Chapter 3 Anna
Anna
At the brasserie Aux Trois Cousins, the kitchen was crowded with staff hurrying to fill food orders.
Cold appetizers were being prepared at the pantry station and entrées on the hot line, while sauciers were poised to put the finishing touches to the plates.
Anna stood ready to carry out the laden trays once the chef had checked and approved them.
Anna was bubbly and high-spirited, as well as a tireless worker.
She had her ups and downs, of course, but aside from the occasional grumpy morning she radiated warmth and positivity.
Working in a large brasserie was a dream come true for her, and she’d lied to get here.
Third prize in the Culinary Institute competition, two years as sous-chef in Rodrigo Perez’s Buenos Aires location, another three under Pontillac in Washington, D.C.
– she had a CV that could have easily got her a spot in the kitchen brigade, but would have looked a little conspicuous in someone applying for a simple waitressing job.
She’d trained in small, renowned restaurants, and wanted to understand the inner workings of a large kitchen’s well-oiled machine.
Nothing in her demeanour betrayed the tension she felt when the bell rang, signalling the next round of service.
She grabbed two soles meunière and two tournedos Rossini, and headed for the dining room.
Reaching the tables, serving the food before it got cold, rushing back to the kitchen, and repeating this routine all evening required stamina, balance and the ability to think ahead.
One wrong sidestep to dodge a clumsy kitchen assistant and the clatter of broken plates would bring her whole plan crashing down.
A small plastic pipette concealed in the palm of Anna’s left hand was the key to the accomplishment of her mission.
The lightest squeeze would be enough to release a few drops of a tasteless, odourless concentrate onto one of the soles.
She’d practiced at home, pacing from her kitchen to her living room, arms loaded with plates.
She’d spent whole mornings repeating the routine again and again until she had the trick down perfectly.
She could now avoid obstacles with a twitch of her hips, palm the pipette and squeeze it between her pinkie and ring fingers before hiding it in her sleeve again without missing a beat.
At around midnight, roughly three hours after finishing his meal, Police Commissioner Jabert would be seized with stomach cramps and then nausea: soon he’d be vomiting, and by the wee hours he’d be pissing fire.
He would accuse the restaurant of giving him food poisoning by serving him tainted fish, of course.
A rush to judgment; One more mistake to add to a long list, mused Anna, and it certainly wouldn’t be his last. The dose wasn’t lethal, just enough to make him sick as a dog.
Commissioner Jabert didn’t look like most people’s idea of a police chief.
A scrawny man with a slightly protruding jaw, aquiline nose, and deep-set eyes, he drank only moderately, didn’t smoke and was no more corrupt than the average man in his position.
His only vices were good food and vulgarity, and he was unequalled in the latter.
Aux Trois Cousins was on the tourist trail, and Walter, the ma?tre d’, always sat them upstairs.
Walter could pick them out immediately. He had a knack for remembering faces, and he was on a first-name basis with all the regulars, piling on the flattery as easily as the sommeliers poured sparkling wine – readily and generously; after all, it cost him nothing.
Commissioner Jabert was completely at home here, just as he was practically everywhere else in the city.
He even had his own permanently reserved table.
Infamous for his inappropriate behaviour, he took a twisted pleasure in the petty abuse that powerful men often delight in.
Every time Jabert dined at Aux Trois Cousins (never once paying), he made a habit of groping the waitresses and whispering filth in their ears as they bent down to serve him.
Anna, being the newest hire, was assigned to Jabert’s table.
The other waitresses had given her careful instructions: Never meet his eyes; don’t linger; only answer questions about the menu; leave as soon as you’ve served his food.
Jabert was untouchable, and he touched whatever he pleased, whenever he pleased.
Anna was expected to accept it, to swallow her pride and a little of her dignity with each new humiliation.
But no one had warned her that Commissioner Jabert, who had quickly set his sights on her, would be lying in wait for her one night at the end of her shift, his car parked discreetly in the alley behind the restaurant.
* * *
It had happened a month ago, at around midnight.
Anna was taking out the garbage when Jabert pounced.
He slammed her up against a dumpster and pressed his mouth to her breasts.
He slapped her when she struggled, scratching his face to try to fight him off.
Jabert would have done every sick thing he wanted to do to her, too, if José the sous-chef hadn’t heard Anna’s cries from inside.
He rushed out just as Jabert was shoving one hand up Anna’s skirt and unzipping his trousers with the other, preparing to rape and choke her.
But José was brandishing a butcher’s knife, and the expression on his face was enough to make even a man as power hungry as Jabert think twice.
As José advanced on him, eyes blazing, Jabert flashed a wide smile and purred that there was nothing to worry about – he’d simply had a little too much to drink, that was all.
“Nothing serious – we were just fooling around. Don’t do something you’ll regret, now. Let’s all act like nothing happened, because nothing did! Just a bit of harmless fun, am I right? I’m sure no one here wants any trouble – not you or the young lady here.”
Jabert flipped up the collar of his coat then, in pathetic imitation of the movie cops he admired, the kind he would never even come close to resembling. Jabert had always been bad. He was born bad, he became a bad cop, and he would die a bad person.
José had taken Anna inside to the restaurant’s office.
She was a mess, her apron straps torn, her right cheek crimson where Jabert hit her, her shoulder throbbing, neck stiff and stomach in painful knots.
They didn’t say anything. They didn’t need to.
The silence was enough to convey what they both understood: this victim’s word would never carry more weight than her attacker’s.
Pressing charges against a police commissioner would do nothing but add shame to the humiliation, brutality to the violence, terror to the savagery.
The knowledge of their own powerlessness made the whole thing even worse.
José poured her a large brandy and ordered her to down it in one, then called a cab to take her home and paid for the ride.
He also offered her a few days off, but Anna showed up the next day as if nothing was wrong. Her gaze met José’s, and they exchanged a look of mutual understanding: Nothing had happened.
Except something had. And Anna – brilliant, resilient, but also deeply vengeful – had a vivid imagination, and she’d learned how to use it.
* * *
Now, a month after the assault, Jabert went home and collapsed in spasms, then vomited through the night.
Anna’s plan had worked perfectly – except for one small detail.
Around noon the next day, the police commissioner, feeling worse with every passing second, dragged himself to the phone and called an ambulance.
He was taken to hospital, but the tests came back inconclusive.
Twelve hours had already passed since the onset of symptoms, and whatever he had ingested was no longer traceable.
The intern on duty diagnosed a severe case of food poisoning and, contrary to what Anna had anticipated, Jabert was too weak to jump to conclusions this time.
As soon as he was discharged from the hospital, Jabert went straight to police headquarters and ordered two plainclothes officers to arrest the sous-chef at Aux Trois Cousins immediately.
When José entered his office, Jabert, though still pale and sickly, was waiting for him with a predatory smile, ready to take his revenge.
A health inspection would be conducted immediately on his orders, he informed the sous-chef, and he was determined to see exemplary punishments handed down – perhaps even the closure of the restaurant.
Unless, of course, José admitted negligence and resigned on the spot.
But José stood firm: all the fish served in his establishment had arrived fresh that very morning.
Coolly, he demanded whether the commissioner had any proof to support his claim.
Then, without waiting for a reply, he turned on his heel and left the office.
Fortunately for Aux Trois Cousins, thanks to two mistakes the investigation went no further.
The first mistake had been made by the medical intern who had attended Jabert in the emergency room: had he made the correct diagnosis and administered proper treatment in time, his patient might well have made a full recovery.
But he didn’t. That night, the commissioner suffered a terrible migraine.
Lying helpless in bed, he became hypothermic and was seized first by fits of shivering, then convulsions.
The second mistake – more serious, though far from deliberate – was Anna’s.
Or, more specifically, to her imperfect understanding of mushroom toxicology.
While a lethal dose of Amanita phalloides is around thirty grams, the Galerina marginata, six times more toxic and often mistaken for its more benign cousin Kuehneromyces mutabilis, delivers a deadly effect in just three drops.
Luckily for Anna, Jabert had far too many enemies for a plate of sole meunière to be suspected of murder.
The next day, as the death of the commissioner of police was announced in the press, Anna entered the staff locker room at Aux Trois Cousins to find José waiting for her. Their eyes met, and once again they understood each other without a word: Nothing had happened.
Still, Anna handed in her apron and left.
She’d only meant to get some justice. To make Jabert suffer, even if it would never match the violence and trauma he had inflicted on her.
* * *
On this autumn evening, Anna finished packing her clothes into a large suitcase.
She had dinner alone in her kitchen, with only a book for company, then set about preparing her house for a long hibernation, draping sheets over the furniture, shutting off the water and gas, closing the shutters.
With its millstone facade, the small house perched above the railway tracks didn’t look like much.
But she loved it, and she’d be paying it off for years to come.
Leaving without knowing when, or if, she’d ever return tugged at her heart.
The next morning, she’d catch a flight to Canada.
She’d landed a sous-chef position at a well-known restaurant in Québec.
She’d stay there until she’d saved enough money to pursue her dream.
And if, by then, things had calmed down – in other words, if the investigation into Jabert’s death didn’t lead anywhere – she’d come back and open her own restaurant.
In the meantime, she promised herself never to cook with mushrooms again.