The Hundred-Foot Journey Read online

  “Poor Mayur,” Auntie said, whirling her wet nails through the air. “He so liked serving in the garden. I must tell him.”

  The hallway filled with the swish-swish of her yellow silk sari as she went in search of her husband. When I turned back to address Papa, I found he had already slipped from the bar stool. The light was filtering through the stained glass of the hall windows, and the air swirled with silver dust motes. I could hear Papa yelling down the telephone at the back of the house. At his lawyer. And I knew then: No good will come of this.

  No good.

  Papa’s counterstrike took place just days later, when the bureaucrat from Lumière’s Department of Environment, Traffic, and Ski Lift Maintenance parked an official Renault van in front of Le Saule Pleureur. It was a poetic justice of sorts, for this was the very same official who had closed down our garden restaurant and made us take down the outdoor stereo speakers.

  “Abbas, come, come,” Auntie screeched, and the entire family, in great anticipation, poured through the front door to stand on the gravel drive and watch the goings-on across the street.

  Two men emerged from the Renault van. They held chain saws. Filterless cigarettes hung from their mouths as they spat the local patois at each other. Papa smacked his lips with satisfaction, as if he had just popped a samosa into his mouth.

  Madame Mallory opened the front door of her restaurant, a cardigan draped over her shoulders. The environmental officer stood on her path, squinting up at her as he cleaned his spectacles with a white handkerchief.

  “Why are you here? And these men?”

  The official took a letter from his front shirt pocket and handed it over to Madame Mallory. She read it in silence, her head moving back and forth.

  “You can’t. I won’t permit it.” Mallory smartly tore up the letter.

  The young man exhaled slowly. “I am sorry, Madame Mallory, but it is quite clear. You are in violation of code 234bh. It’s got to come down. Or at least the—”

  But Mallory had moved over to her ancient weeping willow, its high branches swooping so elegantly down over the front fence and the town pavement. “Non,” she said acidly. “Non. Absolument pas.”

  Mallory wrapped her arms around the trunk and straddled it lewdly with her knees. “You will have to kill me first. This tree is a Lumière landmark, my restaurant’s trademark, everything—”

  “That’s not the point, madame. Please step back. Local ordnance clearly prohibits trees from hanging over the pavement. It’s dangerous. A branch could break—such an old tree—and hurt a child or an elderly person walking by below. And we’ve had complaints—”

  “That’s ridiculous. Who could have complained?” But even as she posed her question, Mallory knew the answer, and she turned to look hatefully at us across the street.

  Papa gave her a big smile and a wave.

  It was exactly what the two workmen were waiting for. The moment Mallory shifted her focus to us across the street, the two burly men grabbed her wrists and adroitly peeled her off the tree. I remember the scream, like an enraged monkey, heard all the way down the street, and the dramatic way Mallory fell to her knees. Her cries, however, they were not to be heard, drowned as they were by the rip-cord roar of the buzz saw.

  Several curious villagers had by now gathered in the street, and we were all riveted to the spot by the violent sound of the working saws. Limbs clunked to the ground. And then, as suddenly as it had begun, it was over. There was a hushed, shocked silence as the small crowd took in the results. Mallory, still on her knees, her face cupped in her hands, was finally unable to stand the silence any longer and she raised her head.

  A third of the gracious willow’s limbs, brutally amputated, sat twisted and oozing sap over the pavement. Her once-elegant tree—a tree that stood for all she had accomplished in life—was now a grotesque, stubby parody of its former self.

  “It is very unfortunate,” said the town bureaucrat, clearly shocked by his own accomplishments. “But it had to be done. Code 234bh—”

  Mallory gave the official such a look of loathing that he stopped in midsentence and scurried back to the safety of the van, gesturing at the men to quickly clean up.

  Monsieur Leblanc came rushing down the front path. “Oh, dear, what a tragedy,” he said, wringing his hands. “Terrible. But please, Gertrude, get up. Please. I’ll pour you a brandy. For the shock.”

  Madame Mallory was not listening to him. She got off her knees and stared across the street at Papa, at our family gathered on the stone steps. Papa looked back at her, coldly now, and they stood locked like that for several moments before Papa told us all to go back inside. There was work to be done, he said.

  Mallory took back her arm from Monsieur Leblanc’s fussing grasp, brushed herself off. And then she marched across the street after us, banging on our door. Auntie opened the door slightly, to see who it was, and was instantly slammed backward as Le Saule Pleureur’s chef pushed through and strode across the dining room floor.

  “Abbas,” Auntie shrieked. “Abbas. She here.”

  Papa and I were back in the kitchen and we did not hear the warning. I was standing over the gas ring, whipping up shahi korma for lunch. Papa sat at the kitchen counter reading the Times of India, dated copies sent to him by a newsdealer in London. I turned the flames up full, to sear the lamb in the kadai, when Mallory slammed her way through the kitchen doors.

  “There you are. You bastard!”

  Papa looked up from his paper, but otherwise stayed seated and calm.

  “You are on private property,” he said.

  “Who do you think you are?”

  “Abbas Haji,” he said quietly, and the threat in his voice made the hairs on my neck shimmer.

  “I will drive you out,” she hissed. “You will lose.”

  Papa stood now, his great bulk towering above the woman. “I have met people like you before,” he said in a sudden rush of heat, “and I know what you are. You are uncivilized. Yaar. Underneath your cultural airs, just a barbarian.”

  Madame Mallory had never before been called “uncivilized.” Quite the contrary, she was, in most circles, considered the very essence of refined French culture. So to be called a barbarian, and by this Indian, to boot, was just too much for her and she smashed Papa on the chest with her fist.

  “How dare you? HOW—DARE—YOU?”

  Although Papa was big, Madame Mallory’s passion was great, and the impact of her clenched fist on his bosom made him take a step back in surprise. He tried to take hold of her wrists, but she flurried them through the air like a boxer working a bag.

  And now Auntie, disheveled, slammed through the door.

  “Aiieee,” she screamed. “Aiieee. Mayur. Mayur, come quick.”

  “You animal,” Papa fumed. “Look at you. You’re nothing but a savage. Only the weak are . . . Madame, will you stop!”

  But Mallory’s fists and curses kept on flying unabated.

  “You are scum,” she screamed back. “Filth. You have—”

  Papa was forced to take another step back, and now he was panting from his attempts to grab her arms. “Get out of my house,” he bellowed.

  “Non,” Mallory yelled back. “You get out. Get out of my country, you . . . you dirty foreigner.”

  And with that, Madame Mallory gave Papa a mighty shove.

  It was the push that changed my life, for when Papa staggered back two steps, he hit me with his great bulk, and I in turn slammed full force into the stove. There was a scream and flurrying arms, and only days later did I realize that the yellow I witnessed was the sight of my tunic going up in flames.

  Chapter Ten

  I remember the wail of the ambulance siren, the swaying of the drip overhead, and my father’s worried face looming over me. The next few days were lost in a haze—an unreliable, drug-addled ride through this world and that. It was an odd mix of sensations: the metallic dry mouth and cracked lips of the anesthesia coupled with the aural assault of my grandmo
ther and auntie and sisters carrying on at my bedside. Then another squeaky stretcher ride to the operating room for yet another skin graft.

  But soon a kind of hospital monotony took over. The pain eased somewhat and the trays of samosas from the Haji camp outside my door were much appreciated. And there, always, my father in the corner of my room, a looming, tight-lipped mountain of man, little Zainab on his lap as he kept his black eyes on me.

  Then, one day, it was just the two of us in the room. He was sitting flush against the bed, and we were playing backgammon on my tray, sipping tea like we did ages ago on the Napean Sea Road, in a life that now seemed so far away.

  “Who’s doing the cooking?”

  “Don’t worry about dat. Everyone’s helping. All covered.”

  “I had an idea for a new dish—”

  Papa shook his massive head.

  “What?”

  “We are going back to London.”

  I threw down my dice and looked out the window. The hospital was in a valley one mountain range over from Lumière, but I had a backside view of the Jura Alps that I could also see from my attic room at Maison Mumbai.

  It was winter. The pine forests were dusted with snow, and icicles dangled like daggers from the eaves overlooking the hospital window. It all looked so beautiful, pristine and pure, and tears, inexplicably, rolled down my face.

  “What? What you crying for? We are better off going back to London. They won’t make any room for us here. I was foolish to think they would. Look at you. Look what my pighead has done to you—”

  But Papa’s outburst was cut short by a knock on the door. I wiped my eyes while Papa yelled “Hold on” at whoever was knocking. He came over and kissed the undamaged skin of my forehead. “You are my brave boy,” he whispered. “You are a Haji.”

  When Papa opened the door, his massive build filled the frame, but I could still see over his arm. Monsieur Leblanc and Madame Mallory stood before him. Le Saule Pleureur’s chef was wearing a chocolate brown wool suit, a bouquet of roses sticking out of the cane basket hanging from her arm. Behind her, Auntie and Uncle Mayur and Zainab sat in the hospital corridor, silently staring. Their silence was deadly, and it seemed to drown out the general cacophony of the working hospital.

  “How can you come here?” an incredulous Papa finally asked.

  “We came to see how he is.”

  “Don’t bother,” he said, his lips curled with disgust. “You have won. We are leaving Lumière. Now go. Don’t insult us with your presence.”

  Papa slammed shut the door. But he was like a beast in a cage, spinning around to pace across my hospital room floor, walloping his hands together like he had when Mummy died.

  “Imagine the nerve of dat woman. Imagine.”

  Mallory was momentarily flustered. She tried to give Zainab the roses, the packet of pastries, but Auntie hissed at the little girl and Zainab scuttled back to her aunt’s knees.

  “We are sorry to have upset you further,” Monsieur Leblanc told an expressionless Uncle Mayur. “You are quite right. It is too late for flowers.”

  And so they returned to the Citroën in the hospital parking lot. They did not exchange a word as Leblanc fired up the car, or when he pulled out onto the A708 back to Lumière. Each was lost in thought.

  “Well,” Mallory finally said. “I tried. It’s not my fault—”

  But Mallory would have been wise to keep her mouth shut. To Monsieur Leblanc’s ears, her protestation was just too much, simply one insensitive remark too far. Leblanc slammed on the brakes and the car came to a skidding halt on the side of the road.

  He turned his crimson face to Madame Mallory, and the chef put a defensive hand to her chest, for she could see that even the tips of his ears were a throbbing red.

  “What, Henri? Drive.”

  Leblanc leaned over and popped open her door. “Out. You can walk.”

  “Henri! Are you mad?”

  “Look, look what you have accomplished with your life,” he hissed, cold with fury. “You have such fortune. And what have you given back to the world but selfishness?”

  “I think—”

  “That’s the problem, Gertrude. You think far too much—about yourself. I am ashamed for you. Now out. I simply can’t stand the sight of you right now.”

  Monsieur Leblanc had never before talked to her in this manner. Never. She was in total shock. No longer recognized him.

  But before she could process this incredible turn of events, Leblanc was around the side of the car, pulling her out onto the shoulder of the road. He jumped into the car’s backseat and this time emerged with Mallory’s basket, roughly shoving it at the startled chef. “You can walk home,” he said tersely.

  And then the Citroën was roaring down the country road in a blast of blue exhaust smoke.

  “How dare he leave me here like this?” Mallory stamped her feet on the ice. “How dare he talk to me like that?”

  Just snowy silence.

  “Has he gone mad?”

  And she stood fuming like that, incredulous, for quite some time.

  Finally, however, reality began to sink in and she looked around the wintry landscape to get her bearings. Mallory was at the foot of a frozen field, the iced-over mountains staring coldly down at her with their tops knotted in dark clouds. Along the valley’s floor a thin gray mist hovered, but at the far end she could just make out two chalets, some barns, cones of smoke rising from wood-shingled roofs.

  Ah, she thought, Monsieur Berger’s farm. Not so bad. She’d use the opportunity to check on her haunch of venison and have the old farmer drive her back to Lumière.

  Madame Mallory started her march across the valley. A cawing raven scratched at the frozen stubble in the field. And the farther she walked along the back roads to Monsieur Berger’s farm, the more the brittle, icy vista about her began to invade her mood. What if he leaves me? she suddenly thought. What will I do without Henri?

  Mallory stumbled on in her ankle boots through the ice and snow, never seeming to get closer to the two farms at the far end of the valley. She crossed a black stream slicing through a snowdrift; she passed an old army depot once used for tank maneuvers and a forlorn clump of leafless silver birch alone in a dead field.

  When the old track circled around a hill, she came across a roadside chapel. It was small and its paint was flaking. Mallory had been walking hard for almost forty minutes at this point, and she stopped to catch her breath, steadying herself with a hand on the gate. The chapel, she realized, would have a bench inside for her to sit on.

  No one knows for sure what happened in that chapel and it is likely not even Madame Mallory rightly understands. But for many years I have wondered about what occurred in that roadside house of worship, imagined it, and perhaps the picture that I have in mind is not all that far off from the truth.

  I imagine Madame Mallory primly sitting for some time on the chapel’s only pew, the cane basket on her lap, staring up at the washed-out mural of Christ’s Last Supper covering the opposite wall. Disciples, faded into a dull wash, break bread. The figures are shrouded in the gloom, mere smudges in the dark, but she can just make out, on the set table, a bowl of olives, a jug of wine, a loaf of bread.

  The air itself is leaden with a cold and musty rot. The chapel’s wooden crucifix stands stiffly and mechanically erect, and the unlit oil lamp to the side of the stone altar is caught up in a dewy net of cobwebs. Not a flower. Not a melted candle or even a burned matchstick. No sign of human life.

  It is then Madame Mallory realizes the chapel has died, that long ago all religious meaning had slipped from the neglected room. And as Mallory sits stiffly on that pew, clutching that basket on her lap, her soul fills with a horrific thought: How cold this chamber. Dear God. How cold this chamber.

  The feeling is unbearable and, being who she is, she tries to fight against the discomfort. She rummages in her basket for a matchbook, lights a match, leans forward to bring some life to the altar lamp. In this s
mall gesture everything changes, for when the flaring match head meets the oil lamp’s wick, the chapel convulses violently in new light and new shadows. The crucifix leaps out across the room, an emaciated and tortured man imploring her with outstretched arms. The cobwebs twitch, like a fisherman’s net full of fish thrashing about for dear life, and a humping mouse scurries behind the altar.

  Mallory wonders if she might be going mad, for she suddenly hears a voice, the angry voice of her father, of years ago, taking a little girl to task. Her forehead beads with sweat but she is too frightened to move. She musters all her strength and lifts her eyes to the ceiling, desperately in search of relief.

  The Last Supper has been transformed by the lamp’s light. Christ and the disciples are in their familiar poses, their garments now glinting with threads of silver and gold paint caught in the light. But it is not the weak-chinned Christ gazing wanly out over the horizon that catches her attention, but the table itself, not sparsely decked with olives and bread as she had first surmised, but groaning under a feast.

  Figs in port. A white clump of sheep’s cheese. A leg of roast mutton and a dish of herbs. And over there. A peeled onion. A boar’s head on a plate.

  It is the eyes of that boar that lock on to her, a decapitated head curiously full of life, and a trembling Mallory, always brave, she forces herself to look resolutely back at the animal. And in the depths of those glinting little eyes she sees the balance sheet of her life, an endless list of credits and debits, of accomplishments and failures, small acts of kindness and real acts of cruelty. And the tears finally come as she looks away, unable to see this thing to the very end, for she knows without looking of the terrible imbalance, how long ago the credits stopped while the debits of vanity and selfishness run on and on. And her involuntary cry for mercy, it rings out into the chapel, witnessed only by a painted boar with a puckish, tusk-toothed smile.

  Chapter Eleven

  It was sometime after dinner when Madame Mallory slipped into my hospital room. I was resting my eyes, and she spent several undetected minutes quietly studying my chest, my arms, my neck, all painfully wrapped in bandages. And most of all, she studied my hands.