The Picnic and Suchlike Pandemonium

by Gerald Malcolm Durrell

  He sighed and sipped his wine musingly. “Well,” he continued eventually, “there was a man in the village who had taken a fancy to me and he spoke to the proprietor of this hotel, saying what a fine fellow I was and asking him if he would consider giving me a job in the kitchens as a skivvy. The owner’s name was Jean Jacques Morceau, a strange, earnest man, short and fat and much given to hysteria over small events so that you sometimes thought him more like an old maid than a man. Nevertheless, monsieur, Morceau cooked like an angel. I do assure you that some of his inventions tasted as though they had been transported straight down from Paradise by kind permission of Le bon Dieu.

  “His pastry was as light as cobwebs; his sauces burnt their way delicately into the very fabric of your mouth so that you thought you had been eating all the most fragrant flowers of the world. His omelette of crayfish tails and finely chopped fennel and walnuts was such a wonderful creation that I have seen men with tears of emotion running down their cheeks as they ate one. He had a white wine sauce in which he would simmer oysters and asparagus tips so that the result was so ambrosial that, if you were a person of fine sensibility and a delicate constitution, you could well faint with pleasure at the first mouthful. He had a way of stuffing wild duck with rice, pine nuts and white truffles soaked in brandy that created a flavour in your mouth as though a whole orchestra was playing: your palate rang with the music of the food. In short, monsieur, Jean Jacques Morceau was a gastronomic genius, a Leonardo da Vinci of the table, a Rembrandt of the taste buds, a veritable Shakespeare of the cuisine.”

  The old man paused, took a sip of wine, popped an olive into his mouth and delicately spat the pip into an adjacent flower-bed.

  “He also had a daughter, the most beautiful woman I have ever seen in my life, monsieur, and really this was the cause of all the trouble, for, having laid eyes on her, I had eyes for no other women. She was incomparable. I, who had taken my pleasures with women in a light-hearted way (and I will not conceal from you that I liked the opposite sex and indeed had considerable success with them); I, who had sworn that I would never marry; I, the gay here-today-gone-tomorrow lover; I fell so deeply in love that I behaved like a calf that has lost its mother, running about like a headless chicken, carrying on like a dog betrayed by aniseed. There was nothing, not even murder, that I would not have done to marry that girl.”

  He gave a great, heartfelt sigh, raised his eyes to heaven at his ancient folly, and took another drink. “I worked here for a year and with each of the 365 days I grew more deeply in love. What was even more extraordinary, the girl grew to love me. However, she was an only child, you understand, and so stood to inherit this hotel. Her father viewed all suitors with grave suspicion, since he felt they might well want to marry the hotel rather than the girl, in spite of her undoubted beauty. Therefore it was not surprising that we both knew that any attempt on my part to ask for her hand in marriage would be immediately misconstrued.

  “We discussed it at great length, the girl and I, and we knew that to be successful we should have to move with great caution. It was then that I had my brilliant idea; at least, I thought it was brilliant at the time, but it turned out to be much more complicated than I had imagined.”

  He lit a cigarette as yellow as mustard and poured out some more wine. “At that time, monsieur, the Michelin tyre company had just started issuing its now world-famous Guide and awarding stars for distinguished tables. As you know the Michelin man comes in secret to your hotel or restaurant and samples your cuisine. Only when this has been done are you aware that you have been tested, so, you understand, it is necessary for you to keep up the same standard at all times, for you are never sure when a Michelin man is lurking among your customers.

  “Now Jean Jacques Morceau knew that he cooked like an angel but he also felt that his hotel was a little bit too distant from the great highways to attract the attention of a Michelin man. To know that he should be awarded a star and yet to be convinced that he would never obtain one, drove the poor man nearly crazy. He could talk of nothing else. It became a grand obsession that ruled his whole life. At the mere mention of the Michelin Guide he would fly into an hysterical rage and start throwing things. It is true, monsieur, with my own eyes I saw him throw a Bombe Surprise and a Turkey en Cocotte at the kitchen wall. It was terrible for him to have an all-consuming passion like that, but it served my purpose admirably. You see I told him that I had heard from my uncle (in the strictest confidence, of course) that he had just been appointed as a Michelin man.”

  “And had your uncle been appointed?” I asked.

  The old man laid a forefinger alongside his nose and closed one eye.

  “Of course not,” he said, “in fact I had no uncle.”

  “Then what was the point?” I asked, puzzled.

  “Wait, monsieur, and I will unfold my whole plan to you. Naturally, when I told Morceau this he got wild with excitement, as I knew he would, and did his best to persuade me to get my uncle to come and stay. At first I said that it would be unethical and I could not possibly expect my uncle to do anything like that. This went on for a week or so, with Morceau doing his best to get me to change my mind. Then, when I had driven him to a near frenzy, I weakened. I said that, even if I did get my uncle down, I could not promise that he would award the hotel a star. Morceau said he quite understood this but that all he wanted was the chance to show his prowess in the kitchen. I expressed doubt about the whole project and kept him on tenterhooks for another few days. Then I said that I was in love with his daughter and she with me and if I agreed to get my uncle down he would have to agree to our getting betrothed. As you may imagine, this threw him into an hysterical fury. A newly made Tarte aux Pommes missed me by a hair’s breadth, and I did not dare venture into the kitchen for the rest of that day. However, as I had hoped, his obsession with the star was too strong and the following day and with the utmost reluctance he agreed to us getting engaged. The day after I put the engagement ring on her finger I went up to Paris to see my uncle.”

  “But you said you hadn’t an uncle,” I protested.

  “No, monsieur, I had no real uncle, but I had a substitute one, an old friend of mine called Albert Henri Périgord. He was the black sheep of a well-to-do family and he lived in a garret on the left bank of the Seine, painting a little, swindling a little and generally living on his wits. He had special qualities which I needed: he was of a very aristocratic and haughty mien, he knew a lot about food and wine which he had learnt from his father who was something of a gourmet, and lastly, he was enormously fat — in a way that you would expect a Michelin man to be — and could eat and drink more than any other human being I had met in my life. He engulfed food, monsieur, as a whale engulfs little shrimps, or so I am told.

  “I went to Paris, called at the garret of Albert Henri and found him, as usual, without a sou to his name and (since he always was) ravenously hungry. I took him out to dinner and unfolded my plan to him. I said that I wanted him to come down here for a week, posing as my uncle, and then to take his leave and return to Paris . There he would write a polite note to Morceau saying that he would do what he could about a star but could promise nothing, as the final decision was not his: he could merely recommend.

  “Needless to say Albert Henri was enchanted by the idea of a trip to the country and a week of eating as much as he could want, prepared by a culinary genius such as Morceau. I sent a telegram to Morceau telling him my uncle was coming down for a week and then Albert Henri and I went down to the Flea Market and got him some respectable second-hand clothes, for he had to look like a man of substance. Mind you, it was not easy, monsieur, for Albert Henri must have weighed every gramme of a hundred kilos. But at length we managed to fit him out with something and this, combined with his aristocratic bearing, made him look every millimetre the Michelin man he was supposed to be.

  “We finally arrived down here to find my future father-in-law in a state of hysterical delight. He treated Albert Henri as if
he were Royalty. I had warned Morceau, of course, that he was at no time to mention to my uncle that he knew he was a Michelin man, and I had warned Albert Henri not to divulge this information to Morceau.

  “To see them together, monsieur, was a delight: the more Morceau fawned on Albert Henri the more haughty and regal did Albert Henri become, and the more regal he became the more Morceau fawned on him. My future father-in-law had gone to unprecedented lengths to ensure success. The kitchen had been scrubbed until every copper pot and pan shone like a harvest moon. The larder was stuffed to capacity with every sort of fruit and vegetable, every form of meat and game. More, in case he might suddenly find that he did not have the necessary ingredients to satisfy the ‘Michelin man’s’ every whim, my future father-in-law had taken the unprecedented and expensive step of having a car and a chauffeur at the ready so that they could dash, post-haste, into the nearest big town to procure whatever it was that this exalted guest might demand.”

  The old man paused and chuckled reminiscently as he sipped his wine. “Never have I seen such cooking, monsieur, and never have I seen such eating. Morceau’s genius was in full flower, and the dishes that flowed from the kitchen were more complicated, more beautifully balanced, more delicious in aroma, texture, than anything that he had ever produced before. Of course, this made Albert Henri’s genius for over-eating come to fruition. They vied with each other, monsieur, like two armies fighting for supremacy. As the dishes became more and more ambrosial Albert Henri would order more and more dishes for each meal, until he was having six and seven courses, not counting the sweet and cheese, of course.

  “If the eating was a Herculean task, washed down by rivers of wine, the preparing of the food was also a mammoth undertaking. Never have I worked so hard, in spite of the fact that we had engaged three temporary skivvies to do the vegetables and so forth. Morceau was like a man demented: he flung himself around the kitchen like a Dervish, screaming instructions, chopping, stirring, tasting and occasionally running, panting, into the dining-room to watch Albert Henri stuffing food into himself in such prodigious quantities that one could hardly believe one’s eyes. A word of praise from Albert Henri and Morceau would go purple with pleasure and gallop back to the kitchen to fling himself with renewed enthusiasm into the task of creating another dish more splendid than the last.

  “I assure you, monsieur, that when he cooked his version of Liиvre Royale — and it took two days in the making — the aroma was such that they could smell it down in the village and all the villagers, to a man, trooped out here just to stand in the garden so that they could have the privilege of simply smelling the dish. It was when all this activity was at its height, when Albert Henri’s appetite appeared to get more gargantuan with each meal that he (Just having consumed some comfit of goose of incredible richness and fragrance) rose to his feet to toast the blushing Morceau. . . . and dropped dead.”

  The old man sat back and watched my expression with satisfaction.

  “Great heavens!” I exclaimed. “What did you do?”

  The Patron looked grave and stroked his chin.

  “I will not conceal from you the gravity of the situation, monsieur,” he said. “Look at all the ramifications. If a doctor was called in it would lead to the eventual discovery that Albert Henri was not a Michelin man, and this might lead to Morceau putting an end to my engagement with his daughter, for in those days children obeyed their parents, especially the girls. This I could not allow. Fortunately at the moment when Albert Henri crashed to the floor there was only my future father-in-law and myself in the room. I had to think fast. Needless to say, Morceau had gone into a sort of hysterical decline when he discovered that Albert Henri was dead and so were his chances of getting a star. To get him in the right mood I pointed out the full horror of the situation: he had, with his culinary art, actually killed a Michelin man. If he had any hopes of ever getting a mention in the Michelin Guide, let alone getting a star, this dreadful fact must be kept from the Michelin company at all costs.

  “Even in the condition he was in, weeping hysterically, he saw the wisdom of my words. What, he implored me, were we to do? Mon Dieu, I could not tell him that I had about as much idea of what to do as he had. I had to take the initiative or else the whole situation would disintegrate.

  “Firstly, I said, he must dry his eyes, gain some control over himself and then go into the kitchen and send his daughter to her room, saying that she had been over-working (which was perfectly true). He must dismiss the kitchen boys, say that Monsieur Albert Henri Périgord had a headache and was retiring to bed. On no account was anyone to be allowed into the dining-room.

  “Having tidied him up a bit — for in his frenzy of grief he had torn off his chef’s hat and trampled it underfoot and hurled a bottle of excellent Medoc at the wall, a lot of which had splashed over him — I sent him into the kitchen. Then I dragged the body of Albert Henri out of the dining-room through the hallway and down into the cellar which, being cool, we used for keeping our wines and game and poultry. I went back upstairs to find that Morceau had done everything that I had suggested, so that we had a moment’s respite.

  “Morceau was beginning to show signs of considerable strain and I knew that he would break under it if I did not keep him occupied. I opened a bottle of champagne and made him drink. In his highly excited state the wine had a befuddling effect which calmed him down considerably. We sat there like two criminals, monsieur, discussing the best way of getting rid of a corpse weighing over a hundred kilos. It was a macabre discussion I can assure you.

  “Morceau was all for waiting until it was dark and then taking the body out in the pony and trap and leaving it in some remote forest glade a number of kilometres from the village. I objected to this on the score that, if the body was discovered, people in the village knew of Albert Henri’s presence in the hotel and would ask why his body should be found so far away. This would immediately throw suspicion on Morceau. Did he, I asked, want to be known throughout the length and breadth of France as the chef who had killed a Michelin man with his cooking? He burst into tears again and said he would commit suicide if this was said of him.

  “I said that we must be intelligent and think of a way of disposing of the corpse without implicating ourselves. I told him that my ‘uncle’ was unmarried and had only a small circle of acquaintances, so that his disappearance would not occasion any undue alarm. This was indeed true, for Albert Henri had a very small circle of acquaintances simply because he was so untrustworthy. I knew that anyone in Paris would treat his disappearance as a cause for rejoicing rather than the reverse. I could hardly tell Morceau that, so to keep him calm, I assured him that, given the hours of darkness, I would think of a solution to our problem. But I do assure you, monsieur, I was at my wits’ end what to do.”

  At this moment the waiter approached the table and told me that my food was ready.

  “Good, good,” said the old man, “don’t delay. Come, monsieur, let me conduct you to the dining-room.”

  He rose and led me into the hotel and thence into a small but beautifully appointed dining-room and there pulled a chair for me to sit down. The waiter came forward bearing a dish of toast and a large dish of pâté. A sudden realization came to me.

  “Tell me,” I said to the Patron, “this pâté commemorating the Passing of Albert Henri Perigord . . . is this named after your friend?”

  “Of course, monsieur,” said the Patron. “It was the least I could do.”

  I cut a slice of the pâté from the dish, applied it to a fragment of toast and put it in my mouth. It was delicious beyond belief.

  “Magnificent, Patron,” I said, “a wonderful pâté. Your friend would have been proud to have had it called after him.”

  “Thank you, monsieur,” he said bowing.

  “But, tell me,” I went on, “you haven’t finished your story. You can’t leave me in mid-air like that . . . what did you do with the body?”

  The old man looked at me an
d hesitated for a moment, as if making up his mind whether to vouchsafe this secret or not. At last he sighed.

  “Monsieur,” he said, “we did the only thing we could do . . . indeed the only thing that I am sure Albert Henri would have wanted us to do.”

  “What was that?” I asked, perhaps obtusely.

  We turned my friend into a pâté, monsieur. It is perhaps somewhat ironical that it was for this very pâté that we were awarded our star by the Michelin, but we were most grateful for it, nevertheless. Bon appetit, monsieur. ” Chuckling, he turned and made his way out to the kitchen.

  THE ENTRANCE

  My friends Paul and Marjorie Glenham are both failed artists or, perhaps, to put it more charitably, they are both unsuccessful. But they enjoy their failure more than most successful artists enjoy their success. This is what makes them such good company and is one of the reasons that I always go and stay with them when I am in France . Their rambling farmhouse in Provence was always in a state of chaos, with sacks of potatoes, piles of dried herbs, plates of garlic and forests of dried maize jostling with piles of half-finished water-colours and oil-paintings of the most hideous sort, perpetrated by Marjorie, and strange, Neanderthal sculpture which was Paul’s handiwork. Throughout this market-like mess prowled cats of every shade and marking and a river of dogs from an Irish wolf hound the size of a pony to an old English bulldog which made noises like Stephenson’s Rocket. Around the walls in ornate cages were housed Marjorie’s collection of Roller canaries, who sang with undiminished vigour regardless of the hour, thus making speech difficult. It was a warm, friendly, cacophonous atmosphere and I loved it.

  When I arrived in the early evening I had had a long drive and was tired, a condition that Paul set about remedying with a hot brandy and lemon of Herculean proportions. I was glad to have got there for, during the last half hour, a summer storm had moved ponderously over the landscape like a great black cloak and thunder reverberated among the crags, like a million rocks cascading down a wooden staircase. I had only just reached the safety of the warm, noisy kitchen, redolent with the mouth-watering smells of Marjorie’s cooking, when the rain started in torrents. The noise of it on the tile roof combined with the massive thunderclaps that made even the solid stone farmhouse shudder, aroused the competitive spirit in the canaries and they all burst into song simultaneously. It was the noisiest storm I had ever encountered.