The reason the Letters to a Young Poet don’t feature on my shelves is that my husband’s name was Rainer and I don’t feel like having his name under my nose the whole time. My husband was called Rainer and that’s not insignificant in our relationship. It was Lina who first mentioned him to me. We were both at the Faculty of Arts, he the Faculty of Medicine. She had met him at a party. ‘Rainer?’ I asked her, ‘Is that really his name?’ - ‘Yes.’ - ‘Is he Austrian?’ - ‘I don’t know.’
An Austrian, I thought to myself. That’s exactly what I need. A boy who’s cold as an iceberg and quite mad, torn between German rigour and Balkan licentiousness. I pictured him as terribly obsessive and, in that, I wasn’t wrong. Fire beneath the ice, I liked to think. Without realizing it, I was drifting away from the truth. In Rainer there was no fire. Ice as far as the eye could see, inside, outside, a human ice field. ‘It’s because I’m reacting,’ he explained one day. ‘Reacting to what?’ - ‘To my origins.’ We were on our third date and I felt it was already too late to back out. Whatever he could have told me, we had both made our choices and our fates were sealed. Contrary to my beliefs, he had not grown up in Vienna, his parents hadn’t sung the Nazi anthem at the top of their lungs. He was born in Ventimillia to a father whose own father had been an Italian resistance fighter, and to a mother who was a Sardinian Communist. My parents-in-law - whom I hardly knew - were extremely friendly, happy people who enjoyed life and lived it to the full. He had long hair and hers was crew-cut. They smoked cannabis and earned their living by buying up ruins in Provence and selling them for a fortune once they had done them up. Emilia told me she had a good network of former Trotskyites who could afford them. ‘An inexhaustible supply! And as they’re buying from a former Commy they can do it with a clear conscience.’ ‘What about you?’ I asked her. ‘What, my conscience? That went up in flames more than twenty years ago. Good riddance!’
My parents-in-law died in a car crash on the dirt driveway to their Provençal farmhouse. It was a smooth, straight track. There was just one yew tree on the right-hand side. They aimed well. It was a week before our wedding.
‘I think they were against it,’ I told Rainer on the way to the cemetery.
‘What are you talking about? They really liked you.’
‘Not against me. Against the marriage. It was the institution that put them off.’
‘Do you think people would die for that? As far as you’re concerned, this is a political suicide then?’
I nodded.
‘They were high as kites. Completely out of it,’ Rainer cried. ‘Two hot-air balloons of shit.’
I thought of cancelling everything. Crossing out the shared future. I didn’t dare. As I put on my white dress, I thought white would always be the colour of mourning for me.
I do occasionally think things would have been different if my parents-in-law had lived. I miss them, even now. Emilia and Francesco, my husband’s parents, were good people. I sometimes saw a sparkle in Rainer that he owed entirely to them. A treasure of tenderness. Hugo was the only person who could make that nugget glow. He only had to come close to him - one word from his mouth, his hand held out, or even sitting on his knee nestled against his chest - and Rainer’s face would change completely. Seeing them together, father and son, the bear and his cub, was the most intolerable sight for me. It’s not true that I disappeared. It’s wrong to say I was rejected. It was me who left, voluntarily. I laid a bomb in my own family. I set fire to the house. That I was wrong is in no doubt. That there was any other possibility, I don’t think so. ‘Should the truth always be told?’ I’ll think about it another day. For now, I’m dwelling on the tricky question of self-defence.
I condemned myself to six years’ banishment. I can’t believe the courage I displayed by sending out fifty invitations after that period of silence and isolation. I can remember the precise emotion as I wrote out those once familiar addresses on the envelopes. I told myself we were drawing a line and picking up where we had left off. My notebook. My Bible. I still knew some of the telephone numbers by heart. Every street name, as I worked my way through them, prompted memories of supper parties and celebrations. I remembered the smell and feel of friends’ houses. Those that were tidy and the others, the ones that were always in pandemonium - we loved that word, ‘pandemonium’. At the time Paris, the whole city, felt to me like a dot-to-dot picture: I could hop from one house to the next. Those façades which appeared anonymous to my fellow citizens’ eyes harboured snug corners for me, tables to drink coffee at and armchairs to curl up in for long conversations. I remembered entry codes. That collection of numbers, a meaningless secret collection, meant I could brave the impassable frontiers of a well-guarded modern city. I adored my friends. I loved the feeling that, wherever I was, I was at home, expected, welcome. I wasn’t surprised that allegiances changed so quickly. People liked one kind of Myriam, and I had altered.
Aunt Emilienne has finished her meal. She was very keen to order the shortbread with figs and her jersey dress is now a constellation of crumbs. I come and sit next to her for a minute.
‘How’s your husband?’ she asks me.
‘Very well,’ I say without a moment’s hesitation.
‘And the little one?’
My throat tightens, but I still manage to reply.
‘Wonderful. He’s a big young man now.’
‘And his studies?’
I nod vigorously. My voice has disappeared. I pray my predictions are right. I picture Hugo with a bag slung across his chest, striding through the cold with his chin up, his head in the air, offering his face up to the kiss of the wind. Nothing that I say to my aunt is of any consequence. She will never try to confirm my version with that of another member of the family. It wouldn’t occur to her to wonder why she hasn’t seen my husband for so long - she can hardly remember his name - and she will have forgotten half of what I tell her by the time she gets home. I wallow in the security of talking to someone whose brain lacks the acuity of rational thinking.
‘Waiter!’ Aunt Emilienne cries as Ben passes within reach. ‘The bill please.’
‘Don’t worry,’ I tell her. ‘You’re my guest.’
‘You’re very kind,’ she compliments me. ‘It was good. I’ve had a lovely meal.’
She rubs her stomach.
‘I’m not hungry at all now,’ she adds.
I help her put her coat on and see her to the door of Chez moi. For a moment I stay rooted to the spot behind the window watching her cross the street. She walks like a goose, swaying from one leg to the other with every step, proudly wielding her huge belly like a wishbone. When she reaches the pavement opposite she turns to blow me a kiss. Ben has put his hand on my shoulder.
‘I’ve got some orders for this evening,’ he tells me. ‘We’ll manage.’
‘Do you think?’
He doesn’t bother replying but goes back to the kitchen to take care of the last few desserts.
Simone and Hannah are waiting for me at their table. They have put €8 in the bakelite saucer.
‘Well?’ Simone asks. ‘Have you thought about it?’
‘Should the truth always be told?’ her friend reminds me.
‘What do you think?’ I ask them.
They shrug.
‘You must have some idea, surely?’ I insist.
‘I spoke to someone who’s taking this year again,’ explains Hannah. ‘He told me that the classic response, the one that works every time is “Yes. No. But.” I can see how the first bit works: Yes, we must tell the truth because it’s wrong to lie, because if we expect a bit of honesty from others we have to be sincere ourselves, and all that. Then you do the “No”. So that’s for when the truth is problematic; it’s easy to imagine situations when the truth would do more harm than good. For example with someone who’s really ill, if you tell them they’re going to die, they get depressed and die… OK, they’re going to die either way but this would speed it up.’
I nod,
trying not to smile.
‘Very good,’ I say, ‘then what?’
‘That’s where I get bogged down,’ says Simone. ‘We’ve tried but we can’t find the “But”. Yes, we should always tell the truth. No, we shouldn’t always tell the truth. But, what? We’re completely stuck, Hannah and me. We just can’t see what to put after the “But”.’
I wave absentmindedly to say goodbye to some regulars who are leaving, chanting my name:
‘Bye, Myriam.’
‘See ya, Myriam.’
‘So long, Myriam.’
They know my name; but I’ve never actually told them what it is. Another of Ben’s manoeuvres. As he puts plates down on the table he whispers, ‘this is one of Myriam’s own recipes. Tell me what you think.’ Or, ‘Myriam recommends the rice pudding. On a cold day like this it’ll keep the angina at bay.’ He invents all sorts of nonsense to make me seem kind.
Simone and Hannah are growing impatient.
‘We’ll never be able to do this!’ they say, putting their heads in their hands.
‘Why don’t you start by asking what the truth actually is?’ I say.
They look at each other, dumbfounded.
‘I wouldn’t have a clue,’ I add quickly. ‘Your friend who did it last year is bound to be right but personally I’ve always been very wary of that word. The truth. It’s like beauty, isn’t it? It depends entirely on who’s looking at it.’
The girls sigh. They are disappointed.
I have a momentary flash of genius.
‘We’ll just have to ask Ben!’
I go over to the percolator and offer to take over from Ben for the coffees and bills.
‘In exchange you can help them with their homework.’
When I tell him the question his face lights up. He’s already written about the subject. He remembers his essay plan very clearly. He cites two invaluable authors whose names evoke age-old personal failures and are enough to make me shudder.
Sitting at the girls’ table with his knees together and feet apart, gesticulating with his long-fingered hands to emphasize his conviction, Ben lays out his argument. The girls take notes. Several pages are covered with black scrawl. Cigarettes are lit and left to burn, un-smoked. I hear the words ‘precepts’, ‘phenomena’, ‘enunciation’, ‘ascendancy’, ‘subjectivity’ and ‘objectivity’. Ben is juggling, as he did with my plates and glasses on the first day. His mum must be so proud of him, I think to myself. Except that she’s dead, I remember, looking at him. I wipe some saucers, singing to myself. The softest feeling begins to swell gently deep in my chest. I really do have the best waiter in Paris.
The orders for the evening are unbelievable. Ben talked me through them when the girls finally left, late, unkempt and emotional.
‘What do you mean unbelievable?’ he asks me when I tell him how surprised I am. ‘You did say we would do catering, didn’t you?’
There is a note of anxiety in his voice.
‘Yes, I did.’
‘Is there a problem?’
I read through the list again: Exotic menu for four, tapas for eight, giant salad for sixteen. I scrutinize the names of our clients: Laferte-Girardin, N’guyen, Elkaroui.
‘Who are these people?’ I ask, not recognizing a single name. ‘How did they know? And this one? What is it? Exotic menu. What do you think I should give them, palm hearts and bean sprouts?’
Ben looks at his feet.
‘Do these people really exist, Ben?’
I suspect something, this smacks of a hoax. This boy’s gentleness is suspect. Suspect too his versatility. Suspect his dedication. He wants to change the world, he told me. I agree the job needs doing but I’m afraid that this grand-scale project is only there to hide another, smaller one. Behind this Ideal with its capital ‘I’ so full of pride and arrogance lurks the obscure obsession for reparation. I know that vice well. If I were a psychiatrist I would call it bricklayer fever. The patient can’t bear a single day between building jobs, he has to be mixing mortar, trowel in hand, filling in gaps, consolidating, renovating. You could also call this pattern of behaviour the fairy complex: when confronted with a difficult situation or conflict, the subject waves his wand wildly, hoping to solve problems and heal wounds. Ben has always carried the burden of the child who does everything in his power to make his parents smile, to satisfy them and surprise them; he has carried it for so long, in fact, that he has built up dangerous reserves of imagination. He wants to cheer me up, help me forget the harassment from the bank and the threatening letters; he’d like to ease my backache and, while he’s at it, fill in the long crease at the corner of my mouth.
I can see exactly what he’s up to. He’s invented customers. What could be easier? He’s the one who takes the orders and makes the deliveries: he would just have to off-load the food at the local soup kitchen (Ben’s not the type to throw it away) and settle the bill with his own money. He’s not rich, he told me, but I don’t believe him. His clothes are beautiful, clean and new. I can still remember that elegance comes at a price. Ben is sacrificing himself for me. It’s a sort of reverse-embezzlement, misusing his personal funds.
I’m waiting for his confession. He’s still staring at the ground.
‘Ben,’ I say, ‘I don’t need help. I’m coping. It may not be going as quickly as you’d like, but I’m getting there, I promise you.’
I say this very gently so as not to offend him. I take the list of orders and tear it up. Ben watches, horrified.
‘What the hell am I going to tell them now, all those people?’
‘Which people, Ben?’
‘Them,’ he says, pointing at the pieces of paper.
A flicker of doubt insinuates itself into me. ‘Do you know them?’
‘No,’ he says.
‘Well, where are they from then?’
‘From the site.’
‘What site?’
‘Chez moi’s internet site.’
‘Have we got an internet site?’ I ask, as if that sort of thing could spring up spontaneously like warts on the backs of fingers or brambles in a garden.
Ben nods. He has set up a system for ordering food on-line. He explains that we’ve been very lucky because the name hadn’t been registered. According to him, the site is still fairly rudimentary. The illustrations are restricted to pictures he took with his mobile. The page layout is a bit sloppy but it works. And the proof is we already have three orders when we’ve only been on-line twenty-four hours. I stick the torn list back together, to reconstitute our virtual customers’ names.
‘Are you angry?’ Ben asks.
‘What do you think?’
We laugh. I congratulate him for this initiative which has propelled us on our way to a fortune and to being utterly up-to-the-minute.
‘How did you decide on the menus?’
‘I looked at what the competition was offering. Usually it’s aimed at a very specific market and too expensive. Ghettos, if you like. There are the Italians, the Asians, the Americans, the Japanese. The menus look varied but they’re not really, and the desserts are depressing. Or it costs a fortune. I also took another gamble, but a more risky one.’
He hesitates. I coax him.
‘I haven’t got my driving licence,’ he says. ‘I don’t have a bike or a moped; so the deliveries were going to be a bit of a problem. Specially as I’m going to have to work in the kitchen to give you a hand, well, if you want me to. So I explained on the site that we offered a local catering service and people had to come and pick their orders up themselves. I puffed this up saying it was reflected in the price and…’
Ben hesitates once more. I coax him again, I want to know the end of our story.
‘… I stressed what a pleasure it would be for our dear customers to meet our chef - Myriam. I wrote stuff about you that…’
‘That wasn’t true?’
‘No, it was true, it would just make people want to meet you.’
I don’t dare ask hi
m to recite the patter he has put together to describe my wonderful self.
‘Well, then?’
‘Well, it seems to be working, doesn’t it?’ he says waving at the Sellotaped list in my hand.
‘What have we got to make?’
‘An exotic menu, a giant salad and some tapas.’
I try to understand the concept, because that’s what people pompously call a restaurant’s style these days. Ben is putting another of his gambles between my hands. According to him, people don’t like choosing any more. They have been asked their opinion too often. This is a worrying kind of weariness because it leaves them easy prey to rampant dictatorship. They don’t want to make decisions any more so we make decisions for them; we are the good tyrants of dining, the enlightened dictators of culinary pleasure. Ben has drawn up a posy of deliberately vague offerings which I now have to interpret. Our menu has four formulae: Exotic, Tapas, Giant Salad and Traditional.
‘Are you sure about the Traditional?’
‘No one will ask for it. It’s a decoy. You have to have the word ‘Traditional’. But it’s just a word. It’s reassuring.’
I sit down at a table, pencil in hand, while Ben clears the other tables. In my head I establish the crossroads between pleasure quotients, preparation times and profitability. Here again I’m banking on my reflex responses. I have to delve deep into myself, not in the cooking I’ve learned, but the cooking that has been transmitted to me, the things I could do before I knew the alphabet, dishes I could put together in the dark, savours from far away, more precious than a bride’s trousseau. I make a list of my assets - caviar of aubergine, pepper salad, spiced fish, cheese pasties, potato salad with chillies, taramasalata, artichokes with oranges, broad beans with cumin, filou parcels of tuna and capers, triangular patties of meat, egg and coriander… I arrange intersections, detours, associations, improbable meetings. The exoticism will stretch from the Far East to Asia Minor. My battalions are lining up, an infantry of vegetables and a cavalry of crunchiness. I inspect my munitions between the flanks of my spice rack, curcuma and ras-el hanout standing to attention in their glass phials. Oregano, sage, poppy seeds, nigella, red berries, black peppercorns. I need mountains of garlic, pine kernels, olives, preserved lemons…
Chez Moi Page 12