At the same time, Mauro trains his senses and is soon able to estimate by sight the capacity of a thimble, a teaspoon, a pinch of salt; he is able to gauge the volume and mass represented by 250 grams of flour and 50 grams of butter; knows how to adjust temperatures and cooking times, how to date an egg, a crème, an apple. Little by little, his sensations become more precise; at each stage of the preparation, they are mobilized as one, coalesced into a single movement, as if the boy himself were becoming unified; it’s synesthesia, a feast, and now he can cook by ear as well as with his nose, hands, mouth, and eyes. His body exists more and more; it becomes the measure of the world.

As he grows older, the desire to amaze the adults at the family table—parents of friends—gradually lessens. Mauro has better things to do, teenage kicks to get, and the floor of home burns his feet. If he continues his incursions into the kitchen now, it is for his friends, and because it’s better, cheaper. All the same, he does have principles: junk food is a form of violence perpetrated against the poor; the mass-produced ready-meal a sign of the solitude of urban existence. A thirteen-year-old ideologue, Mauro warns the gang: frozen pizzas are crap, and so is McDonald’s. The friends say okay while patting their pockets and wonder out loud what could possibly beat the Big Mac Meal for less than seven euros? Me! Mauro jumps up.

Now on Saturday evenings, when Mauro and his five amigos turn up at the house in Aulnay, he immediately starts cooking, because the pure immanence of adolescent sloth—which is charming but also, let’s be perfectly honest, pretty exhausting—requires its quota of slow sugar and its dose of calcium.

During those years, the Aulnay Six fuel up on “homemade” pizza, spaghetti carbonara, potatoes sautéed with shallots, chocolate mousse, crêpes suzette. It’s all right, guys, it’s not expensive. That’s what Mauro tells them when they come to veg out at his house on weekends or after school and slump on couches while passing around a pot into which each of them chucks three or four euros—not including the Cokes, the beers, the smokes. They moan, they joke, and finally they devour what’s put in front of them, silent except for the little sounds of swallowing. It’s fit for a king.