“Non non non. Je ne suis pas Thierry. I am Frédéric. MUCH more handsome.” He looked at the pavement. “So, AnNA Tron, shall we see if we have some things for you to do?”
“Did you forget I was coming?”
“Non non non. Yes. Yes, I did do that.”
He looked up at me with a charming smile. “You understand…many things happen…many nights…I cannot remember all lovely girls.”
Even though it wasn’t even 6:00 a.m. and I knew for a fact I looked like death, and he looked a little peaky himself and had no clue what I was doing there, I was absolutely impressed by the fact that he still felt a bit duty-bound to chat me up. Not seriously or intently, just as if he was passing by. I wasn’t tempted but I was quite impressed.
From the outside, the shop looked like nothing at all, a tiny, discreet storefront leading to a selling space the size of somebody’s front room. At the moment, it was empty, just glass display cases polished clear, standing to attention. The streetlights outside cast an orange glow from their wrought iron posts through the front windows, and I could make out an old polished wooden floor and shelving filled with boxes behind the cabinets. Over everything lay a layer of scent, a heavy deep smell of dark, dense chocolate, thick as tobacco smoke. It was as if it were rubbed into the wood, used as varnish on the floor, as if the whole building were steeped in it. I wondered how long I would notice it for; it was almost intoxicating, even in the empty room.
Frédéric had already threaded past to a small door set in the back wall. It had a swing door and a half round window, like an old-fashioned restaurant kitchen. I tried not to let the door hit me on the rebound.
“’Ere we are!” said Frédéric. “Willy Wonka existe!”
I smiled at him, but it was true. I had never seen such an odd room in my entire life. It wasn’t a room at all, in fact. Back at Braders, everything was done in large industrial stainless steel vats, something that never failed to disappoint every child I had ever met. (Well, either that or they refused to believe me.) But here, the tiny front room of the shop widened out considerably to form a large glassed-in back warehouse, not unlike a huge greenhouse. It was peeling and very old and must have been built in what at one time would have been a garden for the bâtiment, the building. It was wood-framed and rickety, but I could feel a humming in the air of an ionizer; the space was perfectly controlled for temperature and humidity. Frédéric nodded toward a large industrial sink by the door and I quickly washed my hands with antibacterial gel.
The room was lit warmly with lamps, not fluorescent lights. At the back, window boxes of fresh herbs lined the sill: rosemary, lavender, mint, and a small chili pepper tree. It made the room feel even more like a greenhouse. Beans were ground in the large brass machines that looked like coffee grinders. Three large copper pots—dark, milk, and white, I assumed—stood in the middle of the room, but there were a whole load of burners, test tubes, ovens, pipes, and utensils that I had simply never seen before in my life. It smelled like heaven but looked like a mad gardener’s shed.
There was no chocolate to be seen. Not a drop anywhere. The copper pots were empty, the arms not turning. The smell hung heavy in the air, but apart from that, the place could have been a museum. Frédéric approached, holding a tiny cup filled with sticky black coffee which I accepted gratefully, choking it down.
“The elves come,” he said, smiling at my obvious shock. “Oh yes. For Thierry Girard, we start anew every day.”
An unpleasant thought struck me suddenly.
“You scrub everything out? Every day?”
Frédéric nodded solemnly.
“…and now I’m here.”
Frédéric’s impish face turned solemn all of a sudden. He nodded. I realized then that I hadn’t thought too much about the actual “work” part, just the “getting away” part. In my old job, I’d advised on flavorings, worked on quality control, carried a clipboard. And I supposed I had allowed myself a little fantasy—of aiding and perhaps even inspiring the greatest chocolatier of his generation, of fluently swapping tips and ideas with his customers, of perhaps even coming up with my own brilliant new recipes, capturing the heart of the famous store…
I wondered gloomily what the French was for “rubber gloves.”
“Eet is a great experience and privilege,” said Frédéric gravely.
“Is that what they told you when you started?” I said.
“Oui,” said Frédéric, clearly not in the least sorry. He looked like a freed sprite. He looked at my hands. “I would not spend too much money on le mani, non?”
It was true; I had gotten my hands done specially for coming. In a French polish, on purpose. Seeing it now made me want to bite them off.
“But that is just one of many, many interesting things you will be doing through the day,” said Frédéric, raising his eyebrows. “Come, I will show you.”
And I couldn’t deny it; it was interesting. It had never even occurred to me that chocolate was something that needed to be eaten fresh. Indeed, one of its great benefits was that it could be stored, could travel. It wasn’t like milk or eggs.
“Thierry would describe it to you,” said Frédéric, “but he does not like to talk to us leetle people so much. He likes everybody to think he is a genius inventor like the Wizard of Oz who does not need us leetle ants who scurry in his house. So I, Frédéric, shall tell you.”
He took me to the back of the workshop and started grinding the first of the large green cocoa beans.
“Fresh chocolate is of the utmost importance,” he said, as if reciting from a script. “For with the freshness, you get lightness, and churn, and a delicacy that does not come from a huge slab that sits on the shelf for three months, getting heavier and heavier and sinking into itself. NON! This is not good. Chocolate should be treated as a delicacy, something to be plucked fresh from the trees.”
Benoît had laid down a large box of raw cocoa beans and fired up a huge industrial oven.
“From first principles,” said Frédéric. The cocoa beans smelled dark and wonderful. Benoît poured them into a huge rotating drum that looked like the inside of a washing machine. The noise was phenomenal.