I started to cut as well, and a warm rush of deep-forest, deep-shadow, dug-deep earth smell rose up and into me.
“Truffles,” Metcalf said, lifting a bite before him. “Rare and beautiful. You dig one up; you strip away the earth from it and lay it out bare; you give it some brandy; you put it under the covers; you heat it up; you eat it.”
He put truffle and crust into his mouth. He closed his eyes and kept them closed.
I looked away from him. I cut myself a good bite of Truffes Sous La Cendre and put it in my mouth, the sweet coating of crust dissolving away, and I closed my eyes and I held the warm fold of a truffle on my tongue, tasting a secret thing, hidden long from view, put now inside me and held.
I knew what Metcalf was actually saying.
I chewed the truffle gently and let it go down inside me and I looked over at Metcalf, his eyes closed, his mouth at rest, perhaps holding his own truffle in there still.
“Of course,” I said. “You take it and you eat it.”
“Be careful of women in this job,” he said, without opening his eyes, without changing the angle of his head.
“Yes,” I said.
“Inadvertently, of course, but did you let on somehow about your true identity? When you were with her?” He leaned just enough on the “with” to be discreet but clear about what he meant.
The secondary lesson in this was to trust your intuition about situations. Which is what he was doing right now, about Selene and me. I was already pretty good at that, but it was worth the reminder.
“Of course not,” I said. “She was jazzed by a famous newspaperman. Strictly that.”
“You figure Brauer knew about it?”
“Yes.”
“There you are,” he said.
“There I am,” I said.
He opened his eyes but directed them to his truffes.
I thought he’d warn me about leaving important issues out of my reports.
But he didn’t. I liked him for that. We simply fell silent again.
And we ate until we had new wineglasses and, in them, a decade-old cabernet from Château La Tour Carnet.
“Now you’ll see something,” Metcalf said.
He was not speaking about the wine, though the first few sips were very good, but about the small, porcelain ramekin that arrived for each of us shortly thereafter.
Within, a tiny bird lay on its back, plucked and missing its legs but, I would later learn, in no other way altered, its having been trapped and fattened on millet and figs and drowned in Armagnac—literally drowned to death in French brandy—and then simply salted and peppered and baked in an oven complete with bones and blood and organs. I had barely taken my first look at it when our waiter appeared and handed me a large, embroidered white napkin.
He gave another to Metcalf, who said, “This, my friend, is an ortolan bunting. Considered by many to be the heart and perhaps even the very soul of French cuisine. As for our own souls, we each place a napkin over our head, hiding our face. It is true that this confines and enhances the aromas. But it is also true that we thus hide our faces from God, as we devour this innocent songbird, the human soul, of course, being not without its flaws. The Big Man’s eye is on the sparrow. It is also on the ortolan bunting. You may bite off the head and set it aside if you wish. There is no shame in that. But you eat everything else. Put it in your mouth whole, and after the first celestial rush of its fat, you chew. Very slowly.”
And with this he vanished beneath his napkin.
Was I going too far for Metcalf?
I put the napkin on my head and it dropped before my face.
I picked the bird up in my two hands. Though it weighed less than a pair of kid gloves, it was so clearly a body, I held it with both hands and did not let its head fall back. Though I knew I had to bite that off.
Metcalf was faintly moaning nearby. From the fat, no doubt.
This whole meal. What was this meal? Not a last meal. And surely, it now occurred to me, not a meal at the U.S. government’s expense. Metcalf must have his own money, I thought. A lot of it. He dined here often. He brought me with him. But he was also the man guiding me on behalf of my country.
A crackling sound began nearby. Faint and slow. He was beginning to chew his songbird, this Gentleman Jim.
I lifted the ortolan, inclining my head forward to make way beneath the napkin. I was glad God could not see. Nor anyone else.
I brought the bird to my face and I opened my mouth and my teeth found the bird’s neck and I bit through, the bones yielding easily and the head was free on my tongue and I quickly reached in and removed it and I placed it back into the dish.
I shuddered.
I’ve had some wretched food in my life. I’ve shared food with soldiers at war. Ragtag units badly provisioned in hot countries. I’ve eaten field slumgum, maggoty meat heated in big pots with dirty water and weed roots. But that was from necessity. That was as respite from gunfire. And I had never shuddered.
I shuddered from this songbird’s head.
And from its body, which I now laid on my tongue.
It was tiny, fitting in my mouth as if custom-made for eating, soft there but still structured—I was aware of the whole structure of bones within—and it had settled there only a moment and I had only just closed on it, very gently, when the warm rush of the bird’s body fat—the savor at once rich and delicate—filled my mouth and rolled down my throat.
I did not moan but I understood Metcalf’s exclamation.
Then I began to chew, the bones cracking softly, the taste turning from delicate and reminiscent of hazelnuts to gamey now—bird blood and organ meat, though still in a low key, scaled down to the size of this small singing creature—and even the tiny gamey surges of its lungs and heart carried a hint of the Armagnac, like honey and plum.
And it went on and on, the full chewing of this bird. I eventually grew impatient, but I had a mouth full of tiny bone shards and they were beginning to abrade my mouth and it was as if God found me after all, beneath my embroidered napkin, and His judgment was upon me.
But at last the bird was gone.
I took the napkin from my face.
I looked at Metcalf. He was still covered.
I drank my cabernet. Too fast. Trying to wash the bird from my mouth. Another lesson perhaps. Something about a sensual thing that’s intense and delicious but goes on too long and then goes bad.
My glass was empty and I turned back to Metcalf and I started. He was unmasked and looking at me.
As soon as he knew he had my full attention, he leaned a little in my direction, as if I’d just been delivered to him on a plate. And he said very softly, “You may have to act again as you did last night.”
I knew what he was talking about. But I had the odd reflex to play dumb.
“How so?” I said.
He looked at me steadily and did not reply and I knew what was behind his eyes: I know you know what I’m talking about. Don’t play this game.
“The knack,” I offered.
“That’s the act I was referring to,” he said. “But perhaps a different context.”
Now I really didn’t know what he meant.
“Preemptively,” he said.
In my report to him I hadn’t written of the killing of the Hun in detail. There was already a preemptive taint to what I’d done, which I did not mention. As I chewed slowly on that, I stayed quiet. Metcalf thought I was being dense.
He leaned closer. He spoke even more softly.
“I’m thinking at the moment of Brauer,” he said. “You might find it necessary to kill him.”
I spoke with equal softness. “Gentleman Jim,” I said. “I thought you were among the least violent of men.”
“I am,” he said. “But I ha
ve absolutely no qualms about advising men of a different temperament.”
I said, “Knowing what’s necessary when the threat isn’t imminent. That’s a different knack.”
“For the good of our country,” Metcalf said, as if that clarified things.
I could have called him on that. But I didn’t. He seemed to read my eyes or, perhaps, to hear how he’d sounded. He said, “You should trust us and the work we give you. The good of your mission is the good of the country.”
“I understand,” I said. And I suppose I did. I had the sanction to kill.
And when I’d spoken these two words, something apparently shifted in my mouth, from between my teeth, and I felt a small, sharp pain in my cheek.
I turned my head away from Metcalf and reached into my mouth with forefinger and thumb, and I extracted a sliver of songbird bone.
32
The meal lingered on till past midnight.
When I was at last released from the tuxedo and ready to have a final night’s sleep in a good bed before heading off to an unknown number of nights’ sleep in unknown circumstances, I lay down in my bed at the Arundel and almost at once a knock came at my door. Three quick, firm raps.
I rose and moved quietly across the room, and as I did, my mind finally began to work properly and I anticipated what this was, the mention of it seeming to have been a very long time ago, with all that food in between. But I did not touch the doorknob; I turned my head to listen; and as if I’d been observed the whole time, a voice outside immediately said, “Cobb. It’s Smith.”
I opened the door.
He had his suit jacket on, but his tie was askew. I was willing to bet his shirt sleeves were rolled up under there as well.
He held a kit bag and an oversized, cabin-top leather valise.
“Come in,” I said.
He passed by me. “Sorry to disturb you in your union suit,” he said.
“It’s one in the morning,” I said, closing the door.
“The boss wanted this done before dawn.”
Smith was at the bedside. He closed the covers and laid the two bags on top.
“The boss has one hell of an expense account,” I said.
Smith turned to me and he shot me a sly little smile. “I told you it was good pudding.”
“I’m thinking the government didn’t pick up that tab.”
“He’s got serious family money, our Mr. Metcalf. As I understand it. He’s a bit secretive.”
“As we might expect.”
“As we might expect,” Smith said, turning his back on me, though he went on with his point. “He dines at the Carlton once a week. Often alone. Usually alone. You got his attention.”
“Did he give you the same treatment?”
“Nope.” Smith turned around holding a Mauser pocket pistol in his hand, sideways so I could see its lines, pointed toward the ceiling. “This is yours, I believe,” he said.
I extended my right hand and he put the pistol in it.
The last time I saw one of these it was coming out from inside a suit coat with the intent to kill me. I’d seen a similar one with a similar intent not too long before that. This little thing had begun to get my goat. I was happy to make its friendly acquaintance at last.
It rested easy and light in my hand, hardly more than a pound.
“Thirty-two caliber,” Smith said. “Magazine’s in, but empty. Shells in the bag.”
I wanted him to stop talking. This pistol and I were getting to know each other. I turned away from him and lifted the Mauser and settled the front post of its barrel in the rear V-sight, with the head of a rose in the wallpaper as the target. All through last year’s little adventure in Mexico, I’d carried a Colt 1911. A fine but large weapon that was now at the bottom of the North Atlantic, a loss that only just now fully struck me. Too bad. But this covert, diminutive Mauser, with a .32-caliber kick, seemed just fine too. Like going to a lighter bat to get around on a Walter Johnson fastball. Very nice.
I lowered my arm.
I looked at Smith, who was looking at me with an expression that seemed part respect, part fear, and part distaste.
Maybe I was wrong. Maybe that was too much for a look and I was just under the spell of Escoffier putting a bunch of crazy things together onto a single plate. Or maybe I was just feeling all those things about myself.
“What is it?” I asked Smith.
“There’s no it,” he said. “Just watching a guy who knows what he’s doing.”
“I hope,” I said.
“You got a tux for me?”
“In the wardrobe.”
“I’ll trade you for the three-piece wool suit in the kit bag,” he said, and he crossed to the wardrobe and pulled out the tux.
“What’s special about the suit?” I said.
“Berlin tailor. So in a pinch you don’t have to explain a British label.”
“This German with a tailor in Berlin. He’s got a name?”
“I didn’t look. It’s on documents in the portfolio. Including a diplomatic passport.” Smith was crossing back to the bed. “I’ll take the kit bag. You keep the valise. You’ve got a lot of stuff in there. Some alternate selves. Whatever doesn’t fit with who you are should go into the false bottom in the valise. The least whiff of your being a spy and any of the countries you’ll be passing through would walk you into the nearby woods and shoot you.”
“I get it,” I said.
“One thing you don’t need to hide. The ticket for your cabin on the Mecklenburg tomorrow night, heading for Vlissingen. The Brits call it ‘Flushing.’ You take a train from Charing Cross to Folkestone.”
I was going in through still-neutral Holland, my corridor to Germany.
Smith laid the German suit on the bed, and now he was pulling out more candy-store treats from the kit bag: a belt holster and a couple of boxes of .32 caliber bullets.
Smith stuffed the tuxedo into the kit bag, closed it, and turned and stepped to me, offering his hand. I went to tuck the Mauser in at my waist, to free my right hand to shake with him, but I found this didn’t work.
“You need trousers for that,” Smith said.
“Right,” I said, shifting the pistol to my left hand and beginning to shake Smith’s hand good-bye.
“Don’t get me wrong,” Smith said, keeping the handshake going, “Mr. Metcalf is no dilettante. He knows his job. And he says you do too. Good luck out there.”
Metcalf’s declaration of my competence took me by surprise and I said nothing in return but finished the shake with Smith. As soon as our hands separated, he slipped past me and headed for the door.
But he stopped abruptly and turned back. “I almost forgot,” he said.
He dug something out of his inner coat pocket and handed it to me. “Telegram from your boys in Chicago.”
I took it with a thank you and he was gone.
I opened the cable and it was from Clyde Fetter, my editor in chief at the Post-Express. He wrote: Lusitania escape story a killer. Excuse the expression. Follow up solid. Loved the airships. Regular Joes on State Street and beyond agree. You are still the king of the king beat. Keep throwing strikes. Clyde
Which was a good thing.
Nevertheless I tried to give my attention right back to the Mauser. My skill with it seemed more important to me for the foreseeable future. I loaded its magazine and tucked it into the nightstand drawer.
But when I’d returned to bed and the room was dark, I didn’t fall asleep for a time. I found myself thinking hard about the Christopher Cobb that I still tried to believe was me, tried even to believe was the primary me: Christopher Cobb, the newsman. And so I thought of dessert this evening at the Carlton Hotel.
Metcalf and I had eaten songbird together and had spoken openly of m
y license to kill. There was nothing more to say except to speak of the food and to eat dishes built around foie gras and asparagus and sea oysters and on and on in voluptuous silence. But with the imminent arrival of dessert, Metcalf roused himself from the culinary trance he’d put us both in to praise Escoffier’s brilliant young assistant pastry cook.
He said, “You’d never know to look at him. A thin little wisp of an Indochinese man you’d expect to find pulling a jinrikisha somewhere out there in the French Far East. Or throwing a bomb for a gang of anarchists in the Balkans. But you’d be wrong. This guy is a native genius. The maestro plucked him off the cleaning brigade. He caught him routinely putting aside half-eaten food to give to the poor. But the maestro saw something in him and made him an offer: give up your ideas of revolution and learn to make pastry. Which he did. And his work is about to arrive.”
And it did, on a black plate. Pleine Lune Sur Indochine. In the center was a large, white glutinous globe. The full moon over Indochina. On its face was a drizzling of pomegranate juice. There was blood on this moon. Which was, in fact, a sticky-rice cake filled with fruit, both fresh and dried, and with nuts, but dominated by the flavors of mango and brandy and a citrusy flavor, but not a citrus I knew, as if the fruit grew in the ground instead of in the air. Lemongrass, Metcalf told me. And it was very good indeed, the handiwork of this apparent jinrikisha runner.
And I met him in Escoffier’s kitchen, where the Carlton’s once-a-week Gentleman Jim Metcalf and I were invited after dinner, and I was introduced to Georges Auguste Escoffier himself—a tiny man, dressed not like a chef but like a diplomat or a banker, in a frock coat and striped pants—and to the young genius of a pastry chef, who wore the traditional kitchen whites and a tall toque blanche and whose name—I finally heard it properly from his own lips—was Nguyê˜n Tâ´t Thành. I was introduced as Christopher Cobb, the famous American newspaper foreign correspondent. This made Mr. Thành’s eyes widen.
The Star of Istanbul Page 20
