The next morning, the summer began in earnest. At seven, I let in the gardener, and together we enjoyed strong coffee and fresh baguette. We then set off, he to the garden, I to visit Madame and Monsieur in their room.
When I came in, Najiyah was raising the curtains, while the Count and Countess nibbled on breakfast in their pajamas. I had stayed awake late coming up with dishes for their approval, but I quickly discovered that when the Countess asked what they were going to eat today, she was speaking rhetorically. She and the Count knew well what they wanted. My suggestions were politely dispatched. Coq au vin? “Peasant food!” the Count chirped. Green beans with veal scallops? “You serve spinach with veal scallops, my dear,” he said, shaking his head at my American ignorance. “I’d like a steak for lunch. Did my wife tell you? We have guests coming!”
The Count had already called a local fisherman to come to the house with his catch. “The sea is full of sea bass!” he laughed. If the fisherman arrived, dinner would be poached sea bass with hollandaise and boiled potatoes. Carrot soup to start, lemon tart for dessert. For lunch, veal scallops with spinach. A platter of crudités to start, and perhaps a fruit salad for dessert.
And for tomorrow? Well, come back tomorrow morning and we’ll plan tomorrow, they said. It was time to get dressed.
Najiyah walked out with me to make sure I understood everything. “Four today,” she said. Their son and daughter-in-law would arrive that morning. “Get the potatoes from the garden, and get a beef tenderloin for dinner—that fisherman might not come,” she said.
When I returned from the supermarket, I found the Count with the fisherman in the kitchen, surveying a large bucket of flopping sea bass. The fisherman was tall, profoundly sunburned, and had wide blue eyes that seemed permanently focused on a distant horizon. He’d brought three dozen, and was smiling softly at his catch. Najiyah came in and started to gesture that I should begin skinning and gutting them, to prepare them for freezing. But lunch was in two hours, and I didn’t see how I could fit it in. I thought I might throw up.
As she walked out, I ran to the garden to get the potatoes, along with beets, radishes, and lettuce. Monsieur Madiot chastised me for not taking enough beans: there were thousands, and they would go bad if I left them too long. I’d read Alice Waters; I knew I was supposed to love this garden. But that morning I silently cursed it. “Tomorrow!” I promised, as I raced back with arms fully loaded.
Back in the scullery, I hid the fish in the refrigerator to be dealt with after lunch. I tossed the beets in a pressure cooker and filled the sink with water to clean the mud-coated greens. After what felt like a half day of washing, I was ready to start chopping. Najiyah stopped by to tell me the Countess liked hard-boiled eggs with her crudités, so I set those to boiling. The gardener came in to ask when his lunch would be ready, and he suggested I watch Joël Robuchon’s noon cooking show to help me with my knife skills. Even he could see I was slow.
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