Текст книги "Richard C. Morais - The Hundred-Foot Journey"

Автор книги: Richard C. Morais

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But in Lumière there was the slight obstacle of language. Papa’s only foreign language was English, and it was my job to translate his ravings into my schoolboy French. I did not mind: this was how I eventually met several girls my age, such as Chantal, the mushroom picker from across the valley, her nails always gritty with dark humus. In this case, however, the Pole across the table could speak no English and just a little French, and that protected him from Papa’s full frontal assault. So what we had was a stalemate. The Pole simply crossed his arms across his chest and shook his head.

“What is this?” Papa said, poking a green Tupperware lid. “Just a bit of plastic, no? Anyone can make this.”

Madame Mallory deposited herself squarely in front of Papa’s path as he paced, and he was suddenly forced to stop short, his great bulk towering over the little woman. I could see this was the last thing he expected—to be stopped by a woman—and he peered down at her with a puzzled expression.

“Wah?”

“I am your neighbor, Madame Mallory, from across the street,” she said in excellent English.

Papa gave the woman a dazzling smile, the Pole and the savage Tupperware negotiations instantly forgotten. “Hello,” he boomed. “Le Saule Pleureur, nah? I know. You must come over and meet the family. Have tea.”

“I don’t like what you are doing.”

“Wah?”

“To our street. I don’t like the music, the placard. It’s ugly. So unrefined.”

I have not often seen my father at a loss for words, but at this remark he looked as if someone had punched him hard in the stomach.

“It’s in very bad taste,” Mallory continued, brushing an imaginary thread off her sleeve. “You must take it down. That sort of thing is all right in India, but not here.”

She looked him straight in the face, tapped him on the chest with her finger. “And another thing. It is tradition here in Lumière that Madame Mallory has the first choice of the morning’s produce. It’s been this way for decades. As a foreigner, I appreciate you would have no way of knowing this, but now you do.”

She offered Papa a wintry smile.

“It’s very important for newcomers to start off on the right foot, don’t you agree?”

Papa scowled, his face almost purple, but I who knew him so well could see—in the downturned corners of his eyes—he was not mad but deeply hurt. I moved to his side.

“Who you tink you are?”

“I told you. I am Madame Mallory.”

“And I,” Papa said, raising his head and slapping his chest, “I am Abbas Haji, Bombay’s greatest restaurateur.”

“Pff. This is France. We are not interested in your curries.”

By this time a small crowd had gathered around Madame Mallory and Papa. Monsieur Leblanc pushed his way into the center of the ring. “Gertrude,” he said sternly. “Let us go.” He pulled at her elbow. “Come, now. Enough.”

“Who you tink you are?” repeated Papa, stepping forward. “Wah dis talk in third person like maharani? Who you? God give you right to all best cuts of meat and fish in the Jura? Nah? Oh, then perhaps you own dis town. Yaar? Is that what give you right to the fresh produce every morning? Or perhaps you are some big important memsahib who owns the farmers?”

Papa thrust his enormous belly at Madame Mallory and she had to step back, a look of incredulity slapped across her face.

“How dare you talk to me in this impertinent manner.”

“Tell me,” he roared at the onlookers, “does this woman own your farms and your livestock and vegetables, or do you sell to highest bidder?” He smacked his palm. “I pay cash. No waiting.”

There was a gasp from the crowd. This they understood.

Mallory swiftly turned her back on Papa and shrugged on a pair of black leather gloves.

“Un chien méchant,” she said dryly. The assembled crowd laughed.

“What she say?” Papa roared at me. “Wah?”

“I think she called you a mad dog.”

What happened then is forever burned in my memory. The crowd parted for Madame Mallory and Monsieur Leblanc as they began to leave, but Papa, agile for a man of his size, quickly ran forward and stuck his face close to the chef’s retreating ear.

“Bowwow. Roooff. Rooff.”

Mallory jerked her head away. “Stop it.”

“Rooff. Rooff.”

“Stop it. Stop it you . . . you horrible man.”

“Grrrrr. Rooff.”

Mallory covered her ears with her hands.

And then she broke into a trot.

The villagers, never before having seen Madame Mallory ridiculed, roared with amazed laughter and Papa turned and joyously joined them, watching the elderly woman and Monsieur Leblanc disappear behind the Banque Nationale de Paris on the corner.

We should have known then what trouble was ahead. “She was jabbering away like a madwoman,” Auntie told us when we came home. “Slam car door. Pang.” And over the next days, as I glanced across the street, I periodically spotted a pointy nose pressed up against the fogged windowpane.

Maison Mumbai’s opening day approached. Lorries backed into the Dufour courtyard: tables came from Lyon, dishware from Chamonix, plastic menu folders from Paris. One day a hip-high wooden elephant, trumpeting, suddenly greeted me as I entered the restaurant’s doors. A hookah went into the corner of the lobby, and brass bowls on little tables were filled with plastic roses purchased at the local cash-and-carry.

By now the carpenters had converted the three reception rooms into the restaurant’s dining room, and across the teak-paneled walls Papa hung posters of the Ganges, the Taj Mahal, Kerala tea plantations. On one wall he had a local artisan paint a mural of Indian life—of a village woman hauling water from a well, of all things. And all day while we worked speakers on the walls blasted out geets and ghazals, the warbling Urdu ballads and love poems of our heritage.

Papa was Big Abbas again. He worked for days with my oldest brother designing and redesigning an advertisement for the local newspapers. They finally settled their differences in a notebook of inky scratches, driving their design to Le Jura’s office in Clairvaux-les-Lacs. A silhouette of a trumpeting elephant, usually between the sports and television listings, filled an entire page of the newspaper. The balloon coming out of the elephant’s mouth offered everyone who showed up at Maison Mumbai’s opening night a free carafe of wine. The ad ran in Le Jura three weekends in a row. The restaurant’s slogan: “Maison Mumbai—la culture indienne en Lumière.”

And I, at the age of eighteen, finally took up my calling. It was Papa’s idea, ordering me into the kitchen. Ammi was simply incapable of serving a hundred people at a time, and my aunt was the only woman in all India who could not cook. Not even an onion bhaji. But I choked, suddenly afraid of my destiny. “I am a boy,” I yelled. “Make Mehtab do it.”

Papa swatted me across the back of my head. “She got other tings to do,” he roared. “You spend more time than anyone else in the kitchen with Ammi and Bappu. Don’t worry. You’re just nervous, yaar. We’ll help.”

And so my days disappeared in belching smoke and the steamy rattle of pots. Tentatively, backed by constant consultations with my sister and Papa, a rough vision of my menu emerged. I rehearsed and rehearsed until I was sure: lamb brain stuffed with green chutney, coated with egg and tawa-grilled; chicken cinnamon masala and beef cooked with vinegar-spices. For side dishes I settled on steamed rice crumpets and cottage cheese simmered with fenugreek. And as a starter, my personal favorite: clear trotters soup.

The wheel of life was turning. Ammi steadily lost control as I steadily gained it. Dementia had her now, full by the throat. The occasional erratic scene we witnessed in London had become commonplace, and she drifted in and out of this fragile mental state, only rarely again returning to us in moments of lucidity. I recall her looking over my shoulder, giving me useful tips on how to extract the rich flavor from cardamom, very much like she was in the old days on the Napean Sea Road. Moments later, however, she was frothing at the mouth and cursing me as if I were her worst enemy. It broke my heart. But with the restaurant opening so soon, I could ill afford hand-wringing, and I instead buried myself in the kadais.

But there were scenes. Ammi’s obsessions often fixated on the daal, the chickpea staple of Indian cooking I was making in the kitchen, and we frequently argued over the subject. One day, as I was preparing for the grand opening, I simmered an aromatic mix of onions, garlic, and daal. Ammi wandered over and smacked me hard on the arm with a spoon.

“That not how we Hajis make it,” she said, grimacing the Indian way. “Do like I said.”

“No,” I said firmly. “I add a tomato at the end. When it bursts, give a bite to the daal and lovely color.”

Ammi scrunched up her face in disgust and again swatted me on the head with the spoon. But Papa nodded at me over the old woman’s back, and his support shored up my confidence. I rubbed the back of my skull, still smarting from her smack, and then gently eased her toward the door and out of the kitchen.

“Leave, Ammi, please! Leave until you can control yourself. I must prepare for the opening. You understand?”

It was around this time that I undid my apron and walked into town with Uncle Mayur, just a young man desperate for a break from all the pressures of the opening. It was late morning and Mehtab had sent us out in search of supplies, laundry detergent and steel wool pads to scrub the pots and pans.

It was when we returned from town, arms laden with bags from the local Carrefour, that Uncle Mayur made a face and clicked his tongue, nodding in the direction of Le Saule Pleureur.

A young farmer led a monstrous pig around to the back of the restaurant by a rope tied to the ring through its nose. Must have been five hundred pounds of animal. Mallory, Leblanc, and the rest of the staff were looking very officious as they fussed out back with buckets of water and knives and laid out large planks of wood and scrubbed down the country table standing at the top of the field. The snorting pig clattered onto the planks of wood at the sight of a dish of nettles and potatoes carefully placed in a strategic spot under a sturdy chestnut tree. I noticed a complicated system of pulleys hung from the branches overhead.

St. Augustine’s parish priest read from the Bible, sprinkled holy water on the pig, on the ground, on the wooden plank, his lips ceaselessly moving in whispered prayer. The mayor was there, too, standing alongside the local butcher, who was sharpening knives on a whetting stone.

I remember Lumière’s mayor respectfully had his hat off, and in the sharp wind his elaborate comb-over unraveled and began to flick foolishly about his head. And I remember this ludicrous picture of the mayor and his dancing hair as the butcher removed a revolver from his apron, walked over, and dispatched the pig with a shot through the head.

A bark, a defecation, and the thud of the pig as its legs buckled and it landed heavily on the wooden planks. Leblanc and three of the other men instantly pulled at the pulleys, hoisting the planks over onto the scrubbed table, even while the pig still twitched madly, its hooves scrabbling and jerking.

“Christians.” Uncle Mayur snorted contemptuously. “Come, let us go.”

But we couldn’t move, not as the pig’s throat was slit and blood by the liter pulsed from the gash, the red spray pumping into a large plastic bucket. And I’ll always remember the sight of Madame Mallory washing her arms under the outside tap, then whipping the hot blood with her forearms as her sous chef added vinegar to the bucket, to keep the blood from coagulating. The way they later added cooked leeks and apples and parsley, along with fresh cream, to the bucket of fresh blood, before stuffing boudin skins with the thickened paste. And I remember the smells that came to us in the wind, so powerfully of blood and shit and death, and the way they scraped the pig’s hooves clean, scattered straw around the carcass, and set it alight to remove the animal’s bristles. All this I remember, as the three of them carved the animal up over the rest of the day, the butcher and Mallory and her sous chef periodically sipping from tumblers of white wine as they hacked away at the warm slabs of bloodied meat still steaming in the air. And how this public butchering went on into the next day, almost all through the weekend. How they showered shoulder meat with salt and pepper and then spooned the ground flesh into skins, saucissons to dry in Mallory’s back shed, where pears and apples and prunes were stacked on wooden shelves according to size.

“Disgusting,” hissed Uncle Mayur. “Pig eaters.”

And I found myself unable to confess what I was really thinking. That I had seen few things so beautiful. That few things spoke to me so eloquently of the earth and where we come from and where we are heading. How could I tell him, moreover, how could I tell him that I found myself secretly and passionately wanting to be a part of this pig-butchering underworld?

Chapter Seven

Aiee, Abbas. Guess who book a table? The woman from across the road. Table for two.”

Auntie sat behind the antique desk at the main entrance taking reservations, carefully entering the seating in a black ledger. Papa yelled, “Nah? You hear that, Hassan? The old woman from across street come try our fantastic concoctions.”

And there, clutching the banister, Ammi descending the stairs, so bewildered. Auntie had closed the ledger and was now examining herself in a compact mirror. “Stop looking at yourself, you vain girl,” Ammi screeched. “When does Hassan get married? What do I wear? Who has my tings?”

They brought her down to the kitchen and gave her a simple task—that sometimes helped. Of course, Ammi in the kitchen was all I needed; the kitchen on the opening day was already a chaotic mess. I was terribly nervous and had just thrown handfuls of cubed lamb and okra into pots, squeezed in some lemon, dropped in some star seed and cardamom, cinnamon, and crushed grapefruit. Green peas, too. It was a blur of bubbling vats, spicy fumes, nervous yelling.

Mehtab helped, of course, chopping onions in the corner, but she was always somewhere in between tears and uncontrollable giggles. And Papa was driving me mad, nervously pacing back and forth, past the stove, where bubbling sauces spat so hard they spattered the floor.

“Wah?” said grandmother. “Why am I here? What I doing?”

“It’s all right, Ammi. You’re washing—”

“Doing the washing?”

“No. No. Pears. I want you to wash the pears.”

And then the woolly heads of Arash and Mukhtar appeared between the swinging doors. Little bastards. “Hassan is a girl,” they chanted. “Hassan is a girl.”

“If you little rascals bother your brother again,” Papa yelled, “I’ll make you sleep in the garage tonight.”

Auntie slammed through the doors.

“It’s full! It’s full! We book every table.”

Papa grabbed my shoulders in his big hands and turned me around so I would look into his eyes, eyes brimming with emotion. “Make us proud, Hassan,” he said with a quivering voice. “Remember, you are a Haji.”

“Yes, Papa.”

We were, of course, all thinking of Mother. But there was no time for sentimentality, and I quickly turned back to the pan to sauté vanilla pods with chanterelle mushrooms.

Meanwhile, at Le Saule Pleureur across the street, Madame Mallory stood at her spotless steel kitchen counter examining hors d’oeuvres of pike carpaccio and fricassee of freshwater oysters. Behind her the staff wordlessly, efficiently, prepared the night’s fare with a rat-tat-tatting of knives, the hissing of meat seared under a flame grill, the scraping of steel utensils, and the constant back-and-forth thudding of wooden clogs on tile.

Mallory let nothing out into the dining room without her explicit approval, and she checked that the oysters in front of her were hot with the back of her knuckle, dabbing a spoon into the carpaccio’s truffle-and-asparagus vinaigrette. Not too salty, not too tart. She nodded her approval and dabbed a tea towel in a bowl of water to her side, carefully wiping the fingerprints and slopped sauce from around the plates’ rims.

“Pick up,” she cried, “table six.”

Mallory needed everything to be clear, transparent, controlled. A waiter stood before the board—on which a miniature plan of the dining room tables outside had been re-created—ticking in blue felt-tip under the first course box, table six. This board on the wall allowed Mallory to know, at a glance, precisely who was at what stage of their meal and where.

“Hurry up. The oysters are getting cold.”

“Oui, madame.”

The waiter came around to the other side of Madame Mallory’s steel counter and slid the dishes onto a tray lined with a linen cloth. He settled a silver dome over the steaming oysters, bent his knees, and suddenly it was all up in his arms and out through the swinging doors in one graceful move.

Madame Mallory spiked the order for table six and checked her gold watch. “Jean-Pierre,” she cried over the kitchen din. “Take over. Two orders for duckling. Table eleven.”

Mallory untied her apron, examined her hair in the mirror, and then pushed through the swinging doors. Le Comte de Nancy Selière was taking his usual seat near the bay window. The gourmet banker came from Paris every year at this time, for two weeks. A good customer—always Suite 9 and the full meal plan—and Madame Mallory overcame her shyness to greet him warmly and sincerely as he looked up from the menu.

Mallory instantly had the impression the aristocrat was more wistful than normal, saddened by the turmoil of middle age, but perhaps that was because he usually came to Le Saule Pleureur with a much younger woman. This year the gourmet was alone.

Mallory’s favorite painting, a nineteenth-century oil of the Marseille fish markets, stood to the side of the count, and she discreetly straightened the painting’s light after another guest had brushed against it, knocking it slightly askew as he took his seat. A bread boy in gold buttons and cotton gloves magically appeared at her side, a basket of homemade breads on his shoulder.

“We’ve just created this spinach-and-carrot semolina,” Madame Mallory informed the count, pointing with silver tongs at a two-toned bread roll. “Slightly sweet. Particularly good with tonight’s chilled terrine de foie gras, served under a white truffle and port gelée.”

“Ah, madame,” said Le Comte de Nancy, a playful smile on his lips. “What painful decisions you force me to make.”

Mallory wished him bon appétit and continued across the room, nodding at familiar guests, straightening a drooping stalk in the centerpiece of orchids, stopping briefly to furiously whisper in the ear of the wine steward. The steward’s sleeve was stained with wine and she ordered him to change his tunic.

“Immédiatement,” she hissed. “I shouldn’t have to tell you this.”

At the front desk, Monsieur Leblanc and his assistant, Sophie, took the coats of arriving clients, weekenders from Paris, and Mallory waited discreetly to the side until Leblanc was free. “Let’s get this over with,” she said. “And you, Sophie. The Satie tape is a fraction too loud. Turn it down. It should be very faint, in the background.”

The night was as black as a boudin noir, and the stars, I recall, appeared to me as clots of blood-pudding fat. The owls too-wooed deep in the branches of linden and chestnut, and the birch trunks under the moon stood out like solid bars of silver in the night.

But not so still, our street. The brightly lit windows of the Dufour mansion, the festive chatter of arriving guests, the comforting smell of birch smoke drifting through the night.

Our restaurant was already half-full and cars from all over the region jammed our street when Madame Mallory and Monsieur Leblanc crossed the short distance between our restaurants, wading through the inky night, standing their turn at Maison Mumbai’s door, just behind Monsieur Iten and his family of six.

Papa’s massive silhouette appeared in the light-flooded door frame, his immense bulk squeezed into a raw silk kurta, his bosom and hairy nipples pressed unattractively against the shiny tan material. “Good evening,” he boomed. “Welcome, Monsieur Iten. And your lovely family. My, what beautiful boys you have, Madame Iten. Come, bring the rascals in. We have a wonderful table for you near the garden. My sister will show you.”

Papa stepped forward again once they had passed, to peer down the stone steps at the dimly outlined night shapes. “Aah,” Papa said, finally recognizing Mallory and Leblanc. “Our neighbors. Good evening. Good evening. Come.”

Without another word Papa turned and slowly waddled in his white slippers across the restaurant. “We’re completely booked,” he yelled over the din of the crowded restaurant. They passed the plastic roses, the Air India posters, the trumpeting elephant, and Mallory protectively pulled her shawl tighter over her shoulders.

Papa dropped two plastic menus on a table for two. Suresh Wadkar and Hariharan wailed in Urdu from speakers overhead, and the wall visibly vibrated as the sarangi and tabla erupted during a particularly passionate passage.

“Very good table,” Papa yelled above the music.

Monsieur Leblanc quickly pulled out Madame Mallory’s chair, hoping to head off an acerbic remark. “Yes, Monsieur Haji, I see,” he said. “Thank you very much. Congratulations on your opening. We wish you great fortune.”

“Thank you. Thank you. You are most welcome.”

Madame Mallory closed her eyes in horror as Papa bellowed, “Zainab,” so loudly across the room it made several of the guests jump in alarm. My seven-year-old sister dutifully came over to Madame Mallory’s table with a clutch of pansies. Zainab wore a simple white dress, and even Madame Mallory had to admit her cinnamon-colored skin looked beautiful in the light, against the clean cotton. Zainab handed Madame Mallory the flowers and shyly looked at the floor. “Welcome to Maison Mumbai,” she said softly.

Papa beamed and Mallory leaned over and patted Zainab’s head, which had been recently oiled with one of Mehtab’s hair tinctures. “Charmant,” Mallory said stiffly, wiping her hand under the table on the linen napkin over her knees.

She turned her attention back to Papa. “Help us, Monsieur Haji,” she said, pointing at the menu. “We have little understanding of your food. You order for us. Bring us your house specialties.”

Papa grunted and plunked a bottle of vin rouge down on the table. “On the house,” he said. Madame Mallory knew the label well. It was the only truly bad wine in the valley. “Non,” she said. “Merci. Not for us. What do you drink with your food?”

“Beer,” said Papa.

“Beer?”

“Kingfisher beer.”

“Bring us two beers, then.”

Papa waddled back into the kitchen, as I was cooking ground corn and coriander on the tawa, and he spat out their order. I could tell by his ruddy cheeks his blood pressure was rising, and I raised my finger at him, a warning to stay cool.

“Kill them,” he said. “Just kill them.”

The restaurant was now roaring with life, and Madame Mallory must have been surprised to see so many of the townsfolk from Lumière helping us celebrate our opening. Madame Picard, the fruitier, with a friend, getting drunk on the house wine; and the mayor, with his entire family, even his brother the lawyer, roaring off-color jokes at each other around the corner table. As she was peering around the room in this way, Uncle Mayur waddled over and opened, with a hiss, Mallory’s bottles of beer.

Mukhtar and Arash, my younger brothers, suddenly ran hollering through the tables until my uncle grabbed Arash by his nape and boxed his ears. His howl sliced through the restaurant. And shortly thereafter Ammi wandered out of the kitchen, annoyed at all the people in her house, and she went right to the corner table and pinched the mayor hard. The man was rather surprised—he swore, actually—and Papa rushed over to apologize and explain Ammi’s condition.

But it was all right. The first few dishes emerged from the kitchen, dishes rattling in the inexperienced French boy’s hands, and there was great oohhing and aahing as the steaming, prattling iron platters passed through the dining room. The mayor recovered his good humor when a stack of prawn samosas and another bottle of wine arrived at his table—on the house. And that was when Madame Mallory abruptly stood and made her way to the back of the restaurant.

There I was, my back to the kitchen door, my hands and forearms discolored by a mixture of chili powder and grease. I shook some garam masala into a vat of mutton. A pot of clarified butter exploded over the counter, and I rather excitedly ordered Mehtab to spoon the runny butter—which had congealed with onion skins, spilled salt, and saffron—into a frying pan.

“Don’t waste it. Never mind. Still taste good.”

I looked over at the door.

I cannot describe the feeling that made me turn around like that, as if a great force of negative energy was at my back, shoving me forward.

But the glass portico in the door was empty.

Madame Mallory had seen what she wanted to see, and she returned to the dining room to take her seat opposite Leblanc. She sipped her beer and contentedly pictured the scene that was unfolding in her own restaurant across the street.

Stravinsky orchestrations softly playing in the background. The drama of silver domes over delicious dishes lifted simultaneously. The polite sipping of a bouillabaisse. The fecund aroma of orchids and roast suckling pig. Precision, perfection, predictability. “To Le Saule Pleureur,” Mallory said, holding up her glass of beer to Monsieur Leblanc.

Our pimply young waiter arrived with their food. Not very experienced, I’m afraid, and he just banged the pots down on the table. There was an urn of Goa fish stew, thick and gooey. Chicken tikka marinated in pink spices and lemon, grilled until the edges were black and curling. A skewer of yogurt-marinated lamb liver, sprinkled with crunchy pine nuts, was barely contained on a chipped dish. Mushrooms that thickened a masala appeared as unidentified lumps under the film of tarka oil floating atop the dish. There was a copper pan of okra and tomatoes, and cauliflower heads in, I admit, an unattractive brown sauce. Yellow rice was fluffily heaped in a ceramic bowl, with pungent bay leaves buried under the kernels of basmati. Then came a confusing array of side dishes—pickled carrots, cool yogurt and cucumber, unleavened bread blistered with black boils and garlic.

“What a lot of food,” said Mallory. “I hope it is not too hot. The only other Indian food I’ve had, in Paris, was awful. Burned for two days.”

But the smells of the restaurant had made her hungry, as they had Monsieur Leblanc, and they spooned out the rice and fish and cauliflower and crispy liver onto their plates.

“You won’t believe what I saw in the kitchen.”

Mallory swallowed a forkful of yogurt and rice and okra and fish. “They’ll have the health inspectors in there shortly. The boy spilled—”

But Mallory did not finish the sentence. She looked down at her plate, her brow knitted. She took another forkful, chewing methodically, letting the flavors sensually roll across her tongue. Her fingers leaped across the table and dug into Monsieur Leblanc’s forearm.

“What is it, Gertrude? Good God. You look awful. What is it? Too hot?”

Madame Mallory trembled, shook her head in disbelief.

She took another forkful. But now all uncertainty, all shreds of hope, drained away and she was left with the awful truth.

It was there.

Madame Mallory dropped her fork with a clatter. “Ah, non, non, non,” she moaned.

“For God’s sake, Gertrude, tell me, what is wrong? You’re frightening me.”

Never before had Monsieur Leblanc seen such a terrifying look. It was, he thought, the picture of someone who had lost her reason for living.

“He has it,” she hissed. “He has it.”

“What? He has what? Who has what?”

“The boy,” she croaked. “The boy has what . . . Oh, the injustice of life.”

Mallory brought her napkin up to her lips to muffle the squeaks involuntarily popping out of her mouth.

“Oh. Oh.”

Diners at the other tables turned to look at Madame Mallory and she suddenly became aware she was an object of fascination. Gathering all her inner strength, she sat up straight, patted her bun of hair, a frozen smile plastered across her face. Heads slowly went back to their own food.

“Didn’t you taste it?” Mallory whispered.

Her eyes were ablaze, as if cayenne pepper and curry had internally set her afire. “Crude, yes, but there. Under all the fire, hidden, brought out by the cool yogurt. There, yes, distinctly there. It’s in the point and counterpoint of tastes.”

Monsieur Leblanc slapped his napkin down on the table. “What in heaven’s name are you talking about, Gertrude? Now, speak clearly.”

But Madame Mallory, to his utter amazement, lowered her head and began to weep into her napkin. Never before—never in their thirty-four-year partnership—had he seen her cry. Let alone in public.

“Talent,” she said through the muffled clutch of her napkin. “Talent that cannot be learned. That skinny Indian teenager has that mysterious something that comes along in a chef once a generation. Don’t you understand? He is one of those rare chefs who is simply born. He is an artist. A great artist.”

Unable to contain herself anymore, Madame Mallory burst into heartfelt sobs, great wracking gasps of pain that filled the restaurant and brought the entire room to a standstill.

Papa ran over. “What? What matter wit’ her? Too hot?”

Monsieur Leblanc begged their apologies, paid the bill, pulled the distraught chef up by the elbows, and half dragged the weeping woman back across the street to her restaurant.

The church dog howled.

“Non, non,” she wailed. “I can’t bear my guests to see me like this.”

Leblanc managed to get her up the back stairs of Le Saule Pleureur, up the winding servants’ stairway to her attic rooms, where the wretched woman collapsed on to the sofa.

“Leave me—”

“I’ll be just downstairs if you need—”

“Get out! Just get out! You don’t understand. No one understands.”