food.”
“The food?” Maybe I was letting this go too far afield.
“They brought food. You see, we’d been together the whole year. And during the first semester the eight of them had discovered their common interest in cooking. Jivan’s father owned a restaurant in Bombay, quite a famous one, I believe. Noriko was intrigued by Occidental food, and at the time, I thought the others just liked to eat. Whatever their initial interest, they got into the habit of bringing desserts, or hors d’oeuvres, or snacks—not pretzels, but elaborate cooked things like individual pizzas with salmon and sun-dried tomatoes. Exquisite things. I’ll tell you, if the topic had been anything less fascinating than Virginia, the focus of the class would have altered.”
“So they were already interested in cooking.”
She jerked forward. “Don’t you tell me I should have known, young lady. I’ve already heard that from Mitchell. Smug as could be, he was. Laura understood the importance of my work. She was very accommodating. She insisted they’d do everything possible when they opened the restaurant so I wouldn’t be disturbed, that I would be welcome to have free meals there anytime. But Mitch, he just said I should have known.” Bracing on the arms of her chair, she lifted up an inch, leaned forward, and lowered herself down, presumably settling on a more acceptable part of her anatomy. “I pointed out the fallacy in that argument. How could I have known? They didn’t know then. Even when Mitch went off to France, to cooking classes, they didn’t tell me they planned to open their own restaurant. I thought Mitch was just going to visit Jivan and Ashoka. I didn’t realize till he’d been there for six months that he was enrolled in classes too. And even when he got back, it was three years before he opened here. How could I have known?” she insisted in a voice that made me sure she secretly suspected Mitch was right—she should have known.
“So Paradise opened,” I prompted.
She shook her head. Gray hairs that the clasp had bitten through spun like kite tails. “And since that point I haven’t gotten a decent day’s work done.”
“Mitch’s is only open for dinner. Couldn’t you work during the day?”
“They serve dinner after six o’clock. They get deliveries all day long. The trucks park on Josephine and drivers wheel their carts down the alley, cloppety-clop. Sometimes they come two at a time, and they yell to each other. Or they yell to Adrienne, the cook, to open the door. Some of them even yell to me when they pass. Think they’re being friendly,” she muttered in exasperation. “The garbagemen come every day, at the crack of dawn. There’s no way they can be quiet. And that’s not even counting the customers themselves.”
“I can understand—”
“ Understand nothing! Tell that to scholars fifty years from now. Which will be more important, their half-drunken cavorting, or Virginia Woolf’s Berkeley letters?”
“This Berkeley?” I asked in amazement. I was hardly a scholar; indeed, for two years after my divorce from an aspiring English professor, I hadn’t read anything more intellectual than the L. L. Bean catalogue. But there had been a time before that when I’d read Virginia Woolf, and a time since when I’d picked up the Quentin Bell biography. And even from that bit, I knew Woolf had never set foot in the United States. “Who was she corresponding with here?”
“A woman named Florence Crocker. Now before you say anything, I’ll tell you that I know these letters may be apocryphal, indeed probably are apocryphal. Nothing in her published letters or diaries mentions Florence Crocker. Nothing suggests she had an acquaintance here, or any interest in acquiring one.”
“Then how—”
“According to Florence Crocker’s grandson, she met Woolf when she was in London in nineteen thirty-nine, just before the war broke out. They corresponded for the next two years, until
“The food?” Maybe I was letting this go too far afield.
“They brought food. You see, we’d been together the whole year. And during the first semester the eight of them had discovered their common interest in cooking. Jivan’s father owned a restaurant in Bombay, quite a famous one, I believe. Noriko was intrigued by Occidental food, and at the time, I thought the others just liked to eat. Whatever their initial interest, they got into the habit of bringing desserts, or hors d’oeuvres, or snacks—not pretzels, but elaborate cooked things like individual pizzas with salmon and sun-dried tomatoes. Exquisite things. I’ll tell you, if the topic had been anything less fascinating than Virginia, the focus of the class would have altered.”
“So they were already interested in cooking.”
She jerked forward. “Don’t you tell me I should have known, young lady. I’ve already heard that from Mitchell. Smug as could be, he was. Laura understood the importance of my work. She was very accommodating. She insisted they’d do everything possible when they opened the restaurant so I wouldn’t be disturbed, that I would be welcome to have free meals there anytime. But Mitch, he just said I should have known.” Bracing on the arms of her chair, she lifted up an inch, leaned forward, and lowered herself down, presumably settling on a more acceptable part of her anatomy. “I pointed out the fallacy in that argument. How could I have known? They didn’t know then. Even when Mitch went off to France, to cooking classes, they didn’t tell me they planned to open their own restaurant. I thought Mitch was just going to visit Jivan and Ashoka. I didn’t realize till he’d been there for six months that he was enrolled in classes too. And even when he got back, it was three years before he opened here. How could I have known?” she insisted in a voice that made me sure she secretly suspected Mitch was right—she should have known.
“So Paradise opened,” I prompted.
She shook her head. Gray hairs that the clasp had bitten through spun like kite tails. “And since that point I haven’t gotten a decent day’s work done.”
“Mitch’s is only open for dinner. Couldn’t you work during the day?”
“They serve dinner after six o’clock. They get deliveries all day long. The trucks park on Josephine and drivers wheel their carts down the alley, cloppety-clop. Sometimes they come two at a time, and they yell to each other. Or they yell to Adrienne, the cook, to open the door. Some of them even yell to me when they pass. Think they’re being friendly,” she muttered in exasperation. “The garbagemen come every day, at the crack of dawn. There’s no way they can be quiet. And that’s not even counting the customers themselves.”
“I can understand—”
“ Understand nothing! Tell that to scholars fifty years from now. Which will be more important, their half-drunken cavorting, or Virginia Woolf’s Berkeley letters?”
“This Berkeley?” I asked in amazement. I was hardly a scholar; indeed, for two years after my divorce from an aspiring English professor, I hadn’t read anything more intellectual than the L. L. Bean catalogue. But there had been a time before that when I’d read Virginia Woolf, and a time since when I’d picked up the Quentin Bell biography. And even from that bit, I knew Woolf had never set foot in the United States. “Who was she corresponding with here?”
“A woman named Florence Crocker. Now before you say anything, I’ll tell you that I know these letters may be apocryphal, indeed probably are apocryphal. Nothing in her published letters or diaries mentions Florence Crocker. Nothing suggests she had an acquaintance here, or any interest in acquiring one.”
“Then how—”
“According to Florence Crocker’s grandson, she met Woolf when she was in London in nineteen thirty-nine, just before the war broke out. They corresponded for the next two years, until
Similar Books
