The Hundred-Foot Journey Read online

  My unabashed staring was interrupted at that moment by Le Saule Pleureur’s portly apprentice, Marcel, and Jean-Pierre, its darkly handsome chef de cuisine, both emerging from the side of the building and carrying the staff’s noontime meal, to be gobbled down before the restaurant opened for lunch less than thirty minutes hence. The platter Jean-Pierre held was steaming in the wind, a flat steel tray of minute steaks and frites, while Marcel carried cutlery and a glass salad bowl of butter lettuce and chives.

  Chef Mallory instructed the apprentice to take the artichokes and their hearts back into the kitchen, while Margaret expertly set the wooden table with the cutlery and napkins and plates, along with glass tumblers, a vin rouge, and a carafe of cold Jura well water. As Jean-Pierre leaned in to place the tray at the table’s center, Margaret’s tapered hand, elegant like a pianist’s but scarred by oven burns, darted forward, her long fingers pinching a yellow-golden fry. She brought the shoestring frite up to her lips, her teeth delicately biting off its tip, her face lit by a smile provoked by something Jean-Pierre had just said.

  The church clock chimed quarter after noon.

  I turned to continue on home and to our family lunch of Madras mutton, but as I walked back to the Dufour estate, my heart was fluttering and filled by what I had just witnessed, a scene that instantly brought forth pictures of Mummy and steaks and frites and Café de Paris, Bombay memories all richly coming back to me in the streets of that alpine village.

  But then, suddenly, a gust of wind came rushing down the mountain, and in one fell swoop these old memories of Mummy and Mother India were swept away, and in their stead stood an entirely new sensation, tremulous at first, but then growing in intensity with each passing step. What came to me in that wind, so long ago, was an intense yearning triggered by the sights and smells of French food intermingled with the musty aroma of women. Perhaps it was something seeded in childhood, but at that moment it crossed over into something else, something more grown-up.

  * * *

  A few days later, Papa abruptly ordered the entire family out into our courtyard. Even the timid French boy Papa hired as a waiter was forced out, nervously wiping a wineglass on his apron as he stood among us.

  The roofer and Umar, up on ladders above us, yanked at pulleys and swung wrenches around bolts. Suddenly, as we stood openmouthed at their feet, staring up, a large placard arose over the iron Dufour gates.

  “There,” yelled Umar, high up on the ladder.

  MAISON MUMBAI, written in massive gold letters on an Islamic green background, filled the entire billboard.

  Such yelling. Such joy.

  Hindustani classical music blared out scratchily over makeshift speakers Uncle Mayur had set up in the garden. And that, or so I was later told, was the final straw. Le Saule Pleureur staff, all the way downstairs in the kitchen, heard the shrieks of disbelief coming from the attic. Monsieur Leblanc hastily put down the phone as Madame Mallory flew past his office on the second floor, and he went to the top of the landing to watch his maîtresse below him furiously rummage through the chinoise stand for her umbrella. It did not look at all good to Leblanc. A kind of African warrior’s shield and spear secured a knot of iron hair to the back of Mallory’s head.

  “This is too much, Henri,” she said, finally wrenching the unwieldy umbrella out of the stand. “Did you see that placard? Hear that plinky-plinky music? Quelle horreur. Non. Non. He can’t do such a thing. Not on my street. He’s destroying the ambience. Our customers. What will they think?” But before Leblanc could reply, Chef Mallory was out the door.

  Madame Mallory did not do the decent thing. She did not cross the street and talk directly with Papa, try to reason with him. She never tried in any way to make us feel welcome. No, her first impulse was to crush us under her heel. Like we were bugs.

  What precisely happened was this: Madame Mallory marched down to the mayor’s office. Of course, everyone in Lumière was afraid of the sharp-tongued chef, so, not surprisingly, Mallory was immediately ushered into the Town Hall’s boardroom.

  And there we should have met our demise. But clever people were always underestimating Papa. He was sharp, sharp as a filleting knife. Papa assumed politics in a small French town were little different from politics in Bombay—all was greased by the oil of commerce—and so his first move in Lumière was to put the mayor’s brother, a solicitor, on a hefty retainer. Nothing so crude as what transpired up on Malabar Hill, but just as effective.

  “Tell that man to stop,” Mallory imperiously ordered the mayor. “That Indian. Have you seen what he is doing? He’s turned that beautiful Dufour mansion into a bistro. An Indian bistro! Horrible. I can smell that oily cooking all up and down the street. And that placard? Mais non. This is not possible.”

  The mayor shrugged. “What do you want me to do?”

  “Shut him down.”

  “Monsieur Haji is opening a restaurant in the same zone as you, Gertrude. If I shut him down I have to shut you down as well. And his lawyer won permission from the Planning Committee for the placard. So, you see, my hands are tied. Monsieur Haji has done everything correct.”

  “Mais non. This is not possible.”

  “But it is,” continued the mayor. “I can’t close him down without justification. He is acting completely within the law.”

  Her parting remark, I understand, was singularly unpleasant.

  Our first face-to-face with la grande dame took place three days later. Mallory arose at six every morning. After she ate a light breakfast of pears and buttered toast and strong coffee, Monsieur Leblanc drove her to Lumière’s markets in the beaten-up Citroën. You could set your watch by their ritual. Promptly at six forty-five Monsieur Leblanc retired with the newspaper Le Jura to Café Bréguet, where some of the locals were at the bar and already on the day’s first ballon of wine. Meanwhile, Mallory in her gray flannel poncho and wicker baskets on each arm made her way from market stall to market stall, buying fresh produce for the day’s menu.

  Mallory was a magnificent sight to behold, pounding the streets like a workhorse, each of her hard breaths exploding in white smoke. The bulk orders—a half dozen rabbits, perhaps, or fifty-kilo sacks of potatoes—were delivered by van to Le Saule Pleureur no later than nine thirty a.m. But the chanterelles and the delicate Belgium endive and perhaps a paper cone of juniper berries, they went into the baskets hanging from Mallory’s meaty arms.

  On that particular morning, just weeks after we arrived in town, Mallory as usual started her shopping at Iten et Fils, the fishmonger that occupied a white-tiled corner shop on Place Prunelle.

  “What’s that?”

  Monsieur Iten bit the corner of his mustache.

  “Eh?”

  “Behind you. Move. What’s that there?”

  Iten stepped aside and Madame Mallory got her first good view of a cardboard box on the counter. It took just a second before she knew the claws waving in the air belonged to crayfish scrabbling over one another.

  “Wonderful,” said Mallory. “I haven’t seen crayfish in months. They look fresh and lively. Are they French?”

  “Non, madame. Spanish.”

  “Never mind. I’ll take them.”

  “Non, madame. Je regrette.”

  “Pardon?”

  Iten wiped a knife on a tea towel.

  “I’m sorry Madame Mallory, but he just came in and . . . and . . . bought them.”

  “Who?”

  “Monsieur Haji. And his son.”

  Mallory squinted. She couldn’t quite comprehend what Monsieur Iten had just said. “That Indian? He bought these?”

  “Oui, madame.”

  “Let me get this straight, Iten. I have come to you—and before you, to your father—for over thirty years, every morning, and bought your best fish. And now you are telling me, at some godforsaken hour, an Indian came in here and bought what you knew I would buy? Is that what you are telling me?”

  Monsieur Iten looked down at the floor. “I am sorry. But his
manner, you see. He is very . . . charming.”

  “I see. So what, then, are you going to offer me? Yesterday’s moules?”

  “Ah, non, madame, please. Don’t be like that. You know you are my most valued customer. I . . . I have here some lovely perch.”

  Iten scurried over to the cooler and took out a silver tray of striped perch, each the size of a child’s palm.

  “Very fresh, see? Caught this morning in Lac Vissey. You make such lovely perch amandine, Madame Mallory. I thought you would like these.”

  Madame Mallory decided to teach poor Monsieur Iten a lesson and she blew out of the shop like a winter storm. Still furious, she marched up to the open-air market in the square, her heels grinding into the rubbery carpet of discarded cabbage leaves.

  At first Mallory flew through the two rows of vegetable stalls like a bird of prey, her eyes darting about over the shoulders of housewives. The vendors saw her but knew it was unwise to say a word during her first sweep through the market, unless they wanted a vicious tongue-lashing. Her second cruise through, however, one was permitted to engage her, and each farmer did his best to attract the famous chef to his produce.

  “Bonjour, Madame Mallory. Lovely day. Have you seen my Williams pears?”

  “I did, Madame Picard. Not very nice.”

  The vendor next to Madame Picard guffawed.

  “You are wrong,” called Madame Picard, sipping a thermos cup of milky coffee. “Wonderful flavor.”

  Mallory turned back to Madame Picard’s stall and the other vendors turned their heads to see what would happen next.

  “What’s this, Madame Picard?” snapped the chef. Mallory took the top pear off the pyramid and tore off its small sticker proclaiming WILLIAMS QUALITÉ. Under the sticker, a small black hole. Mallory did the same to the next pear, and the next.

  “And what’s this? And this?”

  The other vendors laughed as the red-faced Madame Picard rushed to restack her pears.

  “Hiding worm holes under ‘quality’ stickers. Disgraceful.”

  Madame Mallory turned her back on the Widow Picard and walked to a stall at the far end of the first row, where a shrunken white-haired couple in matching aprons and looking rather like salt-and-pepper shakers stood behind the counter.

  “Bonjour, Madame Mallory.”

  Mallory grunted a good-morning and pointed to a basket of waxy purple orbs on the floor at the back of the stall.

  “I’ll take the aubergines. All of them.”

  “I am sorry, madame, but they are not for sale.”

  “They’ve been sold?”

  “Oui, madame.”

  Mallory felt a tightening in her chest. “To the Indian?”

  “Oui, madame. A half hour ago.”

  “I’ll take the zucchini, then.”

  The elderly man looked pained. “I am sorry.”

  For a few moments Mallory was unable to move, to speak even. But suddenly, from the far end of Lumière’s markets, a booming voice in accented English rose majestically above the general din.

  Mallory’s head jerked toward the sound of the voice, and before the elderly farmer couple could recover, Mallory was barging through the early morning market crowd, her baskets bunched in front like a snowplow, forcing the other shoppers out of her way.

  Papa and I were at the edges of the market bidding for two dozen red and green Tupperware bowls. The trader—a tough Pole—was holding firm, and Papa’s approach to such obstinacy was to roar his price at an ever-louder decibel. The final touch was the menacing pacing back and forth in front of the stall, intimidating other potential customers from coming forward, a tactic I had seen him use to devastating effect in the markets of Bombay.

  But in Lumière there was the slight obstacle of language. Papa’s only foreign language was English, and it was my job to translate his ravings into my schoolboy French. I did not mind: this was how I eventually met several girls my age, such as Chantal, the mushroom picker from across the valley, her nails always gritty with dark humus. In this case, however, the Pole across the table could speak no English and just a little French, and that protected him from Papa’s full frontal assault. So what we had was a stalemate. The Pole simply crossed his arms across his chest and shook his head.

  “What is this?” Papa said, poking a green Tupperware lid. “Just a bit of plastic, no? Anyone can make this.”

  Madame Mallory deposited herself squarely in front of Papa’s path as he paced, and he was suddenly forced to stop short, his great bulk towering over the little woman. I could see this was the last thing he expected—to be stopped by a woman—and he peered down at her with a puzzled expression.

  “Wah?”

  “I am your neighbor, Madame Mallory, from across the street,” she said in excellent English.

  Papa gave the woman a dazzling smile, the Pole and the savage Tupperware negotiations instantly forgotten. “Hello,” he boomed. “Le Saule Pleureur, nah? I know. You must come over and meet the family. Have tea.”

  “I don’t like what you are doing.”

  “Wah?”

  “To our street. I don’t like the music, the placard. It’s ugly. So unrefined.”

  I have not often seen my father at a loss for words, but at this remark he looked as if someone had punched him hard in the stomach.

  “It’s in very bad taste,” Mallory continued, brushing an imaginary thread off her sleeve. “You must take it down. That sort of thing is all right in India, but not here.”

  She looked him straight in the face, tapped him on the chest with her finger. “And another thing. It is tradition here in Lumière that Madame Mallory has the first choice of the morning’s produce. It’s been this way for decades. As a foreigner, I appreciate you would have no way of knowing this, but now you do.”

  She offered Papa a wintry smile.

  “It’s very important for newcomers to start off on the right foot, don’t you agree?”

  Papa scowled, his face almost purple, but I who knew him so well could see—in the downturned corners of his eyes—he was not mad but deeply hurt. I moved to his side.

  “Who you tink you are?”

  “I told you. I am Madame Mallory.”

  “And I,” Papa said, raising his head and slapping his chest, “I am Abbas Haji, Bombay’s greatest restaurateur.”

  “Pff. This is France. We are not interested in your curries.”

  By this time a small crowd had gathered around Madame Mallory and Papa. Monsieur Leblanc pushed his way into the center of the ring. “Gertrude,” he said sternly. “Let us go.” He pulled at her elbow. “Come, now. Enough.”

  “Who you tink you are?” repeated Papa, stepping forward. “Wah dis talk in third person like maharani? Who you? God give you right to all best cuts of meat and fish in the Jura? Nah? Oh, then perhaps you own dis town. Yaar? Is that what give you right to the fresh produce every morning? Or perhaps you are some big important memsahib who owns the farmers?”

  Papa thrust his enormous belly at Madame Mallory and she had to step back, a look of incredulity slapped across her face.

  “How dare you talk to me in this impertinent manner.”

  “Tell me,” he roared at the onlookers, “does this woman own your farms and your livestock and vegetables, or do you sell to highest bidder?” He smacked his palm. “I pay cash. No waiting.”

  There was a gasp from the crowd. This they understood.

  Mallory swiftly turned her back on Papa and shrugged on a pair of black leather gloves.

  “Un chien méchant,” she said dryly. The assembled crowd laughed.

  “What she say?” Papa roared at me. “Wah?”

  “I think she called you a mad dog.”

  What happened then is forever burned in my memory. The crowd parted for Madame Mallory and Monsieur Leblanc as they began to leave, but Papa, agile for a man of his size, quickly ran forward and stuck his face close to the chef’s retreating ear.

  “Bowwow. Roooff. Rooff.”
/>   Mallory jerked her head away. “Stop it.”

  “Rooff. Rooff.”

  “Stop it. Stop it you . . . you horrible man.”

  “Grrrrr. Rooff.”

  Mallory covered her ears with her hands.

  And then she broke into a trot.

  The villagers, never before having seen Madame Mallory ridiculed, roared with amazed laughter and Papa turned and joyously joined them, watching the elderly woman and Monsieur Leblanc disappear behind the Banque Nationale de Paris on the corner.

  We should have known then what trouble was ahead. “She was jabbering away like a madwoman,” Auntie told us when we came home. “Slam car door. Pang.” And over the next days, as I glanced across the street, I periodically spotted a pointy nose pressed up against the fogged windowpane.

  Maison Mumbai’s opening day approached. Lorries backed into the Dufour courtyard: tables came from Lyon, dishware from Chamonix, plastic menu folders from Paris. One day a hip-high wooden elephant, trumpeting, suddenly greeted me as I entered the restaurant’s doors. A hookah went into the corner of the lobby, and brass bowls on little tables were filled with plastic roses purchased at the local cash-and-carry.

  By now the carpenters had converted the three reception rooms into the restaurant’s dining room, and across the teak-paneled walls Papa hung posters of the Ganges, the Taj Mahal, Kerala tea plantations. On one wall he had a local artisan paint a mural of Indian life—of a village woman hauling water from a well, of all things. And all day while we worked speakers on the walls blasted out geets and ghazals, the warbling Urdu ballads and love poems of our heritage.

  Papa was Big Abbas again. He worked for days with my oldest brother designing and redesigning an advertisement for the local newspapers. They finally settled their differences in a notebook of inky scratches, driving their design to Le Jura’s office in Clairvaux-les-Lacs. A silhouette of a trumpeting elephant, usually between the sports and television listings, filled an entire page of the newspaper. The balloon coming out of the elephant’s mouth offered everyone who showed up at Maison Mumbai’s opening night a free carafe of wine. The ad ran in Le Jura three weekends in a row. The restaurant’s slogan: “Maison Mumbai—la culture indienne en Lumière.”