He took the first tortilla off the heat and slid it onto a warming plate, put the second one on to cook and rolled out a third. Then he reached for a frying pan, put it on the stove and turned the burner on.
‘My grandmother always kept the baking stone clean as a whistle. When my grandfather came back ashore, he used to pick up a shell and blow into it like a foghorn. That meant he’d got fresh fish. There was a bench outside the local market and he and his men would gut the fish and sell them right there. He would always prepare some for my grandmother and give them to me wrapped in newspaper so I could take them to her.’
He placed a fillet in the pan and flipped the second tortilla.
‘I had my own little part of the stone, where I was in charge of cooking the tortillas. On her side of the stone, she used to cook the fish. She always said it was a job to do together. I thought she meant the tortillas and the fish and the spices all had to be cooked at the same time, but it wasn’t that. What she meant was that it was a job for the two of us. Her and me.’
Or him and his son. He continued to flip the fish and the tortillas, one after the other, like he and Sébastien had done the evening before.
‘They weren’t the same kind of tortillas as these. My grandmother used masa harina – corn flour – and she kneaded her dough on a big butcher-block worktop that my grandfather put in the kitchen for her. She used to make bread too, and she baked that on one side of the oven. She had to turn it three times so it would bake evenly and wouldn’t burn.’
Joaquin finished frying the fish, opened the wine, poured two glasses and put one beside Simone without making eye contact, then slid another circle of dough onto the hotplate. Simone looked at the wheat tortillas breathing on the heat, then turned her gaze to the stack Moralès was building on the warming plate. An aroma of warm flour, like freshly baked bread, filled the air.
‘When my tortillas were ready, I had to push them to her side of the oven. Then she would take the tongs and put the hot, flaky fish right inside. When people heard the sound of the foghorn shell, some would go down to the market, and others would come straight to my grandmother’s place and stand in line. When the tacos were ready, she would put them on a sheet of newspaper on the sill of the open window, straight on the tiles. People would just put the money in a pot and walk away with their tacos.’
The stack of tortillas now complete, he slid them from the warming plate into a serving dish.
‘My grandmother had a little wooden stool that her father had built. She always said it would be more comfortable to sit on that than to cook standing, but she hardly ever used it. She was always on her feet when she was kneading the dough and cooking the fish. But it was her special stool and we all knew it. My mother always reminded me every summer she drove me there. Sometimes, when it was just the two of us, my grandmother would look at the stool and say ‘Sientate, Joaquin’ – sit down – with a nod of her chin.’
Methodically, Moralès scraped the floured work surface clean with the blunt edge of the knife.
‘And so, I would go and sit on that wooden stool. I barely dared to breathe. It felt like I was sitting on something fragile, so precious and mysterious. I never stayed for long, because when you’re eight, even twelve years old, that kind of fragility doesn’t sit well with you, and besides, there was so much more to do than sit on my backside – fishing by the river mouth, chasing after lizards, swimming in the ocean, collecting driftwood.’
He looked at the tortillas without really seeing them.
‘When my grandmother passed away, my mother sold everything the old lady owned, because she herself had no use for any of it. The only thing she kept was the wooden stool. She held it on her knees in the car all the way back to our house. She couldn’t stop crying.’
He carried the tortillas, the fish and the salsa to a table by the window. Then he returned to the kitchen for the plates. He could see the sea in the window.
‘One day, Cyrille Bernard told me the past was made up of dried, hardened memories worn into the grain of the kitchen counter. Those moments, diluted in the saltwater of our sorrow, he said, would rise up again, flaying everything to shreds as they shoot to the surface of our minds. Since I’ve been here in the Gaspé, it’s not just the saltwater of sorrow that’s been welling inside me, but the seawater I’ve swallowed in spite of myself. It brings everything surging back to the surface.’
He went back to the kitchen and turned to Simone Lord, observing the delicate crow’s feet at the corners of her eyes, the soft lines on her cheeks that deepened her gaze, and everything else she must be harbouring that made her beautiful.
‘What do I have left of my parents now? A wooden stool? A flayed accent when I speak? What do we really pass down to our children? Clumsy gestures, and hurtful words? A desire to be swallowed up by the horizon? A special way to slice fish and cook tortillas?’
Dumbstruck by his outpouring, Simone reached for her glass of wine and drank half of it in one go, only to choke a little and turn away slightly. As she lowered her head to cough discreetly, Joaquin saw the beguiling vertebra protrude ever so gently at the nape of her neck, so close it was unbearable. Could it be that the many images of beauty that had splintered into fragments in the last few weeks were condensing into this woman right here, right now? With a swallow, he glanced at the counter where he had just prepared, alone, the same meal he had made with Sébastien just yesterday, the same meal he prepared once upon a time in Mexico. Could it be that our own life stories, just like our perception of beauty, was a collection of fragments that were forever shattering and rearranging themselves?
Visibly ill at ease, Simone took a sip of wine to calm and collect herself, or at least try.
‘It was Érik Lefebvre who asked me to come here,’ she blurted. ‘He said you wanted to speak to someone from the coast guard who was on the rescue team when Firmin Cyr’s shrimp trawler went down – someone who saw Bruce Roberts. I was there.’
He plunged into her deep, green eyes and gave her the signal.
‘Come and eat while it’s still hot.’
Friday 5th October
The previous night, Jacques Forest had called the auberge to remind Moralès of the plan to take him and Sébastien fishing aboard Annie Arsenault’s boat. Just dress warmly, Forest had said, he’d take care of lunch and all the gear. Moralès hadn’t had the heart to turn the invitation down, even though the idea of a jaunt at sea didn’t exactly fill him with enthusiasm.
Last night, he had talked a lot. Simone had been there, but it wasn’t for her that he had spoken those words. Moralès took a sip of coffee. Who was he kidding? Of course she was the one he had been speaking to. If she hadn’t been there, he wouldn’t have told that story aloud, not to himself. He couldn’t remember having opened up to anyone like that. Except to Cyrille Bernard, these last few months.
Sébastien hadn’t come back to sleep at the auberge. As he had thrown Sébastien’s phone in the dish water, Joaquin had no way of knowing whether his son had even remembered the invitation. At five in the morning, Joaquin scribbled a note to Sébastien and left the auberge. He was hoping his son would be waiting for him down at the wharf. But he wasn’t. Disappointed and irked, he parked and got out of the car.
Jacques Forest and Annie Arsenault were already aboard the little fishing boat and they waved as they saw him approach. The detective had expected they’d be going aboard something resembling a glorified rowboat, but this vessel had a decent outboard motor and an aluminium hull, sat deeper in the water and looked altogether far more seaworthy than he would have thought.