Free The Hundred-Foot Journey by Richard C. Morais Page A

gentler slopes, men carrying baskets on their backs harvested the last grape bunches between rows of vines, and behind them rose the crisp white tops of the granite mountains.
    And the air, oh, that air. Crisp and clean. Even Ammi stopped her wailing. Our cars sailed past wooden farmhouses with antlers nailed over barn doors, bell-clanking cowherds, a yellow postal van bobbing across the fields. And in the flat-bottomed valley we crossed a wooden bridge, entering the town of stone.
    The Mercedes lurched through the village’s narrow eighteenth-century lanes—past cobblestone alleys, past the shoe shop, past watch boutiques. Two chatting mothers pushed baby carriages across the crosswalk to a pâtisserie and tearoom; a portly businessman mounted steps to a corner bank. There was something elegant about the town, as if it had some proud past, and it left a pleasant impression of guild houses and leaded windows, of old church spires and green shutters and World War I memorials carved in stone.
    But finally we had circled the town’s square—boxes of yellow carnations and a fountain of water-spitting fish at its center—and headed back out of town on the N7, over a roaring river that came down from the Alps. And I distinctly remember looking out the window of the car and seeing a man fishing the river’s fast waters with grasshoppers, the entire bank behind him a stunning carpet of bluebells.
    “Papa, can’t we stop here?” asked Mehtab.
    “No. I want to reach Auxonne for lunch. Guidebook says they have very good tongue. With a Madeira sauce.”
    Not for the first time in my life the outside world seemed to respond to my inner needs.
    “Wah dis? Wah dis?”
    The car belched black smoke and shuddered. Papa smacked the wheel, but the car wouldn’t respond, and he guided us to the side of the road. The younger children screamed with delight as we all piled out of the backseats into the crisp country air.
    Our car died on a leafy street of bourgeois limestone houses and potted chimneys and window boxes bursting with geraniums. Behind the houses, apple orchards sloped up hills, and I could just see the tops of headstones jutting up from the local cemetery and church.
    My younger brothers and sisters played tag in the street—a terrier yapping at them from behind an old stone wall—as delicious smells of burning wood and hot bread wafted over us from a nearby house.
    Father cursed and banged the car hood with his fist. Uncle got out of the second car and gratefully stretched his back before joining Papa over the stalled engine. Auntie and Ammi gathered the hems of their saris and went in search of a bathroom. My oldest brother, alone in the last car, which was overloaded with our valises and bundled luggage, morosely lit a cigarette.
    Papa wiped his oily hands on a rag and looked up. I could see he was exhausted, his immense energy finally drained of its reserves. He took a deep breath, rubbed his eyes, and a gust of oxygen-rich air suddenly ruffled his hair. He must have felt the breeze’s invigorating presence, for that was when he really looked at the pristine alpine beauty around him for the first time. And as he looked about, breathing effortlessly through his nose for the first time in almost two years, he leaned against a gate, the wooden board next to him wobbling.
    The mansion we’d broken down in front of was stately, and even from the road we could see it was beautifully carved from fine stone. On the other side of the self-contained estate, a stable and gatekeeper’s lodge stood below linden trees, and a tangle of thick ivy grew along the top of the stone wall encircling the property. “The sign says it’s for sale,” I said.
    A powerful thing, destiny.
    You can’t run from it. Not in the end.
    Lumière, we later discovered, had been a vibrant watchmaking center during the eighteenth century, but the town had shrunk to twenty-five thousand and was now mostly known for a few award-winning wines. The main