Chocolat

Penguin Books

Chapter One

February 11.
Shrove Tuesday

We came on the wind of the carnival. A warm wind for February,laden with the hot greasy scents of frying pancakes andsausages and powdery-sweet waffles cooked on the hot plateright there by the roadside, with the confetti sleeting down collarsand cuffs and rolling in the gutters like an idiot antidote towinter. There is a febrile excitement in the crowds that line thenarrow main street, necks craning to catch sight of the crêpe-coveredchar with its trailing ribbons and paper rosettes. Anoukwatches, eyes wide, a yellow balloon in one hand and a toytrumpet in the other, from between a shopping basket and a sadbrown dog. We have seen carnivals before, she and I; a processionof two hundred and fifty of the decorated chars in Paris lastMardi Gras, a hundred and eighty in New York, two dozenmarching bands in Vienna, clowns on stilts, the Grosses Têteswith their lolling papier-mâché heads, drum majorettes withbatons spinning and sparkling. But at six the world retains aspecial luster. A wooden cart, hastily decorated with gilt andcrêpe and scenes from fairy tales. A dragon's head on a shield,Rapunzel in a woolen wig, a mermaid with a cellophane tail, agingerbread house all icing and gilded cardboard, a witch in thedoorway, waggling extravagant green fingernails, at a group ofsilent children.... At six it is possible to perceive subtleties thata year later are already out of reach. Behind the papier-mâché,the icing, the plastic, she can still see the real witch, the realmagic. She looks up at me, her eyes, which are the blue-green ofEarth seen from a great height, shining.

    "Are we staying? Are we staying here?" I have to remind herto speak French. "But are we? Are we?" She clings to my sleeve.Her hair is a cotton-candy tangle in the wind.

    I consider. It's as good a place as any. Lansquenet-sous-Tannes,two hundred souls at most, no more than a blip on thefast road between Toulouse and Bordeaux. Blink once, and it'sgone. One main street, a double row of dun-colored half-timberedhouses leaning secretively together, a few laterals runningparallel like the tines of a bent fork. A church, aggressivelywhitewashed, in a square of little shops. Farms scattered acrossthe watchful land. Orchards, vineyards, strips of earth enclosedand regimented according to the strict apartheid of country farming:here apples, there kiwis, melons, endives beneath theirblack plastic shells, vines looking blighted and dead in the thinFebruary sun but awaiting triumphant resurrection by March....Behind that the Tannes, small tributary of the Garonne, fingersits way across the marshy pasture. And the people? They lookmuch like all others we have known; a little pale perhaps in theunaccustomed sunlight, a little drab. Headscarves and berets arethe color of the hair beneath, brown, black, or gray. Faces arelined like last summer's apples, eyes pushed into wrinkled fleshlike marbles into old dough. A few children, flying colors of redand lime green and yellow, seem like a different race. As thechar advances ponderously along the street behind the old tractorthat pulls it, a large woman with a square, unhappy faceclutches a tartan coat about her shoulders and shouts somethingin the half-comprehensible local dialect; on the wagon a squatSanta Claus, out of season among the fairies and sirens and goblins,hurls sweets at the crowd with barely restrained aggression.A small-featured elderly man, wearing a felt hat rather than theround beret more common to the region, picks up the sadbrown dog from between my legs with a look of polite apology.I see his thin graceful fingers moving in the dog's fur; the dogwhines; the master's expression becomes complex with love,concern, guilt. No one looks at us. We might as well be invisible;our clothing marks us as strangers, transients. They are polite, sopolite; no one stares at us. The woman, her long hair tucked intothe collar of her orange goat, a long silk scarf fluttering at herthroat; the child in yellow Wellingtons and sky blue mac. Theircoloring marks them. Their clothes are exotic, their faces---arethey too pale or too dark??their hair marks them other, foreign;indefinably strange, The people of Lansquenet have learned theart of observation without eye contact. I feel their gaze like abreath on the nape of my neck, strangely without hostility butcold nevertheless. We are a curiosity to them, a part of the carnival,a whiff of the outlands. I feel their eyes upon us as I turn tobuy a galette from the vendor. The paper is hot and greasy, thedark wheat pancake crispy at the edges but thick and good inthe center. I break off a piece and give it to Anouk, wipingmelted butter from her chin. The vendor is a plump, baldingman with thick glasses, his face slick with the steam from the hotplate. He winks at her. With the other eye he takes in every detail,knowing there will be questions later.

    "On holiday, madame?" Village etiquette allows him to ask;behind his tradesman's indifference I see a real hunger. Knowledgeis currency here; with Agen and Montauban so close,tourists are a rarity.

    "For a while."

    "From Paris, then?" It must be our clothes. In this garish landthe people are drab. Color is a luxury; it wears badly. The brightblossoms of the roadside are weeds, invasive, useless.

    "No, no, not Paris."

    The char is almost at the end of the street. A small band?twofifes, two trumpets, a trombone, and a side drum?follow it,playing a thin unidentifiable march. A dozen children scamper inits wake, picking up the unclaimed sweets. Some are in costume;I see Little Red Riding Hood and a shaggy person whomight be the wolf squabbling companionably over possession ofa handful of streamers.

    A black figure brings up the rear. At first I take him for a partof the parade?the Plague Doctor, maybe?but as he approachesI recognize the old-fashioned soutane of the countrypriest. He is in his thirties, though from a distance his rigidstance makes him seem older. He turns toward me, and I seethat he too is a stranger, with the high cheekbones and pale eyesof the north and long pianist's fingers resting on the silver crossthat hangs from his neck. Perhaps this is what gives him the rightto stare at me, this alienness; but I see no welcome in his cold,light eyes. Only the measuring, feline look of one who is uncertainof his territory. I smile at him; he looks away, startled; beckonsthe two children toward him. A gesture indicates the litterthat now lines the road; reluctantly the pair begin to clear it,scooping up spent streamers and candy wrappers in their armsand into a nearby bin. I catch the priest staring at me again as Iturn away, a look that in another man might have been ofappraisal.

    There is no police station at Lansquenet-sous-Tannes, thereforeno crime. I try to be like Anouk, to see beneath the disguiseto the truth, but for now everything is blurred.

    "Are we staying? Are we, maman?" She tugs at my arm, insistently."I like it, I like it here. Are we staying?"

    I catch her up into my arms and kiss the top of her head. Shesmells of smoke and frying pancakes and warm bedclothes on awinter's morning.

    Why not? It's as good a place as any.

    "Yes, of course," I tell her, my mouth in her hair. "Of coursewe are." Not quite a lie. This time it may even be true.

* * *

The carnival is gone. Once a year the village flares into transientbrightness, but even now the warmth has faded, the crowddispersed. The vendors pack up their hot plates and awnings,the children discard their costumes and party favors. A slight airof embarrassment prevails, of abashment at this excess of noiseand color. Like rain in midsummer it evaporates, runs into thecracked earth and through the parched stones, leaving barely atrace. Two hours later Lansquenet-sous-Tannes is invisible oncemore, like an enchanted village that appears only once everyyear. But for the carnival we should have missed it altogether.

    We have gas but as yet no electricity. On our first night Imade pancakes for Anouk by candlelight and we ate them bythe fireside, using an old magazine for plates, as none of ourthings can be delivered until tomorrow. The shop was originallya bakery and still carries the baker's wheatsheaf carved abovethe narrow doorway, but the floor is thick with a floury dust, andwe picked our way across a drift of junk mail as we came in. Thelease seems ridiculously cheap, accustomed as we are to cityprices; even so I caught the sharp glance of suspicion from thewoman at the agency as I counted out the banknotes. On thelease document I am Vianne Rocher, the signature a hieroglyphthat might mean anything. By the light of the candle we exploredour new territory; the old ovens still surprisingly goodbeneath the grease and soot, the pine-paneled walls, the blackenedearthen tiles. Anouk found the old awning folded away ina back room, and we dragged it out; spiders scattered fromunder the faded canvas. Our living area is above the shop: tworooms and a bathroom, ridiculously tiny balcony, terra-cottaplanter with dead geraniums.... Anouk made a face when shesaw it.

    "It's so dark, maman." She sounded awed, uncertain in theface of so much dereliction. "And it smells so sad."

    She is right. The smell is like daylight trapped for years untilit has gone sour and rancid, of mouse droppings and the ghostsof things unremembered and unmourned. It echoes like a cave.the small heat of our presence only serving to accentuate everyshadow. Paint and sunlight and soapy water will rid it of thegrime, but the sadness is another matter, the forlorn resonanceof a house where no one has laughed for years. Anouk's facelooked pale and large-eyed in the candlelight, her hand tighteningin mine.

    "Do we have to sleep here?" she asked. "Pantoufle doesn'tlike it. He's afraid."

    I smiled and kissed her solemn golden cheek. "Pantoufle isgoing to help us."

    We lit a candle for every room, gold and red and white andorange. I prefer to make my own incense, but in a crisis thebought sticks were good enough for our purposes, lavender andcedar and lemongrass. We each held a candle, Anouk blowingher toy trumpet and I rattling a metal spoon ? an old saucepan,and for ten minutes we stamped around every room, shoutingand singing at the top of our voices?Out! Out! Out!?until thewalls shook and the outraged ghosts fled, leaving in their wake afaint scent of scorching and a good deal of fallen plaster. Lookbehind the cracked and blackened paintwork, behind the sadnessof things abandoned, and begin to see faint outlines, likethe afterimage of a sparkler held in the hand?here a wall adazzlewith golden paint, there an armchair, a little shabby but coloreda triumphant orange, the old awning suddenly glowing ashalf-hidden colors slide out from beneath the layers of grime.Out! Out! Out! Anouk and Pantoufle stamped and sang, and thefaint images seemed to grow brighter?a red stool beside thevinyl counter, a string of bells against the front door. Of course, Iknow it's only a game. Glamours to comfort a frightened child.There'll have to be work done, hard work, before any of this becomesreal. And yet for the moment it is enough to know thatthe house welcomes us, as we welcome it. Rock salt and breadby the doorstep to placate any resident gods. Sandalwood onour pillow to sweeten our dreams.

    Later Anouk told me Pantoufle wasn't frightened anymore, sothat was all right. We slept together in our clothes on the flourymattress in the bedroom with all the candles burning, and whenwe awoke it was morning.

Continues...
Excerpted from Chocolatby Joanne Harris Copyright ©2000 by Joanne Harris. Excerpted by permission.
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