"Yvonne is our family genius, n'est-ce pas, ma chère? She has studied art, she has studied philosophy, she has read every book that was ever printed in the world. N'est-ce pas, ma chèrie? Now she is pretending to be our housekeeper, she is living like a nun, and in two months she will be married to Thomas."
"And she types," said Jonathan, God alone knew why.
A letter slowly disgorged itself from the printer. Yvonne was looking at him, and he saw the left side of her face in naked detaiclass="underline" the straight, untamed eye, her father's Slavic brow and uncompromising jaw, the silk-fine hairs on the cheekbone, and the side of her strong neck as it descended into her shirt. She was wearing her key chain like a necklace, and as she straightened herself the keys settled with a clink between her breasts.
She stood up, tall and at first glance mannish. They shook hands; it was her idea. He felt no hesitation. Why should he, Beauregard, new to Esperance and life? Her palm was firm and dry. She was wearing jeans, and again it was her left side that he noticed by the light of the desk lamp: the tight denim creases that stretched from the crotch across her left thigh. After that it was the formal precision of her touch.
You're a retired wildcat, he decided, as she calmly returned his glance. You took early lovers. You rode pillion on Harley-Davidsons while you were high on pot or worse. Now at twenty-something you've reached a plateau, known otherwise as compromise. You're too sophisticated for the provinces but too provincial for the city. You're engaged to marry someone boring, and you're struggling to make him more. You are Jed but on a downward slope. You are Jed with Sophie's gravitas.
She dressed him, with her mother looking on.
* * *
The staff uniforms were hung in a walk-in airing cupboard on the half-landing one flight down. Yvonne led the way, and by the time she opened the cupboard door he knew that for all her outdoor manners, she had a woman's walk ― neither the swagger of a tomboy nor the watch-me roll of a teenager, but the straight-hipped authority of a grown and sexual woman.
"For the kitchen, Jacques wears white and only white, and laundered every day, Yvonne. Never the same clothes from one day to the next, Jacques; it is a rule of my house, as everybody knows. At the Babette, one is passionately conscious of hygiene. Tant pis d'abord."
While her mother chattered, Yvonne held first the while jacket against him, then the elastic-topped white trousers. Then she ordered him to go into room 34 and try them on. Her brusqueness, perhaps for the benefit of her mother, had an edge of sarcasm. When he came back, her mother insisted that the sleeves were long, which they were not, but Yvonne shrugged and took them up with pins, her hands brushing indifferently against Jonathan's and the warmth of her body mingling with his own.
"You are comfortable?" she asked him as if she didn't give a damn.
"Jacques is always comfortable. He has inner resources, n'est-ce pas, Jacques?"
Madame Latulipe wished to know about his extramural preferences. Did Jacques like to dance? Jonathan replied that he was prepared for anything but not perhaps quite yet. Did he sing, play an instrument, act, paint? All these pastimes and more were available in Esperance, Madame Latulipe assured him. Perhaps he would like to meet some girls? It would be normal, said Madame Latulipe: many Canadian girls would be interested to hear of life in Switzerland. Courteously prevaricating, Jonathan heard himself say something mad in his excitement:
"Well, I wouldn't get far in these, would I?" he exclaimed, so loudly that he nearly broke out laughing, while he continued to hold out his white sleeves to Yvonne. "The police would pick me up at the first crossroads, looking like this, wouldn't they?"
Madame Latulipe let out a peal of the wild laughter that is the signature tune of humourless people. But Yvonne was studying Jonathan with a bold curiosity, eyes on eyes. Was it tactic or was it my infernal calculation? Jonathan wondered afterwards. Or was it suicidal indiscretion that in the first few moments of our meeting I told her I was on the run?
* * *
The success of their new employee quickly delighted the elder Latulipes. They warmed to him with each new skill that he revealed.
In return, Jonathan the more-than-good soldier gave them his every waking hour. There had been a time in his life when he would have sold his soul to escape the kitchens for the elegance of a manager's black jacket. No longer. Breakfast began at six for the men coming back from night shift. Jonathan was waiting for them. An order of twelve-ounce sirloin steak, two eggs and frites was nothing out of the way. Spurning the sacks of frozen chips and ill-smelling catering oil favoured by his patroness, he used fresh potatoes, which he peeled and parboiled, then fried in a blend of sunflower and peanut oils, only the best quality would do. He got a stockpot going, installed an herb chest, made casseroles, pot roasts and dumplings. He found an abandoned set of steel knives and sharpened them to perfection ― no one else must touch them. He revived the old range that Madame Latulipe had variously ruled insanitary, dangerous, ugly or too priceless to be used. When he added salt, he did it in the true chef's way, hand raised high above his head, raining it down from a height. His bible was a tattered copy of his beloved Le Repertoire de la Cuisine, which to his delight he had stumbled upon in a local junkshop.
All this Madame Latulipe observed in him at first with an adoring, not to say obsessive, admiration. She ordered new uniforms for him, new hats, and for two pins she would have ordered him canary waistcoats, lacquered boots and cross-garters. She bought him costly pots and double boilers, which he did his best to use. And when she discovered that he employed a common labourer’s blowtorch to glaze the sugar surface of his crème brulee, she was so impressed by the blending of the artistic with the mundane that she insisted on marching her bohemian ladies into the kitchen for a demonstration.
"He is so refined, our Jacques, n'est-ce pas, Mimi, ma chère? He is reserved, he is handsome, he is skilful, and when he wishes he is extremely dominating. There! We old ladies may say such things. When we see a fine man, we do not have to blush like little girls. Tant pis d'abord, Helene?"
But the same reticence that she so admired in Jonathan also drove her to distraction. If she did not own him, who did? At first she decided he was writing a novel, but a reconnaissance of the papers on his desk yielded nothing but draught letters of complaint to the Swiss Embassy in Ottawa, which the close observer, anticipating her interest, had composed for her discovery.
"You are in love, Jacques?"
"Not that I am aware, madame,"
"You are unhappy? You are lonely?"
"I am blissfully content."
"But to be content is not enough! You must abandon yourself. You must risk everything every day. You must be ecstatic."
Jonathan said his ecstasy was his work.
When lunch was over, Jonathan could have taken the afternoon off, but more often he went down to the basement to help hump crates of empties into the yard while Monsieur Latulipe checked takings: for God help the waiter or bar girl who smuggled in a private bottle to sell at disco prices.
Three evenings a week Jonathan cooked family dinner. They ate it early round the kitchen table, while Madame Latulipe made intellectual conversation.
"You are from Basel, Jacques?"
"Not far from Basel, madame."