The Chef's Apprentice: A Novel (24 page)

That day, Landucci had announced his reward for information about the book, and even at that late hour, people were still out talking about it. I passed clumps of street people huddled in excited bunches. Lamplight glowed in the windows of modest homes where laborers should already be asleep, and prostitutes conferred on corners while potential customers passed them by. There was an unusual number of gondolas about as well, the gentry out visiting neighbors to discuss the big questions: Why a senate seat and small fortune for that book? What secrets might be in it,
and where might it be hidden? Landucci had announced that the book contained secrets of state that must be kept from Genoa and Rome, but no one believed that for a moment.

I raced through the dark streets to the Church of San Domenico, and as I’d hoped, Marco still slept in the deep recess of the church’s double front doors. The Gothic stone lintel sheltered him from wind and rain, and in the morning he sat directly in the path of early churchgoers whose piety inclined them toward charity. Once, an old woman gave Marco an entire loaf of fresh bread. Another time, a girl with a baby in her arms filled his hand with coppers and kissed his grimy cheek. It was a coveted location that Marco had, more than once, defended at the cost of bloody nose or swollen lip.

Others, mostly drunks, idiots, and orphans, slept under rags in the shallower crevices of the old church, but I spotted Marco immediately by the blue wool blankets, torn and stained now, that we’d stolen from the Florentine importer. He’d appropriated mine when the chef took me off the street, and during the day, while he was out hunting food, he stashed them in a secret hiding place.

I pulled the chicken leg from my waistband, squatted down beside the mound of blue blankets, and wafted it under his sleeping nose. With eyes still closed, he darted his hand out of the blankets like a lizard’s tongue and grabbed my wrist. When he recognized me, he propped himself up on one elbow, pulled the meat to his mouth, and tore off the first bite with the chicken leg still in my hand. While he chewed, he took the leg from me and held it close to his chest, like an animal guarding its kill.

He gobbled down all the meat, gnawed at the stripped bone, and bit off the cartilage end before either of us spoke. When he began to crack open the bone with his teeth to get at the marrow I said, “The chef’s not going to promote me.”

“I know that.” He sucked out the marrow and licked the inside of the bone.

“You were right. Something funny is going on in that kitchen. He does have suspicious recipes that change men’s moods.”

Marco wiped his greasy lips with the back of his wrist. “That sauce?”

“
Sì
. Sauce Nepenthes and also a white-bean soup that makes people eat like pigs. They can’t get enough, and I think the secret ingredient is opium. But you should’ve seen the chef’s face when I mentioned it.
Marrone
, he was angry.”

“Opium? Interesting.” Marco pulled off a sliver of bone to pick his teeth. “So, what do you want from me?”

“I tried to learn a few things on my own, and …” I looked down and muttered, “He didn’t like that.”

“I told you!” Marco pointed his sliver of bone at me. “Nobody helps nobody for nothing. He just wants a slave.” Marco broke the denuded bone into pieces and sucked on them for any last traces of flavor.

I hugged my knees. “I mentioned the names of a couple of special ingredients and he went crazy.
Pazzo!
”

“He doesn’t want you to know anything important. But this is good. If he uses magic and drugs, we can blackmail him for whatever he knows about that book.”

“And for the love potion.”

Marco put down his brittle remnants of bone. He said, “The love potion. Sure. We’ll get your love potion, too.”

“You heard about the senate seat?”

“Everyone’s heard.” Marco snorted. “The secret in that book is how to make gold. Has to be.”

I decided to broach the other thing that had been nagging at me. “There was something in that cabinet called amaranth, but the copyist said amaranth doesn’t grow anymore. I don’t think I mis-copied it. But how could the chef have a grain that doesn’t grow anymore?”

“Good question.” Marco scratched lazily at the vermin in his hair. He said, “You have to steal some of the stuff in that cabinet.”

“Steal from the cabinet? I don’t know …”

“Just a little. Not enough to be missed. And some money, too.”

“I don’t want to steal his money.”

“It’s not his money, Cabbage-Head, it’s the doge’s.” He shrugged. “Only enough to pay the Abyssinian. You said yourself a coin or two wouldn’t be missed. We have to know what your chef’s got so we know what we have to bargain with.”

“
Marrone
. The Abyssinian?” This was getting complicated. But after a moment I said, “All right.”

*

The next day was an agony of ambivalence and waiting. I tended to my chores with my head down, wrestling with Marco’s idea, and the chef took my subdued demeanor as a sign that I’d learned my lesson from the previous day’s humiliation. I tried to catch his eye, hoping for a small smile, for some tiny hint of forgiveness. My anger had subsided and any gesture of kindness would have made me abandon Marco’s plan. What I really wanted was a chance to talk to him, to ask him why he’d treated me so harshly. But throughout that long day Chef Ferrero addressed me as “apprentice” or “boy.” He ordered me about the kitchen with dismissive waves and never met my eyes. His coldness made me angry all over again. Worse, it hurt, and it confirmed the belief that Marco was right and I was, indeed, on my own.

After everyone left for the night, I faced the moment of decision. I toyed with the wire in my pocket and stared at the chef’s cabinet. Once again I tried to postpone the act because this time I knew it would be nothing but straightforward stealing. I attended to my night duties slowly, with uncommon diligence, and the impending deed hung in the air like the odor of chicken blood.
With the last chore completed, I stood in the middle of the room looking for one more task, but the clean orderly kitchen had no need of further attention.

I removed the copper sauté pan and laid it on the floor, then faced the cabinet door and stared at it. I wanted to turn around and go to bed. If I opened that door I would embark on a path that did not include the chef. I felt sad and sick. My breath quickened, and I fiddled with the wire. There was an uncomfortable fluttering in my chest. To steal from the chef was a betrayal, there was no other name for it. But hadn’t he made it clear that I would remain a slave? Hadn’t I been forced to kill and eviscerate twenty hens and do the work of a charwoman simply because I knew two of his secret ingredients? How much clearer could it be that he had no plans to promote me?

The familiar lock opened easily. I took a deep breath and pulled the door open, exposing the shelves of neatly arranged bottles and jars. As I reached for the first jar, a voice froze my hand in midair.

Behind me, the chef said, “Why, Luciano?”

CHAPTER XVII
T
HE
B
OOK OF
G
ROWING

T
he aphorism “caught red-handed” probably originated with a murderer caught with the blood of his victim still on his hands. Nevertheless, I got caught red-handed and red faced, drenched not in blood, but in shame and fear.

“I can explain,” I blubbered, having no idea how I might do that.

The chef sounded tired. “Please don’t lie, Luciano. What are you doing? Are you out of your mind? Why do you pry into things you don’t understand?”

“I want to understand.”

“By stealing? I want to teach you something important, and you do this?”

“But you don’t teach me what I need. And when I learn something on my own, you make me kill chickens.”

“Ah. The chickens.”

“Just because I knew the names of some secret spices?”

“Those weren’t secret spices, and you weren’t punished for knowing them. You were punished for the way you learned them. You broke into my cabinet. I suppose you copied the words and had someone read them, eh?”

It gave me pause to know I was so transparent. “I wanted to know about your magic recipes. I thought you had decided not to promote me.”

“Magic recipes.” He managed a sad smile. “Surely you know better.”

“But—”

“A maestro doesn’t need magic. What appears to be magic is knowledge. Remember the dinner for Herr Behaim? That was skill, Luciano, not magic.”

I remembered the dinner, all right. I also remembered his evasion about the Sauce Nepenthes. I said, “Just because food has power and you have skill doesn’t mean there can’t still be magic.”

The smiled drained from his face. “
Dio
, you try me.” As he locked his cabinet, my mind cast about for a place to sleep that night. I hoped Marco would let me share his doorway.

“I’m sorry, Maestro. Will I have to leave?”

“
Dio
. I don’t know.”

“I wanted to be better, but I thought you gave up on me.”

“Me? You’re the one giving up.”

“No. I thought I had to fend for myself.”

“That’s what you’re doing here?”

“I don’t know.” And suddenly I didn’t. The chef’s hurt look made it seem like a terrible mistake, a gross misunderstanding. “I don’t know what I’m doing here. Please give me another chance. I won’t listen to Marco anymore.”

“Marco? This was someone else’s idea?”

“No.” I wouldn’t involve Marco. I was the one who sought him out. I squared my shoulders. “No, Maestro. It was all me. But I was mistaken and I’m sorry.”

“Are you protecting someone?”

“No. There’s no one else.” I took a deep breath and braced to take my punishment like a man. “Do what you wish to me. I
deserve it. But please know that I am truly sorry.” I felt my eyes fill and pretended to scratch my nose to wipe away a tear.

“At least you’re willing to take responsibility.”

“
Sì
. It was all my doing.”

“It’s important for a man to take responsibility.”

“I do. But it was stupid and I’ll never do it again. You’re like a father to me.”

“Oh,
Dio
.” The chef looked tired. “I have to think,” he said. “Go to bed.”

“You mean upstairs?”

“Should I wake the majordomo to prepare a guest room for you?”

“Thank you, Maestro.” I backed away, bowing as I went. “I’m sorry, Maestro. Thank you. I’ll never—”

“Oh, be quiet and go to bed.”

*

I was sincerely repentant, but he had asked why, and part of me felt I could have asked him the same thing. Why so many secrets? Why the parade of scholarly visitors? Why the locked cabinet? And what was the meaning of that strange garden? The chef’s garden was a constant source of whispering, pulled eyelids, and encrypted warnings to all who ventured there. Most of the garden was devoted to the usual things—lettuces, onions, cabbage, and eggplant—ordinary ingredients for good, honest meals. But then there were the chef’s other plants, the ones that made the cooks cross themselves and kiss their thumbnails whenever they were forced to handle them.

Take love apples, to start with. Their poisonous reputation was as well known as that of hemlock, and the cooks protested loudly the day the chef put in his seedlings. What if their roots contaminated the onions? What if their fumes caused swoons or fits? What
if the odd, tangy smell of their leaves attracted disgruntled ghosts from the nearby dungeons? It took repeated assurances, the installation of a wire enclosure, and the fact that nothing catastrophic followed their planting to keep the staff from uprooting the love apples behind the chef’s back. Even so, one cook quit, and another developed a twitchy eye and started nipping at the cooking sherry.

After the love apples, the chef put in beans—another rarity from the New World—and then potatoes. Once, he tried something he called maize, but the plants failed, so instead he bought sacks of dried maize from an unknown source. In a giant stone mortar, he ground the dried maize down to a coarse yellow meal from which he made one of his exotic specialties—polenta.

I’d peeked through the garden door a time or two, but I’d never actually needed to set foot out there, for which I was grateful. The palace gardeners tended to the weeding and watering, and the cooks harvested what they needed. The chef himself saw to his collection of leafy freaks.

The morning after Chef Ferrero caught me with my hand in his cabinet, he didn’t speak to me, and I worked in a limbo of apprehension, wondering exactly what my punishment would be. While finishing my midday
panino
, I stood at the threshold of the open garden door trying to enjoy the mingled smells of mint and rosemary wafting on a shifting breeze. But, waiting for the axe to fall, I couldn’t concentrate on my food or the scented air. As I swallowed the last bite, the chef came up behind me and put a hand on my shoulder. I jumped, thinking,
Here it comes
.

He said, “Would you like to see the garden, Luciano?”

The garden?
Marrone
, this would be worse than the chickens. “No, thank you, Maestro.”

The chef took my elbow as if he hadn’t heard me and guided me outside. We walked along neat gravel paths bordered in every shade of green. The gravel crunched beneath our shoes, and the chef named his strange crops as we went. When we came to the
love apples—garish red globes, some oozing slimy red poison from split skins—I took care not to let the leaves brush against me. I watched in horror as the chef buried his face deep in their foliage and inhaled fiercely. Next to the love apples, malevolent beans crawled up tall poles, out-of-control mutations with curled tendrils like green fingers blindly reaching for passersby. I eased by them carefully.

I followed the chef to the circular herb garden with relief. Here were familiar plants with gentle smells: thyme, dill, mint, basil, and others equally benign. He asked me to identify the ones I knew and gave me a brief dissertation on their uses: Dill was good with fish, thyme complemented veal, mint went well with fruit, and basil was perfect for the dreaded love apples. He plucked two large mint leaves with purplish undersides, placed one on his tongue, and gave me the other. We came to rest on a curved stone bench in the middle of the garden, and we sat there sucking on fresh mint, him enjoying the breeze, and me awaiting the judgment that must be coming.