The Hundred-Foot Journey (10 page)

The boughs of the trees were bent with heavy brown Bosc pears, ready for the picking, and autumn bees were buzzing drunkenly around the sugar-filled fruit. But there were also tidy rows of boxed herbs under glass next to bow-shaped beds of wildflowers and patches for cabbages and rhubarb and carrots, all neatly embroidered by a flagstone path that ambled through the garden’s fertile plots.

Down at the bottom of the garden, a compost heap stood in the moist corner to the left, while an iron-and-copper tap in the shape of a nymph gurgled water into a heavy stone trough off to the right, next to a bench and yet another ancient and majestic willow tree.

I stopped in my tracks. Madame Mallory was again in her garden, this time up at the top of her field, just before it began to roll downhill. She sat upright at a long wooden table, next to who I assumed was one of her sous chefs, for both women wore peacoats over kitchen whites.

I could not, not at first, see their faces because both had their heads down as they worked briskly and professionally at the table filled with bowls and platters and utensils. But I could see there was something in Madame Mallory’s hand, which she promptly dropped into a bowl. Then, without pause, she reached down with her other hand into the rough wooden crate sitting on the flagstone between the two of them. From the crate, Mallory pulled what to me looked like a bizarre form of spiky hand grenade. I later discovered it was an artichoke.

I watched the famous chef expertly trim the vegetable’s leaves with a pair of scissors, the smart snips of her flashing tool ensuring each ragged leaf of the artichoke was symmetrically aligned and aesthetically pleasing to the eye, like she was tidying up after nature. She then picked up one of the lemons that had been cut in half, and doused each of the artichoke wounds—wherever she had snipped a leaf—with a generous squirt of lemon juice. Artichokes contain an acid, cynarin, and this neat trick, I later learned, prevented the sap-oozing leaves from discoloring the vegetable around its wound.

Next, Madame Mallory used a heavy and sharp knife to cleanly take off the top of the artichoke with a firm downward crunch of the blade. For a few seconds her head was down again, as she plucked some pink, immature leaves from the plant’s center. Picking up a new utensil, she cut at the inner artichoke and elegantly scooped out the thicket of thistle fuzz called the choke. You could see the satisfaction in her face when she finally and surgically removed the soft prize of the artichoke’s heart and set it aside in a bowl of marinade, already heaped with succulent and mushy cups.

It was a revelation. Never before had I seen a chef take such meticulous artistic care, particularly not with something as ugly as this vegetable.

St. Augustine’s bells chimed noon. The crate was almost empty, but the young sous chef at Chef Mallory’s side was trailing the older woman, not quite as quick as her
maîtresse
. Madame Mallory, studying her sous chef, abruptly held out the small knife she herself had been using and said, not unkindly, “Margaret, use the grapefruit knife. It’s a trick
Maman
taught me. The bent blade makes it much easier to remove the choke.”

There was something in Madame Mallory’s gravelly voice—not quite maternal, no, but still strongly suggestive of a kind of culinary noblesse oblige and duty to pass the techniques of the kitchen on to the next generation—and it was that inflection that instantly made me sit up.

As it did the young chef, who lifted her head, to gratefully take Madame Mallory’s grapefruit knife. “
Merci, madame,
” she said, in a voice that, as it wafted down to me with the wind, seemed redolent of fresh red berries and cream.

It was my first good look at Margaret Bonnier, Le Saule Pleureur’s quiet sous chef. She was clearly just a few years older than myself, and wore a no-nonsense bob of blond hair, just the right length to tuck behind the ears that were rather modishly studded with silver earrings. Her dark eyes were set deep in pale skin, like pearls inside oyster-sized cheeks red from both the sharp wind and the sturdy Jura stock that was her genetic makeup.

My unabashed staring was interrupted at that moment by Le Saule Pleureur’s portly apprentice, Marcel, and Jean-Pierre, its darkly handsome
chef de cuisine,
both emerging from the side of the building and carrying the staff’s noontime meal, to be gobbled down before the restaurant opened for lunch less than thirty minutes hence. The platter Jean-Pierre held was steaming in the wind, a flat steel tray of minute steaks and
frites,
while Marcel carried cutlery and a glass salad bowl of butter lettuce and chives.

Chef Mallory instructed the apprentice to take the artichokes and their hearts back into the kitchen, while Margaret expertly set the wooden table with the cutlery and napkins and plates, along with glass tumblers, a
vin rouge,
and a carafe of cold Jura well water. As Jean-Pierre leaned in to place the tray at the table’s center, Margaret’s tapered hand, elegant like a pianist’s but scarred by oven burns, darted forward, her long fingers pinching a yellow-golden fry. She brought the shoestring
frite
up to her lips, her teeth delicately biting off its tip, her face lit by a smile provoked by something Jean-Pierre had just said.

The church clock chimed quarter after noon.

I turned to continue on home and to our family lunch of Madras mutton, but as I walked back to the Dufour estate, my heart was fluttering and filled by what I had just witnessed, a scene that instantly brought forth pictures of Mummy and steaks and
frites
and Café de Paris, Bombay memories all richly coming back to me in the streets of that alpine village.

But then, suddenly, a gust of wind came rushing down the mountain, and in one fell swoop these old memories of Mummy and Mother India were swept away, and in their stead stood an entirely new sensation, tremulous at first, but then growing in intensity with each passing step. What came to me in that wind, so long ago, was an intense yearning triggered by the sights and smells of French food intermingled with the musty aroma of women. Perhaps it was something seeded in childhood, but at that moment it crossed over into something else, something more grown-up.

*   *   *

A few days later, Papa abruptly ordered the entire family out into our courtyard. Even the timid French boy Papa hired as a waiter was forced out, nervously wiping a wineglass on his apron as he stood among us.

The roofer and Umar, up on ladders above us, yanked at pulleys and swung wrenches around bolts. Suddenly, as we stood openmouthed at their feet, staring up, a large placard arose over the iron Dufour gates.

“There,” yelled Umar, high up on the ladder.

MAISON MUMBAI
, written in massive gold letters on an Islamic green background, filled the entire billboard.

Such yelling. Such joy.

Hindustani classical music blared out scratchily over makeshift speakers Uncle Mayur had set up in the garden. And that, or so I was later told, was the final straw
.
Le Saule Pleureur staff, all the way downstairs in the kitchen, heard the shrieks of disbelief coming from the attic. Monsieur Leblanc hastily put down the phone as Madame Mallory flew past his office on the second floor, and he went to the top of the landing to watch his
maîtresse
below him furiously rummage through the
chinoise
stand for her umbrella. It did not look at all good to Leblanc. A kind of African warrior’s shield and spear secured a knot of iron hair to the back of Mallory’s head.

“This is too much, Henri,” she said, finally wrenching the unwieldy umbrella out of the stand. “Did you see that placard? Hear that plinky-plinky music?
Quelle horreur. Non. Non
. He can’t do such a thing. Not on my street. He’s destroying the ambience. Our customers. What will they think?” But before Leblanc could reply, Chef Mallory was out the door.

Madame Mallory did not do the decent thing. She did not cross the street and talk directly with Papa, try to reason with him. She never tried in any way to make us feel welcome. No, her first impulse was to crush us under her heel. Like we were bugs.

What precisely happened was this: Madame Mallory marched down to the mayor’s office. Of course, everyone in Lumière was afraid of the sharp-tongued chef, so, not surprisingly, Mallory was immediately ushered into the Town Hall’s boardroom.

And there we should have met our demise. But clever people were always underestimating Papa. He was sharp, sharp as a filleting knife. Papa assumed politics in a small French town were little different from politics in Bombay—all was greased by the oil of commerce—and so his first move in Lumière was to put the mayor’s brother, a solicitor, on a hefty retainer. Nothing so crude as what transpired up on Malabar Hill, but just as effective.

“Tell that man to stop,” Mallory imperiously ordered the mayor. “That Indian. Have you seen what he is doing? He’s turned that beautiful Dufour mansion into a bistro. An Indian bistro!
Horrible.
I can smell that oily cooking all up and down the street. And that placard?
Mais non
. This is not possible.”

The mayor shrugged. “What do you want me to do?”

“Shut him down.”

“Monsieur Haji is opening a restaurant in the same zone as you, Gertrude. If I shut him down I have to shut you down as well. And his lawyer won permission from the Planning Committee for the placard. So, you see, my hands are tied. Monsieur Haji has done everything correct.”

“
Mais non
. This is not possible.”

“But it is,” continued the mayor. “I can’t close him down without justification. He is acting completely within the law.”

Her parting remark, I understand, was singularly unpleasant.

Our first face-to-face with
la grande dame
took place three days later. Mallory arose at six every morning. After she ate a light breakfast of pears and buttered toast and strong coffee, Monsieur Leblanc drove her to Lumière’s markets in the beaten-up Citroën. You could set your watch by their ritual. Promptly at six forty-five Monsieur Leblanc retired with the newspaper
Le Jura
to Café Bréguet, where some of the locals were at the bar and already on the day’s first
ballon
of wine. Meanwhile, Mallory in her gray flannel poncho and wicker baskets on each arm made her way from market stall to market stall, buying fresh produce for the day’s menu.

Mallory was a magnificent sight to behold, pounding the streets like a workhorse, each of her hard breaths exploding in white smoke. The bulk orders—a half dozen rabbits, perhaps, or fifty-kilo sacks of potatoes—were delivered by van to Le Saule Pleureur no later than nine thirty a.m. But the chanterelles and the delicate Belgium endive and perhaps a paper cone of juniper berries, they went into the baskets hanging from Mallory’s meaty arms.

On that particular morning, just weeks after we arrived in town, Mallory as usual started her shopping at Iten et Fils, the fishmonger that occupied a white-tiled corner shop on Place Prunelle.

“What’s that?”

Monsieur Iten bit the corner of his mustache.

“Eh?”

“Behind you. Move. What’s that there?”

Iten stepped aside and Madame Mallory got her first good view of a cardboard box on the counter. It took just a second before she knew the claws waving in the air belonged to crayfish scrabbling over one another.

“Wonderful,” said Mallory. “I haven’t seen crayfish in months. They look fresh and lively. Are they French?”

“
Non, madame
. Spanish.”

“Never mind. I’ll take them.”

“
Non, madame. Je regrette
.”

“Pardon?”

Iten wiped a knife on a tea towel.

“I’m sorry Madame Mallory, but he just came in and . . . and . . . bought them.”

“Who?”

“Monsieur Haji. And his son.”

Mallory squinted. She couldn’t quite comprehend what Monsieur Iten had just said. “That Indian? He bought these?”

“
Oui, madame
.”

“Let me get this straight, Iten. I have come to you—and before you, to your father—for over thirty years, every morning, and bought your best fish. And now you are telling me, at some godforsaken hour, an Indian came in here and bought what you knew I would buy? Is that what you are telling me?”

Monsieur Iten looked down at the floor. “I am sorry. But his manner, you see. He is very . . . charming.”

“I see. So what, then, are you going to offer me? Yesterday’s
moules
?”

“Ah,
non, madame,
please. Don’t be like that. You know you are my most valued customer. I . . . I have here some lovely perch.”

Iten scurried over to the cooler and took out a silver tray of striped perch, each the size of a child’s palm.

“Very fresh, see? Caught this morning in Lac Vissey. You make such lovely perch
amandine,
Madame Mallory. I thought you would like these.”

Madame Mallory decided to teach poor Monsieur Iten a lesson and she blew out of the shop like a winter storm. Still furious, she marched up to the open-air market in the square, her heels grinding into the rubbery carpet of discarded cabbage leaves.

At first Mallory flew through the two rows of vegetable stalls like a bird of prey, her eyes darting about over the shoulders of housewives. The vendors saw her but knew it was unwise to say a word during her first sweep through the market, unless they wanted a vicious tongue-lashing. Her second cruise through, however, one was permitted to engage her, and each farmer did his best to attract the famous chef to his produce.

“
Bonjour, Madame Mallory
. Lovely day. Have you seen my Williams pears?”

“I did, Madame Picard. Not very nice.”

The vendor next to Madame Picard guffawed.

“You are wrong,” called Madame Picard, sipping a thermos cup of milky coffee. “Wonderful flavor.”

Mallory turned back to Madame Picard’s stall and the other vendors turned their heads to see what would happen next.

“What’s this, Madame Picard?” snapped the chef. Mallory took the top pear off the pyramid and tore off its small sticker proclaiming
WILLIAMS QUALITÉ
. Under the sticker, a small black hole. Mallory did the same to the next pear, and the next.