Before leaving add an onion stuck with two cloves, a small carrot, a bay leaf, and some parsley to the fingers and toes in the saucepan. Set it over the lowest possible flame. Remove the block of frozen offal from the freezer and take it out in an opaque garbage bag. Dispose of it in your usual way. Come alert now, while:
Shopping for the Garnish
This trip must be made quickly, for there is so much yet to be done. You are advised therefore to waste no time pitying the common citizens around you. Those aging ladies with their Diet Cola and TV dinners. Waste nothing so precious as scorn upon them; instead, study the produce you are about to buy and be certain that each is in every way not only worthy of the beloved but of the epicurean grandeur you are so rashly attempting to produce. The mushrooms, ten pounds of them, are they all the largest and whitest money can buy? Have you checked each box? The leeks; their leaves are still beaded with morning dew, the horror of crushed ice never having come near them. The black olives; almost the size of hen’s eggs are they not? The artichokes; did their leaves actually squeak when you secretly squeezed them? And the watercress? Immaculate, of course.
Now quickly the two bottles of Chablis. No, no! Chateau Petrus (fool!) its ineffable odor of truffles thus compensating for their absence in this barbarous nation. Yes, yes, the Pomerol by all means, but what for the others? Romanee-Conti comes easily to mind; but the aroma, have we not so far successfully eliminate any of these bugs-and-bees smells? No! Back to the Medoc. Yes! Yes, of course, your choice seems to leap from the shelf: Chateau Mouton-Rothschild, and with the label designed by Dali. Or, the label by Cocteau? Both! Yes, yes, too perfect is the only justice. Now the Galliano, quickly, quickly, and just up the street those princes in peasant coats: Bosc pears.
You see, with my urging, that you have arrived just as the little saucepan has reduced its liquid by half. You salt it (a pinch) and proceed to sort and wash and admire your purchases. Throw them all into the salted bath around him. Is it not as though a willow-grown stream had pooled about him? (Turn him face up.) “There with fantastic garlands . . . of crow flowers, nettles, daisies, and long purples that liberal shepherds give a grosser name, but our cold maids do dead men’s fingers call them: There” it is thus that a dedicated cook can gain inspiration from the simple contemplation of ingredients both perfect and appropriate. But now, it is time for:
The Ornamental Trussing and Final Infusion
Carry him from the tub. Place him in your huge ovenproof serving platter of teflon-coated steel. Then, with a saw remove the cap of his head, that is, above the hairline. It should produce a sort of zuccheto or, if one is of the Hebrew persuasion, a neat yamulka of hair-covered bone. Scrape out the brains and, wrapped in Saran, freeze them.
Push a large trussing needle with heavy twine through one ear, across so that both ends may be tied to his wrist bonds. The purpose, obviously, is to make his head stand up. You will see though, that the weight of the head only draws his wrists up his back and then itself falls again, sadly askew. Remove a short fine sword or bayonet from your wall display. Place the fingerless hand beneath the perfect one (palms up) and pierce them both with this monstrous attelet. Push it on between the choice rondels of his buttocks and through both feet, these again arranged with the marred beneath the perfect.
Now, using the same heavier-weight strands you used to tie his ankles and wrists, make a pattern of tight bonds. A lattice, a stripe, or whatever imagination dictates and skill allows. If his skin is fair these need not be too tight. The roasting will leave a delightful pattern of gold upon the rich brown crust. If he his dark, or fortunately black, this decorative trussing must be made very tight. Then the skin will split so that when untied he will be beautifully marked with red on black incisions.
Now peel and crush forty cloves of garlic. Work them through a sieve into two cups of brandy and one teaspoon of soy sauce. Inject him as before. Carefully spoon out each eyeball and put them to soak with his genitals in the dish of cold milk. Cut out his tongue and put it to poach in the saucepan of stock from which you first remove the fingers, carrots, etc. Last force an empty Coca-Cola bottle as far into his throat as you can. This is to keep it open. Now you are ready for:
Other Dishes
Put the liver (raw) through the meat grinder, mix it with the remainder of the garlic and brandy, quite a bit of black pepper and some thyme with perhaps a pinch of sage. Add the yolk of one egg and enough bread crumbs to make a coherent loaf. Wrap it with bacon and place it in the head. Coat the edge of the skull with a simple flour-and-water paste, replace the lid and cover all the hair with this paste. Do this also to the eyebrows and mustache, if any. Does he need a shave? Quickly lather, shave and dry his distended cheeks. Also, plug the eye sockets with this paste.
Preheat your oven to 450°, rub him carefully with sesame oil, not forgetting his underside. Oil enough aluminum foil on one side to cover him loosely. Place the platter in the oven and turn your attention to his heart.
You are to cut from the face of this a valentine-style heart, remove the various membranes and divisions within, and rub the cavity with salt and pepper. With the two eggwhites from the liver pâté and two more whole eggs mix a half tablespoon of cornstarch and a full cup of coagulated blood which you have kept from the tin bucket. Stir in one tablespoon, not less, of Tabasco and stuff the heart with as much of this pudding as it will hold. Replace the valentine cover and, carefully sliding it by the blade of the sword, place it in the chest cavity.
Next remove the membrane from the kidneys. Slice off about a half cup of the meat and put it to soak in cold water and lemon juice. Discard the rest.
Now, of course, you are tired. But now also it is time to peek in the oven. Quickly baste your prize with a housepainter’s brush with the rich drippings. Repeat this as often as you like thoughout the next hour. Then turn off the heat and leave it to cool in the closed oven. Is it rare? Yes.
Meanwhile, has the stock about the tongue reduced to a mere spoon of syrup? Remove it to a dish of thinly sliced lemons. Pour the syrup over it when it has cooled to room temperature. Chill it in the refrigerator.
Now remove the vegetables from the tub. Pick over the cress to be sure there are no yellow leaves, wrap it in foil and refrigerate it. Clean the leeks thoroughly, discarding the tough green ends and roots. Drop them in two quarts of boiling salted water. Cook uncovered until the root end is tender when pierced with a fork. Remove them with a leaking ladle to a bath of ice water. Do the same to the artichokes, leaving the leaves, however, untrimmed. Flute the mushrooms, trimming a fraction of an inch from their stems. Sauté them cap down so that their centers are rosy brown. Do not toss them about, the rims of their heads as well as their stems must remain ivory white.
Strain the boiling liquid. Reduce it to two cups. With a bulb baster remove all the cooking juices from the roasting platter. Add them to the butter in which the mushrooms were tinted. Stir in a heaping tablespoon of flour until it forms a smooth paste. Continue stirring it over a high fire until it ceases to foam. Remove half of the roux to a saucepan, but continue to stir the rest until it is a rich brown color. Remove it from the heat instantly and continue to stir as you add half of the vegetable stock (which is still hot). Return to the flame and stir just until the brown roux has begun to thicken. Add enough of the wine, one bottle of which you have opened, to make a slightly thick sauce. Stir in one full tablespoon of black pepper! Pour it into its service boat and keep warm at the back of the stove, or in some other way.
Heat the white roux in the saucepan and stir it together with its share of the vegetable liquor. Add a half pint of day-old cream and by boiling rapidly and stirring gently reduce it by less than a fourth. Dot the top with butter but let it cool. Sprinkle the top with fresh grated nutmeg, a little white pepper, and the little glass of sweat you collected from the scraping of the body in the bathtub.
Now rest.
Rest well, for as much time as is left before it is time to bathe and dress for
this Passion, this Eucharistic Holocaust of Perfect Love.
The Last Rite
At seven o’clock your servant (hired for this night alone) wakes you by announcing that your bath is drawn. It is, of course, the same tub, but now blanketed with shimmering unscented bubbles of liquid Ivory soap. Soak in it. Do not move until the oven rouses you with the faint clang of its expanding metals. Wear nothing but your best dressing-gown, not even slippers. Seat yourself at table and, resting your feet upon a high cushion or low stool, watch the candlelight catch the droplets on the tall sides of your Purgative d’amor Cocktail. Sip it slowly while your man prepares Lung Straws Parmesan and Brain Fritters Vinaigrette. (So simple, so right.) They will arrive with your second cocktail. You will salt them lightly it is hoped, but heavily will also be understood. Your man smiles at your enjoyment and, at his nod, you rise and democratically assist his placement of the gorgeously garnished platter, sizzling from the oven, upon its waiting bed of crushed glass over cedar chips. He has followed your instruction about the hors d’oeuvre so perfectly, he will naturally have arranged the garnishes exactly as you diagrammed them to him during his interview.
Now he will serve the soup from its tureen; its ineffable aroma will mingle with that of your centerpiece as he deftly snips and withdraws its trussing strings. As you lower your head to sip your first spoon of soup you will see that the eyes have been perfectly replaced, that his mouth, wide open as so often you saw it in ribald laughter, has within it, upon its bed of crushed ice his Tongue Glittering in Aspic. The perfectly basted face is unmarred The rapidly melting ice fills his mouth and your mind with memories of never-to-be-repeated autumn days when his sweet breath steamed in the apple crisp winds of an already leafless park.
A single spoon of the soup and it disappears. If it were not that your servant will return momentarily to remove the tiny plate where you have left the second slice of tongue, you would not bother to savour the tender, tart, pebbly tip you now nibble, you would at once relieve yourself and, no matter how hot their juices, bite from that laughing face those fiercely chapped lips, and so ruin the rest of your supper. But this servant understands. Invisibly the tiny, icy plate disappears and in its place an ancient ironstone soup plate presents in its pool of lemon butter an artichoke, its petals agape, its heart wrapped in white-of-leek and studded with kidney cut in the tiniest possible cubelets. The lemon butter fuses with the faint odor of urine. The leek, the olive, the artichoke heart, does it not yearn for the very wine which now falls clearly and coolly into your glass? Taste. Could it really be hat this brash experiment has solved the problem of artichokes and wine? But enough, you will imagine next that you have solved the presentation of coq au vin. Taste each ingredient once, then finish another glass of wine. Another yet as you watch the preparation of the Tendron Blanchette.
The cream sauce is placed already bubbling on whichever side of the carcass is least attractive. There, unseen, your man removes the “false” or “Adam’s ribs” to a very hot plate. On the surface of the sauce he dribbles flaming brandy from a small ladle. Immersing the ladle he stirs once and then spoons the hot spiked cream over the ribs and, placing a fluted mushroom beside it, serves it and retires. This morsel, gelatinous bones and all, requires solitude. Not only to hear its crunch in the mouth but to hear also through the salt of your tears, the heavy accelerated breathing which used to cause these tender things to cover themselves with big beads of sweat. Taste the mushroom. Finish the last drop of wine. Wipe your secret from your face. Watch the noiseless spilling of Chateau Mouton-Rothschild ‘53 into the invisible balloon of your glass; it is time for the grill.
Your man may make a show of this, either with a small Japanese charcoal grill or a very hot electric skillet sprinkled with coarse salt. The fillet has been removed with two spoons, and is just as deftly seared, sliced, and served with a single spoon of Poivrade Sauce. A single bite of this melting, crusted flesh and the wine springs to life on your tongue. Has a Medoc ever bloomed with such masculine tenderness not only on your palate but into the very crevasses of your mind? No. It is, relaxing thought, perfect.
Beside you a cut-glass bowl of ice appears, offering watercress. After the pepper sauce, its green tang is more like a memory of the mint of the soup. Now you are presented with a paper thin slice of the Jambon au Saignant on an oval plate of ruby red glass. A pinch of salt, a squeeze of the lemon left imbedded in the iced cress, and yet new mysteries emerge from the muddy mind of the grape. Is there here, now, at this solitary supper, not some silent presence forming?
Strange before you as if by magic, the little cushion of paté displays the sullen radiance of an eye. Call now for the second bottle of Medoc. Surely only such a noble fluid should be used to drown the sort of pain that begins now to drip like gall from your heart. And of course, again, life imitating art, presents you also with a slice of that spiced savoury from the dark coffer of his heart. It is presented on the point of that heartless attelet by means of which it has been removed from the empty oven of his breast.
Finish the wine. All of it. No more is needed. The cheese must meet nothing but the soft sentimentality of the pear.
It arrives and again your man leaves you perfectly alone. Its slow poaching in heavy cream has expanded its tissues to full tumescence. The crisp heart of a carrot, inserted into the urethra and anchored in a dry canape, has enabled it to exceed the usual presentation (enbelle vue) and appear as promised in all the arrogance suitable to its station and purpose; namely life’s only indispensable ornament. The two large animelles, already shrinking slightly as they cool, cause the hairs on the restless scrotum to scatter their droplets of cream. A touch of your dessert spoon and the foreskin slides down. With its silver tip the tiny curds must be caught before they fall. Close your mouth on this minute serving. Close your eyes and breathe deeply. At the end of a minute add a sliver of cold pear. Do not speak. Let your man assist you from the table. He will pour the coffee and the liqueur, then, leave without a word.
Don’t allow the salt of tears to interfere. Think on it. Has it not been indeed the ultimate reality of love with which we have been concerned?
MENU
Purgative d’amor Cocktails
Brain Fritters Vinaigrette
Lung Straws Parmesan
Excretion Soup with Mint
Tongue in Aspic Artichoke stuffed with Kidney
Chateau Petrus ‘61
Tendron Blanchette with Fluted Mushroom
Chateau Mouton-Rothschild ‘53
Grilled Fillet with Sauce
Poivrade Iced Watercress
Jambon au Saignant
Pate Trompe L’oeil and Savoury au Coeur
Fromage Garçon Chaud and Bosc Pear
Galliano
Cofiee and Tabaceleros and Silence . . .
Among the Dahlias
WILLIAM SANSOM
The zoo was almost empty. It was a day in late September, dry and warm, quiet with sunshine. The school-holidays were over. And it was a Monday afternoon—most people had a week-end’s enjoyment on their consciences and would forbear to appear until the Tuesday.
An exception to this was John Doole. He could be seen at about two o’clock making his way quietly past the owl-houses.
Doole is what may too easily be called an “ordinary” man, a man who has conformed in certain social appearances and comportments for a common good; but a man who is still alive with dreams, desires, whims, fancies, hates and loves—none particularly strong or frequent. The effect of a life of quiet conformity had been to keep such impulses precisely in their place as dreams or desires, writing them off as impracticable.
Doole would also have been called a phlegmatic man: at least, the opposite to a nervous type. When Doole compulsorily whistled to himself, or pulled up the brace of his trousers with his left hand while his right patted the back of his head, or took unnecessarily deep breaths while waiting for a train, so deep that he seemed to be saying Hum-Ha, Hum-ha with his mouth conto
rted into a most peculiar shape, or went through a dozen other such queer acrobatics during the course of his day—these gestures were never recognised as the symptoms of nervous unbalance, for too many other people did exactly the same, and Doole knew this too, he found nothing odd in such antics. In fact, he had just as many “nerves” as a Mayfair lady crammed with sleeping pills—only his manner of outlet was different: also, since he never recognised all this as neurotic, it was the more easy to control.
Doole was a man of forty, with a happy pink face and receding fair hair, a little paunch, and creased baby-fat round his wrists. He had three dimples, two in the cheeks and one on his chin, which gave him the happy, merry look—but his yellow eyebrows flew up at angles over pale lashed eyes, arching out like a shrimp’s feelers, and this gave him a little the look of a startled horse, his eyeballs rolled and seemed to shoot out, while those dimples had the effect of stretching the lip over his teeth into an almost animal fixity. He wore a richly sober brown suit, a little rounded over his short figure; an eyeglass bounced on a black ribbon against his paunch; his tawny shoes were brilliantly shined. The paunch seemed to pull him forward, and he threw his arms back as he walked, fingers stretched taut, and his whole body rested back on a very straight, backward-pressed neck. It was easy to imagine him in a bathing costume: one knew he had thin, active legs.
He was in business, in fireplaces. But he would often take a walk in the afternoon between two and three. “Nobody comes back from lunch till three, you might as well not have a telephone,” he often said. “I’m damned if I’m going to sit there like a stuffed dummy while they stuff the real man.” He himself was principally a vegetarian, ate lightly and often alone. He loved animals. He often visited the zoo, though he shuddered a little at the hunks of raw meat dribbling from the vulture’s beak and the red bones lying about the lion’s cage.
Strangeness Page 25