Gourmet Rhapsody, Page 3

  As for my grandparents, they loved us in their way: undividedly. They had made their own children into an assortment of neuropaths and degenerates: a melancholy son, a hysterical daughter, another daughter who committed suicide, and finally my own father who escaped madness at the cost of all fantasy, and who chose a wife in his own image; what safeguarded my parents was the way they applied their apathy and mediocrity to protecting themselves from excess—from the abyss, in other words. And I was the only ray of sunlight in my mother’s existence: I was her god, and a god I have remained; I have preserved nothing of her sad face or her lifeless cooking or her somewhat plaintive voice, but I have preserved all her love, which endowed me with the self-assurance of a king. To have been adulated by one’s mother . . . Thanks to her I have conquered empires, I have confronted life with an irresistible brutality which opened to me the gates of glory. The child who had everything has become a man without pity, thanks to the love of a shrew who, in the end, was resigned to gentleness solely by her lack of ambition.

  With their grandchildren, on the other hand, my grandparents were the most charming of individuals. Deep in their souls they had a talent for the sort of good-natured and mischievous behavior that had been restrained by their burden as parents, but as grandparents, they could give it free rein. The summer radiated freedom. Everything seemed possible in our world of fervid exploration, of joyful, pseudo-secret outings on the rocks by the beach at nightfall; anything could happen, given the unprecedented generosity that extended invitations to all the neighbors at random on those summer days. My grandmother officiated at the stove with a haughty tranquility. She weighed over two hundred pounds, had a mustache, laughed like a man and barked at us with all the grace of a truck driver whenever we ventured into the kitchen. Yet under the influence of her expert hands, the most banal substances were transformed into miracles of faith. White wine flowed freely and we ate and ate and ate. Sea urchins, oysters, mussels, grilled shrimp, shellfish with mayonnaise, calamari in sauce, but also (“You can’t change who you are!”) daubes, blanquettes, paellas, and poultry—roasted, stewed or à la crème; we were showered with food.

  Once a month my grandfather would put on a strict and solemn expression at breakfast, then get up without a word and head off alone to the fish market. Then we knew that the day had come. My grandmother would raise her eyes to the heavens, mumble that “as per usual the whole house will stink for ages,” and mutter something rude about her husband’s culinary talents. I personally felt moved to tears at the thought of what was to follow, and I may have known that she was joking, but I nevertheless fleetingly begrudged her the fact that she did not incline her head with humility in this sacred moment. An hour later my grandfather returned from the port with an enormous crate smelling of the sea. He sent us off to the beach—we were the “brats,” and we would head off all atremble with excitement, already home again in our thoughts but docile and mindful not to go against our grandfather’s wishes. When we set off for home at one o’clock, after what was at best a distracted swim, so hopelessly did we anticipate the prospect of lunch, we could already catch a whiff of the heavenly aroma from the corner of the street. I could have sobbed for joy.

  The grilled sardines filled the entire neighborhood with their ashy marine aroma. A thick gray smoke rose from the thujas that surrounded the garden. The men from the neighboring houses came to lend my grandpa a hand. On enormous grills the little silvery fish were already turning crisp in the noon breeze. There was laughter and talk, and bottles of well-chilled dry white wine were opened; the men sat down at last and the women came out of the kitchen with their piles of immaculate plates. My grandmother reached skillfully for a plump little fish, sniffed its perfume, and dropped it on the plate with a few others. With her big moist cow eyes she looked at me kindly and said, “Here, little fella, the first lot’s for you! Good heavens, but doesn’t he just love ’em, that boy!” And everyone burst out laughing, and slapped me on the back while the prodigious sustenance was placed before me. I did not hear another thing. My eyes open wide, I stared at the object of my desire: the gray, blistered skin, with its long black stripes that no longer even clung to the flesh it was covering. My knife slipped into the fish’s spine and carefully divided the whitish meat: it was perfectly cooked, and came off in firm little strips without the least resistance.

  In the flesh of grilled fish, from the humblest of mackerel to the most refined salmon, there is something that defies culture. Early man, in learning to cook fish, must have felt his humanity for the first time, in this substance where fire revealed both essential purity and wildness. To say that the flesh is delicate, that its taste is both subtle and expansive, that it stimulates the gums with a mixture of sharpness and sweetness; to say that the combination of the grilled skin’s faint bitterness and the extreme smoothness of the firm, strong, harmonious flesh, filling one’s mouth with a flavor from elsewhere, elevates the grilled sardine to the rank of culinary apotheosis, is at best like evoking the soporific virtues of opium. For what is at issue here is neither how delicate or sweet or strong or smooth the grilled sardine may be, but its wild nature. One must be strong in spirit to confront a taste like this; concealed within, very precisely, is the primitive brutality that forges our humanity when we come into contact with it. And one must be pure in spirit, as well, a spirit that knows how to chew with vigor, to the exclusion of any other food: I scorned the potatoes and salted butter which my grandmother had set out next to my plate, and devoured relentlessly the strips of fish.

  Meat is virile, powerful; fish is strange and cruel. It comes from another world, a secret ocean that will never yield to us; it bears witness to the absolute relativity of our existence, and yet it offers itself to us through the ephemeral revelation of unknown realms. When I was savoring these grilled sardines, like an autistic child whom nothing could trouble at that point in time, I knew that this extraordinary confrontation with a sensation from elsewhere was making me human, bringing its contrasting nature to bear to teach me my human essence. Infinite, cruel, primitive, refined ocean: between our avid teeth we seize the products of your mysterious activity. The grilled sardine suffused my palate with its frank and exotic bouquet, with each mouthful I grew more mature, and every time my tongue caressed the marine ash of blistered skin I felt exulted.

  But that is not what I have been looking for, either. I have brought to my memory forgotten sensations buried beneath the magnificence of my regal banquets; I have become reacquainted with the early stages of my vocation; I have exhumed the effluvia of my childhood soul. And that is not it. Time is pressing, and brings with it the uncertain yet terrifying contours of my ultimate failure. I do not want to give up. I am making an immoderate effort to remember. And what if, in the long run, the thing that is taunting me is not even tasty? Like Proust’s abominable madeleine, that oddity of a pastry reduced one sinister and drab afternoon into a spoonful of spongy crumbs—supreme offense—in a cup of herbal tea, in actual fact my memory may merely be associated with some mediocre dish, and it is only the emotion attached to it that remains precious, and that might reveal to me a gift for living that I had not previously understood.

  (Jean)

  Café des Amis, 18th Arrondissement

  Purulent old goatskin. Putrid rotting carcass. Die, just go ahead and die. Die in your silk sheets, in your pasha’s bed, in your bourgeois cage, die, die, die. At least then we’ll have your money, even if we’ll never have your favor. All your big-shot foodie money can’t do you an ounce of good anymore, so it will go to other people, your rich landlord money, the cash from your corruption, your parasitical activities, all that food, all that luxury, such a waste . . . Die . . . Everyone is rushing to your side—Maman, Maman who really should leave you to die alone, abandon you the way you abandoned her, but she won’t, she stays there, inconsolable, and she really believes she is losing everything. I’ll never get it, why she’s so blind, so resigned, and how she manages to
convince herself that she has had the life she wanted, her vocation as a holy martyr; shit, it makes me want to puke, Maman, Maman . . . And then there’s that dickhead Paul, with his airs of the prodigal son, his spiritual heir hypocrisy, he must be crawling all over the bed, do you need a cushion, Uncle, would you like me to read you a few pages of Proust, or Dante, or Tolstoy? I can’t stand that guy, that piece of trash, Mr. Perfect Bourgeois with his distinguished gentlemanly airs, screwing the whores on the rue Saint-Denis; I’ve seen him, yes I’ve seen him coming out of a house over there . . . Oh, but what’s the use, huh, what’s the use of stirring all this up, stirring up my ugly duckling bitterness, it will only prove the old man right: my children are imbeciles, that’s what he used to say, quite calmly, in our presence, we were all embarrassed, except him, of course, he couldn’t even see what might be shocking, not just about saying it but even thinking it! My children are imbeciles, especially my son. He’ll never amount to anything. No you’re wrong, father, they have amounted to something, your brats, they are nothing more than your own creation, you chopped them up fine and spat them out and drowned them in a stinking gravy and that is what they have become: weaklings, losers, failures, sludge. And yet! And yet you could have made them gods, your kids. I remember how proud I used to feel when I would go out with you, when you would take me to the market or the restaurant; I was just a little tyke and you were so tall, with your big warm hand holding tight to mine, and your profile, when I saw it from below, the profile of an emperor, and your lion’s mane! You had such a proud look and I was over the moon, over the moon to have a father like you . . . And now here I am, sobbing, my voice is breaking, my heart is broken, crushed; I hate you, I love you, and I hate my own ambivalence so much I could scream, fucking ambivalence that has ruined my life, because I am still your son, because I’ve never been anything other than the son of a monster!

  The real ordeal is not leaving those you love but learning to live without those who don’t love you. And my sorry life has been spent longing so ardently for all the love you have withheld, your absent love, oh for Christ’s sake, is this the best I can do, weeping over my miserable fate as a poor unloved little boy? There are far more important things, I’m going to die soon, too, and no one gives a damn, and I don’t give a damn either, I don’t give a damn because, right now, he is dying and I love the bastard, I love him, oh shit . . .

  The Vegetable Garden

  Rue de Grenelle, the Bedroom

  My aunt Marthe’s house was a dilapidated old place buried in ivy, and because of its façade with one bricked-in window, there was something distinctly one-eyed about the place that perfectly suited both its surroundings and its occupant. Aunt Marthe, the eldest of my mother’s sisters and the only one who did not inherit a nickname, was a sour, ugly, malodorous old maid who lived between her chicken coop and her rabbit hutches in unbelievable squalor. Indoors, as was to be expected, there was neither running water, electricity, telephone nor television. But above all, beyond this lack of creature comforts to which my love of country outings actually made me completely indifferent, we suffered at her place from the presence of a scourge that was far more dismaying: there was nothing in her house that was not sticky or did not cling to our fingers, whenever we wanted to pick up a tool, or our elbows had the misfortune to bump into a piece of furniture; even our eyes, literally, could perceive the viscous film that covered every single thing. We never lunched or dined with her there and, only too happy to plead the necessity for picnics (“The weather is so fine, it would be a crime not to have lunch on the banks of the Golotte”), we would head off elsewhere with relief in our hearts.

  The countryside. All my life I have lived in the city, intoxicated with the marble surfaces that pave the vestibule of my residence, or the red carpet that muffles one’s steps and feelings, or the Delft glass that decorates the stairwell, or the luxurious woodwork that discreetly panels the precious boudoir we call an elevator. Every day, every week, when I returned from my meals in the provinces, I would find myself once again on the asphalt, and in the distinguished veneer of my bourgeois residence, locking up my hunger for greenery between four walls crammed full of masterpieces, and every time I would forget more definitively that I was born for trees. The countryside . . . My green cathedral . . . It was there that my heart has sung its most fervent hymns, that my eyes learned the secrets of looking, my taste buds the flavor of game and of the vegetable garden, and my nose the elegance of fragrances. For in spite of the repulsive aspect of her lair, aunt Marthe did possess a treasure. I have met the greatest specialists in everything that has to do, however remotely, with the world of taste. Those who claim to be cooks must resort to all five senses to be truly cooks. A dish must be a delight to the eyes, the nose, and the taste, of course—but also to the touch, which directs the chef’s choice on so many occasions and has its part to play in the celebration of fine food. It is true that hearing would seem to have no part to play; but one does not eat in silence, or in the midst of a din; any sound which interferes with the tasting process may either contribute or disturb that process, in such a way that a meal is indisputably kinesthetic. Thus I was often called on to feast with specialists of smell who were lured by the aromas emanating from kitchens, after a time spent in pursuit of those which migrated from flowers.

  Not one of them will ever have as fine a nose as aunt Marthe. Because the old nag was a Nose, a true one, a great one, a huge Nose who didn’t know she was a nose, but whose unprecedented sensitivity would never have suffered from the competition, had there been any. Thus, this coarse, almost illiterate woman, this piece of human scum casting her rotten foul stench onto everyone around her, had created a garden fragrant with paradise. Through a knowing tangle of wildflowers, honeysuckle and old rose whose faded hue had been carefully preserved, a vegetable garden scattered with brilliant peonies and blue sage proudly displayed the most beautiful lettuce leaves in the region. Cascades of petunias, groves of lavender, a few steadfast box trees, ancestral wisteria along the front wall of the house: from this well-orchestrated jumble emanated the best of her being, that neither dirt nor fetid exhalations nor the sordid aspect of a life devoted to vacuousness could manage to enshroud. How many old women in the countryside are gifted in this way with an extraordinary sensory intuition which they apply to their gardening, or to making herbal potions, or to cooking rabbit stew with thyme, old women who then die as unknown geniuses, their gift ignored by all—for most often we fail to see that something so seemingly trivial and inconsequential, a chaotic garden deep in the countryside, can belong with the most beautiful works of art. In this reverie of flowers and vegetables, beneath my dust-brown feet I crushed the dry thick grass of the garden, and grew drunk on its fragrances.

  First of all, the geranium leaves: I would lie on my stomach among the tomatoes and peas and, swooning with pleasure, rub the leaves between my fingers: slightly acid, sufficiently tart with a vinegary insolence, but not so tart that they could fail to evoke at the same time the delicately bitter scent of candied lemon, with a hint of the acrid odor of tomato leaves, whose boldness and fruitiness they preserve—that is what geranium leaves exhale, that is what I was growing drunk on, with my belly to the ground in the vegetable garden and my head in the flowers, ferreting for fragrance with all the concupiscence of the famished. Oh, magnificent memories of a time when I was the sovereign of a realm without artifice . . . In whole battalions, legions of red, white, yellow, and pink carnations stood proudly in the four corners of the courtyard, swelling their ranks each year with new recruits to become an army of serried troops and, through some inexplicable miracle, they did not slump from the weight of their overgrown stems, but bravely lifted their odd, chiseled corollas, incongruous in such tight configuration, scowling, but wafting all around a powdery fragrance, like that of beauties on their way to the ball . . .

  Above all there was the linden tree. Immense and decorative, from one year to the next it threatened to s
ubmerge the house with its tentacular foliage, which my aunt obstinately refused to prune; any discussion was out of the question. During the hottest days of summer, the tree’s troublesome shade offered the most sweet-smelling of bowers. I would sit against the trunk on the little bench of worm-eaten wood and avidly inhale the scent of pure, velvety honey which came from the tree’s pale yellow flowers. A linden tree releasing its perfume at the end of the day is a rapture which leaves an indelible mark, and in the depths of our joy to be alive it traces a groove of happiness that the sweetness of a July evening alone cannot suffice to explain. Filling my lungs with that scent, in memory, which has not neared my nostrils in many a year, I have finally understood what it was that gave it its aroma: the complicity of honey and that very particular smell of the tree’s leaves after a long spell of hot weather, where they are saturated with the dust of the fine summer days, and this evokes the absurd yet sublime feeling of imbibing from the air a concentrated essence of summer. Oh those fine summer days! When your body is free of the constraints of winter, when at last you can feel the caress of a breeze against your naked skin, offered to the world, blatantly open to it, in an ecstasy of freedom regained . . . In the motionless air, saturated with the buzzing of invisible insects, time stands still . . . The poplar trees along the towpaths sing to the breezes a melody of verdant rustling, between light and shimmering shadow . . . A cathedral, yes, a cathedral of light-splattered greenery encircled me with its immediate, clear beauty . . . Even the jasmine at nightfall in the streets of Rabat never attained such evocative power . . . I am following the thread of a scent belonging to the linden . . . Languorous swaying of branches, a bee gathering pollen at the edge of my vision . . . I remember . . .