Шоколад / Chocolat - стр. 19

And here he is again, just as I thought we had found our place at last, Anouk and I. Standing at the door like the angel at the gate.

Well, this time, I swear I will not run. Whatever he does. However he turns the people of this place against me. His face is as smooth and certain as the turn of an evil card. And he has declared himself my enemy – and I his as clearly as if we had both spoken aloud.

“I’m so glad we understand each other.” My voice is bright and cold.

“And I.”

Something in his eyes, some light where there was none before, alerts me. Amazingly, he is enjoying this, this closing of two enemies for battle; nowhere in his armoured certainty is there room for the thought that he might not win.

He turns to go, very correct, with just the right inclination of the head. Just so. Polite contempt. The barbed and poisonous weapon of the righteous.

“M’sieur le Cure!” For a second he turns back, and I press a small beribboned packet into his hands. “For you. On the house.”

My smile brooks no refusal, and he takes the packet with bemused embarrassment.

“My pleasure.”

He frowns slightly, as if the thought of my pleasure pains him.

“But I don’t really like – ”

“Nonsense.” The tone is brisk, unaswerable. “I’m sure you’ll like these. They just remind me so much of you.”

Behind his calm exterior I think he looks startled. Then he is gone, the little packet white in his hand, into the grey rain. I notice that he does not run for shelter but walks with the same measured tread, not indifferent but with the look of one who relishes even that small discomfort.

I like to think he will eat the chocolates. More probably he will give them away, but I like to think he will at least open them and look… Surely he can spare one glance for the sake of curiosity.

They remind me so much of you.

A dozen of my best huitres de Saint-Malo, those small flat pralines shaped to look like tightly closed oysters.

Fifteen customers yesterday. today, thirty-four. Guillaume was among them; he bought a cornet of florentines and a cup of chocolate. Charly was with him, curling obediently beneath a stool while, from time to time, Guillaume dropped a piece of brown sugar into his expectant, insatiable jaws.

It takes time, Guillaume tells me, for a newcomer to be accepted in Lansquenet. Last Sunday, he says, Cure Reynaud preached such a virulent sermon on the topic of abstinence that the opening of La Celeste Praline that very morning had seemed a direct affront against the Church. Caroline Clairmont – who is beginning another of her diets was especially cutting, saying loudly to her friends in the congregation that it was “Quite shocking, just like stories of Roman decadence, my dears, and if that woman thinks she can just shimmy into town like the Queen of Sheba disgusting the way she flaunts that illegitimate child of hers as if – oh, the chocolates? Nothing special, my dears, and far too pricey.” The general conclusion amongst the ladies was that ‘it’– whatever it was – wouldn’t last. I would be out of town within a fortnight. And yet, the number of my customers has doubled since yesterday, amongst them a number of Madame Clairmont’s cronies, bright-eyed if a little shameful, telling each other it was curiosity, that was all, that all they wanted was to see for themselves.