Page 12 of Vianne

Over the course of the past week, I have learnt half a dozen new recipes.

As I learn them, I write them down in a notebook I bought from the Tabac down the road.

Panisses , those chickpea fritters sold by vendors on every street corner, and served with harissa , tomatoes, or roasted halloumi, or grilled sardines; navettes, the little orange-flower biscuits Louis serves with coffee; fougasse , that crispy Provencal bread, enriched with olive oil and herbs; pieds paquets in spicy tomato sauce; olive tapenade with salt lemon confit .

It feels good to learn, and Louis admits that I may have an aptitude.

He has grown warmer towards me. The customers are happy.

I am even allowed officially to handle the book of recipes.

Each one has a story. This tapenade is the first thing she made, when she was only eight years old, in her grandmother’s kitchen.

This is her mother’s clafoutis , made with the fat yellow cherries from the tree at the back of the garden.

And these pomponettes are what she made for the guests on her wedding day; scented with orange blossom and sprinkled with nuts and sugar.

Orange is the scent of hope , she writes in hasty handwriting.

A promise of something small and sweet. A vow, built from spun sugar and dreams, melting in the sunlight.

I wonder if their marriage was as happy as Louis implies.

I sensed it on my first day; I taste it in her recipes.

There is a longing, a wistfulness there.

I see it in the little notes scribbled in the margins, notes which are sometimes quotations from her favourite poet.

Laugh every day, so as not to weep. Fill your belly with laughter.

And there are stories in everything; stories Louis sometimes passes on.

Every cup, every kitchen knife has a story to tell.

This rolling-pin was his mother’s. This wooden spoon he made for her, with wood that he bought from his first paid job, delivering newspapers on his way to school.

His parents were poor. They taught him to work. Love was a lesson he learnt later on.

‘This was a present to Margot on our anniversary.’ He points to a painted plate on the wall.

Good Lord bless our happy home. A chink has been knocked out of the side, as if by a piece of thrown crockery.

In the vapour rising from a pan, I see her features pulled down like blinds.

It was not always a happy home. His grief eclipses the memory.

Thus we erase the bad times we endured with our loved ones.

Soon my memories of Maman will be nothing but sunshine.

But I can almost hear her now; her murmured prayer, her sobbing. Next to her bed, there’s a basket of santons , those little porcelain figurines they sometimes hide in the Galette des Rois . Give me a child, Lord. Give me a child. Without that, what else is there?

This afternoon, between cooking lunch and opening up for the evening, I went to call by Allée du Pieu.

The chocolaterie is still under renovation, and although it looks better than it did – rotten beams replaced; a semblance of order around the front – it is still far from ready.

Mahmed is in charge of all that: the plastering, the woodwork, the electrics, the plumbing of the stoneware sinks, the fitting of the counters.

Guy seems mostly oblivious to the work going on around him – at least until he notices plaster dust or smoke in the air, which he says will taint the precious cacao liquor in its bottles and demijohns piled up in the back rooms.

I found him today in the front space, the space that will become the shop, mixing cream and chocolate into an enamel bowl, while Mahmed, in the back room, was cleaning out the conching machine.

The radio was playing very loudly, there was cacao dust everywhere, and the atmosphere, as always, was filled with chaotic energy.

‘Throw me out if you’re busy,’ I said. ‘I just dropped by to say hello.’

Guy grinned. ‘Never too busy for you. In fact, you’ve come at an excellent time. I need a volunteer to taste one of my newest creations.’ He gestured with his wooden spoon at the trolley behind him, on which were stacked metal trays of some kind of chocolate confection.

‘I made these in a hurry,’ he said. ‘I had to make a batch of ganache because somehow , water got into the conching machine.’ He raised his voice at this last part, making sure Mahmed could hear him.

‘I can’t help it if your machine hates chocolate!’

Guy grinned again. ‘He hates that thing. I’ve told him he has to befriend it.’

I thought of the terrible mouli , and smiled. ‘I sympathize with Mahmed,’ I said. ‘Louis’ kitchen is a minefield, too.’

‘Condensation’s the killer,’ said Guy. ‘If it gets into the machine, the water will ruin the chocolate. You can sometimes salvage what’s left by adding cream, but it doesn’t keep.

Which means now I have three hundred of these …

’ From the trolley, he picked up a chocolate, rolled in cacao powder.

‘These are ganache truffles,’ he said. ‘The easiest chocolates to make. Even a child can make them. Even Mahmed could, probably.’

I took one. It smelt of darkness infused with gold; a scent that both drew and repelled me.

‘I don’t really like dark chocolate,’ I said.

‘Just try one. I made them myself, from bean to bar. Nothing artificial.’

I bit a piece from the chocolate. It was bitter and powdery, but there were other flavours there, struggling to be released.

‘Rest it on your tongue for a while. Eyes closed. Mouth half open.’

I did as he said. The bitter scent started to intensify.

It’s odd; I didn’t quite like it, and yet it was evocative.

I can taste charcoal, and nutmeg, and salt, and olive, and strong wild honey.

It makes me think of incense, and woodsmoke on a frosty night, and the scent of fallen leaves in the rain, and the memory of that night in the church, the warmth of the confessional.

I thought I didn’t like chocolate. In fact, I never knew it. Those little squares of chocolate I’d had as a child were nothing like this.

‘I know. It’s different,’ he said. ‘It’s eighty per cent cacao.

It might taste a little bitter to you, but that’s the nature of cacao: the stuff you get in shops here is really mostly sugar and palm oil and fat.

But this is the soul of the cacao bean. This strength.

This bitter potency. And in this form, it has a kick. It sharpens the mind. Gives energy.’

I put the rest of the chocolate aside. My mouth was furred with darkness.

He grinned. ‘Don’t you like it?’

‘Not at all.’

‘That’s because you don’t know it yet. Trust me, you’ll get used to it. Here. Let me show you. You make one.’

In less than a week, recipes have become a part of my daily life.

Margot’s recipes, and now Guy’s, each with their own mysteries.

First he shows me the chocolate ganache – cream and butter and chocolate, melted together and left to chill – and then hand-rolled into a palm that is covered in cacao powder.

And yes, he’s right. It’s easy. Easy, and somehow compelling.

‘Try another. Take your time. Your palate will have adjusted by now.’

Once more, I try a truffle, resting it gently on my tongue. The cacao powder tastes earthy, somehow, like the dust of a distant land. And the centre is strangely bittersweet, but smooth as butter on the tongue. I don’t know yet if I will ever like it. But it’s interesting; it makes me want more.

Guy smiles. ‘I told you, didn’t I? I’m using Forastero beans right now. They’re the most affordable. But once we’re open, I’ll be using the oldest, rarest varieties; the ones the Mayans and Incas used, deep in the Amazon basin.’

He makes it sound like travelling. I tell him so, and he smiles again.

‘Perhaps it is,’ he tells me. ‘We don’t just travel on roads and seas.

We travel in stories and in dreams. Here.

Try this. I made it.’ He hands me a jar.

A tiny handwritten label says Xocolatl , in brown ink.

Inside is something that looks like dry soil, although it must be chocolate.

He tells me: ‘It’s a condiment. You can put it in anything: stews, soups, coffee, even desserts – for an extra little kick.

It isn’t sweet; there’s no sugar in there.

Keep it. Tell me how it works. It’s a very old recipe, from the time of the Chocolate Kings; handed down by Ixcacao, goddess of love and compassion. ’

I take the jar of chocolate spice and bring it back to La Bonne Mère.

I dare not use it in cooking here – Louis’ orders were quite specific – but maybe I can use it in some other way.

It feels meaningful as those pink bootees from the woman on Rue du Panier; as if somehow, together, they might reveal a glimpse of the future.