The Hundred-Foot Journey (26 page)

Through the French doors behind the widow, the garden was a riot of color—camellias and wood sage and flowering bilberry—and I tried not to let my attention drift over her shoulder to this enchanting scene outside. But I most confess I was unsuccessful, as finches and squirrels darted back and forth from a bird feeder, as a team of monarch butterflies fluttered drunk through the purple haze of a butterfly bush. It was all so much more attractive than the gloom of Madame Verdun’s private parlor, where Paul’s death hung heavy in the air, where the stone floor was cold and the lights dimmed for a house in mourning.

“I will never forgive him, and when Our Lord calls me home, I will make Paul pay for what he has done. I promise you, that impossible husband of mine, he will get an earful. Or worse.”

Her bony white fingers gripped the swoop of the teapot’s handle. “One lump or two?”

“Two lumps, and milk, please.”

The widow handed me my cup, poured her own, and for several awkward moments we sat in silence, the only sound in the room the grating of our silver spoons as we both wordlessly stirred our tea.

“They are still unclear as to what happened? He didn’t leave a note? One didn’t show up later?”

“No,” Madame Verdun said bitterly. “A will, yes, executed a few years ago, but no suicide note. Maybe he took his life. Maybe he didn’t. We will probably never know for certain.”

I pursed my lips. Madame Verdun’s old-fashioned way of talking always sounded to me like a deliberate attempt to let Paul’s friends know that she was of “better” stock than her self-made husband.

“But I think I know why Paul died.”

“Oh. Really?”

“Yes. The inspectors of
Gault Millau
and
Le Guide Michelin
killed him. They have blood on their hands. . . . If the police rule Paul’s death a suicide, and I am denied the payment of his life insurance policy, then I will sue the guides for every penny. I am consulting with my lawyer now.”

“I am sorry. I don’t understand.”

Madame Verdun stared at me—blankly—before placing her cup and saucer atop a coaster, next to a coffee table book on Etruscan gardens. She leaned forward and rubbed the coffee table with the palm of her hand, as if she had just located a wet spot.

“Well, Chef,” she finally said, “you seem to be the only one of Paul’s friends who doesn’t know the next edition of
Le Guide
was going to reduce Paul to two stars. The day before he died he received a call from a reporter at
Le Figaro,
asking for comment. There were rumors, of course, but the reporter confirmed our worst fears: Monsieur Barthot, the Michelin guide’s
directeur général,
personally approved his inspectors’ decision. So it was this completely unwarranted and capricious act by Barthot and his committee that directly or indirectly led to Paul’s death. Of this I am sure. He was powerless to fight their judgment, of course, and you should have seen him these last few weeks, since
Gault Millau
reduced him to fifteen points. He was gutted. Utterly without hope. And you know, the restaurant’s occupancy rate immediately fell when the new
Gault Millau
rating became public. . . . When I think about it, I just become so angry. But just you watch. I will teach
Gault Millau
and that Barthot fellow a lesson or two. I hold them personally responsible for Paul’s death.”

“I did not know. I am so very sorry.”

The room was again filled with our silence.

But Madame Verdun’s arched, finely penciled eyebrows, and the plaintive look on her face, suggested she wanted me to say something more, so I nervously added, “Of course, the critics were entirely wrong. No question. If I can be of help in this matter, please let me know. You know how much I admired Paul. . . .”

“Oh, how kind of you. Yes. Let me think. . . . We are assembling testimonials from his peers. Part of the complaint’s preamble.”

But it was clear, in the curvature of her lips, that my two-star status was not quite of sufficient elevation for such an important task, and that she really had in mind some other assignment. “But I am not sure that would be the best use of your talents,” she finally said.

I looked at my watch. If I left within the next ten minutes, I would hit rush hour but could still be back at the restaurant for the evening’s sitting.

“Madame Verdun, I believe you asked me here for a specific reason, no? Please speak freely. We are friends and you must know I want to be of service to Paul in any way that I can.”

“I did ask you here for a reason, Chef. How insightful of you.”

“Please ask.”

“We are going to have a memorial service for my late husband.”

“Of course.”

“It is Paul’s wish. He left specific instructions in his will, which states he wants a hundred friends for dinner after his passing. He even had the funds set aside in a special account for this memorial meal. You must know Paul was always a little odd, and ‘friends,’ well, we must interpret this word liberally. The list of guests attached to his will is really just a Who’s Who of French haute cuisine, with all the top-rated chefs, gourmand clients, and critics invited to send him off, even though he couldn’t stand most of them. . . . Honestly, such an odd request.”

The mask slipped and Anna Verdun was suddenly overcome by the tragedy of her husband’s death. She had to stop talking altogether for a few moments.

“Tell me, Chef, would you invite all your enemies to your memorial service? I simply don’t understand it. It must be a kind of showing off from beyond the grave, but I don’t know. I just don’t know. Truth be told, I never really understood my husband. Not in life. Not in death.”

It was the first and only time I caught a glimpse of what lay behind the woman’s frigid veneer, and the perplexed look on her face, the pain of her incomprehension, touched me deeply, and I instinctively reached over the coffee table to pat her hand.

She did not like this, not at all, for she promptly pulled her hand back, startled by the physical contact, and then covered up her embarrassment by looking for a tissue up her sleeve.

“But these were Paul’s final wishes, so I will honor them.”

She dabbed at the corners of her eyes, blew her nose, and then reinserted the tissue back up her chiffon sleeve. “Now, in all these specific instructions for the memorial, Paul wants, I quote, ‘the most talented chef in all France to send me home.’ ”

She looked at me. I looked at her.

“Yes?”

“Well, apparently he thought that was you. I am, if I may be frank, not quite sure why he was so taken by you—you have only two stars, no? But he did once say to me that you and he were the only genuine articles in all France. When I asked him what he meant, he said something to the effect that you two were the only chefs in France who really understood food, and only you two could possibly save French cooking from itself.”

A much-overblown and ridiculous remark, of course, so typical of Paul, but his widow smiled tremulously, and this time, against her better judgment, reached across the table to touch my hand.

“Hassan—may I call you that?—would you oversee Paul’s memorial dinner? Would you do this for me? It would be such a relief to know the dinner is in your capable hands. Of course, you mustn’t be in the kitchen yourself—you must be out front with the rest of us—but it would be
merveilleux
if you could oversee the menu, as Paul would have wanted. Is this too much to ask?”

“Not at all. I would be honored, Anna. Consider it done.”

“How kind of you. I am so relieved. Imagine, dinner for one hundred gourmands. What a burden to impose on a widow. I am simply in no state to organize such a thing.”

We stood and hugged each other stiffly, and I again expressed my condolences before moving, as quickly as I could without appearing rude, toward the front door.

“I will let you know the date of the memorial,” she called out.

I scuttled across the gravel to my battered Peugeot, but she kept on talking from the doorstep as I searched for my keys.

“Paul really had affection only for you, Hassan. He once told me that you and he were ‘made from the same ingredients.’ I thought that a rather clever turn of phrase for a chef. I think, when he looked at you, he saw his younger self. . . .”

I slammed the car door shut, awkwardly held up a hand in a final farewell, and then sped off with such force I think I sprayed her with bits of gravel. But in the stop-go drive back to Paris—through the back roads of Normandy, through the
banlieue
suburbs of Paris, along the
périphérique,
and then down through the string of lights of the city center—I could only think about Paul, consciously or not, taking his own life.

“I am nothing like you, Paul. Nothing at all.”

Restaurateurs from all over France—twenty-five thousand estimated the press—came to the capital that fateful day of the demonstration, and we initially gathered at the Arc de Triomphe. The atmosphere was festive, even as media and police helicopters hovered overhead like gathering storm clouds. Young and handsome chefs in toques, oversized and towering above us on stilts, were the charming front line of our demonstration, and we aligned ourselves in orderly rows behind them.

Colorful banners—cartoons of piggish politicians and emaciated chefs, red slashes through the value-added tax rate of 19.6 percent, simple
NON PLUS
placards—they were hoisted here and there by the rapidly gathering crowd, while the organizers in red aprons, holding megaphones, barked orders at us from the sidelines.

We had good cause. McDonald’s meals were, for some twisted bit of political reasoning, entirely tax-free, but quality French restaurants like Le Chien Méchant had to add a 19.6 percent VAT to every customer’s bill. So in the end, dinner at my two-star restaurant, without wine but including the labor-intensive service haute cuisine is rightly famous for, cost an average 350 euros a head. The universe of customers prepared to pay that amount for a meal was, as you can imagine, rather limited and rapidly dwindling. Dropped for a few years, the VAT charge had been reinstated. So the VAT, on top of the recession, was killing our business, and already several well-known restaurants—such as the celebrated Mirabelle over in the 8th—had gone bust.

Enough. We had to fight back.

Le Chien Méchant was that day well represented throughout the twenty-five-thousand-strong column. Serge and Jacques, my right and left hands, both were near the front, arm in arm, ready to roll down the Champs-Élysées like a meaty tanker. But I was also touched to see my pastry chef, Suzanne, plus two sous chefs and four waiters, all ready to do their part. Mehtab refused to come—we were all Bolsheviks, according to her—but the accountant, Maxine, arm in arm with our waiter Abdul, was there, repeatedly looking over at me, through the crowd, with hungry eyes. Even the young apprentice Jean-Luc was willing to be counted on his day off, and, touched to see his earnest face, I went out of my way to shake the boy’s hand and thank him.

“Chef!” yelled Suzanne, waving over the protesters’ heads. “What fun!”

I was not entirely sure. Immigrants, by instinct, we like to keep our heads down. Not make waves. Furthermore, my unease was fanned that morning when I met Le Comte de Nancy Selière. The count and his West Highland white terrier were heading off to their daily rendezvous in the Jardin des Plantes when I bumped into them at the corner of Rue des Écoles, just as the dog finished his business in the gutter and was triumphantly burying imaginary dirt on his mess with aristocratic flicks of his hind legs.

The aged count was bent over and cooing—
“C’est formidable, Alfie!”—
when he removed the linen handkerchief from his breast pocket to dab and tidy up around his dog’s bottom. It was of course a rather awkward moment to engage the gourmet banker, but I thought it would be even ruder to pretend I had not seen him, so I cleared my throat and said,
“Bonjour, Monsieur Le Comte.”

The aristocrat straightened himself and looked around.

“Aah, Chef, it is you . . . I suppose you are off to march with the proletariat.”

“Don’t put it like that, please, Monsieur Le Comte. We want lower taxes.”

“Well, I really can’t blame you,” said the count, patting his pockets, pretending to look for a plastic bag. “Perhaps we should all be doing the same. You know, it was my ancestor, Jean-Baptiste Colbert, the finance minister of Louis XIV, who once noted, very sensibly I should add, that taxation was the art of ‘plucking the most feathers with the least amount of hissing.’ Totally lost on this lot. They’ve proven themselves to be rough and greedy, like provincial butchers.”

The count ignored the dog’s mess, despite the fact that a sign ordering Parisians to clean up after their animals was directly before us, and added, rather thoughtfully, as we continued to stroll down the street, “Do be careful, Chef. This government will mismanage the demonstration. Be sure of it. Absolutely no feel for finesse.”

At ten thirty that morning the morphing mass of demonstrators around the Arc de Triomphe seemed to solidify and congeal, and with a few barks from the megaphones, and some African drumming and whistles, we were off, arm in arm and chanting. I looked around as our sea of banners made its way down the Champs-Élysées, and found both Alain Ducasse and Joël Robuchon in the lines around me. I was literally surrounded by France’s restaurant establishment, and the sense of bonhomie was palpable.

Le Comte de Nancy’s warning suddenly seemed excessively dark and theatrical and misplaced. The sun was shining and the police looked bored; with the gawking Parisians stood wealthy Saudi and Kuwaiti families, the women in burkas, scores of children at their feet, standing along the Champs-Élysées and waving.

Less than an hour later, the forward ranks of the demonstration reached the other side of the Seine, in front of the Assemblée Nationale. It was there a phalanx of helmeted riot police with shields blocked our progress, as expected, with a makeshift pen created from a crescent of steel grilles preventing our protest from actually climbing the steps of the Assemblée Nationale and disrupting Parliament. But a stage, podium, and microphone had been set up within the pen, and a series of speeches was the next stage of the planned event.