Martini

by Frank Moorhouse

  I hadn’t thought about that. ‘Well, I guess, yes.’

  Voltz was doubtful. ‘I don’t know about mixing olive brine with a lemon twist.’

  ‘I’m not absolutely sure that Roosevelt was still making dirty martinis in 1945. Maybe he’d changed his mix.’

  ‘You aren’t suggesting that Yalta is a martini city nominee?’

  ‘I am not familiar with Yalta. As a city, that is. It is really just a martini anecdote. I am not pushing Yalta.’

  ‘Good. I wouldn’t think of Yalta as a martini city. Tehran is in – just – because it is the first example of martini diplomacy.’ Voltz then frowned. ‘Do you know what worries me about the Yalta Lemon Tree story?’

  I ran through it in my head. ‘Yes, I do. It’s the two hundred lemons. The precision of the count. Right?’

  ‘Right. Legendary stories often include those sorts of precise details. As authentication. Who counted them? Roosevelt? Did he stand there in the snow and go “one-two-three-four” up to two hundred?’

  ‘It was December. The ground would’ve been frozen like rock. There is no way they could’ve even planted that tree.’

  ‘They could’ve blown a hole in the ground – yeah.’

  ‘And even so, was Roosevelt going to stand there counting them? Or did some aide count them? If so, why?’

  ‘Discount that story. And another thing – I seriously doubt you can fit two hundred lemons on a tree. But you could check that.’

  ‘Why me?’

  ‘You’re the one who does the checking.’

  ‘Not this time. You know that with a dirty martini it is not only brine that you get in your martini,’ I continued. ‘In the liquid you get water, salt and some lactic acid which is commonly used in foods, sometimes as a flavouring, but it also reduces the risk of salmonella. Lactic acid comes from lactose, the sugar in milk, and is found in sour milk – remember that sour-sweet taste when you discover that the milk has turned? It is used to make yoghurt and cottage cheese. When we exert ourselves physically we make lactic acid. You can taste it in the mouth after a run.’

  ‘You might.’ He pondered. ‘I’ve never tasted this lactic acid of which you speak, in a martini.’

  ‘I am not saying that it would be tasted. It would blend.’

  ‘The presence of that lactic acid does not meet with my full approval but I suppose it is unavoidable. At least in the way you describe it. And I suppose it has always been there. Undetectably. Is it there if it’s undetectable?’

  ‘Chemically there but not consciously there.’

  Voltz thought about this. ‘I suppose that can be said about other ingredients that become blended.’

  ‘I suppose it is the distinction between a compound and mixture.’

  ‘Wollongong Alchemy. Again.’

  ‘A mixture has ingredients that do not change when they are mixed, say oil and water. In a compound, however, when they interact with each other, they change to form a new thing.’

  ‘Is the martini, then, a mixture or a compound?’

  ‘A mixture of mixtures and compounds. Alcohol is a compound.’

  ‘We should look into that. Should follow that up further. At some point. Just so that we are clear about it. I want to be absolutely clear about it.’

  ‘If I have an objection to the dirty martini, it would be that the drink loses lucidity. It becomes slightly clouded. And, of course, its salinity rises.’

  Voltz frowned. ‘I wonder if the salt in the brine is rock salt from salt mines, pond salt, or sea salt?’

  ‘I suppose it depends on which town in which country the salting of the olives takes place.’

  ‘It might be worth looking into that at sometime.’

  ‘Yes. Maybe.’

  Voltz then became worried. ‘Damn it, now we have iodised salt, so the brine will have iodine in it. I wonder if that changes the martini. It must make it taste different from the martinis they drank before salt was iodised.’

  ‘I’m sure it does. Actually it’s potassium iodide.’

  ‘It’s good to know things like that. I suppose it’s possible to find non-iodised salt.’

  ‘It’s worth looking into. The French also put fluoride into their salt.’

  ‘Damn. We have to find our way back to pure salt.’

  ‘And get thyroid problems from lack of iodine?’

  ‘There must be other ways of avoiding thyroid problems and bad teeth, other than screwing around with the salt?’

  ‘I hear that they’ve found salt on Mars.’

  ‘That might be very good salt. There’s a business opportunity in that. We should try to get hold of some of that Mars salt.’

  ‘What are our chances, do you think?’

  ‘I have friends in NASA. I could give it a try.’

  ‘What if it turned out to be Mars-salt-plus X?’

  ‘And we grew tails?’

  ‘Something like that. You can try it first.’

  The twist of lemon in a martini is accepted as an alternative to the olive. The lemon rind is twisted to cause the lemon oil to spray onto the drink – the zest of the lemon, un zeste de provocation – but usually it is a piece of lemon rind dropped into the drink. At Sardi’s bar in New York, the old barman squeeze-sprayed the lemon oil so well you could see it on the surface of the drink – what Kurt Vonnegut Jnr calls the ‘dancing myriads of winking eyes’.

  At the Water’s Edge in Canberra, the martini-maker rubs the lemon peel around the rim of the glass which strengthens the presence of the lemon.

  Some bartenders make a snake out of the rind, some tie it in a bow, although some drinkers feel this is getting too close to the problem of overtouching of food. Voltz and I praise the crafting of the lemon twist as evidence of deliberation.

  There was a lemon tree in our garden when I was a child. Many Australians grew up with a lemon tree in the backyard, often the only fruit tree in the garden. The lemons from our tree had a lumpy skin and thick white rind and were known as Rough Skins. As a child I tried many times to make lemonade from these lemons using the Country Women’s Association of NSW Cookbook but it was never ‘right’ because it was not carbonated. By then my ideal lemonade was the commercial soft drink. I never sold it from a jug on a table at the front of the house for 1 cent a glass, as I had seen it done in comics and films, but it did cross my mind.

  At around the age of eight or nine, I moved out of my family home and set up house in a huge box under the lemon tree. I took my books and some toys and possessions into my new home. My first and only real home. I think my family was glad to see me go. My memory is that I stayed there at least two nights and that eventually rain forced me to take everything back into the house despite the metallic foil lining of the box which I had thought would waterproof it.

  I ran away from home a couple of other times before I ran away to the city for good at sixteen years and ten months to become a copyboy on a newspaper.

  From martini drinkers in bars around the world I have learned that lemons were originally found in China and Northern India and then spread to nearly every country of the world. The Lisbon and Eureka are the most common commercial lemon, very regular in shape, with a bright yellow smooth skin and a tangy taste and a pointed nipple-like end.

  I suppose with the oil of the lemon we get some vitamin C and some mineral salts in our martini.

  Some martini drinkers do not admit the twist of lemon. It is the olive or nothing.

  In the film of M*A*S*H (1970), we see the young doctors, played by Elliott Gould and Donald Sutherland, in a field hospital tent just behind the lines in the Korean War.

  Gould, who has just arrived, is offered a martini which is being served from IV drip-bags hanging in their mess, and he asks, ‘Where are the olives?’

  Sutherland replies, ‘It’s war – we have to make a concession.’

  Gould says, ‘Sorry, the martini just doesn’t make it without the olive.’

  This is a perfect illustration of the dogmas of
martini folklore. It occurs to me that these martini dogmas and doctrines may also be a parody of religion. Or indeed, a fine substitute for religion.

  Elliott Gould did not say what sort of olive he wanted but I suppose that as a drinker of classic martinis he would assume that there is only one acceptable olive for a martini. It is the green olive of whatever size cured in brine, never the black, although there is the cerignola olive which I have had in my martini and which is neither green nor black. It is a potato-shaped blue-grey and is not regular in shape and looks unusual in the martini glass, but I’m fond of this ungainly, fleshy olive; it has a certain jollity. There are about twenty species of olive but it is the age of the olive which determines its nature and size.

  There is a very good bad joke from a New Yorker magazine cartoonist, J.B. Handelsman, about the olive and the twist.

  The cartoon shows the bearded author Charles Dickens wearing a frockcoat in a New York bar. The caption reads: ‘Dickens’ First Encounter with a Martini’. In the cartoon, Dickens has just ordered his martini and the bartender is saying to him, ‘Olive or twist?’

  In the arcane world of the martini, one cannot ignore the ongoing complication of the olive pip.

  Voltz and I discussed the olive pip in the Temple Bar, New York. I said, ‘The dilemma is that with such an elegant drink as the martini the olive pip presents a “chewed bone” look when left in the glass or on a plate nearby or, worse, in an ashtray. No matter how much you work your teeth to get the olive flesh off the pip there will always be a rather inelegant-looking, ravaged pip.’

  He agreed. ‘If you put the chewed pips back into your glass they really disturb the elegance of the drink.’

  I said that I knew that he and I usually put the pips in our pockets out of sight. ‘The lemon twist never is a problem. It looks OK in the empty glass. Or it can be eaten.’

  I told him that once in a dim restaurant Dr Anderson had put the olive pip in the salt dish. ‘It was when they first started to put salt flakes in dishes on the table and took away the shakers.’

  I told him that Dr Anderson had been seriously mortified. Voltz likes stories told against Dr Anderson, although they have never met.

  Voltz said that given that men in trousers and jacket have up to twelve pockets available, why not use them? One pocket could be designated the olive pip pocket, say the left-hand jacket pocket. I sometimes fear that Voltz’s pockets contain moulding olive pips from drinks past.

  I told him that Australia had a Prime Minister, Malcolm Fraser, who, legend has it, would at cocktail parties or receptions put his olive pips in other people’s pockets, which is a rather likeable if mischievous solution.

  Voltz said, ‘I like the sound of your Prime Minister but a roomful of people popping pips into each other’s pockets seems undignified. Here in Manhattan you’ll notice that no martini is ever garnished with an unpitted olive. They are garnished with olives stuffed with pimentos. I suppose they fear legal action from people who are drunk and break their teeth on the olive pip. I have no preference.’

  I looked at him. It was almost unheard of for Voltz not to have a preference.

  ‘The real problem,’ he said, ‘is that the unpitted olives are essential to a proper cocktail hour, in the martinis or not, just as hors d’oeuvres. And as we agreed, the pips are ugly when deposited with cigarette butts in an ashtray. And there are no ashtrays any more. What about using one of those little sake pitchers? If the olive pips aren’t too large, we could drop them into the sake pitchers out of sight?’

  I agreed that this could well be a solution. ‘It would require some training of the guests. Guests can be beasts when it comes to training.’

  ‘I have noticed that,’ Voltz said. ‘Guests are resistant to training.’

  I told him that at my club in London, one of the initiation games is that the new members are served a martini with an unpitted olive in it and the committee then quietly watches what the newcomer does with the olive pip – whether he puts it on the table, back in the glass or in his pocket.

  At the conclusion of the drink, the older members, without a word, then swallow their olive pips.

  Voltz looked intently at my face while I told this story for evidence of fabulism. I didn’t know whether he believed me. His face betrayed nothing and he did not interrogate me further.

  The other practice is to place the pip in the folds of a napkin out of sight. While this is satisfactory it smacks a little of sweeping the dust under the carpet; the pips in the napkin become a dirty secret. (A second napkin should be requested if this is what you intend to do, for use in any of the possible emergencies which arise during the taking of a drink.)

  Once when I met Voltz at Grand Central Oyster Bar, I could see that he was in a rage. ‘In Elmore Leonard’s book Bandits a character has a martini with three olives stuffed with anchovies – I frown on that,’ he said.

  I gave him my full attention while I ordered a pre-lunch martini. I could see he was ill-tempered.

  ‘I frown on that because the anchovy is far too strong a flavour to introduce into the blend of a martini. It is an assault on the martini.’

  ‘I agree,’ I said, ‘but perhaps Leonard is establishing the grossness of his character with this detail.’

  ‘Novelists have to be very careful about these things, gross characters or not,’ he said, taking his drink. ‘To allow out into the world the very notion of an anchovy-stuffed olive in a martini, is to pollute the concept.’

  ‘The epicurian M.K. Fisher fancies the anchovy-stuffed olive as an hors d’oeuvre.’

  ‘We are not talking of hors d’oeuvres,’ he said grumpily.

  I tried to distract him from his rage. ‘There is an almond stuffing but the nut looks alien in the olive already, let alone as an olive for a martini. It looks as if it lost its way from the nut dish.’

  Voltz was undeterred. ‘It has to be the capsicum stuffing or unpitted. Nothing else.’

  I further tried to assuage him, by reminding him of Michael Flanders and Donald Swann, the songwriters, and their Corrida d’Olivas – or the Festival of Olive Stuffing. ‘How many of you, I wonder, as you toy with a dry martini at the bar, have thought of the romance that lies behind the simple stuffed olive?’ ask Flanders and Swann. ‘Or have witnessed, as I have, the almost unbearable drama of a Corrida d’Olivas?’ They also claim that in Andora every boy hopes that he, too, will grow up to be one of the truly great Oliveros.

  ‘I am pretty sure Flanders and Swann made up that festival. I doubt that it exists,’ Voltz said.

  As I write this my mind goes back to my first taste of an olive. I was working as a journalist in a country town. The group I mixed with included Trevor, a gay solicitor, and his boyfriend, John. Paul had moved his work to the town so as to be with me. We were all very, very closeted.

  This was before I married Margaret who was still back in the city. The four of us – Trevor and John, Paul and me – would sometimes eat at the best restaurant in the town called Romano’s, which was in a hotel, as most restaurants in country towns were in those days.

  It was Trevor who urged me to try green olives, which he ordered as an hors d’oeuvre to go with our pre-dinner drinks – gin and tonic, except for Paul who drank beer. The ordering of the olives was a fancy thing to do in those days, and we took our drinks in the upstairs lounge of the restaurant as distinct from the Public Bar or the Saloon Bar – for professionals and business men – or the Ladies’ Lounge where men had to be accompanied by a woman. The olives were the large green sort which we called a Spanish olive. As a nineteen-year-old of undeveloped tastes, I found them too bitter but each time we ate out, Trevor urged me to keep trying. ‘They are an acquired taste,’ he would say. It was the first time I had encountered the idea of an ‘acquired taste’ – and it was also my introduction to the aperitif and the hors d’oeuvre.

  Trevor also introduced me to other important acquired tastes. He was to take – or be given – my anal virginity that year, an
d while taking male anal virginity is a unique pleasure, it is certainly an acquired taste.

  I remember clearly going back one afternoon to his flat – John, his lover, was at work – and he took me, rather pleasantly. I remember saying to him, ‘Well, I am no longer a virgin.’

  For months I’d resisted his advances while still frequently going to visit him, flirtatiously, in his office. I lost my anal virginity to Trevor behind the back of Paul, who did not like anal sex and who, in turn, was my clandestine lover behind the back of my high-school girlfriend, Margaret, soon to be my wife.

  There’s infidelity for you.

  Oh, and as for bisexuality, it’s not as easy as it looks. Don’t even think about it!

  The Diamond: the Pearl: the Acorn

  NEW YORK (Reuters) – Drinkers might want to keep a clear head when ordering a martini at New York’s historic Algonquin Hotel or they might pay $10,000 for that cold sip.

  The landmark hotel, where famed wit Dorothy Parker and fellow literary lights at the Round Table imbibed, offers a $10,000 martini, complete with a loose diamond at the bottom.

  Which reminds me of the legend of Cleopatra’s (69 BCE) pearl drink.

  There was something of a wager proposed by Cleopatra, Queen of Egypt, who had been defeated by Mark Antony and the Roman armies. She bet Mark Antony she could put on a more expensive banquet than he could.

  Mark Antony threw his banquet, which was magnificent beyond anything that had been seen in Egypt. He knew it would be impossible to spend any more than he had spent on wine and food.

  Cleopatra then threw her banquet. After the feast, as Antony reclined eating his grapes, he did a quick calculation and decided that she had been unable to outdo him.

  As the last course, Cleopatra called for two goblets of vinegar.

  Antony was bemused.

  Cleopatra then took off one of a large pair of pearl earrings she was wearing – rumoured to be the most expensive piece of jewellery in history (worth 10 million sesterces if that means anything to you) – removed the pearl, and dropped it into the goblet, where it slowly dissolved. She then drank it.