My Chocolate Redeemer Read Online Free Page B

been welcomed by my French family of Grand-mère and Uncle Claude.
    When I was little Grand-mère carried up the stairs every night a cup of hot chocolate with which I was soothed before going to sleep. She cupped it in her palms and this made the steam seem to rise from her hands. Long before she entered my bedroom, long before I even heard her feet on the stairs, the milky fragrance reached me, the warm sweet genie left the mug and communicated with me. On the cup, which was white with a thick lip and a generous ear, there appeared the picture of a man in a top hat leading a bear on a chain. The bear was muzzled, and padded behind the plump gentleman in his frock coat who put his feet down with complete confidence. When I saw the picture I always felt sad for the bear, but then I would drink my hot chocolate and drowsiness soaked up sorrow like blotting paper. All that was human was to be found in the downcast face of that plodding bear; everything that was most beastly in the fat proud man, beginning with the hard shine on his top hat and going right down to the hatefully confident angle of his little feet. I believe that had it not been for the chocolate I would have tossed and turned and dreamed of the bear. But however much that picture moved me, the chocolate took away my worries and I never dreamed of the bear.
    I dream now. Sometimes I think that if only we could return to those times, those evenings, my grandmother and I, then the dreams would stop. I eat large amounts of chocolate but this does not have a soothing effect, in fact, quite the opposite, for the taste of the chocolate, sweet or bitter, reminds me that the cup, the man and the bear are forever out of my reach. When my father died and it was announced that my mother was selling the apartment in Paris and moving to England, my Uncle Claude broke the cup.
    He dropped it on the stone floor of the dining room, a complex pattern of octagonal black-and-white tiles that reminded me, when I was younger, of the eye of a fly I saw hugely magnified in the photographic exhibition held to celebrate the opening of the old Mairie, restored by Monsieur Cherubini in the days when he still spent his money on restoring old monuments and did not give it all to that disgusting party of which he is the principal benefactor and guardian angel.
    The Parti National Populaire is, against all expectation, increasingly successful and claims it will win seats in the National Assembly at the next election. It has already found favour in our village. Party backing ensured that my Uncle Claude received the nomination for mayor. It was in fact on the day that he was installed in office and took up his sash in the newly renovated mairie that he dropped my bear cup on the kitchen floor, where it did not so much smash but exploded with a dull crump. That day also happened to be my tenth birthday. It was the only time that Uncle Claude actually marked my birthday. In a few weeks’ time I will turn sixteen and I can tell you I won’t be surprised if Uncle Claude celebrates by burning my clothes or hiding my tapes. He insists that I attend the big rally to be held in the village square by Monsieur Cherubini on Saturday. Monsieur Cherubini, says my uncle, is the true guardian angel of the Party and a model for any young person.
    â€˜A paragon of strength, purposeful and honest, a vital force,’ remarked Uncle Claude. ‘A simple, passionate follower of science and truth.’
    Men are the fools boys grow into. It’s not enough that Uncle Claude should have spent his life shut away, contemplating the mysterious origins of the universe and then one day think he is fitted for the job of mayor. But he is also determined to woo converts. From his bedroom in my grandmother’s house, where he still lives, he has been catapulted into the brutally refurbished mairie , an elegant house built before the Revolution into which the Guardian Angel has introduced his ideas of