The boss waited for a moment, then launched into a list.
‘Straps in the air? Cannon? Mats? Trapeze? Tightrope? Wild animals? Juggling?…’
They were like the beads on a big, heavy necklace. I didn’t interrupt him, sitting in silence, not trying to understand.
‘We need someone to cook,’ he said eventually, disorientated by my lack of reaction. ‘Can you cook?’
‘Yes,’ I cried.
If I could have fallen to my knees I would have done, but I didn’t have the strength or the nerve. I could also have kissed his hands or prostrated myself. I had the distinct impression he was saving my life, but I had to disguise this feeling, to keep it a secret for fear of ruining everything.
I squeezed the handle of my suitcase and, as I did, I really felt as if - like Nina or Volsie, the two contortionists - I could have balanced on one arm with my head down and my feet pointing skywards, creating a perfectly straight line like them, a line which they would have rippled slowly and imperceptibly so that, thanks to their orange costumes, they looked like two flames flickering in the wind.
The boss beckoned me to follow him and I discovered my new domain: a very small, very spherical caravan with five gas burners and a wooden table.
‘The tap’s outside,’ he told me.
‘What about washing-up?’
‘The children take care of that.’
At Santo Salto you were a child until you were twelve, not a day more or less. In winter I would look out of the porthole of my seashell and watch Georges and Rodrigo - four and five years old - running the plates under the icy water, splashing it over themselves. I worried about their health. They were never ill. ‘How do you think people managed before?’ I was asked if I commented on their methods. And this question, rather than dazing me, raised my spirits. People before, people now, people after, it was all the same. What had been could happen again, what had existed would never stop.
I sit down on the banquette, run my hand through my hair and wait for the pain to go away. It always goes away in the end. I look over towards the wall at the back of the kitchen, wanting to establish whether or not there actually is a magical blue door there. I know perfectly well I don’t have a store-room, and certainly don’t have a sumptuous back area that looks like a ballroom. I don’t know what I’m hoping for. Perhaps a mirage of Mrs Cohen, the frontier guard to that other space, to the world where wishes have performative power. Let there be a door and there was a door. The world of dreams exists just as powerfully as the real world. What’s the difference? I suddenly don’t know any more. In the world of dreams we don’t have anything to worry about, I tell myself. But that’s not right, in nightmares we have nothing but. In the real world actions have consequences; but that’s also true of dreams. No, I’m getting side-tracked. It’s more general than that, a question of continuity. In life everything leads on from everything else, tomorrow’s reconciliation from yesterday’s mistake, next month’s punishment from last month’s sin. Whereas in dreams, each slice of life is self-contained. They all start from scratch. Time doesn’t exist. We can escape the incurable, even death is dismissed. I’m staggered to think I spend part of my life in a world governed by laws different to those that organize real life. And all of a sudden I can’t tell them apart. Why should one necessarily take precedence over the other? Why is it always the same one that wins? Come back, frontier guard, my sideways glance seems to be begging. Come back and deliver me from this tedious here and now. But it’s impossible, I’m a prisoner of time.
Yesterday was a good day but I didn’t enjoy it. I now see that being a dog among dogs doesn’t suit me. I don’t want just anyone walking in here. I want them to know why they’re coming, for them to realize that everything is different here. I want to fulfil my dream, to see my vision through to its conclusion, and if success threatens that, then I’ll do away with success. Mind you, success is a big word. Yesterday - despite the crowds - I made only half the daily takings I need to pay back my loan. Just half, and I’m already exhausted, ill, good for nothing.
I have a cold shower in my sink, standing there screaming under the blast of water as it freezes and hardens me. I grit my teeth under that stream of arrows in the dark, and my skin puckers and swells, my muscles defending themselves, flexing and bracing, my curves curving out and my hollows hollowing in. I think of christenings, of course, and find it irritating how I always come back to childhood, never succeeding in shaking it off, constantly clinging to it like a pirate to his treasure map. What can I be looking for? Why would anyone turn a restaurant into a school canteen? Why serve sausages and chips when you know how to slow-cook a lamb shank for seven hours? I want to go back, try again, make amends. It’s maddening but I can’t help it. Now that I’ve had my brilliant ideas I have to execute them and if that means turning people away - turning away bank clerks to make way for little darlings from reception class - I’ll do it. I’m so sorry, I’ve got a booking for eighteen grated carrots and croque monsieur, I can’t take you. I think of this stupid victory: swapping €22 meals for picnics at a fraction of the price. Stand back, here comes the business queen, she’s going to teach you a completely new kind of capitalism and re-align your graphs of projected turnover. If anyone ever thought that the shortest route between two points was not, as has always been believed, a straight line, there’s no reason why I shouldn’t devise a system in which accumulation isn’t the only guarantee of profit. I’d like to think that here too, in my little domain, there’s something to invent.
I get my lists back out of the drawer where I’d tidied them away, and study my suggestions. The fruits of nocturnal drinking, gleaming in the cold grey light of dawn. Every word I read is like a coloured lantern shedding kindly light. I need to do a certain amount of research on the internet to find prices and addresses but I no longer have a computer: I sold it to Cash Converters for a mouthful of bread. I get dressed and go out into the crisp early morning to go to the market. The boulevard is deserted and market gardeners are just coming to unload. In the clandestine silence hovering before the first customers arrive, I buy kilos of vegetables, meat and fish. I don’t count or think about anything, letting my instincts guide me without referring to provisional menus. I move from one stall to another like a ghost. My shopping-trolley and backpack are now both full. Collapsing under all this produce, I strain my muscles like a weight-lifter to make it home. As I reach the metal shutter the sun peeps up between two buildings and draws a golden triangle on the metal. I drop my bag, let go of the trolley and breathe. It’s eight o’clock and all the shopping’s done. I’m ahead of myself. I’ll have time to nip to the local internet café to resolve a few of my enigmas.
‘Can I help you?’ a voice asks behind me, startling me. ‘Can I help you?’ it says again.
This is how angels appear to us, dropping from the sky without a sound to say those absurd words we so long to hear. I burst out laughing, just as Sarah did the day the angel announced that, even though she was ninety-nine years old, she would soon bear a son. I feel old and spent too. Who could possibly help me and how?
The young man comes over and holds out a hand towards my bag. He is tall and very slim, wearing flared blue-and-white striped trousers. He is knock-kneed and stands leaning to one side as if trying to get through a doorway too low for him. His torso doesn’t fit onto his hips properly and his head is off at a strange angle. My eyesight isn’t right.
‘Are you not feeling well?’ he asks me.
‘Yes, yes, I’ll be fine. It was all a bit too heavy, I think.’
‘If you open up for me,’ he says, ‘I could take your purchases in.’
This boy seems to talk like an old man. The only person I’ve ever heard use the word purchases for shopping was my grandfather; he always wore a suit and hat, and never went out without his shopping bag. I wonder whether I too have words in my vocabulary that betray something not quite mastered, something unknown, a truth I can’t grasp. I would never notice the
m myself, in the same way as I will never know my own profile or my back - parts of myself that are familiar to others but not to me.
The young man who talks like a pensioner is called Ben. Simone and Hannah told him to come and see me.
‘Simone and Hannah?’ I ask.
I can’t think who he means.
‘Simone and Hannah,’ he says again. ‘They told me you needed someone.’
‘Are you looking for work?’
We’re sitting inside Chez moi and the sun is spilling great bucketfuls of light onto the tables.
He doesn’t answer.
‘I can’t afford to take anyone on,’ I tell him, ‘I’m so sorry.’
He doesn’t respond to this but gets up and starts putting the shopping away in the fridge. He moves so gently. He kneels down, gets back up, bends and twists, picks up and puts down… all gracefully, even though he looks like a badly-put-together puppet.
‘Stop it,’ I tell him. ‘I’ve just said I haven’t got any money. Your friends didn’t understand. They don’t know. They’ve no idea of my circumstances.’
‘They told me you needed someone,’ he says again.
I can’t say anything in response to this: it’s the truth.
I watch Ben moving about my kitchen as if he knows it by heart. He puts the food away in exactly the right place, locates the coldest parts of the fridge and keeps the more temperate areas for fragile produce. When he has finished, he slides the shopping-trolley under the counter, folds up my backpack and bundles it inside the trolley, then picks up a sponge and wipes down the draining-board.
‘Are you a waiter?’ I ask.
Without a word he takes four plates from the cupboard, lays them along his right forearm, his wrist, the pad of his thumb and the rest of his hand, then with the tips of his fingers on his left hand he picks up two long dishes - and I know how heavy they are, problematically heavy - and slips them into a balanced position between his bent elbow and flattened wrist. His hand, which is now free again, picks up two wine glasses. Revolving on his own axis, he whirls from one table to the next, spinning plates, bringing them up over his head and back down to chest height or hiding them behind his back. I tense myself in anticipation of the smash. He looks so clumsy, weedy and misshapen. At the end of this ballet, he puts one plate down on each table and one dish at each end of the counter and then throws the glasses in the air, watches them describe a sort of Catherine wheel through the red morning sunlight and catches them at the last moment. He slips one into my hand and clinks it with the other.
I bury my head in my crossed arms. I try, in my mind, to send him away. I begged the frontier guard a bit too much. Mrs Cohen has sent me the waiter of my dreams, the two worlds have collided. I’m hallucinating. A little snatch of a dream, in the shape of a giant Pinocchio, has worked its way into my everyday existence. It’s just that I’m so tired, I tell myself. If I concentrate he’ll go away. I close my eyes tight and open them again.
Ben is still there.
He’s annoying.
His smile is annoying.
His silence is annoying.
But I can’t afford the luxury of coping without him. If he really does exist he will work for me, starting right now.
‘I’ve got to go to the internet café,’ I tell him. ‘Could you peel and grate the carrots? The food-processor is in the bottom right-hand corner of the cupboard. If you finish before I get back, wash the lettuce and put the Gruyère in some milk to soak. Take the butter out to soften.’
I don’t even need to say he’s hired: he’s got things to do already.
‘I’ll be back as soon as I can.’
‘Take your time,’ he advises amiably.
‘How long can you stay?’
He shrugs.
Incredible, I think as I breeze through the gilded chill of morning, I’ve got a slave! A huge smile breaks my face in two.
No, no! I’m so naïve. He’ll rob the till. I’ve left him on his own, he’s got the keys. He’ll take the business account cheque-book. He’ll take the shopping. The paradise of childhood, the paradise of youth… paradise corrupted. They’re all delinquents, the young these days. Rotten through and through, no respect for anything. They’ll take everything from us, the bastards. They hate us, they resent us for confiscating wealth and not giving way to them. They’ve got the vigour we’ve lost and the audacity we’re so afraid of. They’re having their revenge. This is a network. Simone and Hannah were just scouts, watching me and passing the information on to Ben. He’s making the most of the fact that I’m not there to ransack my poor little restaurant.
There we are, don’t worry, I’m back in the real world. The real world is where things go really badly but follow on from each other perfectly. Dreams, on the other hand, are when everything goes very well, but there’s no connection. All the same, I’m still smiling. I couldn’t give a damn. He can take what he wants. There’s nothing in the till and my cheques will all bounce. I don’t believe in angels, but I’m no more afraid of the devil. Let him rob me. I’m happy to be the victim of this scheme.
The internet café smells of cigarettes. Their coffee is filthy, served in ugly chunky cups. The sugar’s damp and the spoon suspect. Luckily I’m not as persnickety as some of my new acquaintances. The invidious draft from under the door freezes my feet and it’s not long before I’m shivering. But nothing can stop me, not the bland bitterness of the coffee, nor the meagre comforts on offer here. I came to surf and I have every intention of being carried along on this wave. I spend some time on the local authority’s sprawling site, explore sporting activities and adult evening classes, and I reinvent a life for myself in which I spend my evenings learning Russian, chi kong and the art of engraving. I make a note of school meal prices and, while I’m at it, find information about nutritional values. The dieticians’ recommendations make me quite dizzy - our diet seems to have become our only ideology. It’s terrible.
To cheer myself up, I drift over to the virtual islands of various caterers. I’m fascinated by their prices and the names they use. Everything is so detailed, so luxurious. This isn’t just cooking, it’s alchemy. It’s not just money, it’s a budget. I see a lavish procession of frothy strawberry mousses, strips of smoked eel, bundles of mixed seaweed and mushrooms, exquisite spiced biscuits and specialist honeys. The photographs show pyramids, three-arched bridges, palaces with several floors and balconies and terraces - works of art for the delectation of the mouth. I admire a Golden Gate Bridge made of nougatine, an Eiffel tower of profiteroles and a Taj Mahal in meringue. I’m offered a complete meal for €100 a head; it consists of bevies of dainty mouthfuls laid out in rows on a white table-cloth. They are reminiscent of the improbable hats populating the grandstand of an English racecourse at the end of the nineteenth century. In my head I draw in the silhouette of a little woman beneath each ridiculous headdress. Your wide-brimmed sturgeon-and-black-radish creation is most becoming, Lady Winchester. I simply love your salmon-and-samphire number, my dear. The petits fours have started up a conversation. I listen to them, holding off till the last possible moment the next stage when I turn to the yellow pages where I either will or will not find Ali Slimane.
I feel as if my salvation depends on this search. If I find him, I will be saved; if he doesn’t appear, I’m damned.
After arranging the marriage of a lord in a top hat of truffles in champagne to a lady in a beret of cucumber and mullet in aspic, I leave Ascot for the Paris region. I abandon the grandstand perfumed with wild lemon and draped in chiffon to roll in the stubble fields of the Beauce and Brie plains. Slimane. Did you mean Ben Slimane? Widen your search to neighbouring areas. I drift from the Oise to Aisne, go all the way to Aube, get lost in Loiret and go back to Seine-et-Marne. I search by profession, drop the first name. He finally appears in the Eure region: Ali Slimane, Chemin du Vavasseur, 27600 Monsigny-en-Vexin. Alone at the top of a hill, I can see him. His dark eyelids gleaming above his pained eyes, the profusion of lashes
like a chestnut husk. With a cigarette in the corner of his mouth, he surveys his autumnal work: the maize that swelled the ribcage of the field right up to the sky has been harvested, the land offers itself up naked once more, dotted with lengths of dry beige hosepipe. The sky can drop right back onto it and lie down, the eiderdown of ears has gone. Mr Slimane gets home to the farm late. He doesn’t know I’m going to call him. He doesn’t remember me. Never thinks of me. What shall I say? How will he recognize me? I’m the cook from the circus. Then he’ll know.
When I get home everything is organized, my orders have been carried out and the chores done. Ben is sitting on the moleskin banquette, straight-backed and with his head at an odd angle like a flamingo. He’s waiting for me. He hasn’t destroyed anything, he hasn’t ransacked or pillaged, he’s obeyed me.
‘Did it go well?’ he asks me.
‘Yes. I found what I was looking for. How about you?’
Ben does not reply. He leans his head a little further. I’m worried he’ll break his neck.
I explain that we’re going to have a double menu. He doesn’t understand.
‘We’re going to do food for adults and food for children.’
‘Like at the Hippopotamus?’ he asks.
This time I’m the one who doesn’t understand. He explains what he means.
‘You want to do a children’s menu? That’s what it’s called, a children’s menu. Ham and chips or fresh burgers. I didn’t like that sort of thing when I was little. I wanted to have what my parents were eating.’
Chez Moi Page 8