Gourmet Rhapsody, Page 2

  Meat

  Rue de Grenelle, the Bedroom

  We left the ship amidst the crowds, noise, dust and general weariness. It had taken two exhausting days to cross Spain, but that was already nothing more than a ghost lingering on the frontier of memory. Sticky, worn out by miles of hazardous roads, displeased with the hasty roadside stops and the barely edible restaurant food, crushed by the heat in the crowded car, which was at last slowly making its way along the pier, we were still living for a short while longer in the world of travel, but already we could sense the splendor of arrival.

  Tangiers. Where many a passage has ended and many a new journey has begun. With its vigorous port, its embarkations and disembarkations—perhaps the most powerful city on earth. Halfway between Madrid and Casablanca, she is a formidable town that, unlike Algeciras on the other side of the straits, has avoided becoming merely a port town. Consistent, instantly itself despite its piers gaping open onto elsewhere, an enclave of the senses at a crossroads. Tangiers instantly seized hold of us with its vigor. Our journey was nearly over. And although our final destination was Rabat, the town that was the cradle of my mother’s family and where, since the return to France, we spent every summer, we always felt, as soon as we reached Tangiers, that we had arrived. We would park the car outside the Hotel Bristol, modest but clean, on a steep street that led to the medina. A shower and then later, on foot, we would make our way to the theater of succulence foretold.

  It was at the entrance to the medina. Arrayed beneath the arcades on the square, a number of small kebab restaurants greeted passers-by. We walked into “our” restaurant and went up to the second floor: a huge table took all the space in the narrow room whose walls were painted blue and which looked out over the circular piazza below; we would sit down, our stomachs tight and eager in anticipation of the unchanging set menu that was just waiting upon our pleasure. A pitiful but conscientious fan gave the room the charm of a breezy space but did little to refresh us; the harried waiter set down on the sticky Formica some glasses and a carafe of iced water. My mother would order in perfect Arabic. Scarcely five minutes passed before the dishes were there on the table.

  Perhaps I shall not find what I am looking for. I will, at least, have had the opportunity to recall this: the grilled meat, the mechouia salad, the mint tea and the cornes de gazelle. I was Ali Baba. The cave of treasures: this was it, the perfect rhythm, the shimmering harmony between portions, each one exquisite unto itself, but verging on the sublime by virtue of the strict, ritual succession. The meatballs, grilled with the utmost respect for their firmness, had lost none of their succulence during their passage through fire, and filled my professionally carnivorous mouth with a thick, warm, spicy, juicy wave of masticatory pleasure. The sweet bell peppers, unctuous and fresh, softened my taste buds already subjugated by the virile rigor of the meat, and prepared them for the next powerful assault. Everything was there in abundance. From time to time we would take a sip of that carbonated water you can also find in Spain but which seems to have no real equivalent in France: a stinging, insolent, invigorating water, neither bland nor too bubbly. When at last we were sated and somewhat dazed, we would shove our plates away and look in vain for a back to the bench so that we might relax; the waiter brought the tea, poured it according to the established ritual, and on the table, which had been only haphazardly wiped clean, he set down a plate of sugar-covered crescents, the cornes de gazelle. No one was the least bit hungry anymore, but that is precisely what is so good about the moment devoted to pastries: they can only be appreciated to the full extent of their subtlety when they are not eaten to assuage our hunger, when the orgy of their sugary sweetness is not destined to fill some primary need but to coat our palate with all the benevolence of the world.

  If my quest today is to lead me somewhere, no doubt it will not be far from this quintessence of civilization, the extraordinary contrast between the pungency of a simple, powerful piece of meat and the knowing tenderness of a sweet and utterly superfluous delicacy. The entire history of humanity, of our tribe of sensitive predators, can be summed up in these meals in Tangiers, and in retrospect this is why they had such an uncommon power to exhilarate.

  I shall never return to that beautiful maritime metropolis, where you arrive in the port, the long hoped-for refuge during the storm—never again. But what do I care? I am on the road to my redemption. And it is far from the beaten path, along a road where the nature of our human condition can be truly felt, in a place far from the luxurious banquets of my career as a critic and the attendant prestige, that I must now seek the instrument of my liberation.

  (Georges)

  Rue de Provence

  The first time was at Marquet’s. You should have seen it, you ought to have witnessed it at least once in your life—the way this huge feline would take possession of the room, his leonine majesty, the royal nod in greeting the maître d’, be it as a regular, a distinguished guest, or a proprietor. He remains standing, almost in the middle of the room, conversing with Marquet, who has just come out of her den, the kitchen; he places his hand on her shoulder as they make their way to his table. There are many people around them, speaking loudly, they are all splendid with a combination of arrogance and grace but you can tell that they are watching him on the sly, that they are resplendent in his shadow, that they are hanging on his every word. He is the Maître and, surrounded the stars of his retinue, he disposes, while they merely chatter.

  The maître d’ had to whisper in his ear, “One of your young colleagues is here today, Sir.” He turned toward me, observed me for a brief moment during which I felt as if I were being X-rayed right through to my deepest mediocrities, and then he turned away. Almost immediately I was summoned to join him at his table.

  It was a master class, one of those days when he put on the garments of the spiritual guide and invited all the finest young food critics in Europe to dine with him, and like a pontiff gone back to mere preaching, from the height of his pulpit he taught the trade to a few bedazzled disciples. The Pope sitting enthroned among his cardinals: there was indeed something of a great ceremonial mass about this gastronomic council, where he reigned supreme over a hushed, contemplative elite. The rules were simple. You ate, you commented as you liked, he listened, the verdict fell. I was paralyzed. Like an ambitious but shy fellow who is introduced for the first time to the Godfather, or a young man from the provinces at his first Parisian soirée; like a besotted admirer who encounters his Diva by chance, or a little shoemaker whose gaze meets that of the Princess, or a young author entering the temple of publishing for the first time: like them, I was petrified. He was the Christ and, at that particular Last Supper, I was Judas—not that I wanted to betray him, merely that I was an impostor, lost on Olympian heights, invited by mistake, and whose paltry blandness would, at any moment, be revealed in broad daylight. I was silent throughout the entire meal and he did not call upon me, keeping the whip or the caress of his decrees for his herd of regular fol­lowers. At dessert, however, he did question me, in silence. Everyone was glossing unsuccessfully over a scoop of orange sorbet.

  Unsuccessfully. All criteria are subjective. Something that when measured by common sense might seem magical and masterful will fracture pathetically when faced with the sheer rock face of genius. Their conversation was dizzying; the art of speaking supplanted the art of tasting. They all promised, to a man—by virtue of the mastery and precision of their commentary, and the dazzling skill of their practiced tirades, which penetrated the sorbet with brilliant syntax and poetic flashes—to become masters of culinary expression one day, for if they were still in the shadow of their elder’s aura, this would only be temporary. Meanwhile the uneven, almost lumpy orange sphere continued to liquefy in our plates, its silent avalanche reflecting something of his disapproval. For nothing met with his approval.

  Irritated, on the verge of extreme bad temper or even self-incrimination for having allowed himself to be
shackled with such pathetic company . . . his tenebrous gaze catches hold of mine, inviting me . . . I clear my throat, quaking and pink with confusion, because the sorbet does indeed inspire many things, but not the sort of things one ought to say here, at this concert of high-flying phraseologists, amidst these orchestra seats filled with culinary strategists, confronted with this living genius with his immortal pen and fiery gaze. And yet now I must—I must say something, and right away, because his entire person is emanating impatience and irritation. Therefore I clear my throat once again, moisten my lips, and step off into the void.

  “It reminds me of the sorbets my grandmother used to make . . . ”

  On the face of the infatuated young man sitting across from me I see an incipient smile of mockery, his cheeks starting slowly to expand with the mirth that will explode into lethal laughter, and ready to give me a first-class burial: good evening, goodbye, dear sir, you came, you won’t come again, a good night to you.

  But he is smiling at me with a warmth one would not have thought him capable of: a broad, frank smile, the smile of a wolf but meant from one wolf to another in the complicity of the pack, friendly, relaxed, something like, hello friend, it’s good to find you here. And he says, “So tell me, then, about your grandmother.”

  It is an invitation, but also a veiled threat. While his request may seem kindly, it is weighted with the obligation for me to perform and the danger that after such a fine beginning I might disappoint him. My reply was a pleasant surprise to him, for it was in stark contrast to the bravura passages of the virtuoso soloists, and he liked that. For the time being.

  “My grandmother’s cooking . . . ” I say, searching desperately for my words, for the decisive formula that will justify both my reply and my art—my talent.

  But most unexpectedly he comes to my rescue.

  “Would you believe”—and he smiles to me, almost affectionately—“I also had a grandmother, whose kitchen was a magic cave for me. I think that my entire career sprang from the fumets and aromas that came from that kitchen and which filled me, as a child, with desire. I literally went mad with desire. People don’t really know what desire is, true desire, when it hypnotizes you and takes hold of your entire soul, surrounds it utterly, in such a way that you become demented, possessed, ready to do anything for a tiny crumb, for a whiff of whatever is being concocted there beneath your nostrils, subjugated by the devil’s own perfume! And my grandmother was overflowing with energy and a scathing good humor, a prodigious life force that suffused her entire kitchen with a sort of brilliant vitality, and it was as if I were at the heart of some molten matter: she radiated, and enveloped me in this warm and fragrant radiance!”

  “With me, it was an impression rather of entering the temple,” I say, relieved, in possession now of the strength of my intuition and thus of my argumentation (I let out a long inward sigh). “My grandmother was not so cheerful and radiant, far from it. She embodied rather the character of austere, submissive dignity. Protestant to the tips of her fingers, only ever cooking calmly and painstakingly, without passion or thrills, an affair of white porcelain platters and soup tureens that came to a table filled with silent guests, who without haste or visible emotion consumed dishes that could have made you burst with joy and delight.”

  “How odd,” he says to me, “I have always attributed the success and magic of her good-natured, tasty cooking to her easy temperament and southern sensuality. I even thought at times that it was her stupidity and lack of education and culture that had made her an accomplished cook, and that all the energy which did not nourish her mind was free to nourish her fair.”

  “No,” I say after a moment’s reflection, “what went into their art was neither their personality nor their gift for life, any more than it was the simplicity of their spirit, their love of a job well done, or their austerity. I think they were aware, without even telling themselves as much, that they were accomplishing a noble task, one at which they could excel and that was subordinate, material, or basely utilitarian in appearance only. They knew well enough that, beyond all the humiliations they had suffered not in their own name but by virtue of their condition as women, that when their men came home and sat down at the table, their own reign, as women, would begin. And it wasn’t some sort of stranglehold they had over their ‘economy of the interior,’ where they would, as sovereigns in their own right, take revenge on the power that the men had over the ‘exterior.’ It was a great deal more than that; they knew that their exploits spoke directly to the hearts and the bodies of their men, and that in the eyes of those men this conferred upon the women a power greater than that which the women themselves attributed to male intrigues of power and money or all the compelling arguments of society. They held their men not by the ties of domestic administration, or through children or respectability or even those of the bedroom, but by their taste buds, and this was as sure a thing as if they had put them into a cage into which the men had rushed of their own volition.”

  He is listening to me very attentively and I am learning to recognize in him the quality—so rare among men of power—that enables one to determine where the display—the conversation allowing each participant to mark his territory and show signs of power—ends, and the true dialogue begins. Around us, however, things are falling apart. The presumptuous young fellow who only a moment ago was so eager to assail me with his mockery now has a waxy complexion and a vacant stare. The others remain silent, at the edge of an abyss of desolation. I continue.

  “What did they feel, those men—so full of themselves, those ‘heads’ of the family, trained from the dawn of time, in a patriarchal society, to become the masters—when they took their first bite of those simple yet extraordinary dishes that their wives had prepared in their private laboratories? What does a man experience when his tongue—which, up to this point, has been saturated with spices, sauces, meat, cream, and salt—is suddenly refreshed by contact with a slow avalanche of ice and fruit that is ever so slightly rustic, and ever so slightly lumpy; thus, what was ephemeral is now slightly less so, slowed by the more sluggish deliquescence of fruity little chunks of ice gently breaking apart . . . Quite simply, those men experienced paradise, and even if they could not admit it to themselves, they knew very well that they were incapable of offering it to their wives in return, because for all their empires and arrogance, they could never make their women swoon the way those women made them swoon—with an orgasmic experience via the taste buds.”

  He interrupts me without brutality.

  “It’s very interesting,” he says, “I see exactly what you mean. But in this instance you are explaining talent through injustice, our grandmothers’ gift through their condition as oppressed women—although there have been many great cooks who suffered neither from an inferiority of caste nor a life deprived of prestige or power. How do you reconcile this with your theory?”

  “No chef can cook, nor has ever cooked, the way our grandmothers did. All the factors we have been evoking here”—and I place a slight emphasis on the “we” to clearly point out that at this point I am the one who is officiating—“have produced a very specific cuisine, that of women in their homes, within the enclosure of their private interior: a cuisine which sometimes might lack refinement, which always contains a ‘home-cooked’ side to it, that is, solid and nourishing, made to stick to your ribs,—but which is basically and above all intensely sensual: we understand that when we talk about ‘flesh’ it is no mere coincidence that it evokes both the pleasures of the table and those of love. After all it was through their cooking that they lured, and seduced, and charmed—and that is what inspired it and made it like no other.”

  Again he smiles to me. Then in front of all his crestfallen epigones—devastated because they fail to understand, cannot understand that despite performing their gastronomic balancing act, despite erecting temples to the glory of the goddess Grub, they have been upstaged by a wretched mong
rel pup who came along with his gnawed yellow old bone in his sheepish muzzle, and who now sits here before them while they mourn—he says to me, “So that we might quietly continue this fascinating discussion, would you do me the honor of joining me for lunch tomorrow at Lessière’s?”

  I called Anna some time ago and I understood that I would not be going. Not now. Not ever. This is the end of an epic tale, the story of my coming of age, which, like in the novels of the same description, went from wonder to ambition, from ambition to disillusion, and from disillusion to cynicism. The rather shy, sincere young man I once was has become a very influential critic—feared, respected, educated at the best school and welcomed in the best circles. But with each passing day and well ahead of time, he feels older and older, increasingly weary, increasingly useless: a clattering man, old before his time, full of venom as he trots out the better part of a self which is inexorably crumbling away and portends nothing better than twilight years spent as a lucid, pitiful old bastard. And is that what he is feeling now? Is that what would steal secretly under his somewhat weary eyelids with a hint of sadness, a pinch of nostalgia? Shall I follow in his footsteps, experiencing the same regret, the same erring ways? Or am I just in a phase of feeling sorry for myself—since I am far, so far, from the brilliance of his private peregrinations? I shall never know.

  The king is dead. Long live the king.

  Fish

  Rue de Grenelle, the Bedroom

  Every summer we returned to Brittany. It was still the era when school did not start again until mid-September; my grandparents, who had recently made their fortune, rented a large villa on the coast, at the end of the season, and the entire family would gather there. It was a miraculous time. I was not yet old enough to understand that these simple people, who had worked hard all their lives and upon whom fate had smiled somewhat late in life, had decided that, rather than keep their money, as others might have done, under their woolen mattress, they would spend it with their family and in their lifetime. I was, however, already aware that we children were being pampered, albeit in an intelligent way that still astonishes me, for I only ever knew how to spoil my own children—spoil in the strictest sense of the term. I caused them to rot and decompose, those three children who emerged from my wife’s entrails, gifts I had negligently given to her in exchange for her decorative wifely abnegation—terrible gifts, when I think about it today, for what are children other than the monstrous excrescences of our own selves, pitiful substitutes for our unfulfilled desires? For the likes of me—people, in other words, who already have something which gives them pleasure in life—children are worthy of interest only when they finally leave home and become something other than one’s own daughters or sons. I do not love them, I have never loved them, and I feel no remorse on that account. If they expend all their energy hating me with all their strength, that is no concern of mine; the only paternity that I might lay claim to is that of my own oeuvre. And the buried flavor that I cannot find is beginning to make me doubt even that.