The Curse of La Fontaine

by M. L. Longworth

  “Nice to hear laughing,” Mme Martin said. “Lots of glum faces around here this morning.”

  “Ah bon?” Philomène asked. “In this lovely weather?”

  “Boredom,” Mme Martin replied flatly.

  Marine picked up three bundles of the thinnest green asparagus she could find and put them into a basket. Philomène Joubert looked at Marine and frowned. “That doesn’t have the same flavor as the white.”

  “I know,” Marine answered, smiling.

  “People are bored,” Mme Martin went on, warming to her subject.

  “Who’s bored?” Philomène asked, now inspecting the artichokes, also in season.

  “If you’ve nothing to do, then you’re depressed,” Mme Martin said. “Look around you. I have at least seven or eight female friends who have every reason to be happy—health, a roof over their heads, a safe country to live in—and they’re depressed. What’s lacking?”

  Philomène said, “Perhaps—”

  “Well, I’ll tell you,” Mme Martin said, cutting Mme Joubert off. She held up her hand and began counting on her fingers. “Number one: children, or a child. Having to take care of another human means you can’t worry about your own petty problems.”

  “I have three fine sons,” Philomène said.

  “Number two: if you don’t have children, and there are lots of people who can’t, you need to be happy in your work.”

  Philomène, who had helped her husband run his printing shop for more than forty years, had loved their work, but she kept quiet this time. She looked over at Marine, who was smiling and nodding. Newlywed, she thought. She’s in the clouds.

  “And if by chance you have neither of those, you need a hobby,” Mme Martin said. “Une passion!”

  “My passion right now is getting home to cook this asparagus!” Philomène said, handing Mme Martin a handful of coins.

  Marine picked up a dozen small violet artichokes and decided to brave the preparing of them; they would be wonderful along with the leg of lamb she had planned for her dinner party. She quickly paid Mme Martin, who had turned her attention to another customer who had joined in on the conversation: she had read an article about the importance of keeping busy in a women’s magazine.

  “Well?” Philomène asked. “Are you going back to your apartment? We can walk together.”

  “I am, in fact,” Marine said.

  “Are you going to sell it?”

  Marine smiled, not surprised by her neighbor’s boldness. Philomène Joubert was known for it. “We can’t decide,” Marine answered. “We both love our apartments.”

  “A fortunate problem.”

  “A first-world problem, my students would say,” Marine replied as they walked along the rue Thiers. “We are lucky, yes. And very happy.”

  Philomène clicked her teeth in agreement. “What a lot of hocus-pocus Mme Martin was on about. It’s only common sense that if you keep busy you will be happy. Sure, I’ve had the blues now and then, especially when our François lost his first wife, or when we finally closed down the print shop, but I told myself, ‘Philomène, do at least one productive thing with your day. Just one.’ So I’d get up out of bed and bake a pie. Or do the ironing. The next day I’d do a little more, and then, voilà, the emptiness was gone.”

  Marine nodded. She liked the fact that Philomène had used the word vide instead of triste; “emptiness” was more apt, and more powerful, than “sadness.” The nagging feeling in the pit of her stomach acted up again; it had been coming and going for two weeks, and she had told no one about it. It came at the oddest times, usually happy moments like this one, walking in the morning sunshine with a neighbor. She said, “Mme Martin is partly right in what she says. About having a passion. I have a good job, but I’m not sure how much I like it.”

  “You wouldn’t call it a passion?” Philomène asked as she frowned at two high school students who passed by, both eating croissants while they walked. “Bon appétit, les filles!”

  “There’s nowhere for them to sit and eat,” Marine said to defend the girls. “We need more benches and parks downtown.” The pit gnawed at her stomach once more. It felt a little odd to be having this discussion with someone she didn’t know that well, instead of Antoine, or Sylvie, or her parents. But perhaps Philomène might be the best person to talk to. She continued. “No, it’s not a passion. It used to be. But I do have a hobby that I love.”

  “And what’s that?” Philomène asked. She knew that Marine Bonnet was very educated and cultured, and that her husband was as well. She hoped she would understand Professor Bonnet’s reply and that it wouldn’t be something too odd.

  “Writing,” Marine said.

  “But you have to do that as a professor, don’t you?” Philomène picked up her stride, happy to have provided a response.

  “Yes, but I don’t want to write law articles anymore. I’d like to write about lives.”

  “Lives of famous people?” Philomène couldn’t imagine Marine Bonnet writing about movie stars or soccer players.

  “Yes, I’d like to be a biographer. I’ve started researching the lives of Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre. I’d like to write about their relationship.”

  Philomène Joubert stopped in the middle of the sidewalk. She whistled and then said, “Do you want to sell a book on the bedroom life of those two? No one would buy it, Mme Verlaque! What smut!”

  “Perhaps it wasn’t as smutty as all that,” Marine said.

  “Tsk tsk,” Philomène answered, shaking her finger. “With her students,” she whispered, leaning into Marine. “Her female students.”

  Marine tried not to cringe. As much as she admired the couple’s work ethic and open relationship (it worked for them, but never would for her), the fact that Simone de Beauvoir had slept with her students, be they male or female, appalled her. But perhaps making a moral pronouncement wasn’t up to her; all she could do was to research and read as much as she could and then lay out the facts for her readers. Wasn’t that the biographer’s job? Even her beloved Montaigne admitted that he didn’t know all the answers: he watched, questioned, and wrote, often ending his sentences with “though I don’t know.” The problem was, Marine Bonnet wanted to know. Admitting bewilderment went against her nature. It was one of the reasons why Antoine Verlaque was so good for her: he helped her to slow down, to be less perfect, to relax.

  • • •

  Bear Valets was running down the rue Thiers, his arms taut and extended from carrying two bags of various sizes and kinds of artichokes, when he saw the women ahead of him, strolling and chatting. He slowed down and stopped; then, putting one of the heavy bags down, he looked at his watch. It was almost 9:00 a.m. He picked the artichokes back up and walked on, watching them. The tall, younger woman was a client he was particularly fond of. He didn’t know her name, but she came to his restaurant with a guy with a broken nose, who, despite his lack of classic good looks, intrigued Bear: He was at once authoritative and serious (especially when studying the wine menu, full of Italian stars), but when he looked across the table at her, he was someone very much in love.

  Valets worked in an open kitchen—something he had first seen in London—and would watch his customers when he got the chance. After the last clients had finished their main course, Bear made the rounds of the small dining room: He had spoken to this couple more than once and had noted their bright gold wedding bands. She played with hers, as if still getting used to it; his looked like it had been on his hand forever. They had lots of questions about the food and, like everyone else, asked how he, a young French cook, had acquired the name Bear. “I moved to England after high school and my mates couldn’t pronounce Sigisbert,” he usually replied. “So I’ve been Bear ever since.”

  And he did have a bearlike quality to him, both Marine and Verlaque had commented while strolling back to Marine’s apartment. The
chef was short, with a thick build, a head of coarse, curly black hair, and sideburns that he grew intentionally long, trimming each end into a long, thin point that came to within about a half-inch of his wide smile. Antoine Verlaque took an instant liking to him.

  Bear Valets, born and raised in Aix, had graduated from high school with an 18,5 Bac score in general sciences and, instead of applying to a French medical or pharmacy school, left France for a full scholarship to study biology at University College London. He had always enjoyed his English classes in high school and had spent summers with families in Wales, Wyoming, and Yorkshire, perfecting the language. He swam through his first year of studies, but halfway through his second year the recession hit and his father lost his job as the head of a small French pharmaceutical company. Bear tried stretching his scholarship money as much as he could, but it wasn’t enough to live in central London or to pay for train trips back home. “Do what I do,” a brilliant Indian friend in his dorm had told him. “Get a part-time restaurant job.”

  Bear realized why he was so intrigued by this customer and why he was making himself late at the restaurant by slowly following her down the rue Thiers: She reminded him of Jane. Jane Clark had been his inspirational boss at Cavolo Nero, a chic restaurant on the banks of the Thames. He had passed it on the bus, saw its name and the bright blue awnings that covered the big windows in what had once been a factory, rang the bus’s stop bell, ran off the bus, and marched into the restaurant at 5:30 p.m., a folded CV in his back pocket. Jane and Judith were standing at the bar, drinking cups of strong espresso and going over the evening’s menu with a pencil and an eraser. He recognized them from a Guardian article he had read: Jane and her business partner, Judith Hodges, were the only female chefs duo in London, and were vanguards, putting rustic Italian cuisine, the food of Jane’s Italian mother-in-law, back on the city’s once-stuffy, old-fashioned, men’s-club-inspired menus. Bear Valets pretended to study his cell phone as he listened to their conversation.

  “We’ll use the Capri arugula in the artichoke salad. Do we have enough?” Jane had asked.

  “Yes,” Judith had replied. “Just.” Where Jane was tall and slim, with curly auburn hair, Judith was short with spiky black hair and olive skin.

  That day’s lunch menu was sitting on the white marble counter. Bear put his phone away and read the one-page menu in fine detail. It was like taking a trip to Italy, something he and his family had done numerous times. The ridged zucchini for the soup came from a walled garden in Suffolk; the linguine with mussels was made with a rare wine from Liguria called Pigato; the pan-fried organic chicken was stuffed with mascarpone and rosemary. He thought mascarpone was a thick cream cheese, but he wasn’t certain.

  “Can we help you, young man?” Judith asked, setting down her white espresso cup.

  The room smelled of herbs and olive oil, and there was a clatter and laughter coming from the kitchen. The view out the back windows, which he hadn’t seen from the road, was of a garden and the rushing, churning Thames, which he knew flowed in both directions, being tidal.

  “I’d like to work here,” Bear blurted out. “Anything.” He approached them, shaking their hands and pulling out the CV, then handing it to, he decided, the nicer of the two, Jane Clark. Jane quietly read it while Judith looked at Bear with a raised eyebrow. “Have you worked in a restaurant before?” she asked.

  “No,” Jane answered before Bear could.

  “I’m a student at UCL,” Bear said, his voice breaking. “I’m French, and got eighteen point five on the Bac. In science.”

  “Nobody gets that kind of grade on the French Bac,” Judith replied. “Even I know that.”

  Jane pointed to Bear’s CV.

  “My dad lost his job,” Bear went on, trying to look into Jane’s sympathetic green eyes. “I need the money. I’m a good worker, I love Italian food, and I’ll do anything.”

  He thought he saw a smirk forming at the corners of Judith’s mouth, but Jane put her hand on her colleague’s shoulder. “Can you give us a second . . . ? How do you pronounce your name?”

  “See-jeez-bear. But everyone at school calls me Bear.”

  “Bear it is,” Judith said. The women left the bar and walked into the kitchen together. It was partly open and he could see them speaking, while the kitchen staff, young, and most of them very good-looking, began pulling vegetables out of crates or cutting herbs. He saw Judith hold her hands up, then go speak to a young man who was doing something to a fish; Bear couldn’t quite make out what. Jane came back out into the bar and smiled. “Can you work tonight? We’re short one person. I was going to call my husband and get him to come down.” She pointed to the ceiling. “He has his architecture practice upstairs.”

  Bear smiled widely. He liked her humor, as he knew of the famous, very famous, architect upstairs; that, too, had been in the newspaper article. “Yes, I can.”

  “You can bus tables,” Jane answered. “Jamie over there—the guy with the messy blond hair—will show you the ropes. We do things unconventionally here; the waitstaff often helps in the kitchen. Are you in for that?”

  “Sì!” said Bear, grinning.

  “Okay, great,” Jane answered. “Do you have any questions before Jamie finds you an apron that fits?”

  Bear bit his upper lip, deciding not to ask if everyone who worked at the restaurant had a first name that began with J. He asked instead, “What’s a cavolo nero?”

  Chapter Three

  The Dinner Party

  M arine wore a short white dress, fitted in the bust with a puffy and multilayered skirt falling to just above the knees. It was, Verlaque thought he remembered, made out of a fabric called dotted swiss. Much to his disappointment, Marine had not taken up his offer for a shopping spree in Paris or Rome but had bought the dress on sale on the Internet. It had a scoop neck and short sleeves that showed off her arms—thin, slightly tanned, and with thousands of freckles. He lifted the album to just below his nose and looked at his wife. She was holding a small bouquet of pink and white peonies, which they had bought just after crossing the border, at a roadside stand beside a gas station. Peonies were in season and Marine had forgotten to buy the flowers in Aix. They had cost fifteen euros, and she had snipped off the bottom of their stalks using a picnic knife that Verlaque kept in the glove compartment and then tied them together with one of her elastic hair bands. Once at the hotel, she stuck the flowers in the bathroom sink.

  He turned a page in the thick white album—a gift from Sylvie—and took a puff of his Bolivar Super Corona. Sylvie, a renowned photographer, had suggested her best student, Régis, as the wedding photographer. Sylvie wanted to relax and enjoy the party, and she knew that she could follow Régis around, too, suggesting photo opportunities. They couldn’t very well ask Sylvie to take the photos anyway. It would have been like asking a three-star Michelin chef to make hot dogs, mused Verlaque. And Régis had done well, mixing black-and-white photos with color and portraits with group shots, then stills: a silver bowl full of local cherries; a lone champagne glass sitting on a low stone wall, the sparkling sea below; Marine laughing, caught by Régis as she quickly reapplied her lipstick.

  His father looked good. Tall and thin—so unlike Antoine. Rebecca smiled, her hand slipped through the elder Verlaque’s arm. They looked happy, and much like they had been a couple for decades, not months. Rebecca Schultz was an art historian—a Cézanne specialist from Yale—whom Verlaque had met a few cases back: Schultz had helped (and got in the way of) the Aix police determining the authenticity of a nineteenth-century portrait, one that appeared to be a Cézanne. The case had taken them to Paris, and when Rebecca was followed by a menacing motorcyclist, Verlaque had put her into the one safe Parisian house he knew—his parent’s—not ever imagining that his father and the art historian would fall in love. At the time his mother had been in a hospice, suffering from anorexia, and had since died.

  He l
ooked more closely at the photograph and saw something he hadn’t seen the first time around: On the right, a few meters behind the couple, stood Marine’s mother, arms crossed, frowning. Verlaque laughed out loud. He looked at Florence Bonnet’s expression. Could her disapproval stem from the fact that Rebecca was thirty years younger than his father? Or that they had fallen in love while his mother was still alive? Or that Rebecca Schultz was an African American who had been adopted by a Jewish couple? Verlaque took a long puff of his cigar. Was Dr. Florence Bonnet anti-Semitic? Or racist? Not likely. Verlaque chose the most benign option and decided that Marine’s mother disapproved of the couple’s age difference. In fact, he did, too. Had Régis seen the disapproving theologian looking at the couple? Or had this excellent photograph been an accident? It was brilliantly composed, and Verlaque was still laughing when he heard the front door open and close. Marine came into the kitchen and then walked through the door, out onto the terrace. She leaned down and kissed his forehead. “What’s so funny?” she asked.

  Verlaque held up the book for her. “Look at your mother, behind Dad and Rebecca.”

  Marine rolled her eyes and laughed. “Maman isn’t much good at hiding what she thinks.”

  “Ah bon?” Verlaque asked with heavy sarcasm in his voice. “We should hire her at the Palais de Justice,” he added. “She’d scare the wits out of some of those young thugs.”

  “We could get Philomène Joubert to help, too,” Marine suggested. “She was working her magic at the market this morning.”

  Verlaque laughed even harder and set the book down, motioning for Marine to sit on his lap. She sat down, wrapping her arms around his neck and resting her head on his shoulder. He picked up the book and his cigar.

  “Antoine,” she said, “you can hardly smoke and look at wedding photographs with someone sitting on your lap!”

  “Sure I can. Look.” He turned a page and Marine wobbled back and forth, losing her balance.