by Alexis Jenni
I slipped though the crowd of basket-carriers slowly circulating among the stalls. I was looking for the Chinese. I tracked them by smell. I followed the strange smell of Chinese food, that utterly distinctive scent that is unfamiliar at first, but once smelt is never forgotten, because it is instantly recognizable, always the same, due to the use of certain ingredients and certain practices about which I know nothing, but whose effects I can locate from a distance because of the smell.
Given that they eat this way all the time, do the Chinese smell the way they do? What I mean is, does the smell cling to them, to their skin, their mouths, their sweat, their armpits, their groin? To find out, you would need to slowly make love to a beautiful Chinese woman – or a not so beautiful one, it hardly matters – and lick her all over in order to make sure. To know whether the difference between human races boils down to a difference of diet, a difference in eating habits that, over time, permeates one’s skin, one’s whole being, including language and finally thought, would require a meticulous study of the flesh.
Following this scent I quickly found a Chinese butcher. Glossy tripaillons hung beneath a canvas awning. I do not know the word for this cut of offal. I am not sure that it has a name in French or in any European language: it consists of the viscera, intact with nothing left out, crimson entrails, hung by the trachea from a meat hook. Since I know a little anatomy, I can vaguely tell which organs are which, without being able to precisely identify the animal: I suspect it is a bird or some sort of feathered creature.
I do not know what the Chinese do with tripaillons. The Chinese cookbooks you can buy in France make no mention of it. They mention only prime cuts, to be carved with a knife in accordance with carefully delineated rules of butchery, following the natural curves of the animal. They never show revolting entrails, despite the fact they can be eaten. Those hanging beneath the awning are lifelike enough to make you shudder, and I shudder even more to think how they must be harvested. There is no way that I know of to dissolve the skin, the flesh, the bones, leaving only the entrails intact, still in their natural arrangement. Consequently, it would require sticking a hand down the animal’s throat, perhaps while it is still alive, grasping the aortic bulb or some other purchase point, twisting to rip it loose, then yanking it free: it yields, and the whole of the insides come out in your hand, still steaming and breathing. You swiftly plunge them into red caramel sauce to preserve them in their original forms, to display them without embellishment or invention; but how could you invent such organs? How could you invent tripe? Could you invent the inside of the body, its deepest flesh, quivering, dying, hung? How can you invent what is real? It is enough to seize it and to show it.
And so I stopped beneath the Chinese butcher’s awning, admiring the red-glazed entrails. Oh, Chinese wisdom! Applied to gestures and to the flesh! I have no idea how to eat these lacquered viscera, no idea how to cook them. I cannot even begin to imagine; but every time I pass here I see them hanging, so real, so crimson, and I stop and dream, and it makes my mouth water, though I do not dare to swallow. I finally decide to buy a knot of entrails. The white-smocked butcher’s French is difficult to understand. He speaks Chinese with most of his customers. I decide not to ask questions, since any explanation will doubtless be tedious and probably disappointing; besides, my imagination will direct me. Confidently and with a knowing air, I gesture to the viscera and he wraps them in sealed plastic.
I set off again through the crowd, pushing through the throng, the shopkeepers’ cries, the endless chatter, the scents of all manner of food; I feel unaccountably happy carrying my heavy plastic package.
But it would not be enough to feed our guests. My nostrils quivering, I sought out something else. A heady vapour stopped me. Oily and fruity, alarmingly rich, it wafted from a pot-bellied cauldron hanging from a trivet over a gas flame. A fat man girdled with an apron that trailed on the ground was stirring the contents. The crockpot came up to his waist and the handle of his wooden spoon was like a truncheon; I would have had trouble using it with one hand, but he did so as effortlessly as if stirring coffee with a teaspoon. What he was stirring was a deep red, almost black, that bubbled in the centre, while herbs and slivers of onion eddied on the surface. ‘Boudin!’ he shouted. ‘Genuine boudin noir!’ He emphasized the ‘genuine’. ‘Not for the faint hearted this: genuine blood sausage!’
It smelled incredibly good, it shivered deliciously, making a little noise as it simmered like the gleeful snicker you make when doing something horrifying but alluring. A young lad with jug ears and a few stray hairs on his chin brought over some buckets, staggering under the weight. The buckets were filled with blood: crimson, completely opaque, flecked at the edges with foam. The young helper proffered the cargo with difficulty and the maître charcutier seized a bucket in one huge, hairy, purple hand and, in a single motion, tipped the blood of a whole slaughtered pig into the pot, and the bubbling began again. He was stirring a cauldron of blood using a ladle with a handle like a truncheon and spooned the contents into lengths of intestines until they were full to bursting. He worked in a cloud of heavy, fragrant steam. I bought several metres of boudin noir. When I asked him not to cut it up but to leave it intact, he seemed surprised, but coiled the boudin up carefully without asking questions. He double-bagged it, so that the plastic would not give way, and handed it to me with a wink. This second package counterbalanced the first, and increased my satisfaction tenfold.
What I had was good, but it would not be enough; entrails are not everything. I needed to find other parts if my banquet was to be a triumph.
I found inspiration in an African man. He was hawking loudly in a deep bass voice, shouting at men, calling them ‘boss’, laughing all the while, greeting the women with a wink and a compliment tailored to each one, and they smiled as they passed. He was selling ripe mangoes and little bananas, jagged heaps of spices, garishly coloured fruit and prepared poultry: carcasses plucked, wings clipped, claws intact. From him I bought bright red cockscombs that seemed pumped with hydrogen, about to burst into flame or float away. As he wrapped them, he talked meaningfully about their beneficial effects. He held them out with a smile that filled me with joy.
I’ve lost my head, I thought. And besides, two heads are better than one, as they say. I found it with a Berber. Dressed in a grey smock, the sleeves pushed up to reveal forearms with muscles and tendons like cables, the old butcher was deboning a sheep with a cleaver. Behind him, other carcasses looked on. Rows of heads were grilling in a rotisserie. You could watch them whirl through a slightly grubby pane of glass; they turned in fits and starts, aligned in a row, browning over a low heat. Their eyes had rolled back in their heads, their tongues lolled from the corners of their mouths; neatly aligned, cut off at the larynx, the sheep’s heads had been revolving for hours in the rotisserie, golden brown and sizzling, mouth-watering, each individual recognizable. I bought three. He wrapped them in newspaper, put them in a carrier bag and, with a nod that spoke volumes, he held them out to me. This is a delicacy enjoyed usually only by elderly Arab gourmands, those content to wait for death. That made me even happier.
Weighed down with fragrant parcels, I headed home. I tossed them on the table and they made a squelching noise. I opened the bags and the aromas escaped. Smells are volatile particles, they break free from corporeal forms and fashion an image in the air you sense in the depths of your soul. Some of the foodstuffs I had brought home gave off a physical scent: I could see a bluish vapour rising from the bags, a heavy gas which crept to the ground, clung to the walls, pervaded the room.
Océane saw it too, her eyes were wide and staring, I could not tell whether she was about to scream or throw up; she did not seem to know either. And so she said nothing. Before her, the bags slumped on the table, they moved of their own accord. I unpacked the meat and as I finished she gave a gulp of distaste, but recovered herself.
‘You found all that at the market? Out in the open air? It’s disgusting!’
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br /> ‘What is? The open air?’
‘Of course not: that is! Isn’t it against health and safety regulations?’
‘I have no idea. But look at the colours. Red, gold. The brilliant lustre, the bronze, all the colours of the flesh. Just leave it to me.’
I tied on a large apron, put my hands on her shoulders and steered her out of the kitchen.
‘I’ll take care of everything,’ I reassured her. ‘Take some “me” time, make yourself pretty, you’re good at that.’
My private enthusiasm was not the kind of feeling I could discuss: I closed the door behind her. I poured myself a glass of white wine. The light streaming through the liquid was the colour of pristine bronze; the bouquet was that of a pickaxe in the hot sun striking a limestone boulder. I took out my tools: the handles of the knives fitted neatly in my palm; I felt a flash of inspiration. I arranged the cuts of meat on the table. Each was recognizably a piece of a slaughtered animal. My heart raced to see them so recognizable, and I was grateful to them for appearing just as they were. After a moment’s pause, the hesitancy one feels before a blank page, I took the knife to them.
In an orange haze of alcohol and blood, I performed culinary alchemy; I transmuted the breath of life that swelled these cuts into symbolic colours, appetizing textures, scents that were recognizably those of food.
When I opened the kitchen door again, my fingers were tentative, everything I touched slipped from my fingers, which left a reddish trail. And everything I saw, when it moved, left a luminous wake, a vectorial aura that took some time to fade.
Océane appeared before me and I could not fault her. She was sheathed in a white dress, her every contour glittering with silvery light. Her body thus displayed on the plinth of her stilettos filled out her curves: her buttocks, her thighs, her breasts, her delicious belly, her shoulders, everything shimmered as the silk caught new reflections as she moved. Her hands with their painted nails fluttered with gentle, birdlike movements, stroking the air, touching objects, unconsciously arranging everything more perfectly. She moved slowly around the table as she laid the place settings and her slowness troubled me. Her intricate hairdo gleamed like polished oak, revealing the nape of her neck, the curve of her ears studded with diamonds. Her powdered lashes flickered like the wings of a languid butterfly, each flicker setting the perfumed space around her aquiver. She laid settings at the four cardinal points, arranging the plates at perfect intervals, the cutlery forming tangents, the glasses in perfect triads. At the centre of the table, on a white embroidered table runner, the candles cast shadows and soft reflections on the silver, the glass, the china. The small tongues of flame painted her dress with fleeting, iridescent touches as delicate as caresses.
When I entered, wearing my bloodstained apron, my hands crimson even under the fingernails, with curious stains at the corners of my lips, the little flames flickered and threw ghastly shadows on my face. Her eyes widened, her mouth gaped, she started back and just then the doorbell rang. Her recoil became a move towards the door.
‘I’ll finish off,’ I told her. ‘Have everyone come in and sit down.’
I rushed back into the kitchen and closed the door. She will be perfect, irreproachable, the ideal hostess to our friends – whose names escape me just now – expertly steering the conversation, radiating calm, making tactful excuses for my absence until I appear. She will be faultless. It is something she can force herself to do. She always succeeds. Which, when you think about it, is a frightening miracle.
The scents from my cooking crept past the door, straining at the hinges, cleaving the soft-wood panels, stealing through the gap at the bottom, and dispersed. But when I came out and shouted ‘Grub’s up!’ a little too loudly, it seemed as though they did not suspect a thing. Sitting on our sofas, they were sipping champagne and chatting carelessly, their relaxed poses exhibiting a cool indifference.
Excitement coursed through my veins, fuelled by the white wine – I had drained the bottle. My loud, hoarse voice fractured the carefully calibrated background noise of soft chatter and music crafted by Océane. I had not taken off my apron or wiped my lips. When I burst into the soft halo of the living room, the atmosphere became so heavy, so stilted, that I found it hard to speak; but that may have been the drink or a failure of my excitement. I found it difficult to move under their watchful eyes, difficult to fill my lungs with this rarefied air, so that I could say a few words they might understand.
‘Come,’ I said, a little more quietly. ‘Come, sit down. Dinner is ready.’
Océane, smilingly, ushered them to their seats; I carried in huge platters. I set before them a horrifying mass of pungent smells and bloody forms.
I had arranged the Chinese entrails to represent the mythic cabbage under whose leaves we are all found, that fecund vegetable that does not grow in any garden. I created a nest of green cabbage leaves and piled the crimson entrails at its centre, the trachea exposed, arranged as they would be inside the bird itself. I had made no attempt to slice it, since preserving the entrails intact was what gave the dish its piquancy.
I had lightly sautéed the cock crests, reflating them to accentuate the vivid red. I served them, piping hot and swollen, on a black platter that offered a striking contrast, a smooth plate on which they glided, quivered and shifted.
‘You pick them up with chopsticks – I almost said tweezers – and you can dip them in this yellow sauce. But be careful, the yellow sauce is laden with chilli, packed with pepper, tinted with turmeric. If you prefer, you might try this one. It is a soft green, but just as powerful. It is a mixture of onion, garlic and daikon radish. The first will scorch your mouth, the second will scorch your nose. The choice is up to you; but as soon as you try one, it will be too late.’
The fried cockscombs – I had forgotten to drain off the oil – were wildly sliding around the black plate. A brusque movement as I set down the platter sent one of them skittering and then arcing into the air as if from a trampoline, where it hit the hand of one of our guests. He flinched and jerked his hand away, but said nothing. I kept going.
I had chosen not to slice the black pudding, and had cooked it only gently. I had coiled it into a spiral on a large hemispherical platter; a light dusting of curry powder and ginger gave off a piquant aroma.
Finally, in the centre of the table, I placed the three severed heads, the sheep’s heads arranged on a raised platter, nestled on a bed of shredded salad leaves, each gazing in a different direction, eyes rolled back, tongues protruding, like a parody of the three monkeys who see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil. Stupid fuckers.
‘There we go,’ I said.
There was a silence. The pungent scents filled the room. Were it not for the fact that our guests were caught up in this moment of unreality, they might have felt awkward.
‘This is disgusting!’ one man said in a shrill falsetto. I don’t know who, because I never saw any of them again. I forgot them and even moved to live elsewhere, so that I would never again encounter them in the street. But the precise musicality of the word he used to express his unease often springs to mind: the ‘d’ like a hiccup, the long ‘u’, the final ‘ng’ dragged out like the snarl of an aeroplane making a belly landing. I remember the cadence of the word better than his face, because he had said the word ‘disgusting’ like an actor in a 1950s film, when it was the crudest word that could be uttered in public. In our beautiful living room, in the presence of the irreproachable Océane, this was all he could think of to say. They did what they could to express their disapproval of me, but, steeled by booze and bravura, oblivious to everyone but myself, I heard nothing. They should have spoken to me plainly, but unable to find the words – because in our social circle, language is so degraded as to be useless – they tried to communicate their disapproval with their eyes, tried to give me the withering glare that is usually effective. But they could not hold my gaze, they gave up trying. I am not sure why; but something in my eyes made them turn away, so that
they would not be sucked in, wounded, consumed.
‘Let me serve you,’ I said with a politeness they would happily have foregone.
I used my hands to serve, since there is no fitting tool but a hand – and a bare hand at that. Using my fingers I prised open the generative cabbage, grabbed fistfuls of the glistening entrails and proceeded to break up the hearts, the spleens, to split the livers; with a crimson thumb I ruptured the tracheae, the larynges, the colons, to reassure my guests as to the degree of doneness: for such meats only the gentlest heat is appropriate, the flame should be a caress, a rosy touch: inside the flesh should still bleed. The cook’s flame should not be that of the potter, which goes to the heart of a thing and transmogrifies its very substance; the cook’s flame serves only to set the form, to fix the colours in their natural delicacy, it should not spoil the taste, the tang of animal functions, the flavour of animation now suspended, the taste of life, which, beneath its apparent stillness, must always be fluid, evanescent. Beneath the delicate, flushed surface, the blood remained. Taste it. This taste – the taste for blood – is one we never lose. Dogs that have tasted blood, they say, have to be put down before they become murderous monsters. But Man is different. He has a taste for blood, but he controls it; we each keep it to ourselves, nurture it on an inner fire and never show it. No more than the dog, when Man tastes blood, he does not forget; but the dog is an emasculated wolf and if he should change his nature, he must be killed, whereas Man, once he has tasted blood, is finally whole.
I served offal to everyone, a little more to the men than to the women, with a certain smile to explain the disparity. The heads I served only to the men, with an exaggerated wink they did not understand, but which made sure they did not refuse. As I placed each head on a plate, I turned it so the eyes stared at the women, and from each head, with its milky, sightless eyes, the tongue lolled out in a ludicrous expression that was excruciatingly funny. I burst out laughing, but no one joined me. I redoubled the nudges and the winks, the meaningful smiles, but it did nothing to dispel their terror. They did not understand. They may have suspected, but they understood nothing.
