Transcription
Shola, Chapter 5, Saturday, February 15th. I know this isn't my usual day, M, but I needed to talk. The bakery opened yesterday, but it isn't a bakery.
When I awoke yesterday morning at 6:00, the wrapping was off the awning, and the shutters were in place, and the blind was raised in the display window. What was an ordinary, rather drab old house, like all the others around it, has become a red and gold confection in a dazzling white ground. Red geraniums in the window boxes, crepe paper garlands twisted around the railings, and above the door, a hand-lettered sign in black on oak. Of course, it's ridiculous. Such a shop might well be popular in Marseilles or Bordeaux, even in Aen, where the tourist trade grows every year. Laest PR CH Aral in lanet suan and at the beginning of Lent—the traditional season of self-denial—it seems perverse, perhaps deliberately so.
I looked into the display window this morning. On a white marble shelf are aligned innumerable boxes, packages, cornets of silver and gold paper; rosettes, bells, flowers, hearts, and long curls of multicolored ribbon. In glass bells and dishes lie the chocolates: the pralinés, Venus' nipples, truffles, M, candied fruits, hazelnut clusters, chocolate seashells, candied rose petals, sugared violets. Protected from the sun by the half-blind that shields them, they gleam darkly like sunken treasure. Aladdin's Cave of sweet clichés. And in the middle, she's built a magnificent centerpiece: a gingerbread house. Walls of chocolate-coated P de P, with the detail piped in on silver and gold icing; roof tiles of Florentine, studded with crystallized fruits; strange vines of icing and chocolate growing up the walls; marzipan birds singing in chocolate trees; and the witch herself—dark chocolate from the top of her pointed hat to the hem of her long cloak—half a stride, a broomstick that is in reality a giant gimo, the long twisted marshmallows that dangle from the stalls of sweet vendors on carnival days.
From my own window, I can see hers like an eye closing in a sly, conspiratorial wink. Garène Clarion broke her Lenten vow because of that shop and what it sells. She told me in the confessional yesterday, in that breathless, girlish tone that goes so ill with her promises of repentance. "Oh, M, I feel so dreadful about it, but what could I do when that charming woman was so sweet? I mean, I never even thought about it until it was too late. Though if there's anyone who should give up chocolates, I mean, the way my hips have absolutely ballooned in the last year or so, it makes me want to die." To AES, God, that woman! Through the grill, I can feel her hungry, adoring eyes. She feels chagrin at my abruptness, of course, M, and remember why we fast for Lent: not for vanity, not to impress our friends, not so that we can fit into next summer's expensive fashions. I am deliberately brutal; it is what she wants. Yes, I am vain, aren't I, a tiny SOB? A tear blotted delicately with the corner of a lawn handkerchief. Just a vain, foolish woman. Remember our Lord, his sacrifice, his humility. I can smell her perfume, something flowery, too strong in this enclosed darkness. I wonder whether this is temptation; if so, I am stone for AES. It is a kind of despair; it frets at the soul, reduces it piece by piece, as a cathedral may be leveled over the years by the erosion of flying dust and fragments of sand. I can feel it chipping away at my resolve, my joy, my faith. I should like to lead them through tribulation, through wilderness; instead, this, this languid procession of liars, cheats, gluttons, and pathetic self-deceived. The battle of good and evil reduced to a fat woman standing in front of a chocolate shop, saying, "Will I? Won't I?" in pitiful indecision.
The Devil is a coward; he will not show his face; he's without substance, breaking into a million pieces that worm their evil way into the blood, into the soul. You and I were born too late, M. The harsh, clean world of the Old Testament calls to me. We knew then where we stood. Satan walked among us in flesh; we made difficult decisions; we sacrificed our children in the Lord's name; we loved God, but we feared him more. Don't think I blame Vion; indeed, I hardly think of her at all. She is only one of the influences against which I must fight every day. But the thought of that shop, with its carnival awning—a wink against denial, against faith. Turning from the doorway to receive the congregation, I catch a movement from within: "Try me, test me, taste me." In a lull between the verses of a hymn, I hear the delivery van's horn as it pulls up in front. During the sermon—the very sermon, M—I stop mid-phrase, certain I hear the rustle of chocolate wrappers. I preached with greater severity than usual this morning, though the congregation was small. Tomorrow I'll make them pay. Tomorrow, Sunday, when the shops are closed.