Reading Group Guide
When the exotic stranger Vianne Rocher arrives in the old French village of Lansquenet and opens a chocolate boutique called "La Celeste Praline" directly across the square from the church, Father Reynaud identifies her as a serious danger to his flock. It is the beginning of Lent: the traditional season of self-denial. The priest says she'll be out of business by Easter.
To make matters worse, Vianne does not go to church and has a penchant for superstition. Like her mother, she can read Tarot cards. But she begins to win over customers with her smiles, her intuition for everyone's favourites, and her delightful confections. Her shop provides a place, too, for secrets to be whispered, grievances aired. She begins to shake up the rigid morality of the community. Vianne's plans for an Easter Chocolate Festival divide the whole community. Can the solemnity of the Church compare with the pagan passion of a chocolate éclair?
For the first time, here is a novel in which chocolate enjoys its true importance, emerging as an agent of transformation. Rich, clever, and mischievous, reminiscent of a folk tale or fable, this is a triumphant read with a memorable character at its heart.
Says Harris: "You might see [Vianne] as an archetype or a mythical figure. I prefer to see her as the lone gunslinger who blows into the town, has a showdown with the man in the black hat, then moves on relentless. But on another level she is a perfectly real person with real insecurities and a very human desire for love and acceptance. Her qualities too -- kindness, love, tolerance -- are very human." Vianne and her young daughter Anouk, come into town on Shrove Tuesday. "Carnivals make us uneasy," saysHarris, "because of what they represent: the residual memory of blood sacrifice (it is after all from the word "carne" that the term arises), of pagan celebration. And they represent a loss of inhibition; carnival time is a time at which almost anything is possible."
The book became an international best-seller, and was optioned to film quickly. The Oscar-nominated movie, with its star-studded cast including Juliette Binoche (The English Patient) and Judi Dench (Shakespeare in Love), was directed by Lasse Hallstrom, whose previous film The Cider House Rules (based on a John Irving novel) also looks at issues of community and moral standards, though in a less lighthearted vein.
The idea for the book came from a comment her husband made one day while he was immersed in a football game on TV. "It was a throwaway comment, designed to annoy and it did. It was along the lines of...Chocolate is to women what football is to men..." The idea stuck, and Harris began thinking that "people have these conflicting feelings about chocolate, and that a lot of people who have very little else in common relate to chocolate in more or less the same kind of way. It became a kind of challenge to see exactly how much of a story I could get which was uniquely centred around chocolate."
Other Books
Five Quarters of the Orange
Blackberry Wine
Sleep, Pale Sister
The Evil Seed
Suggested Reading
John Allemang The Importance of Lunch
Peter Mayle A Year in Provence; Encore Provence
Patrick Süskind Perfume
Jeannette Winterson Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit
1. To what extent is Reynaud the villain of the piece? Is it possible to understand or sympathize with the motivations and feelings behind his actions?
2. Reynaud and Vianne seem to be natural enemies from the start, and yet they both have significant elements in common: a haunted past, a desire for acceptance. How do you think this affects their relationship?
3. The preparation and eating of food is decribed in detail in many parts of the book. What is the significance of this, and what do the attitudes of the main characters towards food show about their personalities?
4. The author uses the first-person narrative voice for both of her principal characters. Why do you feel she does this, and how effective is each in showing the character's attitudes and motivations?
5. Vianne appears to other people as a strong and confident woman, but is secretly filled with fears and insecurities. To what extent do you think she has been strengthened or damaged by her relationship with her bohemian mother?
6. The themes of moving on and settling down recur frequently in the book. Why do you think Vianne wants so badly to remain in the village? Do you think she eventually decides to stay?
Read an Excerpt
We came on the wind of the carnival. A warm wind for February, laden with the hot greasy scents of frying pancakes and sausages and powdery-sweet waffles cooked on the hot plate right there by the roadside, with the confetti sleeting down collars and cuffs and rolling in the gutters like an idiot antidote to winter. There is a febrile excitement in the crowds that line the narrow main street, necks craning to catch sight of the crêpe-covered
char with its trailing ribbons and paper rosettes. Anouk watches, eyes wide, a yellow balloon in one hand and a toy trumpet in the other, from between a shopping basket and a sad brown dog. We have seen carnivals before, she and I; a procession of two hundred and fifty of the decorated
chars in Paris last Mardi Gras, a hundred and eighty in New York, two dozen marching bands in Vienna, clowns on stilts, the
Grosses Têtes with their lolling papier-mâché heads, drum majorettes with batons spinning and sparkling. But at six the world retains a special luster. A wooden cart, hastily decorated with gilt and crêpe and scenes from fairy tales. A dragon's head on a shield, Rapunzel in a woolen wig, a mermaid with a cellophane tail, a gingerbread house all icing and gilded cardboard, a witch in the doorway, waggling extravagant green fingernails at a group of silent children. ... At six it is possible to perceive subtleties that a year later are already out of reach. Behind the papier-mâché, the icing, the plastic, she can still see the real witch, the real magic. She looks up at me, her eyes, which are the blue-green of Earth seen from a great height, shining.
Read a Sample Chapter
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 and sausages and powdery-sweet
waffles cooked on the hot plate right there by the roadside, with the
confetti sleeting down collars and cuffs and rolling in the gutters like an
idiot antidote to winter. There is a febrile excitement in the crowds that line
the narrow main street, necks craning to catch sight of the crêpe-covered
char with its trailing ribbons and paper rosettes. Anouk watches, eyes
wide, a yellow balloon in one hand and a toy trumpet in the other, from
between a shopping basket and a sad brown dog. We have seen carnivals
before, she and I; a procession of two hundred and fifty of the decorated
chars in Paris last Mardi Gras, a hundred and eighty in New York, two
dozen marching bands in Vienna, clowns on stilts, the Grosses Têtes with
their lolling papier-mâché heads, drum majorettes with batons spinning
and sparkling. But at six the world retains a special luster. A wooden cart,
hastily decorated with gilt and crêpe and scenes from fairy tales. A dragon's
head on a shield, Rapunzel in a woolen wig, a mermaid with a cellophane
tail, a gingerbread house all icing and gilded cardboard, a witch in the
doorway, waggling extravagant green fingernails at a group of silent
children.... At six it is possible to perceive subtleties that a year later are
already out of reach. Behind the papier-mâché, the icing, the plastic, she can
still see the real witch, the real magic. She looks up at me, her eyes, which
are the blue-green of Earth seen from a great height, shining.
"Are we staying? Are we staying here?" I have to remind her to 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 the fast road between
Toulouse and Bordeaux. Blink once, and it's gone. One main street, a double
row of dun-colored half-timbered houses leaning secretively together,
a few laterals running parallel like the tines of a bent fork. A church,
aggressively whitewashed, in a square of little shops. Farms scattered across
the watchful land. Orchards, vineyards, strips of earth enclosed and regimented
according to the strict apartheid of country farming: here apples,
there kiwis, melons, endives beneath their black plastic shells, vines looking
blighted and dead in the thin February sun but awaiting triumphant
resurrection by March.... Behind that the Tannes, small tributary of the
Garonne, fingers its way across the marshy pasture. And the people? They
look much like all others we have known; a little pale perhaps in the
unaccustomed sunlight, a little drab. Headscarves and berets are the color of
the hair beneath, brown, black, or gray. Faces are lined like last summer's
apples, eyes pushed into wrinkled flesh like marbles into old dough. A few
children, flying colors of red and lime green and yellow, seem like a
different race. As the char advances ponderously along the street
behind the old tractor that pulls it, a large woman with a square, unhappy face
clutches a tartan coat about her shoulders and shouts something in the
half-comprehensible local dialect; on the wagon a squat Santa 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 the round beret more common to the region, picks up
the sad brown dog from between my legs with a look of polite apology. I
see his thin graceful fingers moving in the dog's fur; the dog whines; 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, so polite; no one stares at us. The woman, her
long hair tucked into the collar of her orange coat, a long silk scarf
fluttering at her throat; the child in yellow Wellingtons and sky blue mac.
Their coloring marks them. Their clothes are exotic, their faces--are they too
pale or too dark?--their hair marks them other, foreign, indefinably
strange. The people of Lansquenet have learned the art of observation without
eye contact. I feel their gaze like a breath on the nape of my neck, strangely
without hostility but cold 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 to
buy a galette from the vendor. The paper is hot and greasy, the dark
wheat pancake crispy at the edges but thick and good in the center. I break off
a piece and give it to Anouk, wiping melted butter from her chin. The vendor
is a plump, balding man with thick glasses, his face slick with the steam
from the hot plate. 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. Knowledge is 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 land the people
are drab. Color is a luxury; it wears badly. The bright blossoms of the roadside
are weeds, invasive, useless.
"No, no, not Paris."
The char is almost at the end of the street. A small band--two
fifes, two trumpets, a trombone, and a side drum--follow it, playing a thin
unidentifiable march. A dozen children scamper in its wake, picking up the
unclaimed sweets. Some are in costume; I see Little Red Riding Hood and a
shaggy person who might be the wolf squabbling companionably over
possession of a handful of streamers.
A black figure brings up the rear. At first I take him for a part of the
parade--the Plague Doctor, maybe--but as he approaches I recognize the
old-fashioned soutane of the country priest. He is in his thirties, though
from a distance his rigid stance makes him seem older. He turns toward
me, and I see that he too is a stranger, with the high cheekbones and pale
eyes of the north and long pianist's fingers resting on the silver cross that
hangs from his neck. Perhaps this is what gives him the right to stare at me,
this alienness; but I see no welcome in his cold, light eyes. Only the
measuring, feline look of one who is uncertain of his territory. I smile at
him; he looks away, startled; beckons the two children toward him. A gesture
indicates the litter that now lines the road; reluctantly the pair begin to
clear it, scooping up spent streamers and candy wrappers in their arms and into
a nearby bin. I catch the priest staring at me again as I turn away, a look that
in another man might have been of appraisal.
There is no police station at Lansquenet-sous-Tannes, therefore no
crime. I try to be like Anouk, to see beneath the disguise to 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. She smells of
smoke and frying pancakes and warm bedclothes on a winter's morning.
Why not? It's as good a place as any.
"Yes, of course," I tell her, my mouth in her hair. "Of course we are."
Not quite a lie. This time it may even be true.
* * *
The carnival is gone. Once a year the village flares into transient
brightness, but even now the warmth has faded, the crowd dispersed. The vendors
pack up their hot plates and awnings, the children discard their
costumes and party favors. A slight air of embarrassment prevails, of abashment
at this excess of noise and color. Like rain in midsummer it evaporates,
runs into the cracked earth and through the parched stones, leaving
barely a trace. Two hours later Lansquenet-sous-Tannes is invisible once
more, like an enchanted village that appears only once every year. But for
the carnival we should have missed it altogether.
We have gas but as yet no electricity. On our first night I made pancakes
for Anouk by candlelight and we ate them by the fireside, using
an old magazine for plates, as none of our things can be delivered until
tomorrow. The shop was originally a bakery and still carries the baker's
wheatsheaf carved above the narrow doorway, but the floor is thick with a
floury dust, and we picked our way across a drift of junk mail as we came
in. The lease seems ridiculously cheap, accustomed as we are to city prices;
even so I caught the sharp glance of suspicion from the woman at the
agency as I counted out the banknotes. On the lease document I am Vianne
Rocher, the signature a hieroglyph that might mean anything. By the light
of the candle we explored our new territory; the old ovens still surprisingly
good beneath the grease and soot, the pine-paneled walls, the blackened
earthen tiles. Anouk found the old awning folded away in a back room,
and we dragged it out; spiders scattered from under the faded canvas. Our
living area is above the shop: two rooms and a bathroom, ridiculously tiny
balcony, terra-cotta planter with dead geraniums.... Anouk made a face
when she saw it.
"It's so dark, maman." She sounded awed, uncertain in the face of so
much dereliction. "And it smells so sad."
She is right. The smell is like daylight trapped for years until it has gone
sour and rancid, of mouse droppings and the ghosts of things unremembered
and unmourned. It echoes like a cave, the small heat of our presence
only serving to accentuate every shadow. Paint and sunlight and soapy
water will rid it of the grime, but the sadness is another matter, the forlorn
resonance of a house where no one has laughed for years. Anouk's face
looked pale and large-eyed in the candlelight, her hand tightening in mine.
"Do we have to sleep here?" she asked. "Pantoufle doesn't like it. He's
afraid."
I smiled and kissed her solemn golden cheek. "Pantoufle is going to
help us."
We lit a candle for every room, gold and red and white and orange. I
prefer to make my own incense, but in a crisis the bought sticks were good
enough for our purposes, lavender and cedar and lemongrass. We each
held a candle, Anouk blowing her toy trumpet and I rattling a metal spoon
in an old saucepan, and for ten minutes we stamped around every room,
shouting and singing at the top of our voices--Out! Out! Out!--until the
walls shook and the outraged ghosts fled, leaving in their wake a faint
scent of scorching and a good deal of fallen plaster. Look behind the
cracked and blackened paintwork, behind the sadness of things abandoned,
and begin to see faint outlines, like the afterimage of a sparkler
held in the hand--here a wall adazzle with golden paint, there an armchair,
a little shabby but colored a triumphant orange, the old awning suddenly
glowing as half-hidden colors slide out from beneath the layers of grime.
Out! Out! Out! Anouk and Pantoufle stamped and sang, and the faint
images seemed to grow brighter--a red stool beside the vinyl counter, a string
of bells against the front door. Of course, I know it's only a game. Glamours
to comfort a frightened child. There'll have to be work done, hard
work, before any of this becomes real. And yet for the moment it is enough
to know that the house welcomes us, as we welcome it. Rock salt and
bread by the doorstep to placate any resident gods. Sandalwood on our pillow
to sweeten our dreams.
Later Anouk told me Pantoufle wasn't frightened anymore, so that was
all right. We slept together in our clothes on the floury mattress in the
bedroom with all the candles burning, and when we awoke it was morning.
Chapter Two
February 12.
Ash Wednesday
Actually the bells woke us. I hadn't realized quite how close we were
to the church until I heard them, a single low resonant drone falling into
a bright carillon--dómmm flá-di-dadi-dómmmm--on the downbeat. I
looked at my watch. It was six o'clock. Gray-gold light filtered through the
broken shutters onto the bed. I stood up and looked out onto the square,
with its wet cobbles shining. The square white church tower stood out
sharply in the morning sunlight, rising from a hollow of dark shopfronts; a
bakery, a florist, a shop selling graveyard paraphernalia--plaques, stone
angels, enameled everlasting roses.... Above these discreetly shuttered facades
the white tower is a beacon, the Roman numerals of the clock gleaming
redly at six-twenty to baffle the devil, the Virgin in her dizzy eyrie
watching the square with a faintly sickened expression. At the tip of the
short spire, a weathervane turns--west to west-north-west--a robed man
with a scythe. From the balcony with the dead geranium I could see the
first arrivals to mass. I recognized the woman in the tartan coat from the
carnival; I waved to her, but she hurried on without an answering gesture,
pulling her coat protectively around her. Behind her the felt-hatted man
with his sad brown dog in tow gave me a hesitant smile. I called down
brightly to him, but seemingly village etiquette did not allow for such
informalities, for he did not respond, hurrying in his turn into the church,
taking his dog with him.
After that no one even looked up at my window, though I counted over
sixty heads--scarves, berets, hats drawn down against an invisible wind--but
I felt their studied, curious indifference. They had matters of importance
to consider, said their hunched shoulders and lowered heads. Their
feet dragged sullenly at the cobbles like the feet of children going to
school. This one has given up smoking today, I knew; that one his weekly
visit to the cafe, another will forgo her favorite foods. It's none of my
business, of course. But I felt at that moment that if ever a place were in need
of a little magic ... Old habits never die. And when you've once been in
the business of granting wishes, the impulse never quite leaves you. And
besides, the wind, the carnival wind, was still blowing, bringing with it the
dim scent of grease and cotton candy and gunpowder, the hot sharp scents
of the changing seasons, making the palms itch and the heart beat
faster.... For a time, then, we stay. For a time. Till the wind changes.
* * *
We bought the paint in the general store, and with it brushes, rollers,
soap, and buckets. We began upstairs and worked down, stripping curtains
and throwing broken fittings onto the growing pile in the tiny back garden,
soaping floors and making tidal waves down the narrow, sooty stairway so
that both of us were soaked several times through. Anouk's scrubbing
brush became a submarine, and mine a tanker that sent noisy soap torpedoes
scudding down the stairs and into the hall. In the middle of this I
heard the doorbell jangle and looked up, soap in one hand, brush in the
other, at the tall figure of the priest.
I'd wondered how long it would take him to arrive.
He considered us for a time, smiling. A guarded smile, proprietary,
benevolent; the lord of the manor welcomes inopportune guests. I could feel
him very conscious of my wet and dirty overalls, my hair caught up in a red
scarf, my bare feet in their dripping sandals.
"Good morning." There was a rivulet of scummy water heading for his
highly polished black shoe. I saw his eyes flick toward it and back to me.
"Francis Reynaud," he said, discreetly sidestepping. "Curé of the parish."
I laughed at that; I couldn't help it. "Oh, that's it," I said maliciously.
"I thought you were with the carnival." Polite laughter; heh, heh, heh.
I held out a yellow plastic glove. "Vianne Rocher. And the bombardier
back there is my daughter, Anouk."
Sounds of soap explosions, and of Anouk fighting Pantoufle on the
stairs. I could hear the priest waiting for details of Mr. Rocher. So much
easier to have everything on a piece of paper, everything official, avoid this
uncomfortable, messy conversation....
"I suppose you were very busy this morning."
I suddenly felt sorry for him, trying so hard, straining to make contact.
Again the forced smile.
"Yes, we really need to get this place in order as soon as possible. It's
going to take time! But we wouldn't have been at church this morning anyway,
monsieur le curé. We don't attend, you know." It was kindly meant, to
show him where we stood, to reassure him; but he looked startled, almost
insulted.
"I see."
It was too direct. He would have liked us to dance a little, to circle each
other like wary cats.
"But it's very kind of you to welcome us," I continued brightly. "You
might even be able to help us make a few friends here."
He is a little like a cat himself, I notice; cold, light eyes that never hold
the gaze, a restless watchfulness, studied, aloof.
"I'll do anything I can." He is indifferent now that he knows we are not
to be members of his flock. And yet his conscience pushes him to offer
more than he is willing to give. "Have you anything in mind?"
"Well, we could do with some help here," I suggested. "Not you, of
course--" quickly, as he began to reply. "But perhaps you know someone
who could do with the extra money? A plasterer, someone who might be
able to help with the decorating?" This was surely safe territory.
"I can't think of anyone." He is guarded, more so than anyone I have
ever met. "But I'll ask around." Perhaps he will. He knows his duty to the
new arrival. But I know he will not find anyone. His is not a nature that
grants favors graciously. His eyes flicked warily to the pile of bread and salt
by the door.
"For luck." I smiled, but his face was stony. He skirted the little offering
as if it offended him.
"Maman?" Anouk's head appeared in the doorway, hair standing out in
crazy spikes. "Pantoufle wants to play outside. Can we?"
I nodded. "Stay in the garden." I wiped a smudge of dirt from the bridge
of her nose. "You look a complete urchin." I saw her glance at the priest
and caught her comical look just in time. "This is Monsieur Reynaud,
Anouk. Why don't you say hello?"
"Hello!" shouted Anouk on the way to the door. "Good-bye!" A blur of
yellow jumper and red overalls and she was gone, her feet skidding manically
on the greasy tiles. Not for the first time, I was almost sure I saw Pantoufle
disappearing in her wake, a darker smudge against the dark lintel.
"She's only six," I said by way of explanation.
Reynaud gave a tight, sour smile, as if his first glimpse of my daughter
confirmed every one of his suspicions about me.
Chapter Three
Thursday, February 13.
Thank God that's over. Visits tire me to the bone. I don't mean you, of
course, mon père; my weekly visit to you is a luxury, you might almost
say my only one. I hope you like the flowers. They don't look much, but they
smell wonderful. I'll put them here, beside your chair, where you can see them.
It's a good view from here across the fields, with the Tannes in the middle
distance and the Garonne gleaming in the far. You might almost imagine we
were alone. Oh, I'm not complaining. Not really. But you must know how
heavy it is for one man to carry. Their petty concerns, their dissatisfactions,
their foolishness, their thousand trivial problems ... On Tuesday it was the
carnival. Anyone might have taken them for savages, dancing and screaming.
Louis Perrin's youngest, Claude, fired a water pistol at me, and what
would his father say but that he was a youngster, and needed to play a little?
All I want is to guide them, mon père, to free them from their sin. But
they fight me at every turn, like children refusing wholesome fare in order to
continue eating what sickens them. I know you understand. For fifty years you
held all this on your shoulders in patience and strength. You earned their
love. Have times changed so much? Here I am feared, respected ... but
loved, no. Their faces are sullen, resentful. Yesterday they left the service
with ash on their foreheads and a look of guilty relief. Left to their secret
indulgences, their solitary vices. Don't they understand? The Lord sees
everything. I see everything. Paul-Marie Muscat beats his wife. He pays
ten Aves weekly in the confessional and leaves to begin again in exactly the
same way. His wife steals. Last week she went to the market and stole trumpery
jewelry from a vendor's stall. Guillaume Duplessis wants to know if animals have
souls, and weeps when I tell him they don't. Charlotte Edouard thinks her
husband has a mistress--I know he has three, but the confessional keeps me
silent. What children they are! Their demands leave me bloodied and reeling.
But I cannot afford to show weakness. Sheep are not the docile, pleasant
creatures of the pastoral idyll. Any countryman will tell you that. They are
sly, occasionally vicious, pathologically stupid. The lenient shepherd may
find his flock unruly, defiant. I cannot afford to be lenient. That is why,
once a week, I allow myself this one indulgence. Your mouth is as closely
sealed, mon père, as that of the confessional. Your ears are always
open, your heart always kind. For an hour I can lay aside the burden. I can be
fallible.
We have a new parishioner. A Vianne Rocher, a widow, I take it, with a
young child. Do you remember old Blaireau's bakery? Four years since he
died, and the place has been going to ruin ever since. Well, she has taken
the lease on it, and hopes to reopen by the end of the week. I don't expect it
to last. We already have Poitou's bakery across the square, and besides,
she'll never fit in. A pleasant enough woman, but she has nothing in common
with us. Give her two months, and she'll be back to the city where she
belongs. Funny, I never did find out where she was from. Paris, I expect, or
maybe even across the border. Her accent is pure, almost too pure for a
Frenchwoman, with the clipped vowels of the north, though her eyes suggest
Italian or Portuguese descent, and her skin ... But I didn't really see
her. She worked in the bakery all yesterday and today. There is a sheet of
orange plastic over the window, and occasionally she or her little wild daughter
appears to tip a bucket of dirty water into the gutter, or to talk animatedly
with some workman or other. She has an odd facility for acquiring helpers.
Though I offered to assist her, I doubted whether she would find many of our
villagers willing. And yet I saw Clairmont early this morning, carrying a
load of wood, then Pourceau with his ladders. Poitou sent some furniture; I
saw him carrying an armchair across the square with the furtive look of a
man who does not wish to be seen. Even that ill-tempered backbiter Narcisse,
who flatly refused to dig over the churchyard last November, went
over there with his tools to tidy up her garden. This morning at about
eight-forty a delivery van arrived in front of the shop. Duplessis, who was
walking his dog at the usual time, was just passing at that moment, and she
called him over to help her unload. I could see he was startled by the
request--for a second I was almost certain he would refuse--one hand halfway to
his hat. She said something then--I didn't hear what it was--and I heard her
laughter ringing across the cobbles. She laughs a great deal, and makes
many extravagant comical gestures with her arms. Again a city trait, I suppose.
We are accustomed to a greater reserve in the people around us, but I
expect she means well. A violet scarf was knotted gypsy-fashion around her
head, but most of her hair had escaped from beneath it and was streaked
with white paint. She didn't seem to mind. Duplessis could not recall later
what she had said to him, but said in his diffident way that the delivery was
nothing, only a few boxes, small but quite heavy, and some open crates
containing kitchen utensils. He did not ask what was in the boxes, though he
doubts such a small supply of anything would go very far in a bakery.
Do not imagine, mon père, that I spent my day watching the bakery.
It is simply that it stands almost immediately opposite my own house--the one
that was yours, mon père, before all this. Throughout the last day and
a half there has been nothing but hammering and painting and whitewashing and
scrubbing until in spite of myself I cannot help but be curious to see the
result. I am not alone in this; I overheard Madame Clairmont gossiping
self-importantly to a group of friends outside Poitou's of her husband's work;
there was talk of "red shutters" before they noticed me and subsided into
sly muttering. As if I cared. The new arrival has certainly provided food for
gossip, if nothing else. I find the orange-covered window catches the eye at
the strangest times. It looks like a huge bonbon waiting to be unwrapped,
like a remaining slice of the carnival. There is something unsettling about
its brightness and the way the plastic folds catch the sun; I will be happy
when the work is finished and the place is a bakery once more.
The nurse is trying to catch my eye. She thinks I tire you. How can you
bear them, with their loud voices and nursery manner? Time for our rest,
now, I think. Her archness is jarring, unbearable. And yet she means
kindly, your eyes tell me. Forgive them, they know not what they do. I
am not kind. I come here for my own relief, not yours. And yet I like to
believe my visits give you pleasure, keeping you in touch with the hard edges
of a world gone soft and featureless. Television an hour a night, turning five
times a day, food through a tube. To be talked over as if you were an
object--Can he hear us? Do you think he understands?--your opinions
unsought, discarded ... To be closed from everything, and yet to feel, to think
... This is the truth of hell, stripped of its gaudy medievalisms. This loss of
contact. And yet I look to you to teach me communication. Teach me hope.
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