The Hundred-Foot Journey (15 page)

And I remember how the light of the fire suddenly seemed to smooth her skin in a kind of illusory face-lift, and how, for a brief moment, I caught a glimpse of Madame Mallory as she might have been—light of heart, hopeful, butter-skinned. But in that tremulous, insecure light, I also saw how she could so easily go the other way, and a moment later, she did. For the fire’s flicker suddenly cast shadows over her, horribly exaggerating the jowls of her face, a slashing and scarring across the eyes, and I saw the cruelty that lurked there, too, all tightly bound under that feathered Tyrolean hat.

The master of the hunt, walkie-talkie squawking in his hand, came suddenly through the woods with the three men who were the “beaters.” I’m not sure what transpired then—there was much gesticulating and heated exchanges and veal chops being waved in the air to make a point—but suddenly we were all on the march, through the woods and up the sides of mountains, leaves and rubble cascading down the raked slopes behind us.

A sweaty hour later the hunt master began depositing us on a high ridge deep in the forest, tapping a hunter every thirty yards or so. At his touch, the hunter fell to his belly in the crinkle-leaf carpet, and it appeared to me, as one hunter after another fell off behind us, the hunt master was dropping human pebbles across the forest floor so he might remember his way back to the camp.

We were tapped as the rough track bent back at a turning, and Marcus immediately took off his jacket and quietly loaded his Beretta with a single twelve-bore slug. And he told me, just with his eyes and a nod, to lie down in utter silence. Which I did, turning my head briefly to watch the hunt master continue on his journey, the walkie-talkie connecting him to the beaters now silenced. I followed the silly bobbing of Madame Mallory’s hat and feather, until the master tapped her, and she, like us, suddenly disappeared into the forest floor, but higher up the ledge.

And there we sat in monotonous silence, for some time, on our bellies, peering over the ridge at the mountainside dropping below us.

The air suddenly filled with the cry of the beaters down below, the baying of their dogs, together moving up the mountain, driving all forest game before them up to our deadly gauntlet.

Marcus concentrated intensely on a faint track and slight clearing below us, his Beretta at his shoulder. I heard then the faint tinkling of a dog’s bell and the patter of its paws across a forest floor layered in dry leaves. And then a different sound, what seemed to me, in my ignorance, the heavy thump of hooves, running in panic.

The red fur stopped abruptly, sensing danger. Marcus, experienced, instantly relaxed and at this movement the fox bolted from the clearing. What we had been waiting for came then from the clear blue sky above—the single blast of a gun rolling through the hills like a small explosion.

And that was it. The master of the hunt let out his familiar cry. The hunt was over.

Back at the camp Madame Mallory stood proudly by her kill and held court. The boar hung by its hind hooves from the branches of an oak tree, its blood periodically tapping the forest floor. And I remember how a feverish Mallory, with each returning hunter, told and retold how she bagged the animal as it came through the woods.

I could not take my eyes from this strange fruit hanging before me, with its neat hole, the size of a dumpling, gaping tidily in the animal’s chest. And to this day I remember that little snout-face: the small protruding tusks that forced the top lip to curl up, making the boar appear as if it had been highly amused by a witty remark heard at the moment of death. But mostly I remember the eyes with the long lashes, closed so tightly shut against the world, so prettily dead. And now when I think back on it, perhaps it was the boar’s size that so unsettled me, so sickened the young man already well accustomed to the bloody and unsentimental endings of the kitchen. For this boar, hanging undignified from its hindquarters before me, was just a baby, not more than forty pounds in weight.

“I want nothing to do with this,” I overheard a furious farmer telling the master of the hunt. “It’s a disgrace. A sacrilege.”

“I agree, but what do you want me to do?”

“You’ve got to say something to her. It’s not right.”

The hunt master took a swig of cognac before stepping forward to censure Madame Mallory for violating the club’s rules. “I saw what happened,” he said, manfully hitching up his trousers. “It is simply not permissible what you did. Why did you not shoot the mature boars when the colony moved before you?”

Mallory took her time to answer. Someone who didn’t know our history might even have thought it was innocent, the way she seemed to nonchalantly glance over the hunt master’s shoulder to look directly at me for the first time that day, a faint smile tugging the corners of her lips.

“Because, my friend, the young, I find their flesh so tasty to eat. Don’t you agree?”

Papa received the registered letter on the following Tuesday. It came as I wandered out of the kitchen to take a look at the reservations for the evening. Auntie was doing her nails in crimson polish, and she used her elbow to shove the ledger around so I could read it. It was bleak. Just three out of thirty-seven tables booked.

Papa sat at the bar, rubbing his bare foot with one hand, the other hand sorting through the mail.

“What this say?”

I slung a kitchen towel over my shoulder and read the letter he was rattling at me. “It says we are in violation of the town’s noise code. We must shut down our garden restaurant by eight p.m.”

“Wah?”

“If we don’t close down the garden restaurant we’ll be taken to court and fined ten thousand francs a day.”

“It’s that woman!”

“Poor Mayur,” Auntie said, whirling her wet nails through the air. “He so liked serving in the garden. I must tell him.”

The hallway filled with the swish-swish of her yellow silk sari as she went in search of her husband. When I turned back to address Papa, I found he had already slipped from the bar stool. The light was filtering through the stained glass of the hall windows, and the air swirled with silver dust motes. I could hear Papa yelling down the telephone at the back of the house. At his lawyer. And I knew then: No good will come of this.

No good.

Papa’s counterstrike took place just days later, when the bureaucrat from Lumière’s Department of Environment, Traffic, and Ski Lift Maintenance parked an official Renault van in front of Le Saule Pleureur. It was a poetic justice of sorts, for this was the very same official who had closed down our garden restaurant and made us take down the outdoor stereo speakers.

“Abbas, come, come,” Auntie screeched, and the entire family, in great anticipation, poured through the front door to stand on the gravel drive and watch the goings-on across the street.

Two men emerged from the Renault van. They held chain saws. Filterless cigarettes hung from their mouths as they spat the local patois at each other. Papa smacked his lips with satisfaction, as if he had just popped a samosa into his mouth.

Madame Mallory opened the front door of her restaurant, a cardigan draped over her shoulders. The environmental officer stood on her path, squinting up at her as he cleaned his spectacles with a white handkerchief.

“Why are you here? And these men?”

The official took a letter from his front shirt pocket and handed it over to Madame Mallory. She read it in silence, her head moving back and forth.

“You can’t. I won’t permit it.” Mallory smartly tore up the letter.

The young man exhaled slowly. “I am sorry, Madame Mallory, but it is quite clear. You are in violation of code 234bh. It’s got to come down. Or at least the—”

But Mallory had moved over to her ancient weeping willow, its high branches swooping so elegantly down over the front fence and the town pavement.
“Non,”
she said acidly
. “Non. Absolument pas.”

Mallory wrapped her arms around the trunk and straddled it lewdly with her knees. “You will have to kill me first. This tree is a Lumière landmark, my restaurant’s trademark, everything—”

“That’s not the point, madame. Please step back. Local ordnance clearly prohibits trees from hanging over the pavement. It’s dangerous. A branch could break—such an old tree—and hurt a child or an elderly person walking by below. And we’ve had complaints—”

“That’s ridiculous. Who could have complained?” But even as she posed her question, Mallory knew the answer, and she turned to look hatefully at us across the street.

Papa gave her a big smile and a wave.

It was exactly what the two workmen were waiting for. The moment Mallory shifted her focus to us across the street, the two burly men grabbed her wrists and adroitly peeled her off the tree. I remember the scream, like an enraged monkey, heard all the way down the street, and the dramatic way Mallory fell to her knees. Her cries, however, they were not to be heard, drowned as they were by the rip-cord roar of the buzz saw.

Several curious villagers had by now gathered in the street, and we were all riveted to the spot by the violent sound of the working saws. Limbs clunked to the ground. And then, as suddenly as it had begun, it was over. There was a hushed, shocked silence as the small crowd took in the results. Mallory, still on her knees, her face cupped in her hands, was finally unable to stand the silence any longer and she raised her head.

A third of the gracious willow’s limbs, brutally amputated, sat twisted and oozing sap over the pavement. Her once-elegant tree—a tree that stood for all she had accomplished in life—was now a grotesque, stubby parody of its former self.

“It is very unfortunate,” said the town bureaucrat, clearly shocked by his own accomplishments. “But it had to be done. Code 234bh—”

Mallory gave the official such a look of loathing that he stopped in midsentence and scurried back to the safety of the van, gesturing at the men to quickly clean up.

Monsieur Leblanc came rushing down the front path. “Oh, dear, what a tragedy,” he said, wringing his hands. “Terrible. But please, Gertrude, get up. Please. I’ll pour you a brandy. For the shock.”

Madame Mallory was not listening to him. She got off her knees and stared across the street at Papa, at our family gathered on the stone steps. Papa looked back at her, coldly now, and they stood locked like that for several moments before Papa told us all to go back inside. There was work to be done, he said.

Mallory took back her arm from Monsieur Leblanc’s fussing grasp, brushed herself off. And then she marched across the street after us, banging on our door. Auntie opened the door slightly, to see who it was, and was instantly slammed backward a
s
Le Saule Pleureur’s chef pushed through and strode across the dining room floor.

“Abbas,” Auntie shrieked. “Abbas. She here.”

Papa and I were back in the kitchen and we did not hear the warning. I was standing over the gas ring, whipping up shahi
korma for lunch. Papa sat at the kitchen counter reading the
Times of India,
dated copies sent to him by a newsdealer in London. I turned the flames up full, to sear the lamb in the kadai, when Mallory slammed her way through the kitchen doors.

“There you are. You bastard!”

Papa looked up from his paper, but otherwise stayed seated and calm.

“You are on private property,” he said.

“Who do you think you are?”

“Abbas Haji,” he said quietly, and the threat in his voice made the hairs on my neck shimmer.

“I will drive you out,” she hissed. “You will lose.”

Papa stood now, his great bulk towering above the woman. “I have met people like you before,” he said in a sudden rush of heat, “and I know what you are. You are uncivilized. Yaar. Underneath your cultural airs, just a barbarian.”

Madame Mallory had never before been called “uncivilized.” Quite the contrary, she was, in most circles, considered the very essence of refined French culture. So to be called a barbarian, and by this Indian, to boot, was just too much for her and she smashed Papa on the chest with her fist.

“How dare you? HOW—DARE—YOU?”

Although Papa was big, Madame Mallory’s passion was great, and the impact of her clenched fist on his bosom made him take a step back in surprise. He tried to take hold of her wrists, but she flurried them through the air like a boxer working a bag.

And now Auntie, disheveled, slammed through the door.

“Aiieee,” she screamed. “Aiieee. Mayur. Mayur, come quick.”

“You animal,” Papa fumed. “Look at you. You’re nothing but a savage. Only the weak are . . . Madame, will you stop!”

But Mallory’s fists and curses kept on flying unabated.

“You are scum,” she screamed back. “Filth. You have—”

Papa was forced to take another step back, and now he was panting from his attempts to grab her arms. “Get out of my house,” he bellowed.

“Non,”
Mallory yelled back. “You get out. Get out of my country, you . . . you dirty foreigner.”

And with that, Madame Mallory gave Papa a mighty shove.

It was the push that changed my life, for when Papa staggered back two steps, he hit me with his great bulk, and I in turn slammed full force into the stove. There was a scream and flurrying arms, and only days later did I realize that the yellow I witnessed was the sight of my tunic going up in flames.

I remember the wail of the ambulance siren, the swaying of the drip overhead, and my father’s worried face looming over me. The next few days were lost in a haze—an unreliable, drug-addled ride through this world and that. It was an odd mix of sensations: the metallic dry mouth and cracked lips of the anesthesia coupled with the aural assault of my grandmother and auntie and sisters carrying on at my bedside. Then another squeaky stretcher ride to the operating room for yet another skin graft.

But soon a kind of hospital monotony took over. The pain eased somewhat and the trays of samosas from the Haji camp outside my door were much appreciated. And there, always, my father in the corner of my room, a looming, tight-lipped mountain of man, little Zainab on his lap as he kept his black eyes on me.