The Chef's Apprentice: A Novel (34 page)

“Madre mia!”
Tasting his first mouthful of capon, Pomponazzi appeared to be gripped by a culinary orgasm.

The doge looked into his own bowl. “It’s
that
good?” He tasted it, and his eyelids fluttered.

Conversation ceased. They ate greedily, licking spoons, sucking their fingers, and tipping the bowls to lap up all the sauce. After swallowing his last bite, Pomponazzi sat back with one hand on his belly. Suddenly, he looked bewildered, and then upset. He pointed to the rooster tureen. “You realize,” he said, shaking a finger, “for the pleasure of this food, we’ve become party to the castration of a proud animal. The mutilation of one of our own sex.”

“Well, I hadn’t …” The doge looked appalled. He belched and laid a hand on his chest. He said, “Abomination.”

“And mare’s milk.” Pomponazzi shook his head sadly. “Imagine the newborn colt, still wet on the ground, struggling up on trembling legs only to find that we’ve drained its mother’s milk.”

The doge put his head in his hands. “Poor little creature.”

Both men slumped over the table in despondent silence. The doge wiped the corners of his eyes. Pomponazzi sniffed, then sniveled, then sobbed. The doge shuddered and then wept openly. They planted their elbows on the table and bawled like large, over-dressed babies. Wailing filled the room, and tears streaked through the powder on the men’s cheeks. The maids and I watched in shocked silence, but when Pomponazzi held a handkerchief to the doge’s nose for him to blow, we held our hands over our mouths to keep back the laughter.

One of the maids took a moment to compose her face before she served the custard with rose-petal jam. The chef had instructed her
to announce that two dozen roses had been sacrificed for the garnish. He’d said, “Be sure to use that word—‘sacrifice.’” She made her statement to the blubbering men and then bowed out of the room, barely restraining her giggles until she arrived on the landing.

After a few listless bites of jam and custard, both men put down their spoons. The doge wept with his head resting on his arms while Pomponazzi patted his shoulder, saying, “I know. I know.”

The doge looked up and said, “Life is so sad.” A glob of rose-petal jam hung off the tip of his nose.

Pomponazzi agreed. “There’s no mercy.” Custard rimmed his mouth.

The doge stood. “I’m sorry. I must retire.”

“Of course.”

The men embraced. Pomponazzi blew his nose in a napkin while the doge sniffled into his collar. Then they limped toward the door, whimpering and supporting each other—invalids crippled by melancholy. Once they were well out of the room, we on the landing let our laughter go. The brown eye of the Ugly Duchess blinked, and we heard muffled guffaws from behind the wall.

Later that night, I carried a glass of ginger syrup to the doge’s bedchamber to settle the old man’s stomach. The next day, a depressed professor was allowed to return to Padua with red, swollen eyes. The chef heard that the man had left unharmed and said,
“Bene.”
The man may be a dolt, but his debates at Padua have opened minds. We do what we can.”

Unfortunately, he shouldn’t have done anything.

CHAPTER XXV
T
HE
B
OOK OF
N’
BALI

O
n reflection, I suppose the events following that dinner weren’t only the chef’s fault for meddling, but also mine for telling Marco about it. I can see that now, but at that time I thought we’d laugh together at the spectacle of the doge and his learned guest weeping like babies and slobbering into their custards. I hadn’t seen Marco in more than a month, avoiding both him and Francesca because of their demands, but I thought a funny story might ease the tension between Marco and me.

One Saturday, I brought Marco some boiled chicken necks I’d fished out of the stockpot—it wasn’t a lot of meat but it was well flavored—and while he sucked on the little round bones, I entertained him with the story of Pomponazzi. “You should’ve seen it, Marco. The maids are still laughing.”

Marco put down his chicken neck. “Weeping over a capon?”

“Wailing like babies. Howling like cats. Custard and jam all over their faces.”

“It sounds suspicious.”

“It was hilarious.”

“No. It’s like everything else about the chef—suspicious.”

Marrone
. What a pain in the neck. “Marco, where’s your sense of humor? The food changed their mood. So what? The chef has herbs that can do that.”

“He has more than herbs. He has opium.”

“For soup.”

“Boh.”
Marco wouldn’t be put off. “He’s up to something.”

“Oh,
Dio
.” He hadn’t even cracked a smile over the ridiculous doge and his blubbering guest. “The chef uses recipes to protect certain people.”

“
Certain
people? The chef chooses who to protect and who to sacrifice?”

That question gave me pause. Many of the doge’s guests did end up in the dungeon, and only rarely did a meal turn the tide. The chef wanted Pomponazzi to go on promoting his wild ideas, but on another occasion, after the doge had sent a notorious forger to the dungeon, the chef mumbled, “Good riddance.”

I said, “The chef knows what he’s doing.”

“Oh, I’m sure he does. I’m sure he knows a lot of things.”

I didn’t like Marco’s conniving tone. I said, “Leave it alone, eh?”

“Never.”

That night, I lay on my straw pallet, petting Bernardo and listening to music and voices drifting in from the street. I narrowed my thoughts to Francesca’s fingertip on my face, and eventually I dozed, but my sleep was light and restless. In the small hours, half-awakened by a dream of Francesca in her chemise, I reached for Bernardo, but my hand only skimmed the burlap of my pallet. The streets were quiet by then, and the dormitory rippled with snores. I swept my hand up and down my pallet, and then opened my eyes. “Bernardo?” He was gone.

I sat up, rubbing my eyes, and then pulled on my trousers. On bare feet, I padded down the length of the dormitory, whispering. “Psssst. Bernardo?” I found the dormitory door open, but
that wasn’t unusual. Often the last servant to bed was too tired to close it properly. Out on the landing, I called softly, “Bernardo?” I stepped down a few stairs and saw him, midway down the staircase, crouched like a giant fur ball. He looked back at me and blinked. I said, “What is it? Did you hear something?” Bernardo glided down the stairs, and I followed.

Halfway down, I heard a click. Was it a door closing? A lock turning? I crept down farther and peered into the darkened kitchen. An oil lamp outside one window creaked and swayed in the wind and cast a dim, intermittent light on a figure moving toward the back door. I tiptoed down the stairs and through the kitchen and jumped him from behind. He cried out, and we both fell to the floor. Just as I raised my fist to pummel the intruder, he said, “Luciano!”

“Marco?”
Marrone
, he was bold.

“Get off me, Cabbage-Head.”

“What are you doing here?”

“What you won’t do.” Marco reached into his shirt and pulled out a small cloth bundle. He spread it open on a chopping block to show me what he’d stolen from the chef’s cabinet—a few dried leaves, a shriveled flower, a bean, and a pod. He’d sprinkled a powder and some crushed herbs into two pieces of parchment and twisted the ends shut. It was nothing but herbs and spices, and to hide my relief, I kept my head down and fingered the dried leaves. I said, “You turnip. What are you going to do, cook dinner?”

“I’m taking these to the Abyssinian. Tomorrow. I’ll find out what he’s up to. And I’m going to ask her if she knows where Rufina is.” He looked pathetically hopeful.

“The Abyssinian? How will you pay her?”

He jingled his pocket and jerked his head toward the spice closet. He had taken money from the silver box that I had told him about.

“Oh,
Dio
, Marco—”

“You said a few coins wouldn’t be missed.”

I knew immediately that I couldn’t let him go to the Abyssinian alone. He’d only stolen herbs and spices, but I feared what flights of fancy Marco might take. It’s human nature for people to see what they want to see and hear what they want to hear. I had to protect the chef.

Even if I’d wanted to seek advice, I couldn’t; the next day was Sunday, the chef’s day off, and I’d have to handle Marco on my own. I said, “This is foolishness, but I’m curious about the Abyssinian. I’ll go with you.”

Marco smiled. “I knew you’d come around, Cabbage-Head. I’ll come for you in the morning. Save me some breakfast.” He thumped my back, then cantered out the back door.

*

After we served the doge’s breakfast, I told Pellegrino I was going to Mass. I met Marco outside the back courtyard and gave him a slice of bread piled with sardines. I watched while he gobbled it down almost without chewing, and then we made our way through the Rialto and into the hidden streets of Venice. When we arrived in the Circassian Quarter, that colorful district with its shifting, nomadic population, we stood in front of a
ristorante
and stared up at the gossamer curtains fluttering in the Abyssinian’s tall, arched windows.

Rumor had it that N’bali was the daughter of an Abyssinian woman and an Italian sailor. The sailor had brought N’bali and her mother to Venice and left them with the Circassians. The man went back to sea and, as so often happened, he never returned. After her mother died, N’bali stayed with the Circassians because, like them, she resisted assimilation.

Unlike them, she did not have a reputation as a charlatan or a thief. Some people called the Circassians gypsies and scorned them for living on the fringes of society, isolated and answering only to their own laws. But even in that population apart, N’bali was an
individual apart, for she was acknowledged as one of the true
adepti
, those who hold genuine supernatural power in their hands. It was said that she had the power to heal and to know simply by touch.

We walked through the noisy crowd in the Circassian
ristorante
, wading through smells of spicy goulash and heavy amber wine, and wondering at the dissonant music and the staccato language. When we ascended to N’bali’s sparse room, with its high windows and agreeable scent of sandalwood, it seemed a short trip from chaos to calm.

N’bali sat straight backed and cross legged on the floor. She was honey colored and bald, with long, slim limbs and sadness in her languid movements. She wore rope sandals, necklaces of wood and bone, gold armbands, and tiny gold bells around her ankles. She had a fine nose, a carved mouth, and pagan eyes. Her small breasts were only incidentally covered by a simple red cloth that was wound around her lean body and thrown over one shoulder. She had a smooth buttery voice and spoke Venetian with a lilting accent. Amharic had been her first language.

Her sandalwood scent came from the oil with which she rubbed her body in an effort to be more like her mother, the true, full-blooded Abyssinian. Her sadness came from an understanding of her
mingi—
the Abyssinian word for all the bad luck in the world. N’bali’s
mingi
was having her pure Abyssinian blood diluted by her father’s Italian blood. Her mother taught her to keep herself separate from the debasing influences around her, lest they wither her Abyssinian spirit and leave her no better than a Venetian.

She was never seen in public, and her room was decorated only with the few items her mother had left her: a woven floor mat, a bright yellow cloth thrown across the banquette under the windows, a cowhide stretched on the wall, a polished gourd to eat from, and a drinking cup made from a steer horn. Wooden figures carved from dark wood, and showing private parts in shocking detail, were displayed on a low, crook-legged table.

N’bali kept two watchful cats, one white and one black, who stared at her when she spoke to them. Some said the cats understood her purring words and did her bidding. No one ever said anything like that about my conversations with Bernardo, or about the doge’s sugary speeches to his pets, but words took on special meaning when spoken by an
adeptus
.

Everything about N’bali was different. She didn’t engage in any of the practices of witches or Circassians: no dimming of the light with heavy drapes, no incantations, no mysterious concoctions or decoctions. When we entered her airy room, she motioned us forward, saying, “Come, sit with me,” as if she’d been expecting us.

We sat on the floor mat. Marco looked at me and said, “First Rufina.”

“Sure, Marco.”

He said, “Can you tell me how to find my sister?”

N’bali unfurled her long hand, saying, “My mother told me that people do not value what they do not pay for.”

Marco took the coins from his pocket and placed them on her narrow palm. Open-handed, N’bali slid them into a wooden bowl, where they clinked against the coins of many nations. She said, “You stole that money.”

Marco’s jaw dropped. “No—”

“That’s not my affair. My mother told me I am not responsible for what others do. I am keeper only of my own deeds.”

Marco and I both let out our breath. He said, “My sister?”

N’bali closed her eyes and a pained expression came over her face. She said, “Your sister and your mother are together.”

“Where?”

She looked at him sadly and shook her head.

Marco looked stricken, and then angry. “If you don’t know just say so.”

“I don’t know.”

I saw my opportunity. “See, Marco. This is a waste of time.”

“No! I already paid.” Marco took the cloth bundle out of his shirt and spread it out before her. “Here,” he said. “Are things in this cloth magic?”

N’bali smiled, a big, white, generous smile. “Of course they are,” she said. “Everything in this aromatic world is magic.”

“But what kind of magic?” The set of Marco’s shoulders told me he was a little frightened. “What are they used for?”

“Just tell us what they are,” I said. “That’s enough.”