait.

Mass comes and goes. I watch the passers-by, morose beneath the freezing drizzle. My door, slightly open, emits a hot scent of baking and sweetness. I catch a number of longing glances at the source of this, but a flick of the eye backwards, a shrugging of the shoulders, a twist of the mouth which may be resolve or simply temper, and they are gone, leaning into the wind with rounded, miserable shoulders, as if an angel with a flaming sword were standing at the door to bar their entry.

Time, I tell myself. This kind of thing takes time.

But all the same, a kind of impatience, almost anger, penetrates me. What is wrong with these people? Why do they not come? Ten o’clock sounds, then eleven. I can see people going into the bakery opposite and coming out again with loaves tucked under their arms. The rain stops, though the sky remains grim. Eleven-thirty. The few people who still linger in the square turn homewards to prepare the Sunday meal. A boy with a dog skirts the corner of the church, carefully avoiding the dripping guttering. He walks past with barely a glance.

Damn them. Just when I thought I was beginning to get through. Why do they not come? Can they not see, not smell? What else do I have to do?

Anouk, always sensitive to my moods, comes to hug me.

“Maman, don’t cry.”

I am not crying. I never cry. Her hair tickles my face, and I feel suddenly dizzy with the fear that one day I might lose her.

“It isn’t your fault. We tried. We did everything right.”

True enough. Even to the red ribbons around the door, the sachets of cedar and lavender to repel bad influences. I kiss her head. There is moisture on my face. Something, perhaps the bittersweet aroma of the chocolate vapour, stings my eyes.

“It’s all right, Cherie. What they do shouldn’t affect us. We can at least have a drink to cheer ourselves up.”

We perch on our stools like New York barflies, a cup of chocolate each. Anouk has hers with creme Chantillyand chocolate curls; I drink mine hot and black, stronger than espresso. We close our eyes in the fragrant steam and see them coming – two; three, a dozen at a time, their faces lighting up, sitting beside us, their hard, indifferent faces melting into expressions of welcome and delight. I open my eyes quickly and Anouk is standing by the door. For a second I can see Pantoufle perched on her shoulder, whiskers twitching. The light behind her seems warmer somehow; altered. Alluring.

I jump to my feet.

“Please. Don’t do that.”