White Truffles in Winter: A Novel Read online

  “Too much,” he said. “It should just be the tip of your fingernail’s worth.” She poured the excess fat into a glass jar.

  “Good. Now just a small blue flame. Very low.”

  Sabine adjusted the gas. The ring of blue flame sputtered a bit, threatened extinction, but then caught.

  Escoffier handed Sabine the knife. “Now you. Don’t think. Cut.”

  She chopped blindly.

  “Non. Non.”

  He took the knife from her hand. “One quick movement beginning at the head,” he said. “To die painlessly, the brain must be silenced. Anything else is cruel.”

  It was clear that he was not speaking of the langoustines.

  Sabine held the tiny lobster to the chopping block. Its tail slapped her palm. A long pink claw caught her thumb. She could hear one of the nurses speaking loudly over Madame’s cries.

  “Chop,” Escoffier said.

  She did. Sabine pulled the point of the blade through the head and right between the eyes. The body went limp. It went more easily than she imagined.

  “Good. But you need to work quickly. The meat is sweeter when cooked shortly after death.”

  Escoffier slid the pan off the flame and took another knife from the block. Langoustine after langoustine, they chopped and diced. They were silent as they worked. The only sound was that of their knives against the wooden cutting boards, sweet kitchen music. Through the door, they could hear a nurse making a phone call. “Morphine,” she said. “We’ve run out of morphine.”

  Sabine knew there was no money to pay for it.

  Escoffier slid the pan back onto the fire. The butter and the oil bubbled. They tossed in the langoustines by the handful.

  He stepped into the pantry to gather an armful of spices. “Two minutes. Just until they begin to pink. Then arrange them on a platter. And then into a warm oven.”

  A nurse opened the kitchen door. “Monsieur Escoffier?” she said. She was thin and dry as a leaf.

  “We are cooking.”

  “The doctor is coming.”

  “There is enough food.”

  “Monsieur Escoffier, he is coming to speak to you. He requests that you return to your bed and wait for him there.”

  “I am busy.”

  Sabine piled cooked langoustines on a platter, put it in the oven. Escoffier tossed dried herbs into the used pan—savory, fennel, basil, lavender, a sprig of thyme and a bay leaf. He ignored the nurse but spoke to Sabine in the hushed voice of a child up long past his bedtime. “When this reheats, it will fill the room with the air of summer. You’ll see.”

  And then he chopped a fistful of purple garlic.

  “The Parisians would not eat garlic until I told them it was an aphrodisiac. Then they were crazy for it.”

  “Is it?”

  “It is an aphrodisiac if I say it is.”

  The nurse cleared her throat. “Monsieur Escoffier? The doctor insists—”

  “Go away.”

  The nurse slammed the kitchen door behind her.

  Escoffier added the rinds from both lemons and oranges. “See how they release the oil when they hit the heat?”

  “I can finish this.”

  “Our work here is more important than a doctor telling us what we already know. You will see. I am right.”

  The hot pan made the oil seep from the rinds. The scent did, indeed, remind Sabine of a summer’s day in Provence.

  “Words are clumsy and limited by nature,” he said. “Only food can speak what the heart feels.

  “Now. How many tomatoes and how many carrots should I add? And onion. There were onions. How many?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Sabine. Think. The langoustines are sweet. The herbs are fragrant. Tomatoes are sweet, also but acidic. The ragout will be served alongside the crustacean, not on top of it. You should be able to move from the ragout to the langoustines and taste the perfect melody of earth and sea.

  “Now. Peel and chop the right amount of vegetables.”

  “I can’t.”

  “Try. Close your eyes and imagine a finished dish. Think about the right balance—what do you need to achieve the perfect pitch?”

  Sabine closed her eyes. He held the fragrant pan underneath her nose. “This is what we have already, the foundation. Now add the rest of the ingredients in your mind. Think of how they would taste as you add each one. Always remember that we want to bring the sweetness and the brininess of the langoustine forward. Now adjust. Imagine adding more onion, and then less onion. More carrot. Then less. Be careful not to add too much celery, it can be a very loud vegetable, very aggressive on the palate. It should always be an undertone. That’s where it shines.

  “Now can you imagine how the dish should be?”

  Sabine could not. Still, she diced carrots, celery and onions. Escoffier adjusted the amounts and she added them to the pan to soften.

  “You’ll learn,” he said. “Now remove the bay leaf and sprig of thyme. Add salt and pepper for seasoning.”

  Escoffier retrieved the large white platter of langoustines that she had placed in the oven. They were still moist. The kitchen was filled with a briny sweet scent. He took a handful of wilted endive from the pantry and ran cold water over it to refresh it. “Now, tell me, how many cocoa beans?”

  “I love cocoa so I will use two cups of beans.”

  “Non. A perfect dish is a harmony of flavors working together to create something new.” He ground a small amount of cocoa beans with a mortar and pestle. “Cocoa is used as a spice in this; it needs a gentle hand. Now taste. See if it has balance.”

  Sabine took a wooden spoon from the drawer and tasted the ragout, first by itself and then with a langoustine. She ate it shell and all.

  It was overwhelming—the tight briny taste, the crunch of the soft shell and the floral sweetness of the ragout—it was like her grandmother’s dish but not.

  “It’s very good.”

  Escoffier scowled. “That isn’t the question. Imagine what it would be like with a bit more salt. Or does it need lemon? Anything that is too flat or too acidic can be rebalanced with salt. Anything that is too salty can be rebalanced with acid, like lemon.”

  Sabine took another taste. “More salt,” she said.

  It was her best guess. Escoffier knew that. He took a spoon from the drawer and dipped it in the sauce very quickly. Tasted a small amount. Added salt. Tasted it again. “This is just how I remember it.”

  “How can you remember a taste in such detail?”

  “How can you not? Food is transformational. It engages the senses and emotions.”

  “But to remember a taste so specifically?”

  The question pained him. The damp sea air gusted, rattled the kitchen window. Cold air leaked through the rotting frame. There seemed to be no room for words but finally he said, “It was the saddest and yet most romantic meal I ever had in my life. It is impossible to forget.”

  He plated a small amount for himself.

  “What is this called?”

  “It has no name. It was made for me the first night I came back to this house after living alone in London at The Savoy. I’d been gone a very long time. A lifetime. Madame set a table along the hillside. Where the garden is now. Made this dish.”

  Above them, Madame Escoffier was suddenly silent.

  “Perhaps you should name it after her.”

  “It is not complicated enough, or passionate enough, or sensible enough. Nothing is.”

  The doctor arrived; the cherry tobacco from his pipe announced his coming, the chatter of the nurses trailed behind him. He opened the kitchen door. Escoffier grabbed Sabine by the arm. “Take the platter to Madame. Hurry.”

  The large platter was heavy and hot. Sabine
ran up the back stairway carrying it precariously, two tea towels wrapped around her hands, a napkin across her arm, and a fork in her pocket. With her red dancing shoes and her weak leg she found it difficult to keep her balance. At the top of the stairs, she placed the platter on the hall table so that she could readjust the tea towels and strengthen her grip, but the dish was beautiful, too beautiful. She suddenly began to eat it by the fistful. The hot sauce ran down her arm. Some splattered onto her shoes. Her white apron was stained. She didn’t care. She chewed the heads, tails, and claws. She licked her fingers clean after each.

  She could hear the doctor’s voice below her in the kitchen, then the nurses, then Escoffier. They were arguing. The old man said something, pounded the table, and then slid into a coughing fit. It made her eat faster.

  I will only eat three. No one will notice three gone.

  She ate four. That’s all. But she was still very hungry and they were still very wonderful. Each bite was more wonderful than the last. One more will not be noticed. Two more were eaten.

  When Sabine ate the seventh langoustine, even though it was a very small one, her stomach began to hurt. She rearranged the remaining food to fill the gaping holes. She wiped her hands on one tea towel and cleaned her face with the other. She adjusted her apron. There was still a smudge of ragout on her face.

  Madame Escoffier’s door was open. Sabine had not been in the room since the night they had spoken about the fur coat. She was shocked to see how pale Delphine was, how crooked with pain. And she was quite mad, speaking as if performing a dramatic reading to a crowd of people assembled before her.

  “Cité à l’ordre de l’armée pour son superbe courage.”

  Her words slid into each other, veered off course, piled up, toppled into ruts of silence. Her dull eyes were focused on a heaven somewhere beyond Sabine. The poem was something about her son fighting in the war. The girl felt the keen urge to run but knew she had nowhere else to go.

  “Madame?”

  The old woman did not seem to notice her standing there. The hot, heavy plate was beginning to slip from her hands again.

  “It is Sabine.”

  Madame Escoffier had become another sort of creature, not quite human. Or maybe, Sabine thought, maybe more human. Maybe this is what children are like when they are born—straddling this life and that.

  The platter was heavy. She couldn’t stand there much longer. “I have brought a dish for you that Monsieur cooked himself. Langoustines with ragout.”

  Madame Escoffier’s eyes suddenly cleared.

  “Closer.”

  Sabine placed the large platter on the bedside table and sat on the side of the bed. She peeled each langoustine tail and fed the old woman as one would a child.

  Delphine closed her eyes and chewed slowly. She was radiant.

  “Another.”

  “Quick, quick,” she said over and over again, and laughed, although Sabine was not sure why. Still, Delphine’s happiness was so pure that she felt it herself. She fed her fork after fork until they could hear the doctor’s grave basso tones in the hallway. Then the old woman whispered, “Tell Escoffier I still want my dish.”

  Sabine did not want the coat but did, indeed, want more meals such as this one.

  “Oui, Madame. I will tell him.”

  “Good. Now clean your face.”

  At that moment, she sounded so like Sabine’s grandmother that, out of reflex, the girl took the corner of her apron and wiped her cheeks quickly. “Clean?”

  “Clean.”

  The cherry smoke of the doctor filled the room.

  “Bland food only. How many times do I tell you this? Why does no one in this household listen to me?”

  Sabine picked up the platter but a nurse shooed her away. “Put it down and leave. We’ll take care of it.”

  Sabine gave her a shattering smile. “How very kind, but non,” she said. The doctor looked stricken, which pleased Sabine greatly.

  At the foot of the steep servant’s stairway, Sabine ate several more langoustines, wiped her mouth repeatedly and then removed her red dancer’s shoes. They threw her off balance, made her limp even more pronounced. She placed one in each pocket of her stained white apron. She wanted to be very careful. The langoustines were, after all, the only thing left in the house worth eating.

  In the kitchen, Escoffier was still sitting at the table where she had left him. The small plate of langoustines that he had made for himself sat uneaten. His handkerchief was bloodied. He coughed again.

  “You should rest now. The doctor—”

  “Is an idiot.”

  “But he is paid well for it, so perhaps you should follow his advice.”

  “Did she ask where the langoustines came from?”

  “Non.”

  “If she does, tell her Mr. Boots of Southsea.”

  “She will not ask.”

  “But if she does. Mr. Boots . . . of Southsea.”

  “Yes. Southsea.”

  “Good. England.”

  “Yes.”

  Escoffier slowly stood. With the meal cooked, he was no longer the great chef but a small broken man. Sabine wondered how much time he had left.

  That night, the fog cleared and the full moon rose icy red over the wild cobalt sea. Delphine fell in and out of the haze of life: one moment letting go of things she no longer needed like language, and then the next moment, grasping onto it tightly, a frayed rope by which she would try to pull herself back into the world.

  “Cité à l’ordre de l’armée pour son superbe courage.”

  Escoffier knew that line. It was from “Invocation,” Delphine’s poem for their son.

  Bloody bodies. Valorous soldiers. Daniel.

  He leaned against the other side of the wall, listening. “I am sorry,” he said. “So very sorry.” He knew she could not hear him. The ruby moon turned his tears into small dark jewels. With the taste of salt in his mouth, he could not bring himself to go into her room. He did not want to remember her that way, frail and dying—drowning in loss. He turned on the radio. There was news from Berlin.

  “The results given out by the Propaganda Ministry early this morning show that 89.9 percent of German voters agreed that the offices of President and Chancellor should be joined into one. This endorsement gives Chancellor Hitler, who became a German citizen just four years ago, power unequaled since the days of Genghis Khan. It is interesting to note that the Ministry also reported 871,056 defective ballots, which they attribute to protestors attempting to sabotage ‘Germany’s Golden Age.’ ”

  Escoffier turned off the radio, touched the wall. “Soon.”

  By morning, Delphine had let go of dreaming. She had decided that all she required was the deep cool darkness of sleep. Dreams were too untrustworthy. They could turn quickly, without warning. She was no longer willing to accept their mercurial ways. There was no need. Her stillness allowed her to live between time. She was no longer a slave to it. She could be young or old. She could pass into the next world or stay in this one. With the taste of the langoustines still on her tongue, she could feel her husband’s soft hand against her thigh and the tangle of their bodies, the heat of it. Quick. Quick. Dreams had become unnecessary.

  THE FOIE GRAS AND THE JOLLY ROUND FIGURE OF M. Heursel of the Maison Bruck, whose calling card announced that they were the makers of the finest pâtés de foie gras de Strasbourg in the world, arrived by motor car early the next morning along with a slab of larded pork and two geese that were, thankfully, quite dead. M. Heursel was also kind enough to bring six black truffles wrapped in brown paper that to Sabine were unimpressive as rocks.

  “Le grand mystère!”

  The stylish round man picked up a truffle and held it in his doughlike hands, offered it to Sabine as if it were a rare diamond. “Voil�
�!”

  Sabine took the truffle in her hand gingerly. Sniffed. Squinted. It had a strange piquant odor and looked like a dirty walnut. She held it away from herself as if it were a small dead mouse.

  “What should I do with these?”

  “Whatever you want.”

  “These are a type of mushroom?”

  M. Heursel was crestfallen. He puffed his chest again and said, “Mademoiselle, truffles are the great ancient mystery of the vegetable kingdom. They are said to be the children of thunder.”

  Sabine frowned. “And so what does one cook thunderous children in? Butter?”

  A look of panic passed over M. Heursel’s well-fed face. “You are the cook?”

  “I am the cook.”

  “Is Monsieur Escoffier here?”

  “Non.”

  Sabine could see that the man wanted to pack the food back into his perfect wicker baskets and run back to Paris, back to the famed Maison Bruck where people understood how to enjoy the finest pâtés de foie gras de Strasbourg in the world, but it was too late. There was no graceful way to leave now and save face. He offered Sabine the truffles again, hopeful that she misunderstood what he was saying.

  “These are from Périgord.”

  “And I am from Paris.”

  Sabine did not misunderstand. She just did not care. How can I feed an entire household with six dirty mushrooms?

  “Perhaps his son, Paul? We have dined together on many occasions. His lovely wife . . . ”

  “Everyone is gone,” she said and yet the house was filled again with the voices of children and adults.

  “I see.”

  M. Heursel wiped a thin sheet of sweat from his shiny head with a white silk handkerchief, looked at his pocket watch. “Will Monsieur Escoffier return soon?”

  “Non.”

  Above their heads, the old man coughed. It was clearly Escoffier. Unmistakable. They both knew it. Sabine smiled.

  “When Monsieur Escoffier arrives home, I will give him your card.”

  “Is Madame in?”

  Sabine held up the man’s calling card. Waved it in the air. “I will tell them both that you called. They will be sorry to have missed you,” she said, hands on her hips.