“You can’t afford to hire any help. You’re barely making ends meet as it is.”
Once more, I felt a flash of annoyance. Who does he think he is? I thought. As if I’d never managed alone, as if I were a child playing shop with my friends. Certainly, business in the chocolaterie has not been good over the past few months. But the rent is paid till the New Year, and surely we can turn it around. Christmas is coming, and with luck—
“Yanne, perhaps we need to talk.” The smile had gone, and now I could see the businessman in his face; the man who had started out at fourteen with his father to renovate a single derelict flat near Gare du Nord and had become one of the most successful property dealers in Paris. “I know it’s hard. But really, it doesn’t have to be. There’s a solution to everything. I know you were devoted to Madame Poussin—you helped her a lot, and I appreciate that—”
He thinks that’s true. Perhaps it was; but I’m also aware that I used her too, as I used my imagined widowhood as an excuse to delay the inevitable; the terrible point of no return— “But perhaps there’s a way forward from here.”
“Way forward? ” I said.
He gave me a smile. “I see this as an opportunity for you. I mean, obviously we’re all sorry about Madame Poussin, but in a way, this liberates you. You could do whatever you wanted, Yanne—although I think I’ve found a place you’ll like—”
“You’re saying I should give up the chocolaterie? ” For a moment his words sounded like a foreign language.
“Come on, Yanne. I’ve seen your accounts. I know what’s what. It’s not your fault, you’ve worked so hard, but business is terrible everywhere and—”
“Thierry, please. I don’t want this now.”
“Then what do you want? ” Thierry said with exasperation. “God knows, I’ve humored you long enough. Why can’t you see I’m trying to help you? Why won’t you let me do what I can? ”
“I’m sorry, Thierry. I know you mean well. But—”
And then I saw something in my mind. It happens sometimes, at unguarded moments: a reflection in a coffee cup; a glimpse in a mirror; an image floating its clouds across the glossy surface of a batch of newly tempered chocolate.
A box. A little sky blue box— What was in it? I couldn’t say. But a kind of panic bloomed in me; my throat was dry, I could hear the wind in the alleyway, and I wanted nothing more at that moment than to take my children and run and run—
Pull yourself together, Vianne.
I made my voice as bland as I could. “Can’t this wait till I’ve sorted things out? ”
But Thierry is like a hunting dog, cheery, determined, and impervious to argument. His hand was still in his coat pocket, fiddling with something inside.
“I’m trying to help you sort it out. Don’t you see that? I don’t want you killing yourself with work. It isn’t worth it, just for a few miserable boxes of chocolates. Maybe it suited Madame Poussin. But you’re young, you’re bright, your life isn’t over—”
And now I knew what it was I’d seen. I could see it, quite clearly in my mind’s eye. A little blue box from a Bond Street jeweler, a single gem, carefully chosen with the help of a female shop assistant, not too large but of perfect clarity, nestling against the velvet lining. . . .
Oh, please, Thierry. Not here. Not now.
“I don’t need any help right now.” I gave him my most brilliant smile. “Now eat your choucroute. It’s delicious—”
“You’ve hardly touched it,” he pointed out.
I scooped a mouthful. “See? ” I said.
Thierry smiled. “Close your eyes.”
“What, here ? ”
“Close your eyes and hold out your hand.”
“Thierry, please—” I tried to laugh. But it sounded harsh in my throat, a pea in a gourd, rattling to escape.
“Close your eyes and count to ten. You’ll like it. I promise. It’s a surprise.”
What could I do? I did as he said. Held out my hand like a little girl, felt something—small, the size of a wrapped praline—drop into my palm.
When I opened my eyes Thierry was gone. And the Bond Street box was there in my hand, just as I’d seen it a moment before, with the ring—an icy solitaire—gleaming out from its bed of midnight blue.
Friday, 9 November
There, i tell you. just as i thought. i watched them throughout that tense little meal: Annie with her gleam of butterfly blue; the other, red-gold, too young as yet for my purposes but no less intriguing; the man—loud, but of little account; and lastly the mother, still and watchful, her colors so muted that they hardly seem to be colors at all, but some reflection of the streets and the sky in water so troubled it defies reflection.
There’s definitely a weakness there. Something that might give me the edge. It’s the hunter’s instinct I’ve developed over the years; the ability to sense the lame gazelle without even opening half an eye. She’s suspicious, and yet some people want to believe so much—in magic, in love, in business proposals guaranteed to treble their investment—and it makes them vulnerable to one such as myself. These people fall for it every time, and how can I help it if they do?
Ifirst began to see the colors when I was nine. Just a little gleam at first; a sparkle of gold from the corner of my eye, a silver lining where there was no cloud, a blur of something complex and colored in among a crowd. As my interest grew, so did my ability to see these colors. I learned that everyone has a signature, an expression of their inner being that is visible only to a certain few, and with the help of a fingering or two. Mostly there isn’t a lot to see; the majority of folk are as dull as their shoes. But occasionally you can glean something worthwhile. A flare of anger from an expressionless face. A rose banner f lying over a pair oflovers. The green-gray veil of secrecy. It helps when dealing with people, of course. And it helps at cards, if money runs short.
There’s an old finger sign known by some as the Eye of Black Tezcatlipoca, by others as the Smoking Mirror, that helps me to focus on the colors. I learned to use it in Mexico; and with practice and knowledge of the right fingerings I could tell who was lying; who was afraid; who was cheating on his wife; who was anxious about money.
And little by little I learned to manipulate the colors that I saw; to give myself that rosy glow, that gleam of something special. Or—when a certain discretion was required—the opposite: the comforting cloak of unimportance that allows me to pass unseen and unremembered.
It took me a little longer to recognize these things as magic. Like all children reared on stories, I’d expected fireworks: magic wands and broomstick rides. The real magic of my mother’s books seemed so dull, so fustily academic, with its silly incantations and its pompous old men, that it hardly counted as magic at all.
But then, my mother had no magic. For all her study, for all her spells and candles and crystals and cards, I never saw her turn so much as a cantrip. Some people are like that; I saw it in her colors long before I told her so. Some people just don’t have what it takes to make a witch.
But my mother had the knowledge, if not the skill. She ran an occult bookshop in the suburbs oflondon, and all kinds of people came and went. High magicians, Odinists, Wiccans by the score, and the occasional would-be Satanists (invariably acne ridden, as if adolescence had never quite passed them by).
From her—from them—I finally learned what I needed to know. My mother was certain that by allowing me access to all forms of occultism, I would eventually choose my own path. She herself was a follower of an obscure sect who believed dolphins to be the enlightened race, and who practiced a kind of “earth magic” that was as harmless as it was ineffective.
But everything has its uses, I found, and over the years, with excruciating slowness, I was able to pick out the crumbs of practical magic from the useless, ludicrous, and outright fake. I found that most magic—when it’s there at all—is hidden beneath a suffocating drift of ritual, drama, fasting, and time-consuming disciplines devised to give a s
ense of mystery to what is basically just a matter of finding what works. My mother loved the ritual—I just wanted the recipe book.
So I dabbled in runes, in cards, in crystals and pendulums and herbology. I steeped myself in the I Ching; cherry-picked the Golden Dawn; rejected Crowley (but for his Tarot pack, which is rather beautiful), pored earnestly over my Inner Goddess and laughed myself into convulsions over Liber Null and the Necronomicon.
But most fervently I studied Mesoamerican beliefs: those of the Maya, the Inca, and above all, the Aztec. For some reason these had always held a special appeal, and from them I learned about sacrifice, and the duality of the gods, and the malice of the universe, and the language of colors, and the horror of death; and how the only way to survive in the world is to fight back as hard and as dirty as you can.
The result was my System, minutely gleaned over years of trial and error and consisting of: some solid herbal medicine (including some useful poisons and hallucinogens); some fingerings and magical names; some breathing and limbering exercises; some mood-enhancing potions and tinctures; some astral projection and self-hypnosis; a handful of cantrips (I’m not fond of spoken spells, but some of them work); and a greater understanding of the colors. Including the ability to manipulate them further: to become, if I chose, what others expected; to cast glamour over myself and others; to change the world according to my will.
Throughout it all, and to my mother’s concern, I remained unaffiliated to any group. She protested; felt that it was somehow immoral for me to winnow what I liked from so many lesser, flawed beliefs, and would have liked me to join a nice, friendly, mixed-gender coven—where I would have a social life and meet unthreatening boys—or to embrace her own aquatic school of thought, and follow the dolphins.
“But what do you actually believe? ” she would say, worrying at her strings of beads with a long, nervous finger. “I mean, where’s the soul of it; where’s the avatar?”
I shrugged. “Why does there have to be a soul? I care what works, not how many angels can dance on the head of a pin, or what color candle to burn for a love spell.” (Actually, I’d already discovered that in the seduction department, colored candles are vastly overrated when compared to oral sex.)
My mother just sighed in her sweetest way and said something about following my own path. So I did, and I have been following it ever since. It has led me to many interesting places—here, for example—but never have I encountered evidence to suggest that I am not unique.
Until now, perhaps.
Yanne Charbonneau. It rings too nicely to be entirely plausible. And there’s something in her colors, some suggestion of deceit, although I suspect that she has developed ways to hide herself, so that I can only glimpse the truth when her defenses are lowered.
Maman doesn’t like us to be different.
Interesting.
And what was the name of that village again? Lansquenet? I must look it up, I told myself. There may be some clue to be found there, past scandal perhaps, some trace of a mother and child that may cast light on this shadowy pair.
Searching Internet sites from my laptop, I found only two references to the place—both websites dedicated to folklore and festivities of the southwest, in which the name of lansquenet-sous-Tannes was linked to a popular Easter festival, first held a little over four years ago.
A chocolate festival. No surprise.
So. Did she get bored with village life ? Did she make enemies? Why did she leave ?
Her shop was completely deserted this morning. I watched it from Le P’tit Pinson, and no one came in till half past twelve. A Friday, and no one came; not the grossly fat man who never shuts up, not even a neighbor or a tourist in passing.
What’s wrong with the place ? It should be buzzing with customers. Instead, it’s half-invisible, hiding in the corner of the whitewashed square. Surely that’s bad for business. It wouldn’t take much to gild it a little, to enhance the place, to make it shine, as it did the other day—and yet she does nothing. Why, I wonder? My mother spent her life trying vainly to be special—why does Yanne exert so much effort in pretending otherwise ?
Friday, 9 November
Thierry called round at twelve o’clock. i’d been expecting him, of course, and I’d spent a sleepless night worrying about how I was going to handle our next meeting. How I wish I’d never drawn those cards—Death, the Lovers, the Tower, Change—because now it almost feels like Fate, as if this were inevitable, and all the days and months of my life set out like a row of dominoes ready to fall. . . .
Of course it’s absurd. I don’t believe in Fate. I believe we have a choice; the wind can be stilled, and the Black Man fooled, and even the Kindly Ones appeased.
But at what cost? I ask myself. And that’s what keeps me awake at night, and that’s what made me tense up inside as the wind chimes rang out their warning note and Thierry came in with that look on his face—that stubborn look he gets sometimes that speaks of unfinished business.
I tried to stall. I offered him hot chocolate, which he accepted without much enthusiasm (he prefers coffee), but which gave me a reason to keep my hands busy. Rosette was playing with her toys on the floor, and Thierry watched her as she played: lining up rows ofloose buttons from the button box to make concentric patterns on the terra-cotta tiles.
On a normal day he would have commented; made some observation about hygiene, perhaps, or worried that Rosette might choke on the buttons. Today he said nothing, a warning sign that I tried to ignore as I set about making the chocolate.
Milk in the pan, couverture, sugar, nutmeg, chilli. A coconut macaroon on the side. Comforting, like all rituals; gestures handed down from my mother to me, to Anouk, and maybe to her daughter too, someday in a future too distant to imagine.
“Great chocolate,” he said, eager to please, cupping the little demitasse in hands best suited to building walls.
I sipped mine; it tasted of autumn and sweet smoke, of bonfires and temples and mourning and grief. I should have put some vanilla in, I told myself. Vanilla, like ice cream—like childhood.
“Just a little bitter,” he said, helping himself to a sugar lump. “So—how about a break this afternoon? A stroll along the Champs-Elysées—coffee, lunch, shopping. . . .”
“Thierry,” I said. “That’s very sweet, but I can’t just close shop for the afternoon.”
“Really? It looks completely dead.”
Just in time, I stopped the sharp retort. “You haven’t finished your chocolate,” I said.
“And you haven’t answered my question, Yanne.” His eyes flicked to my bare hand. “I notice you’re not wearing the ring. Does that mean the answer’s no? ”
I laughed without meaning to. His directness often makes me laugh, although Thierry himself has no idea why. “You surprised me, that’s all.”
He looked at me over his chocolate. His eyes were tired, as if he hadn’t slept, and there were lines bracketing his mouth that I hadn’t noticed before. It was a hint of vulnerability that troubled and surprised me; I’d spent so long telling myself I didn’t need him that it had never occurred to me that he might need me.
“So,” he said. “Can you spare me an hour? ”
“Give me a minute to change,” I said.
Thierry’s eyes lit up at once. “That’s my girl! I knew you would.”
He was back on form again, the small moment of uncertainty gone. He stood up, cramming his macaroon into his mouth (I noticed he’d left the chocolate). He grinned at Rosette, still playing on the floor.
“Well, jeune fille, what do you think? We could go to the Luxembourg, play with the toy boats on the lake—”
Rosette looked up, her eyes bright. She loves those boats, and the man who rents them; would stay there all summer if she could. . . .
See boat, she signed, emphatically.
“What did she say? ” said Thierry, frowning.
I smiled at him. “She says that sounds like a pretty good plan.”
&
nbsp; I was struck by a sudden affection for Thierry, for his enthusiasm, his goodwill. I know he finds Rosette difficult to cope with—her eerie silence, her refusal to smile—and I appreciated the effort he was making.
Upstairs, I discarded my chocolate-smeared apron and put on my red flannel dress. It’s a color I haven’t worn in years; but I needed something to combat that cold November wind, and besides, I thought, I’d be wearing a coat. I wrestled Rosette into anorak and gloves (a garment which, for some reason, she despises), and then we all took the Métro to the Luxembourg.
So curious to be a tourist still, here in the city of my birth. But Thierry thinks I’m a stranger here, and he takes such joy in showing me his world that I cannot disappoint him. The gardens are crisp and bright today, pebbled with sunlight beneath a kaleidoscope of autumn leaves. Rosette loves the fallen leaves, kicking through them in great exuberant arcs of color. And she loves the little lake and watches the toy boats with solemn enjoyment.
“Say boat, Rosette.”
“Bam,” she says, fixing him with her catlike gaze.
“No, Rosette, it’s boat,” he says. “Come on now, you can say boat.”
“Bam,” says Rosette, and makes the sign for monkey with her hand.
“That’s enough.” I smile at her, but inside, my heart is beating too fast. She has been so good today, running about in her lime green anorak and red hat like some wildly animated Christmas ornament, occasionally calling— “Bam-bam-bam! ”—as if shooting down invisible enemies, still not laughing (she rarely does) but concentrating with fierce intent, her lip pushed out, her brows drawn together, as if even running could be a challenge not to be taken frivolously.
But now there’s danger in the air. The wind has changed; there’s a gleam of gold from the corner of my eye, and I’m beginning to think it’s time—
“Just one ice cream,” Thierry says.
The boat does a clever little flip in the water, turning ninety degrees to starboard and heading out for the middle of the lake. Rosette looks at me mischievously.