Strangers in the Kitchen, Céline, 2014
“CAN YOU BELIEVE THIS IS our last day of cooking class?” I heard my group echo to one another. Everyone was getting sentimental, now that the end was nigh. But I was on the verge of a small panic, still trying to complete Mom’s mission before the clock ran out on me.
I’d shamelessly rummaged around the women’s bedrooms, even though I was pretty sure that Grandma Ondine hadn’t slept up here. Nothing turned up. Now I’d have to find a spare moment either today or tomorrow to search for her Picasso in the last possible place it could be—the old kitchen of the mas. However, I could only do this at night when the construction workers weren’t hammering and sawing. If I didn’t find the painting there, I would be going home empty-handed.
“I’ll do it tonight,” I vowed to myself.
Meanwhile, Gil’s son, Martin, had been given the entire run of the mas, and he apparently decided that all the nicely kept paths were a perfect runway for his skateboard, which he maneuvered with both surprising skill and yet frightful daring. Gil’s serene French staff was being severely tested as Martin whizzed by and literally ran circles around them.
“C’mere, kid,” Aunt Matilda said finally, catching Martin during one of his rare pauses to make him sit with her while we were waiting for Gil. She was shuffling a deck of cards like a pro.
“Céline told me about you. You like cards? Well, I’m going to teach you how to play ‘Spit’. Pay attention if you want to win.” Martin heard the voice of schoolteacher authority, so he sat down, meek and intrigued. Aunt Matilda said crisply, “Okay, podner, cut them cards.”
Despite his hyperactive nature, Martin was, like most young kids, thrilled when adults paid him any attention. He had a sweetness and intelligence that made us all develop a soft spot for him; we enjoyed feeding him treats from the kitchen after we’d been cooking. Gil had taught his son discerning taste, so Martin let us know immediately if our efforts had resulted in good food or bad. And today, just before we left him to go to our last class, he even gave us a few tips about how to please Gil.
“Dad hates using parsley as a garnish,” Martin told me, then added in his little grown-up way, “but I personally like parsley anywhere, even on the plate.”
By now, miraculously, after days of feeling helpless and clumsy, my classmates found that Gil’s rigorous teaching was finally paying off, and everyone was suddenly cooking competently and confidently.
All except me. Oh, I was improving, but I never quite seemed to acquire a knack for gauging just the right moment to stop whisking a sauce, or browning a cutlet, or sautéing a steak.
“You just don’t have a red thumb,” Gil finally admitted today.
“I do so!” I retorted, holding up a burnt finger. “Look at that blister,” I said, aggrieved.
In reply, he held up his palm against mine. “Feel that?” he said, showing me a roughened hand that was a landscape of craters, cuts, blisters, scars, and black-and-blues under his broken nails. “You’re a makeup artist. You deal with color and texture, wet and dry. That’s what cooking is all about,” he said, genuinely trying to be helpful. “You mingle your ingredients to create something new.”
I returned to vigorously pounding garlic cloves with basil and olive oil for a Provençal specialty condiment called pistou, but he stopped me. “Most people misunderstand garlic,” he said, taking the clove and holding it in his fingertips. “Treat it like a delicate flower. Crush gently. When I use garlic for salads, I only rub a whisper on the salad bowl and then I save the actual clove to throw in my stockpot. And I never fast-fry-brown the garlic on high heat. That is like rushed sex.”
I glanced at my elder classmates but they were accustomed to Gil’s sensual metaphors. They just chuckled to themselves, enjoying his provocative exuberance, because it was so evident that he passionately meant it when he exhorted them to handle chicken and fish cutlets “as if it were your lover’s body”. He really, truly loved to cook and was particularly smitten with Provençal cuisine, so I scored a few points today by letting him use one of Grandmother Ondine’s recipes for our class, a daube à l’orange.
“Daube is thought to come from the Spanish word dobar, which means ‘to braise’ and that is exactly what we will do,” Gil told the class. “We’re following Céline’s Grandma’s recipe, which is to braise the beef in red wine with Provençal herbs (not lavender, thank you), tomatoes, onions, black olives, mushrooms, the special ingredient of orange peel—and this, a calf’s foot.”
“Oh, God,” I said, actually feeling faint. “The poor thing.”
Gil looked at me and said seriously, “Steady on! Yes, we cook and eat things that were once alive—be they vegetables or animals—in order to stoke the fire of life in us; but in return, we must keep our end of the bargain, which is to handle them humanely with great respect; and when it’s our turn to die, we should do so gracefully and willingly, so that we, too, feed the fiery furnace of the earth’s future plants and creatures. So today, let’s celebrate life while we’re alive and cooking, okay?”
A thoughtful hush fell over us as we continued working. Gil just had a knack for creating a sacred workspace. But just as we were getting lulled by the meditative atmosphere, we discovered that Gil had something else up his sleeve for this evening.
“Today, boys and girls, YOU are going to work in my restaurant. This is a comparatively quiet weekend, so you won’t be subjected to the worst trial-by-fire. Each of you will pair up with one of my professionals, but remember, these people helped Pierrot win its first Michelin star—and we aim to win a second one this year! So my staff will brook no trouble from anyone. Do not argue. Do not ask why you are doing things. Just follow their instructions to the letter, and most importantly, keep your focus. Got it? Here are your assignments.” He handed out strips of paper as if we’d drawn straws.
“Shoot, I thought you said we’re having a party at the end of this boot camp,” Lola’s brother Ben objected. He looked so woeful standing there, a big Texan in an apron, that Gil had to smile.
“Tomorrow’s your party. That will be your reward. But tonight you have to earn it,” Gil replied. “Okay, I will now hand you over to my assistant, Lizbeth, and to our concierge, Maurice.”
We discovered that Gil had given us the most improbable assignments for our personalities: the languorous Lola was to become a welcoming hostess; the buttoned-down Peter was tending bar; and the rough-and-tumble Joey and Magda were working in Heather’s delicate bakery section.
“What about us?” Aunt Matilda asked, wide-eyed, as she and Ben and I remained there uncertainly.
“Ye also serve who wait on tables,” Gil responded as he whizzed out of the room.
His restaurant team gave us uniforms and efficiently absorbed us into their impeccable routine. The morning of “prepping” flew by. Gil popped in and out of each station—watching, tasting, ever on the lookout for errors. Then suddenly, it was as if a flag had dropped.
“Ouvert!” cried the maître d’.
“What’d he say?” Magda hissed to me.
“We’re open,” I said, and I actually felt goosebumps on my skin.
The well-dressed diners for the first seating came strolling in, laughing and chattering in happy anticipation. Some paused for drinks at the bar, but many were seated immediately at the prized tables on the terrace, overlooking the fragrant gardens of the mas and the serene view of fields and vineyards.
“Céline, Table Two is yours. Tilda, Table Nine,” said the French headwaiter, who spoke impeccable English and helped us with the other languages of the diners as well. He handed us the menus.
“Onward,” he commanded.
“All in the valley of Death rode the six hundred,” Aunt Matilda quoted under her breath.
Our first seating was mostly elegant French couples dining in groups of four and eight; they were amazingly quiet and dignified as they conversed in low murmurs. Even the black poodle who accompanied a party-of-eight behaved well, situating himself under a chair where he politely gnawed the biscuit his mistress had surreptitiously taken out of her Hermès handbag. There was also a scattering of British and American couples, middle-aged and decorous; and later, we seated some German and Russian families who each occupied an enormous round table headed by a proud silver-haired matriarch.
But then an overly made-up woman in a tight red dress and spike heels, loaded down with jewelry, walked into the bar and sloshed down a few drinks before teetering behind Maurice as he led her to her table-for-one. Even before she opened her mouth, I sensed the bad vibes building up in her.
As I handed her a menu, she looked up at me and asked, “So. Has Gil remarried yet?” I shook my head and she nodded sagely, smirking. When I returned to her table with her appetizers and wine, she asked how long had I been working for “the big maestro”. Finally, she put her scarlet-polished, long talons on my arm and asked slurrily, “Where the fuck is Gil? Does he even know that I’m here?”
“He’s in back of the house,” I said automatically. “He’ll be out front shortly.”
She gave me a steady stare, though she swayed in her seat. “Do you know who I am? No? Well, let me enlighten you. Gil used to cook for me in my husband’s restaurant,” she said thickly. “But he uses people, you know. Women especially—oh, he likes the ladies. But he only dates the ones with money. His whole career was built on exploiting a long line of generous gals”—she walked her fingers across the surface of the table—“like a frog hopping from one lily pad to the next. And once he gets his chef’s fingers on your money, well, honey, he’s gone, baby, gone.”
As her voice rose in volume, I shot the headwaiter a frantic look. He hastily took over, soothing her with his French charm, helping her select the “best” main course, then telling the kitchen to rush her order; after which he escorted her to “Gil’s private library” where, he later told me, Gil “personally served her a hazelnut caramel crêpe, then packed her off into a taxi.”
Amid the hubbub of the guests’ excited chatter, Aunt Matilda and I struggled to keep up with the waiters’ shorthand:
“Seat that deuce at Table Five!”
“Where’s the dupe for Table Three?”
“Bottled water gazeuse!”
“Jeepers, what’s gazeuse?” Aunt Matilda wailed.
“Gas,” said a waiter as he flashed by.
“Sparkling water,” I translated.
Rushing back and forth from the serene terrace to the hot kitchen was like going from Dante’s paradiso to his inferno, with an occasional stop at the purgatorio of the bar to pick up a tray of drinks. It was on one such run that Aunt Matilda, of all people, spotted a well-known food blogger who’d booked a table for three incognito. He was informally known as the Butcher of Bloggers because of his formidable influence. It was even said that he had some sway with Michelin judges, although this was never proven.
“Go tell Gil,” Aunt Matilda whispered to me. “I’ll keep the Butcher busy with cocktails.”
I hurried into the kitchen, but at first I couldn’t find Gil anywhere. Finally I spotted him, pacing back and forth in his walk-in freezer. The door was not quite shut; he must have rushed in there for privacy, yet even so, I could suddenly hear his raised, desperate voice as he spoke into his mobile phone.
“Fuck this, you tell Rick he must be joking!” he exclaimed vehemently. “On the eve of signing a contract, he’s now going to dick around with it one more time? Have you read this shit? It gives him complete ownership of the entire mas—the new hotel and the restaurant. That makes me nothing more than a hired cook! Bloody hell, you’re my lawyer, don’t tell me about future net percentages as bonuses!”
Gil fell silent, listening for a moment. Then he burst out, “We’ve gone over this a hundred times. We’ve said ‘yes’ to every other ruddy revision he asked for. I don’t care if his lawyer wants my bloody signature ‘ASAP’, I sure as shit will NOT sign this new draft!” Another pause. Then he exploded.
“DON’T bloody ask me if it’s a ‘deal-breaker’. You know this deal CANNOT be broken! Do you not understand what I’m telling you? Rick’s got to wire six million euros to my bank before Gus sends his goons here on Thursday to collect the loan repayment. Don’t ask me how you’re going to get Rick to sign last week’s draft, just GET it done to-NIGHT, damn it!”
He snapped his phone shut and burst out of the walk-in. Then he saw me hovering in a corner.
“Christ, Céline what are you doing here?” he said in a dead tone. I told him as quickly as I could about the famous food blogger. “Well, fuck me, that’s just perfect,” he said under his breath.
Aunt Matilda rushed in now, wide-eyed. “The Butcher is hungry as a vulture!” she announced, waving her order pad. “The rest of his party ordered from the menu, but he said, ‘Ask Gil to send me his best—and please surprise me with something truly special for dessert.’ ”
I won’t ever forget how quickly Gil’s expression changed. He immediately put aside his troubles and snapped into gear. He made a quick check with his cooks to see which “mains” were still available, and they rattled off several dinner specials for him to choose from.
But when he asked about the desserts, someone whispered to him and he exclaimed, “What do you mean, you’ve run out of gavotte au chocolat already? Bloody hell! All right, dammit, here’s what we’re going to serve him: begin with the caviar-and-lobster amuse-bouche, then the pistou soup, followed by the spinach-and-ewes’-milk ravioli with Mediterranean honey, and for the main, Grandma Ondine’s daube a l’orange. As for his bloody ‘something special’ for dessert, leave that to me.”
“Yes, chef!” everyone shouted.
The whole thing was a blur after that. Fortunately for Aunt Matilda and me, all hands were on deck to help us serve, and the food just kept coming. The “Butcher” was a man with a fussy goatee and the alert eyes of a raptor, and at first his face steadfastly revealed nothing; but the excellent local wines and cuisine soon wore down his sphinx-like attitude, especially when Gil appeared, looking impeccable in his chef’s whites, to serve a dramatic sweet vol-au-vent pastry filled with chocolate and caramel cream, served with a banana and armagnac sauce flambé that Gil personally, and with a showman’s flourish, set fire to, before nonchalantly sliding it from the pan to the platter.
It was like a fireworks finale that got everyone in the restaurant on their feet, applauding. I heard one diner say breathlessly, “Can you believe that we were here tonight to see this?”
Gil accepted it all with great aplomb. And now I finally understood what it was that made him so special, even among other master chefs. He was like a man on a tightrope, fearless, and he had the perfect knack of knowing exactly when to go for it and give a moment everything he’s got.
Aunt Matilda’s friend Peter summed it all up. “Gil’s like a great racehorse. The man’s got heart.”
After that, things wound down quickly, and although a few new diners trickled in, we knew the evening was pretty much done. Gil released my classmates from duty with great thanks for our support on such a challenging night, and he announced that sherry and a late-night supper had been laid out for us in the library. We all breathed a sigh of relief.
But Aunt Matilda caught me gazing off toward the construction site and she inquired, “You got something on your mind, Céline?” So I pulled her aside and dropped Monsieur Clément’s bombshell about how Grandmother Ondine had owned this very mas that we’d been taking our cooking classes in.
“Ohhh!” she said, stunned. “That’s why your mother was so keen to come here. Now it all makes sense!”
And, bless her, she didn’t ask why I’d waited to tell her. I admitted I’d searched the bedrooms, then I said, “The construction site is the last possible place it can be. I’ve just got to find out tonight.”
She said, “Well, go on, then. But be careful. I’ll cover for you. You can tell me all about it later.”
I smiled at the sight of Peter hovering in the doorway, waiting to escort her to the sherry in the library. Then I went to my room, grabbed my flashlight and slipped away.
I had done a little advance reconnaissance during the daytime and noticed that there weren’t any security cameras on the construction site itself, so now I avoided the hotel corridors and instead went outside to approach the site from its far, open end.
The old kitchen looked pretty daunting in the dark of night. The floor was ripped open in various places where new plumbing and wiring were going in; and in some sections it was a sheer drop below to a black, cavernous abyss. I could see only as far as my flashlight’s beam, so I stepped cautiously, fearful of tumbling into the darkness.
I tried to reassure myself that I was on the right track. After all, I reasoned, Grandma Ondine was a chef. She must have spent lots of time in this kitchen.
As my eyes adjusted to the sweep of my light, I saw that the kitchen had been an enormous, low-ceilinged room with rough stone walls painted egg-yolk yellow. It was big enough for cooking, dining and sitting in. The large fireplace was still intact, its firebox flanked by several small ovens built into the bricks, which the publicity brochure had said was for baking bread in wintertime. I checked them. Empty. Nearby, a series of built-in shelves were in various stages of being torn down.
A gaping hole in the ceiling testified to where a stovepipe might have been. I spotted an alcove that could have once been a pantry, but it, too, was in the process of being stripped and gutted. I searched where I could, but there really wasn’t much else to check. It had begun to rain lightly, and the droplets were hitting the construction site with a monotonous plink-plink-plonk, plink-plink-plonk sound as they struck various spots on the site.
And right then and there, in this dark altar to the past, I realized that time may have finally consigned Grandmother Ondine’s world to the dust heap. I had to conclude, at last, that the only sane response to this situation was to accept defeat. “Goodbye, Grandma,” I said softly, a little surprised to feel truly mournful.
Disconsolately I turned away. But then I heard a commotion on the other end of the site, from the hallway leading back into the mas. I could not resist creeping closer and cautiously I peered in.
Three figures had come out of Gil’s kitchen in an all-fired hurry, flinging open that heavy door made of halved logs, and pausing in the bright light of the hallway. I recognized Gil, who was followed by two big guys that gave off a menacing vibe—a pair of thick-looking creatures dressed in dark, heavy wool suits that were in stark contrast to the usual light, bright leisurely garb of the French Riviera.
“You should not have followed me into my kitchen,” Gil told them testily. “This could have waited until I locked up.” His tone was so ominous that I shrank further into the shadows.
“Gus sent us to make sure you understood the situation,” one of them said. He was English, and spoke in such a low, soft voice that I was completely unprepared when his partner suddenly shoved Gil against the wall and held him there.
Yet, Gil’s face under the light deliberately did not change expression. “Your presence in my restaurant is not only unnecessary,” he said defiantly, “but rude.”
The first man continued, “I’m not hearing what I ought to hear.” Gil’s eyes trained on one after the other, as if preparing to do whatever necessary to fight back.
The second man leaned closer and said helpfully, “Thursday. Know what Thursday is?”
“Of course. Gus knows perfectly well he’ll get his money,” Gil said contemptuously.
“All of it,” the first man with the soft voice said. “Repeat after me. ‘All of it by Thursday’.”
And Gil, in his infinite wisdom, said, “Every last pound, on time. At which point you two can go fuck yourselves.”
Well, the second guy hauled off and slugged him in the gut, then shoved him back against the wall so hard that I involuntarily did the only thing I could to interfere.
I let out a scream so loud that Gil and his escorts actually jumped in surprise. Fortunately, the rest of Gil’s customers had already departed. But someone else heard my scream just as she came bursting into the hallway from the restaurant kitchen.
“Hullo, in there!” Aunt Matilda called out, peering down the hallway. Her hand was tucked in Peter’s arm as if they were out for a casual evening stroll. She would later tell me that she’d immediately spotted this pair of thugs, who first came into the bar of Pierrot looking for Gil; and she watched them as they followed him down to the kitchen. And, being Aunt Matilda, she swung into action and rounded up her friends. Behind her were Ben and Lola, with Magda and Joey bringing up the rear.
“Hey, there, Gil!” Ben boomed in his rich Texas drawl. “Heard you might need a posse tonight.”
Lola peered over her brother’s shoulder. “You got yourself the A-Team here,” she announced.
“Ben was just telling us that he’s a retired FBI officer from Dallas,” Magda said meaningfully.
Aunt Matilda’s escort stepped forward. “Naval Intelligence Division, Great Britain,” Peter said, squaring his shoulders.
“United States Air Force commando,” Joey said from the other side. He pretended he was seeing the intruders for the first time. “Is there a problem here, gentlemen?”
The two thugs were already looking around warily for the nearest exit. Gil had managed to recover from their rough treatment, and he had an oddly triumphant look on his face.
“Did I mention,” he said now, “that there are security cameras in these corridors?”
And then another door opened, from the room with the clown wallpaper. Out came Martin, carrying a slingshot. “Dad?” he asked, in his most grown-up manner. “Need a hand?”
It was the sight of Martin that finally clinched it.
“The exit is this way, gentlemen,” Peter said firmly, and his group parted to clear a path. The two thugs quickly took it, but the first guy could not resist saying once more to Gil, “Thursday.”
Nobody else said a word, but we all went outside and watched the two men get into a car and drive off with a sputtering of gravel.
Then Gil hoisted Martin in his arms and said protectively, “Come on, son, time for bed.”
Martin turned to the rest of us and said excitedly, “Dad and I sleep in the dovecote!”
“You’re in France, it’s called a pigeonnier,” Gil said, but as he turned to go he said to my classmates, “Many, many thanks, folks. Bedtime for everybody, yes? Show’s over tonight.”