The Family Frying Pan

by Bryce Courtenay

  Even a stupid country woman like myself can see that there are several holes in this astrological argument and I can hear the professor snorting in indignation to himself. But we dare not interrupt for fear of upsetting Mrs Z further and this theory of her husband’s makes some sort of crazy sense, if you know what I mean.

  Mrs Z continues on with her story. Sergei was born under the sign of Sagittarius the Archer and was therefore obsessive and single-minded and always aimed straight at the target of his particular ambition. Taking our modest savings, he opened a small sanatorium which was centred around a magnificent kitchen. He let it be known among the noble customers of the Hotel Grande Rex that, through the practice of astrological dietary discipline, he could change difficult personalities for the better and also cure depression, aggression, fits, ravings, suicidal tendencies, loss of memory, uncontrolled weeping, coarse language in women and all the various moods and mental frustrations and aberrations commonly found in persons of noble lineage. The nobility were only too pleased to find somewhere to dump their misfits and in no time Dr Zorbatov, Professor of Astrological Science and Zodiac Law, the title Sergei gave to himself, found he had more patients than he could handle. Princes, grand dukes, generals and counts paid huge sums just to gain a few places nearer the top of the waiting list. It seemed that in every aristocratic Russian family there were more than a few members in need of the good professor’s astrological diet and personality adjustment. ‘Fifteen years I studied at the Moscow Academy to become a professor and this astrological charlatan helps himself!’ Professor Slotinowitz mumbles in disgust behind me. Thank heaven, Mrs Z doesn’t hear him, or appears not to anyway, for she keeps talking:

  The curious thing was that it appeared to work. If not in every case, some patients had lost too many marbles too long ago for anything to be done, but in a great many situations.

  Sergei worked out an astrological dietary regime for each patient, but only after having cast an astrological chart of the patient upon admission and from this, taken together with a great deal of close questioning about the patient’s family and family history, he determined what they should eat. He had a vast knowledge of food and herbs and the effect various cuisines have on the human body and mind and he used this to great effect.

  Often the patients would enter the sanatorium in poor health and in a few weeks or months they would be different people, their symptoms eliminated. Those who had entered fat and flaccid would leave with a trim waist and in the best of health.

  My clever Sergei also came up with what he called his ‘patient dialogue’ and as the sanatorium grew larger he employed people from the academy who were studying the new science of the mind to listen to the patients and to make notes as they spoke of their past lives. Soon they would uncover a history of early beatings or cruelty or, as was often enough the case with his female patients – though not always were they women – sexual abuse from a father or an uncle or even an older cousin. And it was from these sessions that he invented his master therapy, the Banquet of Past Suffering and Future Joy.

  This was a grand affair, a banquet to which the patients were required to invite themselves when they felt ready. If they volunteered, believing themselves sufficiently recovered to undergo the routine, they were counselled as to the nature of the dishes available to be eaten. There were twelve dishes in all and they were divided into six ‘good’ dishes and six ‘bad’ dishes, each of the twelve corresponding to a sign in the Zodiac.

  Each dish symbolised a personality characteristic which could be associated with the astrological sign it came under, or rather, it was a symbol for that characteristic. As I have previously said, Sergei believed that there were good and bad aspects of every star sign, but for the purposes of his banquet dishes, the bad dishes represented the worst aspect of its sign and the good dishes the best aspect to be found under its particular star.

  There was the Aries Pie, a dish made of mutton and in particular from the meat of a ram. This pie represented the sexual drive gone wrong and sexual abuse of a small child.

  Then there was a huge beef steak that was named the Tyrant Taurus, which represented the bully and the tyrant.

  Then came a chicken soup which, strangely enough, represented Scorpio, the sign of the scorpion, for while it tasted delicious, after a few spoonfuls it became apparent that it was extremely hot, laced with fiery red peppers so that the tongue swelled in the mouth. This dish stood for temper and subsequent beatings, love promised and then withdrawn, duplicity and betrayal.

  The Coil of Cancer was a length of sausage a metre long that lay coiled like a snake upon a white plate and was filled with every imaginable flavour given to sausages. It represented mysterious stomach pains, headaches, temporary blindness, uncontrollable temper tantrums, depression and other mental maladies which lacked a ready explanation.

  Under the sign of Leo was a dish of raw meat thinly sliced and seasoned with herbs, pepper and capers and served with hot English mustard. It stood for undue severity and unreasonable control and the demand for unquestioning and absolute obedience.

  Finally, on the list of negative characteristic dishes, came the Capricorn Stew, a dish which took after the goat it represented. In fact, it was made of goat’s meat but as the goat is known to eat anything, it contained just about everything you could imagine could safely be contained in a concoction cooked in the juices of meat and vegetables. Capricorn Stew represented any past and negative afflictions visited upon the patient which he or she had not yet discovered or spoken about.

  These six bad characteristic dishes were collectively known as the Food of Sorrow.

  Then there were the astrological dishes which contained positive characteristics, those personal traits to which most humans aspire. These were known as the Food of Joy.

  The Gemini twins were represented by a wonderful dessert known as Gemini Gloriana, a dish exquisitely sweet to the taste but with an occasional spoonful taken distinctly tart. It represented a natural easygoing personality, not easily upset, but if given a just cause not incapable of responding.

  Virgo the Virgin was a lemon sorbet, delightfully fresh tasting and clean to the palate. The characteristics it represented were openness and innocence.

  Aquarius, the water symbol, may at first have seemed a fairly dull dish, but at the banquet it proved to be a most popular addition. It was simply a large crystal jug of pure spring water with a tincture of various oriental herbs added. It represented vigour, decency, sobriety and good health. Aquarius was also represented by a bowl of fresh fruit and the additional characteristic this added was a sweetness of disposition.

  Pisces was a salmon pâté, extremely subtle to the taste, and it represented the salmon who swims for so long against the stream and so stood for individuality, determination and character.

  Sagittarius was not a dish but a clear, white wine with a most beguiling bouquet and a clean, delicious flavour. While it seemed bland enough, a single mouthful went straight to the blood to produce an invigorating effect which turned easily into laughter. The characteristic it represented need hardly be explained, it represented constant good humour.

  Finally there was Libra, the scales, a most popular dish for it was not a dish at all but a pair of scales which allowed any of the guests to take equal amounts of any two dishes so that they weighed precisely the same. This allowed for a mix of positive characteristics. For instance a hundred grams of lemon sorbet taken with a fresh pear promised a sweet disposition and a charming and innocent nature, a combination much liked by the female guests at the banquet. Many of the men, however, chose two dishes which taken together would result in a well-balanced personality.

  All this talk of food, even the kind that represented the bad characteristics, was making us exceedingly hungry and the fish soup I had made from the fish Mrs Z had second-sighted and Mr Petrov had caught was smelling delicious. It was time Olga Zorbatov concluded her story or we would all soon be completely famished, though how her story would
end was a complete mystery and she had, in my mind anyway, already received very high marks for storytelling.

  Well, now that you know the dishes served at the Banquet of Past Suffering and Future Joy, it remains only for me to explain the procedure.

  On the afternoon before the banquet the patients were taken into a small garden known as the Garden of Forgotten Sorrows, which led off from the banquet hall. Here they were given a silver spade and made to dig a hole the depth of their arm and then a little more, so that by reaching into it they were unable to touch the bottom. Though the soil was soft enough and easy to dig, most of the patients had never handled a spade in their lives before and took to the task with little expertise. But, despite their grumbling, they were not allowed to hand the job over to a servant as it was compulsory to complete the task themselves. The soil from the hole was then neatly piled beside it and the patient’s name placed on a small paper flag which was stuck on top of the pile.

  The banquet took place under glittering crystal chandeliers with all the trappings usual to a grand and important occasion. Musicians played from the more famous of the Russian, French and Italian composers, though the Germans, out of favour with the Tsar, were not represented. There were jugglers and acrobats and exotic dancers and, at one stage, a full military band marched through the hall playing a march which celebrated the defeat of the British and French in the Crimea.

  Guests were dressed in all their finery, in uniforms and evening dress, the men with full decorations worn, and the women emblazoned with diamonds and pearls and glittering tiaras. At nine o’clock the dancing stopped. The patients/ guests sat down to eat and the first astrological dish of their personal choice, the dish of negativity, was placed before each of them.

  Dr Sergei Zorbatov, Professor of Astrological Science and Zodiac Law, addressed the glittering throng. By now he was an immensely rich and powerful man with friends in high places, the confidant of grand dukes, counts, generals and politicians. In a few short years he had brought more sanity into the Russian nobility than had existed for the past four hundred years. There was even talk that the Tsar would make him Minister for Culture.

  ‘You will eat every morsel set before you, not one crumb, not one spoonful must be left of the dish you choose. This is an order!’

  There was a loud groan from the assembled guests, the food set in front of them was more even than a starving peasant could hope to eat in a week in paradise. But such was the authority and esteem in which they held Sergei Zorbatov, who had brought most of them in touch with reality for the first time in their lives, that they simply bowed their heads and started to eat the first of the negativity dishes they had chosen.

  They ate until they could eat no more, whereupon one of the observers allocated to watch, judging the time was right, would place a bib over the head of a satiated banqueter and lead him quickly to the Garden of Forgotten Suffering, where he was made to stand beside the hole he had previously dug and marked with his title and name.

  As each patient appeared in the garden, looking much the worse for wear, the professor would address him by his name and title. For example, he might say, ‘Prince Nicolae Dimitri Pyotr Tolstoy, you are here to be granted complete and unconditional absolution from your past, you are now forever rid of your guilt and as a demonstration of this the harm done to you and the guilt you feel will be buried, forever expelled from your body and your soul.’

  A servant would then hand the prince a small crystal goblet of clear liquid which he would suppose to be vodka, but was in fact a potion made from the castor-oil plant. The prince, at Sergei’s command to drink, would throw back his head and down the contents of the glass. Almost instantly he would buckle over and a moment later he would vomit every morsel of the negative astrological dish into the hole in front of him, spitting the last of the evil out of his mouth. Then he would be made to kneel and scoop up the soil and fill in the hole, in this way burying the past with his own hands.

  When this task of absolution and renewal was completed, a servant would bring him a bowl of warm water and a towel and he was allowed to wash his face and hands. Whereupon he was given a goblet of Sagittarius wine, the wine of invigoration and pleasant humour, and led back into the banquet hall where he would be placed at a second table with fresh linen, crystal and silver, and presented with the astrological dishes of future sanity and peace of mind.

  Olga Zorbatov looks up and shrugs her shoulders. ‘That is my story,’ she says simply. Then, turning to me, she announces, ‘Mrs Moses, the astrological fish we are eating tonight in the form of a stew smells delicious and I, for one, am starved.’

  As usual it remains for me to complete the story and it was several weeks before I could pluck up the courage to approach Mrs Z. I would wake up during the night to find her wandering about talking to her husband, who, it seemed, continued to gambol around the Zodiac, for she had lost none of her second-sight since the night of the story and we still depended on her to find that little extra to make our journey bearable and keep us from starvation.

  One night I awoke, it was a full moon and almost light enough to read a book. At first I heard and then moments later saw Mrs Z talking to the sky. I had seen this often enough before but quite why I decided this time to approach her I cannot say. I rose from my blanket beside the fire and, walking over, tapped her on the shoulder and said, ‘Excuse me, Mrs Z, is there anything I can do for you?’

  She turned slowly, as though she was in a trance. ‘You want to know what happened to my husband, don’t you, Mrs Moses?’

  I nodded, too confounded to find the words.

  ‘He was murdered.’

  My hand went to my throat. ‘Oh, how sad! Was it one of the people who attended his sanatorium?’

  ‘No, Mrs Moses, he was killed by a lonely and bitter woman who, every night for a thousand nights and more, waited on the roof, under the stars, for her husband. Each night she prepared a midnight feast for him consisting of the most delectable dishes and chilled a bottle of the finest vodka to drink from the silver horn he had once so loved.

  ‘But her husband was too busy dining with dukes and sleeping with countesses and he had no more time to meet the woman under the stars.’ Mrs Z sighed. ‘So the woman ate the entire midnight feast by herself and grew very fat and cried herself to sleep every night. And then one night he came to the roof. I think he came to tell her that he was leaving her. But first he stood with his hands clasped behind his back and watched the stars and then he spoke.

  ‘“Look, Olga, there is Taurus the Bull,” he pointed to the night sky. “It is your sign.”

  ‘For a moment the woman’s heart leapt and she took the silver horn and filled it with vodka and started to walk towards him, to forgive him. Her husband had come back to her and it would be like old times.

  ‘Then he said, “I don’t suppose you can help being fat and ugly and clumsy, as bulls are naturally all of these unpleasant things.” He turned around to face her. “My dear, I do not love you any more and have come to take my leave of you.”

  ‘It was then that Olga Zorbatov charged him and knocked him down and stabbed him through the heart with the silver horn. What else could she do? She was born under the sign of Taurus and she behaved in the only way a bull knows how when it is baited beyond endurance.’

  THE BLACKSMITH WITH A BELUGA TONGUE

  Mr Petrov likes to call himself a practical man and when folk ask him what he does he shrugs his shoulders. ‘I am a blacksmith,’ he says without pride and then adds self-deprecatingly, ‘I put shoes on horses and fix handles onto cooking pots.’ He once picked up The Family Frying Pan and held it in his large fist as though judging its weight and quality and for once the old frying pan did not look too big for its boots! He grinned. ‘A fine pan, Mrs Moses, the very best, solid as a blacksmith’s head.’ I’m not sure what we would do without Mr Petrov, for amongst such a bunch of misfits a practical man is badly needed. He can mend shoes, catch fish, cut firewood, trap small animal
s and birds, build a rope bridge across a rushing stream and make a snug shelter from bark and twigs and stuff just lying around. While this one argues with that one about how a project should be undertaken, Mr Petrov goes quietly ahead and before you know it we are saved once again from disaster.

  Like Mr Mendelsohn, Mr Petrov is not a big talker and, again, both men have beautiful hands, one for the violin and the other for mending things. The musician’s hands are slim and elegant, soft as a girl’s from the city, with the fingers seemingly too long, kept clean and white with the nails neatly trimmed. And the blacksmith’s are broad and blunt and square, powerful hands with the nails broken and the palms callused so that when he shakes your hand your fist disappears completely and you hope he won’t squeeze it too hard. But, big as they are, that never happens because Mr Petrov has a gentle touch.

  One night when Mr Petrov said quietly that it was time he told a story to enhance the evening meal (the usual melange of turnips, beets and a potato or two), we were all delighted. Though, I must say, I for one didn’t expect much of a story but the mere fact that Mr P wanted to join in the storytelling was a delight to us all.

  Practical people get on with things and it is my experience that they seldom embroider a point or are in the least romantic, so while we were pleased that he was coming out of his shell, we were not exactly holding our breath for an earth-shattering debut.

  ‘I was born in a small fishing village,’ Mr Petrov begins, ‘on the banks of the Volga River. Its name is not important, there are twenty villages along our stretch of the shoreline and each is no more distinguished than the other. The fishing rights to a stretch of the great river were decided in ancient times and must be strictly observed, and the life of a river fisherman is very hard. Sometimes the fish disappear for weeks and the greatest prize, the noble sturgeon, may not choose to use your stretch of the shoreline for years. My family were poor and like most Volga fishermen always in debt to the caviar buyers from St Petersburg, Moscow and Persia, and so they were determined that I, their only son, Petrov Petrovitch would enjoy a less precarious vocation.’