Genna started walking rapidly in the direction of the Musée National du Moyen Âge. How appropriate! She could be the star attraction in a museum devoted to middle age. She arrived expecting to find grimy chunks of stone and a few religious relics. Instead, she found a sumptuous display of tapestries, jewelry, wood carvings, icons, and Gothic sculptures.
The thoughtfully arranged objects slowly worked their magic on her. She circled through the dark rooms, lost in wonder at the beauty created by medieval artisans so many centuries earlier. The fluttering in her chest subsided. She had not come to Paris to risk her hard-won independence on a handsome French avocat.
Never. No way. Jamais.
The museum’s main attraction was the series of enigmatic Lady and the Unicorn tapestries from the fifteenth century housed in its own specially constructed room. Five of the six tapestries depicted a different sense—sight, taste, smell, hearing, and touch. The sixth and final tapestry was called A Mon Seul Désir, translated as “by my desire alone,” “by my will alone,” and several other versions that added to the delicious obscurity of the tapestry’s meaning.
The center of each tapestry depicted a beautiful young woman, her elaborate medieval gown picked out in fine threads of gold, royal blue, and scarlet. To one side of her squatted a lion and on the other side sat a white unicorn, its horn long and slender. Both lion and unicorn gazed adoringly at the woman, their faces childlike in their purity.
In the “Hearing” tapestry, the woman played the harp, but her gaze was faraway and distracted, while in the “Taste” tapestry, one hand trailed across a tray of sweetmeats offered by a kneeling servant. In the “Sight” tapestry, the front legs of the unicorn rested on the lady’s knees while it contemplated its reflection in a mirror she was holding.
But it was the “Touch” tapestry that revealed what those medieval tapestry workers were really all about. The young woman looked toward the lion, which sat docile and obedient. Her right hand grasped a tall flagpole and her left hand wrapped around the horn of the prancing unicorn.
Ah oui!
The symbolism was unmistakable, proving again, if proof were needed, that sex had preoccupied humans in every era.
Genna stared at the tapestries for over half an hour before getting an idea for a recipe to match with the Cluny Museum.
* * *
“Duck confit?” Pierre stirred his espresso, his second since Genna had arrived to find him waiting for her at an outside table overlooking the Boulevard Saint-Germain. “Intriguing choice. How does it relate to a museum that exhibits artifacts from the Moyen Âge?”
They’d been talking for over two hours. The Café de Flore was filling with sleek-looking French businesspeople stopping for a coffee or an apéritif before heading to dinner. She found in Pierre an attentive listener who effortlessly put her at ease. She told him about Eat Like a Parisian, and he thought it was an excellent idea, even giving her the names of several bistros that he assured her were merveilleux. Marvelous.
“My inspiration was the Lady and the Unicorn tapestries. You know them, of course?”
“Mais, bien sûr.” Of course.
“I wanted a dish that represents all five senses, like the tapestries, and that is also somehow exotic, like the unicorn. Duck is still rather an exotic dish in North America, and duck confit is difficult and time-consuming to make.”
“It was one of my mother’s favorites,” Pierre said, a thoughtful expression in his eyes as he stared past Genna at the busy street. “It’s a specialty of Gascony, where my mother was from. She’d make duck confit in the winter and store it for many months before we ate it. You know, of course, that confit means preserved?”
“Yes. But the people who buy my cookbooks won’t want to cure the duck legs in salt, poach them in fat, and pack them in more fat for several weeks. I need to develop a version that retains the flavor but is much less work.”
“Even my mother made it only once a year,” Pierre said. “But you must include it in your cookbook. It is a bistro favorite. Now, I can understand how it incorporates taste and smell, but what of the other three senses?”
“Think of a serving of two legs. Now imagine them balanced together to form a kind of arch, like the lion and the unicorn supporting the lady. That’s sight.”
He nodded. “The presentation of any dish is très important.”
“Exactly. Now hearing. Most foods are not noisy.”
“But the skin of duck confit is, how you say it, brittle?”
“Crispy. Each bite of duck confit should crackle in the mouth.”
“And touch?”
“Touch is why I chose duck confit. It’s one of the few dishes that you can pick up to eat.”
“Not in France!”
“But my book is for North Americans, and picking up what is essentially a drumstick is like a cultural right. People would look at you funny if you ate a drumstick with a knife and fork.”
“Duck confit is not like some crumb-coated horror from the Colonel!”
“You have Kentucky Fried Chicken in Paris?”
“Malheureusement, oui.” Pierre shook his head sorrowfully, reminding Genna of how Monsieur Leblanc had looked when she’d asked him about an internet connection. “It is a travesty. Of course, as a chef yourself, you would object to le fast food.”
“I’m not a chef. I write cookbooks.”
“But you must cook, non?” He looked puzzled.
“I test each recipe in my books, but I trained as a teacher, not a chef.”
“Une professeure?”
“More like an instructrice. I taught high school home economics for ten years before I decided to write cookbooks.”
“Home economics? I am not familiar with this.”
“I don’t know what the course is called in a French school, but you must have something similar. At the school where I worked, we had two types of home economics courses—cooking and sewing. I taught cooking.”
“Did you enjoy it?”
“For the first few years, but then I got bored of teaching the same curriculum over and over.”
“You like to make changes, no?”
Genna laughed. “I suppose I do. My husband . . .” She paused as he again raised his eyebrows—both of them this time. “I mean, my soon-to-be-ex-husband, used to give me a hard time because I was often so restless.”
“And your restlessness has taken you away from him.” Before she could reply, he picked up her hand in both of his and held it. “He should not have let you go.”
To Genna’s horror, tears pricked her eyelids. She never cried. Well, almost never. And certainly not when an elegant Frenchman in an historic Parisian café was holding her hand.
Although, come to think of it, her experience in that regard was limited to never.
She slipped her hand from his grasp. “I must go.”
“Why? Do you have another rendezvous?”
“I’m quite tired after my day at the museum. I’d like to get home and have a light supper and an early night.”
“But you must let me take you to dinner. There’s a wonderful little bistro near here I’m sure you will not have visited yet.”