One year later, Mauro takes the exam as an unaffiliated candidate. That day, he puts on the chef’s uniform that he must wear for the practical tests, an outfit purchased at Monsieur Veste for sixty-eight euros: white trousers and jacket, special loafers, chef’s apron (down to his knees), and cap—he walks across the small garden, silent, the apron tied tight around his narrow torso, his long, thin arms hanging, and gives me a doubtful look: Is this okay? Do I look like a clown or what? I smile: he looks fine, completely credible. You look wonderful. After that, he gathers the utensils that he’ll need for the test, an impressive array of gear that he inventories in front of me, picking up each object one after another and stating its name, a bit like a magician presenting his hat, his wand, and his assistant to the audience before performing his first trick: whisk, carver, peeler, scraper, zester, scissors, spaghetti tongs, meat tongs, fork, pastry bag with a variety of tips, rubber spatulas, an Exoglass spatula and a flat patisserie spatula, a ladle, several soup- and teaspoons, a melon baller, an electric scale (he checks the batteries), and a series of knives chosen after a great deal of research (the steel blades are laid flat in the black case, all pointing the same way—boning knives, butcher’s knives, slicing knife, and paring knife, the sharpening steel). Mauro repeats their names, like a litany of weapons, finding it strange to be so heavily armed.

The day of the exam, he is one of four unaffiliated candidates to turn up at the technical lycée in the eighteenth arrondissement. Apart from Mauro, there are two men his own age and a woman in her thirties. The exam room is large, tiled: the slightest sound creates an echo, but for now it is bathed in the singular silence of an empty school.

Having already dispensed with the basic tests—math and French—Mauro has crammed for the two other written exams: the PSE (Workplace Health) and cooking theory. The first is a general-question exam, about different contracts, the ability to implement a budget, or to react to an accident; the second verifies the student’s knowledge of basic cooking techniques, of sanitary risks, the rules of hygiene, the organization of a kitchen, and so on. Mauro races through them.