The Curse of La Fontaine

by M. L. Longworth

Marine laughed. “Or is one word away from finishing the Le Monde crossword but is stuck.”

  “Is it work?”

  “Not directly,” she said, taking a breath before she continued. “I sent my manuscript in.”

  “You’re finished?” he asked, drawing away from her for a second so that he could look at her face.

  Marine nodded.

  “That’s amazing news! I’m so proud of you. You didn’t tell me you had finished it!”

  “Oh,” Marine said, shrugging.

  “Your modesty shrug.”

  She smiled. “I finished it weeks ago but was terrified to send it to a publisher.”

  “I understand that.”

  “You do?”

  Verlaque said, “Absolutely. You’ve put so much time into this project—”

  “At the expense of my teaching job.”

  “The students probably didn’t even notice. What are you worried about? That the manuscript will be rejected?”

  Marine paused before answering. “Not exactly,” she replied. “I’m worried about what I’ll do when it does get accepted.”

  “So much for Mme Modesty. I’m joking.”

  “Because I think it’s good,” Marine said, standing up and beginning to pace the room. “It’s original, and some will even think it’s shocking.”

  Verlaque beamed, happy to see his wife back, one hundred percent. He was also happy to see her walking around in the room in her bra and underwear. “So what’s the problem?”

  “That it will get published, and everyone will hate it. You. Sylvie. My parents and colleagues. The critics.”

  He wanted to tell her that she was jumping the gun a bit but didn’t. They were her fears, and so were legitimate. “Somebody won’t like it,” he said. “That’s only normal, and you’ll have to be prepared for that.”

  Marine began picking perfume bottles off her dresser and moving them around. “I once had a friend who said that Sartre and Beauvoir lied to each other and everyone else,” she said, “and my friend was right, too. Despite their great efforts at not being bourgeois, that’s exactly the kind of life they were living . . . Sartre was a classic philanderer straight out of Molière and Beauvoir put up with it—”

  Verlaque said, “Like so many before her.”

  Marine turned around. “Exactly. What if readers hate the book for that reason? How can I make their lives sound . . . worthy? Or even admirable?”

  “You may not be able to do that,” Verlaque said. “You’re the biographer, not the judge.” He smiled; his joke hadn’t been intentional. “Just give your readers the facts and make it an enjoyable read.”

  Chapter Four

  Bear’s Problems Begin

  Y esterday’s artichoke soup had been a hit, and he made it again today. Bear had used Jane and Judith’s simple recipe, which called for large globe artichokes, Parmesan, and lemon, and served it with a garlic-rubbed crostini on top. To the crostini Bear added chopped sun-dried tomatoes. “It’s kind of cheating,” his apprentice, Florian Miotto said, watching Bear prepare the soup. “Anything tastes good with a sun-dried tomato crostini.”

  “Give the people what they want,” Bear said, smiling. “Why make fussy food when we all crave simplicity? But to do that, we have to use the best possible ingredients.” Bear knew that there was some truth in what Florian said. He had not gone through the rigorous French kitchen apprenticeship scheme, in which some people began as early as thirteen years of age. And Judith and Jane hadn’t, either. But they had been daring and imaginative, and their timing had been right: When they had started the restaurant, people were making lots of money in London and after a day in the City clients wanted to sit down to what was, basically, stylish comfort food with Italian names. Judith and Jane became successful restaurateurs and had been generous with their staff in passing on their wisdom: Jamie was now a superstar with his own chain of restaurants, and Hugh, another sous chef, had his own television show, cooking from his cottage in Dorset.

  When Bear finished his science degree at UCL, he joined the restaurant full-time. His parents thought that cooking was a passing phase and that their Sigisbert would come back to France and get a laboratory job. But when, after five years, Bear was still at Cavolo Nero, they began putting money aside for him to buy his own restaurant someday. (Bear’s father had found work again, at a pharmaceutical start-up, which went public after four years. He made a fortune.) And here I am, thought Bear, looking out the windows onto the back garden. Back home, in Aix. His parents gave him the money to buy a ground-floor apartment on the rue Mistral, with access to a shared garden. The upstairs apartment was available for rent, and he took it. A small but efficient stainless-steel kitchen was installed, and like at Cavolo Nero, it was open to the twenty-five-seat dining room. It was the first of its kind in Aix. His splurges were a tall, glass-front side-by-side Liebherr wine fridge and white Cararra marble for the tabletops. The chairs were mismatched—all old and wood—bought with the advice of his mother at garage sales and off leboncoin.fr.

  But it was the outside access that had sold Bear on the space: The garden was tiny, but if it was cleaned up and properly arranged, he could fit four or five tables there, with portable heaters in cool weather. A restaurant with a garden. It reminded him of that sloping garden at Cavolo Nero, where Jane and her assistants had planted herb and vegetable gardens that led down to the Thames. This garden was flat and didn’t have a mighty river, no, but it did have water: a historically listed fountain, carved by an anonymous mason in the late seventeenth century.

  “Your turn to clean the hood,” Bear told Florian. It had been one of Bear’s first jobs at Cavolo Nero, and he soon learned that everyone at the restaurant took a turn at climbing onto the range and scrubbing down the interior of the hood after every service, including the dining-room staff and Judith and Jane. Florian moaned, and Mamadou, their dishwasher, grinned. He had done it the day before.

  Florian hopped up on the stove and stuck his head inside the hood, talking as he cleaned. “This is the icing on the cake,” he called down, his voice echoing off the stainless steel. “When you sign up to become a cook, you know you’re a freak, like everyone else in the restaurant world.”

  “Speak for yourself,” Bear mumbled.

  Florian went on, “You know that while all your friends are off having fun on the weekend and traveling around Europe during the holidays, you’ll be working.”

  Bear nodded. “Don’t forget evenings.”

  “You can burn yourself, cut yourself, and freeze your ass off walking into cold rooms,” Florian said. “You need the strength of a rugby player to carry hundred-quart stockpots or half a cow, then the finesse of a ballerina to move around your busy coworkers in a kitchen that’s smaller than your mom’s.”

  Bear grinned and winked at Mamadou, who had set down his dish towel to listen.

  “And you need fine motor control in your hands,” Bear added, “when you’re doing the final plate presentation, arranging flower petals or minuscule pieces of thyme with friggin’ tweezers—”

  “And all the tools you need!” Florian said, pausing to stick his head out of the hood for a second. “Your own set of ridiculously expensive Japanese knives, when all your buddies are buying cars or motorcycles . . .”

  “Pots and pans, fancy stemware,” Mamadou pitched in.

  “Fine Italian cutlery,” Bear said, having just bought some, “and you need to mortgage your ass off, if you’re lucky enough to buy a place, and then you hope you’ve chosen a good neighborhood, the right street that’s busy enough—” He paused and thought of his current difficulties with his terrace project. Florian and Mamadou saw their boss’s face fall, so they got back to work.

  Bear took off his apron and carefully folded it, even though it would be washed and he’d put on a clean one this evening. He left the kitchen and walked out into the garden.
It had been abandoned, and it showed. The previous owner, Béatrice Germain, had lived there on her own for more than fifty years. She had no children and had never married, but had cats. The crazy old woman with cats, thought Bear. What a cliché. But God bless her. After she died, the apartment, and the garden, were left abandoned while her nieces and nephews argued over the succession. After four years of that Bear and his father finally signed the contract for the purchase, and it took another two years to renovate the interior and get approval to open a restaurant in Aix’s chic Mazarin neighborhood. Opening night had been on the first weekend of September, and Judith and her husband had flown in from London. Jane was in New York—her husband had just renovated a wing of an uptown museum, and they were there for its opening—but she sent two dozen roses and a crate of Pol Roger champagne. The restaurant—called La Fontaine—was packed that night and two years later was still busy.

  Bear looked around. He had quickly cleaned the garden for the opening and hadn’t had time to touch it since. The fountain gurgled away; the water came from a source deep below ground and was drinkable and good. It had just been tested by a city worker and had passed with flying colors.

  Mamadou came out and stood beside Bear. After a few moments of silence the dishwasher said, “You could plant herbs out here.”

  Bear nodded and smiled. “That would be perfect. Basil, rosemary, thyme, oregano, marjoram. Around an olive tree.”

  “I dreamed of olive trees before coming here,” Mamadou said. He pounded the earth with his beat-up running shoe. “But this earth, Chef, it’s bad. So bad. It’s drier than in Togo.”

  “I know,” Bear said. “I’ll need to dig up this garden and start over. Bring in new earth and pave the bits where the tables will be.”

  “I’ll help you, Chef,” Mamadou said.

  “Thank you! I’ll pay you, of course,” Bear said. “One of our clients is a stone mason and he suggested we lay the terrace with those colorful cement tiles they used in the nineteenth century. He offered to do it for a few free meals.”

  “The barter system,” Mamadou suggested.

  “Exactly.”

  “I prefer cash.”

  Bear laughed and punched Mamadou in the shoulder. In the April sunshine Mamadou’s scar was even more pronounced. Usually Bear ignored it, but now, as Mamadou was looking around the courtyard, the chef took in the scar: It ran from the bottom corner of his employee’s right eye, down across his cheek, where it veered off toward his ear, and then came back, following his jaw line, finally stopping at the corner of the mouth. Bear looked up at the sky, imagining an olive tree covered in hundreds of tiny blossoms, when loud voices coming from the dining room caused both men to turn around. La Fontaine’s waiter and front-house man, Jacques Oller, quickly walked into the garden.

  “What is it?” Bear asked, seeing the look of worry on Oller’s face. Jacques Oller had come to La Fontaine after spending more than fifteen years working at a two-star Michelin restaurant north of the city. There, he had worked tirelessly and had helped the restaurant go from an unknown bistro to an elegant Michelin-starred restaurant. But fifteen years had been too much on his body; his right hip would soon need replacing, and the normally suave and coolheaded maître’d had become a nervous wreck. His doctor put him on disability and ordered him to stop working in the restaurant business or to find a much-smaller one. He had heard about Sigisbert Valets through colleagues and called him up, asking for an interview. Oller’s knowledge of the business was outstanding, and in his career he had developed a passion for wine, especially Italian ones. “Follow your gut,” Jane had once advised Bear. And so he did. Bear hired Oller that day, agreeing to give Oller, as he would with his other employees, a share of the profits.

  Bear could see a tall, thin man in his sixties standing in the restaurant. Sensing that something was wrong, Oller and Mamadou stayed in the garden while Bear walked into the restaurant. He opened his mouth to speak but was cut off. “I’m your neighbor,” the man said, holding out a long, thin arm. “Thomas Roche.”

  Bear nodded and shook his hand, noting to himself that he had more than one neighbor. He had dozens. But this man seemed to think he was the only one. If Jane had taught Bear how to trust his instincts—which herbs worked best with which pastas and soups; how to check if the fishmonger’s fish was fresh, the flesh rigid when poked with a finger, the skin shiny and firm, the scales intact, the gills a deep red color and the eyes clear, not cloudy—it was Judith who gave him his business savvy and confidence. When he turned in his resignation at Cavolo Nero, Judith had poured two glasses of her favorite grappa, from Piedmont, flavored with chamomile. “Be as kind and innovative as Jane,” she said, throwing back the grappa. “But be a bitch, too, when you have to be.”

  “Sigisbert Valets,” Bear said, unsmiling. He saw Roche twitch slightly; Bear’s posh medieval name usually surprised those who stared too long at the tattoos on his forearms.

  “May we have a few words?” Roche asked.

  “I can guess why you’re here,” Bear said.

  “I have with me a petition,” Roche said, patting the manila envelope that was in his hand. “It’s been signed by seventy people so far, but I haven’t finished my rounds of the neighborhood yet.”

  “It’s about the garden, I assume.”

  “Nothing to do with the garden, young man. The terrace. A terrace with outdoor seating.”

  “When I was given the permit for the terrace”—Bear emphasized the word permit, Judith-style; he then smiled, Jane-style—“I promised the committee I would keep the seating to a maximum of five tables for two and never play music. The fountain will drown out any noise, and you may hear the chatter of people having fun, but we all hear that in this courtyard during the summer months.” If he had to, he’d bring up the fact that most of the owners of Mazarin apartments had illegally built balconies and terraces.

  “This is a copy of the petition for you,” Roche said. He took a few pieces of paper out of the envelope, handing them to Bear, but kept the envelope for himself.

  Now Bear smiled.

  “Next week I’m meeting with the historical committee of Aix. That fountain,” Roche said, pointing, “is listed—”

  “I know,” Bear cut in. “I’m very proud of it. And now I have to prepare for the dinner service. Goodbye, M. Roche.” He held his hand toward the dining room, signaling to his neighbor the way out.

  Roche left, giving Bear a wave of his hand.

  Bear turned on the espresso machine and sat down at one of the small marble-topped tables. He put his head in his hands. What would Roche and his cronies do? Sit down in front of his restaurant in protest? Perhaps. This was France, after all.

  Chapter Five

  L’Anchoïade

  G aëlle Dreyfus quickly crossed the Cours Mirabeau. She had closed her shop at 7:00 p.m. having had two customers that afternoon—one, a very amiable German tourist who fell in love with a rare, pale yellow porcelain set but who could in no way take it home on Ryanair. The second customer was a university student on vacation from Paris who had hemmed and hawed over buying a small linen tablecloth that morning and returned in the afternoon to buy it. Gaëlle took an immediate liking to the girl and offered a ten-percent student discount. “That’s so kind!” said the girl. “Every little bit helps!”

  “I agree,” Gaëlle said. “What are you studying?”

  “Art history at the Sorbonne.”

  “I’ll give you twenty percent, then,” Gaëlle announced. She kept her next thought to herself: You’ve chosen a real moneymaker. She was touched when the girl promised to take a photograph of the tablecloth in her Parisian studio and email it to Gaëlle. That was one of the reasons she had gotten into antiques: She had a deep respect, and knowledge, of le patrimoine, of course, but she also loved the idea of recycling objects, giving them new homes, new lives.

  Gaëlle looked at the time a
nd hurried on, quickly stopping to say hello to friends who were having an aperitif on Le Mazarin Café’s terrace. She gave the three of them the bise, apologizing that she couldn’t stop. As she called out “À bientôt” she almost ran headfirst into Antoine Verlaque, who was walking out of the tiny tobacco shop on the rue Clemenceau. “Bonsoir, M. Verlaque,” she said, reaching up to give him the bise.

  Verlaque kissed both her cheeks and said, “Good evening. And you must call me Antoine, please.”

  “Likewise,” she answered. “Please call me Gaëlle. Thank you so much for last evening. It was wonderful to get to know you, and the food and wine were fabulous.”

  “I’ll pass that on to Marine.”

  “I did send her a text message this morning,” she said. “I know she has classes today, so I didn’t want to call.”

  Verlaque smiled and nodded. A class act, he thought, not like Thomas Roche serving himself wine or his horrible “elle était impéccable!” racist wife. As a way of apologizing for his neighbors’ behavior he said, “We hope to repeat the evening sometime soon, with our neighbors on the second floor. They’re . . .”

  “Not racist bores?” Gaëlle suggested.

  Verlaque laughed and Gaëlle covered her mouth. She said, “I’m a bit of a loudmouth. Sorry. It was a lovely evening, and tell Marine she’s brave to have cut up all those artichokes! They still intimidate me, even after thirty years in Provence.”

  Verlaque smiled again. “I’ll tell her.”

  Gaëlle patted his shoulder and gestured to her wristwatch. “I have a meeting in five minutes! Gotta run!”

  Verlaque saluted and said goodbye, then took a cigar cutter out of his jacket pocket and snipped the end off a cigar. He began walking, going over in his head the dinner he had promised to make for Marine. It had been Emmeline’s—his English grandmother’s—favorite “cheating recipe,” using leftover lamb and potatoes, to which she would add tomato paste and water and a few tablespoons of Patak’s Vindaloo paste that she would bring back from London. Verlaque detested the globalization that seemed to be sweeping across the world, and especially in Europe, when it concerned food and wine, but he had been secretly relieved when he had found a jar of Patak’s in Monoprix’s cuisine du monde section. He had bought a Grand Cru Gewürztraminer from Alsace to accompany the curry, hoping the sweetness of the wine would marry well with the spices.