And waiting for the school bus, I stood with Jean-Loup at the front of the queue, and Chantal and Suze glared from their place in the middle but didn’t say anything at all.
Monday, 19 November
Anouk came home from school today with an unaccustomed bounce in her step. She changed into her play clothes, kissed me exuberantly for the first time in weeks, and announced that she was going out with a friend from school.
I didn’t press her for more details—Anouk has been so moody recently that I didn’t want to dampen her spirits—but I kept an eye out just the same. She hasn’t mentioned the subject of friends since her quarrel with Suzanne Prudhomme, and although I know better than to interfere in what may be nothing more than a children’s squabble, it makes me so sad to think of Anouk being left out.
I’ve tried so hard to make her fit in. I’ve invited Suzanne countless times, made cakes, arranged visits to the cinema. But nothing seems to make a difference; there’s a line that separates Anouk from the rest, a line that seems more pronounced as the days go by.
Today was different, somehow; and as she set off (at a run, as always) I thought I could see the old Anouk, racing across the square in her red coat, her hair f lying like a pirate’s flag and her shadow hopping at her heels.
I wonder who the friend was. Not Suzanne, in any case. But there’s something in the air today, some new optimism that makes light of my concerns. Maybe it’s the sun, back again after a week of cloudy skies. Maybe it’s the fact that, for the first time in three years, we have actually sold out of gift boxes. Maybe it’s just the scent of chocolate, and how good it is to be back at work again, to handle the pans and the ceramics, to feel the granite slab grow warm beneath my hands, to make those simple things that give people pleasure. . . .
Why did I hesitate so long? Could it be that it still reminds me too much of lansquenet—of lansquenet and Roux, and Armande and Joséphine, and even the curé Francis Reynaud—all those people whose lives took a different turn just because I happened to pass by?
Everything comes home, my mother used to say; every word spoken, every shadow cast, every footprint in the sand. It can’t be helped; it’s part of what makes us who we are. Why should I fear it now? Why should I fear anything here ?
We have worked so hard over the past three years. We have persevered. We deserve success. Now, at last, I think I can feel a change in the wind. And it’s all ours. No tricks, no glamours, just plain hard work.
Thierry’s in London again this week, supervising his Kings Cross project. This morning, he sent flowers again, a double handful of mixed roses, tied with raffia, with a card that reads:
TO MY FAVORITE TECHNOPHOBE—LOVE, THIERRY
It’s a sweet gesture—old-fashioned and just a little childish, like the milk chocolate squares he likes so much. It makes me feel slightly guilty to think that in all the rush of the past two days, I’ve barely thought about him at all, and his ring—so awkward to wear when making chocolate—has been lying in a drawer since Saturday night.
But he’ll be so pleased when he sees the shop and all the progress we have made. He doesn’t know much about chocolate—still thinks of it as just for women and children and has quite failed to notice the growing popularity of high-quality chocolate over the past few years—so that it’s hard for him to envisage the chocolaterie as a serious concern.
Of course, it’s early days yet. But Thierry, when you see us again, I think I can promise you’ll be surprised.
Yesterday we began to redecorate the shop. Another of Zozie’s ideas, not mine, and at first I’d dreaded the disruption, the mess. But with Zozie,
Anouk, and Rosette helping out, what might have been a chore somehow ended up being a mad kind of game, with Zozie on the ladder painting the walls, her hair tied up in a green scarf and yellow paint all over one side of her face, and Rosette with her toy brush, attacking the furniture, and Anouk stenciling blue flowers and spirals and animal shapes across the wall, and all the chairs out in the sunny street, covered in dust sheets and speckled with paint.
“It doesn’t matter, we’ll paint them too,” said Zozie when we discovered Rosette’s little handprints on an old white kitchen chair. And so Rosette and Anouk made a game of it, with trays of ready-mix poster paint, and when they had finished the chair looked so cheery, with multicolored handprints covering it all over, that we all did the same with the other chairs, and with the small secondhand table that Zozie had bought for the front of the shop.
“What’s happening? You’re not closing down? ”
That was Alice, the blond girl who drops by almost every week but hardly ever buys anything. She hardly ever says anything either, but the stacked furniture, the dust sheets, and the multicolored chairs drying in the street were enough to startle her into speech.
When I laughed she looked almost alarmed but stopped to admire Rosette’s handiwork (and to accept a homemade truffle on the house, as part of the celebration). She seems quite friendly with Zozie, who has spoken to her once or twice in the shop, and she especially likes Rosette and knelt beside her on the floor to measure her own small hands against Rosette’s smaller, paint-smudged ones.
Then it was Jean-Louis and Paupaul, coming to see what all the fuss was about. Then Richard and Mathurin, the regulars from Le P’tit Pinson. Then Madame Pinot from around the corner, pretending to be on some kind of errand but darting an eager look over her shoulder at the chaos outside the chocolaterie.
Fat Nico dropped by and commented with his usual exuberance on the shop’s new look. “Hey, yellow and blue! My favorite colors! Was that your idea, Shoe Lady? ”
Zozie smiled. “We all contributed.”
Actually she was barefoot today, her long, shapely feet gripping the rickety stepladder. Some of her hair had escaped the scarf; her bare arms were exotically gloved with paint.
“Looks fun,” said Nico wistfully. “All the little baby hands.” He flexed his own hands, which are large and pale and chubby, and his eyes shone. “Wish I could try, but I guess you’re all done, hey? ”
“Go ahead,” I told him, indicating the trays of poster paint.
He extended a hand toward a tray. There was red paint inside, only slightly grubby now. He hesitated for a moment, then dabbed his fingertips with a quick movement into the paint.
He grinned. “Feels pretty good,” he said. “Like mixing pasta sauce without a spoon.” He stretched out his hand again, this time letting the paint cover the palm.
“Over here,” said Anouk, indicating a place on one of the chairs. “Rosette missed a bit.”
Well, as it turned out, Rosette had missed lots of bits, and after that Nico stayed awhile to help Anouk with the stenciling, and even Alice stayed to watch, and I made hot chocolate for everyone, and we drank it like gypsies, out on the step, and laughed and laughed when a group of Japanese tourists came past and photographed us all sitting there.
As Nico said, it felt pretty good.
“You know,” said Zozie, when we were clearing away the painting things ready for the morning, “what this shop really needs is a name. There’s a sign up there”—she pointed to the faded strip of wood hanging above the door—“but it doesn’t look as if there’s been any actual writing on it for years. How about it, Yanne ? ”
I gave a shrug. “You mean just in case people don’t realize what it is? ” As a matter of fact, I knew exactly what she meant. But a name is never just a name. To name a thing is to give it power, to invest it with an emotional significance that, until now, my quiet little shop has never had.
Zozie wasn’t listening. “I think I could do a pretty good job. Why don’t you let me try? ” she said.
I shrugged again, feeling uneasy. But Zozie had been so very good, and her eyes were shining with such eagerness that I gave in. “All right,” I said. “But nothing fancy. Just chocolaterie. Nothing too chichi.”
What I meant, of course, was nothing like Lansquenet. No names, no slogans. It was already enough that somehow my dis
creet plans for redecorating had turned into a psychedelic paint war.
“Of course,” said Zozie.
And so we took down the weathered sign. (Closer examination revealed the ghostly inscription PAYEN FRÈRES, which could have been the name of a café or something different altogether.) The wood was faded but intact, Zozie declared; with a little rubbing down and some fresh paint, she thought she might make something reasonably durable.
We went our separate ways then: Nico to his place on the Rue Caulaincourt, Zozie to her tiny bedsit on the other side of the Butte, where, she promised, she would work on the sign.
I could only hope it wouldn’t be too garish. Zozie’s color schemes tend toward extravagance, and I had visions of a sign in lime green and red and brilliant purple—perhaps with a picture of flowers or a unicorn—that I would have to display or hurt her feelings.
And so it was with a slight feeling of trepidation that this morning I followed her out of the shop—with my hands over my eyes, at her request—to see the result.
“Well? ” she said. “What do you think? ”
For a moment I couldn’t speak. There it was: hanging above the door, as if it had always been there, a rectangular yellow sign with the name of the shop carefully lettered in blue.
“It’s not too chichi, do you think? ” There was a trace of anxiety in Zozie’s voice. “I know you said write something plain, but this just came to me and—well—what do you think? ”
Seconds passed. For a time I could not take my eyes away from that sign—the neat blue letters, that name. My name. Of course it was a coincidence: what else could it be? I gave her the brightest smile I could. “It’s lovely,” I said.
She sighed. “You know, I was starting to worry.”
And she gave me a smile and tripped over the threshold—which, by some trick of the sun or the new color scheme, now seemed almost luminous—leaving me craning my neck at a sign that read, in Zozie’s neat, cursive script:
Le Rocher de Montmartre
CHOCOLAT
✶
✶
PART FOUR
✶
C hange
✶
Tuesday, 20 November
So now I’m officially best friends with jean-loup. Suzanne was away today, so I didn’t get to see her face, but Chantal made up for both of them, looking really quite ugly all day long, and pretending not to look at me while all her friends just stared and whispered.
“So are you going out with him? ” said Sandrine in chemistry. I used to like Sandrine—a bit—before she fell in with Chantal and the rest. Her eyes were round as marbles, and I could see the eagerness in her colors as she kept saying, “Have you kissed him yet? ”
If I’d really wanted to be popular, then I suppose I’d have said yes. But I don’t need to be popular. I’d rather be a freak than a clone. And Jean-Loup, for all his popularity with the girls, is nearly as much of a freak as I am, with his films and his books and his cameras.
“No, we’re just friends,” I told Sandrine.
She gave me a look. “Well, don’t tell me, then.” And stomped off in a sulk to rejoin Chantal, and whispered and giggled and watched us all day, while Jean-Loup and I talked about all sorts of things and took pictures of them staring at us.
I think the word is puerile, Sandrine. We’re just friends, like I said, and Chantal and Sandrine and Suze and the others can just fuck off—we’re fabulous.
Today after school we went to the cemetery together. It’s one of my favorite places in Paris, and Jean-Loup says it’s one of his too. Montmartre cemetery, with all its little houses and monuments and pointy-roofed chapels and skinny obelisks and streets and squares and alleys and flatblocks for the dead.
There’s a word for it—necropolis. City of the dead. And it is a city; those tombs could almost be houses, I think, lined up side by side with their little gates neatly closed, and their gravel neatly raked, and flower boxes in their mullioned windows. Neat little houses all the same, like a minisuburbia for the dead. The thought made me shiver and laugh at the same time, and Jean-Loup looked up from his camera and asked me why.
“You could almost live down here,” I said. “A sleeping bag and a pillow—a fire—some food. You could hide away in one of these monuments. No one would know. The doors all shut. Warmer than sleeping under a bridge.”
He grinned. “You ever slept under a bridge? ”
Well, of course I had—once or twice—but I didn’t want to tell him that. “No, but I’ve got a good imagination.”
“You wouldn’t be scared? ”
“Why should I? ” I said.
“The ghosts . . .”
I shrugged. “They’re only ghosts.”
A feral cat strolled out from one of the narrow stone lanes. Jean-Loup snapped it with his camera. The cat hissed and went skittering off among the tombs. Probably saw Pantoufle, I thought; cats and dogs are sometimes afraid of him, as if they know he shouldn’t be there.
“One day I’m going to see a ghost. That’s why I bring my camera here.”
I looked at him. His eyes were bright. He really believes—and he cares too, which is what I like so much about him. I hate it when people don’t care, when they move through life without caring or believing in anything.
“You’re really not scared of ghosts? ” he said.
Well, when you’ve seen them as often as I have, you tend not to worry about that kind of thing—but I wasn’t going to tell Jean-Loup that, either. His mother’s quite the Catholic. She believes in the Holy Ghost. And exorcisms. And communion wine turning into blood—I mean, how gross is that? And always having fish on Friday. Oh, boy. Sometimes I think I’m a ghost myself. A walking, talking, breathing ghost.
“The dead don’t do anything. That’s why they’re here. That’s why the little doors in these chapel-of-rest places don’t have handles on the inside.”
“And dying? ” he said. “Are you scared of that? ”
I shrugged. “I guess. Isn’t everyone? ”
He kicked a stone. “Not everyone knows what it’s like,” he said.
I was curious. “So what is it like ? ”
“Dying? ” He shrugged. “Well, there’s this corridor of light. And you see all your dead friends and relatives waiting for you. And they’re all smiling. And at the end of the corridor there’s a bright light, really bright and—holy, I guess, and it talks to you, and it says you have to go back to your life now, but not to worry, because you’ll be back one day and go into the light with all your friends and . . .” He stopped. “Well, that’s what my mum thinks, anyway. That’s what I told her I saw.”
I looked at him. “What did you see? ”
“Nothing,” he said. “Nothing at all.”
There was a silence as Jean-Loup looked through his viewfinder at the avenues of the cemetery with all their dead. Ping went the camera as he pressed the switch.
“Wouldn’t it be a joke,” he said, “if all of this was for nothing? ” Ping. “What if there’s no heaven after all? ” Ping. “What if all those people are just rotting?”
His voice had got quite loud by then, and some birds that had been perching on one of the tombs went off in a sudden clap of wings.
“They tell you they know it all,” he said. “But they don’t. They lie. They always lie.”
“Not always,” I said. “Maman doesn’t lie.”
He looked at me in a funny way, as if he were much, much older than me, with a wisdom born of years of pain and disappointment.
“She will,” he said. “They always do.”
Tuesday, 20 November
Anouk brought in her new friend today. Jean-Loup Rimbault, a nice-looking boy a little older than she is, with an old-fashioned politeness that sets him apart. Today he came over directly from school—he lives on the other side of the Butte—and instead of going out straight away sat in the shop for half an hour, talking to Anouk over biscuits and mocha.
It’s good to see
Anouk with a friend, although the pang it causes me is no less strong for being irrational. Pages of a lost book. Anouk at thirteen, the silent voice whispers; Anouk at sixteen, like a kite on the wind . . . Anouk at twenty, thirty, and more—
“A chocolate, Jean-Loup? On the house.”
Jean-Loup. Not quite a usual name. Not quite a usual boy, either, with that dark, measuring look he shows to the world. His parents are divorced, I hear; he lives with his mother and sees his father three times a year. His favorite chocolate is bitter almond crisp—rather an adult taste, I thought; but then he is a curiously adult and self-possessed young man. His habit of watching everything through the viewfinder of his camera is slightly disconcerting; it’s as if he is trying to distance himself from the world outside, to find in the tiny digital screen a simpler, sweeter reality.
“What’s that picture you’ve just taken? ”
Obediently, he showed me. At first sight it looked like an abstract, a dazzle of colors and geometric shapes. Then I saw it: Zozie’s shoes, shot at eye level, deliberately out of focus among a kaleidoscope of foil-wrapped chocolates.
“I like it,” I said. “What’s that in the corner? ” It looked as if something outside the frame had cast a shadow into the picture.
He shrugged. “Maybe someone was standing too close.” He leveled his camera at Zozie, standing behind the counter with a mass of colored ribbons in her hands. “That’s nice,” he said.
“I’d rather not.” She didn’t look up, but her voice was sharp.
Jean-Loup faltered. “I was just—”
“I know.” She smiled at him, and he relaxed. “I just don’t like being photographed. I find I rarely look like myself.”
Now that, I thought, I could understand. But the sudden glimpse of insecurity—and in Zozie, of all people, whose cheery approach to everything makes any task look effortless—made me a little uneasy, and I began to wonder if I wasn’t relying too heavily on my friend, who must have her own problems and concerns, like everyone else.