Vanilla Salt (11 page)

“Pardon, I no understand you nearly nothing. Maybe I go to restaurant. I think this during day.”

Àlex gets up earlier than usual. It’s not even six in the morning, but after tossing and turning all night he decides to get out of bed. He lets the warm water run down his back. He’s always found the shower comforting. Yesterday he made a decision and informed Frank. He’s going to close the restaurant. Today he has to think about how to go about it. Naturally, this is all new to him. He’s never closed a business in his life.

The shower water doesn’t offer any answers for the string of questions he’s asking himself. The paperwork for closing down a business; what to do with the equipment; how to rent the place… Then there are the really hard questions. What’s he supposed to do now? Where will he go? What can he do? The water’s cleansed his skin, but his spirit is still muddy with doubts. The stains of disquiet can’t be washed away.

He gets dressed slowly, looking at the old records and films on his shelves. He’s more than tempted to bolt the door, lock himself in here to waste away, watching all the films and listening to all the records in his collection, over and over again, till he dies. A gradual, pleasant suicide, enjoying his treasures, that’s how he’d like to go. He’s always said that suicide’s for cowards. His father used to like quoting Gómez de la Serna:
“Suicide can only be regarded as man’s weakness because it is certainly easier to die than to endure a life full of bitterness without respite.”

However, today he has to admit that he doesn’t feel like he wants to continue trying to cope with the problems of the world, problems he can’t understand and can’t overcome. He feels like a novice bullfighter faced with a bull that keeps changing colour, form and strength, a bull that’s acting in a completely incomprehensible, unpredictable way. The worst thing that can happen to a bullfighter is to feel afraid. Àlex is afraid.

He decides to go downstairs and have some breakfast. Today he’ll eat whatever he feels like, the last caprice of a king who’s about to be garrotted. He makes two slices of toast, liberally rubbed with a cut clove of garlic, generously anointed in olive oil and topped with a big chunk of
llonganissa
, a dry, hard sausage he loves chewing on to extract all its flavour. He adds a bit of salt and pepper. The joys of his larder. He eats slowly, washing it down with an icy-cold beer. He doesn’t feel like reading the newspaper or listening to the radio or knowing anything about this incomprehensible world. He wants to fuse with the
llonganissa
, feel primitive, not know anything, not understand anything. Only chew, slurp, salivate, swallow… and top it off with a great big beer burp.

The
llonganissa
has made him feel better, or maybe it was catching sight of a few leftover bits of salt cod – scraps like dry, salty rosary beads – in one corner of the kitchen. He decides to make himself an ancestral dish his grandmother used to cook. He doesn’t know its real name, but Gran used to call it
bacallà de bany d’or
. The name comes from its lovely golden colour and the fact that it’s made from the humblest parts of the fish, like gold-plated tin earrings.

He soaks the pieces of
bacallà
in plenty of water, which he changes ten times, hoping to remove the salt faster, though he likes it strong-tasting. Meanwhile, he pours a generous amount of oil into a casserole
and browns some finely chopped garlic. Then he adds the
bacallà
, now shredded into even smaller pieces. It has to be stirred non-stop until it takes on the oil’s golden hues and is cooked through. The process takes quite a while and the action of stirring is hypnotic. This should be the time for singing, caressing the
bacallà
with one of the songs he likes, any one from his French and Catalan repertoire. But he doesn’t feel like singing.

Annette’s taken his enthusiasm for music with her, borne it off tangled in her curls. He can’t get her out of his head – her sweetness, her smile… His brain’s full of Annette. He turns the fire off and phones Frank.

“Hey man, have you got over what was bugging you?”

“Bugging me? You’re the one who was as wobbly as a blancmange.”

“Listen, is Annette there?”

“Yes, but I’m not sure she wants to talk to you.”

“Let her decide that, will you. Tell her I’m on the phone, Mr Mozambique!”

The waiting becomes eternal. Where the fuck has he gone to find her. Quebec? What’s going on? Is it true she doesn’t want to talk to him? At last he hears her voice.

“Hello, Àlex. How you are?”

“Annette…”

“Yes, Àlex…”

“Can you come?”

“Where?”

“Here, the restaurant. I need you.”

“You think this so easy. You talk me loud all the day and now you ask I must to come. You say I necessary. You no have help?”

“There’s no lack of people who want to work for me and, if I wanted, there’d be a queue at the door. But I’m not interested in that. I want you. I’m cooking some
bacallà
just like my old gran used to make it.
I’d like you to taste it. Come on. I’m serious. You know how hard it is for me to say these things. I’m not ashamed to confess it. I need you.”

“No possible now.”

“Not possible for whom?”

“I. This, what I say you.”

“It’s impossible to understand your dreadful Catalan,” he complains. “Why can’t you come?”

“I help the Frank’s wife for to cook. Many childs in house.”

“OK, I’ll come over then and bring lunch. This place is full of dishes no one will ever eat. Today I’ve closed Antic Món once and for all. I can’t keep going. I don’t know what I’m going to do, but I don’t want to do this any more.”

“Frank he explain me this.”

“He told you? The man doesn’t miss a beat. He honks louder than a rutting gander. So do you want me to come?”

“I ask Frank’s wife.”

Annette leaves the phone for a few seconds that seem endless. When she resumes the conversation her voice has changed and is now as sweet as a summer peach.

“She say you can to come.”

Annette’s struggling to contain her happiness, to hide it from Àlex. She’s longing to see him. She’s missed him since she’s been staying with the Gabo family, but fears that her low spirits are an expression of the loneliness she’s been struggling with since her arrival in Catalonia. She knows that confusing the need for company with love is a catastrophic error. She needs to be sure about every step she takes. She’s too old to fail again. She keeps mulling over her yearning to see Àlex, which might be a result of the uncomfortable conditions of her stay with Frank and Graça, or maybe she’s missing Àlex’s fantastic food, or maybe… maybe, flying in the face of all the rules of logic,
she’s irrationally attracted to this bitter, tender, impetuous, irascible and sweet man.

Well, she’ll just have to accept it. Although she hates it when her emotions take control of her actions, the truth is that she really likes, really fancies Àlex.

Àlex hangs up. He’s on cloud nine, light-headed as an adolescent on his first date. He goes upstairs and applies some cologne, lashings of it. Combs his hair. Standing at the mirror, he checks one profile, checks the other, looks at his nose. A hair’s sticking out. Tweezers. Gotcha! He thinks, “What a bloody fool you are. As if Annette hasn’t seen you wearing any old thing, with dirty hands and hair all over the place… You’re a complete cretin.”

He rushes down to the kitchen, scrawls on a bit of paper, “
THE MANAGEMENT APOLOGIZES
.
WE
’
RE CLOSED TODAY
,” and hangs it at the entrance of Antic Món.

He fills a large box with food and loads up the car. He turns the key, and the clock lights up to announce 11.35 in flashing numbers, telling him what a fool he is. Bloody hell, what on earth’s he doing getting all dressed up and going out to lunch at this hour? He can’t turn up so early. How can he pass the time? In the ten years since he first opened Antic Món, there’s never been a day when he’s had nothing to do. Without cooking, without the pressure of having to prepare dish after dish, there’s no other passion in his life.

He picks up the box of food and goes back into the restaurant. Standing in the doorway he surveys the emptiness of the dark dining room and is invaded by painful, wretched feelings. He starts to cry. He’s a poor sod. He wipes away his tears and blows his nose loudly into a linen napkin from one of the tables.

He goes upstairs and into Annette’s room on the pretext of checking that it’s clean and tidy. It’s empty. He opens the wardrobe and finds a brand-new party dress and a bag containing red underwear, bought at a well-known lingerie shop in Granollers. He can’t understand how
Annette could have overlooked these particular items. This woman is veiled in mystery.

He sits down on her bed and suddenly realizes he’s caressing it. Damn it, it’s about time he got it into his head that she’s stolen his heart. He can smell her fragrance, clean, delicate with that touch of citrus, and it takes him back to the night when they sat together, very close together on his bed, laughing like a couple of teenagers at the antics of the characters in
Big Night
.

That night he’d wanted to hold her and kiss her, love her gently. More than sexual desire, it was tenderness, the same thing he felt every time she struggled so hard to make herself understood in Catalan. Or the day that immense smile appeared on her face when she saw the box of fish Frank Gabo had left at the restaurant door. He remembers how he tried not to laugh when he watched her trying to julienne carrots without being able to manage the knife, or how she literally wrestled with the chicken she had to debone. She’s so lovable, Annette…

The telephone snaps him out of his reverie. He dashes down to the dining room, three steps at a time, but is too late. A girl’s voice on the answering machine is requesting further information. She’s seen the Friends of Antic Món page on Facebook.

He checks his watch. It’s just gone quarter-past twelve, and he can’t go to Frank’s place yet as it’s too early, even for a family with customs that are so different from the Catalan ones.

Half-bored and half-curious, he turns on the computer. It’s about time he had a look to see what the hell they’re saying about the restaurant on the social networks.

It takes him a while to get there, as he’s hopeless when it comes to anything to do with computers. However, curiosity is a great educator and, finally, as if he’s rubbed Aladdin’s lamp, Facebook reveals its secrets. He’s astounded. Jesus, what’s this? Not only is he looking at himself stirring casseroles in the kitchen – and the photos are fantastic – but
he recognizes all the dishes, although he has no recall of anyone taking pictures of them. Many recipes are given, most full of errors both in the list of ingredients and in the details of the preparation. On the page, Àlex finds some tempting items: discounts, raffles, a bizarre competition and comments by famous chefs. It’s a full description of his world, of his everyday culinary existence, and he’s only now discovering it.

He’s so flabbergasted he’s not sure whether to get angry at this usurpation of what he regards as his most intimate being, or to celebrate the effort Annette has made to pull Antic Món out of the vortex of ruination into which it is fast sinking.

Annette is a truly wonderful woman, Àlex thinks. He’s got to get her back, somehow persuade her to return. In the short time she’s been at the restaurant she’s become very important to Antic Món… and its chef. He’s more and more convinced that this woman is like the highly prized truffle that can only be sniffed out by fine, sensitive, expert noses, when not found by pure chance.

In this regard, his is not a sensitive nose, and he’s well aware of that. Neither does he have any talent for finding hidden treasures. But now he’s struck gold and has to know how to make the best of it… has to win her back, has to do whatever it takes to have the lovely Annette fragrance swirling round him once more.

He perseveres with the Facebook page and finds a very recent comment. He reads it avidly.

We’re very disappointed. The first time we came here, Annette and Carol looked after us. We remember their names perfectly well, because we ended up chatting until very late, all of us sitting at the same table. They were charming and it was all great. Two days ago we returned very happily, but this time we were served by the owner, Àlex Graupera, who, according to your page, is an excellent chef and a wonderful man. His cooking
was OK, but his manner was very brusque and quite rude. We felt very badly served and he even gave us the impression we were bothering him. We’re sorry to say this, but we think he’ll have to change his ways if he wants his restaurant to work. We certainly won’t be going back there.

He closes the page and glares at the computer screen, itching to punch it so hard that it would fly off to some technological scrapheap ten kilometres away.

His good mood, his willingness to find a solution to all the problems, has evaporated like cognac flambéed over peaches.

He strides up and down the dining room, bristling with indignation. The joy of seeing Annette again has turned into rage. He doesn’t know why the criticism on Facebook has affected him so much, but even the most amateur psychologist would be able to suss out that the cause is not the criticism of his lack of manners. Àlex has never taken any notice of comments from those mortals he calls “normal people”, because he thinks they’re gastronomic barbarians without any right to express their opinions. The cause of his latest hissy fit is jealousy, because he’s realized that Carol, and especially Annette, could end up being even better than he is. This is anger mixed with the sad confirmation that cuisine is not enough in itself, but must always be complemented with soft-soaping the customers. He’s stifled in Antic Món. He’s got to get out.

He loads the box into the car again and heads off to Frank’s place.

“Good morning, Àlex,” Frank’s wife greets him in her strong accent. “We wait you. Is honour you come to poor house here.”

“An honour? Come on, woman, don’t give me that corny bullshit…”

Frank’s wife is transfixed and stands in the doorway gaping at him, not knowing how to respond to such rudeness.