by Shani Mootoo
The restaurants Anick and her parents took him to in Perpignan lined squares where there were churches, like the one — and he struggled to remember and then to say it — like the eleventh-century one, the Paroisse Cathedrale Saint Jean in Place Leon Gambetta (on cue, Viveka raised her eyes in a much appreciated salute to his memory and pronunciation). Everything inside the church was so black and dirty and old that you were afraid to touch the pews, even. And every building they passed seemed to have a historic plaque on it, and a story that Armand was ever ready to expound.
The food in the restaurants in these squares Nayan found to be very good, and Armand, Mimi, and Anick thought the food good too, but they always had to find some small fault. Some small but to everything. Just so that they could dissect and argue.
The food in France was good, he would admit, rich, but — his “but” was a different kind of but — but good. Still, he missed curries, a good shrimp curry or goat meat curry, and a real pelau, and salt fish and buljol. At least when he lived in Canada he would cook these for himself.
At that Viveka said, “I didn’t know you cooked? Do you still?” “I could, but I don’t have to. You know how well Mom cooks. And we have a maid. I’m too busy now, man. Too many responsibilities. A wife and a house to keep up with! And can you imagine if my father came home and found me in the kitchen? In any case, do you know how much I am worth?”
He waited for an answer. Viveka shrugged, the smile she managed becoming yet more painful.
“Three hundred dollars an hour. Three hundred. What do I want to spend time in the kitchen for? I can’t! Time is money, Vik.”
Nayan leaned toward Viveka and lowered his voice. “Dad already thinks I let Anick get away with too much. She isn’t like women here, you know. She isn’t into taking care of family and house and garden and all of that, all the time. She cooked today, but that is unusual. She really wanted you to taste her food, French food. But, otherwise, she doesn’t cook usually. In any case, they wouldn’t really like her style of food. And can you imagine, really, if Dad were to come and find me in the kitchen cooking? Man, I would be up shit creek. I can cook quite well, I enjoy it even, but still, he’d want to know who wears the pants in my family — I mean between Anick and me! He already has his doubts.”
Anyway, Anick’s family took him — he had already been chuckling, but now he guffawed — to the opera, and the symphony. Him! He had actually gone to an opera. He fought to stay interested, to stay awake even. He was pleased to have seen that aspect of European life, but most of what Anick and her family took very seriously left him unmoved, baffled. He didn’t know if they really enjoyed all these things they took so seriously. There didn’t appear to be much happiness at these events, but a lot of frowning and head-nodding. After performances, Armand, Anick, and Mimi argued endlessly. They spoke English when he was present, to engage him as they — well, maybe not argued, but discussed the merits and demerits of everything they experienced together. He merely nodded his head, he laughed, he scowled when it seemed appropriate, but he could not participate and did not understand why such a lot of heated dissection and analysis was necessary. The three of them were full of opinions, and seemed to make sure to have diverging ones only so that they could argue.
One evening, Armand and Mimi invited some of their friends over for the sweet wines of Banyuls and Collioure, and for dessert. They had, unknown to him, spent the previous days searching out in his honour a collection of chocolates. Among these were milk ones, dark ones, truffles, and some with spices in them. There were three kinds that were made from cacao beans imported from an estate in Trinidad. It was at that point, he confessed to Viveka, that he felt really uncomfortable in front of them. He knew of the estate from which the ones made with Trinidad cacao came, but he, the son of a cacao estate owner and all-things-chocolate maker, wasn’t familiar with such dark chocolate. He knew none of the other chocolates they had amassed, all of which were quite unlike the sweet milky ones that Trinidadians were used to, the kind Rimpty’s made. Of course, in Canada he had seen dark chocolates in the shops, with the percentages of cacao — 65%, 70%, 80% — advertised in big bold figures, but he had dismissed them as a gimmick intended to appeal to some of the kinds of Canadians he met in university, ones who liked throwing around numbers that rated the heat of the various pepper sauces in their collection. The dark kind of chocolate, in his estimation at the time, was bitter, and he could never quite understand why anyone would like it.
But now the Thieberts and their friends, to a background of classical music, were breaking off tiny bits of the dark chocolate, putting them on the tips of their tongues and masticating very animatedly, grunting their analyses, judicious with their displays of pleasure, all as if they were critics evaluating wines. Armand would eat, chat, drink, and in particularly melodious sections, conduct the music with his hands. Nayan was indeed intrigued by the chocolates with the spices, for they were reminiscent of the balls of raw cacao that some of the villagers in Rio Claro made for their own private use.
Viveka, too, knew of these cacao balls. Sometimes the workers on the estate would be given a certain amount of a crop for their own use. They would roast the dried fermented beans with peppercorns, cinnamon, bay leaf, nutmeg, allspice, vanilla bean, cloves, and cardamom, grind it all up and make hard-packed balls a little bigger than ping pong balls. They would give the Prakashs gifts of these raw cacao balls and Minty would, in turn, parcel these out to friends, some of them going to the Krishnus. These balls were crude, meant to be grated, and the powder used in baking or in making drinks.
The spiced chocolates that the Thieberts had amassed were quite different, related Nayan. They were little delicacies, conched to truffle-like smoothness. They gave Nayan the idea to re- evaluate the villagers’ cacao balls, add an emulsifier to them, conch them longer. Viveka must look out for a new line of Rimpty’s chocolates, he said.
That evening of wine and chocolates in Perpignan had left Nayan otherwise unsettled. The Thieberts and their friends talked at length about estates in Indonesia and about workers’ conditions on the Ivory Coast estates, in Ecuador. They questioned him about workers’ conditions in Trinidad, and he could only say that there was no need for unionization or any such thing as his father was very good to their workers, giving them, for instance, a percentage of the crop, and sometimes paying for a worker’s medical care or buying school books for a worker’s child. They shied away from talking too much about Trinidad estates after that, but carried on talking about production in other regions, and Nayan wondered if the Thieberts and their friends had known these things for a while, of if they had gone and searched out the information especially for the occasion so that they could have their interminable discussions on the topic. He could have gone and done research too, if they had let him know what they were up to. He felt foolish. But one positive thing he learned was that there was more money to be made in the cacao business than he had realized before. There might be the exporting of beans — of course, they would have to be the fine premium kind — to France, and chocolate candy might be infused with local spices and flavours for export as well as for local consumption.
Viveka was about to say, for the sake of engagement, that she hadn’t known there were different kinds of beans, but Nayan was just then called by Anick. He answered from the table, to which she said, noticeably sharply, “Please come. I need you. Now.”
As he pushed his chair back, Nayan raised his eyebrows at Viveka and wrung his hands in mock fear. He was gone so long that Viveka became uncomfortable. She got up and began clearing the table. She found herself tiptoeing and resting the dishes on the kitchen counter carefully, quietly. Eventually she stepped out onto the open patio, which was lit by a yellow bulb from a single wall sconce. Fireflies and moths flew erratically around the bulb, the glass clinking whenever one of them hit it. Frogs croaked in the bushes close to the fence, and there was a steady pulsing drone from cicadas. Viveka walked around to the outside of the p
atio so that she could step into the relative dark. The lights on the Pointe-à-Pierre refinery twinkled, and from the tips of the stacks orange flames throbbed upward against the night’s utter blackness. Directly above, a billion stars flickered. The brilliant points of the only constellation she knew — the southern cross — shone bold and steady. She strolled on the lawn up toward the back of the house. A light shone through a small high window, the kind one found in bathrooms. As she approached it she heard Anick’s and Nayan’s voices. Her instinct was to rush back down to the patio so as not to suffer the shame of eavesdropping, but then she heard her name mentioned. She stopped, held her breath, and listened. Unable to hear clearly, she tiptoed on the grass until she was just under the window. She could make it back to the area of the patio in seconds if she needed to.
“But the Krishnus are old friends, Anick,” she heard. “Our families have known each other for years now. I told you how close Viveka and I were before I went away.”
“Don’t you understand, Nayan? Is my business you telling. Not just yours. I don’t know her for years. Is shameful what you saying. Is shameful for me, but for you too. Don’t you see that? Is because you drinking too much.”
Nayan’s voice was stern. “Shameful? I am shaming you? And I have had no more to drink than you. I have had two glasses and a half of wine. Don’t start with that nonsense. You want to start controlling everything I do?”
Viveka thought Anick was indeed brave to provoke such ideas when a guest was in their house. That sort of provocation could erupt in a huge quarrel, and even if the quarrel were put off for a few hours until the guest had left it would still cause a sourness in the air that would be only too noticeable. It wasn’t what a woman should do, Viveka reflected, and one shouldn’t need to be told so — this was knowledge one just absorbed and grew up knowing.
“Why you tell her these things?” Anick insisted. “Tell me this. Why you tell her, and you don’t tell Bally and his wife? Is because you too shamed to tell them. You want them to think you so big. But you tell her, like you confessing. You really drink too much — I don’t care what you say. We eat a whole meal and you talk the whole time. You never even say if you like the food, but you say how my parents make you feel stupid. You don’t even ask her about herself. You take advantage of that girl. Is because she is not like other people. She can be my friend and you making me shamed in front of her. Besides, I hate it you talking bad all the time about my country and my family. How she can be my friend now?”
Viveka thought, So, after all, it does matter that it is me who is here at dinner! I am your friend now, Anick, more than his. You and I, we can be friends. We will be. She tried to be as quiet as a blade of grass so that she could hear more.
“Oh Christ, honey,” Nayan’s voice said. “Come on. For God’s sake, be reasonable. She is downstairs waiting, she will think there is a problem, and there is no problem. We’re having fun. At least I am. Don’t spoil it. And does she look like she is having a bad time? I’m telling stories. I am reflecting. She is the kind of person who I can do that in front of. Why do I have to tell you that your food was good? Is there any of the bourguignon left in the dish? The dish is empty. What better compliment is there? We don’t have to discuss everything, Anick.”
“Oh my God. Look who is talking! You discuss everything to this stranger. And you tell her all kind of lies, too.”
“I have my pride, Anick. I know what to say and what not to say. I am not, in fact, discussing everything. You want to see me tell her everything? I can do that, you know. Let me see then if she will have a frigging thing to do with you.”
“I sick of all of this. I just sick of this.”
“Oh Christ, just cut it out. She is going to wonder what the heck is happening. Fix yourself and let’s go on out.”
Viveka quietly hurried back to the patio.
Together, all three finished clearing the table. Anick put away some things and then rather abruptly she and Nayan indicated that they would take Viveka home. When Anick excused herself for a minute and went back upstairs again, Nayan took the chance to say that what he had liked best in France was lying at night with Anick, listening to children shouting things he couldn’t understand, to the click of adult heels on the sidewalks as they passed swiftly beneath the window, a car going slowly down the lane looking for parking, the ping of a bicycle bell. They were in France, and France in all its Frenchness, all its self-assuredness, went on around them, and no Frenchman was in bed with her, the most beautiful woman he had ever seen, but he, from Trinidad, was.
Viveka listened with the evening’s now-habitual forced grin on her face and wondered if perhaps Nayan really was a bit drunk.
IT WAS A SHORT DRIVE THROUGH LUMINADA HEIGHTS FROM NAYAN’S house to Viveka’s, but long enough for Anick’s razor-like silence to divide the space in the car into three uneven parts. She occupied the largest space. Nayan, who had become noticeably silent, had a smaller share. Judging by the way he avoided looking at Anick and the way he gripped the steering wheel, hands clocking in at five to one, he seemed aware and nervous of his share. Viveka was given, it seemed to her, an incidental sliver in the back seat. She felt a little sympathy for Nayan, but only a little.
The developers of Luminada Heights hadn’t been generous with street lamps. Light flickered weakly here and there from the houses they passed. Down in the distance the outline of the oil refinery at Pointe-à-Pierre was shimmering with dots of brilliant silvery light. Now it looked like a rambling fairground of castles, rollercoasters and ocean liners butted together.
By the grace of darkness, Viveka, from the back seat, watched Anick. Anick seemed to be looking out the rolled-up window. Her reflection could just barely be seen in the glass. Viveka imagined Anick seeing herself and her life as she imagined Viveka might have seen her that night, especially in the light of the stories her husband had so indiscriminately revealed. She wanted to assure Anick that she had heard it all with a grain of salt, and longed to hear Anick’s version. Or a different story all together. Anything from Anick, anything that was not about her and Nayan. Her profile was so perfectly set that it was as if Anick had turned just so, so that Viveka might watch her. Her face was thin, but not unhealthy or pinched in its thinness; on the contrary, it was lean and something else indescribable. A woman who, when she spoke to her husband spoke so harshly, who had been so determinedly quiet at dinner, should not, to Viveka’s mind, have looked as soft and vulnerable as Anick did staring out the window. Viveka wanted to slip her hand onto Anick’s shoulder, press her shoulder to let her know everything was all right. But she didn’t, in fact, know anything, and couldn’t know whether anything, let alone everything, was or would be all right. And although she imagined Anick discreetly raising her own hand onto Viveka’s, squeezing it in acknowledgement of camaraderie, she dared not take such a liberty. Then, much too quickly, the car pulled up at the gate to Viveka’s house.
As Viveka unlatched the gate and walked slowly to the back door of her house, her mind travelled to the places that Nayan had talked about: Toronto, Whistler, Perpignan, Paris, the Louvre. The Mona Lisa! Imagine: he had seen it! And had not been impressed. She tried to imagine skiing, but this was difficult. She was more able to conjure up going to the symphony. And she was curious now about chocolate that was as bitter as Nayan described, the chocolate that French people liked.
The Prakashs
ANICK SNATCHED UP A BRASS ROSEBUD VASE. NAYAN MIGHT GUFFAW at that, but she knew he wasn’t amused. She raised the vase, and he ducked and shielded his face with his hands. But Anick wasn’t crazy; she knew better than to aim directly at him. The vase hit the wall to the side of him.
It was Nayan’s turn to scream. “Are you mad, or what! You think I told her everything? I told her nothing. I should have told her about the kind of person you were before I came into your life.” He was not finished but Anick shouted back, interrupting him, wanting to know what, just what kind of a person would that be?
The kind of woman who one day slept with a man, and the next with a woman, the kind no sane man would have risked taking. Lucky for her, Nayan snapped, that he had come along. And if he had not been insane then, she was making him so now. After he had showed her what love was really like.
Anick couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “Nayan, you know about Yves. You know I loved him. You know I lived with him for a year. What are you saying? Why you tell her I live with my parents? You tell her so many lies. Lies about me.”
“Lies? I was protecting you. And myself. Did you expect me to tell her that you lived with other people before me? That you had no discrimination about who and what you loved? I know what I am doing. I know people in my country and how they think. I don’t want people thinking — knowing! — that my wife was a host to others before me. Why did Yves leave you? Tell me again. Why? No. Don’t bother. Because no matter how many times you tell me I can’t understand it or believe you.”
The words seethed between Anick’s clenched jaws. “You foolish, Nayan. You too stupid. Yves leave me because he want to own me, and I do not want to be own by anybody. He was too jealous, possessive, oppressive. Words you should learn.”