Page 19 of The Strawberry Thief
Try me. Taste me. Test me.
The chocolate is cooler now: the silky consistency has returned. I return the pan to the burner. Tiny petals of steam lift from the glossy surface. They look like the ghosts of dead flowers. Scrying with chocolate is a skill that my mother never managed. It was too domestic a magic, perhaps; or maybe she simply did not trust the visions in the vapour. She preferred her Tarot cards, the images worn and familiar. But chocolate and I are old friends: we have travelled a long way, and we have always understood each other.
Try me. Taste me.
I reach through the smoke: now I can smell the heated copper of the pan; the scent of the chocolate mixture. Untreated cacao beans are red; the drink of the ancient Olmecs looked like blood mixed with water.
Test me.
I see a flock of black birds rising into a red sky: in the smoke their cries are like tiny shards of silver. Black birds are a sign of loss; that someone dear is leaving.
Narcisse?But the chocolate vapours tell the future, not the past. And now comes the scent of tobacco and cardamom from the copper pan; the heart’s note of the Criollo bean, clear and persistent as memory. It smells of stories told at night around campfires and in cheap hotel rooms. It smells of brief and passionate love, of leisurely nights under strange stars. It smells of the river, and all of its paths leading to the triumphant sea; and beyond that to London, and Moscow, and Rome, and Morocco, and further beyond, to places we only ever saw in magazines, though the wind would bring us the occasional reminder of places yet to be seen, to be known, teasing and seductive.
What about Sydney? Reykjavik? Madagascar? Tokyo? Or would you prefer Bora Bora, or Tahiti, or the Azores? Come with me, follow me, trust me, and I will give you the world—
But the sly wind always lies: promising so much, and yet bringing only heartbreak. Its voice used to sound like my mother, but now it sounds like someone else: slightly drawling, humorous, a rasp at the back of the laughing throat. Why do those black birds fly, and for whom? Not Anouk. Not Rosette. I have sacrificed too much to let my daughters go with the wind. Who, then?
Find me. Feel me. Face me.
The call from the shop across the square still resonates at the back of my mind. It could almost be my own voice, the Vianne I was when Anouk was born, echoing across the years like the call of a hungry animal.
Find me. Feel me.
I banish the voice.Tsk-tsk. Begone!I return once again to the chocolate.
Now for the base note of the bean: a wild and bitter blackberry, like fruit picked after the turn of the year. It smells of woodland, and falling leaves, and the dark scent of winter spices. And it reminds me of something – maybe a dream, or something I saw a long time ago—
That is all the vapour shows. Those black birds. That red sky. I check the burner: it has gone out. Rather, someone has turned it off: he is standing in the doorway, watching me in silence. Even now, after all these years, I am not yet used to the depth and quality of Roux’s silences. This one is attentive, aware; the silence of a wild thing unsure of its reception.
‘The couverture was burning,’ he says.
‘I had it under control.’
‘Okay.’
I have not seen Roux since before Narcisse died. The business of the oak wood has kept him stubbornly distant. Even Rosette has not spoken to him, although I know Reynaud has tried. But Roux has never owned a house, or been in charge of land. He has always mistrusted these things, and the people who value them.
‘I went to Narcisse’s grave,’ he says. ‘It was too crowded earlier.’
I know why he didn’t come. Roux has always hated Reynaud, for reasons I can understand. I once hoped he might soften, but Roux keeps grudges the way other people hoard possessions.
‘It’s good to see you again.’ He smiles. I put my arms around him. He smells good: a blend of woodsmoke, oil and soap, and the ominous scent of the river.
‘The chocolate,’ he says.
The vapour has cooled. The chocolate is starting to harden again. Over the surface hovers a single ghostly question-mark.What do you want, Vianne Rocher? What is it you really want?
I banish the last of the vapour, and with it – for a time, at least – the sound of those black birds on the wind.
I close my eyes. ‘The chocolate can wait.’
And yet, I find myself watching us with an air of strange detachment; a sense of anticipated loss that cocoons every moment in spider silk. His mouth is warm on mine; his scent is warm and good and comforting. But even so, I cannot quite forget the sound of my mother’s voice, and that phrase she keeps repeating; a phrase of which the meaning now seems even less clear than it did the night when my Rosette was born, and I cast the circle in the sand:
A cat crossed your path in the snow, and mewed. The Hurakan was blowing.
