THENEWYORKER,NOVEMBER25, 2019 33
after, while we were in the middle of
some task or other, I asked, “Is this how
they do it at L’Espérance?,” imagining
he’d appreciate my sarcasm. With sud
den vehemence, he told me never to
mention L’Espérance again. He left be
fore the summer was over.
Jacques Lameloise’s son, Armand,
was only a few months older than me
but seemed vastly more sophisticated,
especially about girls, who frightened
me. A selfstyled intellectual who wor
shipped New Wave cinema, he adored
his mother, a reader of classical French
literature with whom he would linger
for hours in the morning over café au
lait, croissants, and cigarettes. His fa
ther, who had probably never opened
a book that wasn’t about food, was the
odd man out in his own home. He was
a kind, doting father, but Armand con
sidered him a fool and believed him
self to be cut out for grander things
than inheriting the family restaurant,
however many étoiles the Michelin in
spectors had awarded it. I still wasn’t
sure there were grander things than
running a threestar, but I was becom
ing bored in the kitchen, so, whenever
I could, I started joining Armand on
excursions he took with his friends.
Our first trip was to Noyon, a hun
dred kilometres north of Paris, where
Armand’s friend Jérémie, an actor
comedian, was throwing a Bastille Day
party. Noyon had seen its share of lu
minaries—Charlemagne was crowned
coking of the Franks at its cathedral
in 768, Calvin was born there, and
through the centuries the town had
fallen to Vikings, Habsburgs, and
Nazis—but now it was a backwater.
There were no adults in sight, and I
watched a teenage bacchanal unfold
with fear and fascination. A group was
roasting suckling pigs over a fire and
opening bottles of beer and champagne;
couples cavorted in the grass. Some
one poured me a glass of punch. It went
down easily, and I drank another. Next
thing I knew, I had thrown a bottle
into a wall and collapsed on the floor
of someone’s bedroom. A couple came
in and began to have sex on the floor
next to me. “What’s wrong with the
American?” the woman asked. “Oh, it’s
just the jet lag, I hear he flew in today
from California.” They continued their
business and I passed out.
A few weeks later, in the Jura, Ar
mand’s friends and I sped through a
field on bicycles to a discothèque, and
danced till early in the morning. When
we left, a group of skinheads attacked
us with baseball bats and stole our bikes.
We spent the rest of the morning filing
a report in a police station. Then we
made fondue, smoked, and listened to
Serge Gainsbourg, Sade, and the Cure.
I had just read Camus’s “L’Étranger,”
but I’d never heard the Cure’s song
based on it, “Killing an Arab.” I was
stunned by its blunt, angry insistence
on the identity of the man Meursault
had killed. Later that summer, I found
myself in a car with a group of mid
dleaged friends of Jacques’s, who were
joking about “the Arabs” (no one said
“Muslims” then). It was Eid alF i t r,
and the men were talking about the
blood that flowed when the Arabs
sacrificed their sheep. They seemed to
relish the image of Arab “savages.” Only
a quarter century had passed since the
liberation of Algeria from French rule,
and some of these men had probably
served in the Army there. I sat in silence, understanding almost nothing,
and yet understanding everything I
needed to know.T
he most important things I learned
that summer were outside the
kitchen. I still enjoyed cooking, but the
idea of a life of eighteenhour days at
the stove had started to seem less en
thralling. Perhaps cooking had achieved
its unconscious purpose: although I
didn’t exactly like my body, I was no lon
ger counting calories or scrutinizing my
self in the mirror. Finding a refuge from
the world seemed less necessary, too—
indeed, I was impatient to plunge in
and make a difference in its conflicts.
At one of my last stints at Aurora, I
showed up wearing a “U.S. out of Cen
tral America” pin; one of the chefs said
that I should probably take it off when
I was in the dining room, since many
customers were Reagan supporters. He
was teasing me, but I knew that he was
right. Cook for imperialists? For a teen
age radical, it was unthinkable.
During my last two years of high
school, I stopped working in restaurants,“When I asked you if you were ready for this promotion,
you flailed uncontrollably. Was that a lie?”