Шоколад / Chocolat

“Do come in.” I beckoned him inside. “You should have knocked. I didn’t see you out there.”

Roux muttered something in his thick Marseille accent and crossed the threshold rather self-consciously. He moves with an odd combination of grace and clumsiness, as if he feels uncomfortable indoors.

I poured him a tall glass of black chocolate laced with kahlua.

“You should have brought your friends,” I told him lightly.

He gave a shrug in reply. I could see him looking around, taking in his surroundings with keen, if suspicious, interest.

“Why don’t you sit down?”

I asked, pointing to the stools at the counter. Roux shook his head.

“Thanks.” He took a mouthful of the chocolate. “Actually, I wondered if you’d be able to help me. Us.” He sounded embarrassed and angry at the same time. “It isn’t money,” he added quickly, as if to prevent me from speaking. “We’d pay for it all right: It’s just the – organization – we’re having difficulty with.” He shot me a look of unfocused resentment. “Armande – Madame Voizin – said you’d help,” he said.

He explained the situation as I listened quietly, nodding encouragement on occasion. I began to understand that what I had taken for inarticulacy was simply a deep dislike of having to ask for help. Through the thick accent Roux spoke like an intelligent man. He had promised Armande that he would repair her roof, he explained. It was a relatively easy job which would take only a couple of days. Unfortunately the only local supplier of wood, paint and the other materials needed to complete the task was Georges Clairmont, who flatly refused to supply them to either Armande or Roux. If Mother wanted repairs to her roof, he told her reasonably, then she should ask him, not a bunch of swindling vagrants. It wasn’t as if he hadn’t been asking – begging – her to let him do the work free of charge for years. Let the gypsies into her house and God only knew what might happen. Valuables looted, money stolen… It wasn’t unknown for an old woman to be beaten or killed for the sake of her few poor possessions. No. It was an absurd scheme, and in all conscience he couldn’t?

“Sanctimonious bastard,” said Roux viciously. “Knows nothing about us – nothing! The way he talks, we’re all thieves and murderers. I’ve always paid my way. I’ve never begged from anyone, I’ve always worked?”

“Have some more chocolate,” I suggested mildly, pouring another glassful. “Not everybody thinks like Georges and Caroline Clairmont.”

“I know that.”

His posture was defensive, arms crossed over his body.

“I’ve used Clairmont to do repairs for me before,” I continued. “I’ll tell him I want to do some more work on the house. If you give me a list of what you need, I’ll get it.”

“I’ll pay for it all,” said Roux again, as if this issue of payment were something he could not stress enough. “The money really isn’t a problem.”

“Of course.”

He relaxed a little and drank more chocolate. For the first time he seemed to register how good it was, and gave me a smile of sudden and peculiar sweetness.

“She’s been good to us, Armande,” he said. “She’s been ordering food supplies for us, and medicine for Zezette’s baby. She stood up for us when that poker-faced priest of yours turned up again.”

“He’s no priest of mine,” I interrupted quickly. “In his mind, I’m as much of an interloper in Lansquenet as you are.”

Roux looked at me in surprise.

“No, really,” I told him. “I think he sees me as a corrupting influence. Chocolate orgies every night. Fleshly excesses when decent people should be in bed, alone.”

His eyes are the hazy no-colour of a city skyline in the rain. When he laughs they gleam with malice. Anouk, who had been sitting in uncharacteristic silence while he spoke, responded to it and laughed too.

“Don’t you want any breakfast?” piped Anouk. “We’ve got pain au chocolat. We’ve got croissants too, but the pain au chocolat is better.”

He shook his head.

“I don’t think so,” he said. “Thanks.”

I put one of the pastries on a plate and set it beside him.

“On the house,” I told him. “Try one, I make them myself.”

Somehow it was the wrong thing to say. I saw his face close again, the flicker of humour replaced by the now familiar look of careful blankness.

“I can pay,” he said with a kind of defiance. “I’ve got money.”

He struggled to pull out a handful of coins from his overall pocket. Coins rolled across the counter.

“Put that away,” I told him.

“I told you, I can pay.” Stubborn now, igniting into rage. “I don’t need – ”

I put my hand on his. I felt resistance for a moment, then his eyes met mine.

“Nobody needs to do anything,” I said gently. I realized I had hurt his pride with my show of friendship. “I invited you.” The look of hostility remained unchanged. “I did the same with everyone else,” I persisted. “Caro Clairmont. Guillaume Duplessis. Even Paul-Marie Muscat, the man who ran you out of the cafe.” A second’s pause for him to register that. “What makes you so special, that you can refuse when none of them did?”

He looked ashamed then, mumbling something under his breath in his thick dialect. Then his eyes met mine again and he smiled.

“Sorry,” he said. “I didn’t understand.” He paused awkwardly for a few moments before picking up the pastry. “But next time you’re the ones invited to my place,” he said firmly. “And I shall be most offended if you refuse.”

He was all right after that, losing much of his constraint. We talked of neutral topics for a while, but soon progressed to other things. I learned that Roux had been on the river for six years, alone at first then travelling with a group of companions. He had been a builder once, and still earned money doing repair jobs and harvesting crops in summer and autumn. I gathered that there had been problems which forced him into the itinerant life, but knew better than to press for details.

He left immediately as soon as the first of my regulars arrived. Guillaume greeted him politely and Narcisse gave his brief nod of welcome, but I could not persuade Roux to stay to talk with them. Instead he crammed what remained of his pain au chocolat into his mouth and walked out of the shop with that look of insolence and aloofness he feels he has to affect with strangers.

As he reached the door he turned abruptly.

“Don’t forget your invitation,” he told me, as if on an afterthought. “Saturday night, seven o’clock. Bring the little stranger.”

Then he was gone, before I could thank him.

Guillaume lingered longer than usual over his chocolate. Narcisse gave his place to Georges, then Arnauld came over to buy three champagne truffles – always the same, three champagne truffles and a look of guilty anticipation – and Guillaume was still sitting in his usual place, a troubled look on his small-featured face. Several times I tried to draw him out, but he responded in polite monosyllables, his thoughts elsewhere. Beneath his seat Charly was limp and immobile.

“I spoke to Cure Reynaud yesterday,” he said at last, so abruptly that I gave a start. “I asked him what I ought to do about Charly.”

I looked at him enquiringly.

“It’s hard to explain to him,” continued Guillaume in his soft, precise voice. “He thinks I’m being stubborn, refusing to hear what the vet has to say. Worse still, he thinks I’m being foolish. It isn’t as if Charly were a person, after all.”

A pause during which I could hear the effort he was making to retain his control.

“Is it really that bad?”

I already knew the answer. Guillaume looked at me with sad eyes.

“I think so.”

“I see.”