by N. M. Kelby
“We must be united. Do not betray me.”
It all made him sleepless.
Upon his return from Southsea, Escoffier had rented a room in a nondescript hotel as far away from The Savoy as possible. The Ritz Hotel Development Company’s new London venture, the Carlton, was still under construction; its opening was more than a year away. When complete, the kitchen would feature a brigade of sixty cooks who could execute a very complicated idea that he’d been thinking of—a menu à la carte. For five hundred. The hotel would be the model of efficiency, but it was still under construction.
If Escoffier wanted to stay in England, he would be forced to engage a suitable set of rooms and that would be expensive. He and Ritz’s company had little money to spare. They had other management contracts but until both the Ritz and the Carlton were complete, the company could not match Escoffier’s salary from The Savoy, and without The Savoy to help defray fundraising costs, the hotels might never be complete.
The Hôtel Ritz project was not going well. It was scheduled to open in June but cost overruns and delays were threatening to take the Ritz Development Company into bankruptcy. The conversion of the Vendôme and Cambon buildings into one hotel proved to be difficult and more expensive than imagined.
“Let me see what can be done,” he told Ritz and promptly left for France. He still kept a pied-à-terre from his time at Le Petit Moulin Rouge. It only made sense that he should return to Paris. He’d managed construction before and hated it. But this was, at least, someplace to go and something to do. The project was small, only fifty rooms.
“A little jewel,” Marie Ritz had said.
A little nightmare, Escoffier thought.
He spent his days standing in the cold mud appeasing creditors, builders, tradesman and local politicians. It was exhausting. And, unfortunately, he’d forgotten how small his pied-à-terre was. He could barely fit his belongings into it and it had no kitchen. Every night, until the early morning hours, he could be found sitting on top of his tiny bed amidst the chaos of boxes, creating menus he could not cook for a hotel that might or might not get finished at all.
Work, he told himself, work hard and people will forget The Savoy.
But he couldn’t. He couldn’t stop thinking of his kitchen there, the beauty of his staff in motion, the quiet hush of his rooms, and the women, all the beautiful women, who blushed when he kissed their hands.
In the dreary winter of his tiny room, The Savoy seemed as if it were a world scented by roses. And Sarah—Escoffier hadn’t seen her since the day he was fired. He’d thought about sending a letter but she’d moved out of the hotel and, according to his friend Renée at the desk, left no forwarding address. He could send it to her home in Paris, but what could he possibly write? “There was a disagreement.” While enough of an explanation for Delphine, it would insult Sarah. She was there when it happened.
“She will find me when the moment is right,” Escoffier thought, but wasn’t sure if he wanted to be found or if she would want to find him.
Whenever he thought of Sarah, he kept thinking of those last moments at The Savoy: the police taking his bags to the street and then coming for him, their hands on his exquisite dress coat. The Board was watching; Richard D’Oyly Carte was in his wheelchair. The staff was in a state of confusion. The guests were horrified. Some of the men in the kitchen drew knives to defend Escoffier’s honor.
In the middle of it all, Sarah appeared, like some sort of hallucination. Her hair wound tornado-like and held in place by an outrageous concoction of bows, she was dressed in a green silk suit with that pet chameleon chained around her neck, hissing. She had just returned from Cross Zoo with her granddaughters. The crying Lysiane kept saying, “Why is he going away? Was he bad? Where are they taking him?” Simone was pale and silent. The chameleon snapped at everyone like a spoilt dragon.
It was all too much. Much too much.
Escoffier tried to forget it but couldn’t. The look of profound sorrow on Sarah’s face was the first thing he thought of when he rose in the morning and the last thing when he went to bed each evening.
After a month in Paris, a letter from Ritz arrived. “Go to Maxim’s. Spy. They have extended their menu beyond pommes frites, the specialty of the house. Find out what they are planning to serve—but be gracious and do not forget to give the owner Monsieur Cornuché my best wishes. He is a good man, after all.”
With a menu of haute cuisine, or any type of cuisine beyond fried potatoes, Maxim’s could provide serious competition for the Ritz. It was, after all, the haunt of the most notorious courtesans of the belle époque: Jeanne and Anne de Lancy, the twins who tormented suitors by always switching places; Jeanne Derval, who carried her tiny dog in her jeweled chastity belt; and the former Folies Bergères dancer Liane de Pougy, who was such a startling beauty and such a bad actress that Sarah Bernhardt once advised her that when she was on stage it would be best if she just kept her “pretty mouth shut.”
Maxim’s had the potential to become a legend. The café was not that established yet, but its owner, Monsieur Cornuché, was already known as a great restaurateur.
In his letter, Ritz recounted a famous anecdote: “A guest once complained that there was a beetle in his soup and Cornuché picked the bug up and ate it. ‘It is merely a raisin,’ he announced. It was brilliant!”
And so Escoffier found himself waiting in the seemingly endless line outside of Maxim’s. It was just a café. No reservations were accepted, but not everyone was allowed in. The head doorman Gérard, looking very much like a child’s nutcracker in his royal blue pants, scarlet hat and gold monocle, was the gatekeeper. He divided guests into two categories, “goodhearts” and “choleras,” with most falling in the latter. When he saw Escoffier in the back of the line, he embraced him and called for Cornuché, who, laughing like a child with an unexpected chocolate, said, “You will come to work for us now, then? Savoy’s loss will be our gain?”
“Is it true that you have two hundred thousand bottles of wine in your cellar?”
“There are one hundred twelve varieties of champagne alone.”
“Then I’d like supper.”
“Supper is a very good start. I will consider that a hopeful sign.”
It was midnight. Maxim’s was filled with the post-theater crowd—those who had attended the last act, as attending only the last act was fashionable and seeing an entire play was not. Cornuché led him through the dining room past many of Escoffier’s former customers—some of whom looked away when he passed their tables and some of whom merely looked though him as if he had become invisible. Cornuché took him to a small two-top near the swinging doors that hid the famed “omnibus,” the long corridor leading to the bar. The omnibus was not a room, but a tight hallway filled with tables where only the elite of Paris sat, clublike. At Maxim’s it was the only place to be. Escoffier was determined that he would not sit anywhere else.
There was nothing wrong with the main dining room, of course. The band was playing a languid song by Reynaldo Hahn, a mélodie about infidelity. A charming choice, Escoffier thought, noticing how many of the men in the room were not with their own wives.
Maxim’s was a very small place. And very red—the carpet, the curtains, and the hundreds of rose-colored lampshades warming the light that shone upon the rows of tightly packed tables and plush red banquettes. It reminded him of the first-class waiting rooms of railroad stations with the famous and near famous in their silks and tuxedoes wanting to be seen behaving the way the famous often do—badly.
A pretty young girl with painted cheeks and lips came up to Cornuché and whispered something to him. He checked his pocket watch. “Yes. Now. On the front tables,” he said and then slipped the girl some bills that she stuck in her décolletage. She looked like a drawing of La Goulue, “The Glutton,” the queen of the Moulin Rouge. She was a close facsimile
, but clearly not the real thing.
“That’s for both of you,” Cornuché said. “Not like the last time.”
“But of course.”
The girl kissed Cornuché on both cheeks, and then kissed him on the lips. “Here we are scandalous, no?” she said to Escoffier and returned to her table by the window.
Cornuché cleared his throat. “She and her friend will be our surprise for the evening.”
“She’s very beautiful.”
“I pay her to be. One must always have beautiful women sit by the window so they can be seen from the sidewalk.”
Indeed, along the window, each table was filled with ces dames. They were wasp-waisted, their bare shoulders made porcelain with rice powder, and heartbreakingly elegant in their finest gowns, jewels and dream-driven hats.
The women were all so beautiful that Escoffier thought for a moment that he could sit at the offered table. The room was like a small ornate hothouse, the calla lily chandeliers, the twining flowers of the stained glass roof and of course the large murals of naked women. And then there were the women themselves—lush, ripe and waiting.
However, when Cornuché pulled out the chair for Escoffier, the great chef could not sit. “Perhaps, you should save this table for a couple,” he said. “Is there a seat nearer the bar, perhaps?” he said. “Surely you understand what I am saying?”
Cornuché smiled, slapped Escoffier on the back. “Ah! Of course! Closer to heaven,” he said and swung the doors open, and there was the omnibus in all its decadent glory. “The spectacle of grande galanterie!”
Escoffier agreed.
He knew many of the players. By the door there were five brothers, all Russian dukes, in full military dress with their companions in various stages of undress, sitting at a table littered with magnums of champagne. Next to them, two young girls were sitting on the lap of Caruso, feeding him oysters. He’ll need those, Escoffier thought. And Georges Feydeau, the playwright, was scribbling away in the far corner.
Cornuché pointed him out, laughing. “He says it’s the finishing touches on La Dame de Chez Maxim. He claims he will make us famous and finally pay his bill. Given how much he drinks, we need both of these things to happen.”
Each table in the omnibus had a delightful story unfolding and yet Cornuché walked Escoffier back to the bar itself. “The omnibus is not for you. I know how much you like the ladies,” he said and swung the doors open. Escoffier could see that the bar was even smaller than the omnibus and was filled with women only—women in black stockings with hair the color of champagne. Some of them were counting money; one was recording sums in a ledger. They all stopped talking when Cornuché led Escoffier into the room.
“Heaven, is it not?”
No, Escoffier thought. It is not heaven at all. It was more like an office.
“Would you like some help?” Cornuché whispered. “I can tell you which one is A.F. or R.A.F.” Escoffier looked confused. “I make notes,” he explained. “R.A.F. Rien à faire. You know, ‘nothing doing.’”
Escoffier’s spy mission to Maxim’s was starting to feel like a very large mistake, but then a waiter entered the bar carrying a beautiful chocolate soufflé topped with a bouquet of red roses. “We need the magnum of Moët!” he shouted. “Immediately.”
“Miss Bernhardt has arrived?”
Escoffier colored at the mention of her name but Cornuché didn’t notice. “You must excuse me, dear Escoffier. There is a ring in the center of those roses that could make the Queen of England blush. One night with divinity apparently costs a great deal these days.”
Cornuché held the door open for the bartender and the magnum. Escoffier looked back out into the omnibus. Sarah had just arrived. In all her glory, he thought. The Russian dukes were fawning over her. Caruso kissed her hand. She shimmered in the rose-colored light, wearing a dress made entirely of gold silk. Her hat was gold and her neck so filled with jewels that she could hardly move.
“And she’s over fifty years old. And a grandmother at that,” Cornuché said. “It’s amazing what these men will pay for.”
Cornuché took the champagne glasses from the waiter, and pushed past him. “Mademoiselle Bernhardt!” he said loudly.
Sarah looked up and saw Escoffier. The man who she was with was some minor Royal, a distant cousin of Prince Edward on the German side. He whispered something in Sarah’s ear but she didn’t seem to hear him, or even notice that he was there. She was staring at Escoffier—with that horrible sad look. He suddenly couldn’t breathe. He pushed past Cornuché and out of the room and into the dining room where the faux La Goulue and her willing friend had begun a can-can on the tabletops by the window.
When Sarah’s letter arrived at his pied-à-terre a day later, Escoffier boarded the next train.
“We can disappear,” she wrote and signed it Rosine Bernardt, veuve Damala. Escoffier could not understand why, after nearly a decade had passed, Sarah still wished to conjure the man’s spirit.
Perhaps to remember that even the angels have a dark side.
When Escoffier arrived in Quiberon, he boarded the ferry to Belle-Île. It was empty. The weather was foul, colder than usual. The crossing was brutal. The old boat was buffeted by the sea and followed to the island by a howling wall of lightning and rain.
Although Sarah had spoken of it often, Escoffier had never been to this part of Brittany before. When the ferry finally reached the docks, the storm hesitated a moment and he could see what a painter en plein air would see, what Monet had seen as he desperately held his canvas so that the insistent wind would not hurl his easel into the sea—the endless rows of cafés and houses, some pink with blue shutters, some blue with shutters of green, all set in sharp relief against the bones of jagged steep cliffs, the gray-green sea and the coal smoke sky. The colors were so intense, he nearly wept.
“Escoffier!”
There she was—with the storm quickly closing in around her—on horseback, her wild red hair tangling in the savage wind.
“Get on,” she said. “Leave your bags with the harbor master and he’ll deliver them when it’s safe.”
The wind was now howling down upon them. She held out her hand to him and he pulled himself up onto the saddle. She kicked the horse hard; the hail began. Then rain. In a moment, the waves of the ocean overtook the dock, and then the road, but the horse ran full out. The ocean, the rain, it was difficult to tell if they were drowning or not: there was water everywhere but the horse seemed indifferent to the benediction of the storm. He ran through it all, without hesitation, up the steep cliffs through the torrents of rain, the blinding sea-spray and the jagged needles of lightning. He sped along the edge of deep ravines, the swirling rock pools below.
With his arms around her, Escoffier could feel that Sarah was laughing.
“Faster!” she shouted.
“Widow Damala, you are quite mad,” he thought, or perhaps actually whispered in her ear; he wasn’t sure, but he could feel her laugh even harder.
When they finally arrived, the lights of the harbor at Le Palais were far below them. It was a sheer drop down the cliff into the swirling tide. Sarah’s summer home was not a home at all, but an abandoned fort at Pointe des Poulains. Imposing, squat, a square of pink stone and yet when he entered the cool interior, it was so quiet that Escoffier thought he had slipped between this world and that.
After they dried themselves and changed, Sarah said, “Are you hungry?”
No one had ever asked that of Escoffier before. “Do you have food?”
Sarah threw her head back and laughed. “My dear sir, one does not invite Escoffier to her hideaway and not have food.”
She was standing in the middle of the kitchen in a mink-lined dressing gown wearing the rough wool socks that were so common to the people of that wild coast but not the sort of thing that Esco
ffier expected from Bernhardt.
Of course, he was wearing a similar pair, and a red kimono that Sarah swore was designed for men, and which she claimed belonged to her own son, but Escoffier knew that in Japan the color red was always reserved for women and children. Or grandchildren like Sarah’s Lysiane and Simone. The robe had that sticky scent that children often have. Still, there was nothing else that fit and his clothes were wringing wet. A child’s robe, what have I come to? He combed his thinning white hair, brushed his mustache: none of it helped.
“I look like the village idiot.”
“If I had slippers and a hunting dog, we’d be the perfect English couple,” she said.
He kissed her sweetly. “And so, veuve Damala, what is there to eat?”
“There is a Far Breton.”
The cake was on the kitchen table. He touched it with a finger. It was dense, although it had a tentative spring to it, like flan. “Clafouti?”
“Non. It is an entirely different beast.”
Sarah put another log on the fire and wiped the dirt from her hands onto her elegant robe and began to pin her unruly wet hair into a topknot. “My dear Escoffier. You have never had Far Breton? Cinnamon, vanilla and some plum brandy added to the milk. The prunes and raisins are soaked in Armagnac.”
“You baked this? Yourself?”
“Of course. Everyone here can make this. It’s very simple.”
“I didn’t know you could cook.”
“I can but never do, but I will tonight. I had the caretaker bring us supplies. Tonight, we shall feast. I shall be your cook.”
On the counter there was fish, a John Dory, a bucket of small mussels, a loaf of dense bread, fresh butter and a jug of cider. Escoffier picked up the spiny fish. “A fine specimen,” he said.
“From Le Guilvinec.”
“Very fine indeed.”
The fish was silver and olive green with a series of sharp knifelike fins and a pout-ugly face. Escoffier sniffed it carefully; it still had the scent of the sea. “Today?”