Page 5 of Vianne

In a city like Marseille, people are always looking for work.

People like me, unofficial residents, with no address or bank account.

Homeless people, eking out a tiny living from occasional jobs.

People sleeping in tents by night, and by day holding down a poorly paid job in an office or by the docks, ever fearful of being exposed to their colleagues as destitute.

All of us looking for cash-in-hand employment; some of us immigrants; some living in the bidonvilles , those sprawling satellite cities of plastic and corrugated iron that stretch like octopus tentacles from the body of Marseille, to escape the marchands de sommeil and their promises of sleep.

I needed a job. Any job. Something to give me security.

Maman and I did so many casual jobs over the years.

Cleaning houses. Working tills. Waitressing in roadside cafés.

Sometimes we picked fruit on farms, or gutted fish, painted houses, or walked dogs for ladies too rich to walk.

Sometimes, when things were hard, we begged.

More than once, my mother ran contraband over borders – a woman with a child is more likely to pass scrutiny.

But as I reached adolescence, that stopped.

I was glad. The money was good, and so were the forged documents that came with the job, but the risks were too high, and I hated the way she was in the weeks before our trips.

They’ll take you away if I’m caught , she would say, frowning over her Tarot cards.

The Two of Cups. A good card. That’s the kind of card we want.

But here’s the Chariot, reversed. That means trouble at Customs. Three of Swords.

That means deceit. They’ll try to cheat us of our cut.

And Death. The Man in Black. A bad sign.

It means he’s catching up with us. One more run, then time to go.

But now she was gone, and I was alone. Of course, I’d been alone before in the months before her death, when she was in no state to work.

In New York, I’d worked for tips in a diner in Brooklyn, as well as cleaning a lady’s house on a shady street in the Heights.

Sometimes, I would wake in the night, and check to see if she was still breathing.

Sometimes, I would leave early just to get away from her.

Sometimes I prayed to the Man in Black, blasphemous prayers that revolted me.

I was exhausted all the time. I was always empty inside.

Today, I thought, I will go out and search for opportunities.

But my options are limited to those that do not need a paper trail.

To make money, you need money, or at least, the trappings of it.

A fixed address; a bank account; all the things we never had.

We are not respectable , she used to say.

She liked it that way. I am beginning to wonder whether I do.

I am different. I do not need to reflect her.

The thought of living in one place – for months, maybe for years – is like a reflection on water.

A mirage, perhaps. A forlorn hope. And yet I feel it’s possible.

I have not read the cards since New York.

This makes me feel strange and untethered.

All my life, I have followed them. Now, they are the only thing that links me to my mother.

I feel I should have consulted them before heading out this morning.

And yet it never occurred to me. It feels as if I am losing her.

The thought is both liberating, and sad.

I keep thinking about that village, Vianne.

A tiny place on the river Ba?se, a hundred kilometres north-west of Toulouse.

Goose-fat country , she would have said, with all the contempt of the city-born for the regional backwaters.

And yet the thought of it draws me, and not just because it shares my name.

A little walled village on the Ba?se, that offshoot of the great Garonne, with its orchards and vineyards and little farms and castles on the river.

Maybe I will find myself there, after so many years of striving to be lost. And maybe that’s where my child will be born, my daughter, my little stranger.

But first, I need work. I need money. I do not know if I could find work in Vianne.

The trip would eat all my savings, leaving nothing in reserve.

And it’s easier to find work in Marseille, where no one asks questions.

And so I spend all the morning visiting restaurants, asking for work.

I’ve always enjoyed restaurants. The money is often cash in hand.

Washing dishes; waitressing. Sometimes, the bonus of food snatched in haste, leftovers from someone’s plate.

My mother never cooked a meal. She saw food as a source of anxiety, not a source of pleasure. We lived off what was cheapest.

Secretly I collected menus, stolen from tables.

Recipes, clipped from magazines, dishes I would never make.

As we travelled, the dishes changed. I whispered their names like magic spells.

Milan was mondeghili , served in a twist of paper, and machetes , those puffy rolls that look like blowsy roses.

Naples was pasta alla Genovese , and pizza with olives and anchovies, and Rome was artichokes in oil, and cicoria , with garlic and chilli, and twenty kinds of pasta.

Berlin was Currywurst and beer, and blueberry pancakes, and sauerkraut.

And New York was pieces of everything, brought over by generations of immigrants to remind themselves of home.

I look at the sun. I have no watch. The shadows show that it’s long past noon.

I try a café-restaurant in a courtyard, just off the Canebière.

All syrupy with sunshine, with a crooked fig tree that casts its shade on the cobbles.

I ask – perhaps for the twentieth time today – if there is an opening.

Anything. Washing dishes. Waiting tables. Sweeping up.

The woman at the reception area is middle-aged; perhaps more polished than beautiful. I flash her a smile, but she only blinks. ‘We don’t engage our staff that way,’ she says. ‘We use an agency.’

It’s the answer I have received all day, from every place I have approached.

I know these agencies of old. They deal in desperation.

Forty per cent of a person’s wage goes to placate these monopolies.

There are people eating at the shady terrasse, under the tree.

The food must be good. The tables are full.

The couple closest to me are sharing a bowl of tapenade .

I realize now how hungry I am. I know that I have a meal waiting at La Bonne Mère, and run back towards Rue du Panier, getting lost several times on the way.

By the time I arrive, the bistrot is empty, and Louis is wiping the tables.

The outer door is shut, and the place looks dark and uninviting.

He gives me a look. ‘Lunch is finished.’

‘I’m sorry. I lost track of time.’

‘Did you eat?’ His voice is gruff.

I shake my head.

‘I saved you a slice of pissaladière. I think it’s better cold, anyway.’

The tart was good – sweet with onions and salty-rich with anchovies – and so was the little tomato salad that came with it, and the crème caramel to follow. The coffee came without my having to ask, once more with navettes on the side. Louis watched me eat with a look of oddly reluctant sympathy.

‘This is really good,’ I said. ‘You say you make it all yourself?’

He nodded. ‘My wife was a good cook. I still use all her recipes.’

His wife, he tells me, was Marguerite – Margot.

She died nearly twenty years ago. She used to help him run the bistrot, and in cooking he respects her memory.

I like that. I wish I had the same for myself.

But I have never really cooked anything.

Packet noodles. Boiled eggs. Toast. Things that can be prepared in haste in a hotel room, or a hostel, with only a kettle or gas fire.

No pans. No cupboard. No ovens. No knives.

No simple country recipes, handed down from my mother or my grandmother.

I felt a sudden fierce desire for something beyond my mother’s cards, my mother’s incantations.

To be, not the witch in the gingerbread house, but the harmless baker of gingerbread.

‘Do you run the bistrot alone? No son or daughter to help you out?’

He gave me a look. ‘We were never blessed.’

‘ I could help out, if you taught me,’ I said. ‘I’m a quick learner. And I need a job.’

Louis looked at me, surprised. I sensed his hesitation. I also sensed the grief in him, the memories he was keeping alive. Looking at myself through his eyes, I saw the young woman; her second-hand clothes. The promise of her. The danger of her.

I told him, very gently: ‘Try me. You could use some help. I’m strong.

I’ve worked in kitchens before. I’m not afraid of hard work.

And if you taught me, I’d always be respectful of your wife’s recipes.

’ And then I used my mother’s trick; a pretty, in the palm of my hand, to shine a little light on his face; like the sun from a piece of mirror.

Louis has a fleeting smile that only comes out when his guard slips.

It makes him softer, more vulnerable; it glances from his buried grief like the sun on a piece of mica.

And in the reflections, I can see the fragments of her precious life.

Marguerite at seventeen: carefree and girlish, giddy with dreams. Marguerite at twenty-three, after the first miscarriage, hoping next time would be different.

Marguerite at thirty-five, those first silver hairs just beginning to show, twined in among her chestnut curls like filaments of angel hair – ‘ Heh. ’ It is a percussive sound, as if the man is clearing his throat.

I have already learnt that it can mean anything from approval to contempt.

‘I suppose you could help with a few things. Shopping. Preparation. It wouldn’t pay much.

Food and board. I’m barely breaking even as it is. ’

It was a start. I felt my heart beat a little faster. I nodded, sensing that a smile would feel too much like cajolery. ‘That’s good,’ I said. ‘When can I start?’

He gave me a look of suspicion. ‘Not yet. We’ll go to the market tomorrow.’

He goes to the market early, before the bistrot opens. The Marché aux Poissons opens as soon as the fishermen come in with their catch. For Louis, working on his own, it makes for a long and wearing day.

‘Give me the list. I’ll go,’ I said.

‘You don’t know anyone,’ he said. ‘The traders will see you coming.’

‘I’m used to market-traders,’ I said. ‘I promise, they won’t short-change me. What are we making first?’

He made the dismissive sound again. ‘You’ll have to look at the recipes.

Start with something simple enough for a complete beginner to try.

But first, you need to get to know the kitchen.

The utensils. The pans. The knives. The spoons.

To understand a recipe you need far more than words on a page.

You need to know how everything combines to make a recipe.

So first, the kitchen.’ He glared at me.

‘Don’t touch anything I don’t tell you to. ’