by James Runcie
‘Could we not cover the apricot with chocolate?’ I suggested.
‘Don’t be ridiculous.’
‘We have no choice,’ I continued, ‘and if we allow the apricot to settle, then apply the chocolate … look …’
‘Don’t touch it …’ Katharina shrieked again.
‘No, allow me,’ I insisted, placing the two halves of the cake together.
‘Stop it,’ said Trude, desperately.
‘No,’ I cried. ‘I will not.’
I refused to follow the orders of children and began to smooth even more apricot compote over the surface of the cake.
‘If we make this light and even …’ I said, as calmly and as authoritatively as I could.
‘Rather than sticky and messy …’ Trude broke in.
‘If we make this light and even,’ I repeated, ‘then we have a chance of success. Katharina, please continue stirring the chocolate until it is even thicker …’ I ordered. ‘The apricot will keep the sponge moist. It needs to be exactly the right consistency.’
Katharina looked at me sceptically.
‘I hope you know what you are doing.’
‘Madame,’ I said, ‘I may have only the fortune of the desperate to guide me, but if there is one thing in the world about which I know it is chocolate. For this dark liquid is the most perfect partner for all foods, and, employed in the correct manner, there is virtually no edible substance with which it cannot be eaten or drunk. I have only recently tested its taste with raspberries; there is no reason why it may not be equally effective with apricot. Now please let me pour the mixture onto the cake.’
The warm chocolate now met the glistening apricot, and I smoothed the thick dark coating across the surface.
‘Father will never have tasted such a torte,’ said Katharina, ‘and it might be too much for Mother’s nerves.’
Her sister looked out into the hall, as if either parent could reappear at any moment, and explained: ‘You see, she is driven mad by his snoring.’
‘I am sure your father will be intrigued. I am only sorry that your mother may suffer.’
‘She is always anxious.’
‘Has she not seen a doctor?’ I asked, still smoothing the chocolate. Things seemed calmer now.
‘The doctors say there is no cure for her anxiety. They give her salts and tell her to avoid excitement. Father eats for comfort, but the more he eats the less she does so.’
‘And yet they love each other,’ I said.
The children were silent. I was not sure that they should have been speaking so openly about their parents, but it seemed that in this house every role had been reversed.
‘I am sorry for them both,’ I said firmly.
At this moment Franz appeared on the stairs.
‘My wife sends her apologies,’ he called. ‘She is unhappy with too much excitement and finds the children tiring. We will be dining in the city tonight, at one of my hotels. I hope you will join us.’
‘I shall be honoured.’
Then he stopped to observe the chaos of the kitchen.
‘Now, children, what have you been doing?’
‘This man has made a cake,’ said Katharina tartly.
‘It is something by way of experiment,’ I explained. ‘The children have been most helpful.’
‘It’s very dark. And thicker than usual, it seems,’ Franz observed.
He was clearly suspicious.
‘Let me cut a piece for you, Father,’ said Katharina.
‘Very well, I will try it.’
The silver knife cut deep into the thick chocolate surface, and Katharina eased it slowly through the apricot and the sponge. After a second cut the slice was free.
Trude brought out some cream, and placed a plate in front of her father.
‘What has happened to this torte?’ exclaimed Herr Sacher. ‘It seems so moist.’
As the cake entered his mouth a delectable melange of sensation must have spread across his palate, for a feeling of utter pleasure and surprise seemed to engulf him. It was as if he suddenly understood the meaning of the word bliss. He had never tasted such a cake before, the softness of the sponge, the viscosity of the apricot, and the crispness of the chocolate combining to create a sublime sonata of gastronomic delight.
He placed the fork down on the table, made as if to speak, but then thought better of it.
He could not do so.
To speak now would only delay further pleasure.
He scooped up another mouthful, and repeated the experience.
Only after he had taken five mouthfuls in silence could he consider the possibility of speech.
He leaned back in his chair, and brought a handkerchief to his perspiring forehead.
‘This is quite magnificent,’ he exclaimed at last. ‘Apricot and chocolate. I never thought to combine them.’
Then he rose from the chair and beamed at his daughters.
‘We must all try this torte. Katharina, cut more slices. Trude, fetch your mother. Edward! Where is Edward?’
The door was opened to reveal a red-eyed boy behind it.
‘I did it, Father, and I accept my punishment.’
‘Did what?’
‘Put the apricot on the cake.’
‘Did you, my boy?’
‘I’m sorry.’
He looked small, vulnerable and defeated.
‘No … no … no. It can’t have been you,’ his father was saying. ‘It must have been Diego.’
Edward looked amazed. He could not understand how he could escape punishment.
Katharina glowered at me and said nothing, as if testing my honesty.
‘It is true,’ I admitted. Your son applied the apricot.’
Edward gaped at me in fear and hatred, as if I had betrayed him.
‘What has he done now?’ exclaimed his mother as she entered the room. ‘What has been happening in my kitchen. Will no one leave me in peace?’
‘Taste this, my darling,’ her husband urged. ‘The most extraordinary creation. We must take it to the hotel tonight and show it to the chef.’
Bertha took the warm and moist cake up into her pursed dry mouth. At once her expression changed, moving from suspicion to pleasure, as the rich delights of this accidental creation insinuated themselves into her very being.
‘Sir,’ she said, her mouth still full of cake and cream, ‘this is indeed a most remarkable invention.’
‘It is of your son’s making.’
Mother and father looked at their small and nervous child.
His mother swooped down upon him.
‘My son,’ said Bertha, tearfully. ‘You did this?’
‘I did, Mama …’
Then she clasped him, I think, as tightly as a mother ever clasped a son.
‘O, my darling boy, mein Liebchen, mein Liebchen …’
Edward’s small head rested on her shoulder, and he looked back up at his bemused and beaming father. It was a tight, desperate and protective circle of family love, as if they were clinging to each other against the dangers of the world. This was why people have children, I realised, not to send a semblance of themselves into the future, but to put on some small armour, however frail, with which to confront the terrible insecurities of our existence.
‘What shall we call it?’ asked Trude.
Each member of the family tasted the cake and tried to think of a name, as if its rich moistness could provide inspiration. Edward’s cake … chocolate surprise … Diego’s folly … until at last I conjured a name from the air. ‘Let it be called Sachertorte, in memory of this day and this family,’ I said.
‘A capital idea, my good friend,’ Franz replied. ‘Let us preserve the memory of our family in cake.’
His wife wiped away a tear and apologised for her former harshness.
‘My nerves are so bad,’ she sobbed.
‘I can recommend chocolate for all nervous debilities, Madame,’ I replied, ‘if you would allow me to advise you?’
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‘Of course, of course.’
‘I hope you will forgive my follies in your kitchen.’
‘I will, Diego,’ she said, quietly, ‘with all my heart.’
And then she held out her delicate hand for me to kiss.
At last, all was well.
That night we took the remains of the cake to our dinner at the hotel, and Herr Sacher insisted that I should instruct the cook in its creation the very next morning, paying particular attention to the relationship between the moistness of the cake, the texture of the apricot, and the dark smoothness of the chocolate. We would use only the finest ingredients, and serve it with a freshly beaten, lightly sweetened cream to provide a cool finishing touch, enhancing the texture and prompting the flavours.
It was, it must be said, a triumph.
VI
This cake proved particularly suited to the Viennese temperament and I was soon placed in command of a small delicatessen within the hotel in order to sell Sachertorte to the general public. It was a hard winter and the people of the city appeared to wrap themselves in as many clothes as they could find, eating to excess at every opportunity, fattening themselves up against the cold. Observing them, I was able to understand for the first time the notion that we are what we eat, and realised that perhaps it should not surprise us if we feel refreshed by grapefruit, lightened by a lemon soufflé, pleasured by wine, or reassured by chocolate. In our choice of victuals we can predict our future well-being; not only in our bodies, which are comforted, filled, strained or over-burdened, but also in our minds. I began to discover that food could actually generate emotion; and that whereas certain substances might make us agitated and aggressive, others might soothe and calm. I began to study where these emotions might lie and in which part of the anatomy they were concentrated, discovering that alcohol made me depressed, eggs and cheese did not agree with my stomach (causing both fear and insecurity), whilst sausages made my face feel greasy and my body lethargic. Only chocolate offered stability and consolation.
The delicatessen became so successful that we were able to take on extra staff and I was relieved of its daily management in order to concentrate on my research. Herr Sacher was convinced that I could create further delights, and provided me with a small culinary laboratory next to the kitchens in which I could undertake a series of experiments. He asked me to pay particular attention to the creation of chocolate liqueurs which guests could savour in the smoking room after dinner, and my shelves were soon filled with strange marinades, pickling jars and fermenting fruit: raspberries nestled in crème de cassis, cherries were drenched in cognac, and prunes improved immeasurably once they had been saturated in slivovitz. I believe that I was the first to use an early form of Grand Marnier, allowing the sureness of the chocolate to mingle with the zest of the orange and the attack of the alcohol.
But, as the years passed, and my experiments grew increasingly complex, I became even fonder of alcohol than I was of chocolate. I started to drink as I worked, pouring glasses by my side as I created a Kirsch roll or filled a chocolate ball with cognac, and it eventually became clear to me that I was quite unable to cook without this necessary fortification.
After several months the addiction took hold so surely and so firmly that I was trapped before I had been able to realise what had happened.
When I walked through the streets of Vienna, in the Graben, or down the Kartnerstrasse, I blamed my longevity, my boredom and my lack of hope for this inexorable slip towards the delusive and belying attractions of the bottle. Whereas chocolate might satisfy an instant craving, I found that it made me too easily satisfied, too replete, whereas wine or brandy offered more graduated pleasures. With alcohol I no longer needed to be the prisoner of a lengthy memory and an uncertain future. I could slowly slip out of consciousness, escaping the terror of my infinite life, freeing myself into oblivion.
At first I convinced myself that this was a good thing, and sought out those who drank, recognising them in the street by the burgeoning floridity in their faces, the moments of carelessness in their grooming, and their soulful and distracted airs. After a minor setback, or a blunted ambition, these people had searched for the same desperate reassurance I sought myself. Out of fear, out of the need of courage, they had believed that drink might make them safer, happier, wittier, louder, cleverer, or simply forgetful of the pains of life.
Together with these new acquaintances, I sought out conviviality, escape from labour, licence and true freedom, little recognising that at the moment when alcohol appears to provide its greatest liberty one is most truly imprisoned by it. I noticed the sacrifices people made to purchase yet more drink, buying in small and regular quantities so that the effect might be less noticeable. In those who still retained employment I observed the over-eagerness to please mixed with the terror of discovery, whilst in those who had long lost the fight for self-preservation I could find only resignation, acceptance and the abandonment of any who sought to save them.
Perhaps my alcoholism was a slow attempt to kill myself, an endeavour to waste as much time as possible in order to end the terrible sentence of my slow life. I felt even more detached from the everyday realities of my existence, as if I was sleepwalking, haunted by memory, uncertain whether I lived or dreamed.
For although the crowds along the Kartnerstrasse seemed to understand the purpose of their lives, fulfilling their duties and their responsibilities with a grim and somewhat stoic determination, unable to live, and unwilling to die, my life was the exact opposite of theirs. I was still unwilling to live and unable to die.
The people in the streets also looked strangely familiar, even though I knew I could not possibly have met them before. It was as if they were the ghosts of people I had known in centuries past, and as they travelled through their lives, convinced of their own unique place in the universe, I could not help but think that they led an almost identical existence to those who had gone before them. Of course the world had changed, but the inherent character of its inhabitants had not.
Everything seemed both foreign and familiar. I was frequently confused, as each day now seemed to repeat itself. Sometimes I dreamed that the city was full of identical people, all moving at the same pace; at other times I dreamed that it was full of different versions of Ignacia, and that I would be haunted by each one in turn until I found my true love. In the distance ahead of me I would often see women who looked as if they must surely be her. I began to walk behind them, imagining what would happen if my instincts were correct. A woman’s hair might fall in the same way, or she would have the same walk. My memory was so uncertain that I would follow these women in a trance, hardly daring to believe that I might meet Ignacia at last, excited beyond all reason at the possibility of joyous reunion and eternal salvation walking a few paces ahead of me. But each time I quickened my pace and drew alongside the woman in question, I could see that her nose was different, or that her hair fell differently, or that she wore spectacles. I was then appalled by the stupidity of my imagination. These women were but distortions of Ignacia. They were not, and never could be, her. My dreams and my despair now stretched so deeply and so monotonously across my days that I drank even more heavily.
And then, believing that life could offer no escape from my delusions and no comfort for my despair, I decided that I would have to cease this humiliating and pointless pursuit of women in the streets of Vienna and seek a more direct course of relief from Ignacia’s absence, even if I had to pay to do so.
The girl I visited was called Claudia.
I had thought of trying to find someone as dark as Ignacia, but believed that this could only make my depression far worse. It would be better to find an almost exact opposite, and Claudia was certainly that. Her most prominent characteristic was her long red hair, worn as if it had never been cut. It cascaded down her back and fell as low as her waist. She also possessed the most pallid complexion I had ever seen. It was so pale and so frail that it sometimes broke out into a rash
which spread like a faded pink necklace, giving her a vulnerable yet peculiar allure; and although she was surely malnourished, poor and desperate, there was such certainty in her manner and such strength in her beliefs that I could not but submit to her strange beauty.
It was a demeaning liaison which lasted several months: she needed my money, whilst I needed her comforts, and we were trapped in an ever descending spiral of despair. I punished Claudia for her availability and for her poverty, chastised Ignacia for not being with me, and then castigated myself for my depravity. ‘Is this what men do?’ I asked myself. ‘Is this the dark heart of us all?’ There was so little tenderness in our actions that I began to fear that I would never be able to climb out of the sordid depths in which I found myself and discover true love again, for it seemed that I had lost that most precious human quality of all – hope.
‘Why do you do this?’ I asked one evening after Claudia and I had again sought some form of release from our troubles.
‘Why do you?’ she replied.
‘Out of desperation …’
‘Then you know the answer.’
‘So we are the same,’ I said, realising that my time was up.
Claudia had risen from the bed and was now stooping to pick up her lingerie. She turned to look me fiercely in the eye, her nakedness brazen in front of me.
‘No. We are not,’ she said savagely. ‘You can help yourself. You have money and privilege. I have nothing.’
She walked into a small bathing area and began to change.
‘You have beauty,’ I called.
‘A losing beauty. The poor do not live long.’
I knew that she hated these conversations, privileged men taking a strange fascination in the poverty of prostitution.
‘How long?’
‘Tie up my corset please,’ she asked, sitting back on the bed. ‘My father died when he was forty.’
‘It is strange,’ I said, pulling at the laces of her bodice, ‘that you should want to live and I should want to die.’