White Truffles in Winter (27 page)

Escoffier's spy mission to Maxim's was starting to feel like a very large mistake, but then a waiter entered the bar carrying a beautiful chocolate soufflé topped with a bouquet of red roses. “We need the magnum of Moët!” he shouted. “Immediately.”

“Miss Bernhardt has arrived?”

Escoffier colored at the mention of her name but Cornuché didn't notice. “You must excuse me, dear Escoffier. There is a ring in the center of those roses that could make the Queen of England blush. One night with divinity apparently costs a great deal these days.”

Cornuché held the door open for the bartender and the magnum. Escoffier looked back out into the omnibus. Sarah had just arrived.
In all her glory,
he thought. The Russian dukes were fawning over her. Caruso kissed her hand. She shimmered in the rose-colored light, wearing a dress made entirely of gold silk. Her hat was gold and her neck so filled with jewels that she could hardly move.

“And she's over fifty years old. And a grandmother at that,” Cornuché said. “It's amazing what these men will pay for.”

Cornuché took the champagne glasses from the waiter, and pushed past him. “Mademoiselle Bernhardt!” he said loudly.

Sarah looked up and saw Escoffier. The man who she was with was some minor Royal, a distant cousin of Prince Edward on the German side. He whispered something in Sarah's ear but she didn't seem to hear him, or even notice that he was there. She was staring at Escoffier—with that horrible sad look. He suddenly couldn't breathe. He pushed past Cornuché and out of the room and into the dining room where the faux
La Goulue
and her willing friend had begun a can-can on the tabletops by the window.

When Sarah's letter arrived at his
pied-à-terre
a day later, Escoffier boarded the next train.

“We can disappear,” she wrote and signed it
Rosine Bernardt, veuve Damala.
Escoffier could not understand why, after nearly a decade had passed, Sarah still wished to conjure the man's spirit.

Perhaps to remember that even the angels have a dark side.

When Escoffier arrived in Quiberon, he boarded the ferry to
Belle-Île
. It was empty. The weather was foul, colder than usual. The crossing was brutal. The old boat was buffeted by the sea and followed to the island by a howling wall of lightning and rain.

Although Sarah had spoken of it often, Escoffier had never been to this part of Brittany before. When the ferry finally reached the docks, the storm hesitated a moment and he could see what a painter
en plein air
would see, what Monet had seen as he desperately held his canvas so that the insistent wind would not hurl his easel into the sea—the endless rows of cafés and houses, some pink with blue shutters, some blue with shutters of green, all set in sharp relief against the bones of jagged steep cliffs, the gray-green sea and the coal smoke sky. The colors were so intense, he nearly wept.

“Escoffier!”

There she was—with the storm quickly closing in around her—on horseback, her wild red hair tangling in the savage wind.

“Get on,” she said. “Leave your bags with the harbor master and he'll deliver them when it's safe.”

The wind was now howling down upon them. She held out her hand to him and he pulled himself up onto the saddle. She kicked the horse hard; the hail began. Then rain. In a moment, the waves of the ocean overtook the dock, and then the road, but the horse ran full out. The ocean, the rain, it was difficult to tell if they were drowning or not: there was water everywhere but the horse seemed indifferent to the benediction of the storm. He ran through it all, without hesitation, up the steep cliffs through the torrents of rain, the blinding sea-spray and the jagged needles of lightning. He sped along the edge of deep ravines, the swirling rock pools below.

With his arms around her, Escoffier could feel that Sarah was laughing.

“Faster!” she shouted.

“Widow Damala, you are quite mad,” he thought, or perhaps actually whispered in her ear; he wasn't sure, but he could feel her laugh even harder.

When they finally arrived, the lights of the harbor at Le Palais
were far below them. It was a sheer drop down the cliff into the swirling tide. Sarah's summer home was not a home at all, but an abandoned fort at Pointe des Poulains.
Imposing, squat, a square of pink stone and yet when he entered the cool interior, it was so quiet that Escoffier thought he had slipped between this world and that.

After they dried themselves and changed, Sarah said, “Are you hungry?”

No one had ever asked that of Escoffier before. “Do you have food?”

Sarah threw her head back and laughed. “My dear sir, one does not invite Escoffier to her hideaway and not have food.”

She was standing in the middle of the kitchen in a mink-lined dressing gown wearing the rough wool socks that were so common to the people of that wild coast but not the sort of thing that Escoffier expected from Bernhardt.

Of course, he was wearing a similar pair, and a red kimono that Sarah swore was designed for men, and which she claimed belonged to her own son, but Escoffier knew that in Japan the color red was always reserved for women and children. Or grandchildren like Sarah's Lysiane and Simone. The robe had that sticky scent that children often have. Still, there was nothing else that fit and his clothes were wringing wet.
A child's robe, what have I come to?
He combed his thinning white hair, brushed his mustache: none of it helped.

“I look like the village idiot.”

“If I had slippers and a hunting dog, we'd be the perfect English couple,” she said.

He kissed her sweetly. “And so,
veuve Damala
, what is there to eat?”

“There is a
Far Breton
.”

The cake was on the kitchen table. He touched it with a finger. It was dense, although it had a tentative spring to it, like flan.
“Clafouti?”

“
Non
. It is an entirely different beast.”

Sarah put another log on the fire and wiped the dirt from her hands onto her elegant robe and began to pin her unruly wet hair into a topknot. “My dear Escoffier. You have never had
Far Breton
? Cinnamon, vanilla and some plum brandy added to the milk. The prunes and raisins are soaked in Armagnac.”

“You baked this? Yourself?”

“Of course. Everyone here can make this. It's very simple.”

“I didn't know you could cook.”

“I can but never do, but I will tonight. I had the caretaker bring us supplies. Tonight, we shall feast. I shall be your cook.”

On the counter there was fish, a John Dory, a bucket of small mussels, a loaf of dense bread, fresh butter and a jug of cider. Escoffier picked up the spiny fish. “A fine specimen,” he said.

“From Le Guilvinec.”

“Very fine indeed.”

The fish was silver and olive green with a series of sharp knifelike fins and a pout-ugly face. Escoffier sniffed it carefully; it still had the scent of the sea. “Today?”

“Earlier this morning. If this were June, he would have brought us a sink full of lobster.”

Escoffier began to slice quickly along the sharp dorsal fins.

Sarah took the knife from his hands. “No. Sit.”

“There's very little meat. It's very bony. You'll hurt yourself.”

“I want to cook. I never cook. Please let me. When my menagerie is here the staff cooks and I cannot help because everyone would be so disappointed that I am mortal.”

“But if you cook, what should I do?”

“What do you usually do when someone cooks for you?”

“No one usually cooks for me.”

“Well, what would you like to do?”

“Cook.”

“Because you don't believe that I can?”

“Because I need to.”

She handed him the knife. “Only for you, I give this up.”

“Sit by the fire,” he said. “Warm yourself.”

“Do you know I love you?”

“Only because I can cook.”

“That is your charm, yes.”

He rolled up the sleeves of the red kimono. “Any cream?”

“Of course. There are also some very fine anchovies in the larder. And potatoes, onions and garlic.”

Escoffier opened the door to the pantry and not only were there anchovies but several sausages hanging to dry. “Is this “
Andouille de Guémené
?”

“I don't know. More than likely.”

He scraped a bit of mold from the sausage and sniffed it. “It is. It has that sweet hay scent. And a Toulouse sausage?”

It was and there was also salted cod, a confit of goose, two pots of onion-and-black currant jam and a wide variety of dried beans—
mogettes, soissons
and
tarbais.

“This is heaven,” he said. “Tomorrow we could make a
cassoulet.”

“We? You will let me cook?”

“No. Of course not. I was just being polite.”

And for the first time in several weeks he laughed and Sarah did, too.

And so while the storm raged around them, the low pink house took on the scent of home. It was as if they were the only two people left in the world. “So you must eat with me,” she said.

“I will eat.”

“With me?”

“I will eat.”

After all this time, nearly twenty-three years, they had never sat down for a meal together. Escoffier had always served and watched while she ate.

“If you do not eat with me, I will not eat.”

“Then I will sit with you.”

“And eat?'

“And eat.”

The dining room had large windows that overlooked the cliffs and the unforgiving night. Instead of fine china and crystal, Sarah set the rough table as her cook always did with local pottery from Quimper. The set of plates was naive: roughly octagonal, marigold yellow, with paintings of the Breton men and women in their native costumes with the same rough socks. At first, Sarah set both ends of the table, but then reconsidered and placed the two plates in the center, so that she and Escoffier could face the storm together.

“Tonight we shall be very much like an old married couple,” she said when she entered the kitchen. She sat and watched him as he cleaned and then steamed the mussels in the dry cider and garlic, and fried potatoes in duck fat.
“Moules
and
frites
,” he announced when he was finished. He poured her cider into a champagne glass. “For you, madame.”

“Merci.”

When he took the platter into the dining room and saw the bright yellow table settings, “These plates are—”

“Charming.”

“Surprising.”

“Not every good meal is served on fine china, my dear Escoffier. Sit.” He hesitated. “Sit,” she said again.

Outside, the storm pawed at the pink stones of the house. Pushed at the windows. Knocked the shutters off their hinges. They ate together, silently, shyly. Then, quite suddenly, she said, “Be careful of Ritz, my darling. He is too nervous; too self-centered. In the end he could do to you as he did to D'Oyly Carte, the poor man. He's been confined to his bed. Did you know? What a horrible scene in the hotel.”

“He's been ill for quite some time.”

“Ritz means well but I am afraid he will leave you penniless.”

“He is my friend.”

“That is why I worry. You are too good to your friends. I know a lawyer who can help.”

“There is no need for concern.”

“You are too much of an artist, Escoffier. You need to think of the business side of things. Renoir has his brother so that he can paint. Someone must protect you.”

This was the last thing Escoffier wanted to talk about. Sarah obviously did not understand what had happened. No one understood.
It was just an overreaction from the Board.

“Please, Sarah, it is not your worry.”

“But you are my friend and so I am making it my worry. I do know a bit about business, you know.”

It was true. Through endorsements and investments, Sarah had become one of the world's richest people; her face was on everything from Pears soap to beer bottles. She was the most glamorous woman in the world. But at that moment, she suddenly seemed like a wife—somebody else's wife.

Escoffier looked at her closely. It was as if he'd never really seen her before. The candlelight betrayed her age. Her face had grown wrinkled through the years; her eyes were less filled with fire. Her wild red hair needed to be dyed again; it was streaked with so much gray that he was amazed he had not seen it before. He felt a numbness creep over him. Suddenly she was not perfection or a goddess or a muse but the
veuve Damala
. And at that moment, he was not, as he thought, a great chef, a great artist, not the spirit of France itself, but a man in borrowed clothes—children's clothes, no less.

Nothing more was said. As soon as they were finished eating, Escoffier cleared the plates.

“Are you angry with me?” she said.

“How could I be?”

“I adore César and Marie, too. And their children are such great friends of my little Lysiane and Simone. I just can see that he is not well. He's headed for some sort of breakdown.”

Escoffier smiled and patted her hand. “It will be fine.”

“Are you attempting to placate me?”

“Of course I am.”

“Good. You should always placate me.” Sarah stood to follow him into the kitchen, but he kissed her forehead.

“Please,” he said. “Let me.”

Once the door closed behind him, Escoffier felt that old rush of excitement again. It had been too long since he stood in a kitchen and tried to make sense of what should be called “dinner.” He wanted to make a special dish for Sarah, something he could name after her and maybe put on the menu at the Ritz when it opened.