My Soul Looks Back

by Jessica B. Harris

  Nourry took us around Port-au-Prince, treating us to lunch at Le Rond Point, a downtown standby where we sampled items like grillots de porc (tasty garlic-infused pork bits served over white rice). We had the traditional soupe aux pois rouges (a red bean soup richly flavored with thyme) and salads dressed with a proper French vinaigrette. I’d been before on my earlier trip with Anna, so I knew that the food was traditional and delicious and that the capital’s movers and shakers turned up for lunch, but eating there with Nourry was a special treat. We went to the Iron Market and the National Museum and generally acted like the tourists we were.

  Sam, ever the avid golfer, even managed to find a golf course; I’m still not sure how, but we played a round on the course that had definitely seen better days. To this day, I can amaze golfers by recounting the nine-hole game that we played on what I jokingly referred to as Haiti’s “browns” that day. (There was not a green blade of grass in sight.)

  The New York disco the Hippopotamus had been transplanted to the nearby Habitation Leclerc, a luxury hostelry in a spot originally built for Napoleon Bonaparte’s sister, Pauline, and so nights were spent boogying. With Nourry, we also discovered other aspects of Port-au-Prince nightlife; he knew the local spots and loved to dance. In New York and at the Habitation, it may have been about disco, but around the capital with Nourry, it was all about the merengue.

  The merengue is a dance whose origin is disputed between Haiti and the Dominican Republic. (Legend has it that the dance was created in imitation of a shuffling peg-legged pirate.) The citizens of the two countries have an unbridled love of the merengue; it is just about the only thing that they can agree on, and folks from both places dance it with wild abandon. The Haitian upper crust danced at clubs like the Cabane Choucoune in Pétionville, where Port-au-Prince’s jeunesse dorée gathered to shuffle feet and swing hips to the music’s 2/4 rhythm. At the other end of the social spectrum, people got to swinging at Lambi in Carrefour, a blue-collar suburb of the capital. Lambi was an outdoor dance club on the water and it was decorated with conch shells (the “lambi” of its name) that were the detritus from the mollusks that were the main menu item. It was a huge psychic distance from the musky funk of Lambi to the French perfumes of the Cabane Choucoune, but in Pétionville and on the coast, the music blared nightly, and Sam and Nourry and I joined the folks who danced with the passionate delirium of those who knew that they were reveling on the volcano’s edge and that change was coming.

  All was lubricated with vast amounts of Rhum Barbancourt. So much rum was consumed that somehow, in the middle of playing a rousing game of craps on one of our obligatory casino visits, I must have taken off my eyeglasses. (Why, I do not know, because I’m tin-cup-and-a-dog blind without them.) In any case, I removed them and someone made off with them. I never saw them again. It certainly cemented my understanding of the term blind drunk and definitely upped my trust relationship with Sam, as I became dependent on him to shepherd me around as I wore my sunglasses like the blind fool I truly was. He kept my secret, and my eyeglass caper mercifully went unreported when I next saw Paule and company back in New York.

  • • •

  After each trip, we’d return to New York and to school and wait until the next break and try to figure out where to head next. Paris loomed. Like Rick and Elsa, we’d always have Paris, but unlike them, we’d never get to share time together in our favorite city. Rather, Sam went and stayed with Jimmy or I journeyed there solo, and we compared notes on our respective returns.

  Although Sam and I did not spend time together in the city, Paris remained the belon of my dreams. In other parts of Sam’s life, as he discussed things with Jimmy and others, the names of many of the players, the dates, and the locales may have drifted over my head, but when it was about Paris, I understood. I usually managed to find my way through the maze of friendships and alliances thanks to my familiarity with French language and culture, my love of French food, and my knowledge of the city’s Black cultural scene. Paris was a world where intelligence garnered respect and deep conversations were held nightly in cafés over several glasses of scotch or a ballon or two of rouge or in small bistros where the patron presided over the stove in the kitchen and Madame oversaw the front of the house. I still knew a few of them from my student days and discovered others.

  While I’d stayed with my parents in the quartiers populaires on my first trip and spent a junior year abroad with a family in the snooty sixteenth arrondissement, I’ve always been a Left Bank girl in Paris. I’ve always been happiest near the Boulevard St.-Michel and the Boulevard St.-Germain on the south side of the Seine. Maybe it’s a Black folks South Side thing, but that’s the area I keep returning to, and it’s the area I learned to love even more with Sam and Jimmy and their Parisian crew. At first, there were inexpensive hotels in the fifth arrondissement near the Boulevard St.-Michel, but as I became a bit more sophisticated and more flush with cash, I discovered the hotels on the Rue Jacob and near the Boulevard St.-Germain, where the Drugstore, a French version of an American-style all-purpose drugstore, loomed large.

  The sixth arrondissement had traditionally been the haunt of American Blacks in Paris, who shared it with the French intelligentsia and beatniks who made the caveaux de St. Germain-des-Près, the underground jazz clubs of the neighborhood, the in-haunts in the 1950s. This was the neighborhood of Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir, who roosted at the Café de Flore, and others who met regularly at Les Deux Magots and still others who lunched on the prix fixe menu at Petit Saint Benoit and ate with the literary crowd at the Brasserie Lipp.

  The neighborhood was also a section of Paris that was renowned for its gay life and cruising spots. The gay club scene was going full blast, and it, too, was a part of Jimmy’s world and therefore of Sam’s Parisian one. Bernard Hassell, Jimmy’s majordomo in St. Paul-de-Vence, was a former dancer at the Folies Bergère; he brought back to New York tales from the dance floors of various clubs. So although I never went, I’d certainly heard of Le Sept (7 Rue St. Anne), with its mirrored walls and multicolored lights and Le Fiacre (Rue St. Sulpice), Le Bilboquet, and other names bandied about in enough conversations to feel that I knew them. Le Palace opened with Grace Jones atop a pink Harley singing “La Vie en Rose” in March 1978, and the crowd decamped to the northern zones at night, but in the early years, it was all about St. Germain-des-Près.

  My St. Germain-des-Près was a bit more sedate and centered on bookstores. La Hune and L’Ecume des Pages gobbled up my cash and weighted down my luggage. Flea markets yielded treasures, and reconnecting with friends and with my family from my junior year was a joy. It was also all about food. I was tasting my way through the inexpensive restaurants of the capital. Chez Guy offered Brazilian lunches where musicians offered samba and bossa nova and I could try out my skills as a percussionist shaking one of the pebble-filled soda cans they had at each table. Le Baobab presented Senegalese and other West African fare, and I could indulge in my love for poulet yassa. La Rhumerie took me back to the French Antilles with an obligatory ’ti punch and some acrats de morue. My French meals tended to be of the bistro and brasserie type, and, unsurprisingly, a choucroute was obligatory on each trip. Then one year I was asked to meet up with Georges and Mary of my own infamous choucroute caper.

  I certainly knew Georges was a chef held in great esteem by his American colleagues, and I knew that in Paris he was respected, even acclaimed. Before celebrity chefs were the rock stars of the culinary world, they were extraordinarily hardworking professionals whose names were known only to the cognoscenti. Georges’s renown therefore was limited to professionals in the culinary zone, and I had no idea of the French gastronomic heights that I’d scaled. I would find out just how wonderful a chef he was on one of my solo trips to Paris when he invited me to dine at Chez Garin.

  My first impression of Chez Garin was burgundy—not the wine, the color, which was that of the upholstery of the supercomfortable chairs. The decor was old school of the type t
hat the French call feutré (or felted), meaning that it is cossetting, comfortable. The pristine white napery was so well starched it could have been used instead of the well-sharpened knives that set the table, the heavy crystal gleamed, and the whole exemplified Baudelaire’s “luxe, calme et volupté.”

  I was dining solo, but it was clear that I was a guest of the chef, and so I was ushered to a prime location. The meal began with foie gras à la cuillère, a dish in which the goose liver was sautéed and then transformed into a terrine; I slathered it on the toast that accompanied it, appreciating the unctuousness of creamy liver and delicacy of the seasonings. It was clearly yummy and a special presentation, but I’d had foie gras before and although I loved it, I was not astounded. I had expected Georges to be good, and he clearly was.

  At the second course, I began to realize that this was a once-in-a-lifetime meal. I was presented with a small soup bowl of the type usually used to serve soupe à l’onion gratinée. It was topped with puff pastry. When I pierced the flaky crust with my fork, the aroma was astonishing: savory with an underlying funk that I would learn came from the truffles that were the main ingredient. Indeed, the second course was a ragout de truffes—a truffle stew: huge chunks of pungent fresh black truffles served in a perfectly wrought brown sauce. It was rich—Lord, was it rich—and a revelation. I knew food could be very tasty and that some dishes could approach the sublime, but I had no idea that a dish could be a conversation of tastes and ideas. This was an ironic dish—a class war in a soup bowl that was as signifying as the monkey and as revolutionary as “La Marseillaise.” The brown sauce was the nod to the peasant origins of the ragout, and the truffles—the sheer luxurious abundance of fresh truffles—were the pinnacle of gastronomic aristocracy. I indulged spooning up the sauce and learning the unfamiliar earthy pungency of fresh truffle. I tried but was finally defeated by the sheer richness of it all. I couldn’t finish it and sent some of it back to the kitchen with abject apologies.

  While I have regretted those returned truffles on many subsequent days, I am thrilled I did because if I hadn’t, I would have never been able to complete the meal for which they had simply been a shot in the opening salvo. The next course was wheeled up on a mahogany trolley crowned with a silver rolltop. As the top of the trolley slid back, I was presented with the largest single piece of meat I’d ever seen at that point: a saddle of lamb. Now, I knew legs, and racks of chops, and even crown roasts, but I’d never before met this big daddy of lamb cuts. The saddle was usually available only for two-person orders; I was being treated to an indulgence that I knew would be memorable and was also one of the specialties of the house. It was reverently sliced crosswise, and I was presented with several perfectly pink slices accompanied by the vegetable infanticide that is a hallmark of la grande cuisine: tiny fresh vegetables the French call les primeurs, or first of the spring season. These were the thin verdant string beans that we now call harciots verts. There were pommes dauphinoise, the classic dish of thinly sliced potatoes, cream, butter, and garlic that had been cooked in a slow oven to a creamy crisp perfection. If that weren’t enough, there was a purée of celeriac, butter, thick cream, and a hint of nutmeg. Georges, I would learn, was one of the first French chefs to serve vegetable purées as accompaniments. No knife was needed, and the tender lamb was beautifully yet simply seasoned and drizzled with a bit of jus. Despite my failings with the ragout de truffes, I managed to snuffle up the lamb, haricots verts, potatoes, and celeriac purée, savoring each morsel.

  It didn’t end there. This was a true French meal. The most splendid salad I’d ever tasted followed. Buttery lettuces were simply dressed with hazelnut oil and wine vinegar and tossed in a wooden bowl into which a garlic clove and a piece of the lamb’s skin had been rubbed. The delicate lettuces had taken on just a hint of the garlic and the quintessence of lamb as though they, too, were remembering the previous course.

  A cheese trolley followed featuring perfectly ripe chèvre, Port Salut, St. André, Gruyère, and more. By that time, Georges had finished with service and was circulating in the dining room. This was something he did often even though he was an old-school chef who was in the kitchen cooking. It was one of the first open kitchens, and Georges was notorious for hurling all manner of invective at his kitchen staff, much to the amusement of his regular clientele and to the despair of some newcomers. He sampled all of the wines before they were served to ensure their aptness, which more often than not also resulted in a rollicking atmosphere. As he often did with his regulars, he joined me at the table—a singular honor. I surprised Georges by savoring the cheese plate and demonstrating the scant but accurate knowledge that I’d acquired living with a French family. I settled on a bit of Roquefort, a strong cheese and one not expected to be liked by an American. Twinkling, he called for butter and a pear, which arrived tree ripe yet toothsomely crunchy, and proceeded to show me how Roquefort was eaten in some French families. He mashed some of the butter into the Roquefort, making it even creamier, and then slathered it on the crisp pear. Sublime. He must have noticed that my eyes were about to roll back in my head from sheer bliss combined with gluttony because dessert was deceptively simple, yet the perfect finish to this most indulgent meal: a quarter of sweet/tart ripe pineapple that served as palate cleanser and left me with a bit of sweetness in my mouth as an ending to the extraordinary meal.

  I was too afloat on my wave of food sensations to be embarrassed at the time, but as days, and later months and years went by, I remembered the choucroute garnie I’d served him with growing horror. I’d offered unwashed sauerkraut, hot dogs, beer, and gin to the man who created that sublime meal. Mortification was not a strong enough word. Georges, it seemed, could have cared less. He’d accepted my gift as it was offered, mirroring an adage that I’d learned from my parents but that had been confirmed by Sam: when entertaining, always offer the best that you can afford and do not skimp. I had indeed done that. Georges understood my youth and my enthusiasm and appreciated the latter while indulging the former.

  Some time later on another of my then-biannual trips to Paris, Georges and Mary paid me the ultimate compliment and invited me to their home. Georges must have been prepping at the restaurant, for I had lunch with Mary. I remember very little of the look of the apartment, only that it was traditionally French. What I do remember is meeting their beloved cat, Tikété. The feline’s name meant “ticked” in French, and Abyssinian Tikété was a gorgeous beastie with a triangular Egyptian-shaped head set atop a body of burnished ticked fur and looked like a miniature tiger. Tikété not only had full run of the house but ruled the roost with an iron paw. Sam’s Blues and Mouss and Askia, my two Siamese cats, were raised by Black folks and seriously trained to remain out of the cooking areas and on the floor at mealtime even if they were occasionally indulged with a morsel or two. I was therefore astonished when Tikété leaped onto the table and after a sniff and a peruse neatly circled himself around the serving bowl of cauliflower that was the meat’s accompaniment. The cauliflower equally amazed me: it was served whole and not broken into the florets that I was used to. The whole looked like a still life: cat with “brain.” I was speechless.

  The meal was delicious and proved that Mary was no mean cook herself. That was only natural; she’d been dining around the City of Light for years in the company of one of its finest chefs and was a good friend of the man whose culinary know-how helmed the iconic Time/Life series of cookbooks. However, although I dined around New York with Georges and Mary, we did not eat out elsewhere in Paris other than at the sublime Chez Garin. I certainly did not complain.

  It was not all about food. Jimmy’s generosity and my French allowed me to go to the theater and understand, so in January 1973, after a call from him to Tria French, his literary agent, I found myself in a central box seat at the Théâtre du Palais-Royal, watching a dress rehearsal for a new show. It featured another of Jimmy’s friends, Benny Luke. I watched and waited for the three knocks that signal the beginning o
f a theatrical performance in France; then the curtain went up and out came Benny barefoot and wearing not much more than an apron and a jock strap, dusting and singing and sashaying. The play, La Cage aux Folles, wowed them in Paris, went on to spawn three movies, and then did another turn as a musical, but thanks to Jimmy and Tria French, who would be dead less than six months later, I could say that I’d been in the audience at the final dress rehearsal.

  • • •

  Our various Parisian sojourns were a part of the glue that cemented my relationship with Sam; we both seemed to need them to temper the day-to-day Queens College existence, with its papers and grades and exams and the rest. But soon enough we’d be hitting the road again to somewhere wonderful and filled with Sam’s amazing friends.

  * * *

  * * *

  Ten Boy Curry

  There is no way I could even attempt to match the virtuoso performance that Maya Angelou put on when she prepared her curry for me in her Sonoma kitchen over four decades ago. My own curry, from my book Sky Juice and Flying Fish: Traditional Caribbean Cooking, is more of a West Indian–type curry that includes potatoes along with the chicken. They serve to not only stretch the chicken, but also to lend substance to the curry. While this is traditionally eaten with roti, I like to serve it with rice (yes, I know two starches, but why not) and then add as many of the “boys”—mango chutney, tomato chutney, chopped peanuts, raisins, finely grated coconut, lime pickle, fresh pineapple pieces, kachumber salad, raita, and papadum—as I can get.