Save Me the Plums - Ruth Reichl Page 0,47
meal at Caviar Kaspia, I put on my one good dress and climbed the stairs to the small restaurant above the shop. Standing nervously on the threshold, I dared myself to enter. Then Yves Saint Laurent strolled past me, surrounded by an entourage of impossibly chic and beautiful people, and my confidence evaporated. I turned and fled.
Now I climb the stairs again, peering into the ageless restaurant with its wooden paneling, its fussy furniture, its tables swathed in cloth the color of sea foam. But when the maître d’ greets me, I smile and follow him to a banquette near the window, where I watch the moon rise over the Madeleine across the way. I order lobster bisque, and as the aroma swirls around me I can almost feel myself leaping into turquoise waters, imagine diaphanous anemones waving their translucent arms…
“Vous êtes seul?”
How long has the old gentleman at the next table been trying to attract my attention? His skin is porcelain white, his hair silver and just a little too long, his eyes pale blue. He has a long, disdainful nose contradicted by full, sensual lips. A good face. And, I notice, elegant, slightly threadbare clothes whose patina of age makes them distinguished rather than shabby.
“Yes.”
“You eat with such intensity! It has given me much pleasure to watch. You come to remember, yes?”
His speech is the stiff formal French of the past, when well-born people did not employ the casual tu, even within the family.
“Remember?”
He edges toward me on the banquette and inclines his head, a courtly gesture. “I have been coming here since before the war. That was a time when sturgeon filled the Caspian Sea, caviar was cheap, and Russian émigrés came to lament their lost dachas.”
“I wish I had seen it then!”
“The room has not changed; only the clientele. Merci, François.” The waiter is removing a warm flute from the table; the new one he sets before my neighbor is silvered with cool mist. “Un autre verre pour Madame.”
The champagne is deep with the scent of honeyed almonds, the bubbles so lazy they barely make it to the surface.
He smiles. “An excellent vintage, this Krug ’66. My father put down many cases; he said it was the perfect wine for caviar. But wait…” He scoops a great mound of glistening black roe from the bowl before him and hands me the plate.
“Il faut respecter le beluga. Eat it slowly. Hold it in your mouth for a moment before swallowing. The taste will change with the temperature.”
The shock of freshness. The tang of the sea. And then the primal richness of the roe. A phrase of Lawrence Durrell’s floats into my mind: “A taste as old as cold water.”
He is watching me. “My wife ate caviar as you do. Slowly. Avidly. You put me in mind of her.” He takes my plate, scoops on more caviar.
“What was she like?”
He sits back on the banquette and steeples his hands. “She was a mysterious creature. We were married more than fifty years, but I was never sure I knew what she was thinking. Never.”
“Did you mind?”
He looks at me gravely, speaking slowly. “Not at all; it gave life flavor. Sometimes I look at this new generation, their casual ways, their easy familiarity, and I think how much they are missing. When I saw you sitting here, alone, I thought you were like a guest to yourself. And then I thought of my wife.”
I try picturing his wife, but no image comes. “What was she called?”
“Severine.”
The name reverberates through my whole body. Suddenly I am back in the shop and the dress is embracing me, turning me into someone I have never been.
My new friend motions for more champagne. The waiter arrives bearing two frosted glasses and we watch, wordlessly, as he fills them. Then my neighbor lifts his. “Thank you, my dear. For me this was a fortunate encounter. I did not know what brought me here tonight, but now I see that I wanted to try, just for a moment, to become the person I used to be.”
“Fortunate for me too, Monsieur. For you have made me, just for the moment, into the person I might have been.”
I reach into my purse, remove the woman’s card, and tear it into pieces. I do not need her little black dress; it has already given me everything it can.
THE OFFICES I PASSED WERE empty. Strange, I thought, glancing at my watch. Then I heard the babble of