Chocolat

23

Saturday March 8

I CALLED ON ARMANDE AGAIN THIS MORNING. SHE WAS sitting in her rocking-chair in her low-ceilinged living room, one of her cats lying sprawled across her knees. Since the fire at Les Marauds she has looked frail and determined, her round apple-face sinking slowly in upon itself, eyes and mouth swallowed by wrinkles. She was wearing a grey housedress over lumpy black stockings, and her hair was lank and unplaited.

`They've gone, you noticed.’

Her voice was flat, almost indifferent. `Not a single boat left on the river.’

`I know.’

Walking down the hill into Les Marauds I find their absence is still a shock, like the ugly patch of yellowed grass where a circus tent once stood. Only the hulk of Roux's boat remains, a waterlogged carcass a few feet below the surface, blackly visible against the river mud.

`Blanche and Zezette have moved a little way downriver. They said they'd be back sometime today, to see how things were doing.’

She began to work her long grey hair into her customary plait. Her fingers were stiff and awkward, like sticks.

`What about Roux? How is he?’

`Angry.’

As well he might be. He knows the fire was no accident, knows he has no proof, knows that even if he had, it wouldn't help him. Blanche and Zezette offered him a place on their cramped houseboat, but he refused. The work on Armande's house is still unfinished, he says flatly. He needs to see to that first. I myself have not spoken to him since the night of the fire. I saw him once, briefly on the river bank, burning litter left by the travellers. He looked dour and unresponsive, eyes reddened by the smoke, refusing to answer when I addressed him. Some of his hair was burnt away in the fire and he has chopped the rest spikily short, so that now he looks like a newly struck match.

`What is he going to do now?’ Armande shrugged. `I'm not sure. I think he's been sleeping in one of the derelict houses down the road. Last night I left him some food on the doorstep, and this morning it had gone. I already offered him money, but he won't take it.’

She pulled irritably at her finished plait. `Stubborn young fool. What good's all that money to me, at my age? Might as well give some of it to him as to the Clairmont clan. Knowing them, it'll probably end up in Reynaud's collection-box anyway.’

She made a sound of derision. `Pigheaded, that's what it is. Redhaired men, God save us. You can't tell them anything.’

She shook her head peevishly. `He stalked off in a temper yesterday, and I haven't seen him since.’

I smiled in spite of myself. `You're a pair,' I told her. `Each as stubborn as the other.’

Armande shot me a look of indignation. `Me?’ she exclaimed. `You're comparing me with that carrot-topped, obstreperous-' Laughing, I recanted. `I'll see if I can find him,' I told her.

I did not find him, though I spent an hour on the banks of the Tannes looking. Even my mother's methods failed to reveal him. I did find where he was sleeping, however. A house not far from Armande's, one of the least run-down of the derelicts. The walls are slick with damp, but the top floor seems sound enough and there is glass in several of the windows. Passing by I noticed that the door had been forced open, and that a fire had been lit recently in the living-room grate. Other signs of occupancy; a roll of charred tarpaulin salvaged from the fire, a stack of driftwood, a few pieces of furniture, presumably left in the house as being of no value. I called Roux's name, but there was no answer.

By eight-thirty I had to open La Praline, so I abandoned the search. Roux would emerge when he wanted to. Guillaume was waiting outside the shop when I arrived, although the door was unlocked.

`You should have gone inside to wait for me,' I told him.

`Oh no.’

His face was gravely mocking. `That would have been taking a liberty.’

`Live dangerously,' I advised him, laughing. `Come in and try some of my new religieuses.’

He still seems diminished since Charly's death, shrunken to less than his size, his young-old face impish and wizened with grief. But he has retained his humour, a wistful, mocking quality which saves him from self-pity. This morning he was full of what had happened to the river-gypsies.

`Not a word from Cure Reynaud at Mass this morning,' he declared as he poured chocolate from the silver pot. `Not yesterday or today. Not a single word.’

I admitted that, given Reynaud's interest in the travelling community, this silence was unusual.

`Perhaps he knows something he can't tell,' Guillaume suggested. `You know. The secret of the confessional.’

He has seen Roux, he tells me, talking to Narcisse outside his nurseries. Perhaps he can offer Roux a job. I hope so.

`He often takes on occasional labourers, you know,' said Guillaume. `He's a widower. He never had children. There's no-one to manage the farm except a nephew in Marseille. And he doesn't mind who he takes on in the summer when it gets busy. As long as they're reliable it doesn't matter whether they go to church or not.’

Guillaume gave a little smile, as he does when he is about to say something he considers daring. `I sometimes wonder,' he said reflectively, `whether Narcisse isn't a better Christian, in the purest sense, than me or Georges Clairmont – or even Cure Reynaud.’

He took a mouthful of his chocolate. `I mean, at least Narcisse helps,' he said seriously. `He gives work to people who need the money. He lets gypsies camp on his land. Everyone knows he was sleeping with his housekeeper for all those years, and he never bothers with church except as a means of seeing-his customers, but at least he helps.’

I uncovered the dish of religieuses and put one on his plate. `I don't think there is such a thing as a good or bad Christian,' I told him. `Only good or bad people.’

He nodded and took the little round pastry between finger and thumb. `Maybe.’

A long pause. I poured a glass for myself, with noisette liqueur and hazelnut chips. The smell is warm and intoxicating, like that of a woodpile in the late autumn sun. Guillaume ate his religieuse with careful enjoyment, dabbling the crumbs from the plate with a moistened forefinger.

`In that case, the things I've believed all my life – about sin and redemption and the mortification of the body you'd say none of those things mean anything, wouldn't you?’

I smiled at his seriousness. `I'd say you've been talking to Armande,' I said gently. `And I'd also say that you and she are entitled to your beliefs. As long as they make you happy.’

`Oh.’

He watched me warily, as if I were about to sprout horns. `And what – if it isn't an impertinent question what do you believe?’

Magic-carpet rides, rune magic, Ali Baba and visions of the Holy Mother, astral travel and the future in the dregs of a glass of red wine…

Florida? Disneyland? The Everglades? What about it, cherie? What about it, hein?

Buddha. Frodo's journey into Mordor. The transubstantiation of the sacrament. Dorothy and Toto. The Easter Bunny. Space aliens. The Thing in the closet. The Resurrection and the Life at the turn of a card… I've believed them all at one time or another. Or pretended to.

Or pretended not to.

Whatever you like, Mother. Whatever makes you happy.

And now? What do I believe right now? `I believe that being happy is the only important thing,' I told him at last.

Happiness. Simple as a glass of chocolate or tortuous as the heart. Bitter. Sweet. Alive.

In the afternoon Josephine came. Anouk was back from school, and ran off almost at once to play in Les Marauds, wrapped tightly in her red anorak and with strict instructions to run back if it began to rain. The air smells sharp as new-cut wood, slicing low and sly round the angles of buildings. Josephine was wearing her coat buttoned to the neck, her red beret and a new red scarf which fluttered wildly in her face. She walked into the shop with a defiant look of assurance, and for a moment she was a radiant, striking woman, cheeks flushed and eyes sparkling with the wind. Then the illusion dispersed and she was herself once more, hands digging fiercely into her, pockets and head lowered as if to headbutt some unknown' aggressor. She pulled off her beret revealing wildly tousled hair and a new, fresh welt across her forehead. She looked both terrified and euphoric.

`I've done it,' she declared recklessly. 'Vianne, I've done it.’

For a dreadful instant I was sure she was going to confess to murdering her husband. She had that look a wild and lovely look of abandon – her lips drawn back over her teeth as if she had bitten into a sour fruit. Fear came from her in alternating hot and cold waves.

`I've left Paul,' she said. `I've done it at last.’

Her eyes were knives. For the first time since we met I saw Josephine as she was before ten years of Paul-Marie Muscat made her wan and ungainly. Half-mad with fear, but underneath the madness, a sanity which chills the heart.

`Does he know yet?’

I asked, taking her coat. The pockets were heavy, though not, I thought, with jewellery.

Josephine shook her head. `He thinks I'm at the grocer's,' she said breathlessly. `We ran out of microwave pizzas. He sent me out to stock up.’

She gave a smile of almost childish mischief. `And I took some of the housekeeping money,' she told me. `He keeps it in a biscuit tin under the bar. Nine hundred francs.’

Beneath the coat she was wearing a red jumper and a black pleated skirt. It was the first time I could remember her wearing anything but jeans. She glanced at her watch.

`I want a chocolat espresso, please,' she said. `And a big bag of almonds.’

She put the money on the table. `I'll have just enough time before my bus leaves.’

`Your bus?’ I was puzzled. `To where?’

`Agen.’

Her look was mulish, defensive. `Then I don't know. Marseille, maybe. As far away from him as I can get.’

She gave me a look of suspicion and surprise. `Don't start saying I shouldn't do it, Vianne. You were the one who encouraged me. I'd never have thought of it if you hadn't given me the idea.’

`I know, but-' Her words sounded like an accusation. `You told me I was free.’

True enough. Free to run, free to take off on a word from a virtual stranger, cut loose like an untethered balloon to drift on the changing winds. The fear was suddenly chill certainty in my heart. Was this the price of my remaining? To send her out in my place? And what choice had I really given her? `But you were safe.’

I choked out the words with difficulty, seeing my mother's face in hers. To give up her safety in exchange for a little knowledge, a glimpse of an ocean… and what then? The wind always brings us back to the foot of the same wall. A New York cab. A dark alley. A hard frost.

`You can't just run away from it all,' I said. `I know. I've tried it.’

'Well, I can't stay in Lansquenet,' she snapped, and I could see she was close to tears. `Not with him. Not now.’

`I remember when we lived like that. Always moving. Always running away.’

She has her own Black Man. I can see him in her eyes.

He has the unanswerable voice of authority, a specious logic which keeps you frozen, obedient, fearful. To break free from that fear, to run in hope and despair, to run and to find that all the time you were carrying him inside yourself like a malignant child. At the end, Mother knew it. Saw him at every street corner, in the dregs of every cup. Smiling from a billboard, watching from behind the wheel of a fast car. Getting closer with every beat of the heart.

`Start running away and you'll be on the run for ever,' I told her fiercely. `Stay with me instead. Stay and fight with me.’

Josephine looked at me. `With you?’

Her astonishment was almost comic.

`Why not? I have a spare room, a camp bed' She was already shaking her head and I subdued an urge to clutch at her, to force her to stay. I knew I could do it. `Just for a while, till you find somewhere else, till you find a job-' She laughed in a voice tight with hysteria. `A job? What can I do? Apart from clean – and cook – and wipe ashtrays and – pull pints and dig the garden and screw my h-husband every Fri-Friday night-' She was laughing harder now, grabbing at her stomach.

I tried to take her arm. `Josephine. I'm serious. You'll find something. You don't have to-'

`You should see him sometimes.’

She was still laughing, each word a bitter bullet, her voice metallic with self-loathing. `The pig in heat. The fat, hairy porker.’

Then she was crying with the same hard rattling sounds as her laughter, eyes squeezed shut and hands pressing against her cheeks as if to prevent some inner explosion. I waited.

`And when it was over he'd turn away, and I'd hear him snoring. And in the morning I'd try' – her face contorted, her mouth twisting to form the words – `I'd try – to shake – his stink – out of the sheets, and all the time I'd be thinking: what happened to me? To Josephine Bonnet, who was so bright at s-school and who used to dream of being a ddancer-' She turned to me abruptly, her hot face flaring, but calm. `It sounds stupid, but I used to think that there must have been a mistake somewhere, that one day someone was going to come and tell me that it wasn't happening, that this was all some other woman's dream and that none of it could ever have happened to me-' I took her hand. It was cold and trembling. One of her nails was torn down to the quick, and there was blood grimed into the palm.

`The funny thing is, I try to remember what it must have been like loving him, but there's nothing there. It's all a blank. Nothing there at all. I remember everything else – the first time he hit me, oh I remember that – but you'd think that even with Paul-Marie there'd be something to remember. Something to excuse it all. All that wasted time.’

She stopped abruptly. and looked at her watch. `I've talked too much,' she said in surprise. `I won't have time for any chocolate if I'm going to catch my bus.’

I looked at her. `Have the chocolate instead of the bus,' I told her. `On the house. I only wish it could have been champagne.’

`I have to go,' she said fractiously. Her fists dug repeatedly into her stomach. Her head dropped like a charging bull's.

`No.’ I looked at her. `You have to stay here. You have to fight him face to face. Otherwise you may as well never have left him.’

She returned my look for a moment, half-defiant. `I can't.’

There was a desperate note in her voice. `I won't be able to. He'll say things, he'll twist everything' `You have friends here,' I said gently. `And even if you don't realize it yet, you're strong.’

Then Josephine sat down, very deliberately, on one of my red stools, put her face against the counter and cried silently.

I let her. I didn't say it would be OK. I made no effort to comfort her. Sometimes it's better to leave things as they are, to let grief take its course. Instead I went into the kitchen and very slowly prepared the chocolat espresso. By the time I'd poured it,' added cognac and chocolate chips, put the cups onto a yellow tray with a wrapped sugar lump in each saucer, she was calm again. It's a small kind of magic, I know, but it sometimes works..

`Why did you change your mind?’ I asked when the cup was half-finished. `Last time we talked about this you seemed very sure you weren't going to leave Paul.’

She shrugged, deliberately avoiding meeting my eyes. `Was it because he hit you again?’

This time she looked surprised. Her hand went to her forehead where the broken skin looked angry, inflamed. 'No.’

`Then why?’

Her eyes slid from mine again. With her fingertips she touched the espresso cup, as if to test its reality. `Nothing. I don't know. Nothing.’

It is a lie, and a visible one. Automatically I reach for her thoughts, so open a moment ago. I need to know if I made her do it, if I forced her in spite of my good intentions. But for the moment her thoughts are formless, smoky. I can see nothing there but darkness.

To press her would have been useless. There is a stubborn streak in Josephine which refuses to be hurried. She will tell me in time. If she wants to.

It was evening before Muscat came looking for her. By then we had made up her bed in Anouk's room – for the moment Anouk will sleep on the camp bed beside me. She takes Josephine's arrival in her stride, as she accepts so many other things. I knew a momentary pang for my daughter, for the first room of her own she had ever had, but promised it would not be for long.

`I have an idea,' I told her. `Perhaps we could have the attic space beneath the roof made into a room just for you, with a ladder to climb up, and a trapdoor above it, and little round windows cut into the roof. Would you like that?’

It is a dangerous, beguiling notion. It suggests we are going to stay here a long time.

`Could I see the stars from up there?’ asked Anouk eagerly.

`Of course.’

`Good!' said Anouk, and bounced upstairs to tell Pantoufle.

We sat down to table in the cramped kitchen. The table, was left from the shop's bakery days, a massive piece of rough-cut pine cross-hatched with knife scars into which veins of ancient dough, dried to the consistency of cement, have worked to produce a smooth marbly finish. The plates are mismatched: one green, one white, Anouk's flowered. The glasses, too, are all different: one tall, one short, one which still bears the label Moutarde Amora. And yet this is the first time we have really owned such things. We used hotel crockery, plastic knives and forks. Even in Nice, where we lived for over a year, the furnishings were borrowed, leased with the shop. The novelty of possession is still an exotic thing to us, a precious thing, intoxicating. I envy the table its scars, the scorch marks caused by the hot bread tins. I envy its calm sense of time and I wish I could say: I did this five years ago. I made this mark, this ring caused by a wet coffee cup, this cigarette bum, this ladder of cuts against the wood's coarse grain. This is where Anouk carved her initials, the year she was six years old, this secret place behind the table leg. I did this on a warm day seven summers ago with the carving knife. Do you remember? Do you remember the summer the river ran dry? Do you remember? I envy the table's calm sense of place. It has been here a long time. It belongs.

Josephine helped me prepare dinner: a salad of green beans and tomatoes in spiced oil, red and black olives from the Thursday market stall, walnut bread, fresh basil from Narcisse, goat's cheese, red wine from Bordeaux. We talked as we ate, but not about Paul-Marie Muscat. Instead I told her about us, Anouk and I, of the places we had seen, of the chocolaterie in Nice, of our time in New York just after Anouk was born and of the times before, of Paris, of Naples, of all the stopping-places Mother and I had made into temporary homes in our long flight across the world. Tonight I want to recall only the bright things, the funny, the good things. There are too many sad thoughts in the air already. I put a white candle on the table to clear bad influences, and its scent is nostalgic, comforting. I remembered for Josephine the little canal at Ourcq, the Pantheon, the Place des Artistes, the lovely avenue of Unter den Linden, the Jersey ferry, Viennese pastries eaten in their hot papers on the street, the seafront at Juan-les Pins, dancing in the streets in San Pedro. I watched her face lose a little of its set expression. I remembered how Mother sold a donkey to a farmer in a village near Rivoli, and how the creature kept finding us again, time after time, almost as far as Milan. Then the story of the flower-sellers in Lisbon, and how we left that city in a refrigerated florist's van which delivered us half frozen four hours later by the hot white docks at Porto. She began to smile, then to laugh. There were times when we had money, Mother and I, and Europe was sunny and full of promise. I remembered them tonight; the Arab gentleman in the white limousine who serenaded Mother that day in San Remo, how we laughed and how happy she was, and how long we lived afterwards on the money he gave us.

`You've seen so much.’

Her voice was envious and a little awed. `And you're still so young.’

`I'm nearly the same age as you.’

She shook her head. `I'm a thousand years old.’

She gave a smile which was both sweet and wistful. `I'd like to be an adventurer,' she said. `To follow the sun with nothing but a single suitcase, to have no idea at all of where I might be tomorrow.’

`Believe me,' I told her gently, `you get tired. And after a while everywhere starts to look the same.’

She looked doubtful.

`Trust me,' I said. `I mean it.’

It isn't quite true. Places all have their own characters, and returning to a city where you have lived before is like coming home to an old friend. But the people begin to look the same; the same faces recurring in cities a thousand miles apart, the same expressions. The flat, hostile stare of the official. The curious look of the peasant. The dull unsurprised faces of the tourists. The same lovers, mothers, beggars, cripples, vendors, joggers, children, policemen, taxi-drivers, pimps. After a while one begins to feel slightly paranoid, as if these people were secretly following from one town to another, changing clothes and faces but remaining essentially unchanged, going about their dull business with half an eye slyly cocked at us, the intruders. At first one feels a kind of superiority. We are a race apart, we the travellers. We have seen, experienced, so much more than they. Content to run out their sad lives in an endless round of sleepwork-sleep, to tend their neat gardens, their identical suburban houses, their small dreams; we hold them in a little contempt. Then, after a while, comes envy. The first time it is almost funny; a sharp sudden sting which subsides nearly straight away. A woman in a park, bending over a child in a pushchair, both faces lit by something which is not the sun. Then comes the second time, the third; two young people on the seafront, arms intertwined; a group of office-girls on their lunchbreak, giggling over coffee and croissants… before long it is an almost constant ache. No, places do not lose their identity, however far one travels. It is the heart which begins to erode after a time. The face in the hotel mirror seems blurred some mornings, as if by too many casual looks. By ten the sheets will be laundered, the carpet swept. The names on the hotel registers change as we pass. We leave no trace as we pass on. Ghostlike, we cast no shadow.

I was roused from my thoughts by the imperious knocking at the front door. Josephine half-stood, fear starting in her eyes, both fists clenched against her ribs. It was what we had been waiting for; the meal, the conversation, merely a pretence at normality. I stood up.

`It's OK,' I told her. `I won't let him in.’

Her eyes were glazed with fear. `I'm not talking to him,' she said in a low voice. `I can't.’

`You may have to,' I answered. `But it's all right. He can't walk through walls.’

She gave a shaky smile. `I don't even want to hear his voice,' she said. `You don't know what he's like. He'll say-' I began to move towards the unlit shop area. `I know exactly what he's like,' I said firmly. `And whatever you might think, he isn't unique. The advantage of travel is that after a while you begin to realize that wherever you go most people aren't really all that much different.’

`I just hate scenes,' murmured Josephine quietly as I put on the shop lights. `And I hate shouting.’

`Soon be over,' I said as the hammering began again. 'Anouk can make you some chocolate.’

The door is on a safety-chain. I put it on when we arrived, being used to city security, though there was never a need for it until now. In the slice of light from the shop, Muscat 's face is congested with rage.

`Is my wife here?’ His voice is thick and beery, his breath foul.

`Yes.’

There is no reason for subterfuge. Better have it out now and show him where he stands. `I'm afraid she has left you, Monsieur Muscat. I offered to let her sleep here for a few nights, until things are sorted out. It seemed the best thing to do.’

I try to make my voice neutral, polite. I know his type. We met it a thousand times, Mother and I, in a thousand places. He gapes at me in stupefaction. Then the mean intelligence in his eyes takes over, his gaze narrows, his hands open to show that he is harmless, bewildered, ready to be amused. For a moment he seems almost charming. Then he takes a step closer towards the door. I can smell the rankness of his breath, like beer and smoke and sour anger.

`Madame Rocher.’

His voice is soft, almost appealing. `I want you to tell that fat cow of mine to get her arse out of there right now, or I'll be in to get her. And if you get in my way, you bra-burning bitch-' He rattles at the door. `Take the chain off.’

He is smiling, wheedling, his rage burning from him with a faint chemical stink. `I said take the fucking chain off before I kick it off!' His voice is womanish in anger. His squeal sounds like that of an angry pig.

Very slowly I explain the situation to him. He swears and shrieks his frustration. He kicks at the door several times, making the hinges wince.

`If you break into my house, Monsieur Muscat,' I tell him evenly, `I'll assume you're a dangerous intruder. I keep a can of Contre-Attaq' in my kitchen drawer, which I used to carry when I lived in Paris. I've tried it once or twice. It's very effective.’

The threat calms him. I suspect he believes he alone has the right to make threats. `You don't understand,' he whines. `She's my wife. I care for her. I don't know what she's been telling you, but-.’

'What she's been telling me doesn't matter, Monsieur. The decision is hers. If I were you I'd stop making an exhibition of myself, and go home.’

`Fuck that!' His mouth is so close to the door that his spittle peppers me with hot, foul shrapnel. `This is your fault, you bitch. You started filling her head with all this emancipation bullshit.’

He mimics Josephine's voice in a savage falsetto. `Oh, it was all Vianne says this, and Vianne thinks that. Let me talk to her for just one minute and we'll see what she says for a change.’

`I don't think that's-'

`It's all right.’ Josephine has come up behind me, softly, a cup of chocolate held between her folded hands as if to warm them. `I'll have to talk to him, or he'll never go away.’

I look at her. She is calmer, her eyes clear. I nod. 'OK.’

I step aside and Josephine goes to the door. Muscat begins to talk but she cuts him short, her voice surprisingly sharp and even. `Paul. Just listen to me.’

Her tone slices through his blustering, silencing him mid-phrase. `Go away. I've nothing more to say to you. All right?’

She is shaking, but her voice is calm and level. I feel a sudden rush of pride for her, and give her arm a reassuring squeeze. Muscat is silent for a moment. Then the wheedling tone returns to his voice, though I can still hear the rage behind it, like the buzz of interference on a distant radio signal.

`Josh,' he says softly, `this is stupid. Just come out and we can talk about it properly. You're my wife, Josh. Doesn't that deserve at least, another try?’

She shakes her head. `Too late, Paul,' she tells him in a tone of finality. `I'm sorry.’

Then she shut the door very gently, very firmly, and though he hammered on it for several minutes longer, swearing and cajoling and threatening by turns, even weeping as he became maudlin and began to believe his own fiction, we did not answer it again.

At midnight I heard him shouting outside, and a clod of earth hit the window with a dull thumping sound, leaving a smear of clay across the clear glass. I stood up to see what was happening and saw Muscat like a squat, malevolent goblin in the square below, his hands thrust deep into his pockets so that I could see the soft roll of his stomach above the waistband of his trousers. He looked drunk.

`You can't stay in there for ever!' I saw a light go on in one of the windows behind him. `You'll have to come out some time! And then, you bitches! And then!' Automatically I forked his ill-wishing back at him with a quick flick of the fingers.

Avert. Evil spirit, get thee hence.

Another one of Mother's ingrained reflexes. And yet it is surprising how much more secure I feel now. I lay calm and awake for a long time after that, listening to my daughter's soft breathing and watching the random shifting shapes of moonlight through the leaves. I think I tried scrying again, looking in the moving patterns for a sign, a word of reassurance… At night such things are easier to believe, with the Black Man standing watch outside and the weathervane shrilling cri-criii at the top of the church tower. But I saw nothing, felt nothing, and finally fell asleep once more and dreamed of Reynaud standing at the foot of an old man's hospital bed with a cross in one hand and a box of matches in the other.