Sila's Fortune by Fabrice Humbert

Author:Fabrice Humbert
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Profile
Published: 2010-05-25T21:00:00+00:00

14

Sila turned. A young woman was looking at him through the window of the restaurant. He wondered if she was a customer. As she simply stood, frozen, staring at him, he moved towards her. He opened the door of the restaurant.

‘Can I help you?’ he asked in English.

The woman didn’t answer. Instead, she adjusted her sunglasses.

‘Would you like to reserve a table, madame?’ he spoke again.

She nodded her head with difficulty.

‘For what date?’

‘I’m not sure yet,’ she said weakly.

Sila smiled. ‘Take all the time you need to decide. We’re at your service.’

Suddenly, Shoshana was no longer sure. What if it was someone else …? After all, this man didn’t look like he’d had his nose broken. And his pleasant, affable manner was nothing like the stunned, shattered expression of the waiter on the floor.

Sila went back inside. Shoshana slowly crept away. But for the rest of the day, she thought about the encounter. What if it really was him? What was he doing in Miami? Could he have followed them? But why?

The truth was that Sila had followed them, for no particular reason, the simple, chance movement of a leaf buffeted by the wind. With no intention, no purpose, only the unfathomable curiosity of a wanderer coming from Africa, passing through Europe, deciding to spend some time in the United States. A week after being discharged from hospital, where he’d had an operation on his nose, he had announced that he wanted to go to the States.

‘But why?’ the maître d’hôtel asked him. ‘Are you not happy here?’

‘I am, but I want to see the world.’

‘So why the States?’

‘Because the guy who punched me is American. I want to see what the country is like.’

‘You get arseholes the world over. He could just as easily have been from France or Belgium or Venezuela.’

‘Maybe. But the fact is he’s American. It interests me. I want to see the country.’

Lemerre called him into his office, asked him if he was sure about his decision. When Sila insisted he was, Lemerre said he would go on helping him. He owned twenty-three restaurants around the world, three in the United States - in New York, Miami and Los Angeles. He would make him maître d’hôtel.

Sila had seen from his hotel registration card that the American came from Florida.

‘I’d like to go to Miami.’

‘Is this why you’ve been learning English?’

‘No, but I’ll get some use out of it.’

Everything had been simple, as always for Sila. All he had had to do was wait a few months for his work permit. When he left the restaurant, one of the waiters said: ‘The guy’s an idiot.’

‘No,’ said Lemerre, ‘he’s a prince.’

And no one quite knew what he meant by this.

Sila settled in Miami. He took a studio apartment downtown, and adapted to the restaurant which, while it didn’t have the prestige of the flagship restaurant in Paris, had skilfully developed the concept of a fusion of flavours from all over the world, something that initially disconcerted the

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