The Chef's Apprentice: A Novel (30 page)

“
Dio
. Dante is waiting. I’m sure he’ll let you know what he thinks of tardy cooks. Go on now.”

After Dante unleashed a string of caustic remarks about wasting his time on incompetent, undeserving boys, he dumped a mountain of onions in front of me with a warning to “be quick and do it right, or else.” We settled into a rhythm of synchronized chopping.

Chop, chop, chop—“Show me something.”

Va bene
. Chop, chop, chop—I’d show her something.

*

That Sunday, I walked into the Church of San Vincenzo, washed and combed and determined to make a favorable impression. I refused to cower in the back with the urchins and beggars. I was a cook. Boldly, I walked down the center aisle, feeling dwarfed by the Roman columns and gothic arches, but holding my shoulders back and head high. I sat in a middle pew, in full view of the chef and his family. The well-dressed matron already seated in that pew looked down her nose at me, stood with a stiff back, and removed herself to another pew. I blamed my birthmark. I’d forgotten that without my cook’s jacket and toque, I was just another motherless boy.

Stand, sit, kneel, sit, stand, kneel … I felt like a puppet. Did God really care so much about my posture? And why did the priest have to drone his incantations in a language no one understood? But I told myself: This is what respectable people do. Still, during my hour-long captivity, I prayed only for release. When the priest finally made his exit and the faithful heaved up off their knees, I darted into the aisle to intercept the chef’s family.

Chef Ferrero stood in the pew helping his wife up, and when she saw me, she gave her husband a look that seemed to ask, “Him again?” The chef said, “
Cara mia
, take the girls outside. I’ll join you in a minute.”

“Of course,” she said through clenched teeth.

She stood in the aisle and motioned her daughters out of the pew. As they filed past their father, he caressed each little face trimmed in its lace veil. Signora Ferrero hesitated long enough to give me a look that scorched my eyebrows, but I assured myself that in time I could win her over. After Francesca and I were married, Signora Ferrero would see me as a good family man, she’d forget that I was a thief, and she’d mellow. Maybe the New World could wait. Maybe I could work for the chef, and if Francesca and I had a daughter, maybe we could name her Rosa. Maybe everything would work out, as the chef said, in its own time. But not that day. That day the lady glared at me with a look that could have singed pinfeathers, then she herded her daughters away at a quick irreverent pace.

I took two careful steps toward the chef and folded my hands across my chest like a penitent. “Maestro, I’ve come to ask you humbly to allow me the same happiness you have with your family. You know how desperately I love Francesca. You know she’s in a convent. I need your help, Maestro. I believe there’s a love potion in your secret writings, and I beg you, in the name of love, to share it with me. If I lose her, I’ll die.”

The chef rolled his eyes up to the heavenly scene painted on the church ceiling. He said,
“Dio.”
His head came down, and he said, “After everything I’ve told you, this is still what you think about? This infatuation—”

“No, Maestro.” The firmness in my voice surprised even me. “Not infatuation. Love. You have your secret writings and your wife and your daughters and your kitchen and your position in society. I have a cat and a dream. It’s not fair.”

“Now he wants justice. Who told you life was fair?”

I almost sobbed. “There’s nothing wrong with what I want.”

“I know there’s nothing wrong with it.” The chef sighed. “But there’s no potion to get you want you want.”

“I think there
is
a love potion.”

The chef raked his fingers through his hair. “You’ve probably heard talk about an aphrodisiac, eh? And you think it’s a love potion. Yes, there are aphrodisiacs, but an aphrodisiac won’t make Francesca love you.”

I believed he was trying to trick me with words. “Call it what you wish.”

The last worshippers had gone, and we stood alone in the cavernous church. The chef stared at me for a moment, then he said, “I understand your obsession. I understand only too well. You really can’t let her go, eh?”

“No, Maestro.”

“I see. But, Luciano, no potion will make her love you.”

“Then what’s the harm in giving it to me?”

“You’ll be disappointed, I’m sure of it. But I suppose you’ll be disappointed no matter what I do.”

“Please, Maestro.”

“Perhaps the best way to convince you is to let you see for yourself.”

My heart leapt. “You’ll give it to me?”

“Only if you promise to remember this: No potion will make anyone love you.”

“
Grazie
, Maestro.
Grazie
.”

“Va bene,”
he said. “Tomorrow night.”

CHAPTER XXI
T
HE
B
OOK OF
F
ORBIDDEN
F
RUIT

T
he next night, I wiggled away from Bernardo without waking him, slid off my pallet, and tiptoed down to the kitchen. The chef was asleep at his desk, and I shook his shoulder gently. “Maestro, it’s time.”

He yawned and stretched, then sleepily removed the key from the chain around his neck and shuffled over to his cabinet to collect the makings of my dreams. I expected him to assemble an elaborate array of secret ingredients, and I was mildly disappointed when he returned with only a small bottle of black liquid and a shriveled brown disc, no bigger than a fingernail. It looked like a piece of dried mushroom.

He set them on the chopping block and tapped the bottle. “Coffee,” he said, “from Arabia. The Turks called coffee berries the Fruit of Lust.” He scratched the back of his neck and yawned again. “But I don’t think it’s the coffee that does it.” He picked the bottle up, and we both stared into its murky depths. He said, “You roast the beans and grind them in a mortar, then pour boiling water over the grounds and let it steep. I brewed this at home.” He uncorked it and my nostrils filled with that smoky smell, like burnt chestnuts. This was what I had smelled on his bedroom balcony. Finally!

He filled a cup with the thick, black coffee and dropped in the wrinkled button. “We’ll let that soften while we make the syrup. The coffee is bitter, and this addition makes it more so.”

“Is that a dried mushroom? Is it amanita?”

“Oh, stop that. This is peyote from the New World. It’s from a plant called the sacramental cactus and its effect is something like wine. But too much can make you sick. We use it sparingly.”

The chef mixed sugarcane and water in a pan; he boiled it down to syrup and poured it into the coffee. He used a fork to mash the softened peyote button to a pulp, stirred it, poured it into a carafe, and corked it. Then he held the carafe out to me and said, “Shake it before you drink, and, please, take only a small sip.”

“That’s all?” I couldn’t believe it.

“What did you expect, a soufflé?”

I took the carafe and examined it. Bits of mashed peyote still settled, drifting through the black coffee like magic dust.

The chef said, “I don’t want you to think I tricked you, Luciano. Let me be clear. I know you think this will induce love. It won’t.”

“But it’s a love potion.”

“No, it’s a mixture of drugs. You’ll feel strange sensations, but they’re false, and they’re temporary. Try to understand this: Love is a ripening of honesty, a deepening of truths that people can tell each other. It comes with time. This drug will
not
make anyone love you. It might even make you feel unwell if you take too much. A small amount can be an aphrodisiac, but only for people who already desire each other. It will create nothing; it will only heighten what is already there.”

Love potion or aphrodisiac?
Boh,
just words
. I imagined Francesca and myself being overcome by passion. I said, “Is this enough for two?”

“That’s enough for a crowd. One small swallow will be plenty. Now good night.” The chef lumbered out the back door, mumbling, “Half a night’s sleep wasted on nonsense.”

I stared at my dark carafe. There was more than enough for a test, so I shook it vigorously, pulled the cork, and tasted it. As he said, it was bittersweet, but not unpleasant. I tipped my head back and took a generous gulp.

Immediately, I felt a rush of panic, as though I’d accidentally swallowed poison. I wanted to believe it was a love potion but … could that dried bit have been amanita? Why would he do that? To teach me a lesson? Should I make myself vomit? No, the chef would never poison anyone. I laid a hand on my chest to calm the thudding there and forced myself to take deep breaths. I recorked the carafe, climbed onto the table near the back door, and pushed my prize into the recess over the lintel. I jumped down and peered up at the lintel from various spots in the kitchen to make sure my treasure was well hidden. I was craning my neck, looking up at the lintel, when I felt a numbness steal over my lips. Warmth spread over my chest while a chill rippled down my legs. I heard a sound like a loud vibration and looked around, but it seemed to be coming from beneath my skin.

A feeling of vertigo overcame me. The room swayed; the warmth in my chest moved down to my stomach and turned sour. Nausea hit like a sledgehammer, and I doubled over groaning. I closed my eyes, and the world inside my head began to spin. I thought, Marrone,
he
did
poison me
. Then my thoughts turned chaotic. I retched, hoping to see the poisonous black fluid pour out of my mouth. I retched again, but nothing came up. I lay on the stone floor moaning. I don’t know for how long.

As quickly as it came, the nausea subsided, and in its place I experienced a sense of intense clarity. I straightened up, feeling strangely alert and invigorated. The vibrating sound had gone, and instead I heard the footsteps of an ant crawling across the floor. Then the smell of boiled syrup walloped me so hard I tasted sugar on my tongue, and I swallowed a mouthful of sweet saliva. The taste mutated into the sound of an oar slicing through water, then
into the gentle green fragrances of celery and thyme. I stared at a carrot top and watched it grow until it surrounded me like a feathery jungle. Carrot tops tickled my face.

The smell of simmering beef stock made me ravenous, but when I moved toward the stockpot, the kitchen turned upside down, and I fell on my backside. I pulled myself onto hands and knees, falling first this way and then the other, and finally, craving my bed, I crawled toward the servants’ stairway. But the kitchen had grown immense, and the distance to the stairway seemed impossible. I watched myself crawl in someone else’s dream, moving but not making any progress until, without warning, my hand hit the first stair. I thought the stairway had moved to meet me.

I hauled myself up the first step on my elbows, but I couldn’t feel the stone beneath me. When I looked down to make sure it was there, I understood that it was not just cold stone but something warm and alive—rose and dove-gray and amber humming and melding as if it were breathing. I felt myself sinking into the rose, becoming the amber. I have no idea how long I reclined on that step. It felt like seconds; it felt like days.

The next thing I remember is lying on my straw pallet, staring out a high window at a square patch of starry sky and a lemon moon. I felt I could rise in the air and fly out that window, but I was content to stay there and watch the stars. Somehow, I was already among them. It must have been very late, but I wasn’t sleepy. I wove through a sparkling universe filled with wonder. I blessed the chef—he’d been so good to me—and Marco, he’d been good in his own twisted way, and quiet, grateful Domingo, he was almost like another brother. I even felt sympathy for Giuseppe, that poor, sorry drunk. I loved my straw pallet, oh, and Bernardo, and all the servants snoring in the dormitory, and all the servants all over Venice. I loved life and everyone in it. Some small, drug-addled corner of my mind rejoiced: Dio mio,
I love everyone! It
must
be a love potion
.

A misty vision of Francesca gazed down at me from a corner of the window. She gave me her wicked-sweet smile and the stars sparked in her pale hair. I wanted to call to her, but I had no voice. I smelled the mixed scents of her, and I imagined the lush, tropical feast I’d prepare for her on our wedding night.

I’d slip raw oysters between her lips. We’d share ripe figs and plump, dewy cherries. I’d offer her sweetmeats and honeyed milk, blood oranges peeled and ready, salty artichokes stripped down to the heart. I’d pry open a lobster shell and feed her tender morsels of meat, slowly, slowly. The flavors would mingle and mount and burst inside us like soft explosions. I wanted to believe it would all be possible.

I imagined her staring into my eyes while she dragged a buttered artichoke leaf between her teeth and sucked on the flesh. It was good. I rode through the long, lovely night on wave upon wave of pleasure, smelling her, tasting her, touching her. …

I heard myself moan, and in that fierce embrace, I believed.

CHAPTER XXII
T
HE
B
OOK OF
H
ALF
T
RUTHS

T
he sun rose, the city plunged into another day of commerce, and the kitchen came to life like a spicy batter thwacked to a froth—all while I lay comatose on my pallet. One of the servants in the dormitory told me later that I looked so still and pale he thought I’d died, and he’d rushed down to tell Chef Ferrero. The chef waved him off, saying, “Luciano isn’t dead. Although later he might wish he was.”

The midday sun slanted needle-sharp rays through the high window, and I opened one eye with a careful squint. There was a nugget of pain inside my head that rolled when I moved; my eyes felt dry and scratchy, and my stomach ached. I sat up, tired and dazed, and wondered what I was doing in bed so late.