Life was intolerable until one night I stumbled by chance on a winding side street in Greenwich Village and a wooden sign that read Chez. Yvette. I wandered in without hope. The place was dark and dreary with small tables lit only by candles thrust into the necks of Chianti bottles. The menu was in French but I had been fooled too often for this to arouse my expectations. My spirits were dampened further by the drab slattern of a waitress who took my order.
I selected fillets of sole au gratin. It is a simple dish which even the inexpert cook should be able to prepare tolerably well. The restaurant was almost empty and I tapped my foot with impatience over the long delay. At length the waitress returned with a covered tray. As soon as the lid was lifted I knew that I found what I had sought for so long, a cook who was absolute mistress of her craft. The sole could not have been better. The sauce Provencale was exquisite, the forcemeat stuffing a dream. The vintage wine which accompanied the meal was perfection.
I could scarcely believe my good fortune and I demanded to be taken to the kitchen to present my compliments to the cook. Yvette was standing by the stove, her black hair straggly, her swarthy face beaded with sweat. She was an enormous woman, her shapeless figure encased in a rusty black dress, her thick legs covered with black cotton stockings. But to me she was beautiful. I kissed her on both cheeks and hugged her.
Yvette was delighted to find an appreciative customer. Soon we were talking a mile a minute, both ecstatic in our discoveries. From then on I rarely missed a night at Chez Yvette. She prepared all sorts of delicacies for me, sweetbreads a la Brunilesco, lobster a la Borgia, galantine of capon a la Persano. She would hover over me while I dined and often, after the front lights had been dimmed, she would join me over a glass of wine or black coffee served with the most delectable of French pastries.
She was a treasure and I could not let her go but unfortunately my reserve of cash was running low. Yvette’s flair for cookery did not dim the shrewd financial calculations which were an essential characteristic of her French peasant ancestry. I was well fed but I paid through the nose, and I could not afford to pay much longer. Yvette sensed my dilemma and it was she who struck the bargain. One evening after we had dined, she suggested that I stay the night. I was already in her debt and I could scarcely refuse. When the restaurant was closed, I followed her to her room above the kitchen with considerable reluctance.
We undressed in the dark and I slipped into the oldfashioned, four-poster bed beside her. My misgivings were groundless. Yvette’s approach to love was direct and forthright. My previous experience with fashionably slender young women of my acquaintance seemed, by comparison, shallow, bloodless, pale carbon copies of passion.
The next week we were married. At first the marriage was a happy one. Shortly afterward I came into a small legacy which I invested in enlarging the restaurant and in advertising. Soon we were doing a thriving business. The discriminating, with a few paid plugs from columnists, found their way to our door. Yvette continued to cook. I decorated an upper room and held a sort of informal court here. The room was open only to gourmets who sought my advice in the selection of their dishes. Yvette and I planned the meals together. Often I spent the mornings scouring the markets for the necessary ingredients for the day’s bill of fare.
The restaurant became the very core of my existence. It gave me dignity and stature as a man. I loved it and I loved Yvette because she was an integral part of it. I was happier than I had ever been.
Then tragedy struck without warning. Yvette had complained of aches and pains, of exhaustion at night. I advised a medical checkup but Yvette’s reluctance to pay a doctor’s fee restrained her from following my advice until she actually collapsed in the kitchen.
Yvette returned from the clinic gray-faced and shaken. Her excessive weight had brought on a coronary condition complicated by incipient diabetes. The doctor had prescribed a rigorous diet. Yvette had protested.
“You have no choice,” he told her. “Either diet or die.”
Yvette was a determined woman. Once convinced that dieting was a necessity, she approached her problem with rock-like fortitude. No longer did she sip the vichyssoise which she prepared, or slip a strawberry tart from the tray into her mouth.
Yvette’s reduction in weight was phenomenal. Within a few months she was scarcely recognizable as the fat, jolly, easy-going woman I had married. Her figure became slim and solid; her face, planed down, showed a fine bold bone structure. I would not say that she was beautiful. The descriptive word handsome might apply better. Certainly she was striking. Deprived of her interest in food, she became impassioned with her appearance which she had previously neglected. She was rigorously corseted, her hair coiffed with painstaking care and she became adept in the use of make-up.
My coterie of friends congratulated me on the change but soon they began to drift away from Chez Yvette. More and more my wife became indifferent to the preparation of those dishes which had given a certain fame to the restaurant. She hired a chef of mediocre talents and her supervision was limited to seeing that he prepared the day’s menu with the maximum of economy.
With the change in her appearance came a complete alteration of her personality. She had always been thrifty but now she developed a mean, niggardly streak. She substituted dried mushrooms for the fresh ones required in Allemande sauce. She even mixed pig’s liver in the pate de foie gras and, most frightful of all, employed margarine in the preparation of vegetables. My protests were without avail. Soon she was serving smaller portions and, one by one, she eliminated the dishes requiring long preparation and expensive ingredients.
Our exclusive clientele dropped off but Yvette was not disturbed. The restaurant was being filled by a new type of customer, tourists with barbarian tastes, clerks and typists from nearby office buildings, hoi-polloi from the housing development in the next block. Yvette moved from the kitchen to the cashier’s desk. She made a careful survey of the neighborhood’s desires and came up with a menu of salads, sandwiches and business men’s special blue plates.
Our personal relations deteriorated rapidly. Previously she had deferred to my judgments and I had believed that she considered herself fortunate indeed in finding a husband of refined tastes and superior social position. But now I was a supernumerary. She did not trust me with the marketing but attended to all purchases herself. Our marriage was disintegrating. Her pliancy and docility disappeared. By bedtime she was usually too exhausted by the day’s labor and her rigorous diet to respond to my overtures and on such occasions as she did, she tended to be harsh, demanding, and even critical of my male prowess.
Before long my affection for her changed to hate. I could not stand the sight of her bold, hawk-like features. Her eyes which had seemed jolly in their casements of flesh, now had a predatory gleam. But all these shortcomings might have been tolerable were it not for the fact that the food became increasingly execrable. Yvette had developed into a fanatic in the matter of diet. Like the reformed drunkard, she sought converts with a crusader’s zeal. The room which had once been reserved exclusively for myself and my friends was changed into a health bar.
It was bad enough not to be able to get a proper meal in my own home but Yvette did not stop at that. She constantly nagged at me for what she termed an excessive interest in food. She plied me with carrot juice, cottage cheese and rye crisp and, when I spurned them, made derogatory remarks concerning my expanding waistline.
My quest for gastronomic pleasure led me far afield but with only the most miniscule success until I discovered the Golden Cock and Germaine Duval. The Golden Cock was on the East Side in the upper Seventies, a shabby basement affair which one could pass a thousand times and hardly notice. But where else in the city could one secure such exquisitely prepared tomato and shrimp soup or cabbage a la petite russienne?