The Hunger and Other Stories

by Charles Beaumont

  Ramon leaned against the building, waiting for the sourness to leave his throat.

  “In all the world they could not find one whose face was perfect enough for the part of the Virgin. Except for Dolores. It was my work: I introduced her to the owner: he took one look, one look only. ‘She has come, at last!’ I did not tell him where I found her.” The man seemed to be talking to himself. “Ironic? Perhaps. But did not the one who modeled Michelangelo’s Infant Christ, did he not come back one day to the master and sit for the portrait of Judas Iscariot? That is far more ironic.”

  The man took out his wallet and held it in his hand.

  “I saw you in the crowd, Ramon,” he said. “I saw you sitting there. I go every night to watch her, did you know? Then the allegory is over and the theatre is closed and—I remember. Every night I do this!” The man did not look happy: he tapped the wallet and straightened. “Well, but it is over now. Alas, for her beauty they cannot pay her enough to live. These theatres make so little. . . . Would you believe me if I told you something? Before she met me, she passed her blessings to the rich and poor alike and did not charge! I told her, even the Church charges! You have the money?”

  Ramon pushed his fist out and dropped its contents into the man’s hand.

  “She will do you much good, little friend. But be careful: she lifts misery from many hearts, with others she leaves a different kind of misery. It is the worst. Can you understand me?”

  The sound of snapping castanets rose from the shadows. The big brown man put his wallet away and turned. Ramon turned.

  A woman came toward them, smiling. She wore a white blouse of thin cloth and her bosom pressed against the cloth. Her black hair was lustrous against the pale shoulders. She wore stockings and very high thin black heels that snapped along the sidewalk, louder and louder. Her face was encased in powder: the contrast of red cheeks and scarlet lips glowed even in the darkness.

  The man in the American suit frowned at the woman, whose smile was directed at Ramon. He frowned at the movement of her hips, at the sound of her bracelets, at the smell of cheap musk perfume: but without anger; his frown was not easy to read, for it was hidden well.

  “Dolores, my dear,” the man said, “I would like you to meet Ramon. He has come a great distance—for the first time. If he leaves full of pride, perhaps he will return.”

  The woman winked and moved her head.

  Ramon came close and saw her eyes.

  “They make her stare into the lights,” the man said. “Otherwise, she cannot cry. The redness will go away.”

  The woman’s eyes were swollen and puffy and the tears still gleamed beneath the heavy blue lids.

  Ramon backed away from the man and the woman. The sickness churned in his stomach and he fought for his breath.

  “Where are you going, little brother?”

  Ramon stumbled on the curb and got up and then walked fast through the dark streets, fast; then he ran.

  He ran from the soft white robes that rustled behind him; from the tears and the lights; from the laughter of giant hot bulls dying in their sweat.

  He did not stop running for a very long time.

  The Infernal Bouillabaisse

  “I like to think of our stomachs,” Mr. Frenchaboy said, in conclusion, “as small but select museums, to which a new treasure should be added at least once a day. We are all curators, gentlemen; and I believe that we ought to be careful to maintain our gastronomic establishments in the best possible taste. No cheap reproductions! No penny-a-lot artifacts of dubious origin! But, instead, only the finest, the crème de la crème: shared one with all.” He sent a sharp look in the direction of Mr. Edmund Peskin and adjusted his bifocals. “The exhibits themselves,” he said, “may not linger long in our museums. But the memory of them is a lasting pleasure. Thank you.”

  Mr. Frenchaboy nodded to gloved and spiritless applause and made his way to the dinner table. Once he had seated himself, a hundred napkins flew listlessly into a hundred laps and seven expressionless men in velvet jackets entered the hall bearing trays.

  The meal, if it mattered, which it didn’t, was a masterpiece. Mr. Frenchaboy had begun preparations five weeks previous and worked himself into a nervous tic over the selection. Why? He could not say. Force of habit, perhaps, a blind refusal to admit that there was no point to the Gourmet’s Club any more. Honeycomb Tripe à la Creole had been the first thought. It might have been a good thought, too, except that Peskin had written a monograph on the subject—damn and damn him! Braised Pigeons on Croutons followed, but this was a rather pedestrian choice, and where could one get the right sort of mushrooms these days? Rapidly, he’d hit upon and rejected Roasted Saddle of Young Boar, Steamed Chicken Mère Fillioux, Sweetbreads à la Napolitaine, Cock in Vintage Wine, Chicken in Half Mourning, and Escargots à la Frenchaboy; all unworthy. As time had grown shorter, he’d become desperate—almost as in the old, pre-Peskin days!—wandering the house in a half-daze, muttering recipes aloud: Sauté of Baby Armadillo, Gizzards of Lizards in Sauce Bearnaise, Pie of Bull’s Cojones, minced, Brain of Veal à la Mustafa, Sucking Pig with Eels—but when he would hit upon something pleasant, he would remember Peskin’s Bouillabaisse, and then he would turn the color of a broiled lobster.

  At last, ill with weakness—for in preparing the feast he had neglected to eat—he sent a cable to a friend in South America, requesting immediate delivery of two healthy young llamas. The llamas arrived and were carefully slaughtered by Mr. Frenchaboy himself and put on ice. On the day of the semi-annual meeting of the Gourmet’s Club, of which he was president, he placed the animals in a Mexican pot of hard wattle and allowed them to simmer for five hours.

  Fricasee of Llama; Truffles de Chambéry; Gazpacho of Malaga: a chef d’oeuvre, indeed, to the most exacting! Mr. Frenchaboy had blended the tastes, the sharp and the mellow, as a fine artist blends colors; and the result was an addling mixture of dark and light, overwhelming as a late Goya, exotic as Gauguin, humbling as Tintoretto. But Mr. Frenchaboy did it all automatically, with less than half a heart. The spirit was not in him. It was not in any of them.

  Even as he sat discreetly spooning the last traces of Sorbet d’Champagne, he knew; and the knowledge made him sadder than if he had been ordered onto a lifetime diet of enchiladas and bottled pop.

  “Magnificent, Frenchaboy,” they said, when the meal was over; and, “Frenchaboy, really, you know, you have outdone yourself!” but he knew what they were thinking.

  They were thinking, It was all very excellent, old man, but how can we be genuinely enthusiastic over anything after having tasted Peskin’s Bouillabaisse? Don’t fret, though: he has reduced all of our best efforts to second rate. One must, after all, go on, mustn’t one?

  No, Mr. Frenchaboy thought, suddenly: one mustn’t. Because one can’t. For two years, ever since the blasted meal was first served up, I’ve been at him. I’ve made every appeal to the man’s sense of good sportsmanship, even going to the length of asking him, in so many words, for the recipe. And how he strutted then! Miserable peacock, how he smirked and danced and made it clear to us all that we would get the Bouillabaisse only when he might deign to let us; when and if . . . Disgusting! Mr. Frenchaboy glared at the large man at the end of the table and fumed, quietly. Peskin. A rank amateur, and not a very gifted one at that, before the trip to Africa or wherever the devil it was that he went; then, magically, with that one dish, shooting to the very forefront of the Club, holding them all in thrall, enchanting and tantalizing them and destroying their morale—

  Of course, it had occurred instantly to Mr. Frenchaboy that Peskin had resorted to some sort of jiggery-pokery with human flesh; and so—at considerable risk, and with little real hope—he had tried fillets of deceased chauffeur; but it was patently not the answer. No: The secret did not wholly lie in the ingredients, however rare some of them might be: breast of condor, he detected, Alsatian rat tails, et cetera; it lay also in the mixture. And finding this through trial and error was an
impossible task. Mr. Frenchaboy knew. He had tried. Simple enough! Peskin had found the perfect combination, probably by accident, and had every intention of holding it over their heads indefinitely. And so they would go on being second-raters, for it was true: Nothing could rival (and his mouth began to water as he thought of it) the Bouillabaisse à la Peskin. . . .

  “Delicious,” a last voice said, insincerely. “My compliments.”

  The members filed out the door, a disconsolate cortège all but the red-faced fellow, and soon Mr. Frenchaboy was left as alone as a stick of dynamite in an empty warehouse.

  He sat down and put his head on his arms.

  Dying, he thought: We are dying, thanks to that insufferable ass of a Peskin. Oh—I would do anything to bring back the enthusiasm, the éclat, the downright fizz that were the hallmarks of the club!

  He looked up. “Anything?” a small, silent voice inquired.

  And Mr. Frenchaboy answered, silently: “Anything.”

  “Then,” inquired the voice, “what are you waiting for?”

  Mr. Frenchaboy sighed. “He’s too well known. I’d be caught. They’d hang me.”

  “Not,” said the voice, “necessarily.”

  Mr. Frenchaboy listened. Then he went home and got his wallet and his small .32 revolver and drove to the home of Edmund Peskin.

  He knocked.

  “Yes?”

  “Peskin,” Mr. Frenchaboy said, stepping inside, “I will be candid. The Club is not pleased with you.”

  “Ah?”

  “The Club,” Mr. Frenchaboy said, more strongly, “is, in fact, not pleased at all.”

  “I can’t imagine what you’re talking about.”

  “Simply this. It has been an unspoken rule with us for twenty years that all recipes are to be shared. Yet you have insisted upon withholding the secret to your Bouillabaisse. Why?”

  “That,” Edmund Peskin said, “is, I think, my affair. I suggest that you tend to your pots and pans, and I’ll tend to mine.”

  Mr. Frenchaboy turned red. “You refuse to share the secret?”

  “Exactly.”

  “Very well. In that case, I have little choice.” Mr. Frenchaboy withdrew a large wallet from his breast pocket. “What is your price?”

  The large man looked at the wallet, and drew himself to his full stature. “I am not remotely interested in your crass offer,” he said. “There is only one copy of the recipe for Bouillabaisse à la Peskin in existence, and it reposes in my wall safe—where it shall remain. You are wasting your time and mine. Good night.”

  Peskin turned on his heel and started for the library.

  He never reached it.

  The report of the revolver sent Mr. Frenchaboy stone deaf for a moment; he trembled; then, ears ringing, he walked over to the still form on the rug, aimed carefully, and pulled the trigger twice more.

  The safe proved to be a flimsy affair: relatively little gunpowder was required to blow it apart.

  Within, there was a single sheet of paper, folded and tied with a blue ribbon. Mr. Frenchaboy had barely enough time to memorize the contents and burn the paper when the knocking began at the door.

  “Come in, gentlemen,” he called.

  They took him to jail at once, on suspicion of murder. But for all the brutality of his crime, Mr. Frenchaboy was a model prisoner, polite to the guards and uncomplaining of his gray situation. It is true that he fasted, but he made no fuss over it.

  Slow days plodded upon slow days. The trial was conducted in a peremptory manner and Mr. Frenchaboy was found guilty as charged and sentenced to hang; yet he bore up with a stolidity and good humor unmatched in the history of the great stone pile. Of him they said: “He’s a cool one, all right. Headed for the rope and he still makes jokes. It’s eerie!”

  Eerie or not, there seemed nothing that could destroy the little man’s imperturbability. He whistled loudly, read an astonishing number of cookbooks, and slept like a lamb before the slaughter.

  To the members of the Gourmet’s Club who visited him, he said only: “Eat well, my friends; the menace is gone!” and “Don’t worry. They’ll not hang me.”

  And so it went, for two months, during which time Mr. Frenchaboy ate only fresh bread and drank pure water.

  On the third month, third Tuesday night, a group of somber men came into his cell. “Frenchaboy,” they said, “it is almost time.”

  “Quite so,” Mr. Frenchaboy said, with a twinkle in his eyes.

  “Are you ready?”

  “Doesn’t that seem a rather pointless question?”

  The somber men looked at one another. One of them came forward. “Have you nothing to say?” he asked.

  “Nothing,” Mr. Frenchaboy said. “And you?”

  The man shook his head. “Although it is doubtful that you can have much of an appetite,” he intoned, “you are, of course, entitled to your choice of menu for this evening’s meal.”

  Mr. Frenchaboy sat forward. “Indeed?” he said, a sudden glitter to his voice. “Is that quite true? Anything I wish to eat, no matter what?”

  “Yes, yes,” the man said, as though pained by the discussion. “No matter what.”

  “Well, then!” Mr. Frenchaboy crossed his legs and leaned backward on his elbows. “For my last meal,” he said, “I should like—Bouillabaisse à la Peskin.”

  There was a moment of silence.

  “What was that?”

  “Bouillabaisse,” Mr. Frenchaboy repeated, “à la Peskin.”

  “Very well,” the man said, and exited.

  In a short time he was back.

  “The prison chef informs me that there is no such dish,” he said.

  “The prison chef,” Mr. Frenchaboy said, “is mistaken. For verification, I suggest you telephone any member of the Gourmet’s Club. They have all had Bouillabaisse à la Peskin at least once.”

  “In that case,” said the man, “perhaps you would care to give me the recipe, which I shall pass along to the chef.”

  “If only I could!” Mr. Frenchaboy sighed. “I’m afraid it’s out of the question, though. I haven’t the slightest idea of what goes into it, or in what quantities, you see.”

  The man paused, opened his mouth, closed it, and went away.

  An hour later he returned, looking trapped.

  “Mr. Frenchaboy,” he said, “it is impossible for us to serve you this Bouillabaisse à la Peskin. The recipe does not exist.”

  “What a pity,” Mr. Frenchaboy said, with deep regret. “I’d so looked forward to it. However, there is a bright side to the picture.”

  “Eh?”

  “I allude to the fact that now the sentence cannot be carried out.”

  The man blinked. “How is that, sir?”

  “Well,” Mr. Frenchaboy said, rubbing his thin hands together, “my understanding of the law is—and you have verified it—that a man is entitled to the meal of his choice before he is executed. I have made my request but it has not been granted. Therefore,” he smiled, “you can’t hang me.”

  The man looked a trifle panicky for a moment. Then he said, “I’ll have to find out about this.”

  “By all means,” Mr. Frenchaboy said. “But I think you’ll find that I’m correct.”

  He listened to the disappearing footsteps, and chuckled.

  Unfortunately, they did not find that Mr. Frenchaboy was correct.

  They decided to feed him hamburgers and malted milks and hang him anyway.

  But when they came to get him just before sunrise the following day, they discovered that the sentence could not be carried out after all. Mr. Frenchaboy was in no condition to be hanged.

  He had passed away in the night.

  Of acute indigestion.

  Black Country

  Spoof Collins blew his brains out, all right—right on out through the top of his head. But I don’t mean with a gun. I mean with a horn. Every night: slow and easy, eight to one. And that’s how he died. Climbing, with that horn, climbing up high. For w
hat? “Hey, man, Spoof—listen, you picked the tree, now come on down!” But he couldn’t come down, he didn’t know how. He just kept climbing, higher and higher. And then he fell. Or jumped. Anyhow, that’s the way he died.

  The bullet didn’t kill anything. I’m talking about the one that tore up the top of his mouth. It didn’t kill anything that wasn’t dead already. Spoof just put in an extra note, that’s all.

  We planted him out about four miles from town—home is where you drop: residential district, all wood construction. Rain? You know it. Bible type: sky like a month-old bedsheet, wind like a stepped-on cat, cold and dark, those Forty Days, those Forty Nights! But nice and quiet most of the time. Like Spoof: nice and quiet, with a lot underneath that you didn’t like to think about.

  We planted him and watched and put what was his down into the ground with him. His horn, battered, dented, nicked—right there in his hands, but not just there; I mean in position, so if he wanted to do some more climbing, all right, he could. And his music. We planted that too, because leaving it out would have been like leaving out Spoof’s arms or his heart or his guts.

  Lux started things off with a chord from his guitar, no particular notes, only a feeling, a sound. A Spoof Collins kind of sound. Jimmy Fritch picked it up with his stick and they talked a while—Lux got a real piano out of that git-box. Then when Jimmy stopped talking and stood there, waiting, Sonny Holmes stepped up and wiped his mouth and took the melody on his shiny new trumpet. It wasn’t Spoof, but it came close; and it was still The Jimjam Man, the way Spoof wrote it back when he used to write things down. Sonny got off with a high-squealing blast, and no eyes came up—we knew, we remembered. The kid always had it collared. He just never talked about it. And listen to him now! He stood there over Spoof’s grave, giving it all back to The Ol’ Massuh, giving it back right—“Broom off, white child, you got four sides!” “I want to learn from you, Mr. Collins. I want to play jazz and you can teach me.” “I got things to do, I can’t waste no time on a half-hipped young’un.” “Please, Mr. Collins.” “You got to stop that, you got to stop callin’ me ‘Mr. Collins,’ hear?” “Yes sir, yes sir.”—He put out real sound, like he didn’t remember a thing. Like he wasn’t playing for that pile of darkmeat in the ground, not at all; but for the great Spoof Collins, for the man Who Knew and the man Who Did, who gave jazz spats and dressed up the blues, who did things with a trumpet that a trumpet couldn’t do, and more; for the man who could blow down the walls or make a chicken cry, without half trying—for the mighty Spoof, who’d once walked in music like a boy in river mud, loving it, breathing it, living it.