Page 64 of Vianne

Last night, no one slept very much. I heard Guy pacing in his room until well after midnight.

Stéphane was anxious for Pomponette, who has been missing for a couple of days, and I heard him walking about downstairs, opening doors and closing them, until Mahmed came in, very late, and I heard him, saying: What the hell?

I listened to the rise and fall of voices in the kitchen, and then at last Stéphane went to bed, and Mahmed stayed alone downstairs, and there was an unquiet silence.

But all night I felt the call of the wind, as if the power I invoked has taken an unexpected turn, bringing discord and resentment into my new family.

I’ve never been happy with conflict. My mother shrugged off unpleasantness like a rain-wet garment.

That’s why we move on, Viannou . We move between the raindrops .

But I am always caught in the rain. And I lie awake during the night, while the people I am learning to love tear each other apart, piece by piece.

But that can all be fixed. The cards have promised me a solution.

Already, my little red sachets have been placed all around the chocolate shop, with a circle of sand and salt cast around the building.

The Lovers will be reunited. The Three of Cups will bring us success.

And the Hermit – I have my plans for him, too.

I know where to look for him. Today is All Souls, and the bistrot is shut, and Louis will go to visit Margot.

That’s where I mean to find him – alone – to heal the rift between us.

Louis knows the neighbourhood, and if I am to win back my place, then his approval matters.

There was no one downstairs at breakfast today.

Guy and Mahmed must have been asleep. Stéphane was not in his room – I supposed he must have already gone out.

I slipped into the bakery to buy fresh bread and croissants, and then, after a hasty, solitary breakfast, pausing only to pick up a box of my most recent chocolate creations, I went out into the windy streets in pursuit of Cyrano.

I knew exactly where to go. I took the same route, the same bus, the same walk across the cemetery, past the Cathédrale du Silence .

I was a little surprised to see how naturally it stands above the necropolis; the patterns of the arches, like futuristic space capsules.

I was also surprised at the size of the place; a city for the dead, with its own streets and alleyways and slums, and this, its high-rise housing for nearly two hundred thousand people.

All the alcoves are the same: the five blocks nearly identical to those designed for the living, but without the human details; curtains in the windows; pot plants on the balconies; litter in the doorway; the ramshackle trappings of life.

This place is almost indecently clean, from the cloisters to the central court, and seemingly empty of visitors.

There are no flowers, no furnishings, no offerings from loved ones.

The dead here are democratic: all of them nothing but names and dates inscribed on identical plaques.

I find it strangely moving, and yet I can understand why Louis refuses to come here.

Grief is not democratic. Grief demands a gesture.

Grief demands the illusion of singularity, of permanence.

I think of my mother’s ashes, drifting on the slipstream of the soft wind over the harbour.

The wreath of fireworks overhead; the sound from the cheering holiday crowds.

I remember wondering how many other people had done the same with the remains of their loved ones; how many secrets the Hudson held quietly in its dark embrace.

We’re all the same, really, aren’t we, Louis?

We want to believe we are different. We want to believe our loved ones are special, unique; that they will be more than ashes.

But we are all of us carbon: stars, and ash, and coal, and diamonds.

And in the end we all return to the same collective stardust.

Edmond Rostand’s tomb is a family plot which has fallen into such disrepair that the inscription on the plain stone cross is barely even legible.

Rostand was always derided for his Marseillais background: the literary world never forgave him for being the son of this city.

His tomb stands in an alley of gracious monuments some distance away from the main drag.

It is humble in comparison to the mausoleum that shields me from sight.

Without Louis, I would not have noticed it; next to the other tombs it looks drab and relatively unadorned.

A marble cross; a scroll underneath: a raised stone section at the foot on which now rests a single rose.

And Louis there, in his Sunday clothes, which have nothing to do with going to church, sitting at the foot of the grave, reading softly from a book.

‘ Mon c?ur ne vous quitta jamais une seconde,

Et je suis et serai jusque dans l’autre monde

Celui qui vous aima sans mesure— ’

I can’t hear the words, but I know them.

Cyrano’s final love letter; filled with unspoken longing and loss, the words like the sound of a river at night, with fireworks in the distance.

Poor Cyrano, I think. Poor Louis. Some men are afraid to be loved.

And some women need reassurance that their love is acceptable; that it nourishes the ground instead of simply draining away.

But some men only realize what they had when they no longer have it, and their love has nowhere to go any more, except into the wilderness.

Cyrano would have understood that, too. Cyrano, of the golden voice, hiding his face in the shadows.

Poor Marguerite. I see her so well. I see her all-consuming need to love, and be loved, unconditionally.

A woman loved by two men, neither of whom understood her.

And now Louis keeps this ritual – Louis, who despises magic – and Emile watches from the wings, to ensure that Louis can never move on, or earn a second’s happiness.

This is the bitterness he hides. I saw it in the vapour, and in his colours when he tried my chocolate rose fondants.

What it serves me to know this is a mystery for the moment.

Maman never encouraged my skill of looking into people.

‘Vianne? What are you doing here?’

I must have made a movement. I stepped from the shadow of the tomb and came to stand by Rostand’s grave. ‘I knew you’d be here,’ I told him. ‘It’s All Souls’ Day.’

He faced me, angry; bewildered. ‘You followed me?’

‘I knew where you’d be. I wanted to give you something.’ From my pocket I took out a box.

‘What is it, another paperweight?’

‘I made the moulds myself,’ I said. ‘I thought maybe I could do something to celebrate Margot’s memory. Her recipes have taught me so much. I wanted to mark that, somehow.’

I saw him stiffen. That suspicion of his is always so close to the surface, and yet there is so much in him that wants to let it go. Some men find it hard to trust because their trust has been betrayed. Some men find it hard to trust because of their own betrayals.

‘She’s dead,’ he said in a low voice. ‘Nothing we do can bring her back.’

‘And yet, you come here. That means something. You keep her recipes alive. You read her favourite poetry and buy her favourite flowers.’

He made a dry, dismissive sound. ‘ Heh . Much good it does her.’

I smiled at him. ‘These things are not to please the dead. These monuments, these memorials – they’re all to comfort the living. To keep a part of them with us. To remind ourselves that death is only one part of our journey.’

He looked at me contemptuously. ‘And you think chocolate will do this?’

‘Just try one,’ I said. ‘I thought perhaps I could call them – Santons de Margot .’

He opened the box. I’m proud of this work.

I used Margot’s santons as a template; those little ceramic babies transformed into 75 per cent cacao; dark and sweet and tempered just right in order to achieve the snap that makes for the very best chocolate.

Brown, and plump as plums on the branch, they lie side by side in the little box, smiling, irresistible.

Louis looked at the chocolate santons . His narrow face was expressionless. In the autumn sun they shone: Try me. Taste me.

‘Try one,’ I said.

‘I’m not hungry.’ He picked out a santon from the box. ‘She collected these,’ he said. ‘Not the other figurines – the shepherd, the washerwoman, the kings. Only the babies.’

‘Yes. I know.’

The scent from the open box was starting to come alive now.

It is a scent I have come to know well; the dusty scent of cacao beans hoarded in cedarwood caskets; the spicy scent of cacao liqueur whisked to a froth in an abalone cup; the hot scent of chillies, and cumin, and mace; the sweet and rich vanilla scent of innocence and childhood.

Chocolate is like wine, I think. Like wine, it unleashes the tongue.

Like wine, it has its rituals. Like wine, it opens the mind to different possibilities.

‘She wanted a child so much,’ he said. ‘My Margot would have done anything. Hormone treatments, vitamins, prayers. An army of doctors and herbalists. Cold-water baths. Hot-water springs. And then, that Arab woman.’

‘The one from the shop on Allée du Pieu.’

He made the dismissive sound again. ‘I suppose you heard that from Emile. That idiot never could hold his tongue. I suppose he told you she duped me? Told me she could contact Margot? Took God knows how much money from me?’

‘Didn’t she?’

He shook his head. ‘She wouldn’t take it.

All those other people she helped, all those spells and potions, all those séances behind closed doors, and she wouldn’t even talk to me.

’ His voice was small and pebble-hard. ‘She knew I didn’t approve of her, or believe in her methods. This was her revenge.’

For what? But I already knew the answer. Revenge for giving up Edmond. For having rejected Margot’s gift; the child she’d always wanted.

He put the chocolate in his mouth. Held it for a moment there.

Felt the sweetness of the bean without its bitter embryo.

‘I would have paid whatever she asked. I would have given her anything. I didn’t believe in her nonsense, but I would have tried anything.

For a single word from her. Even a letter. Even a lie.’

‘What happened to her?’

‘She moved away.’

Of course, there’s more to it than that. A burning rag, through a letterbox, which had spread to some dried herbs, then to a plastic curtain, and then like an evil spell, torching the air, leaping and dancing from place to place—

I remembered him saying to me: Should have burnt it to the ground.

And now I could see how he blamed himself, though someone else had started the fire; blamed himself for what he’d said to turn the others against her.

The fire could have been anyone – local youths, one of his regulars – but his resentment had lit the fuse.

I could see all this in the motes that danced in the air like fireflies; this, and his sullen conviction that he would do it all again—

‘She moved on. So can you,’ I said.

Chocolate is confessional. Like the sacrament, it is occult. Like the Host, it is holy. Most of all, it is transformative; passing from euphoria to regret, from grief to consolation in the space of a heartbeat.

Louis finished his chocolate and looked up. ‘ Santons de Margot ,’ he said. ‘I think she would have liked that.’

I let the thought hang in the air between us, like a bauble. Then I said: ‘I hope you’ll come to our opening on the fourth of December.’

He gave a brief, one-shouldered shrug. ‘ Heh . I might be busy.’

I smiled. ‘I’ll see you there,’ I said.