A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain (45 page)

“That you poured the heated sugar on.”

“Yes.” H
’s sweet-smelling hands came forward but they did not quite touch me. I thought to reach out from beneath the covers and take them in my own hands, but Ho leaped up and paced about the room. “The marble slab, moderately oiled. Of course. I am to let the sugar half cool and then use the spatula to move it about in all directions, every bit of it, so that it doesn’t harden and form lumps.”

I asked, “Have you seen my wife?”

H
had wandered to the far side of the room, but he turned and crossed back to me at this. “I’m sorry, my friend. I never knew her.”

I must have shown some disappointment in my face, for H
sat down and brought his own face near mine. “I’m sorry,” he said. “There are many other people that I must find here.”

“Are you very disappointed in me?” I asked. “For not having traveled the road with you?”

“It’s very complicated,” H
said softly. “You felt that you’d taken action. I am no longer in a position to question another soul’s choice.”

“Are you at peace, where you are?” I asked this knowing of his worry over the recipe for the glaze, but I hoped that this was only a minor difficulty in the afterlife, like the natural anticipation of the good cook expecting guests when everything always turns out fine in the end.

But H
said, “I am not at peace.”

“Is Monsieur Escoffier over there?”

“I have not seen him. This has nothing to do with him, directly.”

“What is it about?”

“I don’t know.”

“You won the country. You know that, don’t you?”

H
shrugged. “There are no countries here.”

I should have remembered H
’s shrug when I began to see things in the faces of my son-in-law and grandson this morning. But something quickened in me, a suspicion. I kept my eyes shut and laid my head to the side, as if I was fast asleep, encouraging them to talk more.

My daughter said, “This is not the place to speak.”

But the men did not regard her. “How?” L
’i asked his father, referring to the missing murder weapon.

“It’s best not to know too much,” TH
ng said.

Then there was a silence. For all the quickness I’d felt at the first suspicion, I was very slow now. In fact, I did think of H
from that second night. Not his shrug. He had fallen silent for a long time and I had closed my eyes, for the light seemed very bright. I listened to his silence just as I listened to the silence of these two conspirators before me.

And then H
said, “They were fools, but I can’t bring myself to grow angry anymore.”

I opened my eyes in the bedroom and the light was off. H
had turned it off, knowing that it was bothering me. “Who were fools?” I asked.