are wishes which can be granted simply, for the asking.
Guy, my confectioner, has known me for a long time. We worked together after Anouk was born and he helped me to start my first business, a tiny pattisserie-chocolaterie in the outskirts of Nice. Now he is based in Marseille, importing the raw chocolate liquor direct from South America and converting it to chocolate of various grades in his factory.
I only use the best. The blocks of couverture are slightly larger than house bricks, one box of each per delivery, and I use all three types: the dark, the milk and the white. It has to be tempered to bring it to its crystalline state, ensuring a hard, brittle surface and a good shine. Some confectioners buy their supplies already tempered, but I like to do it myself. There is an endless fascination in handling the raw dullish blocks of couverture, in grating them by hand — I never use electrical mixers — into the large ceramic pans, then melting, stirring, testing each painstaking step with the sugar thermometer until just the right amount of heat has been applied to make the change.
There is a kind of alchemy in the transformation of base chocolate into this wise fool’s gold; a layman’s magic which even my mother might have relished. As I work I clear my mind, breathing deeply. The windows are open, and the through draught would be cold if it were not for the heat of the stoves, the copper pans, the rising vapour from the melting couverture. The mingled scents of chocolate, vanilla, heated copper and cinnamon are intoxicating, powerfully suggestive; the raw and earthy tang of the Americas, the hot and resinous perfume of the rainforest. This is how I travel now, as the Aztecs did in their sacred rituals. Mexico, Venezuela,-Colombia. The court of Montezuma. Cortez and Columbus. The food of the gods, bubbling and frothing in ceremonial goblets. The bitter elixir of life.
Perhaps this is what Reynaud senses in my little shop; a throwback to times when the world was a wider, wilder place. Before Christ — before Adonis was born in Bethlehem or Osiris sacrificed at Easter — the cocoa bean was revered. Magical properties were attributed to it. Its brew was sipped on the steps of sacrificial temples; its ecstasies were fierce and terrible. Is this what he fears? Corruption by pleasure, the subtle transubstantiation of the flesh into a vessel for debauch? Not for him the orgies of the Aztec priesthood. And yet, in the vapours of the melting chocolate something begins to coalesce — a vision, my mother would have said — a smoky finger of perception which points…points…
There. For a second I almost had it. Across the glossy surface a vaporous ripple forms. Then another, filmy and pale, half-hiding, half-revealing. For a moment I almost saw the answer, the secret which he hides — even from himself — with such fearful calculation, the key which will set all of us into motion.
Scrying with chocolate is a difficult business. The visions are unclear, troubled by rising perfumes which cloud the mind. And I am not my mother, who retained until the day of her death a power of augury so great that the two of us ran before it in wild and growing disarray. But before the vision dissipates I am sure I see something a room, a bed, an old man lying on the bed, his eyes raw holes in his white face…And fire. Fire.
Is this what I was meant to see? Is this the Black Man’s secret? I need to know his secret if we are to stay, here. And I do need to stay. Whatever it takes.
TEN
Wednesday, February 19
A WEEK, MON PERE. THAT’S ALL IT’S BEEN. ONE WEEK. BUT it seems longer. Why she should disturb me so is beyond me; it’s clear what she is. I went to see her the other day, to reason with her about her Sunday morning opening time. The place is transformed; the air perfumed with bewildering scents of
Guy, my confectioner, has known me for a long time. We worked together after Anouk was born and he helped me to start my first business, a tiny pattisserie-chocolaterie in the outskirts of Nice. Now he is based in Marseille, importing the raw chocolate liquor direct from South America and converting it to chocolate of various grades in his factory.
I only use the best. The blocks of couverture are slightly larger than house bricks, one box of each per delivery, and I use all three types: the dark, the milk and the white. It has to be tempered to bring it to its crystalline state, ensuring a hard, brittle surface and a good shine. Some confectioners buy their supplies already tempered, but I like to do it myself. There is an endless fascination in handling the raw dullish blocks of couverture, in grating them by hand — I never use electrical mixers — into the large ceramic pans, then melting, stirring, testing each painstaking step with the sugar thermometer until just the right amount of heat has been applied to make the change.
There is a kind of alchemy in the transformation of base chocolate into this wise fool’s gold; a layman’s magic which even my mother might have relished. As I work I clear my mind, breathing deeply. The windows are open, and the through draught would be cold if it were not for the heat of the stoves, the copper pans, the rising vapour from the melting couverture. The mingled scents of chocolate, vanilla, heated copper and cinnamon are intoxicating, powerfully suggestive; the raw and earthy tang of the Americas, the hot and resinous perfume of the rainforest. This is how I travel now, as the Aztecs did in their sacred rituals. Mexico, Venezuela,-Colombia. The court of Montezuma. Cortez and Columbus. The food of the gods, bubbling and frothing in ceremonial goblets. The bitter elixir of life.
Perhaps this is what Reynaud senses in my little shop; a throwback to times when the world was a wider, wilder place. Before Christ — before Adonis was born in Bethlehem or Osiris sacrificed at Easter — the cocoa bean was revered. Magical properties were attributed to it. Its brew was sipped on the steps of sacrificial temples; its ecstasies were fierce and terrible. Is this what he fears? Corruption by pleasure, the subtle transubstantiation of the flesh into a vessel for debauch? Not for him the orgies of the Aztec priesthood. And yet, in the vapours of the melting chocolate something begins to coalesce — a vision, my mother would have said — a smoky finger of perception which points…points…
There. For a second I almost had it. Across the glossy surface a vaporous ripple forms. Then another, filmy and pale, half-hiding, half-revealing. For a moment I almost saw the answer, the secret which he hides — even from himself — with such fearful calculation, the key which will set all of us into motion.
Scrying with chocolate is a difficult business. The visions are unclear, troubled by rising perfumes which cloud the mind. And I am not my mother, who retained until the day of her death a power of augury so great that the two of us ran before it in wild and growing disarray. But before the vision dissipates I am sure I see something a room, a bed, an old man lying on the bed, his eyes raw holes in his white face…And fire. Fire.
Is this what I was meant to see? Is this the Black Man’s secret? I need to know his secret if we are to stay, here. And I do need to stay. Whatever it takes.
TEN
Wednesday, February 19
A WEEK, MON PERE. THAT’S ALL IT’S BEEN. ONE WEEK. BUT it seems longer. Why she should disturb me so is beyond me; it’s clear what she is. I went to see her the other day, to reason with her about her Sunday morning opening time. The place is transformed; the air perfumed with bewildering scents of
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