“Indeed,” confirmed the countess, gazing suspiciously at her
plate.
As for myself, I did not notice anything out of the ordinary in the taste of the cauliflower; to me it seemed as wan as the preceding dishes.
“Could Philip .
.
.
?”
asked the countess, and her eyes shot daggers.
“It should be checked!”
said the marchioness mistrustfully.
“Have Philip summoned!”
ordered the countess.
“There’s no reason to conceal anything from you, my dear friend,” said Baron de Apfelbaum; quietly, and not without suppressed irritation, he explained to me what the matter was.
It turned out to be nothing less than the following: Two Fridays before, the countess had found her cook Philip seasoning the ideal of the fast with bouillon and the taste of meat!
What a scoundrel!
I couldn’t believe it!
I found it impossible to believe!
Truly, only a cook was capable of such a thing!
Worse still, the recalcitrant cook apparently showed no remorse, and instead had the impudence to defend himself with the bizarre thesis that “he wanted to satisfy all parties.”
What did he mean by this?
(It seemed that he had previously served as cook to some bishop.) It was only when the countess threatened to give him his notice immediately that he swore he would desist!
“Booby!”
the baron concluded his story angrily.
“Booby!
He let himself be caught!
And that’s why, as you see, today the majority of people did not come and .
.
.
hm .
.
.
if it weren’t for this cauliflower, I’d frankly be afraid that they made the right decision.”
“No,” said the toothless marchioness, chewing the vegetable with her gums, “no, this isn’t the taste of meat.
Mmm, mmm .
.
.
this isn’t the taste of meat; rather—
comment dirais-je
—it ’s exceptionally refreshing—it must contain a great number of vitamins.”
“There’s something peppery,” declared the baron, discreetly taking a second helping.
“Something delicately peppery—mmm, mmm—but meatless,” he added hurriedly, “decidedly vegetarian, peppery and cauliflowerish.
One can rely on my palate, countess; in questions of taste I am a second Pythia!”
But the countess did not calm herself till the cook appeared—a long, skinny, ruddy individual with a cross-eyed gaze—and swore on the shade of his late wife that the cauliflower was pure and spotless.
“All cooks are like that!”
I said sympathetically, and also took more of the popular dish (though I still could not see anything exceptional in it).
“Oh, cooks have to be watched!”
(I don’t know if remarks of this kind were sufficiently tactful, but I was overcome by a euphoria light as champagne bubbles.) “The cook in that hat of his and his white apron!”
“Philip looks so good-hearted,” said the countess with a faint note of bitterness and mute resentment, reaching for the melted butter.
“Good-hearted, good-hearted—no doubt,” I said, sticking to my ground with perhaps too much stubbornness.
“Nevertheless, a cook .
.
.
.
A cook, ladies and gentlemen, is a man of the common people, homo vulgaris, whose task is to prepare elegant, refined dishes—in this there lies a dangerous paradox.
Elegance being prepared by boorishness—what can that mean?”
“The aroma is exceptional!”
said the countess, breathing in the
smell of the cauliflower through flared nostrils (I could not smell it), and not letting the fork out of her hand, but instead continuing to wield it briskly.
“Exceptional!”
repeated the banker, and, so as not to spill butter on himself, he fastened his napkin over his shirt front.
“A little more, if I might ask, countess.
I’m reviving after that .
.
.
um .
.
.
soup, mmm, mmm .
.
.
Indeed, cooks cannot be trusted.
I had a cook who made Italian pasta like no one else—I would simply stuff myself!
And imagine if you please, I go into the kitchen one day and in the pot I see my pasta, and it ’s crawling—simply crawling!
—and it was worms—mmm, mmm—worms from my garden, which the villain was serving up as pasta!
Since then—mmm, mmm—I’ve stopped looking into pots!”
“Just so,” I said.
“Exactly!”
And I spoke further about cooks, saying that they were butchers, small-time murderers, that it was all the same to them what and how, all that mattered was adding pepper, adding seasoning, making meals—comments that were not entirely appropriate and rather crass, but I had gotten carried away.—“You, countess, who would never touch his head, in the soup—you are ingesting his hair!”
I would have continued in the same vein, since I had suddenly been seized by an access of treacherous eloquence, but all of a sudden—I broke off, for no one was listening to me!
The extraordinary sight of the countess, that dogaressa, that patroness, eating in silence and so rapaciously that her ears trembled, terrified and astonished me.
The baron accompanied her gallantly, bent over his plate, slurping and smacking his lips with all his might—and the old marchioness did her best to keep up, chewing and swallowing huge mouthfuls, evidently
worried that they would take her plate away before she had eaten the best morsels!
This extraordinary, sudden image of guzzling—I cannot put it otherwise—of
such
guzzling, in
such
a house, this awful transition, this diminished seventh chord, shook the foundations of my being to such an extent that I was unable to restrain myself and I sneezed—and since I had left my handkerchief in the pocket of my overcoat, I was obliged to rise from the table and excuse myself.
In the hall, falling motionless onto a chair, I attempted to bring my scattered thoughts to equilibrium.
Only a person who, like me, had long known the countess, the marchioness, and the baron for their refined gestures, the delicacy, moderation, and subtlety of all their functions, and especially the function of eating, the incomparable nobility of their features—only such a person could appreciate the horrible impression I had received.
At the same time I happened to cast a glance at the copy of the
Red Herald
sticking out of my overcoat pocket, and I noticed a sensational headline:
MYSTERIOUS DISAPPEARANCE OF CAULIFLOWER
along with the subtitle:
CAULIFLOWER IN DANGER OF FREEZING
and an article containing the following text:
Stable hand Valentine Cauliflower of the village of Rudka (belonging to the estate of the renowned Countess Pavahoke) reported to the police that his son Bolek, aged 8, has run away from home.
According to the police the boy, described as having a snub nose and flaxen hair, ran away because his father was drunk and walloping him with a belt,
and his mother was starving him (a common phenomenon, alas, in the current crisis).
There is concern that the boy could freeze to death wandering about the fields during the autumn rains.
“Tsk, tsk,” I tutted, “tsk, tsk .
.
.”
I glanced through the window at the fields, veiled by a thin curtain of rain.
And I returned to the dining room, where the huge silver platter contained nothing but the remains of the cauliflower.
The countess’ stomach, on the other hand, looked as if she was in her seventh month—the baron’s organ of consumption was virtually dangling in his plate—while the old marchioness was chewing and chewing indefatigably, moving her jaws—truly, I must say it—like a cow!
“Divine, marvelous,” they all kept repeating, “delightful, incomparable!”
Utterly disconcerted, I carefully and attentively tasted the cauliflower one more time, but I sought in vain for something that would even partially justify the company’s unprecedented demeanor.
“What is it that you see in this?”
I coughed timidly, somewhat abashed.
“Ha ha ha, he’s asking!”
cried the baron loudly, gorging himself and in a capital humor.
“Can you really not taste it .
.
.
young man?”
asked the marchioness, without interrupting her consumption even for a moment.
“You’re not a gastronome,” declared the baron, as if with a hint of polite sympathy, “whereas I .
.
.
Et moi, je ne suis pas gastronome
—
je suis gastrosophe!
” And did my ears deceive me—or was it the case that as he pronounced that French platitude, something swelled within him, so that he threw out the last word
“gastrosophe”
from
bulging cheeks with an exceptional exaltation he had never shown before?
“It’s well seasoned, no doubt .
.
.
very tasty, yes, very .
.
.
but .
.
.”
I mumbled.
“But?
.
.
.
But what?
So you truly cannot taste it?
This delicate freshness, this .
.
.
mmm .
.
.
indefinable firmness, this .
.
.
characteristic pepperiness .
.
.
this scent, this alcohol?
But my deah sir” (this was the first time since we had known each other that I had been addressed in the aristocratic manner as ‘deah sir’) “surely you are pretending?
Surely you are meahly attempting to alahm us?”
“Don’t talk to him!”
the countess interrupted flirtatiously, convulsed with laughter.
“Don’t talk to him!
After all, he’ll never understand!”
“Style, young man, is imbibed with one’s mother’s milk,” the marchioness lisped benevolently, reminding me, it seemed, that my mother’s maiden name was Turky—may she rest in peace!
And everyone abandoned the continuation of the dinner and dragged their full stomachs into the gilded Louis XVI boudoir, where they sprawled in the softest armchairs they could find and began laughing—and there was no doubt whatsoever it was me they were laughing at, just as if I had given them cause for especial merriment.
I had long rubbed shoulders with the aristocracy at tea parties and benefit concerts—but, by my word of honor, I had never seen such behavior, nor such an abrupt change, such a transformation unmotivated by anything at all.
Not knowing whether to sit or stand, whether to be serious or rather
faire bonne mine à mauvais jeu
and give a foolish smile, I tried vaguely and timidly to return to Arcadia, that is, to the pumpkin soup:
Returning to the matter of Beauty .
.
.
“Enough, enough!”
exclaimed Baron de Apfelbaum, holding his hands over his ears.
“What a tedious fellow!
Now it’s time to have fun!
S’encanailler!
I’ll sing you something better!
From an operetta!”
This greenhorn is a funny bird!
He doesn’t understand a word!
I’ll teach him to know the things he should:
What’s beautiful’s not what’s beautiful, what’s beautiful is what
tastes good.
Taste!
Taste!
Good taste!
That’s where Beauty’s based!
“Bravo!”
cried the countess, and the marchioness chimed in, baring her gums in a old woman’s giggle: “Bravo!
Cocasse!
Charmant!
”
“But it seems to me .
.
.
that this .
.
.
that this is not right .
.
.”
I stuttered, yet my stupefied gaze was thoroughly out of keeping with my formal attire.
“We aristocrats”—the marchioness leaned over to me good-naturedly —“in our innermost circle profess a great freedom of manners; at such times, as you have heard, we occasionally even use coarse expressions and we can be frivolous, often even vulgar in our own way.
But there is no need to be appalled!
You must get used to us!”
“We’re not so feahful,” added the baron patronizingly, “though our vulgahness is hahder to come to terms with than our refinement!”