All the Days and Nights Page 7

  From her place under the oak tree she watched the colored woman go out to the trash pile with the flat square box, set a match to the accumulation of paper and garbage, and return to the kitchen. The little girl waited a moment and then got up and ran to the fire. She found a stick, pulled the burning box onto the grass, and blew out the flames that were licking at it. Then she ran back to the oak tree with her prize. Part of the linen handkerchief was charred and fell apart in her hands, but the flames hadn’t reached the lavender butterfly. The little girl hid the handkerchief under the piece of calico and looked around for a place to put the strawberry box.

  When she came into the house, five minutes later, her eyes were blank and innocent. She had learned that much in a year and a half. Her eyes could keep any secret they wanted to. And the box was safe under the porch, where her mother wouldn’t dare look for it, because of the snake.

  The Pilgrimage

  IN a rented Renault, with exactly as much luggage as the backseat would hold, Ray and Ellen Ormsby were making a little tour of France. It had so far included Vézelay, the mountain villages of Auvergne, the roses and Roman ruins of Provence, and the gorges of the Tarn. They were now on their way back to Paris by a route that was neither the most direct nor particularly scenic, and that had been chosen with one thing in mind — dinner at the Hôtel du Domino in Périgueux. The Richardsons, who were close friends of the Ormsbys in America, had insisted that they go there. “The best dinner I ever had in my entire life,” Jerry Richardson had said. “Every course was something with truffles.” “And the dessert,” Anne Richardson had said, “was little balls of various kinds of ice cream in a beautiful basket of spun sugar with a spun-sugar bow.” Putting the two statements together, Ray Ormsby had persisted in thinking that the ice cream also had truffles in it, and Ellen had given up trying to correct this impression.

  At seven o’clock, they were still sixty-five kilometers from Périgueux, on a winding back-country road, and beginning to get hungry. The landscape was gilded with the evening light. Ray was driving. Ellen read aloud to him from the Guide Gastronomique de la France the paragraph on the Hôtel du Domino: “Bel et confortable établissement à la renommée bien assise et que Mme. Lasgrezas dirige avec beaucoup de bonheur. Grâce à un maître queux qualifé, vous y ferez un repas de grande classe qui vous sera servi dans une élégante salle à manger ou dans un délicieux jardin d’été.…”

  As they drove through village after village, they saw, in addition to the usual painted Cinzano and Rasurel signs, announcements of the spécialité of the restaurant of this or that Hôtel des Sports or de la Poste or du Lion d’Or — always with truffles. In Montignac, there were so many of these signs that Ellen said anxiously, “Do you think we ought to eat here?”

  “No,” Ray said. “Périgueux is the place. It’s the capital of Périgord, and so it’s bound to have the best food.”

  Outside Thenon, they had a flat tire — the seventh in eight days of driving — and the casing of the spare tire was in such bad condition that Ray was afraid to drive on until the inner tube had been repaired and the regular tire put back on. It was five minutes of nine when they drove up before the Hôtel du Domino, and they were famished. Ray went inside and found that the hotel had accommodations for them. The car was driven into the hotel garage and emptied of its formidable luggage, and the Ormsbys were shown up to their third-floor room, which might have been in any plain hotel anywhere in France. “What I’d really like is the roast chicken stuffed with truffles,” Ellen said from the washstand. “But probably it takes a long time.”

  “What if it does,” Ray said. “We’ll be eating other things first.”

  He threw open the shutters and discovered that their room looked out on a painting by Dufy — the large, bare, open square surrounded by stone buildings, with the tricolor for accent, and the sky a rich, stained-glass blue. From another window, at the turning of the stairs on their way down to dinner, they saw the delicious garden, but it was dark, and no one was eating there now. At the foot of the stairs, they paused.

  “You wanted the restaurant?” the concierge asked, and when they nodded, she came out from behind her mahogany railing and led them importantly down a corridor. The maître d’hôtel, in a grey business suit, stood waiting at the door of the dining room, and put them at a table for two. Then he handed them the menu with a flourish. They saw at a glance how expensive the dinner was going to be. A waitress brought plates, glasses, napkins, knives, and forks.

  While Ellen was reading the menu, Ray looked slowly around the room. The “élégante salle à manger” looked like a hotel coffee shop. There weren’t even any tablecloths. The walls were painted a dismal shade of off-mustard. His eyes came to rest finally on the stippled brown dado a foot from his face. “It’s a perfect room to commit suicide in,” he said, and reached for the menu. A moment later he exclaimed, “I don’t see the basket of ice cream!”

  “It must be there,” Ellen said, “Don’t get so excited.”

  “Well, where? Just show me!”

  Together they looked through the two columns of desserts, without finding the marvel in question. “Jerry and Anne were here several days,” Ellen said. “They may have had it in some other restaurant.”

  This explanation Ray would not accept. “It was the same dinner, I remember distinctly.” The full horror of their driving all the way to Périgueux in order to eat a very expensive meal at the wrong restaurant broke over him. In a cold sweat he got up from the table.

  “Where are you going?” Ellen asked.

  “I’ll be right back,” he said, and left the dining room. Upstairs in their room, he dug the Guide Michelin out of a duffel bag. He had lost all faith in the Guide Gastronomique, because of its description of the dining room; the person who wrote that had never set eyes on the Hôtel du Domino or, probably, on Périgueux. In the Michelin, the restaurant of the Hôtel du Domino rated one star and so did the restaurant Le Montaigne, but Le Montaigne also had three crossed forks and spoons, and suddenly it came to him, with the awful clarity of a long-submerged memory at last brought to the surface through layer after layer of consciousness, that it was at Le Montaigne and not at the Hôtel du Domino that the Richardsons had meant them to eat. He picked up Ellen’s coat and, still carrying the Michelin, went back downstairs to the dining room.

  “I’ve brought you your coat,” he said to Ellen as he sat down opposite her. “We’re in the wrong restaurant.”

  “We aren’t either,” Ellen said. “And even if we were, I’ve got to have something to eat. I’m starving, and it’s much too late now to go looking for —”

  “It won’t be far,” Ray said. “Come on.” He looked up into the face of the maître d’hôtel, waiting with his pencil and pad to take their order.

  “You speak English?” Ray asked.

  The maître d’hôtel nodded, and Ray described the basket of spun sugar filled with different kinds of ice cream.

  “And a spun-sugar bow,” Ellen said.

  The maître d’hôtel looked blank, and so Ray tried again, speaking slowly and distinctly.

  “Omelette?” the maître d’hôtel said.

  “No — ice cream!”

  “Glace,” Ellen said.

  “Et du sucre,” Ray said. “Une —” He and Ellen looked at each other. Neither of them could think of the word for “basket.”

  The maître d’hôtel went over to a sideboard and returned with another menu. “Le menu des glaces,” he said coldly.

  “Vanille” they read, “chocolat, pistache, framboise, fraise, tutti-frutti, praliné …”

  Even if the spun-sugar basket had been on the menu des glaces (which it wasn’t), they were in too excited a state to have found it — Ray because of his fear that they were making an irremediable mistake in having dinner at this restaurant and Ellen because of the dreadful way he was acting.

  “We came here on a pilgrimage,” he said to the maître d’hôtel, in a tense, excited voice that
carried all over the dining room. “We have these friends in America who ate in Périgueux, and it is absolutely necessary that we eat in the place they told us about.”

  “This is a very good restaurant,” the maître d’hôtel said. “We have many spécialités. Foie gras truffé, poulet du Périgord noir, truffes sous la cendre —”

  “I know,” Ray said, “but apparently it isn’t the right one.” He got up from his chair, and Ellen, shaking her head — because there was no use arguing with him when he was like this — got up, too. The other diners had all turned around to watch.

  “Come,” the maître d’hôtel said, taking hold of Ray’s elbow. “In the lobby is a lady who speaks English very well. She will understand what it is you want.”

  In the lobby, Ray told his story again — how they had come to Périgueux because their friends in America had told them about a certain restaurant here, and how it was this restaurant and no other that they must find. They had thought it was the restaurant in the Hôtel du Domino, but since the restaurant of the Hôtel du Domino did not have the dessert that their friends in America had particularly recommended, little balls of ice cream in —

  The concierge, her eyes large with sudden comprehension, interrupted him. “You wanted truffles?”

  OUT on the sidewalk, trying to read the Michelin map of Périgueux by the feeble light of a tall street lamp, Ray said, “Le Montaigne has a star just like the Hôtel du Domino, but it also has three crossed forks and spoons, so it must be better than the hotel.”

  “All those crossed forks and spoons mean is that it is a very comfortable place to eat in,” Ellen said. “It has nothing to do with the quality of the food. I don’t care where we eat, so long as I don’t have to go back there.”

  There were circles of fatigue under her eyes. She was both exasperated with him and proud of him for insisting on getting what they had come here for, when most people would have given in and taken what there was. They walked on a couple of blocks and came to a second open square. Ray stopped a man and woman.

  “Pardon, m’sieur,” he said, removing his hat. “Le restaurant La Montagne, c’est par là” — he pointed — “ou par là?”

  “La Montagne? Le restaurant La Montagne?” the man said dubiously. “Je regrette, mais je ne le connais pas.”

  Ray opened the Michelin and, by the light of the nearest neon sign, the man and woman read down the page.

  “Ooh, LE MonTAIGNE!” the woman exclaimed suddenly.

  “LE MonTAIGNE!” the man echoed.

  “Oui, Le Montaigne,” Ray said, nodding.

  The man pointed across the square.

  STANDING in front of Le Montaigne, Ray again had doubts. It was much larger than the restaurant of the Hôtel du Domino, but it looked much more like a bar than a first-class restaurant. And again there were no tablecloths. A waiter approached them as they stood undecided on the sidewalk. Ray asked to see the menu, and the waiter disappeared into the building. A moment later, a second waiter appeared. “Le menu,” he said, pointing to a standard a few feet away. Le Montaigne offered many specialties, most of them truffés, but not the Richardsons’ dessert.

  “Couldn’t we just go someplace and have an ordinary meal?” Ellen said. “I don’t think I feel like eating anything elaborate any longer.”

  But Ray had made a discovery. “The restaurant is upstairs,” he said. “What we’ve been looking at is the café, so naturally there aren’t any tablecloths.”

  Taking Ellen by the hand, he started up what turned out to be a circular staircase. The second floor of the building was dark. Ellen, convinced that the restaurant had stopped serving dinner, objected to going any farther, but Ray went on, and protesting, she followed him. The third floor was brightly lighted — was, in fact, a restaurant, with white tablecloths, gleaming crystal, and the traditional dark-red plush upholstery, and two or three clients who were lingering over the end of dinner. The maître d’hôtel, in a black dinner jacket, led them to a table and handed them the same menu they had read downstairs.

  “I don’t see any roast chicken stuffed with truffles,” Ellen said.

  “Oh, I forgot that’s what you wanted!” Ray said, conscience-stricken. “Did they have it at the Domino?”

  “No, but they had poulet noir — and here they don’t even have that.”

  “I’m so sorry,” he said. “Are you sure they don’t have it here?” He ran his eyes down the list of dishes with truffles and said suddenly. “There it is!”

  “Where?” Ellen demanded. He pointed to “Tournedos aux truffes du Périgord.” “That’s not chicken,” Ellen said.

  “Well, it’s no good, then,” Ray said.

  “No good?” the maître d’hôtel said indignantly. “It’s very good! Le tournedos aux truffes du Périgord is a spécialité of the restaurant!”

  They were only partly successful in conveying to him that that was not what Ray had meant.

  No, there was no roast chicken stuffed with truffles.

  No chicken of any kind.

  “I’m very sorry,” Ray said, and got up from his chair.

  HE was not at all sure that Ellen would go back to the restaurant in the Hôtel du Domino with him, but she did. Their table was just as they had left it. A waiter and a busboy, seeing them come in, exchanged startled whispers. The maître d’hôtel did not come near them for several minutes after they had sat down, and Ray carefully didn’t look around for him.

  “Do you think he is angry because we walked out?” Ellen asked.

  Ray shook his head. “I think we hurt his feelings, though. I think he prides himself on speaking English, and now he will never again be sure that he does speak it, because of us.”

  Eventually, the maître d’hôtel appeared at their table. Sickly smiles were exchanged all around, and the menu was offered for the second time, without the flourish.

  “What is les truffes sous la cendre?” Ellen asked.

  “It takes forty-five minutes,” the maître d’hôtel said.

  “Le foie gras truffé,” Ray said. “For two.”

  “Le foi gras, O.K.,” the maître d’hôtel said. “Et ensuite?”

  “Œufs en gelée,” Ellen said.

  “Œufs en gelée, O.K.”

  “Le poulet noir,” Ray said.

  “Le poulet noir, O.K.”

  “Et deux Cinzano,” Ray said, on solid ground at last, “avec un morceau de glace et un zeste de citron. S’il vous plaît.”

  The apéritif arrived, with ice and lemon peel, but the wine list was not presented, and Ray asked the waitress for it. She spoke to the maître d’hôtel, and that was the last the Ormsbys ever saw of her. The maître d’hôtel brought the wine list, they ordered the dry white vin du pays that he recommended, and their dinner was served to them by a waiter so young that Ray looked to see whether he was in knee pants.

  The pâté was everything the Richardsons had said it would be, and Ray, to make up for all he had put his wife through in the course of the evening, gave her a small quantity of his, which, protesting, she accepted. The maître d’hôtel stopped at their table and said, “Is it good?”

  “Very good,” they said simultaneously.

  The œufs en gelée arrived and were also very good, but were they any better than or even as good as the œufs en gelée the Ormsbys had had in the restaurant of a hotel on the outskirts of Aix-en-Provence was the question.

  “Is it good?” the maître d’hôtel asked. “Very good,” they said. “So is the wine.”

  The boy waiter brought in the poulet noir — a chicken casserole with a dark-brown Madeira sauce full of chopped truffles.

  “Is it good?” Ray asked when the waiter had finished serving them and Ellen had tasted the pièce de résistance.

  “It’s very good,” she said. “But I’m not sure I can taste the truffles.”

  “I think I can,” he said, a moment later.

  “With the roast chicken, it probably would have been quite easy,” Ellen said. />
  “Are you sure the Richardsons had roast chicken stuffed with truffles?” Ray asked.

  “I think so,” Ellen said. “Anyway, I know I’ve read about it.”

  “Is it good?” the maître d’hôtel, their waiter, and the waiter from a neighboring table asked in succession.

  “Very good,” the Ormsbys said.

  Since they couldn’t have the little balls of various kinds of ice cream in a basket of spun sugar with a spun-sugar bow for dessert, they decided not to have any dessert at all. The meal came to an abrupt end with café filtre.

  Intending to take a short walk before going to bed, they heard dance music in the square in front of Le Montaigne, and found a large crowd there, celebrating the annual fair of Périgueux. There was a seven-piece orchestra on a raised platform under a canvas, and a few couples were dancing in the street. Soon there were more.

  “Do you feel like dancing?” Ray asked.

  The pavement was not as bad for dancing as he would have supposed, and something happened to them that had never happened to them anywhere in France before — something remarkable. In spite of their clothes and their faces and the Michelin he held in one hand, eyes constantly swept over them or past them without pausing. Dancing in the street, they aroused no curiosity and, in fact, no interest whatever.

  AT midnight, standing on the balcony outside their room, they could still hear the music, a quarter of a mile away.

  “Hasn’t it been a lovely evening!” Ellen said. “I’ll always remember dancing in the street in Périgueux.”

  Two people emerged from the cinema, a few doors from the Hôtel du Domino. And then a few more — a pair of lovers, a woman, a boy, a woman and a man carrying a sleeping child.

  “The pâté was the best I ever ate,” Ellen said.

  “The Richardsons probably ate in the garden,” Ray said. “I don’t know that the dinner as a whole was all that good,” he added thoughtfully. And then, “I don’t know that we need tell them.”