Gaston Gets His Just Dessertsby Karis Fiorucci
Gaston was dreaming, as usual, of pastry people and swimming pools filled with cream cheese. He woke up and began to prepare breakfast, with an eye on the clock. For this morning, as well as taking out the fresh bread from the oven, Gaston was putting the finishing touches to his masterpiece. Lo! in the display window stood a life-size bust of the President, carved out of crusty white bread and sporting a blazer of pastry rectangles (pastel-coloured macaroons doubling as buttons). He had been working on it without pause for the previous four days—not daring to start earlier in case the skull grew mouldy or the jacket crumbled into dust. Now Gaston leaned against his broom handle in raptures, picturing the President's spellbound reaction: "Incredible handiwork!," "Goodness, you are the equal of any sculptor!" or "Should I eat it, or place it in a gallery?"
Before long, the Presidential party had arrived in town. Gaston ambled out of his bakery and pushed his way through the crowd for a better view. He was just able to make out the podgy figure he had recently immortalised in dough.
"Well Gaston, what will you give the President for his breakfast?" chuckled an old woman.
"Madame, our guest shall not leave with an empty stomach. Madeleines, pastries, a warm loaf…"
"Though lucky for you he will not be visiting Monsieur Tortoni, eh?"
"Tortoni?' snorted Gaston. "I have nothing to fear from that fat idiot. Unless you are proposing to hold an eating competition, in which case he would greatly outshine me."
"Oh, I know that you two are rivals, Gaston. But he is an excellent baker. Each week I buy half a dozen millefeuilles for my grandchildren. Such a treat for them."
She held up a paper bag.
"I want to conduct an experiment, madame. Please, come inside for a moment. And take out the cakes so well-regarded by those little food critics of yours."
Gaston produced a silver tray. His millefeuilles were identical to Tortoni's, except for their monstrous ornamentation. Thick wedges of chantilly and jam had been squeezed between quadruple pastry stacks, garnished with chocolate shavings, raspberries and edible sequins. The fondant topping had also been coloured red, white and blue.
"Well?"
"Very lavish."
"Ah!"
Two silver trays were now placed on the counter in front of the old woman, and the rival delicacies laid side by side.
"Well?"
But before she could reply, a gunshot rang out in the street.
"The President!"
***
Twenty minutes later, Gaston's shop was stuffed with dignitaries, photographers, and last of all the President himself. The old woman was lying down in the bedroom above Gaston's shop, still shaken by the backfiring car. Introductions were made, and an enormous, hairy hand shot towards Gaston. The silence which breathes over every such exchange was eventually relieved by the President's appetite (it had been swelling all morning, following a most unsatisfactory breakfast at the hands of the new cook.)
"These millefeuilles look rather spectacular, if I may say so."
***
Over the next few days, Gaston appeared to have swapped brains with a debonair society gent. "Tell us again, Gaston, what the President said to you?" "Annie—we shook hands and, instantly, I felt something of the warmth and fondness that only comes after a long friendship. 'My dear Gaston', he said…" The baker would continue like this for several hours, until even the usually attentive Annie began looking around for a stale baguette with which to bludgeon him to death. Word quickly spread (much to the old woman's disapproval, for she could not stand arrogance in young men) that Gaston had proclaimed himself the best baker in France. A preposterous photograph of the President (shaking hands with Gaston next to the baked sculpture of his head) was published in the local newspaper.
Of the millefeuilles, Gaston kept very quiet. In truth, the President had been enraptured with the taste, and was fervent in his congratulations. But Gaston's horror, at the moment the President made for the millefeuille tray, was observed by the old woman, who had wandered back into the shop. Not wishing to embarrass the poor boy, she crept back into the bedroom, unseen.
One week after the Presidential visit, a motorcycle pulled up outside the bakery. The courier passed a handwritten note to Gaston:
Monsieur, I cannot get those millefeuilles out of my mind. A pastry which resists the bite just long enough to be tantalising, before finally giving way to the luxury and smoothness of the cream—which is utter velvet! This filling of yours—so original in taste! What lightness! I want to place an order for a dozen each week. The courier will collect them every Wednesday, starting today. One other matter. Let this remain a secret indulgence, for now, as Marie is being very strict after that nonsense with my heart. Yours, J. B.
"Have I not been right to imagine that my life would not be conducted in this grimy backwater?" thought Gaston, tying a ribbon around the box of cakes and handing them to the courier, who sped off without a word. "My career is beginning!" The next day, however, he received another note:
Monsieur, did I not make clear that the other millefeuilles in your shop were much more to my taste than those absurd monsters which you sent me yesterday? The taste of the cream was much different, and not to my liking. My courier will return tomorrow. No more mistakes.
Gaston stayed in the bakery all that night, struggling to breathe through an upwelling of sobs and nausea. He had not tasted Tortoni's creations. But how could they be so different? More vanilla? Less vanilla? A swig of grape liqueur? By morning, Gaston had resolved to refuse the commission. One thing he could not decide. Had his mother died, or had the shop burnt down? He would actually have to set fire to the place. No. Kill his mother? Ideally, no. Then what was the excuse? Ah, such a simple dish! At this moment of anguish, Gaston looked up to see a gangly youth loping past the shop. This Jean-Paul was known all over town as a reliable sort, good at running errands for the shopkeepers. Gaston slipped a banknote into the boy's hand and sent him off to Tortoni's for a dozen millefeuilles. The following Wednesday, the courier returned:
Delighted with recent delivery. Yours, J.
After this, Jean-Paul's errand became a weekly mission. The millefeuilles from Tortoni were placed in Gaston's own boxes, then dispatched to the President. As weeks passed, and the President's notes became ever more rapturous, Gaston began to find his deception extremely gratifying. "Soon the President will reward my talent. I shall move to Paris and live in a house made of bread! Yes, I am going to be famous." But on the eighth Wednesday, Gaston's make-believe mansion was torn down, by Presidential edict:
Palace reception in two weeks. Need three hundred of the usual. Don't disappoint. Wonderful things are due. J. Gaston marched down to the river, with every intention of drowning himself. "What does it matter that I have been not been truthful? I deserve my commission! I deserve palaces and sports cars and statues in my honour and a chain of bakeries and television adverts. But Tortoni has stolen these things from me. Tortoni has drowned me! Tortoni has murdered me!" He sobbed until he thought his eyes would bleed, and bellowed until he thought his throat would close up with choking. Rushing down the hill, he passed the town's other bakery, and swivelled to see the two architects of his ruin, staring back at him with open mouths. He shook his fist and let out a roar of impotent rage—"MURDERER!"—before burying his face in his hands once again, and continuing along the sorrowful road which Tragedy had paved for him.
The old woman turned to her companion. "Oh, Monsieur Tortoni, don't you think we should fetch the poor boy? He is in a wretched state."
"Yes, madame. But please," laughed the baker, "just a few minutes more."
Also watching the scene were the gangly errand boy, Jean-Paul, and a dark-haired girl he was working up the courage to ask over for supper.
"It is the strangest thing, Virginie. Every Wednesday morning, Gaston pays me to bring him a dozen millefeuilles from Tortoni's bakery, with instructions not to breathe a word to anyone. Then at midday, Monsieur Tortoni pays me to pick up the same millefeuilles from Gaston's, drive my motorbike two miles out of town and deliver them back to him again, on the condition that I am not allowed to remove my helmet or speak while I am in Gaston's shop. What do you make of it? Strange, is it not?"
"Some practical joke at your expense, no doubt, Jean-Paul. Now kiss me, you silly boy, before I die waiting."
A Guestby David Wolf
1.
Thank God he didn't speak French, she thought as he lay there, his chest rising and falling, his thin arms resting awkwardly by his sides. His face could have been described as blank, were it not for the scattered red blotches protesting against the epithet. Long wiry hairs poked through his chest here and there, whilst on his stomach sat a number of small white spots left by chicken pox some years ago.
It was a dull thing, their arrangement. He had arrived two weeks beforehand, a hunched, bony teenager from Bristol, come here to study French for a month. She didn't know why he'd chosen Toulouse, or if he had chosen it at all. Keen parents might have been involved. Whatever the reason, she had received him into her flat, like countless other language students over the past few years, since she separated from Paul.
Soon after their split Paul had taken a flat just two floors below. He continued to come by unannounced, usually to rekey her fridge, leaving with a yoghurt or a can of something, and nodding on his way out, as if to commend her stoic fortitude in the face of such provocation. He always walked around his ex-wife's flat with a bouncy step, ostentatiously at ease. The more bad-tempered she was, the more jaunty his walk would become, all his own ill-will channelled into his aggressively jolly gait. Eventually, she had given up protesting about these visits. They punctuated her days, which were otherwise filled with bills, paperwork and television.
If this boy could speak French she didn't imagine he'd have much to say. She tried to imagine him at home, no longer muted as he was here, but the scene refused to play itself out. He was a blank to her. And what had in her mind been some kind of escape, was now a routine, a knock on her door at 3.15 after he got back from the school. At first she had worried about the possibility of an impromptu visit from Paul, but by now she didn't even bother to close her bedroom door.
The phone rang, jangling her out of her thoughts. It was her daughter. Yes, tonight was fine.
2.
She walked down Boulevard de Strasbourg, cutting into the centre of town via Rue St Bernard. As she passed by Saint-Sernin the sight of the tower annoyed her. It stretched upwards with an infuriating ease, like a ballet dancer casually holding an impossible pose. It was too elegant and distant, gazing indifferently over the city. It would never have got divorced in its fifties, it wouldn't spend its time in an endless back and forth just to get an estimate on a new bathroom and it would never have ended up sleeping with a fifteen-year old boy who had come to stay in her apartment for a month.
As she got nearer to the restaurant she thought of her daughter's reaction. She would find it disgusting, incomprehensible. She had never lost that childish horror at the thought of her parents having sex. With each other was unpleasant enough but with a teenager? That was just depressing. Why didn't she try and find someone of her age? There were plenty of old divorced guys about. And with an English kid? That was even worse.
Noticing the time she walked on faster, her form fading in and out as she hurried past the brightly glowing kebab restaurants and dark storefronts. And as she was overtaking one such establishment, she saw him. He was at a table with two other boys of his age, each of them convulsing with laughter at some shared joke. Seeing him in this context she felt compelled to go in and greet to him, the way two acquaintances who have never spoken might suddenly chat as friends upon bumping into each other in a foreign country.
Entering the glare of the restaurant, she brushed past the warmth from the rusty iron plate heating the spit. As the tower of meat rotated, gently sweating, a bald man behind the counter, electric razor in hand, lovingly shaved off the outer layer, exposing the pink meat underneath. Seeing the new customer he turned away, ready to take her order, but she pointed over to the young men to explain this was just a quick visit. She stepped forwards attempting to catch the boy's eye. He didn't see her straight away. He was busy using his finger to clear up the last few smears of ketchup from the flimsy plastic carton which had previously held his chips. But then looking up he caught her eye. She instantly knew what would follow but she was already too close to their table to turn around. Besides, the waiter was looking over now, curious as to her relation to this group of guffawing kids.
She had wanted to ask him what he was doing here, who his friends were, tease him for spending his time in places like this rather than in one of the restaurants she'd recommended when he first arrived, but instead she stood dumbly in front of these three teenage boys, who themselves had fallen silent, made self-conscious by her presence. After a few moments he began to exchange glances with his friends as if to say he had no idea who this old person was and why she was hovering over them expectantly. One of them snorted and soon they fell back into conversation, leaving her standing there for a few seconds like an actor who had missed her exit.
She arrived at Le Pastel ten minutes late. She'd run into someone on the way.
3.
The next afternoon she waited in bed as usual. By 3.30 she assumed he wasn't coming, but she remained where she was all the same, watching bubbles collect at the bottom of the glass on her bedside table. Then came the familiar timid knock. She went to the door and let him in without a word.
Dolphin
by Arabella Milbank
Down where the Canal Saint-Martin emerges to meet the Seine, where the albatross skeletons of umbrellas buffet gently in the dead eddy, where the dregs of a city are rolled around the water's mouth like the gritty residue of a glass of wine, there lives a man called Simon. He is so old he is almost young again, and Janus-headed watches the flow both ways. Tide-wise is the rosy view west to Notre-Dame's rear-end, current-wise silts his doorstep with the unwanted and the unexplained. Mostly it is shells of things; cartons and bottles brimming with murky river liquor. They call him an itinerant, but he is only as passing as the Seine, sinking itself year by year a deeper, softer bed. Above the crowds zig-zag in contrary motion, a swarm with myriad camera eyes. His Paris is done in strips of dark and light and the passing of the water's dappled shadow on the bridge above his head. And sometimes in tapering streets behind the river with his rattletrap trolley and the sweet rot of dustbins. His Paris is the dry cough of winter and the deep belch of August.
But the morning in question was stencilled in crisp lines of February sun. He had been posted erect since dawn, waiting to pay his respects to the sanitation boat scooping through. The Seine was lucid-flat, mirror to the day. The weight of the trains passing overhead juddered through his body with a familiar vibration.
At 8 hours the first bateau-mouche of the morning came droning by, the loudspeaker feeding stale figures to its croissant-munching load. —The Seine is 777 km long. The Seine's source is in Lot-et-Garonne. 43 million tonnes are transported by river every year…
43 million tonnes of sun-burnt tourist flesh.
Later that day he would clap on his hat and limp his way down the right bank to the tents that huddled under the Pont de Bercy. There they called him the harbour-master, for his two brass anchor buttons and his portside pitch.
—Va bien, le Capitaine? Still fishing for the stars?
Perhaps a little too for his rod and line, and his nightime vigils over the dark waters.
—Va bien, va bien. Just a mouthful. Your health.
They were a collection of beards and shoelaces nearly as old as himself, sitting round a dining-table on which sat one baguette with both ends missing and a camembert rind.
Later still, he crosses the Ile-St-Louis, through a blur of faces he has ceased to bother remarking. The city reduces itself to what will stay put.
In the square in front of the cathedral Jan two-stump and Jan one-stump are holding an animated conversation, gesturing with invisible limbs. Between them Marthe spreads her legs comfortably apart, skirt swagged between, legs turned out toad-like and slipper soles flapping. Her face is an eyeless smile, pupils lost in the creases. The tableau swivels outwards like a hinged triptych at Simon's arrival.
—Capitaine!
They usher him to sit on the wall and bow down anxiously, sleeveless vests and armless torsos, consulting him like an almanac.
—Capitaine! You can tell us, surely. When was the last dolphin seen on the Seine?
Simon looks warily from one to the other.
—A dolphin?
—A dolphin! A fin, two flippers and a snub nose. Like on the tuna cans.
Inserts Jan one-stump, waggling his good arm in a wave-like motion.
—I know what a dolphin is, Jan.
And he did. He knew very well. He knew with his innermost self, his oldest youngest self. Simon on his mother's knee. D for dolphin, and the leaping waves with the higher-leaping fish, an arc of joyful energy caught high on the page.
—Who's seen a dolphin?
—Why, no-one, but…well I forget, but Jan…
—No, clochard, it was you, you said…
Tweedledum and Tweedledee in round hats rolled at the edges like cottage loaves, white vests and encrusted jeans.
—Well, in any case, capitaine! You who know the river like Marie here knows the gutter…
Marie croaked a laugh and rocked her large head from side to side.
—It was Thomas.
She said suddenly, and then again,
—Thomas, but he didn't believe.
—Didn't believe what, Marie la vieille?
said Simon gently, Marie the young in his mind, spitting tobacco juices and laughing with orange teeth.
But Jan remembered now, Jans both.
—Oh, Thomas heard it from a type who works the sanitation boats.
—But Thomas didn't believe it. What would it come down here for? Fine dining?
Thomas was another parvis-rat, but of the higher species that dangled gilt eiffel-tower keychains from their fingers, and carried money in a bulging bum bag round his skinny middle.
—That's a good one, truite meunière!
—Salmon en croûte!
The question was forgotten. Simon raised his eyes to gargoyle-height and saw the open page again, flat underneath the table where he'd crawled to peruse it, words, as always, impenetrable. But the image clear, the arc of spray dividing into seven colours and the beak-mouth open, to sing.
Towards dusk Simon sat behind the lock, the bobbing end of his line growing indistinct. Earlier now, just as earlier in the season the soft marrow of his bones seemed to stiffen and crack. Scuppered and fouled, he murmured, aiming a mouthful of frothed spit at his reflection. They'd said as much in October, when that kid-doctor came down the jacob's ladder from the quay, swinging a green case of placebos and platitudes. Get yourself inside, Monsieur. The shelters are nothing to be ashamed of. A good warm meal for once, heh? But Simon was waiting. For a bite, for the spring, for the shore to recede. To go down with his ship.
A pair of pigeons cooed and the scuffle of their wings echoed from the sinewed bridge. By the running lights of a receding barge he saw the tight skin of a swollen shopping bag, a plastic champagne flute, a patisserie box breaking down into cardboard crumbs. Then another passing glimmer, and a shadow pushing against his line. He almost missed it, the curving darkness rising above the water-line, so close. He tugged once, no response. Then suddenly it seemed to glide forwards, until it was there, buoyed up aginst the stone step. A blurred outline, like fur. His heart juddered. A dead dog? Too big for a dog. His hands shook and he dropped his rod, hungry to touch.
What he had taken for fur was the familiar blanket of bacteria, the river-scum. But beneath was different, at once rough and smooth. He fished out his pocket-knife to try if it would cut, then hesitated. A low whine in his ears. He shook his head and scored the blade in. The surface parted and a luminous pink glowed through, streaked with white. He recoiled suddenly. It was the colour of tuna steak on the fishmonger's ice, ice and green plastic fronds. Panicked, he pinched the cut closed, his fumbling fingers chill and unwieldy. D, a D for…
He was breathing too fast, and the stone was cutting through his patched knees. He half hauled himself up, then dove awkwardly forward as the body seemd to drift slightly from its berth. Clawing, scrabbling, he hugged it to himself. It was trapped here, he saw now, trapped in the narrow mouth of this artificial river, who knows how. He saw the open page again, the arc…
What else could he do? No-one to call, the animal's voice in his ears.
He lifted the slipping mass with a heaving breath, its blood-heat surprising him against his own age and cold. It rolled away under his hands, like lifting a barrel. The whine grew, persistent and keening. He found himself keening back, keening then almost roaring. He heaved again, his body a straining arc, stringy muscles taut as the winching ropes to lift a yacht, rigid like the buttresses curving up to cradle the cathedral, up and up. Slithering weeds, warm water, blood gushed over his forehead, his front, his back. He felt a massive pain clutch his neck, then silence. Then, beyond the silence, bells. It must be time, time for…but he could not remember what for, and he was turning, keeling forward, and the grey weight rolled from his arms and tore his skin as it fell, and then he was hunkered there, kneeling. He saw the pain-pale disk of his face, first. Like the yacht's white hull underwater. It greyed and he felt hope in his heart's skipped beat. Perhaps it would rise, surface and swim on. Then the bile flooded up, and blood-red blotches billowed through the narrow aperture of his sight, and the pain slipped away.
It was the sanitation boat that found him, an angled heap. A nylon tent. A bottle. A rod. They took old Marthe down to identify the body, at her insistence. She ran her fingers over the anchors of his buttons and the dense stuff of his beard and found his eyes. Open when we found him, said someone, awkwardly. No-one had thought to close them. But Marthe smiled her eyeless smile.
—Simon, you see, he believed.
She nodded emphatically all around and waddled on through the double doors.
In death he was gazing through a nacreous haze at the rainbow arch of the bridge. At the arching rainbow of the bridge. At the rainbow, which, in the end, was not a bridge at all. And he followed it down.
Gaston was dreaming, as usual, of pastry people and swimming pools filled with cream cheese. He woke up and began to prepare breakfast, with an eye on the clock. For this morning, as well as taking out the fresh bread from the oven, Gaston was putting the finishing touches to his masterpiece. Lo! in the display window stood a life-size bust of the President, carved out of crusty white bread and sporting a blazer of pastry rectangles (pastel-coloured macaroons doubling as buttons). He had been working on it without pause for the previous four days—not daring to start earlier in case the skull grew mouldy or the jacket crumbled into dust. Now Gaston leaned against his broom handle in raptures, picturing the President's spellbound reaction: "Incredible handiwork!," "Goodness, you are the equal of any sculptor!" or "Should I eat it, or place it in a gallery?"
Before long, the Presidential party had arrived in town. Gaston ambled out of his bakery and pushed his way through the crowd for a better view. He was just able to make out the podgy figure he had recently immortalised in dough.
"Well Gaston, what will you give the President for his breakfast?" chuckled an old woman.
"Madame, our guest shall not leave with an empty stomach. Madeleines, pastries, a warm loaf…"
"Though lucky for you he will not be visiting Monsieur Tortoni, eh?"
"Tortoni?' snorted Gaston. "I have nothing to fear from that fat idiot. Unless you are proposing to hold an eating competition, in which case he would greatly outshine me."
"Oh, I know that you two are rivals, Gaston. But he is an excellent baker. Each week I buy half a dozen millefeuilles for my grandchildren. Such a treat for them."
She held up a paper bag.
"I want to conduct an experiment, madame. Please, come inside for a moment. And take out the cakes so well-regarded by those little food critics of yours."
Gaston produced a silver tray. His millefeuilles were identical to Tortoni's, except for their monstrous ornamentation. Thick wedges of chantilly and jam had been squeezed between quadruple pastry stacks, garnished with chocolate shavings, raspberries and edible sequins. The fondant topping had also been coloured red, white and blue.
"Well?"
"Very lavish."
"Ah!"
Two silver trays were now placed on the counter in front of the old woman, and the rival delicacies laid side by side.
"Well?"
But before she could reply, a gunshot rang out in the street.
"The President!"
***
Twenty minutes later, Gaston's shop was stuffed with dignitaries, photographers, and last of all the President himself. The old woman was lying down in the bedroom above Gaston's shop, still shaken by the backfiring car. Introductions were made, and an enormous, hairy hand shot towards Gaston. The silence which breathes over every such exchange was eventually relieved by the President's appetite (it had been swelling all morning, following a most unsatisfactory breakfast at the hands of the new cook.)
"These millefeuilles look rather spectacular, if I may say so."
***
Over the next few days, Gaston appeared to have swapped brains with a debonair society gent. "Tell us again, Gaston, what the President said to you?" "Annie—we shook hands and, instantly, I felt something of the warmth and fondness that only comes after a long friendship. 'My dear Gaston', he said…" The baker would continue like this for several hours, until even the usually attentive Annie began looking around for a stale baguette with which to bludgeon him to death. Word quickly spread (much to the old woman's disapproval, for she could not stand arrogance in young men) that Gaston had proclaimed himself the best baker in France. A preposterous photograph of the President (shaking hands with Gaston next to the baked sculpture of his head) was published in the local newspaper.
Of the millefeuilles, Gaston kept very quiet. In truth, the President had been enraptured with the taste, and was fervent in his congratulations. But Gaston's horror, at the moment the President made for the millefeuille tray, was observed by the old woman, who had wandered back into the shop. Not wishing to embarrass the poor boy, she crept back into the bedroom, unseen.
One week after the Presidential visit, a motorcycle pulled up outside the bakery. The courier passed a handwritten note to Gaston:
Monsieur, I cannot get those millefeuilles out of my mind. A pastry which resists the bite just long enough to be tantalising, before finally giving way to the luxury and smoothness of the cream—which is utter velvet! This filling of yours—so original in taste! What lightness! I want to place an order for a dozen each week. The courier will collect them every Wednesday, starting today. One other matter. Let this remain a secret indulgence, for now, as Marie is being very strict after that nonsense with my heart. Yours, J. B.
"Have I not been right to imagine that my life would not be conducted in this grimy backwater?" thought Gaston, tying a ribbon around the box of cakes and handing them to the courier, who sped off without a word. "My career is beginning!" The next day, however, he received another note:
Monsieur, did I not make clear that the other millefeuilles in your shop were much more to my taste than those absurd monsters which you sent me yesterday? The taste of the cream was much different, and not to my liking. My courier will return tomorrow. No more mistakes.
Gaston stayed in the bakery all that night, struggling to breathe through an upwelling of sobs and nausea. He had not tasted Tortoni's creations. But how could they be so different? More vanilla? Less vanilla? A swig of grape liqueur? By morning, Gaston had resolved to refuse the commission. One thing he could not decide. Had his mother died, or had the shop burnt down? He would actually have to set fire to the place. No. Kill his mother? Ideally, no. Then what was the excuse? Ah, such a simple dish! At this moment of anguish, Gaston looked up to see a gangly youth loping past the shop. This Jean-Paul was known all over town as a reliable sort, good at running errands for the shopkeepers. Gaston slipped a banknote into the boy's hand and sent him off to Tortoni's for a dozen millefeuilles. The following Wednesday, the courier returned:
Delighted with recent delivery. Yours, J.
After this, Jean-Paul's errand became a weekly mission. The millefeuilles from Tortoni were placed in Gaston's own boxes, then dispatched to the President. As weeks passed, and the President's notes became ever more rapturous, Gaston began to find his deception extremely gratifying. "Soon the President will reward my talent. I shall move to Paris and live in a house made of bread! Yes, I am going to be famous." But on the eighth Wednesday, Gaston's make-believe mansion was torn down, by Presidential edict:
Palace reception in two weeks. Need three hundred of the usual. Don't disappoint. Wonderful things are due. J. Gaston marched down to the river, with every intention of drowning himself. "What does it matter that I have been not been truthful? I deserve my commission! I deserve palaces and sports cars and statues in my honour and a chain of bakeries and television adverts. But Tortoni has stolen these things from me. Tortoni has drowned me! Tortoni has murdered me!" He sobbed until he thought his eyes would bleed, and bellowed until he thought his throat would close up with choking. Rushing down the hill, he passed the town's other bakery, and swivelled to see the two architects of his ruin, staring back at him with open mouths. He shook his fist and let out a roar of impotent rage—"MURDERER!"—before burying his face in his hands once again, and continuing along the sorrowful road which Tragedy had paved for him.
The old woman turned to her companion. "Oh, Monsieur Tortoni, don't you think we should fetch the poor boy? He is in a wretched state."
"Yes, madame. But please," laughed the baker, "just a few minutes more."
Also watching the scene were the gangly errand boy, Jean-Paul, and a dark-haired girl he was working up the courage to ask over for supper.
"It is the strangest thing, Virginie. Every Wednesday morning, Gaston pays me to bring him a dozen millefeuilles from Tortoni's bakery, with instructions not to breathe a word to anyone. Then at midday, Monsieur Tortoni pays me to pick up the same millefeuilles from Gaston's, drive my motorbike two miles out of town and deliver them back to him again, on the condition that I am not allowed to remove my helmet or speak while I am in Gaston's shop. What do you make of it? Strange, is it not?"
"Some practical joke at your expense, no doubt, Jean-Paul. Now kiss me, you silly boy, before I die waiting."
A Guestby David Wolf
1.
Thank God he didn't speak French, she thought as he lay there, his chest rising and falling, his thin arms resting awkwardly by his sides. His face could have been described as blank, were it not for the scattered red blotches protesting against the epithet. Long wiry hairs poked through his chest here and there, whilst on his stomach sat a number of small white spots left by chicken pox some years ago.
It was a dull thing, their arrangement. He had arrived two weeks beforehand, a hunched, bony teenager from Bristol, come here to study French for a month. She didn't know why he'd chosen Toulouse, or if he had chosen it at all. Keen parents might have been involved. Whatever the reason, she had received him into her flat, like countless other language students over the past few years, since she separated from Paul.
Soon after their split Paul had taken a flat just two floors below. He continued to come by unannounced, usually to rekey her fridge, leaving with a yoghurt or a can of something, and nodding on his way out, as if to commend her stoic fortitude in the face of such provocation. He always walked around his ex-wife's flat with a bouncy step, ostentatiously at ease. The more bad-tempered she was, the more jaunty his walk would become, all his own ill-will channelled into his aggressively jolly gait. Eventually, she had given up protesting about these visits. They punctuated her days, which were otherwise filled with bills, paperwork and television.
If this boy could speak French she didn't imagine he'd have much to say. She tried to imagine him at home, no longer muted as he was here, but the scene refused to play itself out. He was a blank to her. And what had in her mind been some kind of escape, was now a routine, a knock on her door at 3.15 after he got back from the school. At first she had worried about the possibility of an impromptu visit from Paul, but by now she didn't even bother to close her bedroom door.
The phone rang, jangling her out of her thoughts. It was her daughter. Yes, tonight was fine.
2.
She walked down Boulevard de Strasbourg, cutting into the centre of town via Rue St Bernard. As she passed by Saint-Sernin the sight of the tower annoyed her. It stretched upwards with an infuriating ease, like a ballet dancer casually holding an impossible pose. It was too elegant and distant, gazing indifferently over the city. It would never have got divorced in its fifties, it wouldn't spend its time in an endless back and forth just to get an estimate on a new bathroom and it would never have ended up sleeping with a fifteen-year old boy who had come to stay in her apartment for a month.
As she got nearer to the restaurant she thought of her daughter's reaction. She would find it disgusting, incomprehensible. She had never lost that childish horror at the thought of her parents having sex. With each other was unpleasant enough but with a teenager? That was just depressing. Why didn't she try and find someone of her age? There were plenty of old divorced guys about. And with an English kid? That was even worse.
Noticing the time she walked on faster, her form fading in and out as she hurried past the brightly glowing kebab restaurants and dark storefronts. And as she was overtaking one such establishment, she saw him. He was at a table with two other boys of his age, each of them convulsing with laughter at some shared joke. Seeing him in this context she felt compelled to go in and greet to him, the way two acquaintances who have never spoken might suddenly chat as friends upon bumping into each other in a foreign country.
Entering the glare of the restaurant, she brushed past the warmth from the rusty iron plate heating the spit. As the tower of meat rotated, gently sweating, a bald man behind the counter, electric razor in hand, lovingly shaved off the outer layer, exposing the pink meat underneath. Seeing the new customer he turned away, ready to take her order, but she pointed over to the young men to explain this was just a quick visit. She stepped forwards attempting to catch the boy's eye. He didn't see her straight away. He was busy using his finger to clear up the last few smears of ketchup from the flimsy plastic carton which had previously held his chips. But then looking up he caught her eye. She instantly knew what would follow but she was already too close to their table to turn around. Besides, the waiter was looking over now, curious as to her relation to this group of guffawing kids.
She had wanted to ask him what he was doing here, who his friends were, tease him for spending his time in places like this rather than in one of the restaurants she'd recommended when he first arrived, but instead she stood dumbly in front of these three teenage boys, who themselves had fallen silent, made self-conscious by her presence. After a few moments he began to exchange glances with his friends as if to say he had no idea who this old person was and why she was hovering over them expectantly. One of them snorted and soon they fell back into conversation, leaving her standing there for a few seconds like an actor who had missed her exit.
She arrived at Le Pastel ten minutes late. She'd run into someone on the way.
3.
The next afternoon she waited in bed as usual. By 3.30 she assumed he wasn't coming, but she remained where she was all the same, watching bubbles collect at the bottom of the glass on her bedside table. Then came the familiar timid knock. She went to the door and let him in without a word.
Dolphin
by Arabella Milbank
Down where the Canal Saint-Martin emerges to meet the Seine, where the albatross skeletons of umbrellas buffet gently in the dead eddy, where the dregs of a city are rolled around the water's mouth like the gritty residue of a glass of wine, there lives a man called Simon. He is so old he is almost young again, and Janus-headed watches the flow both ways. Tide-wise is the rosy view west to Notre-Dame's rear-end, current-wise silts his doorstep with the unwanted and the unexplained. Mostly it is shells of things; cartons and bottles brimming with murky river liquor. They call him an itinerant, but he is only as passing as the Seine, sinking itself year by year a deeper, softer bed. Above the crowds zig-zag in contrary motion, a swarm with myriad camera eyes. His Paris is done in strips of dark and light and the passing of the water's dappled shadow on the bridge above his head. And sometimes in tapering streets behind the river with his rattletrap trolley and the sweet rot of dustbins. His Paris is the dry cough of winter and the deep belch of August.
But the morning in question was stencilled in crisp lines of February sun. He had been posted erect since dawn, waiting to pay his respects to the sanitation boat scooping through. The Seine was lucid-flat, mirror to the day. The weight of the trains passing overhead juddered through his body with a familiar vibration.
At 8 hours the first bateau-mouche of the morning came droning by, the loudspeaker feeding stale figures to its croissant-munching load. —The Seine is 777 km long. The Seine's source is in Lot-et-Garonne. 43 million tonnes are transported by river every year…
43 million tonnes of sun-burnt tourist flesh.
Later that day he would clap on his hat and limp his way down the right bank to the tents that huddled under the Pont de Bercy. There they called him the harbour-master, for his two brass anchor buttons and his portside pitch.
—Va bien, le Capitaine? Still fishing for the stars?
Perhaps a little too for his rod and line, and his nightime vigils over the dark waters.
—Va bien, va bien. Just a mouthful. Your health.
They were a collection of beards and shoelaces nearly as old as himself, sitting round a dining-table on which sat one baguette with both ends missing and a camembert rind.
Later still, he crosses the Ile-St-Louis, through a blur of faces he has ceased to bother remarking. The city reduces itself to what will stay put.
In the square in front of the cathedral Jan two-stump and Jan one-stump are holding an animated conversation, gesturing with invisible limbs. Between them Marthe spreads her legs comfortably apart, skirt swagged between, legs turned out toad-like and slipper soles flapping. Her face is an eyeless smile, pupils lost in the creases. The tableau swivels outwards like a hinged triptych at Simon's arrival.
—Capitaine!
They usher him to sit on the wall and bow down anxiously, sleeveless vests and armless torsos, consulting him like an almanac.
—Capitaine! You can tell us, surely. When was the last dolphin seen on the Seine?
Simon looks warily from one to the other.
—A dolphin?
—A dolphin! A fin, two flippers and a snub nose. Like on the tuna cans.
Inserts Jan one-stump, waggling his good arm in a wave-like motion.
—I know what a dolphin is, Jan.
And he did. He knew very well. He knew with his innermost self, his oldest youngest self. Simon on his mother's knee. D for dolphin, and the leaping waves with the higher-leaping fish, an arc of joyful energy caught high on the page.
—Who's seen a dolphin?
—Why, no-one, but…well I forget, but Jan…
—No, clochard, it was you, you said…
Tweedledum and Tweedledee in round hats rolled at the edges like cottage loaves, white vests and encrusted jeans.
—Well, in any case, capitaine! You who know the river like Marie here knows the gutter…
Marie croaked a laugh and rocked her large head from side to side.
—It was Thomas.
She said suddenly, and then again,
—Thomas, but he didn't believe.
—Didn't believe what, Marie la vieille?
said Simon gently, Marie the young in his mind, spitting tobacco juices and laughing with orange teeth.
But Jan remembered now, Jans both.
—Oh, Thomas heard it from a type who works the sanitation boats.
—But Thomas didn't believe it. What would it come down here for? Fine dining?
Thomas was another parvis-rat, but of the higher species that dangled gilt eiffel-tower keychains from their fingers, and carried money in a bulging bum bag round his skinny middle.
—That's a good one, truite meunière!
—Salmon en croûte!
The question was forgotten. Simon raised his eyes to gargoyle-height and saw the open page again, flat underneath the table where he'd crawled to peruse it, words, as always, impenetrable. But the image clear, the arc of spray dividing into seven colours and the beak-mouth open, to sing.
Towards dusk Simon sat behind the lock, the bobbing end of his line growing indistinct. Earlier now, just as earlier in the season the soft marrow of his bones seemed to stiffen and crack. Scuppered and fouled, he murmured, aiming a mouthful of frothed spit at his reflection. They'd said as much in October, when that kid-doctor came down the jacob's ladder from the quay, swinging a green case of placebos and platitudes. Get yourself inside, Monsieur. The shelters are nothing to be ashamed of. A good warm meal for once, heh? But Simon was waiting. For a bite, for the spring, for the shore to recede. To go down with his ship.
A pair of pigeons cooed and the scuffle of their wings echoed from the sinewed bridge. By the running lights of a receding barge he saw the tight skin of a swollen shopping bag, a plastic champagne flute, a patisserie box breaking down into cardboard crumbs. Then another passing glimmer, and a shadow pushing against his line. He almost missed it, the curving darkness rising above the water-line, so close. He tugged once, no response. Then suddenly it seemed to glide forwards, until it was there, buoyed up aginst the stone step. A blurred outline, like fur. His heart juddered. A dead dog? Too big for a dog. His hands shook and he dropped his rod, hungry to touch.
What he had taken for fur was the familiar blanket of bacteria, the river-scum. But beneath was different, at once rough and smooth. He fished out his pocket-knife to try if it would cut, then hesitated. A low whine in his ears. He shook his head and scored the blade in. The surface parted and a luminous pink glowed through, streaked with white. He recoiled suddenly. It was the colour of tuna steak on the fishmonger's ice, ice and green plastic fronds. Panicked, he pinched the cut closed, his fumbling fingers chill and unwieldy. D, a D for…
He was breathing too fast, and the stone was cutting through his patched knees. He half hauled himself up, then dove awkwardly forward as the body seemd to drift slightly from its berth. Clawing, scrabbling, he hugged it to himself. It was trapped here, he saw now, trapped in the narrow mouth of this artificial river, who knows how. He saw the open page again, the arc…
What else could he do? No-one to call, the animal's voice in his ears.
He lifted the slipping mass with a heaving breath, its blood-heat surprising him against his own age and cold. It rolled away under his hands, like lifting a barrel. The whine grew, persistent and keening. He found himself keening back, keening then almost roaring. He heaved again, his body a straining arc, stringy muscles taut as the winching ropes to lift a yacht, rigid like the buttresses curving up to cradle the cathedral, up and up. Slithering weeds, warm water, blood gushed over his forehead, his front, his back. He felt a massive pain clutch his neck, then silence. Then, beyond the silence, bells. It must be time, time for…but he could not remember what for, and he was turning, keeling forward, and the grey weight rolled from his arms and tore his skin as it fell, and then he was hunkered there, kneeling. He saw the pain-pale disk of his face, first. Like the yacht's white hull underwater. It greyed and he felt hope in his heart's skipped beat. Perhaps it would rise, surface and swim on. Then the bile flooded up, and blood-red blotches billowed through the narrow aperture of his sight, and the pain slipped away.
It was the sanitation boat that found him, an angled heap. A nylon tent. A bottle. A rod. They took old Marthe down to identify the body, at her insistence. She ran her fingers over the anchors of his buttons and the dense stuff of his beard and found his eyes. Open when we found him, said someone, awkwardly. No-one had thought to close them. But Marthe smiled her eyeless smile.
—Simon, you see, he believed.
She nodded emphatically all around and waddled on through the double doors.
In death he was gazing through a nacreous haze at the rainbow arch of the bridge. At the arching rainbow of the bridge. At the rainbow, which, in the end, was not a bridge at all. And he followed it down.
