The intern

August 31, 2019

Screen shot 2019-08-31 at 1.07.48 PMI came down Saturday morning to find the following note written in pen on a piece of graph paper torn from a notepad, next to a blue plate on which lay five fat quesadilla triangles, one a third eaten:

“Ah et j’etais pas très inspiré ce soir, ce plat est déguelasse… Mais vous pouvez toujours tenter de le manger… Ce qui ne va pas arriver je pense…

Si vous connaissez des oiseaux qui mangent des pâtes, des tortillas, des patates et des oignons (Oui, j’ai vraiment mélangé tout ça) vous pouvez leur donner, c’est cadeaux! Signé, le cuisto français.” On the back he added, “Si vous avez gouté, félicitations. Vous n’avez peur de rien.

Translation: “Oh, and I was not very inspired tonight. This dish is disgusting. But you could always try to eat it…Something that will not happen I think.

“If you know any birds who eat pasta, tortillas, potatoes and onions (Yes, I really did mix all that) you can give it to them; it’s a gift. Signed, the French cook.” And on the back: “If you tasted it, congratulations. You are fearless.”

A young man we’ll call Julien, from Toulouse, France, wrote this note. Julien came into our lives at the beginning of July, just two weeks after our daughter had moved to Montreal. She was a sort of economic refugee; she wanted to leave home, but knew she could never afford to pay rent on an apartment in Toronto. Since she speaks French and loves Montreal, she moved there, to try to make it on her own. This left us with an empty bedroom and washroom in the basement.

An email came through from a colleague at the Faculty of Forestry at U of T, about a young man arriving from France as a summer intern. His accommodation arrangements had fallen through. We invited him to live in our basement. He showed up from the airport in the late evening, exhausted and running on fumes.

Julien is a tall young man, 19 at the time. He since has turned 20. He looked well fed, and with an open face and guileless expression that is usually a smile. He may own pants; I have never seen him wear anything but shorts. He wears his shoulder-length brown hair in a ponytail.

We gave him a beer and sent him to bed.

Julien has proven to be a charming guest. He is very French and speaks only halting English. He owns many pair of espadrilles. And he has no idea how to cook.

Screen shot 2019-08-31 at 1.08.07 PMBack in France Julien, the youngest of four children, last year moved out of the family home to live with his grandmother, whose home lies near his agricultural college in Toulouse. Julien’s eyes misted over and his voice became very soft when I asked him about the cooking of the woman he calls his “Mammy.”

“She cooks some beef and then she makes this sauce with onions and mushrooms,” he said. “It’s otherworldly.”

The first morning when he awoke Julien asked for hot chocolate. How French. When it comes to cooking he seems a bit like a mynah bird – copying or imprinting on our food choices. We loaned him our daughter’s old bike and the first morning my spouse took him to Kensington, where they both bought bagels. After that Julien ate the same thing for weeks: toasted bagels with a salad of lettuce and tomato. As a bagel spread, he rationed out two cans of pâté he brought from France.

One day my spouse and I drove off to the grocery store and received a call. “Peter,” Julien said, “the smoke alarm is blaring and I don’t know how to make it stop.”

By the time we got home the alarm had shut off. That was the last time Julien tried to cook meat.

More recently, my spouse showed him how to make a quesadilla: crush kidney beans in a frying pan, then put the beans in a tortilla shell, add grated cheese and heat in a skillet. Julien bought Wonder brand flour wraps ( I didn’t even know Wonder had entered the wrap market) and began to make quesadillas.

On Friday night we arrived home near midnight and found him in the kitchen stirring things in several frying pans cooking simultaneously over low heat. He smiled. He looked as thought he had mastered the art of cuisine.

The result, however, was the abandoned meal I found on the counter in the morning. I fed it to our dog. She ate it without comment.

In good news, Julien’s English has improved a great deal. That was the main goal of the internship. My spouse’s French has leapt forward, too. Julien told me the other day he thinks he’s lost five kilos; he’d said when he arrived that he wanted to lose weight. He has two choices: learn to cook or return to Mammy in France. I think Mammy is the short-term plan right now.

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