A Bakery in Paris, page 16
Nanette banged her spoon against the copper pot forcefully. “They can’t spare space in the balloons for the likes of us. Not that you could get me in one. I’d sooner face the Prussians armed with naught but my meat cleaver. They’d get me in the end, but I’d take a few with me, make no mistake.”
“I know you would, Nanette,” I said, smiling at the image of the valiant woman guarding the kitchens and striking fear in the hearts of the Prussians. “But how will you manage?”
“Oh, don’t you worry. I suspect your father hopes we’ll stay and guard the house against marauders. If that’s what he wants, he can pay the grocer bill for his private standing army when he returns. And I won’t spare any expense. If it costs him half a million francs to keep us fed, so be it.”
“As well he should pay it, but all of Papa’s money won’t help if there isn’t food to be had.”
“Well, we’ll have to hope this cursed siege is over soon,” she said. “It can’t go on forever.”
“The Prussians seem indefatigable,” I said.
“But the Versaillais are not. Do you imagine that Gaspard d’Amboise your parents picked has much reserve left? They’re all gentle born and soft. The Prussians are sturdy boys raised in forests and on farms. Not those fancy city lads and starving factory workers bullied into service. France will surrender soon enough.”
“Shhh!” Marie cautioned, finally breaking into the conversation. “That talk is treasonous according to Monsieur Vigneau. He’ll send you packing.”
Nanette shook her head. “Treason indeed. Your father let poor Gustave go for saying less than that. Loyalty to an emperor without a throne.”
“He fired Gustave?” I asked, incredulous. The man had served us as butler for almost twenty years. For a man who spoke so often of loyalty, my father wasn’t too quick to show it to those who could garner him no favor.
“No notice. No character reference. Just showed him to the door like a maid who got too close to the heir to the family throne.”
I shook my head. “And now they’re leaving you all behind.”
“Don’t mind that. We’ll be fine, Kitchen Mouse. It’s you I worry about.”
“Well, Théo and I can’t afford places on a balloon like my parents. And even if we could, I don’t think Théo would abandon his post. The people on the butte depend on the National Guard for safety and order.”
“So let him stay—but save your own neck. Your parents would have you out of the city in a matter of hours. There isn’t a person in that squalid neighborhood of yours who wouldn’t take your place.”
“But they don’t have that choice, do they?” I asked. “They have no means of escape at all.” Their faces all rushed into my memory in a blur. There were tall and squat, young and old. But none of them—nary a soul—had Papa’s wealth or advantages.
“Which makes you all the more ungrateful for not taking yours while you can. You can play the penitent daughter, face your parents’ wrath for a while, and save your skin.”
I felt my shoulders sag with exhaustion as I tried to keep up my resolve. I was beginning to feel restored by the ample meal, but now the lack of sleep was causing the room to lose focus. “I can’t abandon my husband.” I wanted to speak with the conviction of my heart, but I found no force to put behind my words. Nanette pounced on it like a cat on an injured mouse.
“If he’s alive when this is all over, you can spirit away back to him. If he finds the wrong end of a Prussian mortar, then you can take solace that it didn’t take both of you.”
I blanched at the idea of Montmartre in ruins and Théo lost in the rubble. “Nanette, you can’t possibly mean that. I love him.”
“Oh, I do mean it. Once you have a child of your own, you’ll understand. You’d accept tragedy a thousand times over if it meant sparing your child. And don’t you dare cast it in my face that you aren’t my blood and bone. You couldn’t be more my own if I’d carved you from my own heart and you know it.”
I stood and flung myself into Nanette’s arms. For weeks and weeks I’d had to be strong. To show a brave face for Théo and to do my part. But with Nanette I was free to fall to pieces.
She pressed a kiss to my cheek, then held my face in her hands. “You’ll go with them? Tonight? I’ll have Marie sneak up and get one of your dresses and I can draw you up a hot bath to get the slums scrubbed off you. As aloof as your mother is, she may not have noticed you left.”
Marie coughed.
“Very well, it’s not all that likely, but they’ll probably be so grateful to have you back in one piece, it might stave off the temper tantrum. Dinner is in an hour. You’ll have time to make yourself presentable. Too thin, but there’s nothing we can do for that now. A little rouge at the cheeks and lips to make you look a bit less drawn.”
“Really?” I asked. She’d always been vehemently opposed to women enhancing their appearances with color, disdaining my mother’s indulgence in the practice.
“I didn’t say to paint you like a harlot. I mean to make you look robust and hardy when you see your parents again. You don’t want to go before them looking like a common dustwoman.”
“Nanette . . .” I started to protest. I’d vowed in front of Sébas, Marie, our whole neighborhood, and God himself to remain with Théo in sickness and in health. For better or for worse. Richer or poorer. We’d been tested more in the early days of our marriage than any couple ought to have been, but it was poor resolve to abandon him at the first test of courage.
I opened my mouth to tell her I had to leave. That venturing back to the Place Royale had been folly of the worst sort. She cut the words off before I could draw the breath to speak them.
“Dammit, child. You’re skin and bones. You’re starving. If you don’t starve to death, you’re going to get the grippe or consumption and fade away before winter’s out. If I have ever meant a thing to you, you’ll go with Marie and get ready. Don’t let me live out the rest of my days with your death on my shoulders.”
I wanted to protest, but I choked on my tears. I wanted to be strong. I wanted to stay for Théo.
But as I clung to Nanette, I realized I wasn’t the woman I’d hoped I was.
I’d not looked at my reflection properly in months. Théo didn’t have a mirror, and I rarely bothered with my little hand mirror. I hardly recognized myself as I sat at the vanity, dressed in the soft pink gown made in the most buttery silk I’d ever felt against my skin. The one Maman favored. I was scrubbed clean, dressed for a dinner with the empress herself, and Marie was silently styling my hair by candlelight so as not to alert my parents to my presence before dinner. Marie had clucked as she dressed me, noting how my ribs were visible through my taut skin and how my corset was loose against my frame. Marie had slipped into Maman’s room while she was napping and procured a little pot of rouge to bring some brilliancy back to my complexion. My cheeks looked hollow, and my skin looked chalky, though improved by Marie’s efforts.
I’d been wasting away for weeks, and I looked like a shadow of myself.
But now I was fed, clean, dressed in fine clothes, and laced with scent from the bottle of jasmine perfume I’d left behind.
Marie squeezed my shoulder and snuck out. Dinner would be in ten minutes, and I would make my appearance at the table as though I’d never left and hope for the best.
Maman and Papa had kept my room much the way I’d left it. They’d gone through the room looking for some clues to explain my departure but hadn’t sold off my dresses or the trinkets I’d left behind. They were hopeful I’d return. They’d had people looking for me. They’d alerted the police. Nanette and Marie had kept my secret, and it was only for this they hadn’t found me. But even with their silence, had it not been for the chaos of the siege, my parents likely would have found me by now.
But would their spies have recognized me? Would they have seen the privileged girl in the face of the humble baker? It was hard to imagine that they would have seen her in the tired gaze of the woman peddling bread.
I watched the hands of the little enameled clock on the vanity click-click-clicking away toward the appointed hour.
I thought of Théo. I wondered if he’d come home yet. I wondered if he was worried for me. Even more frantic than my parents had been. I thought of Sébas comforting him over too much wine, convincing him it was better I was away and safe. I imagined Pierrine telling him that she knew I’d run off one day. That I wasn’t hard enough for life on the butte.
I hated that she was right.
I wanted to be strong enough to face the hardships ahead with Théo. The hunger, the threat of Prussian artillery.
But the thought of another night, willing sleep to come so I could ignore the gnawing pain in my gut was beyond what I could endure.
I was weak and I hated myself for it.
I looked at the clock again and knew I could no longer tarry.
The woman in the mirror looked back at me, and while she was better dressed and groomed, the tiredness still lingered in the green eyes. It would take more than sleep to alleviate it. More than a good meal. It was a weariness that went bone-deep.
I left my room and padded down to the dining room as I had done thousands of times in the years I lived there.
I could envision a dozen different reactions my parents might have to my return. Relief. Joy. Fury.
Indifference.
I stood at the door to the dining room, my hand on the door handle.
I didn’t have the courage to return to Théo, but neither did I have the courage to walk through the door.
I could hear animated voices from within the room. They were leaving within hours. This would be the last meal they would take in this house, likely for months, if not longer. For Papa to leave this house, his beloved monument to his own successes, meant that he truly believed the Prussians would be victorious.
It must have cost him dearly to admit as much, but at least the children would be safe. Sweet Gislène and the little rascal Antoine deserved to be safe.
But so did everyone else in Paris.
There wasn’t a person in the whole of the city who didn’t deserve to sit down to a warm meal and to go to bed that night without fear of a Prussian shell destroying his home and cutting short his life.
There wasn’t a soul in Paris—even old Jacquot or the fiend Mercier—who didn’t deserve the chance to have a life where they didn’t have to work themselves like plow horses simply to have their basic needs met.
That was what Théo was fighting for. It was the cause he’d taught me to believe in.
It was a cause worth fighting for.
Worth dying for.
And so was Théo. I’d made a vow to love him for the rest of my days, and I was not going to forsake him.
I removed my hand from the door handle and sprinted down to the kitchens. I didn’t have time to change back into my simple linen dress, so I’d have to return home in the preposterous satin confection of a dress. I would look a fool but would appear less ridiculous than I felt.
Nanette looked up from the stove which she was giving its nightly scrub as I ran in, breathless. She shook her head, understanding what my presence meant.
“I’d never be able to live with myself. Even if I survived the winter, I’d die of guilt. You have to understand that.”
Nanette averted her eyes back to the stove and her scrub brush. “I do. I wish I didn’t, but I do.”
I closed the gap between us and kissed her cheek. “Be safe, please. Don’t do anything heroic to save this place, no matter what Papa might wish. Nothing matters as much as you do.”
She nodded. “Same thing to you. Don’t get yourself killed if you can help it, you wee idiot. There are cats aplenty out there, Kitchen Mouse, and none of them would mind making a meal of you.”
“I know that all too well,” I said. The months in Montmartre had taught me as much.
“And take your basket with you,” she said, pointing her brush to the table where my marketing basket sat. I peered in to find it filled with food from the cellars. Onions, broth, potatoes, salted meat . . . it would feed us for a week if we were careful.
I blinked at her in confusion.
“I know you well enough, Kitchen Mouse. There was no way I could talk enough sense in you to leave with your parents. I can’t do much for you, but I can at least do that. Now go before you get strangled on the bank of the Seine before you make it home.”
I kissed her cheek and wrapped my tattered woolen shawl around my shoulders. It had to look asinine contrasted with the satin gown, but nothing mattered more than getting home. I hoisted the basket off the table, embracing both Nanette and Marie with one free arm before I rushed out into the night.
The hour it took to find my way back to Montmartre felt interminable, and Théo looked distraught as I crossed the threshold to our apartment.
He scooped me into his arms, and I could feel his ragged breath grow steady as he calmed himself. “My God, Lisette. I didn’t know what to think. I thought I’d lost you. I’ve never been more frightened in my life.”
He looked me up and down, arching a brow at the sight of my fine clothes and well-coiffed hair.
“I was lost,” I said. “In a manner of speaking. But I’m home now. I’m sorry I worried you.”
“You’re safe, that’s all that matters,” he said, placing a kiss on my forehead. “And thank God for it.”
“Let me make you something to eat,” I said, thinking of the bounty Nanette had provided us.
I made him a hearty meal of onion soup, but had none for myself, still ashamed of my gluttony that afternoon. We prepared for bed knowing that we would at least not starve that Christmas.
We were far luckier than many.
That night, before turning in to bed, I looked out the window to look at the star-studded sky over Paris, scanning to see signs of the balloon that would carry my parents and siblings to safety. I saw a vague shape on the horizon, and couldn’t be sure it was them, but blew a kiss, and with it all my wishes for a safe journey.
Clafoutis aux fruits
One of Nanette’s favorite uses for small amounts of fruits on point of spoiling when the quantity isn’t sufficient to make preserves. Especially well-suited for all sorts of berries.
Sprinkle half a cup of fruit-based liqueur (Nanette favors cherry brandies) over one pound of berries and leave them to soak for an hour or more. Combine one-half cup milk, one-half cup cream, and one spoonful of plain liqueur infused with vanilla. Remove from heat as soon as it begins to boil. Whisk four eggs and five ounces of sugar until creamy. Stir in two spoonfuls of flour until just smooth (lesson learned again: do not overmix). Slowly add the egg mixture to the hot cream (another lesson learned: if you do this too quickly, your eggs will scramble).
Place the fruit in the bottom of a buttered mold and spoon batter over the top. Cook in a medium oven for almost half an hour.
Best served warm with unhealthy quantities of Chantilly cream.
Recipe notes: Nanette usually prepared the dish with cherries. Experiment with currants, blackberries, or blueberries. Consider apricots and peaches. Experiment with marinating the fruits in rum, cognac, or Calvados.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Micheline
Cooking with Laurent felt as natural as breathing, especially at home and away from the pressures of the academy. We moved in harmony in the bistro’s kitchen, chopping the vegetables and browning the meat. We put it in the oven and Laurent set to work on the clafoutis. I looked over Lisette’s comments on the subject of clafoutis and found that she and Laurent agreed on much. It was a comforting thought.
“You’ve been cooking a long while,” I said. It wasn’t a question: he moved with a practiced efficiency that I envied.
“I have,” he confirmed. “My mother taught me. I don’t have sisters, and with a pack of younger brothers, Maman needed a hand in the kitchen. Papa scoffed at the idea of one of his boys in the kitchen at first, but Maman squelched it quick enough. She needed the help and I was a fair hand at it. It’s come in handy more times than I can count. It helped me make friends when I served, that’s for sure. A taste of home was always welcome.”
“I’m sure it was,” I said. “What was it like to serve?”
He grew somber. “Some things are best left unsaid. But suffice it to say, there was a lot more brutality than there was blackberry clafoutis.”
“That I can only imagine too well,” I said.
“We need more flour,” he announced, ready to change the conversation.
“In the cellar,” I said. My stomach lurched but I volunteered to fetch it. I wouldn’t have him see me acting a fool.
I paused at the top of the stairs and forced some air into my lungs. I made my way down, scooped up a huge bin full of flour and ran back upstairs. I placed it on the counter next to Laurent and forced my heart to slow. I placed my hand over the face of Maman’s watch and focused on the tick-tick-tick it made. Dependable. Even. I wasn’t lying in a ball sobbing on the floor of the cellar. It was progress.
“You’re white as a sheet,” he said. “And shaking.”
“I’m fine,” I insisted. “I—I just hate the cellar.”
Comprehension flooded his face. He wrapped an arm around me and pressed his lips to my temple. “We all have our cellars to contend with.”
It was a simple truth. Anyone who survived the war had their scars. And as much as I struggled, I knew my burden was far less than many others. But sometimes, it was hard to be grateful.
Laurent didn’t release me. He wrapped his other arm around me, and cradled my head against his shoulder. “You have been so strong for so long. You’re doing an amazing job with Sylvie and Noémie. You’re finding your stride in class. But it’s okay to be weak sometimes. To let down your guard.”
I melted into his embrace. I had been in need of this reassurance for so long.
