The Curse of La Fontaine Page 4

  She stood up and pointed to her watch. “Guests are arriving in less than two hours. I’m going to start cooking.”

  “I’ll come in and help,” Verlaque said. “I just want to look at the photos one more time.”

  Marine laughed. “I’ll give you five minutes and then I need you in here to trim the artichokes.”

  “May I—”

  “No, you may not smoke your cigar at the same time.”

  Verlaque mumbled something and Marine laughed, putting on an apron. As she got the food out of the refrigerator, she glanced at her new husband, who was looking at their wedding photographs for the hundredth time, his reading glasses perched at the end of his once-broken and now-crooked nose. He had a huge smile on his face. How the examining magistrate of Aix-en-Provence had changed from the first time she met him, a ball of nerves thinly disguised with a glass of whiskey and a cigar.

  Verlaque closed the book and set down his cigar in the oversize red Havana Club ashtray, a birthday gift from his brother, Sébastien. Going into the kitchen, he kissed Marine on the back of the neck and washed his hands at the kitchen sink. “Remind me who’s coming,” he said, drying his hands with a tea towel.

  “Sylvie; some neighbors, Thomas and Stéphanie Roche; and Gaëlle Dreyfus. We’ll be six.”

  “Gaëlle is the antiques dealer on rue Cardinale, right? My father loves her shop.”

  “Yes,” Marine answered, setting a bowl with a dozen artichokes in front of Verlaque. “And the Roches live in a garden apartment on our street, down a few buildings.”

  “The garden with the Portuguese tiles on the wall?” he asked. “You can see it from the terrace.”

  “That’s the one,” Marine answered.

  “Azulejos,” Verlaque whispered, hugging his wife. Marine kissed him and whispered back “Azulejos,” but with a better Portuguese pronunciation. “Showoff,” he said. “Okay, put me to work.”

  Marine opened a drawer, took out three different knives, and set them down. Verlaque looked at the knives and then at his wife, perplexed.

  “The serrated knife is for cutting off the tip of the artichoke,” she said. “Then you take off most of the outer leaves until you get to the pale yellow ones. With the big knife, you cut the artichoke into fourths lengthwise, and with the small paring knife you dig out the hairy middle and any other thorny bits.”

  “There will hardly be anything left,” he said, frowning. “It’s a lot of work for not much artichoke flesh.”

  “Yes, that’s why they’re so expensive when jarred in olive oil and sold in fancy shops.” She set a bowl of cold water before him and squeezed a lemon into it. “Drop them in here. They need to soak a bit.”

  “Why lemon?”

  “I have no idea,” she quickly answered. “I had to look up the recipe today, between classes. Now stop asking questions or we’ll be late.”

  Verlaque nodded, seeing that Marine was getting frazzled. Cooking was the only thing that he knew of that made her lose her composure—not lecturing, not writing law articles under unreasonably short deadlines, not meeting new people or shopping in the market on a busy Saturday, something that he avoided at all costs. Marine winced, rubbing her stomach. She had turned her back, but Verlaque had seen her discomfort. It was unlike her, too, to raise her voice and be short-tempered. He picked up an artichoke and the serrated knife, then said, “Lamb, artichokes, potatoes, and fresh asparagus. It’s going to be fabulous.”

  Gaëlle Dreyfus was the first to arrive. When invited for dinner she sometimes selected a small object from her shop as a gift, as she did this evening. Marine had been going to Gaëlle’s shop for years, ever since she was a teen. Marine had always loved antiques, and in particular silver and china for the table, perhaps because she hadn’t grown up with it. Before closing her shop Gaëlle selected a set of six crystal knife rests. They were Baccarat, and she slowly wrapped them in lilac-colored tissue paper, as the 1940s box the set came in was long gone. It was an extravagant hostess gift, but it was a wedding gift, too, and she had bought them at a good price from someone who hadn’t known their value.

  Marine loved the knife rests, and Gaëlle was delighted. The professor’s husband, introduced simply as Antoine, quickly took the existing knife rests off the table and replaced them with the Baccarat.

  “I wish you both years of happiness,” Gaëlle said.

  “Thank you,” Marine answered. “I feel like we should be toasting that with champagne, but—”

  “No, no,” Gaëlle said. “We should wait for the others.”

  Five minutes later the other guests, having arrived at the same time, were present, introductions were made, and Verlaque lifted the champagne out of its icy bucket.

  “Thomas used to open champagne with a saber!” Stéphanie Roche exclaimed.

  “Only outside in the garden,” Thomas said. “It was for the kids, really.”

  “So that works?” Sylvie asked, giving a start as the cork made its usual popping sound. “I thought it was a myth.”

  “Clean as a whistle,” Thomas replied.

  “How long have you lived on our street?” Marine asked.

  “We bought the apartment when we were still living in South Africa, where Thomas was an engineer.” Stéphanie answered. “I grew up here, so we bought the apartment for our retirement. We moved in five years ago.”

  “Ah, retirement,” Gaëlle said. “That’s a magic word.”

  The aperitif passed smoothly. The guests enjoyed several rounds of champagne (a second bottle was opened), thinly sliced sausage laced with green peppers that Marine’s butcher had recommended, fresh radishes with sea salt for dipping, almonds, and a small bowl of sweet pickled garlic. Despite the guests having little in common, the conversation flowed smoothly enough, and they all agreed that the mayor’s new shopping mall built at the bottom of Aix’s main street, the Cours Mirabeau, was a disaster. “I refuse to buy anything there,” Stéphanie exclaimed, crossing her arms. Gaëlle kept the thought to herself that Mme Roche had never bought anything in her shop, either.

  “I’m proud of our bookstores standing up to the mayor and big business,” Marine said.

  “Is that why the FNAC doesn’t sell books?” Thomas asked of the huge Parisian franchise that sold electronics, DVDs, CDs, and, in Paris, books.

  “Yes, they agreed to that when signing the lease,” Marine explained. “They could sell music and electronics and such, but not books.”

  “You’ve been into the FNAC?” his wife asked, glaring. Thomas looked into his flute and muttered something about needing advice on fixing his computer.

  “Hear, hear,” Verlaque said, raising his glass. “To our booksellers.”

  “That Anglo-Saxon bookshop down the street is a heavenly spot for afternoon tea,” Gaëlle said. “I sometimes go there before I open up my shop again at four-thirty. There’s something wonderful about tea and scones and the smell of books.”

  The aperitif went on, the guests on their best behavior, avoiding subjects that can ruin a dinner party between neighbors, like politics. During a conversation about Aix’s new dance theater, designed by a young Marseillais architect, Marine noted that Stéphanie Roche politely nodded up and down while her husband yawned.

  “It’s a jewel of a building,” said Gaëlle Dreyfus. “It’s basically a glass box, but what a brilliant move to frame it with those black concrete beams that crisscross, going every which way, like webs.” She gestured with her hands quickly slicing the air in long diagonal movements. “And I don’t even like contemporary art!”

  “I love it, too,” Sylvie agreed. “We need more black buildings.”

  Marine saw Thomas Roche flinch. “I stopped on my way home from the library one night,” she said, passing the olives across the coffee table. “The rehearsal room was lit up and I could see the troupe dancing. It was mesmerizing. I must have staye
d there for ten minutes.”

  Verlaque stood up to serve more champagne. “Plus the architect is a cigar aficionado. He was on the cover of L’Amateur de Cigare this month.”

  “Oh, shut up, Antoine,” Sylvie said, winking. “Nobody cares about your stupid cigars.”

  • • •

  An hour later they were sitting at the table. The leg of lamb was cooked perfectly—pink—and the potatoes and artichokes that had roasted under the meat were tangy and juicy. As Verlaque thinly sliced the meat, Marine served the wine, walking slowly around the table.

  “Oh, a female wine steward,” Thomas Roche said.

  Sylvie looked across the table at Marine and mouthed “Moron.”

  “Marine chose the wine, too,” Verlaque said, smiling. “I wanted a red Bordeaux, but Marine quite rightly pointed out that the acidity of the artichokes called for a floral white.” When they had begun dating Marine had been a novice wine drinker. But she learned to appreciate and understand wines by doing what she usually did when setting out to learn about a new subject: She read. She pored over wine atlases, memorizing the many appellations controlées in France; then read in detail about wine in Bordeaux, Burgundy, and the Rhône; finally devoured biographies on winemakers and critics. The last one, a gift from Verlaque, was the memoir of Jancis Robinson, the eminent English wine critic. “It’s in English,” he had apologized. Marine had muttered thanks and grabbed the book, fluffed up the two pillows behind her head, and turned to the first page. “But I suppose it could be written in Russian and you’d still devour it,” he’d joked, seeing Marine’s excitement to begin yet another book about a life.

  “Oh, it’s a Châteauneuf-du-Pape!” Thomas exclaimed. “No problem with white, Antoine. The white ones are hard to find up there.”

  Verlaque smiled, hoping it looked genuine.

  “I once dated a New Yorker,” Gaëlle said. “He took me to his favorite restaurant in Manhattan—Veritable, Veritas, something like that—and introduced me to the owner, an American who has the keys to the village of Châteauneuf-du-Pape.”

  “A Yankee!” exclaimed Thomas, setting his napkin down with a theatrical thump. “Why on earth?”

  “Because in his subterranean wine cellar,” explained Gaëlle, “he has eighty thousand bottles of the stuff. All Châteauneuf-du-Pape.” She quickly added, smiling at Verlaque, “Red and white, I would imagine.”

  “Not a very varied collection, I have to say,” Thomas Roche said.

  Who’s asking you? thought Sylvie.

  “Thomas,” Verlaque said, reaching across the table to pour his guest more wine, “have you been to the new restaurant on the rue Mistral? The chef is really proud of his wine list. Mostly Italian . . .” He thought he should try to make conversation with Marine’s neighbor, a man with whom he had nothing in common and a man he would unlikely ever share a table with again. But good breeding had trained him to engage others in conversation.

  Marine, seeing Thomas Roche’s face turn red, quickly added, “The chef is very charming and enthusiastic, and everyone calls him Bear, short for Sigisbert.”

  “You’ve spoken to him?” asked Stéphanie Roche.

  Verlaque looked around the table, surprised. “Of course,” he said. “We love eating there.” He looked to Marine.

  “Yes,” Marine said. “He—Bear, I mean—has a really interesting CV. He studied science in London—”

  “I don’t care where he studied!” Thomas Roche said.

  Stéphanie Roche set her knife and fork aside and said, “You all know, I presume, that the chef has been granted a license for outside seating. In our neighborhood!” The Mazarin was a privileged neighborhood in downtown Aix, filled with listed eighteenth-century manor homes, most of which had been cut up into apartments. The small quartier had very few shops, no bars, and only two or three restaurants. Bear’s was the most discreet, hidden behind carved wooden doors save for one window on the street, with only a small brass plaque announcing its name: La Fontaine. Shopping was done on the rue d’Italie, technically in the Mazarin but not considered so by those residents lucky enough to live in the listed buildings on the rue Cardinale, the rue du 4 Septembre, or the rue Goyrand, where often the only sounds were birds and water gurgling from fountains. Stéphanie Roche looked around the table for support.

  “Don’t look at me,” Sylvie said. “I live on the poor side of town.” She held out her empty plate for seconds. Verlaque jumped up and served her.

  “It’s not the same for any of you,” Stéphanie went on. “You don’t live on the ground floor, two doors down from the restaurant, like we do.”

  “I agree,” Marine said. “But have you spoken to him about it? I heard that he has promised not to play music and to only have a few tables out there.”

  “The duke is on our side,” Thomas said, not replying to Marine’s question.

  “A real duke?” Sylvie asked, looking up from her plate.

  Marine looked down at her lap, suppressing laughter.

  “We’ve started a petition and I’ve brought it with me,” Thomas continued, ignorant of Sylvie’s teasing. “I was hoping you would all sign it, and that you, Antoine, might have some sway at the mayor’s office.” He gestured, poking the air with his elbow.

  “The mayor hates me and I hate her,” Verlaque replied, shrugging. “What can I say? We got off to a bad start.”

  Gaëlle Dreyfus stayed quiet; she had hoped that Thomas Roche would abandon his silly petition, which in her mind, like all petitions, wouldn’t be of any use. She could do better work at the historical society, where they would accumulate facts about the fountain and the garden, hopefully enough to sway the city planners. She changed the conversation, bringing up the neighborhood’s long-standing debate over speed bumps. The Mazarin had two schools, an elementary school and a junior high, where Cézanne and Zola had been inseparable friends. Residents had been trying for years to get the city to install one or even two speed bumps on their streets, or close the Mazarin off altogether to traffic other than badge-carrying residents. Sylvie tried to suppress a yawn, and Verlaque suggested that she help him with the dessert in the kitchen.

  “What a barrel of laughs in there,” Sylvie whispered as she got six dessert plates out of the cupboard.

  “An experiment,” Verlaque answered. “Not to be soon repeated. But the antiques dealer is quite sympathetic. Say, that photo album you gave us is fantastic. Did you see the picture of my dad and his . . .” What was Rebecca? He finished his sentence with “His girlfriend?”

  Sylvie laughed. “The one with Dr. Florence Bonnet scowling in the background?”

  “So you noticed that detail.”

  “Régis was really proud of that shot,” Sylvie replied. “That’s one of the signs of a great photograph, and it’s something I tell my students over and over. An A-plus photograph is—”

  “In focus,” Verlaque said, grinning.

  “Yes, you dork. It’s also perfectly composed, the subject matter is interesting, but what puts it into the A-plus zone are the hidden surprises. Each time you look at it, something new appears.”

  “Well, tell Régis he did a great job.” Verlaque lifted the cake, an Opéra, which he had bought earlier at Michaud’s, and Sylvie followed with the dessert plates. They heard laughter coming from the dining room and Verlaque was relieved.

  “That’s not the only thing my crazy colleague did when we were young and foolish,” Thomas Roche said, pouring himself a glass of wine, then setting the bottle back down in front of him without offering any to the other guests. Marine looked at her husband and winked. “Pierre also stranded his young bride at the altar up in Brittany . . .”

  “Not quite,” Stéphanie Roche cut in. “He gave her a few weeks’ warning, although the invitations had been sent.”

  “And then Pierre went and married a local!” her husband went on.


  Sylvie looked at Verlaque in puzzlement. They had obviously missed something when they were in the kitchen. A local of which country?

  “A South African beauty!” Thomas said, answering the question for Sylvie.

  “As black as coal,” Stéphanie said, pursing her lips.

  Sylvie put the plates down on the table with an intentional thud.

  “And they had two children, and you’ll never guess what happened,” Thomas continued.

  The others looked at one another and shrugged. Verlaque carefully began cutting the cake and said, looking up, “I guess you’d better tell us.”

  “The first child, a boy, was black!” Thomas roared. “And the other, a girl born two years later—”

  “Elle était impeccable!” his wife cut in, waving her hands in the air.

  “Perfect?” Marine asked, her hands gripping the edge of the table.

  “Well, white, of course!” Stéphanie exclaimed, beaming.

  • • •

  Verlaque sat on the edge of the bed, taking off his shoes. “That was a great dinner, Marine,” he said. Marine was hanging up her blouse in the closet and she turned around. “I had no idea the Roches were like that,” she said. “I’m embarrassed I invited them over.”

  “No worries,” Verlaque answered. “You didn’t know, and you were being neighborly. We can unfriend them, as my younger colleagues say. I think it has something to do with Facebook.”

  Marine laughed. “At least you didn’t call it Bookface.”

  “I’ve never done that!”

  “Yes, you did, once at the Pauliks’.” She took off her slacks and hung them on a hanger, laughing.

  “Well, if my technology handicap makes you laugh like that, it’s all worth it,” Verlaque said. “What’s wrong, anyway? You looked worried, and tense.”

  Marine came and sat beside him, then sighed.

  “Wow, that was a Florence Bonnet sigh,” he said, taking Marine in his arms. “When she’s overcooked something—”