by N. M. Kelby
“It would be better if we left the jackets on them.”
“It would be better if you did it the way it’s done.”
“White truffles would be lovely with this.”
“It would, but there are none. Peel, old man.”
Delphine slowly peeled two cloves of garlic. When she tried to stir them into the melted butter, the wooden spoon slipped out of her hand. He came up behind her and put his hand over hers. She said nothing, but leaned against him gently.
When the potatoes were finally soft, she put them in a bowl and covered it with a cloth to absorb the steam. “They have to be dry,” she said and when she finally tried to whisk them, again her hand failed.
The future, he thought. So slowly we unravel into the darkness.
He took her hand in his. It was smaller, and more brittle than he remembered. Together they slowly whipped the potatoes until the starch began to break down and when it did, she added the butter and garlic, some black pepper and a handful of cheese.
“That’s too much cheese,” he said. She added a handful more.
“Whisk.”
Escoffier continued to whisk despite the fact that the potatoes were now like glue. She continued to add more and more cheese until nearly half a pound was used.
“This has gone to paste.”
“You have to believe.”
“It is inedible.”
“Goats should never be allowed in the kitchen.”
She tossed in another handful and the potatoes suddenly clung to the whisk. She added more. “Believe.” And more. And Escoffier continued to whisk until the aligot became translucent with stiff glossy peaks.
She handed him a fork. “Eat.”
He wanted a bowl, but did not ask for one. The aligot was hot and the cheese burned his mouth but he ate it and she did, too. They ate from the pan on top of the stove.
“The way they feel in your mouth,” he said. “Superb.”
“Yes. But now that you mention it, I do think it would have been lovely with white truffles. Much more complex.”
And then he kissed her and could taste the salty rich cheese and butter and potato.
And for the first time in a long time they laughed together. I’ve so missed you, he wanted to say but was afraid it would sound untrue.
When the pan of aligot was finished, there was still the matter of the cake. It was Belgian chocolate with a glaze of framboise ganache and covered in tiny black raspberries. She placed a single wax candle on top, a squat votive from church.
“Is this not how it is done in America?”
“They put one for each year.”
“Really? Why?”
“To blow them out.”
“They are a very odd people.”
“They are enthusiastic.”
She did not light the candle. He did not blow it out. She cut the cake and served two small pieces. The crumb was beautiful; he picked at it with his fork.
“Duck eggs,” she said. “The extra fat makes the difference. And they are quite convenient. There are ducks everywhere and they are indiscriminate in their mating habits.”
“Very nice.”
He did not eat the cake. Nor did she. The taste of aligot was still on their lips.
“And the voyage?” she said.
“The RMS Berengaria was named after an abandoned queen.”
“Was it a nice boat?”
“It was the Imperator.”
The moment felt airless. She took his hand in hers.
They sat for a while listening to the sounds of the evening. The whitecaps, gray with night, were hushed and nearly forgotten but the rumble of a distant train, the honk and squeal of automobiles and, underneath it all, the music of the cafés, each melody distinct—an accordion riff as ripe as Paris, an abandoned singer with the rain of Pissarro darkening every phrase, a battered hound of piano—and each whisper, each shout, was a story that did not need words, just beauty and gravity.
In eighty years so much had changed around La Villa Fernand and so very little.
He looked out the window into the garden. “I’m glad you planted that.”
“Happiness is our best revenge.”
He kissed her tenderly, with the last lushness of autumn. And even though she was not a woman given to blushing, her face flushed.
“Madame Escoffier, I have always loved you.”
It no longer mattered if she believed him. Tomorrow Escoffier would go again to Paris. But that night, they held each for a long time, just listening to their hearts, their own private waltz: listening in three-quarter time.
FALL PASSED AND WINTER WAS UPON LA VILLA FERNAND, but even the seasons no longer mattered.
“Does God dream?” Delphine asked but only Escoffier could hear her. It was nearly 2 a.m. Sabine was in the kitchen warming the milk for his nightcap. Everyone in the house was asleep; they had said their goodbyes to Delphine once more, perhaps for the last time, and the children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, grandnieces and grandnephews fell exhausted into their beds.
Escoffier was asleep, too. He had been confined to his room; the doctor told him his heart was leaking again. He had become unsteady, always dizzy and unwilling to eat. Time had lost its meaning, past and present slipped through his mind without a destination.
“What would He dream of?” she asked. Her voice was so clear it was as if she were in the room with him.
“What contains King Edward potatoes, garlic, butter, Cantal cheese and pepper?”
“Aligot?”
“Yes.”
“And our Mr. Boots, what does he dream of?”
“I have no idea.”
“Of course you do.”
She knew, of course. She always knew.
He wanted to laugh but could not find the heart for it. “Are you afraid?” he asked.
“No. I’m thinking of aligot.”
“I would think God dreams of it.”
“It’s all I can think about now.”
“I love you, Madame Escoffier.”
“There were times when you had forgotten this.”
He said nothing. It was true and they both knew it.
“To be forgotten is the saddest thing of all,” she said.
Escoffier held his hands up to the wall. If Sabine had opened the door to his room, he would have appeared to be holding it up, but it was the other way around. It was, through the power of Delphine’s voice, holding him to the earth.
“Am I awake?” he asked.
“Does it matter?”
And she said nothing more.
Escoffier fell back into his own dreams again. Mud was everywhere. War. It was cold against his feet; it was in the bowl of broth he was given for his meal, and in the water he cleaned himself with. It was in the hollow sucking sound of his boots as he was marched though the field filled with bones of the dead picked clean by dogs and the desperate. And there was that smell again, he could not escape it—the sweet green yellow mist of mustard gas. It was difficult to forget how it sometimes reminded him of stone mustard and sometimes of garlic and how even when the fog of it had rolled away, the bodies still reeked from it.
“Monsieur Escoffier?”
He awoke in a cold sweat. “Sarah?”
Sabine sat down on the edge of the bed. “Your milk will get cold, Monsieur.”
“Your leg is better?”
“Still gone.”
Sabine had grown accustomed to the confusion. At this moment, he was, obviously, back in the time of the Great War. Sarah’s leg had been amputated right before it began. She’d taken a fall off the stage and it never quite recovered, and so she was carried to the front on a chaise longue to entertain the troops.
&nb
sp; “Drink your milk,” she said, but he would not.
He lectured her at great length about her safety at the Front and ended with “You must be careful. What would I do without you, Rosine?”
“Cook,” she said. “It’s what you always do.”
“True.”
He’d fallen asleep in the middle of his writings. The bed was littered with pages; ink stained the sheets. Sabine picked up the work and began to read as he spoke about the Kaiser, Dear Bertie, and then, suddenly, Mussolini.
“His father was a blacksmith, as was mine. He is very small, too. Why are we so alike? What does this mean?”
He was panicked again. Talk of war always did that to him now. Sabine sat on the side of his bed, holding the pages of his memoir. “This work is very good. You are quite correct. There are too many patron saints. Saint Fortunat, I agree with you. Only male cooks, why? In most professional kitchens, women need to be prayed for.”
“I am awake?”
“Of course.”
She handed him the mug of milk; it was now cold. A thick skin had formed on the top. There was no money anymore for his nightly split of champagne but he didn’t seem to notice.
“This is a very good chapter, but there’s no recipe in it.”
“What do you mean?”
“The other chapters had recipes. The other ones that you wrote.”
Escoffier looked at the pages. His eyes were red-rimmed and glossy. He slipped from this world to that. She took the pages from him.
“Tomorrow,” she said. “We will add a recipe tomorrow.” She turned to leave and he caught her by the hand.
“Sabine?”
“Yes?”
“Do you know how to make aligot?”
“Non.”
“Ask Bobo to show you.”
“I will,” she said, but did not. Madame’s death soon covered everything like fine gray soot.
THE NEXT MORNING, ESCOFFIER SEEMED HEALTHIER, AS if released from some horrible burden. Happy even. His face had a ruddy look to it. The children, grandchildren and grandnieces and grandnephews tried not to notice. He asked for both breakfast and lunch and ate them.
“It’s obscene,” the nurse told the doctor. “The wife dies and the old man is reborn.”
“Do you understand what we’re saying, Papa?” Paul asked gently. “About Mother.”
“Yes. Of course,” Escoffier said. “What should we have for supper? Sabine, did Mr. Boots deliver a package recently?”
“Is there something you’d like?”
The old man handed her a list. At first it looked like gibberish, the handwriting was so shaky, but it clearly was a grocery list. She read it aloud to make sure. “Eggs, white truffles, caviar—”
“Truffles, caviar?” Paul said. “Is that really appropriate?”
“Of course.”
Paul took the blankets and covered his father’s shaking hands. “Sabine, leave us.”
“I’ll be in the kitchen.”
Bobo was waiting for her there.
“And?”
“He’s happy.”
She handed him the stack of pages that Escoffier had been working on. “There’s nothing here, though. Just stories, mostly. The recipe for fried chicken looks very good.” Then she handed him the shopping list.
“White truffles?”
She shrugged.
“What time?”
“19:00.”
“Will that be enough time?”
“It will have to be.”
Overhead, the grandchildren, great-grandchildren, grandnieces and grandnephews ran down the hallway, then down the front stairway.
She shook his hand. “Thank you, chef.”
“And you, chef.”
And he was gone.
Paul sat at the foot of the bed and watched his father tumble in and out of sleep. The thin winter light made Escoffier seem grayer than he should be, smaller than he should be. He looked like a stranger, which, in so many ways, he was.
“Does Jeanne have the Petite Mignonne?” he asked when he finally woke.
“Peaches?”
The question took Paul back to his own small kitchen, his wife, Jeanne, and Escoffier, long retired, sweating joyously together creating pots of exotic jams and jellies. Each new fruit—Italian elderberries, white raspberries from the Alps, and Queen Victoria’s favorite, the Purple Mangosteen from Indonesia—created a new puzzle that could only be solved by sugar and more sugar and high heat and laughter.
“We are schemers,” Escoffier said to his daughter-in-law. “Are we not?”
Jeanne would kiss him sweetly. “You are the schemer. I am merely the schemer’s apprentice.”
“My magicians,” Paul would call them both and they shyly, ruddy-faced and pleased, would smile.
We come to love so late, Paul thought.
“I need them for your mother,” Escoffier said.
She is gone, he thought. Please remember. “It is not peach season. June, I think.”
“But Jeanne was to go to the market. Did she not? Are the children ill?”
“They are fine.”
“But the peaches?”
“When you are better.”
“No. Jeanne knows. The Royal George and Gross Mignonne, fat and obscene, are everywhere but the Petite Mignonne is so remarkable: white-skinned and small as a flat stone. It is so rich and filled with juice, that mingling of wild rose and honey, that you finally know heaven. And such a surprise they are—so complex. When you pick them if they are in the branches that are shaded, they are merely a blush of yellow. However, if you pick them in the full light, they are bright red. It is amazing.”
“We will get peaches.”
“No. Not just any peaches. Petite Mignonne. I must insist. Tell Jeanne. They are like small hearts hiding from the sun, ripe only when broken. A beautiful metaphor. Your mother will be quite pleased.”
Paul turned away. He didn’t want Escoffier to see him crying. The old man reached out and took his son’s hand in his and kissed it. His lips were so cold.
“What is wrong, Paul?”
“You are confused, Papa.”
“I am not.”
Paul could not turn to face his father. He looked out the window. After a time he said, “She is gone, you know.”
“Jeanne? Where would she go?”
“Maman est morte.”
“She is only waiting.”
Paul could not stop weeping. Escoffier kissed his hand again, leaned into him and whispered, “Hearts, both large and small, always hide from the sun and only show their true nature when broken. Is that not true?”
“It’s just fruit.”
“But not to a poet like your mother. To your mother, a peach is the impossible beauty of God.”
Paul embraced his father—the small frail body—and could feel his heart beating, and then his own heart like an echo. He could feel them both leaking; both breaking, both lush and ripe and filled with the memory of sunlight. He held his father in his arms so gently, the old man fell into a deep dreamless sleep.
TWO WEEKS LATER, LA VILLA FERNAND WAS NEARLY empty, hollowed out by grief. “Papa wants to be alone,” Paul told everyone, although he did not like the idea of leaving him with strangers. He was eighty-nine, after all. And not well. But the old man insisted.
“Just for a few days,” he said.
Escoffier also ordered Sabine to clean the kitchen. “Package everything that is not needed. Label it. Place it in the cellar.”
“And your bottles?”
“Break them.”
“All of them?”
“All of them.”
And so late that night, one by one, Sabine and Bobo threw
the bottles into the calm azure sea. The ships of the navy, La Royale, were dark, the harbor hushed. Each bottle bobbed in the waves for several moments, awaiting reprieve, then took on water and spun into the depths.
“Are you crying?” he asked.
“Are you hungry?”
At 2 a.m., when Sabine delivered his nightcap, Escoffier was not in bed, but waiting for her at his desk. He was dressed in his Louis-Philippe dress coat and striped trousers. “For you,” he said. “Le Guide Culinaire.” He opened to a page and began to read.
“The expression ‘boiling hot’ is unsuitable. Fat never boils. It burns first. This is true of all fat. To fry, oil should only be moderately hot.”
“What are we frying?”
He handed her the book. “Joy, my dear. Do not forget joy.” And then walked down the hallway, unsteady, to Madame Escoffier’s bedroom and closed the door behind him.
Sabine was unsure of what to do. She sat on the floor outside Madame’s room for a long time, listening. She was afraid to leave him alone. When she finally gathered her courage, she opened the door. The room still smelled of Madame Escoffier, of lavender and talc.
The curtains were pulled back, the lights of the city and the harbor below looked like so many fallen stars. Escoffier was asleep on top of the white lace sheets, still dressed in his Louis-Philippe dress coat and striped trousers. He seemed peaceful; she didn’t want to wake him and so she gently closed the door behind her.
The next morning, Sabine laid out the food that Bobo had brought from the Grand. “I think these are the last truffles in the region,” he told her. “We should stay with him.”
“He wants to be alone for a while.”
“He could burn the house down. Or cut himself. Or become disoriented.”
“Or find joy.”
When Escoffier finally came down to the kitchen that morning, he sat for a long time in the quiet. The smell of bleach, the silence—they seemed the same to him. Both had erased all traces of life from the room. Instead of rows of copper pans polished and waiting, there were only two pans—a Windsor and pôele, the “fraying-pan.”