Chez Moi Read online

  She shook her head.

  ‘I mean the other one,’ she explained. ‘The one that’s not there any more. I can still move it.’

  She thought for a moment, then asked, ‘Where do you think they put it, my bit of leg? In the bin?’

  Her eyes clouded. I wonder what sort of bin my lost love for my son could be in now.

  It’s late and I haven’t done anything. I can’t afford to shut for lunch on top of my unscheduled closure yesterday evening. I come back to my senses by the dim light of the fridge which I have opened wide to gauge my stocks. My eyes wander from shelf to shelf, from tubs to drawers. On the dairy products side, it’s okay, I’ll manage. On the fish side, I’m screwed, but it’s not Friday as far as I know and if a vegetarian turns up I’ve got enough in my vegetable racks to keep them happy. The shin of veal is going to turn into Osso buco; I had planned to roast it all in one piece on a bed of shallots confits but I don’t have enough cooking time left for that. I take my saw from its sheath and set to work, cutting the joint into sections, first using a knife through the meat, which is pale as a ballerina’s tutu, then attacking the central bone with the handsaw.

  The telephone rings. Nudging it with my elbow, I knock the handset off to answer the call without interrupting my butchery, then I use the saw handle to push the loudspeaker button. It’s Vincent, worried because I haven’t opened my metal shutter and it’s already ten-thirty. He wants to know if everything is all right and offers to give me a hand.

  Now what he wants is a cup of coffee, I think to myself. He’s getting into the habit a bit too quickly, he’s the Speedy Gonzalez of routine.

  ‘Come over, you know you want to,’ I say, glibly introducing a teasing note of familiarity into my voice. If you stay standoffish for too long, things become stilted and you end up having to sleep with people just to break the ice.

  ‘I can’t do the shutter to let you in because I’m a bit busy, but the door to the back stairs is open. Come in that way. Do you know the code?’

  He knows the code and comes straight over. All at once I feel both the weight of a new friendship and the relief of no longer being alone.

  Vincent is wearing a polo shirt which smells strongly of washing powder. I know this because, probably galvanized by my inviting him over when he knew that I knew it was what he wanted, he gives me a peck on each cheek. It’s not very easy kissing me when I’m standing at my butcher’s block with a saw in one hand and a shin of veal in the other. Vincent kisses me - how shall I put this? - from behind, which has the advantage of wafting the smell of washing powder towards my nostrils rather than… the other, the fatal, well, you know what I mean. He is, as he puts it, in an epic mood or even, he adds in a ‘megaepic mood’. I realize that I’m duty-bound to ask him the reason for this mega-epic mood.

  ‘Do you want a coffee?’ I ask to rile him slightly.

  ‘A coffee? If you like. But champagne would be more like it.’

  I finish my slicing and start up my beloved percolator.

  ‘I’m running late,’ I tell Vincent, ‘so I haven’t got time to sit down, but I’m listening.’

  ‘Mmm?’ he asks with affected nonchalance, pretending not to know what I mean.

  I won’t get away without asking him. It’s like with the coffee: this isn’t to do with what he wants, but with what would make me happy. There’s absolutely no question of him pouring his heart out, he’s very keen for it to look as if he’s merely satisfying my curiosity.

  ‘To what do we owe this mega-epic mood, then?’ I ask, defeated.

  ‘A contract,’ he replies enigmatically.

  I’m going to have to drag this out of him one bit at a time. Still, that’s easier than diverting the conversation onto something else. While I slice the shallots I raise my voice above the meat spitting as it browns and the thrum of the extractor fan. ‘What sort of contract?’

  ‘Floral decorations.’

  I’m not even entitled to full sentences now. No more determiners. Forget verbs. This will have to be a forceps delivery. I allow myself a pause while I take out the meat and put it aside on an earthenware plate, before tossing the chopped shallots and some garlic into the pan along with a bit of rosemary and a bunch of flat leaf parsley. I turn down the heat and put the extractor on a lower setting, then swivel slowly towards my muse who is looking out of the window with an inspired expression and assuming poses like a young pre-Raphaelite model.

  ‘Floral decorations?’ I say in my most engaging voice. ‘That’s exciting. Is this a new departure for you? Have you ever done it before?’

  I have opted for what is called a quick-fire tactic, bombarding my target with questions, pretending to be impatient and consumed with curiosity by jumping up and down on the spot a couple of times.

  Vincent lazily drags his affectedly dreamy eyes away from the empty street. He’s laying this on a bit thick, I think, but I don’t hold it against him. Gratitude is a feeling I rate very highly on my personal scale, and I consider I owe him a good deal of it.

  ‘No, I’ve done it before,’ he replies in a blasé voice. ‘I do it all the time, but this is different.’

  Still facing him, I stir the herbs with a spatula behind my back.

  ‘Go on!’

  I gratify him with two further little skips.

  ‘It’s for a big company,’ he says, closing his eyes so that I can gauge the full extent of his new undertaking. ‘Event organizers run by a Jew.’

  I freeze. Why is that detail necessary? My face tenses slightly.

  ‘Do you see what I mean?’ he asks.

  I shake my head.

  ‘Lots of money.’

  Really? I think to myself. Of course. Jews and money. I prepare myself for the fun and give up on trying to adapt my expression. It’s beyond my abilities. Now I need to deglaze my sauce with some white wine. I turn my back on Vincent and pour in half a bottle of Muscadet, stirring all the time and revelling in the delicious smell. Once I’ve put the pieces of veal back into the rust-coloured sauce, I flambé it with cognac.

  ‘They arrange weddings, all sorts of parties and… what do they call them again?’

  I could supply him with the word he needs, but my gratitude has its limits.

  ‘Bar mitzvahs!’ he exclaims. ‘No expense spared, I tell you. My first two budgets are around the €3000 mark, and apparently there’ll be plenty more where that came from.’

  I don’t know how to start up my questioning again, suddenly very tired of this particular epic. So I concentrate on the tomato sauce and on making some cremolata, a mixture of lemon zest, basil, olive oil and parmesan that I’ll add to the dish when it’s served.

  ‘I’m going to do table displays for them with passion flowers,’ he coos. ‘Circlets of convolvulus for the little girls. I’ll use lots of jasmine, of course. I’ll have to get used to making crystallized rose petals instead of the usual sugared almonds, they’re so much more refined. For big venues I’ll use vines and ivy dotted with big blousy roses. Lilies are very tough, very strong. I’ll mix wild flowers like cow parsley and camomile with more sophisticated things. Lots of greenery, eucalyptus, ribes…’

  There’s no stopping Vincent now. I’m touched by his enthusiasm, his genuine love of flowers, how well he wants to do it all. I’ve poured the tomato coulis over the meat and now I cover it and sit down to drink a toast to him. We clink our cups together. His is empty but mine is still full. Vincent gets a bit carried away and knocks rather too hard, spilling coffee over my fingers and the table, and sending a few droplets onto the white blouse I put on in honour of Charles because I know it’s his favourite colour.

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry!’ Vincent cries, leaping up to dab me with a cloth which he grabs on his way over. ‘What an idiot!’ he says heatedly. ‘What a prat! I’m so bloody clumsy!’

  He can’t find insults sufficiently violent for the anguish he feels.

  ‘It’s nothing,’ I say. ‘Really, I promise. Everything’s fine. I needed to ch
ange anyway.’

  His hands are everywhere, on mine, on my chest, under my feet, on the table, between my legs. I like it. But he suddenly stops.

  ‘Are you going to have time to go home?’ he asks.

  ‘Home?’ I ask.

  ‘To change. It’s five to eleven.’

  I want to tell him everything. It would be so tempting, right now, to let the truth well up and simply flow, undeterred: this is where I live, I camp in the restaurant. But I restrain myself. It’s too soon.

  ‘I’ve got a change of clothes with me,’ I tell him. ‘Cooking gets you so dirty.’

  I couldn’t say for sure whether he believes me. Something in his expression - like a tiny wren feather flitting across a square of blue sky marked out by the bars of a window, and which could so easily be mistaken for a reflection - makes me think he’s beginning to guess.

  ‘I’d better go,’ he says.

  ‘Mazel tov,’ I say as I wind up the metal shutter so he can go out of the front door.

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘Mazel tov, that’s what the Jews say to wish someone good luck. It’s what we say when we’re happy for someone.’

  ‘You too,’ he replies, backing out of the door.

  His smile hovers behind him for a moment and I stand there looking out at the street to watch the ghost of his expression. Vincent runs over to his shop, he’s late. And, as he does, his smile keeps me company. The street is deserted, this is the lull before the school gates open and offices have their lunch hour. The sun warms my forehead, the tip of my nose and the tops of my breasts, my angled surfaces, the places where my body projects itself forwards. I watch the lab technicians opposite working with acute precision on dental prostheses. I like people working, each in their own little bubble, standing motionless, busy with what they should be doing, tinkering. Workers are well-ordered, calm, and the deserted street is open to offenders: parents of pre-school children, the unemployed, the ill-employed, the idle, the mad and people like me who, despite their best efforts, despite the fact that their days are full and busy, never really settle into the hugely reassuring structure of so-called office hours. The street changes character at different times of day and, now that my observation post is well established, I love watching its every alteration.

  I finish winding up the metal shutter and go back to the kitchen. Seeing my reflection in the mirror above the banquette, I notice there is still a bit of blood under my left nostril and that my upper lip, which split when I fell, is swollen. Vincent didn’t say anything. He must have been concentrating on his mega-epic mood. I give myself a quick wash, and tidy away my lists and pencils. I need to make things for people to eat. The sun is warming up, they will be wanting salads. I launch into haphazard peeling and chopping, using an unorthodox technique which probably wastes a fair bit of time, but it suits me. It consists in doing everything at once. I take out salad ingredients, vegetables, herbs and several knives: peeler, smooth-bladed and serrated. I cut half a cucumber into cubes, then move onto the mushrooms which I slice into little slithers, I go back to the cucumber, cutting wafer-thin slices, skip to topping and tailing green beans, pop whole beetroots into the oven, I scoop the flesh out of avocados and grapefruits, and put the chard into boiling water. The whole idea is not to get bored. The theory, because I have a theory about peeling things, is to leave room for random opportunities. With cooking, as with everything else, we tend to curb our instincts. Speed and chaos allow for a slight loss of control. Cutting vegetables into different shapes and sizes encourages combinations which might not have been thought of otherwise. In a salad of mushrooms, cucumber and lamb’s lettuce, the chervil needs to stay whole, in sprigs, to make a contrast because the other ingredients are so fine, almost transparent, and slippery. If its thin stems and tiny branches didn’t contradict the general sense of languor - accentuated by the single cream instead of olive oil in the dressing - the whole thing would descend into melancholy. Keeping a balance is the key, and I don’t think that this balance can derive from premeditation. It’s a dangerous thought but one so frequently put to the test that I’m prepared to take on the challenge. Humans lean. They don’t know it. But they lean. It’s called a tendency, an inclination, a mania. In order for a dish to succeed there has to be a connection between soft and crisp, bitter and mild, sweet and spicy, wet and dry, and that connection has to play on all the tensions in these warring couples. No one is sufficiently tolerant or inventive to respect opposites, so someone has to open up the way for contraband and clandestine activities.

  The beetroots come out of the oven and I shower them with walnut vinegar. The chard gushes into the colander and I sprinkle it with lemon juice and pepper. My worktop is a battlefield: pips, tops, droplets, stains, leaves and peelings - everything piles up and oozes. I melt at the sight of pink beetroot blood on a cucumber heart. But there isn’t really time. I turn into Shiva, my extra arms popping out from my back, working faster than my brain to clear up, sponge down, sort through, share out and put away.

  When my mascot customers - the two schoolgirls with gleaming hips - come through the door of Chez moi everything is tidy and ready. The only thing I haven’t dealt with is the blackboard, so I’ll just have to tell them what’s on the menu.

  The girls are in a bad mood: they’ve had terrible marks in philosophy, and they want to eat fish to make them more intelligent. I try to persuade them that Osso buco is very good for the brain, that the unctuous sauce lubricates meningeal surfaces and protects nerve synapses. They tell me it’s fattening. I tell them they’re beautiful and explain how and why. I talk about how lovely they are for a long time and they say I express myself so well they’re sure I could help them with their philosophy. They promise to bring me their next essay topic. I’m terrified to think they actually might. I can remember the torture of quotations. At school. You always had to cite different writers, to say ‘like when so-and-so wrote such-and-such’ and I never knew who had done what - I got The Human Condition confused with Balzac’s Human Comedy (and, anyway, I thought Balzac was a pseudonym of Stendhal’s), I had an idea The Divine Comedy was written in Latin by Ovid. And as for philosophy, don’t let’s go there, the only name I could remember was Plato. So he had written everything from Theaetetus to The Critique of Pure Reason. But sometimes I also got him confused with Socrates. Who was the puppet and who the puppeteer? Had Socrates written dialogues featuring Plato? I was completely lost.

  The girls are hungry. I set the price of their meal at €4 to put a smile back on their faces.

  ‘For the whole year?’ they ask.

  ‘For life,’ I tell them. ‘But that’s our little secret. Don’t let the others know; don’t tell your friends.’

  ‘We haven’t got any friends,’ they say straight away (which can’t be true but they’ll do whatever it takes to preserve the unprecedented privilege I’m granting them). ‘What if we have desserts? What if we have caviar? And what about coffee?’

  They make me laugh. I tell them my name’s Myriam. They shake my hand ceremoniously and introduce themselves: Simone and Hannah.

  Two men who have grabbed the moleskin banquette are complaining that the service is too slow. They don’t say it openly, but grumble, shoot angry glances, sigh a lot and keep looking at their watches. I’ve got too many tables at the same time. I waste precious minutes reciting the menu, forget to put the water back on to boil for the tagliatelle and haven’t made enough cremolata. One woman sends back her steak because it’s overdone. The place is noisy, full of steam and pans clashing together; I drop a cast-iron casserole and it shatters a floor tile, making everyone jump. Simone and Hannah come up to the till to pay for fear of revealing the cut-down price I have offered them.

  ‘You should get a waiter,’ they tell me. ‘We know a good one, we could ask him to come and see you if you like.’

  I’m not listening to them. I thank them and kiss them goodbye. They’re my nieces, I tell my other customers mentally in case they get it into
their heads to ask for kisses too.

  I understand the full meaning of the expression ‘it’s all go’ because it really is all going for me at the moment, only it’s all going in every direction as far as I can make out. I write out the orders and pin them to the board, then I carry out the orders I’ve given myself in the kitchen. Sometimes I’m so quick and efficient I feel I’m on top of things, but I haven’t spotted four new customers who have come in and sat down, and I’ve forgotten the desserts for table five. I feel I’m really turning a corner and euphoria surges up inside me. I’m giving my tables numbers like a professional. It suddenly feels as if there’s a giant sign writing itself outside: Chez moi is actually becoming a restaurant. I could bark out loud for joy, now that I’m a dog among dogs, but a plate slips out of my oily hand and splatters its contents on the floor. I push the wasted food aside with my foot and make the lost salad again. I’ve only got three portions of plum and almond tart left. I’m one short. I suggest a praline and raspberry mousse instead, offering it for free, and the jacketed man to whom I’m explaining the terms of this substitution says, ‘Well, that’s very kind’. I’m thinking commercially-motivated gesture. I’m thinking developing customer loyalty… I’m also thinking improvised prodigality ends in ruin, a proverb I invent for the occasion but whose warning I immediately decide to ignore. I’ll have to take my system for what it’s worth, it does at least have the advantage of being coherent. I’m banking on the dividends this offer will bring me. This line of reasoning is backed up by countless examples gleaned at random from fables I read as a child. The young girl who agrees to give the old lady a drink at the fountain ends up with pearls flowing from her mouth, the one who refuses spews out vermin.

  ‘Is it too late to eat?’ a woman half-opens the door to ask.

  I look at my watch, because that’s what restaurant managers do. It’s quarter to three, Chez moi is still half-full, and there’s no Osso buco or mushroom salad left.

  ‘It’s fine,’ I say slightly gruffly, as if doing her a favour. ‘But I’m all out of the dish of the day. I’ve got quiches and a selection of vegetables.’