They oohed and aahed quite agreeably.

“What a ting,” said Uncle Mayur. “Imagine dat. Our Hassan. Knows French wines.”

“And what is Mallory like? She beat you?”

“No. Never. She doesn’t have to. Just one eyebrow up and we are all dashing about like nervous chickens. Everyone is scared of her. But Jean-Pierre, her number two. He yells and swats my head. Quite a lot.”

Slit. Slit. From the back of the room.

It was only later in the day, when I was stuffed with our food and coddled and suitably stroked by the family, ready at long last to return to Le Saule Pleureur with renewed determination, that Papa would formally summon me for a private talk, gesture at me to sit down at his desk, his fingers in a steeple and his voice laden with gravitas.

“Tell me, Hassan, has she showed you how to make the tongue? With the Madeira sauce?”

“Not yet, Papa.”

His face fell in disappointment.

“No? Hmm. Not very impressive. Perhaps she not as good as we tink.”

“No, Papa. She a great chef.”

“And that scoundrel Jean-Pierre. Does he know you are from an important family? Nah! Do I need to teach this fellow a lesson or two?”

“No, Papa. Thank you. I will manage.”

In short, I never let on to Papa how difficult the transition was during those first few months, how I missed him and the rest of the family dearly, and how frustrated I was by the work during those early days at Le Saule Pleureur.

For I desperately wanted to get my hands dirty with the cooking, but Madame Mallory wouldn’t let me near a stove, and my frustrations finally came to a head late one morning when I was climbing Le Saule Pleureur’s back stairs, on Jean-Pierre’s order, to fetch lightbulbs from the supply closet on the third floor.

Madame Mallory was at that moment descending the stairs, fresh as could be, on her way out to the driveway where Monsieur Leblanc was waiting in the idling Citroën, ready to take her to a social function in town.

Chef Mallory was shrugging on brown leather gloves and wore a heavy wool wrap thrown around her shoulders. The narrow wooden stairway in which we stood filled with her Guerlain perfume, and I respectfully pressed myself against the wall to let her pass. But she stopped, two stairs above me, and peered down through the artificial gloaming of the staircase.

I undoubtedly looked wan and weak and possibly at rope’s end.

“Hassan, tell me, do you regret your decision? To come here?”

“Non, madame.”

“The hours are very difficult. But you’ll see. One day you’ll wake up, and, voilà, you will have a second wind. The body adjusts.”

“Yes. Thank you, Chef.”

She continued down the stairs, and I upward, and I don’t know what possessed me, to be so impertinent, but I blurted out, “But when can I start cooking? Will I only be peeling carrots here?”

She stopped on a lower step, in the dusk, but never turned her head. “You will start cooking when the time is right.”

“But when will that be?”

“Patience, Hassan. We will know when the moment has arrived.”

“Now focus. In what waters do the Ostrea lurida grow?”

“Umm. Off Brittany?”

“Wrong. Completely wrong, young man.”

Madame Mallory stared at me with her most imperious look, one eyebrow raised. It was six fifteen in the morning and we sat as usual under her turret window, sipping coffee from delicate Limoges porcelain. I was stupid with sleep.

“The Ostrea edulis is the oyster that grows off Brittany. Hassan, honestly, you should know this. We learnt about the Ostrea lurida two weeks ago. Here is the book on shellfish again. Study it. Properly this time.”

“Oui, madame . . . Oh, I remember now. The lurida is the tiny oyster that grows only in a few bays off the northwest coast of the United States. In Puget Sound.”

“Correct. I’ve never tried them myself, but I understand they have a very fine taste of seaweed, iodine, and hazelnut. Considered among the world’s finest. Hard to believe, that they should be better than a good Brittany oyster, but that is some people’s opinion. It is a matter of taste.”

Madame Mallory leaned forward to attack the bowl of fruit salad sitting at the center of the table. Her early morning appetite, the amount of fuel she took on board for her rigorous schedule of the day, was quite astounding. She had far more in common with Papa than either cared to admit.

“Now, European markets have been infested by a foreign import. What is the name of this invasive oyster, and tell me its history, briefly.”

I sighed. Glimpsed at my watch. “Will you be stuffing the veal breast today?”

Madame Mallory delicately spat out the pit of a stewed prune into a silver spoon and deposited it on the side of her bowl.

“Ah, non. Do not change the subject, Hassan. It won’t work.”

She put her bowl down. And stared.

“Crassostrea gigas, a Japanese oyster, commonly called the Pacific oyster, became dominant in Europe during the 1970s.”

It was a tad wintry, true, but it was still a smile.

Later that day, however, I caught my first glimpse of what lay ahead, when down in Le Saule Pleureur’s cold kitchen, leaning over the sink, Madame Mallory spontaneously reached out and patted my cheek after I correctly identified a specific type of les creuses de Bretagne oyster solely by sipping a teaspoon of its briny juice.

It was essentially a kind gesture meant to convey affection and approval, but in all honesty that tap-tap at my cheek, with her dry hand, so stiff, made my toes curl. And the incredible awkwardness of the moment was compounded by the fact she had ordered her chef de cuisine to demonstrate a certain oyster dish for us, and Jean-Pierre was at that moment standing at the stove glowering at me over Madame Mallory’s shoulder.

I knew then there was trouble ahead. But powerless to shape events, I avoided Jean-Pierre’s red face and instead focused intently on his hands, how he prepared the Sauternes sabayon sauce for the oysters, swiftly and expertly combining ingredients in the shuffling hot pan, as Madame Mallory droned on, explaining in minute detail the magical transformations happening in the searing heat, entirely oblivious to the emotions she had unleashed in her chef de cuisine.

I was slave to Le Saule Pleureur’s rhythms but still clinging to Maison Mumbai’sdoorknob, and this weird transitional phase all comes vividly back to me when I remember that time, a month or two after I moved, when Madame Mallory and I went into town to the markets for our early-morning purchases and lessons.

Madame Mallory had spent the first part of the morning tour making me smell and taste various cabbages—the savoy, chubby little cancan dancers luridly fanning their ruffled green petticoats so we could get a sneak peek at their delicately pale and parting leaves inside, and the giant red cabbage, deep in color, like a bon vivant soused in a ruby red port wine before showing up merrily on the stall’s counter.

“The thing you need to understand, Hassan, is that kohlrabi is the bridge between the cabbage and the turnip, and it melds the flavors of both vegetables. Remember that. It’s a subtle but important distinction that will help you decide when one vegetable is an ideal side dish, but not the other.”

Wicker baskets on both arms, leaning over to listen to my small voice in the boisterous market, Madame Mallory was, I must tell you, the very essence of patience on those trips, prepared to answer any of my questions, no matter how puerile and basic.

“We have a preference, in this region of France, for the Early White Vienna and the Early Purple Vienna kohlrabi varieties. Now, the navet de Suede is, in contrast, a robust turnip that grew wild up in the Baltic region, before Celts brought the nutritious root south and it began proper cultivation in France. This was thousands of years ago, of course, but it is my opinion the Swedish turnip today surpasses all other turnips, because of its sweetness, a characteristic bred into the vegetable over time. We should be able to find the yellow and black navet varieties at Madame Picard’s—”