Chocolat

8

Tuesday February 18

FIFTEEN CUSTOMERS YESTERDAY. TODAY, THIRTY-FOUR.

Guillaume was among them; he bought a cornet of florentines and a cup of chocolate. Charly was with him, curling obediently beneath a stool while, from time to time, Guillaume dropped a piece of brown sugar into his expectant, insatiable jaws.

It takes time, Guillaume tells me, for a newcomer to be accepted in Lansquenet. Last Sunday, he says, Cure Reynaud preached such a virulent sermon on the topic of abstinence that the opening of La Celeste Praline that very morning had seemed a direct affront against the Church. Caroline Clairmont – who is beginning another of her diets was especially cutting, saying loudly to her friends in the congregation that it was ‘Quite shocking, just like stories of Roman decadence, my dears, and if that woman thinks she can just shimmy into town like the Queen of Sheba disgusting the way she flaunts that illegitimate child of hers as if – oh, the chocolates? Nothing special, my dears, and far too pricey.’ The general conclusion amongst the ladies was that `it' – whatever it was – wouldn't last. I would be out of town within a fortnight. And yet, the number of my customers has doubled since yesterday, amongst them a number of Madame Clairmont's cronies, bright-eyed if a little shameful, telling each other it was curiosity, that was all, that all they wanted was to see for themselves.

I know all their favourites. It's a knack, a professional secret like a fortune-teller reading palms: My mother would have laughed at this waste of my skills, but I have no desire to probe further into their lives than this. I do not want their secrets or their innermost thoughts. Nor do I want their fears or gratitude. A tame alchemist, she would have called me with kindly contempt, working domestic magic when I could have wielded marvels. But I like these people. I like their small and introverted concerns. I can read their eyes, their mouths, so easily: this one with its hint of bitterness will relish my zesty orange twists; this sweet-smiling one the soft-centred apricot hearts; this girl with the windblown hair will love the mendiants; this brisk, cheery woman the chocolate brazils. For Guillaume, the florentines, eaten neatly over a saucer in his tidy bachelor's house. Narcisse's appetite for double-chocolate truffles reveals the gentle heart beneath the gruff exterior. Caroline Clairmont will dream of cinder toffee tonight and wake hungry and irritable. And the children… Chocolate curls, white buttons with coloured vermicelli, pains d'epices with gilded edging, marzipan fruits in their nests of ruffled paper, peanut brittle, clusters, cracknels, assorted misshapes in half-kilo boxes… I sell dreams, small comforts, sweet harmless temptations to bring down a multitude of saints crash-crash-crashing amongst the hazels and nougatines.

Is that so bad? Cure Reynaud thinks so, apparently.

`Here, Charly. Here boy.’

Guillaume's voice is warm when he speaks to his dog, but always a little sad. He bought the animal when his father died, he tells me. That was eighteen years ago. But a dog's life is shorter than a man's, and they grew old together.

`It's here.’

He brings my attention to a growth under Charly's chin. It is about the size of a hen's egg, gnarled like an elm burr. `It's growing.’

A pause during which the dog stretches luxuriously, one leg pedalling as, his master scratches his belly. `The vet says there's nothing to be done.’

I begin to understand the look of guilt and love I see in Guillaume's eyes.

`You wouldn't put an old man to sleep,' he tells me earnestly. `Not if he still had' – he struggles for words `some quality of life. Charly doesn't suffer. Not really.’

I nod, aware he is trying to convince himself. `The drugs keep it under control.’

For the moment. The words ring out unspoken.

`When the time comes, I'll know.’

His eyes are soft and horrified. `I'll know what to do. I won't be afraid.’

I top up his chocolate-glass without a word and sprinkle the froth with cocoa powder, but Guillaume is too busy with his dog to see. Charly rolls onto his back, head lolling.

`M'sieur le Cute says animals don't have souls,' says Guillaume softly. `He says I should put Charly out of his misery.’

`Everything has a soul,' I answer. `That's what my mother used to tell me. Everything.’

He nods, alone in his circle of fear and guilt. `What would I do without him?’ he asks, face still turned towards the dog, and I understand he has forgotten my presence. `What would I do without you?’

Behind the counter I clench my fist in silent rage. I know that look – fear, guilt, covetousness – I know it well. It is the look on my mother's face the night of the Black Man. His words – What would I do without you? – are the words she whispered to me all through that miserable night. As I glance into my mirror last thing in the evening, as I awake with the growing fear – knowledge, certainty – that my own daughter is slipping away from me, that I am losing her, that I will lose her if I do not find The Place… it is the look on my own.

I put my arms around Guillaume. For a second he tenses, unused to female contact. Then he relaxes. I can feel the strength of his distress coming from him in waves.

'Vianne,' he says softly. 'Vianne.’

`It's all right to feel this way,' I tell him firmly. `It's allowed.’

Beneath us, Charly barks his indignation.

We made close to three hundred francs today. For the first time, enough to break even. I told Anouk when she came home from school, but she looked distracted, her bright face unusually still. Her eyes were heavy, dark as the cloudline of an oncoming storm.

I asked her what was wrong.

`It's Jeannot.’

Her voice was toneless. `His mother says he can't play with me any more.’

I remembered Jeannot as Wolf Suit in the Mardi Gras carnival, a lanky seven-year-old with shaggy hair and a suspicious expression. He and Anouk played together in the,square last night, running and shouting arcane war cries, until the light failed. His mother is Joline Drou, one of the two primary teachers, a crony of Caroline Clairmont.

`Oh?’ Neutrally. `What does she say?’

`She says I'm a bad influence.’

She flicked a dark glance at me. `Because we don't go to church. Because you opened on Sunday.’

You opened on Sunday.

I looked at her. I wanted to take her in my arms, but her rigid, hostile stance alarmed me. I made my voice very calm.

`And what does Jeannot think?’ I asked gently.

'He can't do anything. She's always there. Watching.’

Anouk's voice rose shrilly and I guessed she was close to tears. `Why does this always have to happen?’ she demanded. `Why don't I ever' She broke off with an effort, her thin chest hitching.

`You have other friends.’

It was true; there had been four or five of them last night, the square ringing with their catcalls and laughter.

`Jeannot's friends.’

I saw what she meant. Louis Clairmont. Lise Poitou. His friends. Without Jeannot the group would soon disperse. I felt a sudden pang for my daughter, surrounding herself with invisible friends to people the spaces around her. Selfish, to imagine that a mother could fill that space completely. Selfish and blind.

`We could go to church, if that's what you want.’ My voice was gentle. `But you know it wouldn't change anything.’

Accusingly, `Why not? They don't believe. They don't care about God. They just go.’

I smiled then, not without some bitterness. Six years old, and she still manages to surprise me with the depth of her occasional perception.

`That may be true,' I said. `But do you want to be like that?’

A shrug, cynical and indifferent. She shifted her weight from one foot to the other, as if in fear of a lecture. I searched for the words to explain. But all I could think of was the image of my mother's stricken face as she rocked me and murmured, almost fiercely, What would I do without you? What would I do? Oh, I taught her all of this long ago; the hypocrisy of the Church, the witch-hunts, the persecution of travellers and people of other faiths. She understands. But the knowledge does not transpose well to everyday life, to the reality of loneliness, to the loss of a friend.

`It's not fair.’ Her voice was still rebellious, the hostility subdued but not entirely.

Neither was the sack of the Holy Land, nor the burning of Joan of Arc, nor the Spanish Inquisition. But I knew better than to say so. Her features were pinched; intense; any sign of weakness and she would have turned on me.

`You'll find other friends.’

A weak and comfortless answer. Anouk looked at me with disdain.

`But I wanted this one.’

Her tone was strangely adult, strangely weary as she turned away. Tears swelled her eyelids, but she made no move to come to me for comfort. With a sudden overwhelming clarity I saw her then, the child, the adolescent, the adult, the stranger she would one day become, and I almost cried out in loss and terror, as if our positions had somehow been reversed, she the adult, I the child.

Please! What would I do without you? But I let her go without a word, aching to hold her but too aware of the wall of privacy slamming down between us. Children are born wild, I know. The best I can hope for is a little tenderness, a seeming docility. Beneath the surface the wildness remains, stark, savage and alien.

She remained virtually silent for the rest of the evening. When I put her to bed she refused her story but stayed awake for hours after I had put out my own light. I heard her from the darkness of my room, walking to and fro, occasionally talking to herself – or to Pantoufle – in fierce staccato bursts too low for me to hear. Much later, when I was sure she was asleep, I crept into her room to switch off the light and found her, curled at the end of her bed, one arm flung wide, head turned at an awkward but absurdly touching angle that tore at my heart. In one hand she clutched a small Plasticine figure. I removed it as I straightened the bedclothes, meaning to return it to Anouk's toybox. It was still warm from her hand, releasing an unmistakable scent of primary school, of secrets whispered, of poster paint and newsprint and half-forgotten friends.

Six inches long, a stick figure painstakingly rendered, eyes and mouth scratched on with a pin, red thread wound about the waist and something – twigs or dried grass – stuck into the scalp to suggest shaggy brown hair.

There was a letter scratched into the Plasticine-boy's body, just above the heart; a neat capital J. Beneath it and just close enough to overlap, a letter A.

I replaced the figure softly on the pillow beside her head and left, putting out the light. Some time before dawn she crept into bed with me as she often had when she was a child, and through soft layers of sleep I heard her whisper, `It's all right, Maman. I'll never leave you.’

She smelt of salt and baby soap, her hug fierce and warm in the enclosing dark. I rocked her, rocked myself, in sweetness, hugged us both in relief so intense that it was almost pain.

`I love you, Maman. I'll always love you for ever. Don't cry.’

I wasn't crying. I never cry.

I slept poorly inside a kaleidoscope of dreams; awoke at dawn with Anouk's arm across my face and a dreadful, panicky urge to run, to take Anouk and keep on running. How can we live here, how could we have been foolish enough to think he wouldn't find us even here? The Black Man has many faces, all of them unforgiving, hard and strangely envious. Run, Vianne. Run, Anouk. Forget your small sweet dream and run.

But not this time. We have run too far already, Anouk and I, Mother and I, too far from ourselves.

This is one dream I mean to cling to.