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dare!’ the plate said, and laughed in your face.
    I tried to recall the price; the cheapest appetizer was nineteen euros, the entrées varied from twenty-eight to forty-seven. And then there were three set menus of forty-seven, fifty-eight and seventy-nine euros each.
    ‘This is warm goat’s cheese with pine nuts and walnut shavings.’
    The hand with the pinkie was above my own plate now. I fought back the urge to say, ‘I know, because that’s what I ordered,’ and concentrated on the pinkie.
    This was the closest he had come this evening, even when pouring the wine. The manager had finally opted for the easiest solution and returned from the open kitchen with a new bottle, the cork already sticking halfway out of the neck.
    After the wine cellar and the trip to the Loire Valley, there had been the six-week wine course. Not in France, but in a classroom at a night school. Serge had hung the diploma in the hallway, somewhere no one could possibly miss it. A bottle with the cork sticking out of it could contain something very different from what was on the label: that must have been dealt with during one of his very first lessons in that classroom. It could have been messed with; a malicious person could have diluted the wine with tap water, or dribbled saliva down the neck.
    But after the aperitif of the house and the broken cork, Serge Lohman was apparently not in the mood for any more mucking about. Without looking at the manager, he had wiped his lips with his napkin and mumbled that the wine was ‘excellent’.
    At that moment I glanced over at Babette. Her eyes behind the tinted lenses were fixed on her husband; it was almost impossible to tell, but I would almost have sworn that she had raised an eyebrow when he passed his judgement on the pre-uncorked wine. In the car, on the way to the restaurant, he had made her cry, but by now her eyes were looking much less swollen. I hoped she would say something, something to get back at him: she was entirely capable of that, Babette could be very sarcastic when she put her mind to it. ‘He’s tasting wine in the Loire Valley’ had been one of the mildest expressions of that.
    In my mind, I egged her on. Every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. When it came right down to it, that might be the best thing: a huge, knock-down, drag-out fight between Serge and Babette before we moved on to the main course. I would speak soothing words, pretend not to take sides, but she would know that she could count on me.
    To my regret, though, Babette said nothing at all. You could almost see the way she gulped back her undoubtedly murderous comment about the cork. But still, something had now taken place that kept alive my hopes of an explosion later in the evening. It’s like a pistol in a stage play: when someone waves a pistol during the first act, you can bet your bottom dollar that someone will be shot with it before the curtain falls. That’s the law of drama. The law that says no pistol must appear if no one’s going to fire it.
    ‘This is corn salad,’ the manager said; I looked at the pinkie, which was no more than a centimetre away from the three or four curly little green leaves and the melted chunk of goat’s cheese, and then at the entire hand, which was so close that I would only have had to lean forward a little to kiss it.
    Why had I ordered this appetizer, when I don’t even like goat’s cheese? To say nothing of corn salad. This time the stingy portions worked in my favour: my plate too was mostly empty, although not as empty as Claire’s; I could have devoured the three leaves in a single bite – or simply left them lying on the plate, which amounted to pretty much the same thing.
    Whenever I see corn salad I’m reminded of the little cage with the hamster or guinea pig that stood on the windowsill of our classroom in elementary school. It was there because it was good for us to learn about animals – to learn to take care of animals, I suppose.