The Chef's Apprentice: A Novel (12 page)

“Cursed?”

“
Mon Dieu
, I’ll never forget his face when he came back to Venice that day. Pale. Broken.
Choqué
. Amato dropped into a chair as if he’d been punched in the chest. He sat there, splay legged and staring, too stunned to weep. That would come later. That was the day he finally told me what he’d done, all of it, from the beginning.”

I had long suspected that this so-called curse had to do with the reason my maestro took me off the street, but I wanted confirmation. “How was the child cursed,
monsieur
?”

“A dark birthmark on the forehead.” Chef Meunier made a distracted gesture at my head. “I suppose it was much like yours; they’re common enough. But Amato’s mother thought Giulietta had caught the evil eye. Peasants, eh?”

“A birthmark like mine?”

“I don’t know if it was like yours. It was a birthmark. Not the most handsome of features but certainly not a curse.”

I nodded. I’d rarely thought of my birthmark as handsome or not handsome. Most people had some unique feature and mine was a birthmark. I did not grow up with mirrors at my disposal and I only knew the thing was dark brown because La Canterina told me so. Having a handsome face was not something to which street urchins gave much thought, but I had sometimes wondered whether the mark might be a curse. Of course that was in my youth, before I grew beyond superstition.

“Amato said Giulietta’s grave was ordinary, a neat mound of
freshly dug earth with a simple wooden cross and a posy of wild daisies. But the baby’s grave was crude, nothing but a patch of barely scratched earth, and it was unmarked. They knelt at Giulietta’s grave, and his mother mumbled a rote prayer. Amato asked, “Aren’t we going to pray for my son?” She muttered, ‘That child was cursed. He’s already in hell.’
Alors, c’est fini
. Amato never visited his mother again.

“Each year, Amato observed the day of Giulietta’s death and his son’s birth by falling to his knees and begging forgiveness.
Naturellement
, the more he learned from me, the more he questioned who or what he was petitioning.”

“I know how that goes.”

“We all know how that goes. But Amato needed absolution for the selfishness that had made him hold on to Giulietta.
Mais bien sûr
. Isn’t that why people need their gods? To grant wishes, to give assurances, to offer consolation, to mete out reward and punishment? Someone should be in charge,
non
? So Amato prayed. He kept track of how old his son would have been, and he found himself scanning the foreheads of boys that age. He admitted that he felt foolish doing it, but he couldn’t help himself.

“A few years later, he became a sous-chef and married Rosa, a young gentlewoman from Aosta. She had fierce brown eyes, a tiger, that one.
Piemontese
women are
durables;
I think it’s the hard winters in those mountains.
Oui
. Rosa had a jaw that showed fortitude and a character that promised loyalty. Those two were good together, and they adored their daughters.”

“Yes, they did.”

Thunder crashed overhead and lightning flashed in the window, causing us both to startle. Chef Meunier said, “
Quelle pluie torrentielle!
I hope the woman has set out the water barrel.” Chef Meunier shared my maestro’s obsession with fresh water. He huddled in his shawl and watched the rain sheet his window. He didn’t need to say any more; we had come to the part of the story that included me. By
the time Amato Ferrero became chef to the doge, he had achieved everything he’d wanted and his escape was complete. There was just one thing missing.

He wasn’t yet forty when he caught me pinching the pomegranate and rushed me to a tub of cold water, eager to scrub my face and see whether the dark-brown smudge on my forehead washed off or not.

CHAPTER IX
T
HE
B
OOK OF
D
ESIRES

A
fter the catfight on the chef’s balcony, I raced back to the palace to finish my evening chores. I washed the dishes in a fever, splashing the floor with suds and fumbling a wineglass, barely catching it before it shattered on the stone floor. I perspired as I banked the fires under the stockpots, then swept the floor like a storm at sea, all the while mumbling under my breath.

Signora Ferrero had talked about a love potion, and I’d smelled it—smoky and foreign, something like burnt chestnuts, but liquid. I’d heard her pour it and offer it to her husband. My blood boiled with the kind of excitement that’s only possible in youth when everything is felt rather than understood. Oil lamps swinging outside the windows created a wavering light and gave the kitchen a dreamlike quality well suited to my mood on that confusing night of revelations. When Bernardo emerged from under the chef’s desk I raised my broom like a victor’s sword and announced, “The chef knows a love potion!”

Marco used to ridicule me for talking to Bernardo, but in the palace, I saw the doge himself converse openly and at length with his cats. He named them after precious gems, calling them, “My
Emerald. My Sapphire. My Ruby.” He coaxed them to eat costly tidbits, petted them, and crooned to them. Oftentimes, he put his corrugated lips to a velvet ear and whispered like a besotted lover. Watching the doge, I realized that cats make a perfect audience—they don’t laugh at you, they never contradict you, there’s no need to impress them, and they won’t divulge your secrets. I said, “Think of it, Bernardo—Francesca in my arms.” I embraced the air and clownishly kissed my own biceps.

My stomach rumbled, and I remembered that I hadn’t taken my evening meal. I ripped off half a loaf of Enrico’s onion bread, then ladled out a bowl of beef stock and settled myself on the hearth. After I dipped a corner of the bread in my bowl, I remembered the day I had paid attention to eating a single green grape at the chef’s table and the strange pleasure it had afforded me. The smell of savory stock and fresh bread made my mouth water, but I stopped my hand short of my lips and forced myself to look at the bread. It was saturated with appetizing juices and flecked with caramelized onion. I wafted it under my nose and let it brush my lips. The bread’s proximity to my mouth was excruciating, but I liked the idea that this manner of restrained, mindful eating somehow made me a better person. I wanted that.

I nibbled the soup-drenched crust, chewing slowly, with closed eyes, and let the soft bread slide down my throat. I felt it land in my stomach, warm and satisfying, and tried to pay equal attention to the next bite, but the scraps of conversation I’d overheard on the chef’s balcony distracted me.

My mind wandered. I pulled it back to my supper, and it wandered again. It was no use. I abandoned my meditative effort and examined the situation with Bernardo.

I said, “The doge is looking for this book because he thinks he can defeat death. All right, that’s nonsense. But the love potion is real. The question is, does the love potion come from the secret book? If the maestro knows something about this book, he could
be in danger.” I finished off my dinner with a few more thoughtless bites and slurps, but I left a puddle of broth in the bottom of the bowl for Bernardo. While he licked it clean, I stroked his back. “We can’t let the doge become suspicious of the chef. Everyone thinks the doge is senile, but he’s not. He’s putting on an act because of what happened to Doge Faliero.”

The Council of Ten always elected weak old men as doges. They tolerated no opposition to their power, and they wanted nothing more from a doge than the ability to make public appearances without drooling. Doges were not even allowed to open their own mail.

But once in a while the council misjudged; Doge Faliero had been one of their more spectacular mistakes. I’d often walked through the Hall of Doges and felt spooked by the black curtain hanging over his portrait. When I asked the chef about it, he said, “That fellow was too ambitious. He plotted to overthrow the council and have himself proclaimed prince of Venice. But they found him out and had him beheaded.” The chef’s mouth turned down in disgust. “They displayed his body in the Piazza San Marco with his head between his knees. It was a warning to future doges, eh? And it worked. No doge ever tried it again, and that was more than a hundred years ago.”

Our doge seemed more typical—very old and slightly addled, or so he appeared. Having had opportunities to observe him alone, I knew that a conniving mind hid behind that pretense of senility. The Council of Ten referred to the doge as
íl vecchío ídíota—
the old idiot—and they were so certain of his ineptitude that they never took a moment to look beyond the trembling hands and quivering chin (which held steady enough when he dined alone). They never troubled to look him in the eye, though if they had, they would have seen a cunning that belied everything else. I imagined our doge slipping out of his withered skin like a snake, emerging newborn and voracious, sliding silently into our midst and striking without warning.

With my stomach full, a wave of exhaustion came over me. I leaned back against the hearth, and the fire’s warmth and fluttering light lulled me into gentler thoughts of Francesca. I closed my eyes and saw the beloved face dominated by wide-set antelope eyes. Her eyebrows arched like the wings of a swan, and the whites of her eyes, almost bluish, made a startling contrast to her caramel skin. I later learned that her great-great-grandmother had been kidnapped by slavers in Turkey, brought to Venice, and then sold to a German trader. It was a common story in Venice. Francesca’s more recent ancestors had been German and Italian, and the result was a mix of northern ice and Mediterranean warmth.

Francesca’s upper lip curved in that sensual way that caused jealous Muslim husbands to veil their wives’ faces. Her smoldering Levantine beauty contrasted with her silver-blond Teutonic hair, shockingly fair next to her dusky complexion and the sultry hint of Byzantium flashing in her dark eyes. Her nostrils were shaped like perfect teardrops.

I stretched out on the hearth and recalled speaking to her for the first time, about a week earlier, while shopping for the chef in the Rialto. I’d watched her many times before when I lived on the street, although I’d never dared to show myself in my filthy, lice-ridden rags. But after the chef washed me and dressed me and my hair had grown back, I felt my clothes and manner bespoke a decent young man with respectable prospects, and I decided to approach her. I had adored her from afar for more than a year, desperately wishing to feel those antelope eyes turned on me, and one day, in the street of greengrocers, I found my opportunity.

Mother Superior had plunked a large cantaloupe into Francesca’s basket and the unexpected weight caused the girl to drop everything. The older nun stood with her fists on her square hips while Francesca scrambled to retrieve fallen turnips and escaping apples. The heavy melon rolled up to my foot—obviously divine
intervention—so I picked it up and returned it to her basket with a reverent dip of my head.

The scent of soap in her hair and the fragrance of fresh-baked bread lingering in her woolen habit unleashed a memory of La Canterina, and I became light-headed in her aromatic presence. I noticed a frill of lace tucked into her sleeve and briefly wondered how she came by such extravagance. But no matter, for then our eyes met and I blinked. She murmured,
“Grazie,”
in a voice like the low note of a lute, and sweat broke out at my hairline. I wanted to make her smile—a smile on that face would have been a bestowal of grace—and I strained to think of a witty remark. But, overwhelmed by her scent and intimidated by her closeness, I was struck dumb. I rescued the last apple and held it out. My tongue felt swollen and my mouth parched. When she took the apple, her fingertips brushed mine. A shock ran through my hand, burned up my arm, heated my neck, and flared like a match behind my eyes. I even felt an embarrassing tingle in my groin, which rendered me frozen as well as mute. Again, she said,
“Grazie.”

I wanted to say “It’s nothing,” or “It’s my pleasure.” I wanted to appear casual and well mannered, to bow like a gallant and say “At your service, my lady.” But I was confused by her touch and lost in her scent.

I said, “I love your nostrils,” then clamped my mouth shut in horror.

Francesca laughed, which made Mother Superior leave off inspecting the lettuce and glare at me. That bear of a nun grabbed Francesca’s arm and dragged her off into the crowd. I watched her go, knowing that she probably thought me simpleminded. In fact, I did feel stupid and doltish, and I despised myself the whole day.

Sitting alone on the hearth, the excitement of eavesdropping on the chef’s balcony dwindled, and the shame of my encounter with Francesca came back in a painful rush. The memory of my
humiliation erased all thoughts of doges and secret books, and even the promise of a love potion. What good would a love potion do me when Francesca would probably never look at me again? I hauled myself up the back staircase to the servants’ dormitory and tiptoed past rows of snoring servants.

Curled on my straw pallet, I hugged my knees to my chest and felt my face tighten as a hot tear slipped out the inside corner of one eye, trickled across the bridge of my nose, and slid down the opposite cheek. That night’s exhilaration over the chef’s love potion dissolved in the acid memory of my mortification. I’d introduced myself to Francesca as a dunce, and it would take a miracle to redeem me.

*

The next morning, Chef Ferrero bustled into the kitchen without his usual smile. We all waited for his hearty shout of
buon giorno
, but it never came. A few cooks offered a greeting, and he responded with an absent nod. He slapped three packages wrapped in oilcloth onto a table, then unwrapped a gorgeous cut of prime veal, a mound of freshly caught red mullets, and a heap of still-wriggling spider crabs, all purchased before dawn in the Rialto. He made no comment about the promising whiteness of the veal or the remarkable clarity of the mullets’ eyes. He pulled a freshly starched white toque onto his head without his customary self-satisfied grunt, and he unlocked the spice closet without engaging in his ritual sniff of cinnamon.