Agnes Desarthe - Chez Moi

PENGUIN BOOKS

CHEZ MOI

AGNS DESARTHE was born in Paris in 1966 and has written many books for children and teenagers, as well as adult fiction. She has had two previous novels translated into English: Five Photos of My Wife (2001), short-listed for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize and the Jewish Quarterly Fiction Prize, and Good Intentions (2002).

ADRIANA HUNTER has been working as a literary translator since 1998, and has now translated over thirty books from the French, including two other novels by Agns Desarthe. She lives in Norfolk with her husband and their three children.

Praise for Chez Moi

Chez Moi is a delectable confection of renewal and hope, peppered by surprises and sweetened by friendship, set in a little restaurant in Paris. Agns Desarthes mouthwatering novel, like an innovative menu, introduces scenes and sorrows and characters in unexpected flavors; culinary ingredients rush in by flurries of musical aromas. The pages beg to be licked!

Cynthia Ozick, author of Dictation: A Quartet

Thank you, Agns Desarthe, for letting us into the imaginative mind of this wacky, philosophic, good-hearted, and altogether brave woman. I loved her from the piquant start to the satisfying finish, like an inventive meal with a deliciously perfect dessert.

Susan Vreeland, author of Luncheon of the Boating Party

Sometimesvery rarelya book comes your way that is so deceptively approachable and sastifying, it is only when you are finished that you realize it has offered profound human wisdom and a refreshing new way of looking at life. This is such a book.

Linda Olsson, author of Astrid & Veronika

Chez Moi is full of surprises and delights. Myriam is the sort of friend wed all like to havesmart and determined, eccentric and bravea person who will serve you fine coffee and praline raspberry mousse while she listens to your story. Her own story, with its pleasures of discovery and piercing losses and errors of the past, will catch your attention and make you want to linger in her restaurant over yet another cup of coffee, and then one more.

Kim Edwards, author of The Memory Keepers Daughter

Chez Moi

Agnes Desarthe

Translated from the French by Adriana Hunter

PENGUIN BOOKS

PENGUIN BOOKS
Published by the Penguin Group
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Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

First published in Great Britain by Portobello Books Ltd 2008 Published in Penguin Books 2008

Copyright Agnes Desarthe, 2006

Translation copyright Adriana Hunter, 2008 All rights reserved

Originally published in French as Mangez-moi by Les Editions de LOlivier, Paris.

PUBLISHERS NOTE This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the authors imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING IN PUBLICATION DATA
Desarthe, Agns, 1966
[Mangez-moi. English]
Chez moi / Agns Desarthe ; translated from the French by Adriana Hunter.
p. cm.

ISBN : 978-1-4406-3049-1

The scanning, uploading and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the authors rights is appreciated.

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To DanteTo my friends, for whom I love to cook, and to Claude, at Le Passage.

Contents

Am I a liar? Yes, because I told the man at the bank Id been on a hotel and catering course and done an eighteen-month work placement at the Ritz. I showed him the diplomas and contracts Id made the day before. I also brandished a management training certificate, a really good fake. I like living dangerously: thats how I lost my way in the past, and why Im on a winning streak now. The banker was completely taken in, and gave me the loan. I thanked him without turning a hair. The medical check? No problem. My blood, my precious blood is clean, nice and clean, as if I hadnt been through anything.

Am I a liar? No, because I can actually do everything I claim I can. I can wield spatulas like a juggler with his batons. Like a contortionist, I can supplely activate several different parts of my body independently: thickening a sauce with one hand while separating eggs and tying filou pastry parcels with the other. True, teenagers with fuzz on their lips, spots on their foreheads and greasy hair under their kitchen boys caps can master the amber colour of an impossibly unctuous caramel, they can fillet a mullet without losing one milligram of flesh, and stitch their crepinette sausages with all the dedication of Penelope. But. BUT! Stick them in a kitchen with five starving bawling children who keep getting under their feet and need to be back at school within half an hour (ones allergic to dairy products and another wont eat anything), throw our splendid young apprentice chefs into that lion cubs den with an empty fridge, pans that everything sticks to and a desire to give the little darlings a balanced meal, and watch them cope. Watch those chubby-faced boys toil away and fall apart. Everything theyve learned in cooking school Ive learned from my different lives: the first one, in those far off days, when I was a housewife and mother, and the second, more recently, when I earned my crust in the kitchens of the Santo Salto circus.

My restaurant will be small and inexpensive. I dont like frills. It will be called Chez moi because it really will be my home, Ill be sleeping there; I dont have enough money to pay for the lease and a rent.

It will serve all the recipes Ive invented, the ones Ive transformed and the ones Ive worked out for myself. There wont be any music - Im too emotional - and the light bulbs hanging from the ceiling will be orange-tinted. Ive already bought a giant fridge on the Avenue de la Rpublique. Theyve promised me an oven and a hob at a good price. Does it matter if its scratched? It doesnt matter at all, Im pretty scratched myself! The salesman doesnt laugh, he doesnt even smile. Men dont like it when women do themselves down. I also order a fifteen-setting dishwasher, the smallest model they have. It wont be big enough, the man says. Its all I can afford, itll have to do to start with. He promises hell send me some customers. He promises hell come for supper one evening himself, without any warning: as a surprise. Now he is lying, thats for sure, but I dont mind, I wouldnt exactly have loved cooking for him.

I cook with and out of love. How am I going to manage to love my customers? The sheer luxury of that question makes me think of prostitutes because thats precisely what they dont have - that luxury.

I didnt let my friends or family know about the day of the opening. I gave them the wrong date. This time, theres no denying it, I lied too. The shoppings done. Ive written my menus. Ive prepared everything that could be prepared. The rest is last minute work. But there is no last minute. Im still waiting. And theres no one coming through the door. No one knows my restaurant exists. I shake with anticipation from quarter to twelve till half past three. Its very tiring and my navel, which is the epicentre of frequent nervous spasms, is sorely tested.