Gourmet Rhapsody

by Muriel Barbery

  When he looks for me, without ever finding me, when at last he resigns himself to lowering his eyes or to grabbing hold of the cord in order to annihilate my existence, he is fleeing, fleeing, fleeing the unbearable. How he desires other people; how he fears them.

  Die, old man. There is no peace and there is no place for you in this life.

  The Dog

  Rue de Grenelle, the Bedroom

  In the early hours of our companionship, I was relentlessly fascinated by the indisputable elegance with which he would lower his hindquarters; firmly wedged between his rear paws, his tail sweeping the ground with the regularity of a metronome, his little hairless pink tummy folding softly beneath his downy chest, he would sit down vigorously and raise his moist hazelnut eyes to me, and often I thought I could see something else there besides mere appetite.

  I had a dog. Or rather, a snout on paws. A little receptacle of anthropomorphic projections. A loyal companion. A tail that kept time with his emotions. An overexcited kangaroo at certain times of the day. A dog, as I said. When he first came to the house, his plump little folds of flesh could easily have inspired in me a sort of silly-making tenderness; but in the space of a few weeks the little round ball had become a slender little dog with a well-defined muzzle, clear, luminous eyes, an inquisitive nose, a powerful chest and well-muscled paws. He was a Dalmatian, and I’d baptized him Rhett, in honor of Gone with the Wind, my favorite film, because if I had been a woman, I would have been Scarlett—the one who survives in a world that is dying. His immaculate fur, with its meticulous sprinkling of black, was incredibly silky; as it happens, the Dalmatian is a very silky dog, both to look at and to touch. Not in an unctuous way, however: there was nothing complacent or sappy about the immediate sympathy that his physiognomy aroused, only a great propensity toward loving sincerity. Moreover, when he would tilt his muzzle to one side, his ears perked forward, falling in fluid flaps along his drooping chops, I understood how much the love one has for an animal is part of one’s self-image; and I did not regret this, for in such moments he was utterly irresistible. And besides, there is no doubt that after a certain amount of cohabitation, man and beast borrow each other’s failings. Rhett—who was, incidentally, rather poorly trained, that is to say not trained at all—was in fact afflicted with a pathology that hardly came as a surprise. If I qualified as gluttony the trait which ended up, in his case, more like obsessive bulimia, I would be falling far short of the truth. Just let a simple lettuce leaf fall to the floor, he would pounce upon it with an impressive nose dive that ended in a compact slide of his hindquarters, and then he would devour the leaf without even chewing it, in his fear of being tricked; I am convinced that it was only after the fact that he would identify what it was that he had caught. No doubt his motto was, Eat first, look later, and I often told myself that I was the owner of the only dog in the world who placed a higher price on his desire to eat than on the act of eating, for the greater part of his daily activity was spent in being there where he might hope to happen upon some revolting crumb. Though his ingeniousness did not extend to inventing subterfuges in order to procure some victuals, he was master of the art of placing himself strategically in the exact spot where a forgotten sausage might be lured away from the grill, or a crushed potato chip, vestige of a hasty before-dinner drink, might escape the attention of the masters of the house. What was more serious, his irrepressible passion for eating was eloquently (and somewhat dramatically) illustrated one Christmas in Paris, at my grandparents, where the meal, according to some antediluvian custom, must finish with a Yule log lovingly prepared by my grandmother, a simple rolled biscuit stuffed with a butter, coffee, or chocolate cream—it may have been a simple biscuit but it was laden with the magnificence of successful endeavors. Rhett was in fine fettle and frolicked his way around the apartment, gathering caresses here, being surreptitiously fed there with some treat carelessly dropped onto the carpet behind my father’s back, and so, from the beginning of the meal, he had been making the rounds on a regular basis (corridor, living room, dining room, kitchen, corridor, and so on) where he engaged in not a few generous licking sessions. It was my father’s sister Marie who first noticed his absence. I realized at the same time as the others that indeed for some time we had not noticed the recurring wag of the white, quivering plume above the armchairs, which was the sign that the dog was going by. After a short lapse of time during which we became brutally aware, my father, mother and I, of the probable turn of events, we leapt to our feet as if propelled by a single spring, and rushed to the bedroom where, as a precaution, because she knew the little rascal and his love of anything remotely culinary, my grandmother had stored the very precious dessert.

  The bedroom door was open. Someone (the guilty party was never identified), despite all the admonishments in the matter, had forgotten to close the door, and the dog, whom one can hardly expect to single-handedly resist his own nature, had quite naturally concluded that the Yule log belonged to him. My mother let out a cry of despair: a white-tailed eagle in distress surely does not produce such wrenching cries. Rhett, in all probability too heavy from his spoils to react in his usual fashion, that is, by rushing through people’s legs in order to reach a more benign refuge, stood there next to the empty plate watching us with a gaze devoid of all expression, all expectation fulfilled. Empty, in fact, is not exactly the right word. With methodical application, certain he would not be interrupted too soon, he had attacked the Yule log from right to left, then from left to right, and so on across its entire length, until we finally got there and all that was left of the sweet butter triumph was a thin, elongated filament, and it would have been futile indeed to hope that something might be recovered, to find its way onto our plates. Like Penelope unraveling the yarn on her loom, row upon row along its length, from a canvas that was meant to be a tapestry, Rhett had put his industrious fangs to good use in order to fashion a busy little shuttle, weaving the pleasure of his connoisseur’s stomach.

  My grandmother had such a good laugh that the incident was transformed from galactic catastrophe to savory anecdote. This was another aspect of the woman’s talent, the way she could see the salt of life in situations where others might see nothing but inconvenience. She wagered that the dog would be the instrument of his own punishment by virtue of the monumental indigestion which the ingurgitation of a pastry intended for fifteen people could not fail to provoke without delay. She was proven wrong. Despite the suspicious protuberance which could be observed for several hours in the region of his belly, Rhett digested his Christmas meal very well, aided by a deep siesta where he could be heard cooing with pleasure from time to time, and he was not even terribly indignant when the next morning he came upon his empty bowl, a paltry retaliatory measure implemented by my father who, to say the least, had not appreciated the display of mischief.

  Is there a moral to the story? I briefly begrudged Rhett for having deprived me of a pleasure foretold. But I had also laughed wholeheartedly at the sight of the serene disrespect the dog had manifested toward the relentless labors of my dragon of a grandmother. And above all, there was one thought that had crossed my mind and which I had found very heartening. Seated around the table for the occasion were so many of my relatives for whom I felt, at best, scorn, at worst animosity, that in the end it seemed to me a delightful conclusion that the cake which had been destined for their dreary taste buds had delighted my dog’s instead, for I am sure he had all the talents of a true gourmet. I am not, however, one of those people who prefer their dog to a stranger; a dog is nothing more than a thing that moves, barks and wiggles, while wandering through the province of our daily life. But if one must display one’s disgust for those who deserve it, it may as well be done via these amusing furry beasts: they may be insignificant, but they are also marvelously adept at innocently conveying mockery, in spite of themselves.

  A gift, a clown, a clone: he was all those things at once. He was funny, with his merry figure
of soft refinement; he offered himself by radiating the unaffected kindness of his puppy soul; he was a clone of my own self, but then not altogether: I no longer saw the dog in him, any more than I made him into a man. He was Rhett, Rhett above all, before he was a dog, or an angel, or a beast, or a demon. But if I am speaking of him a few hours before my demise, it is because I have offended him by omitting him in my earlier evocation of natural fragrances. Indeed, Rhett was a source of olfactory delight all to himself. Yes, my dog, my Dalmatian exuded the most fantastic smell; and believe it or not, on his neck and on the top of his well-shaped crown he smelled like the toasty aroma of brioche bread with butter and cherry plum jam that would fill the kitchen in the morning. Thus, Rhett gave off the lovely smell of warm brioche, a yeasty fumet, which immediately made you want to sink your teeth in, and just picture this: all day long, the dog would frolic everywhere around the house and in the garden; whether he was trotting, supremely busy, from the living room to the study, or galloping to the far end of the field in a crusade against three presumptuous crows, or fidgeting in the kitchen in hopes of a tasty morsel, he always gave off the evocative aroma, and was thus a permanent living ode to the Sunday morning brioche: numb but content at the start of our day of rest, we would slip on a comfortable old cardigan and go down to make the coffee, one eye on the brown loaf sitting on the table. It’s a delightful feeling to be not yet quite awake, taking a few silent moments to enjoy the fact of not being subjected to the laws of work, rubbing your eyes in a display of sympathy for yourself and, when the palpable aroma of hot coffee rises, you finally sit down before your steaming bowl and give a friendly squeeze to the brioche as you tear it apart, then you slowly bring a piece to the bowl of powdered sugar in the middle of the table and with your eyes half-closed you acknowledge—and no need to tell yourself as much—the bittersweet quality of happiness. It is all of this that Rhett could evoke with his fragrant presence, and if I loved him as I did it was also surely for the way he came and went like some itinerant boulangerie.

  As I reminisce about Rhett, reliving these adventures I haven’t thought about in ages, there is one abandoned aroma I have been able to recapture: that of warm and fragrant pastry, nestled in my dog’s head. An aroma and therefore other, similar, memories—mornings in America, and the buttered toast that I used to gobble down, astounded by the symbiosis between bread and butter when they have been toasted together.

  (Anna)

  Rue de Grenelle, the Corridor

  What is to become of me, my God, what is to become of me? I have no more strength, I cannot breathe, I have been emptied out, bled dry . . . I know that they don’t understand, except Paul perhaps, I know what they are thinking . . . Jean, Laura, Clémence, where are you? Why this silence, why this distance, why all these misunderstandings, when we could have been so happy, the five of us? All you see is a cantankerous, authoritarian old man, you’ve never seen anyone but a tyrant, an oppressor, a despot who made life impossible for you, and for me—you set yourself up as knights in attendance who would console me in my distress as an abandoned wife and, in the end, I have not disabused you, I let you embellish my daily life with your laughter, as loving, comforting children, I have silenced my passion, silenced my reasons. I have silenced my own self.

  I have always known what sort of life we would lead together. From the very first day, I could see that for him, far away from me, there would be banquets, and other women, and the career of a charmer with insane, miraculous talent; a prince, a lord constantly hunting outside his own walls, a man who, from one year to the next, would become ever more distant, would no longer even see me, would pierce my haunted soul with his falcon’s eyes in order to embrace a view that was beyond my sight. I always knew this, and it didn’t matter. The only thing that mattered were the times when he came back, and he always came back, and that was enough for me, I would be the woman to whom one returns unfailingly, however absentmindedly and vaguely. If you knew him, you would understand . . . If you knew the nights I have spent in his arms, trembling with excitement, transfixed with desire, crushed by his royal weight, his divine strength, I was happy, so happy, like the woman in love in her harem on the evenings when it is her turn, when she receives, reverently, the pearls of his gaze—because she lives for him alone, for his embrace, for his light. Perhaps he finds her tame, coy, childish; elsewhere, he has other lovers, tigresses, sensual felines, lustful panthers, with whom he roars with pleasure, in a debauchery of moans, of erotic gymnastics, and when it’s all over, he feels as if he has reinvented the world, he is inflated with pride, with faith in his own virility—but, in fact, she takes her sensual pleasure on a deeper level, a mute pleasure, she gives herself, offers all of herself, receives religiously and it is in the silence of churches that she attains the pinnacle, almost without anyone noticing, because she has no need of anything else: his presence, his kisses. She is happy.

  And so her children . . . she loves them, obviously. The joys of motherhood, of bringing them up, are things she has known; as well as the horror of having to raise children who are unloved by their father, the torture of watching them gradually learn to hate him, because he looks down on them, because he has abandoned her . . . But above all, she feels guilty because she loves them less than she loves him, because she was not able, was not willing to protect them from the man she was waiting for with all her waking energy, and there was no place left for anything else, no place left for them . . . If I had left, if I had been able to hate him too, then I might have saved them, they would have been released from the prison where I cast them, the prison of my resignation, of my mad desire for my own torturer . . . I raised my children to love their torturer . . . And today I am weeping tears of blood, because he is dying, he is leaving . . .

  I remember how splendid we were, I held your arm, I was smiling in the gentle evening air, in my black silk gown, I was your wife and everyone was turning to look at us, murmuring, an appreciative whispering following in our footsteps, it followed us everywhere, like a light breeze, eternal . . . Don’t die, please don’t die . . . I love you . . .

  Toast

  Rue de Grenelle, the Bedroom

  It was during a sojourn abroad occasioned by a seminar. I was already well known at the time, and I had been invited by the French community in San Francisco, where I chose to stay with a French journalist who lived near the Pacific Ocean, in a neighborhood to the southwest of the city. On the very first morning I was ravenous and my hosts were taking too long, for my liking, in their discussion about where to take me for “the breakfast of a lifetime.” Through the open window, on a little prefab building, I could see a sign that said “John’s Ocean Beach Cafe,” and I decided it would be good enough for me.

  From the start, I was beguiled by the door. The “open” sign, hanging on the frame from a little golden chain, went very well with the gleaming copper knob and made arrival in the café particularly welcoming, in an inexplicable way—it all made such an agreeable impression on me. But when I went into the main room, I was carried away. This was just as I had dreamt America would be, and despite all my expectations, flouting my certainty that once I was there I would revise all my clichés, it was exactly as I had imagined: a large rectangular room with wooden tables and booths covered in red leatherette; on the walls were photos of actors, a poster from Gone with the Wind with Scarlett and Rhett on the boat taking them to New Orleans; a vast, well-polished wooden counter cluttered with butter, maple-syrup dispensers, and ketchup bottles. A blond waitress with a strong Slavic accent came over to us with her coffeepot in her hand; behind the bar, John, the chef, with his air of an Italian Mafioso, was busy grilling hamburgers with a disdainful sneer and a cynical expression. The interior of the café belied the exterior: everything bore a patina of age, worn furniture and a divine aroma of food frying. Oh, John! I had a look at the menu, chose the Scrambled Eggs with Sausage and John’s Special Fries, and before long there arrived, in addition to a steaming cu
p of undrinkable coffee, a plate or rather a platter overflowing with scrambled eggs and potatoes sautéed in garlic, topped with three greasy little aromatic sausages, while the pretty Russian waitress set down next to all this a smaller plate piled with buttered toast, accompanied by a pot of blueberry jam. People say Americans are fat because they eat too much and eat badly. This is true, but in this incrimination one should not include their gargantuan breakfasts. I am inclined to think that, on the contrary, they are exactly what a man needs to face the day, and our stingy little French breakfasts—given the spinelessness clearly imbued with snobbery with which anything salty or porky is shunned—constitute an insult to the requisites of the body.