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

Автор книги: Richard C. Morais

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Ammi circled, as the chef calmly placed a wooden seat in the middle of our cobblestone courtyard.

As three large bottles of Evian went under the chair.

As Mallory sat down and crossed her arms over her bosom, a tartan blanket on her lap. The sun was setting behind the Alps.

“Wah?” said Ammi, puffing on her pipe. “Wah you doin’ here?”

“Sitting.”

“Haar,” said Ammi, “good place,” and continued on her walkabout. But perhaps something did get through her muddled brain, for Ammi eventually made her way into the party, through the gyrating bodies, and tugged at Papa’s kurta.

“Visitor.”

“Wah you mean, visitor?”

“Outside. Visitor.”

Papa swung open the front door and a chilly wind rattled through the hall.

His roar, I tell you, stopped the party in its tracks.

“Are you deaf? Are you mad? I told you to get out.”

We all piled out onto the icy steps to see what was going on.

Madame Mallory stared straight ahead as if she had all the time in the world. “I will not move,” she said calmly. “I will not move until you let Hassan come work for me.”

Papa laughed, and many on the steps joined in his mocking laughter.

But not I. Not this time.

“Crazy woman,” Papa sneered. “Never will that happen. But do what you want. You are welcome to stay there. Until you rot. Bye-bye.”

He shut the door and we returned to our festivities.

In the early evening the party disbanded. Our guests left through the front door, chatting to themselves, startled to discover Madame Mallory still sitting in the middle of the courtyard.

“Bonsoir, Madame Mallory.”

“Bonsoir, Monsieur Iten.”

The excitement of the homecoming was too much, and I mounted the steps to my room while the rest of the family went about their duties for the evening meal. I was so pleased to finally be with my things again in my room up in the turret—my cricket bat and Che Guevara poster and my CDs. But the world could wait, and I lay down on the bed, too tired even to get under the duvet.

It was late evening when I awoke and the downstairs dining room was in full roar. I went to my window; water dripped from the roof’s gutter.

There she was, down below, bundled up in a heavy overcoat. Someone had since plied her with blankets, and she was buried under them like an ice fisherman, patiently waiting in the night. Her head was wrapped in a flannel scarf, and I remember how a column of steam roared from her face with each breath. Guests arrived at the restaurant, uncertain of the etiquette required in such an unusual situation, and stopped nervously to chat with her, moved on, wished her well again as they left near midnight.

“Is she still there?”

I turned. It was little Zainab in her pajamas, rubbing her eyes. I took her carefully in my arms and we sat on the windowsill, staring down at the forlorn figure in our courtyard. We sat there for some time, almost in a trance, until we heard an odd noise different from the restaurant din. It was an unpleasant sort of chattering. Ammi, we figured, having one of her dialogues with the past, and we went into the hallway to help her snap out of it.

Papa.

He was peeking out from the upper corridor window, hiding behind the curtains. “What am I to do, Tahira?” we heard him mutter. “What am I to do?”

“Papa.”

He jumped, dropped the corners of the curtain.

“Wah? Why you sneak up on me like dat?”

Zainab and I looked at each other, and Papa barreled past us down the stairs.

Madame Mallory sat on the chair all that night and all the next day.

The news spread and her hunger strike became the talk of the valley. By noon a three-deep crowd had gathered at the gates of Maison Mumbai; by four in the afternoon a local reporter from Le Jura was at the gates, his long lens stuck between the bars, snapping away at the squat figure resolutely sitting in the middle of our courtyard.

When Papa saw this—saw this from the upstairs corridor window—he went absolutely mad. We could hear him roar all the way through the house, heard him pounding down the central staircase and out the front door. “Get away,” he yelled. “Go. Shoo.”

But the townspeople wouldn’t budge from the other side of the gate.

“We’re not on your property. We can stay here.”

Local boys jeered him, chanted, “Haji is a tyrant. Haji is a tyrant.”

“Monsieur Haji,” the reporter called out. “Why do you treat her so shabbily?”

Papa’s face trembled with disbelief. “Me treat her shabbily? She try to ruin my business. She almost kill my son!”

“It was an accident.” It was Madame Picard.

“You, too?” he asked incredulously.

“Forgive her.”

“She is just a foolish old woman,” said someone else.

Papa scowled at the mob.

He turned around and marched up to Madame Mallory.

“Stop it! Stop it now. You will fall ill. You are too old for this nonsense.”

And it was true. The elderly woman was now quite stiff, and when she turned her head her whole torso had to twist with her.

“Let Hassan come work for me.”

“Go freeze to death. Please. Be my guest.”

*   *   *

I remember that night, before turning in, sitting again with my little sister Zainab at my turret window. We watched, in the moonlight, the elderly Frenchwoman in the courtyard, her arms folded, not budging. The moonlight and swirling clouds above were caught at her feet, reflected back up to us from the puddles of the uneven cobblestone court.

“What will happen to her?” Zainab asked. “What will happen to us?”

I stroked her hair. “I don’t know, little one. I don’t know.”

But that was when I crossed sides and secretly began rooting for the elderly woman. And I think little Zainab must have sensed this, for I remember she squeezed my hand and nodded, like she alone understood what had to be done.

Papa tossed and turned in his bed that night, thrice got up to look out the window. The thing that most galled him was the idea that Mallory was using passive resistance to get what she wanted. Of course, this was the very same method with which Gandhi had created modern India, and it was intolerable, so infuriating, that she would use the same methods against us. Papa, I tell you, he was the picture of a man in turmoil during this time, and all through the night he slid eerily in and out of consciousness, muttering to himself in broken sleep.

Around four in the morning the hallway filled with creaking.

I, in my room, Papa in his, woke instantly at the noise and we clambered out of bed to see what was going on. “You hear it, too?” he whispered as we crept down the corridor, our nightshirts rippling in the frigid air.

“Yes.”

Luminous figures hovered on the stairs.

“What are you doing?” Papa bellowed, snapping on the overhead chandelier.

Auntie and Ammi screamed and dropped a plate. It smashed on the steps and three pieces of naan and a bottle of Evian rolled to the bottom of the staircase. We looked back at the two offenders. Ammi clutched a chamber pot.

“Who dat for? Who dat for?”

“You’re an animal, Abbas,” yelled Auntie. “The poor woman. She is starving. You will kill her.”

Papa roughly grabbed Ammi and Auntie by the elbows and hauled them back upstairs. “Everyone go back to bed,” he roared. “Tomorrow I will have that woman removed. Finish. I will not have this. She is an insult to the memory of Gandhi, using these techniques on us.”

Of course, no one slept a wink after that and we were all up early, watching Papa pace back and forth in front of the telephone. Finally, the slow-dragging watch hands pointed at the allotted time and Papa rang his lawyer at the office, demanding the police cart Mallory away for trespassing.

A funk had settled on the entire family, and we morosely shoveled our potato breakfast back and forth across the plate as Papa talked and talked and talked into the phone. Only Ammi ate well.

But Zainab, we learned that morning, Zainab was cut from the same cloth as Papa. My little sister walked over to Papa as he bellowed into the phone, and she tugged his kurta, utterly fearless.

“Stop it, Papa. I don’t like this.”

The look on his face, my God, it was horrible.

I stepped forward and took her hand. “Yes, Papa. It’s time to stop this. Now.”

I’ll always remember that moment. His mouth hung open, his torso frozen in an odd twist, half-talking on the phone, half-turned toward his two children. Zainab and I stood resolutely like that for some time, waiting for the bellow or the slap, but he turned back to the phone and told his lawyer he’d call him back.

“What you say? I don’t tink I heard you right.”

“Papa, if Hassan becomes a French chef, that means we stay here and make this home. Well, good. I am tired of moving, Papa. I don’t want to go back to drizzly old England. I like it here.”

“Mummy would want us to stop running,” I added. “Can’t you hear her, Papa?”

Papa stared at us coldly, as if we had betrayed him, but gradually the hardness in Papa’s face dissolved, and it was something quietly miraculous, like watching a chilled lump of goose fat warming in a hot pan.

The mountain air was crisp and clean, just like that first day when we arrived in Lumière those three months ago, and the region’s famous morning light was busy washing the mountains in pinks, mauves, and mild browns.

“Madame Mallory,” Papa called out gruffly across the courtyard. “Come and have breakfast with us.”

But the chef no longer had the strength to turn her head. Her skin was a deathly white, and her nose, I recall, was bitter red and sore, with beads of mucus hanging from its tip. “Promise,” she croaked in a weak voice, still staring straight ahead through a small opening among the layers of blankets. “Promise Hassan come work for me.”

Papa’s face darkened at the woman’s obstinacy, and he was again at the threshold of blowing his top. But little Zainab, his conscience, she was in his hands and at his side, tugging her warnings. Papa took a deep breath and released his terrible sigh.

“What you think, Hassan? You want to study French cooking? You wanna work for dis woman?”

“I want nothing more in this world.”

I think he was physically struck by the fervency of my answer, that irrefutable call of destiny that spoke through me, and for a few moments he could do nothing but stare intently at the cracks of the cobblestones beneath his feet, holding on to little Zainab for strength. But when enough time had passed, he raised his head. He was a good man, my Papa.

“You have my word, Madame Mallory. Hassan, you must work in Le Saule Pleureur’s kitchen.”

The joy I felt, like that incredible explosion of cream when you bite into a religieuse pastry. But Mallory did not have the arrogant smile of the winner on her lips, but something humble, something that expressed relief and somber thanks and somehow acknowledged my father’s sacrifice. And I think Papa appreciated this, for Papa planted his feet solidly before her, for balance, and offered her his outstretched hands.

And I remember, so well, that moment when she clapped her hands in his and Papa pulled her to her feet with a grunt, the way my maîtresse slowly and creakily rose from her courtyard chair. This, too, I remember.

And so, next day, Auntie and Mehtab helped me pack my bag and I crossed the street. A lot of emotion went into that hundred-foot journey, cardboard suitcase in hand, from one side of Lumière’s boulevard to the other. Before me the sugar-dusted willow tree, the leaded windows and the lace curtains, the elegant inn where even the warped wooden steps were soaked in great French traditions. And there, standing on Le Saule Pleureur’s stone steps, in white aprons, the taciturn Madame Mallory and kind Monsieur Leblanc, an elderly couple waiting with outstretched hands for their newly adopted son.

I went to them and my adopted home and the growing I had yet to do—as a student of French cuisine, as a servant of the kitchen. But at my back was the world from where I had come: little Zainab and watery-eyed Ammi, pomfret tikka and Kingfisher beer, the wailing of Hariharan, the hot kadai spitting oil and peas and ginger and chili.

And as I passed Papa at the iron gates, as each new generation is meant to do, he wept unabashedly and wiped his grief-stricken face with a white handkerchief. And I remember, as if it were yesterday, his words as I passed.

“Remember, sweet boy, you are a Haji. Always remember. A Haji.”

It was such a small journey, in feet, but it felt as if I were striding from one end of the universe to the other, the light of the Alps illuminating my way.

Chapter Twelve

My room at Le Saule Pleureur was at the top of the house, down the narrow hall from Madame Mallory’s flat. In winter, my monk’s cell was intensely cold; in summer, it was unbearably hot and stuffy. The bathroom was down a half flight of stairs at the end of the hall.

That day when I moved to Le Saule Pleureur, I found myself standing alone, for the first time, in the attic room that was to be my home for the years to come. It smelled of old people and a long-ago-sprayed bug treatment. A gaunt Christ on a crucifix was gushing blood from his wounds, and the emaciated figure hung, with a small mirror, on the wall directly above my bed. A dark-wood closet, with two ancient cedar hangers hanging inside, seemed to glower malevolently from the corner of the room, opposite the narrow cot. There was hardly enough space to turn around in; a portico high up on the wall looked out on the gabled roof outside but did little to alleviate the close space.

I set my suitcase down. What had I done?

I was—I don’t mind admitting it—completely rattled by the austere room, so Catholic and foreign to my upbringing, and a voice in my head, half-hysterical, urged me to dash back to the safety and comfort of my cheerful bedroom in Maison Mumbai.

But a book on the bedside table caught my eye and I stepped forward to examine it. It was a fat tome with yellowed pages and ornate illustrations depicting different butchering cuts on every kind of livestock from cattle to rabbit.

An unsealed envelope was slipped inside its pages.

The handwritten note, from Madame Mallory, was a formal welcome to Le Saule Pleureur and stated, in her old-fashioned penmanship, how much she looked forward to having me as a student in her kitchen. She urged me to work hard and absorb as much as possible in the coming years; she was there for me and would help me any way she could. To start our adventure, she said, I should study this Lyon butcher’s treatise with utmost care.

Her letter hit just the right note, and a manly voice inside my head suddenly and roughly said, Get on with it and stop acting the damn fool. So I made sure Madame Mallory and Leblanc had closed the door firmly behind them, before locking it tight. Reassured I couldn’t possibly be disturbed, I stood on the cot and took down the frightening crucifix, hiding it deep in the back of the closet, totally out of sight. And then, finally, I unpacked my bag.

There was a dream that repeatedly visited me during those early days of my apprenticeship, which now, looking back, seems quite significant. In this dream I was walking alongside a large body of water when suddenly an ugly, primordial fish from the water’s deep, flat and round with a bull head, crawled up the beach using its fins as primitive feet, pushing itself with a great deal of effort out of the water and onto dry land. And there, exhausted by the Herculean effort, the fish rested, its tail still in the water, its head on the dry sand, gills opening and closing like fire bellows, shocked and pumping and gasping in this new amphibian state, half-in and half-out of the two vastly different worlds.

But truth be told, there was no time to concern myself with such things, or even the niceties of boudoir décor, because from that first afternoon forward, I was hardly ever in my room, but to put my head down and pass out.

My alarm went off at 5:40 every morning. Twenty minutes later I was having breakfast with Madame Mallory in her attic flat. Bombarding me with questions on what I had studied during the previous twenty-four hours, Madame Mallory used these early morning sessions to lay the intellectual groundwork for the real lessons held down in the kitchen later in the day.

Verbal interrogations completed, we promptly headed off to the markets in furtherance of my education, before returning to the inn with our purchases, where the day’s work began in earnest. The first six months of my apprenticeship Madame Mallory rotated me through every low-level job: At first I did nothing but wash dishes, mop the kitchen floors, and scrub and prepare les légumes; the next month I was out front, in the restaurant, a bread-boy in tunic and white cotton gloves, instructed to closely study the ballet of service unfolding around me, or ordered in off-hours to set the dining room, Madame Mallory personally following me from table to table and clicking her tongue in consternation every time I positioned a silver spoon not perfectly aligned with the other cutlery’s military order.

No sooner had I found my footing there, than I was marched back to the kitchen, this time to spend my days plucking and cleaning wild pigeons, quail, and pheasant for hours on end, until I thought my arms might drop off. Chef de Cuisine Jean-Pierre barked at me continuously during this period, and by the end of the day I was barely able to stand, for the stiffness of my back. This assignment was followed, then, by a stint alongside Monsieur Leblanc, at the front desk, taking reservations and learning the skill of properly seating a restaurant and the delicate politics of not offending repeat customers.

But still no hand at cooking.

I worked this way every day until three thirty, when we were given the midafternoon break hoteliers call “room hour,” and I crawled back to my attic cell for a nap that bordered on a coma. Early evening, I tumbled bleary-eyed down the stairs again, to engage in my next lesson: thirty minutes of wine tasting and corresponding lecture, under the tutelage of Le Saule Pleureur’s sommelier, before taking up my regular work shift until midnight. The alarm would go off at the unforgiving hour of 5:40 the next morning, and the tyranny of the workday started all over again.

Monday was my day off, and all I had the energy for was to stagger back across the boulevard, to the Dufour estate, to collapse on our old couch.

“They make you eat pig?”

“Arash, stop it with the stupid questions. Leave your brother alone.”

“But did they, Hassan? You eaten pig?”

“You are looking so thin. I tink dat woman starve you.”

“Try this, Hassan. I made it just for you. Malai peda. With golden blossom honey.”

I lay stretched out on the couch like a Mughal prince, Auntie and Mehtab feeding me sweetmeats and milky tea, Uncle Mayur and Ammi and Zainab and my brothers dragging chairs over to listen spellbound to the morsels of information I passed on from the inner sanctum of Le Saule Pleureur across the street.

“The special tomorrow will be palombe, wood pigeon. I tell you, I have been plucking and cleaning pigeon for two days. Very difficult work. Mehtab, please, massage the shoulders. See how tense, from all the work? We are serving salmis de palombes, which is pigeon pie, very succulent, in a Merlot and shallot sauce. It is best served with . . .”

Papa behaved very curiously during this period. Warmly roaring his greetings at the door and throwing his arms around me when I first entered, he would then drift off, oddly distant, allowing the rest of the family to swarm in. For some reason, Papa never partook in the family’s ritual interrogation about my work, but hovered at the back of the room, pretending to fuss over some task at the partner’s desk, like slitting open bills with an ivory letter opener, but clearly listening to every word that was being said, even though he never asked a question himself.

“All week I have been learning about the Languedoc-Roussillon, the wine region around Marseille. Makes a huge quantity of wine but, you know, it produces only ten percent of the nation’s Appellation Contrôlée.” Seeing how wide-eyed they were, at my every pronouncement, I couldn’t resist adding, with an affected wave of the hand, “I recommend the Fitou and Minervois. The Corbières is rather disappointing, particularly the vintages of the more recent years.”

They oohed and aahed quite agreeably.

“What a ting,” said Uncle Mayur. “Imagine dat. Our Hassan. Knows French wines.”

“And what is Mallory like? She beat you?”

“No. Never. She doesn’t have to. Just one eyebrow up and we are all dashing about like nervous chickens. Everyone is scared of her. But Jean-Pierre, her number two. He yells and swats my head. Quite a lot.”

Slit. Slit. From the back of the room.

It was only later in the day, when I was stuffed with our food and coddled and suitably stroked by the family, ready at long last to return to Le Saule Pleureur with renewed determination, that Papa would formally summon me for a private talk, gesture at me to sit down at his desk, his fingers in a steeple and his voice laden with gravitas.

“Tell me, Hassan, has she showed you how to make the tongue? With the Madeira sauce?”

“Not yet, Papa.”

His face fell in disappointment.

“No? Hmm. Not very impressive. Perhaps she not as good as we tink.”

“No, Papa. She a great chef.”

“And that scoundrel Jean-Pierre. Does he know you are from an important family? Nah! Do I need to teach this fellow a lesson or two?”

“No, Papa. Thank you. I will manage.”

In short, I never let on to Papa how difficult the transition was during those first few months, how I missed him and the rest of the family dearly, and how frustrated I was by the work during those early days at Le Saule Pleureur.

For I desperately wanted to get my hands dirty with the cooking, but Madame Mallory wouldn’t let me near a stove, and my frustrations finally came to a head late one morning when I was climbing Le Saule Pleureur’s back stairs, on Jean-Pierre’s order, to fetch lightbulbs from the supply closet on the third floor.

Madame Mallory was at that moment descending the stairs, fresh as could be, on her way out to the driveway where Monsieur Leblanc was waiting in the idling Citroën, ready to take her to a social function in town.

Chef Mallory was shrugging on brown leather gloves and wore a heavy wool wrap thrown around her shoulders. The narrow wooden stairway in which we stood filled with her Guerlain perfume, and I respectfully pressed myself against the wall to let her pass. But she stopped, two stairs above me, and peered down through the artificial gloaming of the staircase.

I undoubtedly looked wan and weak and possibly at rope’s end.

“Hassan, tell me, do you regret your decision? To come here?”

“Non, madame.”

“The hours are very difficult. But you’ll see. One day you’ll wake up, and, voilà, you will have a second wind. The body adjusts.”

“Yes. Thank you, Chef.”

She continued down the stairs, and I upward, and I don’t know what possessed me, to be so impertinent, but I blurted out, “But when can I start cooking? Will I only be peeling carrots here?”

She stopped on a lower step, in the dusk, but never turned her head. “You will start cooking when the time is right.”

“But when will that be?”

“Patience, Hassan. We will know when the moment has arrived.”

“Now focus. In what waters do the Ostrea lurida grow?”

“Umm. Off Brittany?”

“Wrong. Completely wrong, young man.”

Madame Mallory stared at me with her most imperious look, one eyebrow raised. It was six fifteen in the morning and we sat as usual under her turret window, sipping coffee from delicate Limoges porcelain. I was stupid with sleep.

“The Ostrea edulis is the oyster that grows off Brittany. Hassan, honestly, you should know this. We learnt about the Ostrea lurida two weeks ago. Here is the book on shellfish again. Study it. Properly this time.”

“Oui, madame . . . Oh, I remember now. The lurida is the tiny oyster that grows only in a few bays off the northwest coast of the United States. In Puget Sound.”

“Correct. I’ve never tried them myself, but I understand they have a very fine taste of seaweed, iodine, and hazelnut. Considered among the world’s finest. Hard to believe, that they should be better than a good Brittany oyster, but that is some people’s opinion. It is a matter of taste.”

Madame Mallory leaned forward to attack the bowl of fruit salad sitting at the center of the table. Her early morning appetite, the amount of fuel she took on board for her rigorous schedule of the day, was quite astounding. She had far more in common with Papa than either cared to admit.

“Now, European markets have been infested by a foreign import. What is the name of this invasive oyster, and tell me its history, briefly.”

I sighed. Glimpsed at my watch. “Will you be stuffing the veal breast today?”

Madame Mallory delicately spat out the pit of a stewed prune into a silver spoon and deposited it on the side of her bowl.

“Ah, non. Do not change the subject, Hassan. It won’t work.”

She put her bowl down. And stared.

“Crassostrea gigas, a Japanese oyster, commonly called the Pacific oyster, became dominant in Europe during the 1970s.”

It was a tad wintry, true, but it was still a smile.

Later that day, however, I caught my first glimpse of what lay ahead, when down in Le Saule Pleureur’s cold kitchen, leaning over the sink, Madame Mallory spontaneously reached out and patted my cheek after I correctly identified a specific type of les creuses de Bretagne oyster solely by sipping a teaspoon of its briny juice.

It was essentially a kind gesture meant to convey affection and approval, but in all honesty that tap-tap at my cheek, with her dry hand, so stiff, made my toes curl. And the incredible awkwardness of the moment was compounded by the fact she had ordered her chef de cuisine to demonstrate a certain oyster dish for us, and Jean-Pierre was at that moment standing at the stove glowering at me over Madame Mallory’s shoulder.

I knew then there was trouble ahead. But powerless to shape events, I avoided Jean-Pierre’s red face and instead focused intently on his hands, how he prepared the Sauternes sabayon sauce for the oysters, swiftly and expertly combining ingredients in the shuffling hot pan, as Madame Mallory droned on, explaining in minute detail the magical transformations happening in the searing heat, entirely oblivious to the emotions she had unleashed in her chef de cuisine.

I was slave to Le Saule Pleureur’s rhythms but still clinging to Maison Mumbai’s doorknob, and this weird transitional phase all comes vividly back to me when I remember that time, a month or two after I moved, when Madame Mallory and I went into town to the markets for our early-morning purchases and lessons.

Madame Mallory had spent the first part of the morning tour making me smell and taste various cabbages—the savoy, chubby little cancan dancers luridly fanning their ruffled green petticoats so we could get a sneak peek at their delicately pale and parting leaves inside, and the giant red cabbage, deep in color, like a bon vivant soused in a ruby red port wine before showing up merrily on the stall’s counter.

“The thing you need to understand, Hassan, is that kohlrabi is the bridge between the cabbage and the turnip, and it melds the flavors of both vegetables. Remember that. It’s a subtle but important distinction that will help you decide when one vegetable is an ideal side dish, but not the other.”

Wicker baskets on both arms, leaning over to listen to my small voice in the boisterous market, Madame Mallory was, I must tell you, the very essence of patience on those trips, prepared to answer any of my questions, no matter how puerile and basic.

“We have a preference, in this region of France, for the Early White Vienna and the Early Purple Vienna kohlrabi varieties. Now, the navet de Suede is, in contrast, a robust turnip that grew wild up in the Baltic region, before Celts brought the nutritious root south and it began proper cultivation in France. This was thousands of years ago, of course, but it is my opinion the Swedish turnip today surpasses all other turnips, because of its sweetness, a characteristic bred into the vegetable over time. We should be able to find the yellow and black navet varieties at Madame Picard’s—”

We both looked up, to orient ourselves in the market and locate Madame Picard’s stall, and found, much to our surprise, Papa standing in front of the French widow’s operation. His feet were planted firmly apart, one hand on his hip, the other thrashing the air. He was talking with a great deal of animation, and I suspect I must have imagined it, at that distance, but I distinctly recall spittle flying like fireworks from his face.

Meanwhile, rough-looking Madame Picard, in her army boots and the usual layers of black skirts and sweaters, and that wispy hair, she had her head back and was lustily roaring with laughter at Papa’s story, so taken with mirth she had one hand out, to steady herself on Papa’s forearm.

I cringed when I saw the two of them like that, and immediately wanted to turn away, but Madame Mallory, perhaps sensing my instinct to bolt, put her hand on my elbow and marched us forward.

“Bonjour, Madame Picard. Bonjour, Monsieur Haji.”

Papa and Madame Picard had not seen us approach, were in fact still laughing, but their amusement instantly withered at the sound of that familiar voice. Papa in fact turned in a slightly defensive crouch, until he saw me, and then there was this flicker of insecurity behind the eyelids, as if he was unsure of how he should behave. But we were all like that—me in the markets accompanying Madame Mallory, and Papa with Picard on the “other side,” it was head-bending.

“Hello, Chef Mallory,” Papa said awkwardly. “Beautiful day. And I see you have brought your most talented student with you.”

“Hello, Papa. Bonjour, Madame Picard.”

The Widow Picard looked me up and down in that French way.

“Don’t you look the part, Hassan. Le petit chef. ”

“So, how is my boy doing? Ready to take your place yet?”

“Certainly not,” Madame Mallory said stiffly. “But he is a quick learner, I will grant him that.”