by Marie Ndiaye
When she got to Bordeaux the Cheffe took a room in a run-down hotel near the train station, then, dressed in her best dark blue cotton skirt and a sky-blue, full-waisted blouse, her chestnut hair combed back and bound tight behind her head, she walked to the center of town through the hot, soot-black streets, regularly asking her way with an unshakable, almost aggressive confidence that concealed a preference for silence.
She walked into a restaurant she liked the look of, and that was the first time the Cheffe had ever set foot in a restaurant, she’d drunk an occasional cup of hot chocolate in a Marmande café, but that was all.
She said she was looking for work in the kitchen, she didn’t have a degree but she knew how to cook, and those words, repeated in every establishment whose door she pushed open that day, always met with more or less the same reception, a discreetly mocking surprise not at the words themselves but at the brash self-assurance of this young woman with the serious, stolid face, who was making not a request but a fair offer of her services, as if she was trying not to take undue advantage of the obvious fact that she was the ideal candidate, her face was perhaps only middlingly pleasant and attractive, bent as it was on not trying to charm, and her voice was blunt, plain, with something mechanical and efficient in her tone, her arms hung straight down her slightly stiff torso, her fists faintly clenched so her hands wouldn’t quiver in their eagerness to get down to work.
She looked at people a little too straight on with her gentle, imperturbable brown eyes, eyes that expected nothing, hoped for nothing, were simply doing their job of looking, and when the “no” came they serenely turned away, neither disappointed nor pleading, and seemed to carry away with them nothing they’d seen.
Some who said no might have misread the very particular way she stood before them, dense, almost massive even though she wasn’t, so perfectly contained in her solid flesh, her short muscles, that she sometimes seemed to stand there for longer than she did, her thick, heavy body refusing to hear that “no” and go away, her gaze as steady as ever, but that was an illusion, a misperception, the Cheffe turned around as soon as she heard there were no openings, her certainty that she would be hired never shaken, no weariness slumping her very straight back.
She walked the streets like that for two or three days, quietly obstinate, neither anxious nor bored, on the contrary, she never entered a dining room, whether crowded or dead, without a happy excitement shooting through her, heightened by the mingled aromas streaming from the plates when she came in at lunchtime.
She looked all around her as she waited to be dealt with, attentive, methodical, meticulous, she judged the look of a sauce, the presentation of a salad, she was severe, often disapproving, nothing seemed quite beautiful enough, nothing entirely thought through.
The idea of the customer being used to such drab inadequacy, not seeing it, even believing that what he was brought conformed perfectly to what a beautiful plate was supposed to be, that idea simultaneously saddened and stimulated her, with the placid, neutral, almost distant self-confidence that was hers alone, she told herself she’d work hard when she ran a restaurant (when I have a place of my own, she thought), to develop and refine the customer’s tastes, to endow him with the capacity to judge the food more exactingly, whatever the consequences for the cook, but she knew her own pleasure in working would feed on that customer’s high expectations, she already knew the complaisance of praise too easily given would leave her far more disgusted with herself than with the overeager customer.
It was on the Rue du Cancera that she finally found work, in a little restaurant that had opened not long before.
The owner had knocked around France and Belgium, making use of his pragmatic detachment, his dry, mirthless humor, and his supercilious benevolence to manage various joints, as he put it, before he finally opened his own on the Rue du Cancera, with the goal—proclaimed with a studied twinkle in his eye, a practiced facetiousness—of taking it easy while others toiled to make him rich, those others consisting of a cook and two apprentices, the owner thinking it made him look good to imply they worked harder and better than he ever could, which wasn’t true, the Cheffe soon realized, since he owed his restaurant’s growing success as much to his own constant, alert, hospitable, professionally cheerful presence and energy as to the quality of the food, but he liked to think he was essentially an idler, he considered it more elegant.
One of his apprentices had just quit when the Cheffe walked through the door.
Seeing that slight, silhouetted figure appear from the sunlit street and then stand motionless amid the tables, its momentary stillness deceptively suggesting something sluggish and heavy and unsuited to hard work, his first impulse was to send her away with a polite, gentle, inflexible refusal, but he prudently reined in his impatience to be rid of that stranger he couldn’t quite make out in the narrow-windowed dining room, and, his thoughts still full of the apprentice’s sudden departure, he came forward, considering the navy blue skirt, the pale blue blouse, the severe, neutral outfit that seemed to faithfully conform to the body that wore it and to precisely, forthrightly, seriously represent the character of the woman who’d chosen it, even if she didn’t know it herself.
Then his eyes saw the Cheffe’s eyes tranquilly, imperturbably looking back at him, and at once the brief misgiving he felt on seeing that silhouette almost riveted to the floor vanished, he saw the intensity, the initiative, the selflessness in that peaceful gaze, everything that freely gave of itself but never lost its self-possession—the very way the Cheffe’s body completely occupied any space was itself a product of her self-possession, she never shrank, never scattered, wherever she happened to be.
Maybe the owner noticed that too, because he immediately forgot his plan to show her the door, and later he wouldn’t remember he’d ever had it, he would always say he was determined to hire the Cheffe from the first words she spoke, when in reality he asked her to repeat those words, he was scarcely listening when they first issued from that very still, very intrusive backlit silhouette.
“All right,” he answered hurriedly, as if he didn’t want to give himself time to think, and also curtly, almost angrily, as if he were furious at himself for not giving himself time to think.
Once he’d said yes, and since there was no unsaying it now, he fell back into the affably impersonal tone he essentially never abandoned, the Cheffe said, you couldn’t imagine him talking any other way, but neither could you imagine anyone talking like that in private, so you vaguely imagined him as a man who never left his restaurant and had neither family nor friends, no one would have been surprised to hear he laid out a mattress in the dining room and spent his nights there, the one place he felt at home, the one place he could be himself, restaurant work being all he knew.
His name was Declaerk.
When I asked the Cheffe to describe him she closed her eyes, so many years had gone by, and her delicate face with its long closed eyelids took on a meditative look that brought a silly little laugh to my lips.
“You weren’t in love with him, were you?” I said, immediately shocked at my boldness but rankled to see that the Cheffe didn’t vigorously protest as she usually did when I said something foolish, she only shrugged, murmuring, “Really, he was twice my age,” and there was nothing reassuring about that answer, it said nothing one way or the other, but there was something demoralizing, because the Cheffe herself was twice my age, and I hoped she no longer saw that as a bar to a romantic relationship but especially to genuine love on the part of the younger one, before she loved me back I wanted her to believe in my love for her, believe it was real, even fated.
And so I answered, a little tartly, “That doesn’t prove anything, you know,” and the Cheffe gave me a noncommittal smile, the kind you give someone whose odd, uninteresting ideas you don’t feel like discussing, her eyes still closed, her pink-tinged lids so smooth and so delicate I could
see the mobile bulge of her eyeballs behind them, like two uncooked eggs, I thought she was luxuriating, almost drowsing in the possibly wistful remembrance of Declaerk’s physical appearance, until her voice seemed to startle her awake when it spoke again, saying, “He could eat whatever he liked, he never gained weight.”
Coming from the Cheffe, that remark had an odd moral connotation, as if Declaerk, along with a handful of others granted the same privilege, lived in a state prior to sin, and so went unpunished for excesses that others, less graced with innocence, paid dearly for.
The Cheffe looked on overfondness for food with the deepest indulgence, as she did all sorts of weaknesses or eccentricities, she never condemned them, and—depending on the person’s age—either ignored or chided anyone who did, but at the same time she showed a fervent, naïve respect not for those who ate very little but for those who by some miracle stayed thin, so she had questionable idols of her own.
I would never be one of them, I wasn’t fat, but neither was I built to be thin, though that wasn’t what bothered me about the Cheffe’s uncritical wonderment: it was that I thought it gave a taint of condescension and disloyalty to her goodwill toward healthy eaters who put on weight, those who weren’t quite fine enough to hang on to their youth, but I was probably making too much of it and no doubt I was simply jealous, that’s my way, always jealous and never thin, and too sensitive, easily offended by everything that in one way or another drew the Cheffe’s approval or respect, yes, I often made too much of things.
And so I remembered the mention of Declaerk’s magical thinness better than the rest of her description, which nonetheless conjured up in my mind a caricature of a type from those days, a poseur with shaggy hair brushing his neck, a fine blond mustache, tight jeans over excessively slender and definitely bowed legs that he must have thought attractive, narrow shoes a size too large, and shirts with long stiff collars that he ornamented with garish, hand-width neckties, the Cheffe explained that he was bold enough to come to work in jeans but not so wild as to go tieless, to me the interest of that portrait lay in the idea it gave me of the Cheffe’s tastes in men, because I couldn’t help thinking that this Declaerk, even twenty years too old, clearly appealed to her, even if the Cheffe always quietly denied it, but with a halfheartedness that convinced me she was hoping I wouldn’t believe her, hoping I would persuade her she’d been drawn to that guy as if she weren’t sure she hadn’t, as if she wanted that to be how it was and was waiting for me to prove it to her.
After a long internet search I recently found a photo of Declaerk standing behind the counter of his restaurant, taken to illustrate, among other things, one of the first articles on the Cheffe that appeared in the local press, the article called him the man who’d given her her start, and portrayed him so fulsomely that you might think she would never have become a cook had he not had the goodness to take on that ignorant, inexperienced young woman, I couldn’t make out if he’d told the story that way or if the reporter had put that spin on what might have been his narrowly factual account, but at the same time it clearly came out, from certain expressions that could have been only his, that he never forgave the Cheffe’s going into business for herself, he even hinted that she’d stolen some of his recipes, which amused me enormously, and which I found so sad that I felt a sort of compassionate, posthumous sympathy for this Declaerk, I couldn’t decide if his professional bitterness hid a sentimental and sexual rancor or if he was sincere in his idiocy, if he genuinely thought he’d been robbed.
I studied his face with a magnifying glass for hours.
I didn’t know just what I was hoping to see or learn, I was waiting for something about the Cheffe to be revealed, some side of her I had no way of knowing, just as I’d hungrily, feverishly studied her daughter’s face when I met her, looking for something that I would never have, her undeniable, stupefying link to the Cheffe, the emotions of the Cheffe’s that had been projected onto that face and were now held fast by it, however it hurt me to imagine that cunning, vulgar face containing emotions felt by the Cheffe, the purest and happiest as well as the ugliest, my own loving face was the guardian of no such treasures.
So, if the Cheffe once felt the desire to sleep with this Declaerk, I not very reasonably hoped I might, in that dull gray photo I hadn’t zoomed in on to keep it as sharp as possible, detect or uncover some echo of that desire, its explanation, and also a paradigm of the Cheffe’s erotic proclivities, and the answer to that mystery, the mystery of womankind, and of her especially.
But I found nothing I could learn from, even dimly, I didn’t feel changed or aquiver as I did every other time my investigations afforded me a sudden leap from ignorance to understanding.
Declaerk asked the Cheffe if she’d be willing to start that same evening and she accepted at once, adding that she’d rather not go home, would rather spend the next few hours visiting the kitchen, learning all about the dishes they served, to which Declaerk smilingly replied that they weren’t hiring her to cook but only to wash dishes and help with the prep work.
She said nothing, she consented with her whole unmoving, contained, amenable body, she gave that disconcerting impression of agreeing and obeying with all her being, her limbs and face perfectly still, even as she kept herself at a slight remove from docility, like a little donkey that lets the burden be placed on it but inside itself can’t be forced into anything, from what I could tell that’s just how her parents were, she didn’t realize how like them she was.
Declaerk vaguely waved toward the kitchen, saying that Millard, the chef, would tell her everything she needed to know as soon as he came in, in the meantime she could certainly take a look around if she liked.
No sooner had he spoken those words than that passive body, that cumbersome body he’d earlier thought too lethargic, abruptly flitted away, whisking almost inaudibly over the floor, and by the time Declaerk had bestirred himself, walked around the counter, and entered the kitchen behind her, the Cheffe was already exploring the cabinets with a discreet, almost hushed attention, she pointlessly slid her hands back and forth over the stainless steel countertop, almost caressing it, Declaerk would say in the interview, she seemed absurdly happy, though her face was serious, almost solemn, her hands trembling visibly.
The dour Declaerk of the article seems to be trying to make the Cheffe’s emotion faintly ridiculous, even as he paternalistically preens himself on having allowed her that joy, but I’m sure he found nothing to smirk at as he wordlessly watched her test the edge of a knife against her thumb, stroke the butcher block with her hungry palm, methodically pace from one corner of the kitchen to the other on her quick, silent feet, her heart soaring but restrained, deliberately held in check so it wouldn’t reveal itself so soon and so entirely to the man watching her in silence, though she didn’t even seem to see he was there, or to care, not for a moment did Declaerk think of laughing at her.
At the very most, he quietly thought she was strange, but that didn’t bother him, he’d been around, he’d come across specimens weirder than this.
Wanting to say something, and perhaps prompted by the shadow of an apprehension, he repeated with a chuckle that he wasn’t hiring her to cook, for that he had Millard, who was excellent, she had only to do exactly what Millard told her, and the Cheffe, smiling for the first time since she opened the restaurant door, patiently nodded, reassuring and distant, disciplined, unreadable.
She asked if he’d mind describing the menu.
A little taken aback, he handed her the big, stiff sheet, and she sat down on a chair and laid it on the table without looking at it, her eyes serenely fixed on Declaerk, waiting for him to come read the names of the dishes, not that she couldn’t have done it herself, if she concentrated she could grasp the meaning of what she deciphered, but she wanted to hear the words from the mouth of someone who knew what they stood for, in whose mind the precise image of each dish appeared as
soon as the name was spoken, she thought that by probing him on what he was seeing she could construct a schematic reflection of that image in her own mind, and then she would enter Millard’s kitchen fully briefed, and she’d feel at home from the start.
At the same time, she knew she took such a deep pleasure in listening to the language of cooking that she furrowed her brow and hardened the bow of her mouth so Declaerk wouldn’t see it, wouldn’t know it, in the article he would say, no doubt stupidly thinking he was taking her down a peg, that she was illiterate, that she had common sense and intuition but no brains, and neither would he know that the Cheffe would take no offense when she read those words, would in fact be mischievously delighted that a description so far from the truth would protect her against any irrefutable claim to know who she was.
I knew the Cheffe better than anyone.
But she sometimes misled me, she didn’t lie but she didn’t correct me when I misunderstood her, and what right would I have to complain that she wasn’t always sincere, she didn’t owe me anything, you never owe anything to people who want to know your secrets, even out of love, and she wasn’t quite sure of me even if she’d placed a considerable part of her trust in me, she didn’t think love was any guarantee of decency, and even if today I’m trying to treat her as honorably as I can, that’s most assuredly not what she thought of as decency, and I know it.
What an idiot that Declaerk was, I told myself when I first read that article, I laughed to find him so stupid, that popinjay the Cheffe might have sexually desired, but I realized he wasn’t saying what he really thought of the Cheffe, he was only trying to taunt her, to hurt and disserve her, in his bitterness toward that woman who’d left him and outstripped him in every way, richer and better known than he ever was, so was he really as stupid as he seemed, I wouldn’t dare say he was, the only thing that’s certain is his resentment, that and another sort of pain, set off by the memory of the Cheffe, but I don’t know enough to understand what it is.