The Chef's Apprentice: A Novel (13 page)

That day’s great task was to prepare a dinner for a special guest from Rome—Loren Behaim, the pope’s astrologer and alchemist, one of the most learned men in Europe. It would be an elaborate meal and preparations began early. The chef ordered a cook out to the kitchen’s strange garden to snip fresh lavender and marigold blossoms. The other cooks exchanged worried glances, and the chosen man stalled at the garden door until the chef gave him a
threatening look. Before stepping out into the garden, the hapless cook made the sign of the cross, took a deep breath, and balled a fist behind his back, protection against the evil eye.

That day, the chef was more exacting than usual. He instructed Enrico to prepare a quantity of spongy dough, saying, “Remember, warm hands are best for kneading.”

Enrico swelled with indignation at the unnecessary reminder.

“Pellegrino,” said the chef, “slice the veal thin and against the grain.”

Pellegrino huffed under his breath, “How else?”

The chef ordered the fish cook to put the spider crabs into the leather salt-water tank. He patted the threshing crabs, saying, “They’ll be sweeter if they enjoy their final hours.”

“Of course,” the fish cook muttered. “Who does he think he’s talking to?”

With chores assigned, the chef pulled a neck chain out of his collar and unhooked a small brass key. He walked over to a row of copper sauté pans hanging from an iron rack and removed the largest one. Hidden behind that gleaming pan was a small oaken cabinet, which he unlocked with his brass key. Very quickly now, he removed something from the cabinet, secreted it in his trouser pocket, and then relocked the cabinet. He turned, saw me watching, and cleared his throat. “Have you resigned as my apprentice, Luciano?”

“No, Maestro.”

“Are you a saint then, waiting for a sign from God?”

“No, Maestro.” I grabbed two wooden buckets and ran out to the courtyard. Cold water gushed into my bucket while I replayed the sight of the chef withdrawing something from his private cabinet—but what was it? I thought I’d seen a glint of green like the glass used for wine bottles. Or maybe it was more of a grayish green, like a dried herb. It had been such a fleeting glimpse. I closed my eyes to recapture the image, but all I could see was the chef’s closed hand slipping into his pocket.

I lugged my water buckets into the kitchen just in time to hear the chef announce that he would take personal charge of the veal sauce. “It’s a fragile sauce and can’t be fussed over by too many hands. It’s sensitive to disharmony.” The cooks had already taken note of the chef’s mood, so they simply nodded. But when he began ladling stock into a saucepan, uncorking wine, and assembling ingredients with the intensity of a virtuoso, the sauce cook pulled his eyelid. There he was again, the haughty
artiste
whose privacy no one dared to disturb.

That evening, it fell to me to carry a great tray laden with porcelain dishes, solid gold chargers, crystal goblets, and silver cutlery up to the dining room. Chambermaids trained in the art of table arrangements would lay the table with hand-tatted lace cloths and a huge bowl of white lilies. Footmen would use pulleys to lower a massive chandelier so that the maids could light its one hundred tapers.

My breath came hard as I struggled up the circular stairway with the heavy tray. I pushed open the service door with my back, lugged the tray into the opulent dining room, and set it down on a marble sideboard. The doge stood in the middle of the room with two of his thick-necked guards. He’d been speaking quietly—all their faces bore a somber expression—but when I entered, huffing and puffing, he’d cut off abruptly. All three men watched in silence while I unloaded the tray. I took my time, handling each piece with care, hoping the doge would continue talking in my presence. But before I finished, he waved a veiny old hand my way and said, “Get out.” I bowed and backed out of the room. After closing the door, not quite all the way, I crouched to peek through the keyhole.

The doge said, “I want you both ready tonight, over there.” He pointed down the room. “Behind the portrait of the Ugly Duchess.”

The two guards looked down the length of the dining room, but my view was limited, so I abandoned the keyhole and nudged
the door open just enough to see the far side of the room. On that wall hung an eight-foot-high portrait of the blue-eyed Duchess of Tyrol. A bulbous nose squeezed between jowly cheeks and close-set eyes had earned the poor woman the popular title of the Ugly Duchess. The artist, in a valiant attempt to distract attention from her unfortunate face, had tried to soften and obscure his subject amid swirls of pink satin, pounds of pearls, and a towering hairdo. He was clearly a skilled painter, but no one is
that
talented.

They walked to the painting, and I understood how two men could hide behind it when the doge pulled on the gilded frame and the entire painting swung open on concealed hinges. It revealed a dark passageway, no doubt one of the many secret galleries that led to the Bridge of Sorrows and across to the dungeons.

The doge showed the guards how to slide back a small panel behind one of the lady’s blue eyes. On the floor inside the passageway were wooden steps high enough to bring a man’s eyes up to the eyes of the portrait. The doge slid the panel back in place, and I saw that the trick eye was a masterpiece of
trompe l’oeil
. The doge turned his back to the painting and instructed his guards to watch the dining table that night for his signal. He said, “When I do this”—he curled his forefinger in a lazy, come-hither gesture—“come out and take him.”

One guard asked, “To the Leads, my lord?” He referred to the upper-prison cells directly under the lead-tiled roof, which made the cells hotter in summer and colder in winter. The Leads were reserved for prisoners of rank to inhabit while they mulled over their options. Though they were spartan and uncomfortable, the Leads were infinitely better than the dungeons, a warren of pitch-dark, rat-infested caves with low, bolted doors and special chambers in which subhuman men tortured their prisoners. Some nights, shadowy figures could be seen rowing a lumpish sack out of a water gate and heading out to sea where no one could hear the splash.

The doge thought for a moment, then said, “I don’t have time for the niceties. Take him directly to the dungeon.”

The guards exchanged a quick look, and the one who had asked about the Leads cleared his throat and said, “With respect, my lord, Herr Behaim is said to be a close friend of His Holiness.”

The man’s impudence surprised me. I thought the German astrologer must indeed be powerful to embolden a guard to question the doge. The doge’s rheumy eyes narrowed into that shrewd look that so few ever saw. He moved closer to the guards, and his voice dropped to a conspiratorial hush. I prayed the heavy service door wouldn’t creak as I eased it open another inch to hear him.

The doge said, “There are plots against our Most Serene Republic. We must protect her, even from Rome.”

The two guards were typical of the men in the doge’s small personal guard. They were rough, uneducated young fellows with a taste for fighting and strutting about in crisp uniforms. In time, they would leave the doge’s service, marry wholesome girls, and become bakers or blacksmiths or fruit merchants. They had nothing in common with the hand-picked
Cappe Nere
, who worked alongside Inquisitors and were well trained in brutal interrogations and merciless executions. Many heretics facing the auto-da-fé had looked down from the stake and seen the pyre lit by an impassive
Cappa Nera
.

The council’s secret police were killers who wore the black cape for life, but the doge’s guard was comprised of an ever-changing bunch of feckless young ruffians. That’s why the two ignorant boys in the dining room, thinking the doge had taken them into his confidence, huffed in unison to demonstrate their appreciation for the doge’s trust, as well as their offended patriotism.

The doge nodded like a disappointed sage and shrugged as though the matter were out of his hands. “I’m hoping Herr Behaim will talk to me like an honest Christian over a civilized dinner, but if not, well, we do what we must. For Venice.”

The guards mumbled, “For Venice.” They bowed stiffly and disappeared behind the portrait of the Ugly Duchess. With a swish of wood on canvas, one of the lady’s blue eyes turned brown.

I raced down to the kitchen, leaping the last four steps in one go, and burst through the door. All the cooks turned to look at me. Dante raised a questioning eyebrow, and Enrico put down his bread paddle. Giuseppe, slumped over his sluggish broom, glowered at me while I whispered my report to the chef.

The chef barely glanced at me, nor did he pause in his preparations. He added wine to his saucepan, whisked the mixture, and said, “Plots against Venice, eh?” He smiled, then dipped a fingertip into the sauce, touched it to his tongue, and closed his eyes to test the undertones. When he opened his eyes he said, “You’re still here?”

“But, Maestro,” I said, “the doge is going to kidnap the pope’s astrologer.”

The chef pinched a few grains of salt from a dish, sprinkled it into the sauce, and whisked again. “You’re very good at spying, and that can be useful, but don’t be a nuisance.”

“But, Maestro—”

“Bring in more wood. I have a dinner to prepare.”

CHAPTER X
T
HE
B
OOK OF
N
EPENTHES

T
he chef was right, of course. I was good at spying because I’d spent most of my young life at it—not only as he’d done, to learn correct manners, but for survival. Marco and I had spied on the merchants in the Rialto, waiting for the moment one would turn his back long enough for us to grab his wares and run. While looking for Rufina in the Campo San Cassiano, we spied on the prostitutes, who smelled of wine and musk, fascinated by the quick, crude couplings we saw in dark
calli
. Once, we watched a woman pressed against a wall with her skirts bunched at her waist and her legs wrapped around a grunting man who groped her breasts and bumped rudely against her hips. She squinted in the lamplight and counted her coppers behind his head.

We spied on old women paying for sardines with shaky hands, hoping they’d fumble a coin. Outside gaming houses, we watched noblemen stumble out, always on the lookout for the one too drunk to feel our fingers in his velvet purse. We spied on well-dressed sons of princely houses and were astonished at the way they sauntered along, carefree and sure of themselves, as if the world were a safe place, as if there were not dangers in every step and disasters lying in wait. We could tell that those boys felt no hunger and
that their teeth didn’t ache, because they smiled for no reason. We wondered why God granted them the advantages we lacked. For myself, I believed, as La Canterina had predicted, that the birthmark on my forehead had sealed my fate. But I couldn’t see what was wrong with Marco.

After joining the palace staff, I spied on cooks who wasted food that I later wrapped and took to Marco and Domingo. I spied on other servants, on the chef and his family, and on the doge—indeed, all the days of my life were strung together by a slippery thread of watching and calculating. Spying had been my means of learning about the world and surviving it. Spying had kept me alive, and I saw no reason to give it up.

During state dinners, my job as an apprentice afforded me wonderful opportunities for spying. I ran up and down the spiral stairway, cheerfully carrying each new course and hauling off the dirty dishes from the last. I handed loaded platters and steaming tureens to maids who waited on the landing, and I caught glimpses of the dining room as the women went in and came out with the trays. The maids left the door ajar so they knew when to serve more wine or bring in the next course. That slight opening was just enough to allow the voices of the doge and his guests to carry out onto the landing. Between courses, I lingered there with the maids while I kept one ear trained on the doge’s conversations.

On the night of the dinner for the pope’s astrologer, I watched through the cracked-open service door as the doge and Herr Behaim entered through the grand double doors on the other side of the room. One brown eye of the blue-eyed Ugly Duchess followed the doge and Herr Behaim as they walked to the table and seated themselves. Herr Behaim praised the room’s elaborate Byzantine decor, the silk-clad walls and coved ceiling, and I noticed that his Venetian was accented with a Germanic growl. The doge sat facing the portrait of the Ugly Duchess, and Behaim sat at his right hand, the hand that might give the fatal signal.

The meal began with asiago cheese rolled in herbed breadcrumbs and grilled just to the point at which the breadcrumbs acquire a golden hue. It was a tricky dish because it had to be grilled only to the edge of melting—one second longer might cause the cheese to bleed through its crispy coating and ruin the presentation. Still sizzling, it had to be rushed to the table before it could cool and solidify. The cheese was accompanied by a cold bottle of Foianeghe Rosso from the doge’s cellar, a full-bodied wine with the character of an overture.

The doge cut through the delicate crust and into the soft, warm cheese. Herr Behaim held up his fork and admired the shimmering reflection of candlelight on silver. “This charming implement you Italians invented, tell me again what you call it.”

“A fork.”

“Of course! Why can’t I remember that odd little word? I hear it’s becoming a fad in the French court.”

“The French? I doubt they can master it.”

“Be merciful, my lord. Venice sets the style; the rest of us can only follow.”

The doge smiled, placed a forkful of cheese in his mouth, and closed his eyes as it spread over his tongue, herb crusted and butter-luscious. Before I ran off for the next course, I heard him purr.

For the
prímo píatto
, the chef had chosen to serve a dish he called gnocchi—small dumplings made with potato flour. It was an unusual dish as potatoes were a rarity from the New World and largely unknown. The gnocchi were simply dressed in browned butter and sage and then dusted with freshly grated Parmigiano-Reggiano. It was a plain presentation with no garnish, and it was accompanied by a white table wine of no special distinction.