Valmiki's Daughter (27 page)

At this comment, Anick retorted, “What you mean they do research before you come? These are things they know. They just know it. I do not know why you can not understand this. They not cretins, you know. They know of the world. They smart. They read. They talk. They think. Not to impress you, but all the time.”

Nayan made a face at Viveka, as if to suggest, “See? This is what I have to put up with.”

Viveka didn't want Nayan to think her rude by changing the subject, even if she knew how to do it kindly, but she also so wanted to spare Anick these stories about the arrogance of her parents and the naivete of her husband. She wondered what it was that Anick had seen in Nayan to have married him. “Hmm. You know,” she said pensively, “I am still thinking about the French-Indian thing. I've been curious about the differences between ‘cacao Indians' and ‘sugar-cane Indians.' I bet the French influence would have something to do with their differences.”

Nayan chuckled and said that it was too bad that Armand wasn't at the table with them, as he might be able to expound on the differences between the two.

Anick got up and slipped away from the table. Nayan watched her leave, then continued regaling Viveka with stories of his visit to France. Knowing that he and Anick had met in a skiing village, her parents took them to Chamonix in the French Alps, to
a chalet in which they had shares. They had planned a trip to take him to see France's largest glacier, La Mer de Glace, but he didn't want them to learn how incompetent and fearful he would have been on such terrain. “Can you imagine,” he said to Viveka, “traipsing about on a mountain of ice with big gaping cracks in it, so big you could fall in and that would be the end of you? What for? What kind of an end would that be for a boy from the tropics?” Anick's parents didn't hide their disappointment, and he and Anick were on edge with each other because of it. But what was a holiday without a little drama? Anyway, if he had been searching for some soupçon — Anick's word, he added — of familiarity with Anick's world, he found it in the brand name of the pen that certain Trinidadians brandished. Nayan winked at Viveka as he pronounced, “Mont Blanc.” Unlike those people who liked to whip the pens out of their pockets to lend to you the instant you started patting your shirt pocket for a writing instrument, he now knew, he boasted, that it was not simply the brand name of a pen, but the name of a mountain in the French Alps. And he had actually seen that mountain. Being able to make the connection between pen and place had given him a momentary thrill of worldliness. But he made the mistake, he told Viveka, of asking Mimi if there was any relationship between the two. His question provoked unexpected hostility from Mimi: of course it is named after our mountain, and that diamond logo represents the snow-cap, but the pen company was originally German. This, she tartly said, was clearly an appropriation, and as if Nayan had been accusatory she added, “But there is nothing anyone can do about that.”

Although Anick's parents attempted to be good-natured about it, Nayan could tell that his timidity to go on the glacier had tainted their impression of him. They stayed in the village
of Chamonix and he witnessed a bristling camaraderie between Anick and her parents. He envied it. He had never done such holidaying with his parents, nor had he ever had that kind of easy back and forth with them.

As Nayan talked, Viveka's mind trailed after Anick again, and again she wished she could get up and go to her. She wouldn't know what to say to Anick, though, if it was the two of them alone. Perhaps there wouldn't be any need to talk. Perhaps, after all that listening, Anick would welcome some silence. Viveka could have offered her silence. It was strange. She had never felt so drawn to anyone, nor so protective before. It was strange because she didn't think she was capable of protecting anything. And although she had just finished a meal, a delicious, filling one, she felt as if she hadn't eaten in a long time.

It was there in the mountains, Nayan was saying, more than in Perpignan or Paris, that he had felt like an outsider. He was aware that, because of him, Anick's family had tempered their enthusiasm for the mountains and ski resort they so loved. Back in Perpignan they showed him the coastal towns. They went on day trips to Collioure, to Banyuls, and wherever they went there was an abundance of food and drink. And always they played classical music in the house on Impasse Drancourt. Mimi plied him with local sheep's milk cheeses, with sheep's milk yogourt, and bread she sent him down the road to get fresh from the bakers. He told Viveka how he had to ask for a bag to put the baguettes in, as the bakers had expected him to just carry it in his hand with only a little piece of greaseproof paper wrapped around the centre of it. Mimi made local dishes such as the one with anchovies, eggs, olives, and a Banyuls vinegar, and it was in fact very good, and with everything they ate there was wine from the area. They took him to restaurants that served the local
Catalan food, sausages and a rice dish that resembled a pelau but was full of shellfish, mussels, crayfish, scallops, squid, everything a bright orangy-yellowy colour because they had put saffron in it. He sometimes felt that a little jeera would have made it that much better, and he wanted to try that dish back here, adding jeera and a dash of curry powder.

The restaurants Anick and her parents took him to in Perpignan lined squares where there were churches, like the one — and he struggled to remember and then to say it — like the eleventh-century one, the Paroisse Cathedrale Saint Jean in Place Leon Gambetta (on cue, Viveka raised her eyes in a much appreciated salute to his memory and pronunciation). Everything inside the church was so black and dirty and old that you were afraid to touch the pews, even. And every building they passed seemed to have a historic plaque on it, and a story that Armand was ever ready to expound.

The food in the restaurants in these squares Nayan found to be very good, and Armand, Mimi, and Anick thought the food good too, but they always had to find some small fault. Some small
but
to everything. Just so that they could dissect and argue.

The food in France was good, he would admit, rich, but — his “but” was a different kind of but — but good. Still, he missed curries, a good shrimp curry or goat meat curry, and a real pelau, and salt fish and buljol. At least when he lived in Canada he would cook these for himself.

At that Viveka said, “I didn't know you cooked? Do you still?” “I could, but I don't have to. You know how well Mom cooks. And we have a maid. I'm too busy now, man. Too many responsibilities. A wife and a house to keep up with! And can you imagine if my father came home and found me in the kitchen? In any case, do you know how much I am worth?”

He waited for an answer. Viveka shrugged, the smile she managed becoming yet more painful.

“Three hundred dollars an hour.
Three hundred
. What do I want to spend time in the kitchen for? I can't! Time is money, Vik.”

Nayan leaned toward Viveka and lowered his voice. “Dad already thinks I let Anick get away with too much. She isn't like women here, you know. She isn't into taking care of family and house and garden and all of that, all the time. She cooked today, but that is unusual. She really wanted you to taste her food, French food. But, otherwise, she doesn't cook usually. In any case, they wouldn't really like her style of food. And can you imagine, really, if Dad were to come and find me in the kitchen cooking? Man, I would be up shit creek. I can cook quite well, I enjoy it even, but still, he'd want to know who wears the pants in my family — I mean between Anick and me! He already has his doubts.”

Anyway, Anick's family took him — he had already been chuckling, but now he guffawed — to the opera, and the symphony. Him! He had actually gone to an opera. He fought to stay interested, to stay awake even. He was pleased to have seen that aspect of European life, but most of what Anick and her family took very seriously left him unmoved, baffled. He didn't know if they really enjoyed all these things they took so seriously. There didn't appear to be much happiness at these events, but a lot of frowning and head-nodding. After performances, Armand, Anick, and Mimi argued endlessly. They spoke English when he was present, to engage him as they — well, maybe not
argued
, but
discussed
the merits and demerits of everything they experienced together. He merely nodded his head, he laughed, he scowled when it seemed appropriate, but he could not participate and did not understand why such a lot of heated dissection and analysis
was necessary. The three of them were full of opinions, and seemed to make sure to have diverging ones only so that they could argue.

One evening, Armand and Mimi invited some of their friends over for the sweet wines of Banyuls and Collioure, and for dessert. They had, unknown to him, spent the previous days searching out in his honour a collection of chocolates. Among these were milk ones, dark ones, truffles, and some with spices in them. There were three kinds that were made from cacao beans imported from an estate in Trinidad. It was at that point, he confessed to Viveka, that he felt really uncomfortable in front of them. He knew of the estate from which the ones made with Trinidad cacao came, but he, the son of a cacao estate owner and all-things-chocolate maker, wasn't familiar with such dark chocolate. He knew none of the other chocolates they had amassed, all of which were quite unlike the sweet milky ones that Trinidadians were used to, the kind Rimpty's made. Of course, in Canada he had seen dark chocolates in the shops, with the percentages of cacao — 65%, 70%, 80% — advertised in big bold figures, but he had dismissed them as a gimmick intended to appeal to some of the kinds of Canadians he met in university, ones who liked throwing around numbers that rated the heat of the various pepper sauces in their collection. The dark kind of chocolate, in his estimation at the time, was bitter, and he could never quite understand why anyone would like it.

But now the Thieberts and their friends, to a background of classical music, were breaking off tiny bits of the dark chocolate, putting them on the tips of their tongues and masticating very animatedly, grunting their analyses, judicious with their displays of pleasure, all as if they were critics evaluating wines. Armand would eat, chat, drink, and in particularly melodious
sections, conduct the music with his hands. Nayan was indeed intrigued by the chocolates with the spices, for they were reminiscent of the balls of raw cacao that some of the villagers in Rio Claro made for their own private use.

Viveka, too, knew of these cacao balls. Sometimes the workers on the estate would be given a certain amount of a crop for their own use. They would roast the dried fermented beans with peppercorns, cinnamon, bay leaf, nutmeg, allspice, vanilla bean, cloves, and cardamom, grind it all up and make hard-packed balls a little bigger than ping pong balls. They would give the Prakashs gifts of these raw cacao balls and Minty would, in turn, parcel these out to friends, some of them going to the Krishnus. These balls were crude, meant to be grated, and the powder used in baking or in making drinks.

The spiced chocolates that the Thieberts had amassed were quite different, related Nayan. They were little delicacies, conched to truffle-like smoothness. They gave Nayan the idea to re- evaluate the villagers' cacao balls, add an emulsifier to them, conch them longer. Viveka must look out for a new line of Rimpty's chocolates, he said.

That evening of wine and chocolates in Perpignan had left Nayan otherwise unsettled. The Thieberts and their friends talked at length about estates in Indonesia and about workers' conditions on the Ivory Coast estates, in Ecuador. They questioned him about workers' conditions in Trinidad, and he could only say that there was no need for unionization or any such thing as his father was very good to their workers, giving them, for instance, a percentage of the crop, and sometimes paying for a worker's medical care or buying school books for a worker's child. They shied away from talking too much about Trinidad estates after that, but carried on talking about production in
other regions, and Nayan wondered if the Thieberts and their friends had known these things for a while, of if they had gone and searched out the information especially for the occasion so that they could have their interminable discussions on the topic. He could have gone and done research too, if they had let him know what they were up to. He felt foolish. But one positive thing he learned was that there was more money to be made in the cacao business than he had realized before. There might be the exporting of beans — of course, they would have to be the fine premium kind — to France, and chocolate candy might be infused with local spices and flavours for export as well as for local consumption.

Viveka was about to say, for the sake of engagement, that she hadn't known there were different kinds of beans, but Nayan was just then called by Anick. He answered from the table, to which she said, noticeably sharply, “Please come. I need you. Now.”

As he pushed his chair back, Nayan raised his eyebrows at Viveka and wrung his hands in mock fear. He was gone so long that Viveka became uncomfortable. She got up and began clearing the table. She found herself tiptoeing and resting the dishes on the kitchen counter carefully, quietly. Eventually she stepped out onto the open patio, which was lit by a yellow bulb from a single wall sconce. Fireflies and moths flew erratically around the bulb, the glass clinking whenever one of them hit it. Frogs croaked in the bushes close to the fence, and there was a steady pulsing drone from cicadas. Viveka walked around to the outside of the patio so that she could step into the relative dark. The lights on the Pointe-à-Pierre refinery twinkled, and from the tips of the stacks orange flames throbbed upward against the night's utter blackness. Directly above, a billion stars flickered.
The brilliant points of the only constellation she knew — the southern cross — shone bold and steady. She strolled on the lawn up toward the back of the house. A light shone through a small high window, the kind one found in bathrooms. As she approached it she heard Anick's and Nayan's voices. Her instinct was to rush back down to the patio so as not to suffer the shame of eavesdropping, but then she heard her name mentioned. She stopped, held her breath, and listened. Unable to hear clearly, she tiptoed on the grass until she was just under the window. She could make it back to the area of the patio in seconds if she needed to.