The Discovery of Chocolate

by James Runcie

  ‘I do not have the luxury to choose,’ she replied firmly.

  Feeling the lace strings between my fingers, I realised , that I could either pull them as tightly as possible, or unfurl her clothes once more. I wanted to ravish her all over again and began kissing the back of her neck, pushing her down onto the bed, but Claudia forced herself away from underneath me.

  ‘You must go. My next guest is about to arrive.’

  ‘Let me pay him to go away.’

  ‘No. For if I lose him, and then later lose you, I have nothing,’ she said, pulling on her nightgown.

  ‘Don’t you love me?’ I asked.

  ‘How can I love you? Do you love me?’

  ‘I like you,’ I said. ‘I need you.’

  ‘But you do not love me?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then what am I supposed to do?’

  ‘Do you hope to love?’

  ‘I am beyond love,’ said Claudia.

  ‘You are too young to be so sad.’

  ‘Love is rarer than you think.’

  It became distressing to visit Claudia. She had closed herself off to so much of the world that after several weeks in her company I decided that I must do something to arrest her air of sorrow and mistrust. I wanted to arouse her, to bring her back to life, to make her feel once more. Perhaps we could even redeem one another.

  And so, on my birthday in early June, I gathered a basket of the first strawberries of summer and asked her to light a small fire. She told me that the room was quite warm enough and that the last of the frosts must surely have passed, but I persuaded her that the most delightful of sensory experiences awaited her.

  After placing the strawberries in a crystal bowl, I began to melt a dark and bitter chocolate in an improvised bain-marie over the fire. If the Marquis de Sade had been so successful with his raspberries, I knew that I could easily match his endeavours with a fuller and more succulent fruit.

  And so, as the chocolate melted, its aroma filling the room, Claudia and I slowly undressed each other, letting our clothes fall silently to the floor. We knelt down by the fire, and then began to dip the tips of the sweet wild strawberries into the warm and newly melted chocolate, feeding each other in front of the flames.

  The taste was extraordinary. Our mouths were filled with the dark and bitter fullness of the chocolate and then instantly refreshed by the tender succulence of the newly ripe fruit. We kissed, rolling the taste and texture of chocolate and strawberry backwards and forwards between us, losing ourselves completely in this shared moment of hunger and satisfaction, as if we were consuming the richest, darkest and sweetest flavours that had ever been created, no longer knowing if we were taking or giving, no longer aware of where our bodies began or ended.

  The room was filled with heat and flesh and chocolate. Even when we thought that we might be sated by passion, the fresh taste of the strawberries cleansed and revived us, letting us plunge once more into the dark and secret world of our desire.

  I took up my pastry brush and began to paint Claudia’s breasts with chocolate, covering her pale, alabaster skin with its darkness, stroking her nipples with an upward movement so that they had never been so hard or so high.

  Then I began to lick the chocolate gently from her breasts. Its very thickness meant that nothing could be rushed, that this moment must seem to last for ever, as if we had been granted the secret of eternal longing. I was child and man; Claudia was both mother and lover. I could sense and even taste her milk beneath the chocolate as I sucked at her breast. We had entered a world beyond time.

  At last I looked up to see Claudia’s face, to find the light in her eyes, to see her happy.

  She smiled fondly as she saw that both my nose and my mouth were now coated in chocolate.

  Then she looked down at her breasts.

  ‘Oh,’ she said, quietly, suddenly sad, ‘look.’

  ‘You are beautiful,’ I whispered, before resuming my task.

  ‘No,’ she replied, ‘look where the chocolate falls, in the aureole, in the rivulets around my breasts. It shows the lines. It shows my age.’

  ‘Let me lick you clean,’ I murmured.

  But Claudia took my head in her hands, and lifted me gently away.

  ‘No. Stop now. Please. I cannot bear it. I’m sorry.’

  To abandon my desire was almost impossible, yet Claudia was distracted and insistent. Once again she was struck by the strange melancholy that hovered over her, ready to possess her, offering only occasional moments of respite, so that any happiness in her life must always be fleeting.

  Half-covered in chocolate, she turned her back to me and began to sleep.

  ‘Let me rest now. Go when you are ready.’

  It was over.

  Even though at one point we had seemed outside time, and even though it seemed that I would live for ever, nothing of love and tenderness could last: everything must fade from me.

  It was three o’clock in the morning. The fire was out and the night was cold. Rising from the bed, I cleared away the remains of the chocolate, washed the bowl, and gathered up the discarded strawberries. Normal life must resume, I thought, with all its tired familiarity.

  But then, while dressing, as I turned to look at Claudia for one last time, I noticed that the chocolate over her right breast had begun to harden in the cool of the night. I stopped, watching as she slept on, unaware of my observations. The coating seemed, if such a thing were possible, to grow in perfection with each minute that passed.

  It occurred to me that I might be able to make this moment last after all. I might not be the finest of sculptors who could carve Claudia’s body eternally in stone, but I knew that there was a world in which even I could be an artist.

  Here was my chance.

  I would preserve Claudia’s nipple in chocolate.

  After taking a few moments to consider the exact course of my actions, and when I could bear the suspense no longer, I leaned over Claudia’s sleeping body, and took the chocolate gently between my fingernails, easing it away from her breast.

  I do not know if I had ever seen anything so beautiful.

  Claudia turned, as if waking, and I kissed her lightly on the shoulder.

  Holding the chocolate shell, which now bore the shape and beauty of Claudia’s breast, I opened the door and left the room.

  And, as I walked back through the streets of Vienna in the early morning light, I thought that life need not necessarily be a disaster, that small moments of beauty can be reclaimed from even the most impossible of situations, and that I might be able to create at least one thing each day, however trifling, that would make life worth living.

  For it is often in the smallest of details that a life must be lived.

  Unfortunately, the next time that I visited Claudia she was no happier.

  ‘Do not wish for love from me. Do not think that chocolate escapade will make a difference to our lives.’

  ‘I wish only that you were not so melancholy,’ I replied.

  ‘My sorrow is not your responsibility. You cannot take the cares of my life upon your shoulders.’

  This much was true.

  ‘Have you ever known love?’ I asked.

  ‘I have learned not to expect its return.’

  ‘But why are you so bleak about the future?’

  ‘I have seen men’s minds.’

  ‘How do you know so much of life already?’ I asked as Claudia opened a bottle of brandy.

  ‘Because I know what it is to be rejected. Because I have looked life in the face.’

  ‘And now?’ I asked.

  ‘I try not to look at it at all. It’s like staring into the sun.’

  She handed me the brandy, and then began to brush her hair at the dressing table.

  ‘Do you think that I will ever love again?’ I asked.

  ‘I do not know.’ She tilted her head to one side, and I could see her face reflected in the mirror, looking back at me as I lay on the bed. ‘Perhaps
you will not love until you learn to think less of yourself.’

  ‘I can hardly think less than I do already.’

  ‘I do not mean degree. I mean quantity.’

  ‘You mean I am selfish?’

  ‘You told me once that you have loved and been loved in return. You are lucky to have loved at all.’

  ‘Sometimes I can hardly remember it.’

  Claudia was exasperated, and pushed her hair away from her face as an angry flush spread across her cheeks.

  ‘You are being ridiculous. What of the love you could give in the future, have you not thought of that? Have you not thought that you might change a life?’

  ‘No. I no longer have the confidence. I do not believe that anyone’s life could be improved by mine.’

  ‘Then why do you live?’

  ‘I have often asked myself that question, but it seems I cannot die.’

  ‘We all must die.’

  ‘I once thought so; but I cannot think of it.’

  ‘Well,’ said Claudia, as she wound a black ribbon in her long red hair, ‘you could always kill yourself.’

  ‘I suppose I could,’ I replied fiercely.

  Claudia tied the black silk into a tight knot. She was beginning to annoy me. I did not enjoy being criticised, and she did not seem grateful for my interest. I vowed that if such conversations were to become a regular part of my visits then perhaps I should never see her again.

  ‘Why don’t you think about it then?’ Claudia added. ‘It would certainly put a stop to your decadent pessimism. Will I see you next week?’

  She held out her hand.

  ‘Tuesday,’ I said meekly, paying her the money.

  ‘As long as you don’t throw yourself in the Danube?’

  She hesitated for a moment and then kissed me softly on the lips.

  ‘I’m sorry to tease you, my love. Try and be more cheerful next time.’

  ‘I will be,’ I replied crossly.

  It was not me who needed to be happier.

  Finding myself alone once more in the night-time streets of Vienna, I did not want to go home. There was so much to think about, and Claudia’s words had begun to rage around my head. It seemed that we needed each other, and that, although a part of me found her irksome, I could not live without her. She had a hold on me that I did not understand.

  How could I shake it off?

  I stopped at a bar to warm myself and drank once more.

  On the other side of the street stood a large and solidly respectable house. A Midsummer party of men and women, dressed in their finest clothes, could be seen drinking champagne and dancing together in the lighted windows of the first floor, like figures in a dream. They glided past the window, endlessly circling the room, as if they were telling the stories of their lives, waltzing towards an inevitable oblivion.

  ‘Perhaps I could love Claudia?’ I thought, attacking my third brandy of the night. If only I could learn the art of generosity and stop thinking about myself. Then I might find love again. Here it might lie, right on my doorstep.

  But surely she would never love me? It would be too difficult. I would have to explain everything about my slowness, my immortality, and the promises I had made to Ignacia. I would have to tell her even more of my faults and my inadequacies, and then, even if I did manage to convince her that I was not mad, I would have to marry her, and there might perhaps be children, and it would all become horribly complicated as our lives would be lived at such different rates. I would watch them grow up and pass me. They would die, and I would outlive them all.

  No, it was impossible. I could not love Claudia. It would be better to travel the world alone.

  Returning to my brandy, I began to think once more about the purpose of my life.

  If it was all lived in order to come to terms with death, then what was I waiting for? I had understood life’s meaning, no one would miss me if I died, and I might just as well get on with it. Claudia’s words rang in my ears. ‘You could always kill yourself.’

  Suicide.

  That was the answer. A noble and brave end.

  After all, it was good enough for Socrates.

  I left the bar and walked on through the streets. A strange lightness now entered my soul. ‘As long as you don’t throw yourself in the Danube.’

  Suddenly my life had a purpose it had never known before. I understood that the meaning of life was but a preparation for death and that I was now heading straight into its heart.

  I walked out into the Weihburggasse and listened to the bells of the Franziskankirche strike midnight – as if they were already tolling for my funeral. I then turned into the Rotenturmstrasse and made for the Marian Bridge. To die in the Danube would be a noble end. I would line my pockets with stones, and throw myself into its hostile currents.

  I stopped at a small bar and drank heavily once more, persuading the barman to let me leave with an extra bottle of brandy against the cold before the dawn.

  Reaching the Marian Bridge, I drained the bottle, climbed up on the low brick promontory and took a last moonlit look at the world in which I had lived for so long.

  This was it.

  I reached into my pocket, and found the chocolate cast of Claudia’s nipple. I had no need of it now. Taking it into my mouth, I thought of her for the last time. This would show her how serious I was.

  I bit into the chocolate nipple, swallowed, and steadied myself on the bridge.

  Come, death, embrace me.

  I threw myself forward, out into the dark night air, hitting the water and spiralling down into a deep underworld, unable to see what lay below, frozen in dark waters of fear, as my body was sucked down into an everlasting abyss.

  But then, as death’ began to close its final arms around me, I felt a strange tugging at my bow-tie, and could just discern four long legs, and the familiar cavity of a canine chest.

  Pedro!

  This must be a dream, a final vision of death, of life passing before my eyes?

  But no! I was pulled away, up through the currents, struggling with my dog, back up through the darkness, my head finally bursting through the surface of the waters.

  We swam to the bank of this great river, Pedro barking loudly, waking the neighbourhood in search of assistance. He must have travelled the night in search of me. How selfish I had been, unaware of the only living thing that shared my condition, careless of his future, abandoning him to suffer the insecurity and cruelty of inexorable fate.

  Two large men now pulled me out of the water.

  ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘I wanted to end it all,’ I cried.

  ‘No one dies in the Danube Canal,’ one of the men said dismissively.

  ‘It is a raging torrent,’ I shouted.

  ‘No,’ the other man said, ‘it isn’t.’

  Looking back, I saw that this was, indeed, a small outpost of the Danube. In the darkness, and in my drunkenness, the realities of life had escaped me. I had not managed to jump in the right place and had then suffered the indignity of being rescued by my dog.

  Into what murky shallows had my life now sunk? I could not even make a success of suicide.

  The men dragged me back to Claudia’s house and dumped me at the front door, just as a bearded client with a fierce look in his eye was leaving, carrying what appeared to be an artist’s sketchbook.

  ‘What have you done?’ she cried. ‘You are soaked through.’

  The men explained what had happened.

  Claudia was furious.

  ‘You are mad to have taken me at my word. If I had known you might attempt such a thing I would never have put the idea into your head.’

  ‘I was unhappy. I thought you wanted me to do it.’

  ‘I was being provocative. You were so selfish and impossible.’ Claudia pulled me inside and stirred up the fire. Then she began rubbing Pedro dry. ‘There was no need to try and kill your dog as well. I would have looked after him.’

  ‘He saved me,’
I said.

  ‘Well, perhaps next time you should learn your lessons of love from him rather than from me. Why did you do it?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘You do.’

  ‘No, I don’t.’

  ‘Well then, let me tell you. Pique. Imagined desperation. To spite me. To make me pity you. It’s pathetic.’

  ‘I wanted you to think better of me. To miss me.’

  ‘But you wouldn’t have seen my pity, you would have been dead. And now I can only believe that you are stupid.’

  ‘Which is worse.’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘It makes me want to kill myself all over again,’ I cried.

  ‘Oh, stop that. There’s no remedy in suicide.’

  ‘But what shall I do?’

  ‘I’ll tell you what you can do,’ she hissed. ‘You can stop being so obsessed with your own self. You can stop talking about chocolate all the time.’

  ‘I don’t talk about chocolate all the time …’

  ‘You can think of Pedro. You can think of your friends at the hotel. You can even, for once, think of me.’

  ‘I thought you liked your life.’

  ‘No. You like my life. I do not. That is why I am changing it.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘Gustav has asked me to model for him.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘He is going to be a great painter. He knows about love and death.’

  ‘When did this happen?’

  ‘We have just been discussing it. He is obsessed with my hair.’

  ‘I’m obsessed with your hair …’

  ‘He says that he is going to make me eternal. My body will live for ever through his work.’

  ‘I do not find eternity consoling,’ I advised.

  ‘You’re jealous.’

  ‘And is he going to pay you?’

  ‘It’s a job.’

  ‘And what will become of us?’

  ‘We will have to be friends. You will have to talk to me.’

  ‘No more …?’

  ‘No. No more of that. But it will be a better life. We will learn to respect each other.’

  ‘And Gustav?’

  ‘Will be my employer. Nothing else.’

  This was a terrible shock, and my brain was so filled with the adventures of the night that I wondered, yet again, if I might be dreaming.