by Idwal Jones
Here I see that I have recorded but Jules’ triumphs. Let me recall now the shaking moment when grief was the portion of this excellent man. Pierre one night, walking heavy-footed, came bearing a salver and laid it on the bench. The Maharajah had rejected a dish of woodcock fillets à la Lucullus.
“Pourquoi?” faltered Jules.
Pierre could only echo: “Why?” He looked at me, lifted stricken hands, and withdrew as slowly as he had come.
I drew up two chairs, got an end of bread, some leaves of green salad, and Jules and I sat down to the dish. It was as hot as it was beautiful. It was perfect, almost. Wherein lay the flaw in the emerald, the false note in the madrigal, my critical faculty could not apprise me.
Jules rose and went into the garden, where he sat alone in darkness.
Alas, my poor friend! In time of heart-shaking stress, he was less a philosopher than an artist, and chagrin gnawed at his heart. I too, Gallois, have had my failures, but I have learned not to dwell upon them overmuch, but to fix my thoughts upon perfection.
Surely there had been no fault in Jules’ technique. The salpicon—was it too bland? The wine in the fumet—was it of a sugary year? The crouton—should it have opposed the teeth with more crackle? Or was it merely that inspiration had failed the artist, and left his hand limp? Whatever the cause, the woodcock had been of inglorious flight, and fallen back into the covert. And in the garden sat Jules, staring into the silence, baffled and damned.
I do not regret telling of this disaster. When genius falls, it falls mightily.
Too often genius dares beyond its skill, or is overconfident. A reasonable amount of failure is salutary, for it reminds us that success is often but a truce between men and gods, between whom is unending warfare. The wisest of men will not deplore it overmuch. Success can no more exist without failures than can a bow without a string, or black without white, or heat without cold. Perhaps Destiny had done a kind thing in bedeviling Jules’ dish. Fatigue lurks in the shadow of perfection, and nothing so surely dulls the spirit, whether of dictator or chef, as the monotony of triumphs.
Jules that night drank much brandy—four bottles.
A month later he could look back upon the failure without a twinge, and neither Monsieur Paul nor Urbain ever referred to that debacle of the woodcock.
The Maharajah, the purple-black satrap, gave us infinite trouble at times. Urbain liked him, and Pierre tolerated him because of the tips. Once the ruler had tried to secure the filigree salon for a peculiarly private little banquet, and was annoyed when Monsieur Melun-Perret refused to give it up on that night.
“I am dining alone,” our favorite client snorted. “That blue-skinned savage! Throw him to the carps!”
The two patrons bowed stiffly to each other after that. True, they had never met, but each knew the other. It saddened Urbain, this gulf between his two friends.
“His Excellency’s up there again,” Pierre said one night. “He wants a curry of young ducks.”
“He does, eh? Le cochon! If he wants that curry, very well then, he must give us his formula!” Jules said. “Let it be the patron’s fault this time, not the chef’s. I want that formula, and on paper!”
The Maharajah’s curries were renowned. Their preparation was a family secret—hereditary, no doubt, like his throne and the jewels he wore at the Durbar. The Roi Nantois, our rival, had tried for years to get hold of that recipe, and was in dread lest the Faisan d’Or learn it, and serve that duck curry to the Prince of Monaco, and the Club des Cent and ensnare these clients forever—which was exactly what did happen!
Pierre trod upstairs. In a few minutes he came down with the Maharajah’s secretary, a fragile, dark youth with a paper in his claw-like hands. He began reading. “Ducks—severed in handy portions. Now, fry lightly until set, and—”
He read in a curious, fluting, bird voice, and Jules set to work with a mighty clatter of pans.
“Again, M’sieu, I beg of you! A little more slowly,” pleaded Jules.
The secretary obliged, then read to me. I looked for the apples and herbs. Jules began chopping up ducks, and I prepared the other ingredients. The secretary read and droned from the paper like a bailiff at court. He peered over our shoulders, and he blinked into the pots on the range. I could not so much as steal a glance at that recipe. Jules and I heard it piecemeal, and it was far too intricate to memorize. The Faisan d’Or would have paid five thousand francs for a copy of it.
We were in the thick of our task when Monsieur Paul came up, smiling and bowing to the ambassador from upstairs. We knew what he was after.
“It is execrable, Monsieur, that you should have to visit this den! Your pardon! May I—surely—you will, I hope—do me the honor?” He lifted a bottle of Madeira. “A little appetizer?”
The ambassador was measuredly amiable. They drank. They sat at the bench and drank again, and talked cookery. The kitchen was very hot, the Madeira was very cold, and the secretary was thirsty. He gesticulated much with his long, bony hands.
I connived with Monsieur Paul. The paper lay on the bench, and I read it as I passed by frequently, and each time memorized a few sentences which I jotted down on a paper behind the range.
The style is curious, but clear:
Sever two young ducks into parts, joint from joint. Cook them in three pints of boiling water. In butter make brown a very large onion, two apples, and three stalks of rhubarb. Cast upon this three tablespoonfuls of curry powder, and after all has cooked five minutes, throw into the stock, from which you have removed the fowl, and stew for twenty minutes.
Add thereto now a pint of chicken soup, and three tablespoonfuls of flour to thicken it and simmer another ten minutes. Sink back the fowl, and with it the milk of a cocoanut and a cupful of the grated meat; three cut-up ginger roots and some of their syrup; a tablespoon of British meat sauce. Brown slightly in a buttered pan a cut-up green pepper, which you will throw into the pot with three sliced-up very green bananas, a cut-up pimento, a half cupful of chutney, a teaspoonful of salt, two tablespoonfuls of juice of lemon, and two egg yolks beaten in two cupfuls of cream. Bring slowly to the boil, and serve within a moat of boiled rice.
The secretary went upstairs with his paper, unaware that he had been pillaged. When Pierre came down an hour later, his countenance was beatific. He shook hands silently with Jules, and then with Monsieur Paul.
It would be easy to prove that fine cookery has caused little infelicity, and still easier to show it has added much to the sum of mortal happiness. I memorized the recipe, thinking of my Bishop’s palace, and then gave it to the Faisan d’Or. A theft, perhaps. But a sacrifice I had laid upon the altar of gastronomy. India could do no less to square itself for the fate it had dealt out to that unhappy Bulgakov, of herbal memory and a watery end.…
VII
CHEFS DINE ELSEWHERE
My uncle was accustomed to dine well at a tavern he often frequented near Hyères because of its quietness. It was an ancient tavern with Crusaders’ heads cut into the stone above the door, but with nothing else to single it out above its rivals. He had to wait half an hour for a table. Motorcars and omnibuses were pulling up before it to disgorge patrons who had come for the roast lamb and apricot tarts. Its fame was resounding, though recent.
“Here, what does this mean?” he asked the proprietor over a glass of marc with him. “Have you a new cook?”
“The same one. But we painted his name on the sign. So now we are famous.”
I am not metaphysician enough to explain this. Perhaps the cook had improved, to live up to the dignity of the signboard. Or perhaps everyone seeing it thought that here was the Napoleon of chefs, not to be missed on any account. But it is true that where chefs are anonymous la gourmandise in its transcendent aspect may not exist.
The Faisan d’Or was renowned not only because its food had merit but because its cooks were known by name and therefore praised. The names of at least ten of them were attached to a sauce, a garnish, a dessert,
or a manner of preparing fish or a fowl. Between the salons and the kitchen were invisible wires kept at tension by couriers like Pierre and the major-domo. They would purr that Blaise or Guido or Jules was in masterly vein at this moment; or, in a voice pitched low in excitement, hint that Monsieur Paul himself was this night turning out something special.
It was a subtle kind of flattery, also; the patrons felt that they themselves had conspired in the making of a dish whose pattern would never be exactly repeated. Then they would dispatch compliments, or even write off a note.
Guido received a note one night. He started as he read it, then gave it to me. It was from Georges Melun-Perret, whose pleasure it was that we dine simply with him on an evening a week hence.
“If he goes to the slums,” said Guido, “I tell you it will be for something good!”
The night came. Paris was dripping like a sponge. We crawled through a fog that seemed an overflow of the Seine, trudged far beyond Notre Dame to the bleak, cobbled alleys of La Villette, and fetched up at our rendezvous, a filthy little café on the banks of the canal. It was noisy, full of tanners and abattoir workmen, all thirsty, argumentative, and with pay money in their pockets. Dogs yelped and fought underfoot, and were no more noticed than if they were fleas. There was Monsieur Georges at a corner table, looking like a drover in rough coat and mud-colored tie.
He greeted us and shouted for hot grogs. We were served by a blue-jowled waiter in corduroys and visored cap.
“You did pick on a sale trou this time,” said Guido. “You are also a connoisseur in deadfalls.”
Georges winked. “They know beef, these fellows around here. The abattoirs are close by. Nobody knows beef so well as Louis Jussien. A vast friend of mine from Normandy, bigger than five slaughterers. He runs a coal-and-wood yard near by. He’ll be here at eight, after getting the meat.”
He looked at his watch. “Past eight now.”
“Well, this friend of yours, M’sieu Georges, I hope he finds it,” said Guido. “But the shops are closed.”
“Then he’ll knock down a tram horse and carry it off.”
A man of canorous voice moved toward us, arms outstretched—a giant in corduroys, unbelted, with kerchief around his neck.
“I couldn’t shut up the yard until just now!”
Georges he greeted as one would a godchild, and we as if were cousins bursting with money and with news from home. He led us out, his laughter blasting a tunnel before us into the fog. To his apartment we climbed, above the fuel yard. How excellent it was, how sparely Norman! The chairs on the red-tiled floor were massive and thonged, the walls decoratively bare; against the window was a large table spread with checkered cloth. Here we sipped vermouth and looked into the well of the back street heaving with coils of fog.
“I was sitting here the other night,” said Louis. “And under that lamp passed two oxen. Big as locomotives! I went to the abattoir in a great hurry. By good luck my cousin Guillaume was still there. They cut up prettily into fillets, I tell you.
“Indeed?” Melun-Perret drummed with his fingers. “We ought to have ten kilos of fillets for our club dinner at the Dauphine-Royale.”
“Who will cook them?”
“Bosque, I think. Learned his craft at the Faisan d’Or and Foyot’s.”
“Bosque! Meat is not in his blood! His father, you see, was a locksmith.”
Guido flung Louis a glance of admiration. This was an original, and worthily a friend of Melun-Perret, whose judgment was unerring. “But there are some, Monsieur, who think Bosque is good.”
“They have not seen our fillets,” said Louis. “Marie! The shrimps.”
A femme de ménage, wide in the beam, brought him a bowl in which shrimps had been marinated in thick white sauce that was half veal bouillon. It was seasoned and chilled, flavored with garlic. The woman brought over a tray of condiments. He looked at it with one eye squinting at Melun-Perret.
“M’sieu Georges, if you can guess—you shall mix it.”
“Shrimps à la Mirabeau,” said Melun-Perret, pulling up his sleeves. “Permit me.”
He rubbed a little beef extract in the juice of a lemon, added a handful of stoned black olives, some strips of anchovies, and threw these in. Next he added some torn-up watercress, mostly leaves.
“My weakness, but if you will allow me—” He thrust a knife tip into a pot of vinegarish mustard. Louis raised a hand in blessing at the alliance as Melun-Perret stirred all into perfect unity.
After we had shined our plates, “Why ‘Mirabeau’?” boomed Louis. “Why the compliment?”
“In recognition of certain merits, no doubt,” said Melun-Perret. “The arts can afford to be courteous. Look at Sauce Diable.”
Marie staggered over with a tray laden with four mastodonic kidneys, whose ruby meat winked in the matrix of fat. We had to poke and admire them. Louis himself slid them into the stove, to frizzle and snap like Chinese firecrackers.
“Valmonte,” said Melun-Perret regretfully, laying a handful of cigars on the table. “My poor Duca di Valmonte! If only he was here now!”
“Two oxen offer but four kidneys,” said Louis with reproach. “There is hardly enough for us!”
The haze from the meat baking in the oven was like an aroma made perceptible. The fifth glass of the amber wine was better than the first. More bottles were misting out on the window sill, and Louis drew in another. I felt that the evening, still young, was already memorable: the talk was good, the spirits convivial.
The recollection of any well-cooked dish fades if those at table with us were dull. You can be dull, like Brillat-Savarin, the worthy overfat barrister, and yet dine well—if you first take his precaution of inviting only agreeable and witty dining partners.
With an eye on the clock, Louis retreated to the oven. He showed us the kidneys with unaffected pride. They were crackled like old porcelain, roasted to the core. He sliced them the breadth of a finger, and glacéed them a minute under the flame. We took out slices from the hot wood, ate them with a powdering of salt. How they snapped!
The woman brought us hot bread in a cloth and wedges of cold tomato. No meal could have been simpler. Invigorated as by a tide, we felt a renewal of bodily and spiritual strength. Melun-Perret ate in a slow trance. The texture of the lean alternated on his palate with the waxy crispness of the fat. The slices disappeared. None was left.
“Messieurs?” said Louis, pointing to the liquor on the still hot plank. Guido and I shook our heads. With a crust, Louis dabbed piously at a blot on the plank. It was deeper than a blot. The bread sopped abundantly in a hollow, and he gave it to Melun-Perret, who feebly simulated protest.
“That hollow,” said Louis, “my father scraped it out with the edge of a coin. He was a farmer and knew honest beef. It is—what shall I say?—his monument.”
He made coffee over the blaze, and carried it to the table in a blackened pot. Meanwhile we had cognac from a squat bottle. It was robust and old, the dowry of a grandmother in Angoulême. It spread lambently over tone, palate, and throat with the light of shaken-out tinfoil.
Louis filled our thick, white cups with his brew.
“In my yard is a wood sawyer who is rich. He owns a leak in the engine. Under it he keeps a coffee filter. Every ten minutes—pouf!—goes a pinch of steam. At noon his reward is a finer cup than we can drink.”
We sat longer over the coffee than over the meal. It was screaming hot, tar-black, and aromatic. Melun-Perret bowed over it with eyes closed, inhaling, his cigar rolled beatifically in his mouth. The baked rognon and the coffee had thrown him into silence. Man’s propensity to praise, so often foolish, departs him when he meets with the highest excellence. One accepts with decent and quiet joyfulness a finer sunset than ordinary, a Molière play, a dinner of extreme merit. In aftertime to sharpen our recollection, we speak of them in praise.
The woman left. Louis brewed another potful of coffee. I drank mine simple and black. Guido spooned in plenty of sugar. Louis laced his
with cognac, and Melun-Perret poured his coffee over a twist of tangerine peel. Where no coffee is, says the Arab, there is no merry company.
—
“We shall get the Doctor di Valmonte one of those fillets,” said Guido finally. “He will insist on eating it with a pinch of salt, though.”
“Still,” said Melun-Perret, pensively, “no man has a palate more delicate, nor more curious.” He lighted a cigar. The woolly smoke of it matched the fog at the window. One eyelid drooped—a sign that the raconteur was finding his vein.
“Di Valmonte, when I first knew him, was living on the Grand Canal in Venice. At his palazzo he pursued the art of dining well. It was an art he carried as far as it could go. He was even more devoted to his friends: a failing, perhaps, but it was his heart that was at fault.
“So his dinners were epochal. Figure to yourselves my trepidation when I was invited there one night, three weeks beforehand. I set out with three acquaintances, and we poled up the Grand Canal through a fog thicker than sheep’s wool. The palace was very old, rearing five stories high out of the mud in which it had been planted at the time of the first Doges. A little ruined, and very damp, but incurably noble.
“A porter with a hurricane lamp awaited us on the landing. He had a mourning band on his arm, I remember, and the grandeur of a three-cornered hat. After all, the guests were members of the Royal Gastronomic Society. He escorted us up one flight of stairs after another. Up we went, winding on the spiral staircase, as if we were in an etching by Piranesi. There were statues, and ancient tapestries, and murals eaten by damp so that they hung flickering in the wind, like pennants.
“The upper floor was stately, thronged with persons of dignity and manner. Our cloaks were removed. An aged servant, who might have been a Cardinal in disguise, brought me an apéritif of Manzanilla. I was conscious that his hand trembled ever so slightly, that a blue shadow underlaid a pallor about his eyes.