“And Thierry? ” she said.
Well, he had to go. Surely Maman could see that. “Nothing bad happened, did it? ” I said. Except that—
Maybe it did, I thought. Maybe if Roux really did forge that check, then maybe that was the Accident. Maybe it’s what Maman says: that nothing comes without a price, and even magic has to have an equal and opposite reaction, like Monsieur Gestin tells us in physics at school—
Maman turned to the kitchen stove. “I’m making hot chocolate. Do you want some ? ”
I shook my head.
She made the chocolate anyway, grating it into the hot milk, adding nutmeg and vanilla and a cardamom pod. It was getting late—eleven o’clock—and Rosette was nearly asleep on the floor.
And for a moment I thought it was all right, and I was happy I’d cleared the air, because I hate having to hide from Maman, and I was thinking that perhaps now she knew the truth she wouldn’t be afraid anymore, and she could be Vianne Rocher again, and fix it so we’d be all right—
She turned, and I knew I’d made a mistake.
“Nanou, please. Take Rosette to bed. We’ll deal with this tomorrow.”
I looked at her. “You’re not angry? ” I said.
She shook her head, but I could see she was. Her face was white and very still, and I could see her colors, all mixed up in reds and angry oranges and panicky zigzags of gray and black.
“It isn’t Zozie’s fault,” I said.
Her face told me she didn’t agree.
“You won’t tell her, will you? ”
“Just go to bed, Nou.”
So I did, and lay awake for a long time, listening to the wind and rain in the eaves and watching the clouds and the stars and the white Christmas lights, all jumbled up against the wet windowpane, so that after a while there was no way to tell which were the real stars and which were the fake.
Friday, 21 December
It’s been a long time since i did any scrying. an accidental glimpse; a spark, like static from a stranger’s hand—but nothing more deliberate. I can see their favorites, that’s all. Whatever their secrets, I don’t want to know.
Tonight, however, I must try again. Anouk’s account, though incomplete, is enough to make me see that, at least. I managed to keep calm until she left; to maintain the illusion of control. But now I can hear the December wind, and the Kindly Ones are at the door. . .
My Tarot deck is no help to me. It just keeps showing me the same thing, the same cards in a different order, however much I shuffle them.
The Fool; the Lovers; the Magus, Change.
Death; the Hanged Man; the Tower.
So this time, I’m using chocolate, a technique I haven’t tried in years. But I need to keep my hands busy tonight, and making truffles is such a simple thing that I could do it blind, by touch, with only the scent and the sound of the melted couverture with which to gauge the temperature.
It is a kind of magic, you know. My mother despised it—called it trivial, a waste of time—but it’s my kind of magic, and my tools have always worked better for me than hers. Of course, all magic has consequences; but I think we’ve gone too far to worry about that. I was wrong to try to lie to Anouk—more so for trying to lie to myself.
I work very slowly, eyes half-closed. I smell the hot copper in front of me; the water boils with a scent of age and metal. These pans have been with me many years; I know their contours, the dents that time has put upon them, and in some places they bear the bright burnished marks of my hands against the darker patina.
Everything around me seems to have taken on a sharper kind of definition. My mind is free; the wind is up; outside the solstice moon is only a few days’ waxing to full, and it rides the clouds like a buoy in a storm.
The water simmers but must not boil. Now into the small ceramic pan I grate the block of couverture. Almost at once the scent rises, the dark and loamy scent of bitter chocolate from the block. At this concentration it is slow to melt; the chocolate is very low in fat, and I will have to add butter and cream to the mixture to bring it to truffle consistency. But now it smells of history; of the mountains and forests of South America; of felled wood and spilled sap and campfire smoke. It smells of incense and patchouli; of the black gold of the Maya and the red gold of the Aztec; of stone and dust and of a young girl with flowers in her hair and a cup of pulque in her hand.
It is intoxicating; as it melts, the chocolate becomes glossy; steam rises from the copper pan, and the scent grows richer, blossoming into cinnamon and allspice and nutmeg; dark undertones of anise and espresso; brighter notes of vanilla and ginger. Now it is almost melted through. A gentle vapor rises from the pan. Now we have the true Theobroma, the elixir of the gods in volatile form, and in the steam I can almost see—
A young girl dancing with the moon. A rabbit follows at her heels. Behind her stands a woman with her head in shadow, so that for a moment she seems to look three ways—
But now the steam is getting too thick. The chocolate must be no warmer than forty-six degrees. Too hot, and the chocolate will scorch and streak. Too cool, and it will bloom white and dull. I know by the scent and the level of steam that we are close to the danger point. Take the copper off the heat and stand the ceramic in cold water until the temperature has dropped.
Cooling, it acquires a floral scent; of violet and lavender papier poudré. It smells of my grandmother, if I’d had one, and of wedding dresses kept carefully boxed in the attic, and of bouquets under glass. I can almost see the glass now, a round cloche under which a doll stands, a blue-eyed doll in a fur-trimmed red coat that reminds me strangely of someone I know. . . .
A woman with a tired face looks longingly at the blue-eyed doll. I think I’ve seen her before somewhere. And behind her, another woman stands, with her head half hidden behind the curved glass. I seem to know this woman, somehow, but her face is distorted through the cloche and she could be almost anyone—
Return the pan to the simmering water. Now it must reach thirty-one degrees. It is my last chance to make sense of this, and I can feel a tremor in my hands as I look down into the melted couverture. Now it smells of my children: of Rosette with her birthday cake and Anouk, sitting in the shop, six years old, talking and laughing and planning—what?
A festival. A Grand Festival du Chocolat—with Easter eggs and chocolate hens and the pope in white chocolate—
It is a wonderful memory. That year, we faced down the Black Man and won—we rode the wind, at least, for a while—
But this is no time for nostalgia. Banish the steam from the dark surface. Try again.
And now we are in Le Rocher de Montmartre. A table is set, all our friends are here. Another kind of festival now—I see Roux at the table, smiling, laughing, with a holly crown on his red hair, holding Rosette in his arms and drinking a glass of champagne—
But that’s just wishful thinking, of course. We often see what we want to see. For a moment I am shaken almost to tears—
Once more I pass my hand through the steam.
And now the festival is different again. There are firecrackers and marching bands and people dressed as skeletons—the Day of the Dead, with children dancing in the streets and paper lanterns with demon faces painted on them, and sugar skulls on sticks, and Santa Muerte parading through the streets with her three faces watching every which way—
But what can it have to do with me ? We never got as far as South America, although my mother longed to see the place. We never even got to Florida—
I reach out a hand to disperse the steam. And it’s then that I see her. A mouse-haired girl of eight or nine, hand in hand with her mother among the crowds. I sense they are different from the rest—something about their skin, their hair—and they look around in half-lost wonderment at everything: the dancers; the demons; the painted piñatas on long pointed sticks with firecrackers tied to their tails. . . .
Once again, I move my hand across the surface of the chocolate. Little tendrils of stea
m rise up, and now I can smell gunpowder, a dangerous scent, all smoke and fire and turbulence—
And now I see the girl again, playing with a group of other children in a back alley outside a darkened little shopfront. There is a piñata hanging above the doorway, a striped and fabulous tiger-thing in red and yellow and black. The others are shouting—Hit it! Hit it!—and showering it with sticks and stones. But the little girl holds back. There is something inside the shop, she thinks. Something—more—attractive.
Who is the girl? I really don’t know. But I want to follow her inside. There is a curtain across the door, made up oflong strips of multicolored plastic. She holds out a hand—a thin silver bracelet circles her wrist—and looks back to where the children are still trying to dislodge the tiger piñata, then ducks through the curtain into the shop.
“Don’t you like my piñata? ”
The voice comes from the corner of the shop. It belongs to an old woman, a grandmother, no, a great-great-grandmother—so old she might be a hundred, or even a thousand, to the little girl. She looks like a witch from a storybook, all wrinkles and eyes and clutching hands. In one of these she holds a cup; and from it, an odd scent reaches the little girl, something heady, intoxicating.
All around her on the shelves are bottles and jars and pots and gourds; dried roots hang from the ceiling, giving out a cellar smell; and there are lighted candles everywhere, making the shadows grin and dance.
A skull looks down from a high shelf.
At first the girl thinks it’s a sugar skull, like the others at the carnival, but now she isn’t so sure anymore. And in front of her, on the counter, is a black object about three feet long—the size of a baby’s coffin, perhaps.
It looks like a papier-mâché box, painted a dull and uniform black except for the sign—which looks almost like a cross, but not quite—painted in red across the lid.
Why, it’s a kind of piñata, she thinks.
The great-grandmother smiles and hands her a knife. It’s a very old knife, rather blunt, and looks as if it’s made of stone. The girl looks curiously at the knife, then back at the old woman and her strange piñata.
“Open it,” urges the great-grandmother. “Open it. It’s all for you.”
The scent of chocolate intensifies. It’s reaching the correct temperature now; the thirty-one-degree threshold beyond which the couverture must not rise. The vapor thickens; the vision blurs; quickly I move the chocolate away from the heat and try to recapture what I have seen—
Open it.
It smells of age. But from inside, something calls to her; not quite a voice, but coaxing, promising . . .
It’s all for you.
What, exactly?
Strike one. The piñata echoes flatly, like a crypt door, like an empty cask, like something much larger than this small black box.
Strike two. It cracks; a split appears along its length. The girl smiles, half-seeing the hoard of tinfoil and trinkets and chocolates inside—
Nearly there now. One more strike—
And now at last the child’s mother appears, pushing the plastic curtain aside and looking in with widening eyes. She calls a name. Her voice is shrill. The little girl does not look up, too absorbed in the black piñata, which needs only one more strike to release its secrets—
The mother cries out again. Too late. The child is too absorbed in her task. The grandmother leans forward eagerly, almost tasting it now, she thinks; rich as blood and chocolate.
The stone knife falls with a hollow sound. The split widens—
She thinks: I’m in.
And now the last of the vapor has gone. The chocolate will set correctly, with a good sheen and a pleasing snap. And now I know where I’ve seen her before, that little girl with the knife in her hand— I’ve known her all my life, I suppose. We fled her for years, my mother and I, running like gypsies from town to town. We have met her before in fairy tales: she’s the Wicked Witch in the gingerbread house; she’s the Pied Piper; she’s the Winter Queen. For a while we knew her as the Black Man—but the Kindly Ones have so many disguises, and their kindness spreads like wildfire, calling the tune, ringing the changes, charming us out of Hamelin, sending all of our troubles racing and tumbling in the wake of those enticing red shoes—
And now I can see her face at last. Her real face, hidden behind a lifetime of glamours, variable as the moon and hungry, hungry—as she steps through the door in her bayonet heels and stands watching me with a radiant smile. . . .
Friday, 21 December
She was waiting for me when i came in. can’t say i was altogether surprised. I’d been expecting a reaction for some days now, and to tell the truth, it’s overdue.
Time, at last, to set things right. I’ve played the tabby cat too long. Time to show my feral side, to face my opponent on her home ground.
I found her in the kitchen, wrapped in a shawl, with a cup of chocolate long since gone cold. It was past midnight; it was still raining outside, and there was a lingering smell of something burned.
“Hello, Vianne.”
“Hello, Zozie.”
She looked at me.
Once more, I was in.
If I have a single regret regarding the lives I have stolen, it’s this: that so much of it was done in stealth, and that my adversaries never knew or appreciated the poetry of their downfall.
My mother—not the brightest spark—may have come close to it once or twice, though I don’t think she ever believed it, really. In spite of her occult interests, she really wasn’t all that imaginative, preferring meaningless rituals to anything closer to the bone.
Even Françoise Lavery, who, with her background, must have caught a glimpse of it at the end, was still unable to grasp the elegance of it all; the way that her life had been neatly reclaimed and repackaged. . . .
She’d always been a bit unstable. Like my mother, a mousy type— natural prey to one such as myself. She was a teacher of classical history, living in a flat off Place de la Sorbonne, and she’d taken to me (as most people do) the day we met, not quite by chance, in a lecture at the Institut Catholique.
She was thirty-two; overweight; a borderline depressive; friendless in Paris, plus she’d recently split up with her boyfriend and was looking for a female flatmate in town.
It sounded perfect—I got the job. Under the name of Mercedes Desmoines I became her protector, her confidante. I shared her affection for Sylvia Plath. I sympathized with her over the stupidity of men and took an interest in her very dull thesis on the role of women in pre-Christian mysticism. It’s what I do best, after all; and little by little I learned her secrets, nurtured her melancholy tendencies, then when the time came, collected her life.
It wasn’t much of a challenge, of course. There are half a million just like her: milk-faced, mousy-haired girls with neat handwriting and bad dress sense, hiding their disappointments beneath a veil of academia and common sense. You might even say I did her a favor; and when she was ready, I slipped her a dose of something reasonably painless to help her along.
After that, it was just a question of tying up a few loose ends—suicide note, identification, cremation, and the like—before I was able to junk Mercedes, gather up what was left of Françoise—bank details, passport, birth certificate—and take her on one of those foreign trips she was always planning but never booked, while at home, people may have wondered how it could be that a woman could vanish so completely and efficiently, leaving nothing in her wake—no family, no papers, not even a grave.
Some time later, she was to reappear as an English teacher at the Lycée Rousseau. By then, of course, she’d been largely forgotten, lost in a mound of paperwork. The truth is, most people don’t care. Life goes on at such a pace that it’s easier to forget the dead.
I tried, at the end, to make her understand. Hemlock is such a useful drug; so easy to come by in summer, of course, and it makes the victim so manageable. In a matter of minutes paralysis sets in, and after that it’s
all good, with plenty of time for discussion and exchange of views—or rather view, in my case, as Françoise seemed incapable of speech.
Frankly, that disappointed me. I’d been looking forward to seeing her reaction when I told her, and although I wasn’t exactly expecting approval, I’d hoped for something more from a person of her intellectual caliber.
But all I got was disbelief, and that rictus in her staring face—never pretty at the best of times—so that if I’d been a susceptible person I might have seen her again in my dreams, and heard the choking sounds she made as she struggled vainly against the draft that did in Socrates.
Nice touch, I thought. But wasted on my poor Françoise, who sadly discovered her zest for life only minutes before its end. And I was left, once again, with a sense of regret. Once more, it had been too easy for me. Françoise was no challenge at all. A silver mouse charm on my bracelet. Natural prey to one such as myself.
Which brings me to Vianne Rocher.
Now there’s an opponent worthy of me—a witch, no less, and a powerful one, for all her silly scruples and guilt. Perhaps the only worthy opponent that I have ever encountered thus far. And here she is, waiting for me with that quiet knowledge in her eyes, and I know she sees me clearly at last, sees me in my true colors, and there’s no sensation quite as fine as that first true moment of intimacy—
“Hello, Vianne.”
“Hello, Zozie.”
I sit down at the table opposite her. She looks cold, bundled up in her shapeless dark sweater, her white lips pinched with unsaid words. I smile at her, and her colors shine out—strange, how much affection I feel, now that the knives are drawn at last.
Outside, the wind is riding high. A killer wind, charged with snow. Sleepers in doorways will die tonight. Dogs will howl; doors slam. Young lovers will look into each other’s eyes and for the first time will silently question their vows. Eternity is such a long time—and here, at the dead end of the year, Death seems suddenly very close.
But isn’t that what it’s all about, this festival of winter lights? This little defiance in the face of the dark? Call it Christmas if you like, but you and I know it’s older than that. And beneath all the tinsel and the carol singing and the glad tidings and the gifts lies a bleaker and more visceral truth.