Save Me the Plums

by Ruth Reichl

  “Why not?” I said. “It’ll be fun!”

  * * *

  —

  THE MANAGER OF my first hotel had to shout over the blare of the television as she handed me a key. A brusque Brazilian, she had none of the edgy obsequiousness found at more fashionable addresses. “There’s an elevator, but…” She peered across the high counter separating us, pushing stacks of paper to one side so she could study my small suitcase. “You would be wise to take the stairs.”

  Wise? Unable to resist the challenge, I wedged myself into the antique elevator, worrying as it wheezed slowly upward, stopping every few seconds to catch its breath. I imagined the chain breaking, the fall….Relieved when it finally shuddered to a halt, I stepped into a narrow hallway carpeted in dingy gray, hoisted my suitcase over a pile of sheets, and squeezed past an abandoned vacuum cleaner. The door to my room creaked open to reveal a spartan space whose lone window looked onto an air shaft. The bathroom was just big enough to turn around in, the towels were thin as washcloths, and the sink held a single minuscule bar of soap. At least it was clean.

  I sat down on the bed, which groaned beneath my weight, and felt the mattress. Larry, I thought, would be pleased: It was definitely lumpy. An image of the room at Le Meurice flashed through my mind; you could fit a dozen of these in there—and still have space to spare. I changed my clothes, splashed water on my face, and went off to meet Sertl. This time I took the stairs.

  “How’s your hotel?” We were walking through the eerily deserted streets of a remote residential district. Doors were closed, shutters drawn; even the lampposts seemed to shrink from us. This was not tourist Paris.

  Sertl made a face. “Not exactly the George Cinq. The bathroom’s down a flight of stairs, and if you want to take a bath you have to request the key from an unkempt gentleman at the desk who grumbles loudly about having to rise from his chair. I think I’m too old for forty-five-euro hotels in squalid neighborhoods. And our readers would hate it.” He peered gloomily down the empty street. “Are you sure you’ve got the address right? We haven’t passed a single restaurant.”

  “Pretty sure.” But I was beginning to get nervous; the metro station was blocks behind us. Had I misunderstood the directions? “I think it’s just around the corner. Alec said this was the best cheap meal in the city, and I guess you can’t expect convenience when you’re paying twenty-five bucks for a three-course dinner.”

  We walked on. With each block the neighborhood became less prosperous. The restaurant, when we finally found it, was small and spare, with bare wooden tables and hard wooden chairs. The waitress took one look at our unhappy faces and relieved us of our coats. “Did you think you were lost?” Her entire face turned into a welcoming smile and she hurried off, returning with an enormous ceramic terrine filled with game pâté, a plate of cornichons, and a basket of bread. She gave Bill’s shoulder a motherly pat. “This should revive you.”

  I tore off a hunk of bread and scooped up a slab of pâté. The flavor filled my mouth—strong, rustic, a pâté with conviction. “God, this is good.” As I took a bite of the crisp, salty pickle, I had a quick taste memory of the working-class France I’d known before my three-star days. I pushed the terrine toward Bill.

  The air was filled with the soft melodic thrum of French, its cadence a kind of music. From the kitchen came the comforting thunk of pans and the scent of roasting meat, onions in butter, a hint of thyme. The wine was young, slightly sharp, but well made. The waitress kept our glasses filled.

  The food was simple but very fine: a pile of petit gris, the tiny shrimp you find only in France, still in their shells. Fat white asparagus, simply steamed and drenched in sweet butter. A plump roast chicken with fresh morels and a sauce made of cream so rich it gleamed like gold. A handful of tiny strawberries, a cloud of chantilly, a wedge of Brie.

  I sighed—I hadn’t meant to—and Bill studied my face. “Maybe,” he said, “you can go home again after all.”

  “We’ll see,” I said. “Our lumpy beds await us.”

  But when I opened the door to my austere little room, I threw the window wide, breathing in the air of Paris. In the tiny space between two buildings, I could just make out the moon. I slept without dreaming, and in the morning a plump maid in a blue apron knocked on the door and, with work-reddened hands, offered me a slightly cracked bowl of café au lait. On the tray were two croissants, a square of butter, a dish of apricot jam. I ate greedily, splashed water on my face, and walked out into the lovely light of early spring.

  The hotel was at the foot of the rue Mouffetard, one of my favorite market streets; today the air smelled like strawberries. The stalls were filled with bright-green watercress, mesclun, frisée, and leaves of mâche. Fat spears of asparagus poked up their heads with such a curiously aggressive air I could not resist them. Munching the raw stalks, I stood at the fishmonger, admiring a big floppy turbot, a pair of eels, small, shiny rougets spread across oceans of ice.

  In the bakery next door, people were queuing for croissants, and I looked into the window as a small boy stuffed an entire brioche into his mouth. A few doors down, a woman rushed out of the cheese shop, and as she careened into me I caught the fine scent of ripe Camembert, that seductive mixture of mushroom, yeast, and cream. Church bells began to ring. No meetings, no ad sales: The day stretched invitingly before me.

  Bill was standing at the top of the street, looking so disgruntled that I did not ask how he had slept. “Tonight’s hotel is bound to be better.” I tried to soothe him as we meandered down the hill into the university district.

  “It had better be,” he replied morosely. “Changing hotels every night is hard enough when you’re staying in great places. But this—” He stopped talking to stare, transfixed, at a menu tacked to a bright-green shutter.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “A three-course menu for only twelve euros.”

  I headed for the door. “We have to try it.”

  “No!” Bill hung back, reluctant. “You know it’s going to be like the hotel I just left: too small, too noisy, and very uncomfortable.”

  “What do we have to lose? It’s barely noon. We can always have a second lunch. And a third.”

  As we stood outside arguing, the waitress pounced. “Venez, venez, vous ne le regretterez pas,” she said, herding us inexorably into the small restaurant.

  She handed Bill the wine list. He handed it back. “Just water, please.” I watched as a curiously avid expression crossed the woman’s face. What could it mean?

  “Je vous propose…” she began, with the French waiter’s classic opening line. Mid-sentence, she stopped herself and snatched the menus from our hands. “I will bring you lunch,” she announced. “You will be happy. Ça va?”

  It was not really a question.

  “Accras de poisson!” she sang out, setting fragile little fish fritters on the table. “I brought also the compote of tomatoes.” She set another dish down. “You must, simply must, taste this. The chef makes even the balsamic vinegar himself.”

  Next she offered a plate containing two fluffy clouds. “Cervelle de veau.” She said the words with great pride and watched us take the first bites, her mouth turned up in a small, satisfied smile. It seemed impossible that anyone had managed to coax calf’s brains into this airy substance. “Christophe seeks out his own special suppliers,” she said proudly. “He uses nothing but the best. You know he used to work with three-star chef Anne-Sophie Pic.”

  “Are you sure the menu said twelve euros?” I whispered to Bill; the waitress was now heading toward us, bearing a platter of hanger steaks. Setting it down, she forked meat onto our plates, then added a pile of chickpea pancakes. “Nobody, but nobody, makes panisses like Christophe,” she said happily.

  I looked at Bill. “Have you ever read the M.F.K. Fisher story that begins, ‘That early spring I met a young servant in nor
thern Burgundy who was almost fanatical about food, like a medieval woman possessed by the devil’?”

  “No.”

  “It’s about a waitress who takes such pride in her chef that at one point she says, ‘Any trout is glad, truly glad, to be prepared by Monsieur Paul.’ The food is superb, but as course follows course, Fisher begins to fear for her life.”

  The restaurant was starting to fill up, and Bill looked over at the waitress as she stood at a nearby table, decanting a bottle of wine with quick economical gestures. “I think,” he said speculatively, “that she watched us arguing over the menu and decided we must be impoverished tourists, counting our pennies. When we declined wine, she knew she was right. She’s proud of her chef, proud of French food, and this is a private act of patriotism. She’s trying to seduce us with food. I haven’t had this experience in years, but it used to happen all the time when I was hitchhiking around Europe.”

  “I remember that!” I was thinking of a meal in a small restaurant in Florence when I was twenty and another in Tours a few years later. People would lean in to tell me what to order and to share their favorite dishes. And every once in a while a chef would simply start feeding me, a point of pride because I was so new to the food. It was a generosity that was not reserved for restaurants. Once, stranded at Heathrow because of a canceled connection, the girl who’d been sitting next to me on the plane took me home to stay with her family. They were lovely people with a large house in Wimbledon, and I ended up staying a few days. Those things never happen when you travel on the excess express. The more stars in your itinerary, the less likely you are to find the real life of another country. I’d forgotten how money becomes a barrier insulating you from ordinary life.

  Later, as I was writing about Paris, I wished there was some way to tell that waitress how her generosity had changed our trip. She’d opened the door to the Paris we’d forgotten, reminded us how it felt to be young, hopeful, and open to possibility. Reminded us how exciting it was to abandon security and run toward the life that is waiting.

  After that lunch, Bill threw himself into the adventure, gleefully seeking out bargains everywhere we went. He discovered that entrance fees were waived if we waited to visit museums late in the day. He found free concerts in small churches and free food samples in department stores. And now every ride on the metro was another opportunity to meet strangers.

  I kept wishing Michael was with me—he’d never seen this side of Paris—and I longed to share it with Nick. Bill missed his family too; each time he came upon some quaint architectural detail, he lamented that his partner wasn’t there to see it. But we also understood that in some strange way we’d each found the perfect companion for this particular adventure. We’d both traveled light when we were young, and relearning how to live on very little was like flexing old, underused muscles.

  Bill, more outgoing than I, had no qualms about stopping people on the street to ask for advice. Everyone was eager to tell us about a great shop, to point out a painting in the parish church, or to lead us to a local wine shop where generous tastes were poured. And every Frenchman had a secret restaurant we simply should not miss. We were rarely disappointed.

  Our only failure was hotels. We slept all over the city, moving every night, but the cheap hotels were pretty awful. I’d been happy with my first hotel, but when Bill insisted on staying there himself one night, he was disappointed. “Gourmet readers,” he said, “require more charm.”

  We did, finally, find one great bargain. The Hôtel des Grandes Écoles was so charming and so cheap it was complet—every room reserved for the foreseeable future. When I managed to snag a last-minute cancellation, Sertl was overjoyed. Mission accomplished. For me it was something else.

  “The room was lovely,” I conceded the next morning as we meandered along the Seine, “but I wish you’d been the one who stayed there. You would have appreciated all the amenities, and I realized I just don’t care. As far as I’m concerned, a swell room means you end up spending too much time there, and I’d rather be out in the streets.”

  But Sertl wasn’t listening. He had stopped before an ornately gilded window, and his nose was pressed against the thick leaded glass.

  “We can’t eat here!” I protested. “It’s way beyond our means. This is the oldest restaurant in Paris.”

  “I know it is.” He pointed to the menu tacked next to the window. “But they have a thirty-five-euro lunch special—and it includes wine. I’ve always longed to see the inside of Lapérouse. Haven’t you?”

  He had me there. The restaurant has been in the same place since 1766, and through all those years it has remained unchanged. Of course I wanted to see the inside. “But…” I was hesitant. “The food’s going to be dreadful. When I first came to Paris, Lapérouse had three Michelin stars, and over the years they’ve lost every one.”

  Sertl, however, was already inside the door.

  The maître d’ did not betray by the flicker of an eyelash that we were not dressed for such a formal establishment. “Une de nos salles privées, peut-être?” he murmured, leading us up a narrow set of stairs into one of the restaurant’s famous private rooms.

  Charmingly antique and extremely intimate, the small chamber was clearly intended for trysts. I sank onto the velvet sofa that lounged along one wall, staring up at an antique chandelier. Behind me an old mirror reflected the Seine, filling the room with shifting watery light. “I read somewhere”—Sertl was touching the scarred old mirror—“that the courtesans used to test the quality of the diamonds their patrons gave them by running them across the surface of the glass.”

  I was just reaching up to feel the mirror when a waiter appeared. I quickly snatched my hand away. “Is this a special occasion?” he asked. “An anniversary perhaps?”

  “Indeed,” Bill replied without a moment of hesitation. When the waiter inquired how many years of wedded bliss we had enjoyed, Bill shamelessly replied, “Thirty.”

  “Trente ans!” The waiter refilled our glasses. And refilled them again. And again.

  Mushroom bisque arrived in a porcelain dish; in the center, an island of foie gras slowly melted into a sensuous puddle. Veal came surrounded by a garland of interwoven vegetables as delicate as a filigree necklace; tiny gnocchi were scattered through it like little pearls. “But this food is wonderful!” I cried. It was the last thing I’d expected.

  Hours later, as the meal rolled to a close with coffee, minuscule pastries, homemade chocolates, and caramels, I looked over and said, “I really loved this meal.” What I was thinking, however, was that it would not have tasted nearly as good if we’d come from dinner at Gagnaire.

  * * *

  —

  ALEC INSISTED ON making the reservation for our final dinner. “I want you to leave Paris with a good taste in your mouth,” he said, “and L’Ami Jean is perfect.”

  We plunged into a crowded, boisterous dining room, making our way through an aromatic swirl of wine, butter, and onions. Voices eddied around us in a happy babble. A jolt of laughter rocketed out of the kitchen.

  We sat at a table the size of a postage stamp, neighbors tightly packed on either side, studying the menu. I wanted everything: soupe de poisson a l’ancienne, rabbit cooked in its own blood, or perhaps those langoustines at the next table, shimmering beneath a translucent sheet of pig skin.

  My eyes went up to the man who had ordered it. He was sitting alone. Skin the color of porcelain. Silver hair, a bit too long. Pale-blue eyes and that long, disdainful nose. It had been nearly eight years, but he had not aged. Even his clothes, threadbare and elegant, seemed the same.

  “You remember me!” He emitted a little cry of delight and I noticed, again, how sensual his lips were. He lifted the bottle sitting on his table. “Ce n’est pas le Krug ’66, mais ce n’est pas mal.” As he began to fill our glasses, a waiter hurried over, reproachfully seizing the bottle from
his hand.

  “Have the duck,” my friend whispered as I studied the menu. “You have no such birds in America.”

  “Et mon ami?”

  “The scallops are superb.”

  The food was extraordinary, the duck a mineral slab of meat, blood rare, with the wild taste of lakes and forests. Bill’s scallops—still in their pretty pink shells—sizzled with butter, sending delicious whiffs of bacon, garlic, and thyme shooting across the table. As the meal progressed in a blur of flavor, I found myself eating with joyful abandon. The old gentleman’s eyes were on me, and I remembered him saying that I reminded him of his wife, because I ate as if I were a guest to myself.

  For one brief moment I imagined that Severine was sitting across from him. The room would be less frantic in that other time, and the scent of cigars would fill the air. He’d be watching his wife as he was watching me, appreciating her appetite.

  “You must have the rice pudding.” He pointed; it was on every table. Rich, creamy, scattered with dried apricots and raisins, it was an extraordinary concoction, a dish more of yesterday than today. As I scooped up a dollop of crème anglaise I said, “I am so happy to see you again. But surprised to find you here.”

  His eyebrow lifted in a question. I gestured around the raucous room. “This is hardly Caviar Kaspia.”

  “Ah.” He steepled his hands. “How young you are.” He stared at the pot of rice pudding, considering his words. “When you attain my age you will understand one of life’s great secrets: Luxury is best appreciated in small portions. When it becomes routine it loses its allure.”

  I remember his face, and the heady scent of almonds and cherries, as he said those words. I remember the musical French voices that surrounded us. And each time, I am grateful to my mysterious friend, for he’d put everything I’d discovered on this trip into a few simple words.

  IN SEPTEMBER 2009 I RETURNED from Laos—where we’d shot the last episode of the new television show, Adventures with Ruth—to find the advertising situation improved. “Lots happening,” my publisher gushed in an email. “Lot of good news. New biz…big units…exclusive business.”