The Family Frying Pan

by Bryce Courtenay

  Mr Petrov stopped and looked around at us, as the food in The Family Frying Pan was almost cooked, and even though we were all hungry I could see that there were none among us who did not wish him to continue.

  I have mentioned the procedure before but I will repeat it in just the way it happened to me. With the wooden tweezers I selected a single fish egg, a single precious grain, a tiny pearl of glory, and placed it carefully on the tip of my tongue. I had never before tasted this priceless jewel of the sea and now I rolled it around my palate as if I was imbued with an ancient instinct. The tiny ball of ecstasy seemed to dance on my tongue and skate across my palate as though it knew exactly where to go to stimulate my tastebuds. Quite suddenly there was an explosion in my head as loud, I swear, as a single cannon shot fired beside my ear. With it came a burst of the most exotic and exquisite flavour I had ever experienced. My eyes rolled back with divine pleasure and I began to moan. My arm lifted of its own accord and to my surprise I saw that I now held the tiny wooden spoon. Then my hand moved, again without any conscious effort on my part, and dipped the wooden spoon into the bowl of salt and sprinkled it over the beluga caviar in the bowl. Without hesitation and as if by magic, it returned and dipped once more into the salt and added yet another spoonful, then again, though this time slightly less. Still inwardly directed, I mixed the salt into the beluga, but with so little hand movement that my fingers hardly seemed to move.

  All of this occurred without a single thought entering my head and, when the mixing was complete, again without any rational decision from me, my hand collapsed into my lap and lost all its power. In fact, if I had wished to raise it to add more salt to the beluga I would not have been able to do so. But what lingered was the sublime taste, the unforgettable aftertaste of the single sturgeon’s egg in my mouth.

  I have no idea how long I sat waiting for the cathedral bells to ring, for I seemed to be in some sort of trance. But at last they rang out and the enormous doors were flung open. We rose and, leaving the salted caviar in the bowls behind, were ushered out into the great square to wait. It was now the dealers’ turn to enter the great church.

  There were twelve of these rich caviar merchants in their long woollen coats and shiny boots who are known as the Twelve Apostles of Beluga and they were responsible for ‘The Tasting of the Salt’. Five were chosen from Moscow, five from St Petersburg and two from Persia. Each had been selected for his immense knowledge of the sturgeon’s roe and the exceptional clarity of his taste for the finest beluga caviar. Each carried with him a pair of tiny tweezers made of pure gold with which he must now select a single egg from each of the hundred bowls and, having tasted it, mark it for its perfection of salt. No word was spoken between them, and they would simply write down the number of the bowl they had selected and hand it to the bishop.

  You may imagine my surprise when a priest came hurrying from the cathedral calling out a number, my number! The decision by the Twelve Apostles of Beluga had been unanimous and soon, with the church filled and with onlookers spilling over into the square and the bells ringing, the bishop announced my number again from the high altar.

  Everyone claimed it was a miracle. A blacksmith and not a fisherman had been given the beluga tongue by Peter the saint of all fishermen. In all of history such a thing had never happened before. Some of the old babushka immediately forecast that no good would come of it. But, of course, they were ignored, as most old women are in these modern times. ‘The holy saint of fishermen,’ the bishop explained, ‘worked in his own mysterious ways’, and the fact that the gift of a beluga tongue was given to a blacksmith made it no lesser than a great miracle. I was proclaimed the Salt of the twenty villages with a grand ceremony and a procession that led through the city streets, which was followed by a banquet held by the caviar merchants and attended by the city’s most important dignitaries. It was an occasion so auspicious that a person of my humble origin could not comprehend that men could aspire to such extravagant feasting. The food was far too rich for my blacksmith’s palate and the vodka was of such purity that it must have been distilled from the tears of God.

  In my own village we feasted for days on herring pie, roast lamb and sweetmeats of every kind. I was a hero who had put our village on the map and bestowed great honour on all our fisherfolk. Henceforth, no beluga fish would leave our stretch of the Volga without first having been salted by me.

  Needless to say, I was forced to give up black-smithing, for I was by definition a rich man who owned a horse and trap, and wore shiny boots and a coat that touched the ground. The candles in the village churches were lit for me with prayers for my good health, and children stepped aside and cheered as I passed. There seemed no end to my good fortune, except for one thing, the Salt must by holy tradition remain celibate, and I was forbidden to know the joy of a woman in my bed.

  I told myself that if a priest can take a vow of chastity and keep to it all of his life, then I too can overcome the primitive urge which conquers the minds of the strongest men. I was strong-willed by nature and single-minded in my endeavour to live up to my vocation and commitment to my people. To strengthen this resolve I reminded myself that I had been granted the gift of a beluga tongue from Saint Peter the Fisherman himself. It would be a small price to pay and I counted myself fortunate that with five spinster sisters to attend to my needs I possessed all the blessings of a married man save for connubial bliss.

  As to the job at hand, it seemed I was truly gifted. On every occasion I was called upon to travel to a village where they had made a killing of the sturgeon, it was the same result. I made no conscious decisions myself but no sooner had the precious jewel, the tiny black marble of pristine perfection, exploded on my tongue when my hand, moved by the Holy Spirit and guided by the Great Fisherman himself, moved to the salt pot of its own accord. Consequently the salting of the beluga was always performed to perfection, and the term malassol on a blue can of Volga caviar from our region of the river became especially prized by the caviar merchants.

  My reputation grew to the point where, in a few short years, my name became a legend right up into the furthermost reaches of the Volga. Soon all the big, important fish, the most precious and glorious beluga, carefully packed in ice, were brought from far beyond our river boundaries for me to sanctify with ‘the gift of salt’.

  And then one day as I was travelling in my trap to a village not ten kilometres away, where they had taken two great beluga fish that very morning, I saw a young woman limping at the side of the road. Her hair was the colour of flax and braided around her head in so many strands that I felt sure that if it was allowed to fall, it would surely have reached well below her slender waist. She looked up at me as I passed and her eyes were the colour of the summer sky, though they were filled with pain and distress and I could see that she was close to tears.

  I quickly brought my trap to a halt and, climbing down, walked the short distance to where she stood. She bowed her head and modestly averted her eyes and as I addressed her I felt sure that she knew who I was but she felt herself too humble to look at me.

  ‘Good morning, little sister, are you hurt?’ I asked gently. ‘Where are you going?’

  Without replying to my first question, she gave the name of the village to which I myself was travelling.

  ‘Come, you may ride with me, my name is Petrov Petrovitch and, while I am a big fellow, there is room on the trap for both of us.’

  ‘I cannot, sir,’ she said, without looking up. ‘I am not a married woman.’

  ‘But you are hurt, people will understand.’

  ‘My father will beat me, it would not be correct.’ She looked up for the first time and smiled, and it was as though an arrow had been shot through my heart. I know this mention of cupid’s arrow is not an original idea, but there is no other way to describe the sensation. One moment my heart was beating in my chest as calmly as the ticking of the gold watch attached to the chain strung across my stomach and the next it was as though…
well, as though it had been penetrated by an arrow!

  I swallowed hard, attempting to stay composed. ‘Do you know who I am?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes, sir, you are the Salt,’ she said quietly, her eyes once again downcast.

  ‘Well then, your father will know you are safe with me. Come along, I will help you up into my trap.’ I took her arm by the elbow and she limped to the trap. I could now see that she was in considerable pain. I grabbed her by her slim waist and lifted her into the seat. My big hands seemed to enclose her entire form, and I could feel the warm flesh under her coarse linen skirt. I am ashamed to say my throat tightened and went suddenly dry, and I was forced to cough in an attempt to conceal my extreme agitation. As she was now on the trap seat and her ankle was at the level of my waist, I could see that it was red and inflamed.

  ‘You have sprained it badly, perhaps even broken it,’ I said clumsily, my voice sounding strange to me as though it had risen another octave.

  ‘No, sir, it was a scorpion.’

  ‘A scorpion!’ I exclaimed, my dismay immediately apparent. It would take us half an hour of hard driving to reach her village. I anxiously looked again at the ankle and saw that the colour of her foot and the surrounding area was rapidly turning a deep scarlet and was beginning to spread up her leg as the poison travelled up to her heart. The sting from a large scorpion can kill, and I saw the two tiny marks where the creature had struck her on the arch of her instep, injecting its deadly poison directly into the vein that lies near the surface of the skin. It is a large vein, I have since learned, called the Long Saphenous, and rides from the instep up the entire length of the leg, and is an easy passage for the blood pumping its way back to the heart.

  I looked at the stricken girl and could see that she was in terrible pain. I knew instantly that we could not make the distance to the village in time to save her life. All fishermen carry a sharp gutting knife on their belts and, although I was now perceived to be a gentleman and had never been a fisherman, it was a habit carried over from childhood when I had worked on the boats.

  I reached for the knife and at the same time spoke to the girl. ‘I am going to cut the bite and try to suck the poison out.’ I grabbed the trap whip which had a handle of plaited leather and handed it to her. ‘Here, bite hard onto this!’ She nodded, but by now the pain was so intense that she moaned and sobbed, and her hands shook violently as she took the small leather whip and bit down hard.

  Using the gutting knife I cut deep into the scorpion puncture marks, opening the flesh on the instep where the vein is still fairly small, and even closer to the surface. Putting my mouth against the wound, I sucked and immediately spat. I continued for several minutes tasting her fresh blood in my mouth and spitting it onto the ground at my feet. I hoped I had acted swiftly enough to suck most of the poison from the vein, sufficient anyway, to prevent it from killing her.

  At one stage I glanced up at the girl and saw that she had the handle of the trap whip grimly clamped between her teeth and that her eyes were tightly closed against the pain and her cheeks were wet with tears of distress. My heart went out to this beautiful young woman who was suffering so much. I continued to suck and spit for another five minutes and then I took a small flask of vodka from the pocket of my coat and poured a little of it on the open wound. I held my thumb hard against the vein to stop the blood flow. After I had rinsed my mouth with a swig of vodka and spat the contents out, I removed the trap whip from the girl’s mouth. ‘Here, drink!’ I said, holding the flask to her lips. Even in this state of severe distress her lips looked soft and inviting, and I am ashamed to say I felt the stirring deep inside me again and the pain in my heart returned. She parted her lips to take the vodka and coughed as the fiery liquid reached her throat, but she managed to keep it down.

  I removed my coat and placed it over her shoulders and wrapped it around her to keep her warm. Then I tore the sleeve from my blouse and made a tourniquet above her knee, blushing violently as I raised her skirt to tie and then to tighten the bandage. Quite soon the blood flow began to lessen and, wrenching the remaining sleeve from my arm, I bandaged her foot. Then I leapt up into the trap and we set off at a furious pace for the village.

  You can see I am not a small man and the seat of the trap was not very wide and so her body, enveloped in my coat, was forced against mine. Although the coat was of fine heavy wool and I now tell myself I couldn’t possibly have felt her ravishing body through the thick material, it was as though she wore nothing. The flesh of her thigh was pressed against my own and, despite her condition, I thought I must surely die of the pure ecstasy. I could do nothing to stop the feelings that coursed through my blood and the terrible beating of my sinful heart, and I prayed silently to Saint Peter the Fisherman to make my thoughts pure and stop the ache in my throat.

  Twice on the way she vomited, but the tourniquet effectively cut the blood supply from her leg so that by the time we reached the village it was clear that I had been successful in sucking out most of the scorpion’s poison and that she would live.

  I was late for the caviar salting. I carried her into her father’s cottage and instructed her mother to remove the tourniquet above her knee. Her young brother had been sent to fetch an old crone, who was said to know how to treat a scorpion bite. I departed, but not before learning her name was Katya Markova.

  ‘It is a love story! A beautiful love story!’ Tamara Polyansky cries, clapping her hands together in excitement. ‘Mr Petrov, you had fallen in love and…’ She stops in mid-sentence, as no doubt Miss Showbiz with the slow-motion brain suddenly remembers that women are forbidden to someone who possesses a beluga tongue. Tamara now brings her hands to her mouth, which has formed into an ‘o’ of consternation.

  ‘Oh dear, I am so sorry, I am so very sorry, Mr Petrov,’ she says in a small, pathetic voice.

  Mr Petrov sighs, then smiles a sad smile and spreads his hands. ‘You are quite right, Miss Polyansky, I was hopelessly in love. Head over heels in love, besotted and enchanted and unable to think of anything else but the beautiful Katya Markova.’

  In a week the news had spread around the villages and the village priest came to see me. ‘Is it true, Petrov Petrovitch?’ he asked.

  ‘Holy Father, I am pure in my heart,’ I told him. ‘I have not taken Katya Markova into my bed, but I cannot deny she has entered my heart.’

  ‘You cannot have her, Petrov Petrovitch, you are the Salt. Would you destroy the livelihood of twenty villages for a silly girl?’

  ‘Father, I have prayed to God and to Saint Peter the Fisherman all night for four nights that my heart will be mended, that the love I feel for Katya Markova will be taken from me, wrung from my heart like a sea sponge. I simply don’t know how I shall endure the pain of it if it continues for I am aware that I cannot have her and I will live with this, and pray that God will forgive the thoughts in my head and the desire in my heart. I shall swear on the Holy Bible that I will not take Katya Markova to my bed, and will remain the Salt for as long as I am needed by the river people.’

  ‘Bless you, my son! You will one day enter the gates of paradise to the clapping of angels’ wings and the sounding of trumpets!’ Then he added, ‘A woman is a wonderful thing for a man, but a beluga tongue, now that is something else!’

  Mr Petrov looks up and shrugs and it seems he had come to the end of his story which, I must say, I didn’t consider a very good ending. The boyski doesn’t get the girlski and all that’s left is a fish mouth? Life goes on ho hum, so to speak. What kind of garbage is that? A miserable ending, no less! ‘So tell me already, Mr P,’ I say in a sweet voice which hides my disappointment. ‘You remained the Salt and you were rich and famous and daily candles were lit and prayers said on your behalf. And you drove a horse and trap and wore shiny boots up to your knees and a pure wool coat that swept the ground, so how come you’re sitting on that log with patches on your toukis?’

  The others all laugh, but in a good-natured way. Mr Petrov has three
patches on the back of his trousers and each is of a different colour, one red, the other blue and the last brown. He is a practical man, but for neatness and sewing he knows from nothing already.

  ‘That is a very good question, Mrs Moses.’ Mr Petrov looks at The Family Frying Pan bubbling on the fire and then at all of us, knowing that we are all hungry and that the food is ready. ‘That is, if you are still interested?’

  ‘Ye… es… er,’ everyone says, but in a tone which contains a certain degree of politeness, and I can see that the demands of an empty stomach are greater than the need for another empty ending.

  ‘A good ending should not be served to an empty stomach,’ I say. ‘First we eat and then the ending will be even more satisfying.’ Such a diplomat I am becoming already, I think to myself.

  After we have eaten, turnips and cabbage mixed with a little fat and with three large potatoes, not so bad, Mr Petrov concludes his story.

  ‘With the story of my love affair with Katya Markova put to rest by the priests in every village church, who, no doubt instructed by the bishop, all preach a sermon about the triumph of the spirit over the needs of the flesh, honour and dignity is restored. Candles burn again at the altar of Saint Peter the Fisherman, giving thanks to the saint for having saved the situation. The general conclusion among the fishermen is that a beluga tongue is a great blessing and, besides, is a gift from God and the saint himself, whereas a woman is only gossip and trouble and, in the end, no gift at all.’

  ‘Ha!’ Olga Zorbatov snorts.

  ‘But what of Katya? Does she love you? Is her heart broken?’ Tamara Polyansky, Miss Showbiz, asks.