Шоколад / Chocolat - стр. 48
“And flags – bunting – ”
“Streamers-”
“And a chocolate Jesus on the cross with – ”
“The Pope in white chocolate – ”
“Chocolate lambs – ”
“Egg-rolling competitions, treasure hunts – ”
“We’ll invite everyone, it’ll be – ”
“Cool!”
“So cool – ”
I waved my arms at them for silence, laughing. An arabesque of acrid chocolate powder followed my gesture.
“You make the posters,” I told them. “Leave the rest to me.”
Anouk leaped at me, arms out flung. She smells of salt and rainwater, a cuprous scent of soil and waterlogged vegetation. Her tangled hair is barbed with droplets.
“Come up to my room!” she shrieked in my ear. “They can, can’t they, Maman, say they can! We can start right now, I’ve got paper, crayons – ”
“They can,” I said.
An hour later the display window was embellished by a large poster – Anouk’s design executed by Jeannot. The text, in large shaky green letters, read:
Around the text capered various creatures of fanciful design. A figure in a robe and a tall crown I took to be the Pope. Cutout shapes of bells had been pasted thickly at his feet. All the bells were smiling.
I spent most of the afternoon tempering the new batch of couverture and working on the window display. A thick covering of green tissue-paper for the grass. Paper flowers – daffodils and daisies, Anouk’s contribution – pinned to the window-frame. Green-covered tins which once contained cocoa, powder, stacked up against each other to make a craggy mountainside. Crinkly Cellophane paper wraps it like a covering of ice. Running past and winding into the valley, a river of blue silk ribbon, upon which a cluster of houseboats sit quiet and unreflecting. And below-a procession of chocolate figures, cats, dogs, rabbits, some with raisin eyes, pink marzipan ears, tails made of licorice whips with sugar flowers between their teeth… And mice. On every available surface, mice. Running up the sides of the hill, nestling in corners, even on the riverboats. Pink and white sugar coconut mice, chocolate mice of all colours, variegated mice marbled through with truffle and maraschino cream, delicately tinted mice, sugar-dappled frosted mice. And standing above them, the Pied Piper resplendent in his red and yellow, a barleysugar flute in one hand, his hat in the other. I have hundreds of moulds in my kitchen, thin plastic ones for the eggs and the figures, ceramic ones for the cameos and liqueur chocolates. With them I can recreate any facial expression and superimpose it upon a hollow shell, adding hair and detail with a narrow-gauge pipe, building up torso and limbs in separate pieces and fixing them in place with wires and melted chocolate. A little camouflage – a red cloak, rolled from marzipan. A tunic, a hat of the same material, a long feather brushing the ground at his booted feet. My Pied Piper looks a little like Roux with his red hair and motley garb.
I cannot help myself; the window is inviting enough, but I cannot resist the temptation to gild it a little, closing my eyes, to light the whole with a golden glow of welcome. An imaginary sign which flashes like a beacon COME TO ME. I want to give, to make people happy; surely that can do no harm. I realize that this welcome may be in response to Caroline’s hostility to the travellers, but in the joy of the moment I can see no harm in that. I want them to come. Since we last spoke I have glimpsed them occasionally, but they seem suspicious and furtive, like urban foxes, ready to scavenge but not to be approached. Mostly I see Roux, their ambassador – carrying boxes or plastic bags of groceries – sometimes Zezette, the thin girl with the pierced eyebrow. Last night two children tried to sell lavender outside the church, but Reynaud moved them on. I tried to call them back, but they were too wary, watching me with slant-eyed hostility before pelting off down the hill into Les Marauds.