Gourmet Rhapsody Read online

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  This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real locales are used fictitiously.

  Copyright © 2009 by Éditions Gallimard, Paris

  First publication 2010 by Europa Editions

  Translation by Alison Anderson

  Original Title: Une Gourmandise

  Translation copyright © 2010 by Europa Editions

  All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.

  Cover Art by Emanuele Ragnisco

  www.mekkanografici.com

  ISBN 9781609452216

  Muriel Barbery

  GOURMET RHAPSODY

  Translated from the French

  by Alison Anderson

  To Stéphane, without whom . . .

  Flavor

  Rue de Grenelle, the Bedroom

  When I took possession of the table, it was as supreme monarch. We were kings, the suns of those few hours of banqueting, who would determine their futures and describe their horizons—tragically limited or mouth-wateringly distant and radiant—as chefs. I would stride into the room the way a consul entered the arena, and I would give the order for the feast to begin. Those who have never tasted the intoxicating nectar of power cannot imagine the sudden explosion of adrenaline that radiates throughout the body, releasing a harmony of movement, erasing all fatigue, along with any reality that does not bend to the orders of your pleasure; the ecstasy of unbridled power, when one need no longer struggle but merely enjoy the spoils of battle, and savor without cease the headiness that comes with inspiring fear.

  That is who we were, and how we reigned as lords and masters over the finest establishments in France, filled with the excellence of the dishes, with our own glory, and with our unquenchable desire—like a hunting dog’s first, excited flair—to pronounce upon that excellence.

  I am the greatest food critic in the world. It is I who has taken this minor art and raised it to a rank of utmost prestige. Everyone knows my name, from Paris to Rio, Moscow to Brazzaville, Saigon to Melbourne and Acapulco. I have made, and unmade, reputations, and at sumptuous banquets I have been the knowing and merciless maître d’oeuvre, expediting to the four corners of the globe the salt or honey of my pen, to newspapers and broadcasts and various forums, where I have been repeatedly invited to discourse upon that which previously had been reserved for a few select specialized journals or intermittent weekly chronicles. I have, for all eternity, pinned to my list of discoveries some of the most prestigious butterflies among practicing chefs. The glory and the demise of Partais, or the fall of Sangerre, or the increasingly incandescent success of Marquet can be attributed to me alone. For all eternity, indeed, I have made them what they are; for all eternity.

  I have held eternity under the skin of my words, and tomorrow I shall die. I shall die in forty-eight hours—unless I have been dying for sixty-eight years and it is only today that I have deigned to notice. Whatever the case may be, the verdict was handed down yesterday by my friend the physician Chabrot: “Old boy, you’ve got forty-eight hours.” How ironic! After decades of grub, deluges of wine and alcohol of every sort, after a life spent in butter, cream, rich sauces, and oil in constant, knowingly orchestrated and meticulously cajoled excess, my trustiest right-hand men, Sir Liver and his associate Stomach, are doing marvelously well and it is my heart that is giving out. I am dying of a cardiac insufficiency. What a bitter pill to swallow! So often have I reproached others for a lack of heart in their cuisine, in their art, that never for a moment did I think that I might be the one lacking therein, this heart now betraying me so brutally, with scarcely concealed disdain, so quickly has the blade been sharpened . . .

  I am going to die, but that is of no importance. Since yesterday, since Chabrot, only one thing matters. I am going to die and there is a flavor that has been teasing my taste buds and my heart and I simply cannot recall it. I know that this particular flavor is the first and ultimate truth of my entire life, and that it holds the key to a heart that I have since silenced. I know that it is a flavor from childhood or adolescence, an original, marvelous dish that predates my vocation as a critic, before I had any desire or pretension to expound on my pleasure in eating. A forgotten flavor, lodged in my deepest self, and which has surfaced at the twilight of my life as the only truth ever told—or realized. I search, and cannot find.

  (Renée)

  Rue de Grenelle, the Concierge’s Loge

  And now what?Is it not enough for them that every day the Good Lord gives us I clean up the muck that falls from their rich people’s shoes, I vacuum the dust they stir up during their rich people’s deambulations, I listen to their rich people’s conversations and concerns, I feed their mutts, their cats, water their plants, wipe the noses of their offspring, accept their yearly gifts of money—and that is indeed the only moment when they don’t play at being rich—I sniff their perfume, I open the door to their relatives, I hand out their mail dripping with bank statements regarding their rich-people accounts and investments and overdrafts, I force myself to smile in response to their rich-people smiles, and, finally, I live in their rich-people building, me, the concierge, a nobody-at-all, a thing behind a window that people say hello to in great haste to ease their conscience, because it’s awkward, isn’t it, to see that old thing lurking in her dark little hole without any crystal chandeliers, without any patent-leather slippers, without any camel’s-hair overcoat, it’s awkward but at the same time it’s reassuring, like some incarnation of the social differences that justify the superiority of their class, like an ugly thing exalting their munificence, like a foil enhancing their elegance—no, all that is not enough, because in addition to all that, in addition to leading this existence as an unbecoming recluse day after day, hour after hour, minute after minute, and what’s worst of all, year after year, I am expected to understand their rich-people’s sorrows?

  If they want to have news of the Mâââître, let them ring at his bell.

  The Man of Property

  Rue de Grenelle, the Bedroom

  If I go back to my earliest memories, I find that I have always liked eating. I cannot pinpoint exactly my first gastronomic ecstasies, but there is no doubt as to the identity of my first preferred cook: my own grandmother. On the menu for celebrations there was meat in gravy, potatoes in gravy, and the wherewithal to mop up all that gravy. I never knew, subsequently, whether it was my childhood or the stews themselves that I was unable to re-experience, but never again have I sampled as fervently (I am the specialist of such oxymorons) as at my grandmother’s table the likes of those potatoes: bursting with gravy, delectable little sponges. Might the forgotten taste throbbing in my breast be hidden somewhere in there? Might it suffice to ask Anna to let a few tubers marinate in the juices of a good traditional coq au vin? Alas, I know only too well that it would not. I know that what I am searching for is something that has always eluded my talents, my memory, my consideration. Extravagant pots-au-feu, poulets chasseur to make one faint, dizzying coqs au vin, astounding blanquettes—you have all been the companions of my carnivorous and saucy childhood. I cherish you, amiable casseroles with your fragrance of game—but you are not what I am seeking in this moment.

  Despite those early, always faithful, love affairs, in later years my tastes turned to other culinary destinations, and with the additional delight occasioned by the certainty of my own eclecticism, my love of the stew came to be replaced by the urgent call of more austere sensations. The soft, delicate touch on the palate of one’s first sushi
no longer holds any secrets for me, and I bless the day my tongue discovered the intoxicating, almost erotic, velvet-smooth caress of an oyster slipping in after a chunk of bread smeared with salted butter. I have dissected the magical delicacy of the oyster with such brilliance and finesse that the divine mouthful has become a religious act for all. Between these two extremes—the rich warmth of a daube and the clean crystal of shellfish, I have covered the entire range of culinary art, for I am an encyclopedic esthete who is always one dish ahead of the game—but always one heart behind.

  I can hear Paul and Anna speaking in hushed voices in the corridor. I peer through my eyelids. My gaze, as usual, encounters the perfect curve of a sculpture by Fanjol, a birthday present from Anna on my sixtieth birthday; it seems such a long time ago. Paul comes quietly into the room. Of all my nephews and nieces, he is he only one I love and respect, the only one whose presence I can tolerate during the final hours of my life. Therefore, before I can no longer speak at all, I have taken him—along with my wife—into my confidence regarding my distress.

  “A dish? A dessert?” asked Anna, with a sob in her voice.

  I cannot bear to see her like this. I love my wife, as I have always loved the beautiful objects in my life. That is the way it is. I have lived as a man of property, and I shall die as one, with neither qualms nor sentimental indulgence; nor do I regret having accumulated property or having conquered souls and beings as if I were acquiring an expensive painting. A work of art has a soul. It cannot be reduced to a simple mineral existence, to the lifeless elements of which it consists. Perhaps because I know this I have never felt the least bit ashamed of considering Anna the most beautiful work of all—this woman who for forty years has used her finely chiseled beauty and her dignified tenderness to enliven the chambers of my realm.

  I do not like to see her cry. On the threshold of my death I feel that she is waiting for something, that she suffers for the imminent end looming on the horizon of the coming hours, and that she is dreading I might disappear into the same void, bereft of communication, that we have maintained since our wedding—it is the same void, but definitive now, without appeal or hope, the false promises that tomorrow will, perhaps, be another day. I know that she is thinking or feeling all of this, but that is not what worries me. We have nothing to say to each other, she and I, and she will have to accept that things are just as I have wished them. All I want is for her to understand that that is the way it is, to appease her suffering and, above all, my displeasure.

  Nothing except that flavor I am pursuing in the limbo of my memory is of any importance now: enraged by a betrayal I cannot even recall, it continues to resist me, and stubbornly slips away.

  (Laura)

  Rue de Grenelle, the Stairway

  I remember our holidays in Greece when we were children, on Tinos—a horrid island, bare and scorched, that I hated from the moment I saw it, from the moment we set foot on solid ground, from the moment we left the gangplank of the ship, the moment we left the winds of the Aegean behind . . .

  A big gray and white cat had leapt onto the terrace and from there onto the low wall that separated our villa from the neighbors’ invisible house. A big cat: by the standards of the country, he was impressive. The neighborhood abounded in scrawny creatures with bobbing heads and it broke my heart to see them dragging their exhausted bodies around. This cat, however, seemed to have grasped the principles of survival: he had made it past the terrace, gotten as far as the door to the dining room, and once inside the house grew bold and shamelessly swept down like some avenging angel upon the roast chicken that was resting in state upon the table. We found him comfortably indulging in our victuals, not the least bit intimidated, or perhaps just enough to enchant, in the time it took to grab a wing with a smart, expert snap of his teeth and to sneak off through the French doors, his loot in his chops, with a perfunctory growl to the delight of our childhood selves.

  Of course, he wasn’t there. He would be coming back from Athens a few days later, and we’d tell him the story—Maman would tell him the story, oblivious to his scornful expression or his absence of love—he would pay no attention, he already had his mind on his next feast, far away, at the ends of the earth—without us. All the same, he would look at me with a glint of disappointment in the depths of his eyes, unless it was repulsion, or perhaps cruelty—perhaps all three at the same time—and say, “That is how to survive, that cat is a living lesson,” and his words would ring like a bell, words meant to hurt, words meant to wound, to torture the frightened little girl I was, so weak and insignificant: without importance.

  He was a brutal man. Brutal in his gestures, in the dominating way he had of grabbing hold of things, his smug laugh, his raptor’s gaze. I never saw him relax: everything was a pretext for tension. Already at breakfast, on those rare days when he deigned to grace us with his presence, our martyrdom began. The stage was set for psychodrama, he would splutter and expostulate: for the survival of the Empire was at stake, what were we having for lunch? Trips to the market were opportunities for hysteria. My mother bowed to his will, as usual, as always. And then off he would go again, to other restaurants, other women, other vacations, without us, where we were not even—of this I am sure—cause for memories; perhaps, just as he was leaving, we were like flies to him, unwanted flies that you brush away with a sweep of your hand so you needn’t think about them anymore. We were his coleopterous insects.

  It was one evening; he was walking ahead of us, past the little tourist boutiques in Tinos’s only shopping street, with his imperious gait, his hands in his pockets, mindful of no one. The earth could have collapsed beneath our feet, it was all the same to him; he strode ahead and it was up to our little terrorized children’s legs to close the chasm between us. We did not yet know that this was the last vacation he would spend with us. The following summer it was with relief—with frenzied delight—that we greeted the news that he wouldn’t be coming with us. But we quickly had to resign ourselves to another affliction, that of Maman wandering like a ghost through the places we were meant to enjoy. It struck us as worse than ever because by his very absence he managed to hurt us even more. But on the day I’m remembering, he was very much present and he was climbing up the hill at a discouraging rate—I had just stopped outside a humble little neon-lit restaurant with my hand to my waist, plagued by a cramp. My sides heaving, I was trying to catch my breath when I saw with terror that he was making his way back down to me, followed by Jean, who was livid and gazed at me with big tearful eyes; I stopped breathing. He walked by without seeing me, strode into the little greasy spoon, greeted the proprietor, and while we stood uncertain on the threshold, hopping from one foot to the other he pointed to something behind the counter, raised a hand with his fingers well spread to indicate “three,” and motioned briefly to us to enter as he made his way to a table at the far side of the bar.

  They were loukoumades, perfectly round little fritters that are dropped into boiling oil just long enough for the outside to become crisp while the inside stays tender and cottony; they are then covered in honey and served very hot on a little plate, with a fork and a tall glass of water. You see, nothing changes. I think the way he does. Just like him, I dissect each sensation in succession; like him, I cloak them with adjectives, dilate them, stretch them over the length of a sentence, or a verbal melody, and I let nothing of the actual food remain, only these magician’s words, which will make the readers believe they have been eating as we did . . . Not for nothing am I his daughter . . .

  He tasted a fritter, made a face, pushed his plate back and watched us. Although I couldn’t see him I sensed that Jean, next to me, was having a terrible time swallowing; whereas I was postponing the moment when I would have to take another bite and, petrified, I gave him a stupid look, for he was studying us.

  “Do you like them?” he asked, in his grating voice.

  Panic and disorientation. Next to me Jean was breathi
ng quietly. I forced myself.

  “Yes,” I muttered timidly.

  “Why?” he pursued, his tone increasingly dry, but I could see that in the depth of his eyes, which were actually inspecting me for the first time in years, there was a new spark, something I had never seen, like a little speck of caution and hope, inconceivable, harrowing and paralyzing, because for so long I had been accustomed to his not expecting a thing from me.

  “Because it’s good?” I ventured, hunching my shoulders.

  I had lost. How many times since then have I relived in my mind—and in images—this wrenching episode, the moment when something could have shifted, when the bleakness of my fatherless childhood might have been transformed into a new and brilliant love . . . As if in slow motion, against the painful backdrop of my disappointed desire, the seconds tick by; the question, the answer, the waiting, and then the annihilation. The gleam in his eyes is extinguished as quickly as it flared. Disgusted, he turns away, pays, and I am once again relegated to the solitary confinement of his indifference.

  But what am I doing here in this stairway, with my pounding heart, rehashing these horrible memories I left behind so long ago—or which should have been left behind, should have subsided after so many years of necessary suffering on the shrink’s couch, of being attentive to my own words and conquering each day a bit more of the right to be something other than hatred and terror, the right just to be myself. Laura. His daughter . . . No. I won’t go. I’ve already mourned the father I didn’t have.