The Hundred-Foot Journey (18 page)

A funk had settled on the entire family, and we morosely shoveled our potato breakfast back and forth across the plate as Papa talked and talked and talked into the phone. Only Ammi ate well.

But Zainab, we learned that morning, Zainab was cut from the same cloth as Papa. My little sister walked over to Papa as he bellowed into the phone, and she tugged his kurta, utterly fearless.

“Stop it, Papa. I don’t like this.”

The look on his face, my God, it was horrible.

I stepped forward and took her hand. “Yes, Papa. It’s time to stop this. Now.”

I’ll always remember that moment. His mouth hung open, his torso frozen in an odd twist, half-talking on the phone, half-turned toward his two children. Zainab and I stood resolutely like that for some time, waiting for the bellow or the slap, but he turned back to the phone and told his lawyer he’d call him back.

“What you say? I don’t tink I heard you right.”

“Papa, if Hassan becomes a French chef, that means we stay here and make this home. Well, good. I am tired of moving, Papa. I don’t want to go back to drizzly old England. I like it here.”

“Mummy would want us to stop running,” I added. “Can’t you hear her, Papa?”

Papa stared at us coldly, as if we had betrayed him, but gradually the hardness in Papa’s face dissolved, and it was something quietly miraculous, like watching a chilled lump of goose fat warming in a hot pan.

The mountain air was crisp and clean, just like that first day when we arrived in Lumière those three months ago, and the region’s famous morning light was busy washing the mountains in pinks, mauves, and mild browns.

“Madame Mallory,” Papa called out gruffly across the courtyard. “Come and have breakfast with us.”

But the chef no longer had the strength to turn her head. Her skin was a deathly white, and her nose, I recall, was bitter red and sore, with beads of mucus hanging from its tip. “Promise,” she croaked in a weak voice, still staring straight ahead through a small opening among the layers of blankets. “Promise Hassan come work for me.”

Papa’s face darkened at the woman’s obstinacy, and he was again at the threshold of blowing his top. But little Zainab, his conscience, she was in his hands and at his side, tugging her warnings. Papa took a deep breath and released his terrible sigh.

“What you think, Hassan? You want to study French cooking? You wanna work for dis woman?”

“I want nothing more in this world.”

I think he was physically struck by the fervency of my answer, that irrefutable call of destiny that spoke through me, and for a few moments he could do nothing but stare intently at the cracks of the cobblestones beneath his feet, holding on to little Zainab for strength. But when enough time had passed, he raised his head. He was a good man, my Papa.

“You have my word, Madame Mallory. Hassan, you must work in Le Saule Pleureur’s kitchen.”

The joy I felt, like that incredible explosion of cream when you bite into a
religieuse
pastry. But Mallory did not have the arrogant smile of the winner on her lips, but something humble, something that expressed relief and somber thanks and somehow acknowledged my father’s sacrifice. And I think Papa appreciated this, for Papa planted his feet solidly before her, for balance, and offered her his outstretched hands.

And I remember, so well, that moment when she clapped her hands in his and Papa pulled her to her feet with a grunt, the way my
maîtresse
slowly and creakily rose from her courtyard chair. This, too, I remember.

And so, next day, Auntie and Mehtab helped me pack my bag and I crossed the street. A lot of emotion went into that hundred-foot journey, cardboard suitcase in hand, from one side of Lumière’s boulevard to the other. Before me the sugar-dusted willow tree, the leaded windows and the lace curtains, the elegant inn where even the warped wooden steps were soaked in great French traditions. And there, standing on Le Saule Pleureur’s stone steps, in white aprons, the taciturn Madame Mallory and kind Monsieur Leblanc, an elderly couple waiting with outstretched hands for their newly adopted son.

I went to them and my adopted home and the growing I had yet to do—as a student of French cuisine, as a servant of the kitchen. But at my back was the world from where I had come: little Zainab and watery-eyed Ammi, pomfret tikka and Kingfisher beer, the wailing of Hariharan, the hot kadai spitting oil and peas and ginger and chili.

And as I passed Papa at the iron gates, as each new generation is meant to do, he wept unabashedly and wiped his grief-stricken face with a white handkerchief. And I remember, as if it were yesterday, his words as I passed.

“Remember, sweet boy, you are a Haji. Always remember. A Haji.”

It was such a small journey, in feet, but it felt as if I were striding from one end of the universe to the other, the light of the Alps illuminating my way.

My room at Le Saule Pleureur was at the top of the house, down the narrow hall from Madame Mallory’s flat. In winter, my monk’s cell was intensely cold; in summer, it was unbearably hot and stuffy. The bathroom was down a half flight of stairs at the end of the hall.

That day when I moved to Le Saule Pleureur, I found myself standing alone, for the first time, in the attic room that was to be my home for the years to come. It smelled of old people and a long-ago-sprayed bug treatment. A gaunt Christ on a crucifix was gushing blood from his wounds, and the emaciated figure hung, with a small mirror, on the wall directly above my bed. A dark-wood closet, with two ancient cedar hangers hanging inside, seemed to glower malevolently from the corner of the room, opposite the narrow cot. There was hardly enough space to turn around in; a portico high up on the wall looked out on the gabled roof outside but did little to alleviate the close space.

I set my suitcase down. What had I done?

I was—I don’t mind admitting it—completely rattled by the austere room, so Catholic and foreign to my upbringing, and a voice in my head, half-hysterical, urged me to dash back to the safety and comfort of my cheerful bedroom in Maison Mumbai.

But a book on the bedside table caught my eye and I stepped forward to examine it. It was a fat tome with yellowed pages and ornate illustrations depicting different butchering cuts on every kind of livestock from cattle to rabbit.

An unsealed envelope was slipped inside its pages.

The handwritten note, from Madame Mallory, was a formal welcome to Le Saule Pleureur and stated, in her old-fashioned penmanship, how much she looked forward to having me as a student in her kitchen. She urged me to work hard and absorb as much as possible in the coming years; she was there for me and would help me any way she could. To start our adventure, she said, I should study this Lyon butcher’s treatise with utmost care.

Her letter hit just the right note, and a manly voice inside my head suddenly and roughly said,
Get on with it and stop acting the damn fool.
So I made sure Madame Mallory and Leblanc had closed the door firmly behind them, before locking it tight. Reassured I couldn’t possibly be disturbed, I stood on the cot and took down the frightening crucifix, hiding it deep in the back of the closet, totally out of sight. And then, finally, I unpacked my bag.

There was a dream that repeatedly visited me during those early days of my apprenticeship, which now, looking back, seems quite significant. In this dream I was walking alongside a large body of water when suddenly an ugly, primordial fish from the water’s deep, flat and round with a bull head, crawled up the beach using its fins as primitive feet, pushing itself with a great deal of effort out of the water and onto dry land. And there, exhausted by the Herculean effort, the fish rested, its tail still in the water, its head on the dry sand, gills opening and closing like fire bellows, shocked and pumping and gasping in this new amphibian state, half-in and half-out of the two vastly different worlds.

But truth be told, there was no time to concern myself with such things, or even the niceties of boudoir décor, because from that first afternoon forward, I was hardly ever in my room, but to put my head down and pass out.

My alarm went off at 5:40 every morning. Twenty minutes later I was having breakfast with Madame Mallory in her attic flat. Bombarding me with questions on what I had studied during the previous twenty-four hours, Madame Mallory used these early morning sessions to lay the intellectual groundwork for the real lessons held down in the kitchen later in the day.

Verbal interrogations completed, we promptly headed off to the markets in furtherance of my education, before returning to the inn with our purchases, where the day’s work began in earnest. The first six months of my apprenticeship Madame Mallory rotated me through every low-level job: At first I did nothing but wash dishes, mop the kitchen floors, and scrub and prepare
les légumes;
the next month I was out front, in the restaurant, a bread-boy in tunic and white cotton gloves, instructed to closely study the ballet of service unfolding around me, or ordered in off-hours to set the dining room, Madame Mallory personally following me from table to table and clicking her tongue in consternation every time I positioned a silver spoon not perfectly aligned with the other cutlery’s military order.

No sooner had I found my footing there, than I was marched back to the kitchen, this time to spend my days plucking and cleaning wild pigeons, quail, and pheasant for hours on end, until I thought my arms might drop off. Chef de Cuisine Jean-Pierre barked at me continuously during this period, and by the end of the day I was barely able to stand, for the stiffness of my back. This assignment was followed, then, by a stint alongside Monsieur Leblanc, at the front desk, taking reservations and learning the skill of properly seating a restaurant and the delicate politics of not offending repeat customers.

But still no hand at cooking.

I worked this way every day until three thirty, when we were given the midafternoon break hoteliers call
“room hour,” and I crawled back to my attic cell for a nap that bordered on a coma. Early evening, I tumbled bleary-eyed down the stairs again, to engage in my next lesson: thirty minutes of wine tasting and corresponding lecture, under the tutelage of Le Saule Pleureur’s sommelier, before taking up my regular work shift until midnight. The alarm would go off at the unforgiving hour of 5:40 the next morning, and the tyranny of the workday started all over again.

Monday was my day off, and all I had the energy for was to stagger back across the boulevard, to the Dufour estate, to collapse on our old couch.

“They make you eat pig?”

“Arash, stop it with the stupid questions. Leave your brother alone.”

“But did they, Hassan? You eaten pig?”

“You are looking so thin. I tink dat woman starve you.”

“Try this, Hassan. I made it just for you. Malai peda. With golden blossom honey.”

I lay stretched out on the couch like a Mughal prince, Auntie and Mehtab feeding me sweetmeats and milky tea, Uncle Mayur and Ammi and Zainab and my brothers dragging chairs over to listen spellbound to the morsels of information I passed on from the inner sanctum of Le Saule Pleureur across the street.

“The special tomorrow will be
palombe,
wood pigeon. I tell you, I have been plucking and cleaning pigeon for two days. Very difficult work. Mehtab, please, massage the shoulders. See how tense, from all the work? We are serving
salmis de palombes,
which is pigeon pie, very succulent, in a Merlot and shallot sauce. It is best served with . . .”

Papa behaved very curiously during this period. Warmly roaring his greetings at the door and throwing his arms around me when I first entered, he would then drift off, oddly distant, allowing the rest of the family to swarm in. For some reason, Papa never partook in the family’s ritual interrogation about my work, but hovered at the back of the room, pretending to fuss over some task at the partner’s desk, like slitting open bills with an ivory letter opener, but clearly listening to every word that was being said, even though he never asked a question himself.

“All week I have been learning about the Languedoc-Roussillon, the wine region around Marseille. Makes a huge quantity of wine but, you know, it produces only ten percent of the nation’s Appellation Contrôlée.” Seeing how wide-eyed they were, at my every pronouncement, I couldn’t resist adding, with an affected wave of the hand, “I recommend the Fitou and Minervois. The Corbières is rather disappointing, particularly the vintages of the more recent years.”

They oohed and aahed quite agreeably.

“What a ting,” said Uncle Mayur. “Imagine dat. Our Hassan. Knows French wines.”

“And what is Mallory like? She beat you?”

“No. Never. She doesn’t have to. Just one eyebrow up and we are all dashing about like nervous chickens. Everyone is scared of her. But Jean-Pierre, her number two. He yells and swats my head. Quite a lot.”

Slit. Slit.
From the back of the room.

It was only later in the day, when I was stuffed with our food and coddled and suitably stroked by the family, ready at long last to return to Le Saule Pleureur with renewed determination, that Papa would formally summon me for a private talk, gesture at me to sit down at his desk, his fingers in a steeple and his voice laden with gravitas.

“Tell me, Hassan, has she showed you how to make the tongue? With the Madeira sauce?”

“Not yet, Papa.”

His face fell in disappointment.

“No? Hmm. Not very impressive. Perhaps she not as good as we tink.”

“No, Papa. She a great chef.”

“And that scoundrel Jean-Pierre. Does he know you are from an important family? Nah! Do I need to teach this fellow a lesson or two?”

“No, Papa. Thank you. I will manage.”

In short, I never let on to Papa how difficult the transition was during those first few months, how I missed him and the rest of the family dearly, and how frustrated I was by the work during those early days at Le Saule Pleureur.

For I desperately wanted to get my hands dirty with the cooking, but Madame Mallory wouldn’t let me near a stove, and my frustrations finally came to a head late one morning when I was climbing Le Saule Pleureur’s back stairs, on Jean-Pierre’s order, to fetch lightbulbs from the supply closet on the third floor.