Martini

by Frank Moorhouse

  Margaret replied: ‘Obviously I haven’t forgotten our past (though some bits are blurred). I think you must have been very brave to go back to the old school and read what you’ve written to the students of Today.

  ‘People’s memories differ so much, don’t they? I’m not sure how much we can trust them at all. When I got together with my sisters and brother last year it was quite obvious that all their memories differed from mine, and when June did her oration at Mum’s funeral it all sounded terrific but the facts, according to my knowledge, were entirely up the creek …

  ‘About dreaming: I’m sure your therapist is absolutely right. You’re in my dreams too (but not so frequently). You often appear in them but your presence is not threatening in any way. I imagine it is because of all those formative years together so I am not disturbed by the dreams. I’m a big dreamer, with lots of complications and intricacies!

  ‘About the other matter you mentioned, it would make sense that your mother would want a girl after having two sons, but unless she dressed you in pink and allowed your hair to grow into long girlish curls, her unrealised wish should not have affected you.

  ‘Over here, things are not going too badly for us and the weather is being uncommonly benign which is a bonus …

  ‘Love Margaret.’

  A Letter to My Drinking Companions Around the World

  This memoir is not a comprehensive overview of my life or my relationships and is not meant, therefore, as a complete diagram of my life now or in the past. It is, in the main, a ruminative set of memories and ideas triggered by a consideration of the martini and its folklore. Nothing more or less. It is, in a way, a commonplace book of personal notes, a project of connoisseurship and folklore. And as I look back, surprisingly, a small project of self-reconciliation.

  To my friends I feel I need to say that the absence of your name or the number of times you are mentioned is not necessarily in any way an indication of where you fit into my life or how much I care for you. In the writing of the book there was no consideration or calculation of proportion or fairness in terms of affection. It was the subterranean logic which determined where the book went and who was consequently mentioned. Some of you do not even drink martinis. Some of you do not even drink!

  It is, in passing, also a consideration of the relationship of fiction to memory and to the writer’s life and it begins with the unpacking of an earlier story of mine entitled ‘Martini’ – the making of stories from stories, I suppose, and how stories can bubble out from other stories.

  An Afterword Concerning Voltz, Gussie Fink-Nottle, Automatic Slims, and a Remarkable Letter

  Seated in Automatic Slims bar in NYC with Voltz for our first meeting since the book came out I could tell that he was not reposeful, not that repose was a state to which either of us felt entitled.

  He twirled the glass of his first martini in a way that a cat sometimes slowly but deliberately moves its tail.

  Martini: a Memoir was published; his name was in it; he had read it; I awaited his response.

  As I sat there, I worried about whether I should have had a chapter on the effects of twirling on the martini. Wine connoisseurs have a way of twirling their glass to release the imprisoned aromas. But Voltz was not twirling to set free the so-called imprisoned aromas.

  I thought I would allow him to choose his time to speak.

  He was dressed in his old Clintonesque black overcoat, which he had not removed despite the heating of the bar. Perhaps it was Gogol’s overcoat. Though Gogol’s, as I remember it, was made of cat skin. Hence, perhaps, the cat-tail movement? I did see that it was partly unbuttoned to reveal a garment that I couldn’t quite identify – perhaps one of those high-tech fabrics used by Americans for wearing to gymnasiums, although I think that knowing Voltz that was unlikely. More likely it was some civil war garment found in his great-grandfather’s wardrobe. His overcoat was damp around the shoulders where flakes of snow had melted. His black shoes well polished, his black socks long enough to conceal any leg.

  During my frequent visits to New York and my drinks with Voltz there and around the world I have come to observe that sometimes we sit without talking during the advent time of the first martini. Sometimes he clears his throat; sometimes I give a small cough; sometimes there is a sound from one of us moving a foot; sometimes we study the city licences and signed photographs of Bob Hope on the walls; sometimes, I’ve observed, one of us makes a small, weary grunting sound, suggesting the absence of an answer to some existential question that life has silently, perhaps viciously, poked at our minds and to which a weary grunt is the only answer.

  I have noticed that Jo-Lene, the tattooed cocktail waitress, stays well clear of us during this part of the first martini, and after her usual greetings offers none of her salacious chat, respects the difficulty that she knows both of us have when out among the citizenry, of having been rooted away from our respective writing study-holes (his in West Village, mine at the Yale Club), and now pushed into the blinding light of a New York City night.

  When we had reached the Second Savouring of the drink, he spoke. ‘Besides learning from the book that you think me mad, I was delighted to discover that I’ve been changed into one of those irrepressible characters, sometimes called a man-on-the-town, who is drunk and funny – often melancholy – who usually is best friend to the main character, who usually ends up coming to no good end, and who usually is called Gussie Fink-Nottle or some such thing in P.G. Wodehouse stories.’

  I hadn’t quite seen him that way, as a Gussie Fink-Nottle.

  ‘Well …’ I had long since let go of the idea that it was, in any way, a realistic portrait of Voltz.

  ‘No need to say anything.’

  ‘I will say something, if you don’t mind. As I remember, Gussie Fink-Nottle was a teetotaller with a face like a fish. You are not a teetotaller and your face is not like that of any fish I’ve seen.’

  We both sipped our drink into the Third Savouring but Voltz had, at least, stopped twirling.

  ‘It wouldn’t be such a bad thing,’ I said, ‘give or take the name Gussie Fink-Nottle.’

  ‘What wouldn’t be “such a bad thing”? That I’d been changed into an irrepressible man-on-the town, known behind my back as a Gussie Fink-Nottle? There is no “give or take” about the name.’ He wasn’t cranky: he was more resignedly investigating the consequences of the publication of the book to him around the New York bars where he was an habitué.

  After a time I said, ‘Doubt that anyone would ever think of you as a Gussie Fink-Nottle.’

  ‘Others might – come to think of me as that sort of person, that is.’

  Again we went back to silence.

  I then said, ‘I could ask Jo-Lene what she thinks, whether she thinks of you as a Gussie Fink-Nottle.’

  ‘I don’t think that’s the sort of question to pose to Jo-Lene. I don’t want you going over to her and asking “Do you think Voltz is a Gussie Fink-Nottle sort of guy?” ’

  ‘OK. I’ll respect your wishes.’

  ‘I would seriously fear her answer.’

  Since Voltz and I had begun talking and were into the Third Savouring of the martini, Jo-Lene must have felt it was now polite for her to come over with the gin bottle and recharge our half-drunk martinis, a practice about which I have, uncharacteristically, chosen not to form an opinion, given that the free gin top-up is an act of favouritism, and given that I was striving not to become a martini pedant. Too late perhaps, one might say.

  Voltz, I know, had decided long ago to allow her to do what she damn well wanted with the gin at this point of the drink. It has been argued that the ‘martini’ exists only for a short time after advent – before transformation by atmospheric conditions and the inescapable mutability of the martini. As a drink, we know that it languishes, pleasantly enough, at around 180 seconds – in fact, at this time it comes to pine somewhat for its lost self: that its perfection is as fragile as that of a rose. Voltz never argued with Jo-Lene
about the top up. I had heard no one argue with Jo-Lene.

  Her martinis at advent were always perfect.

  As she poured I dared to raise the Whole Question and I said to her that she was playing out Spencer’s idea of Mutability, that she was making herself an agent of mutability.

  ‘Please explain,’ she said.

  ‘… the ever-whirling wheel

  Of Change, to which all mortal things doth sway … dah dah …

  How MUTABILITY in them doth play

  Her cruel sports, to … MEN’S DECAY …’

  ‘Cute,’ Jo-Lene said, ‘just right for the happy hour – keep it up,’ as she went off to serve a customer.

  Voltz and I mused then about the Cave of Despair, the House of Pride, the Bower of Bliss and, of course, Castle Joyous. But especially the Bower of Bliss.

  All of which we had visited in the last month. At least in our minds.

  She returned and asked us if we knew of the ‘Frit’ martini.

  I looked at Voltz and he shook his head and we then both looked up at Jo-Lene and shook our heads dutifully.

  ‘You put ice cubes in a shaker and cover them with French vermouth – say Noilly – that’s the “fr” bit. Shake. Strain – leaving only the ice washed with the French vermouth. Then you add the gin or vodka. And then you add the Italian dry vermouth – say Martini and Rossi – that big splash you guys like, that’s the “It” bit. You shake. You pour into the glass.’

  We discussed this for an hour or more with her coming and going but I will not record this conversation here as it is very much a conversation requiring the peculiar atmosphere of Automatic Slims and New York City and the coming and going commentary of Jo-Lene and so on.

  We argued whether it should be called the Paris-to-Rome Martini.

  Suffice it to say, we had over the years remonstrated more than once with Jo-Lene about the absolute necessity to have vermouth honourably present in the martini, not a suggestion, not a wisp, not a whisper, but a solid presence. Now she seemed to have gone even further and introduced the idea of the two vermouths.

  We agreed to have the Frit or Paris-to-Rome for our second.

  As he drank it, Voltz said he felt he was moving on the Express – he sensed there was a snowy European landscape passing through his mind from the mingling of the vermouths, although he thought a more perceptive palate might see it more as a collision of the Rome-to-Paris with the Paris-to-Rome. ‘We mustn’t encourage too much playing around with the martini,’ he said. ‘As a general rule.’

  When she came back, again topping up the martini with gin if indeed it were now still a ‘martini’, I remembered to tell her about the House of Lords In and Out on Toast martini.

  ‘Jo-Lene, do you know about the House of Lords In and Out on Toast martini?’

  ‘New one on me.’ This time she sat down, in that curious crouch that table-waiting people can adopt which says, ‘I am not joining your table, just visiting’ and which sometimes suggests you are a special customer and are being offered an uncommon intimacy.

  ‘Pray tell,’ she said. Jo-Lene has a taste for scholarship.

  ‘In 1961, Hoy Wong, bartender at the Algonquin, New York, now ninety years old, served the Duke of Windsor …’

  ‘I know who the Duke of Windsor is. I know the Algonquin. I know Hoy Wong.’

  ‘Good. The Duke of Windsor said he wanted a House of Lords martini In and Out on toast. Wong knew immediately what this martini was: a martini with a lemon twist ignited with a match before being placed in the martini.

  ‘ “After he drink, he like it,” Wong said. “And he had a second one.” ’

  Voltz said he doubted whether a burnt flavour would bring anything to the drink except the fear of your house burning down.

  ‘It would make you think you left the iron on,’ Jo-Lene said.

  ‘Precisely,’ said Voltz. ‘I think I would call that too much playing around with the martini. If not with fire.’

  I said that although the burning of the lemon twist was not strictly speaking ‘toast’, I’d written extensively on toast.

  Voltz said why did that not surprise him.

  I have argued, I said, that the making of toast recalled the first advanced cooking experiences of the species – a moving on from throwing a beast on the coals and roasting nuts, to making and cooking dough – and the making of toast returns us to phylogenic connections. ‘The smell of toasting takes us back to the fire in the cave, the lair, old bones, fur, the wheatfield, the granary, husking and winnowing, to the first baking on hot coals.’

  I took a sip of my drink. ‘I grow faint with atavistic memories,’ I said. ‘That is why the smell of burning toast causes unconscious panic in us. It is the smell of the world on fire. We have lost most of the elemental smells of the cave of which toast is the most basic. We have lost all of the natural household and body smells. We use all those smell-suppressing sprays and lose so much. Especially from the toilet.’

  Voltz said that, being American, he would leave aside my references to the elemental smells of the toilet and the body but for him, yes, burning toast was the smell of the whole world on fire.

  Jo-Lene said she too would pass on the toilet smells and said that burning toast also caused her to think her hair was on fire.

  Voltz said that burning hair was definitely the worst smell in the world.

  Jo-Lene had read my Martini book too and she now raised a philosophical point.

  ‘Talking of mutability, in the book you carry on about Jacky’s axe and whether it was the same axe if the head had changed at some point and the handle had been replaced at some point but you don’t mention the Ship of Theseus Paradox.’

  Educated cocktail waitresses.

  ‘He wanted to wear his learning lightly, Jo-Lene,’ said Voltz.

  ‘Gee, I wear mine as flashily as I can,’ she returned. ‘It’s called intellectual bling, learning can be bling.’

  ‘We notice,’ Voltz said. ‘Go on, tell us about Theseus’s ship and its fancy paradox.’

  ‘No, I won’t now, not since you’ve been so ho-hum.’

  ‘Please, Jo-Lene,’ I said, taking her hand. ‘Tell us.’

  She told us that the Jacky’s Axe paradox was also known as the Locke’s sock paradox and the Heraclitus river paradox.’

  ‘I have Heraclitus in the book,’ I said.

  ‘I gave you points for that – the Weeping Philosopher – appropriate,’ she said, ‘but we think the paradox was first formulated by Plutarch who describes how Theseus’ ship returned and was kept as a monument and when something broke or rotted away they would replace it. So: hundreds of years on, is it the same boat?’

  ‘We get the picture. Is this drink,’ Voltz said, holding up the glass, ‘to which you so generously keep adding gin, the same martini as the one you first served us? Anyhow, the book adequately investigates that question with the Jacky’s Axe reference.’

  She poked out her tongue, saying, ‘At least you could be appreciative that one of us has a classical education,’ as she left the table.

  ‘We are thankful,’ Voltz called after her. ‘We will show how thankful we are for your classical education when we leave the tip.’

  I said, ‘She may be the only cocktail waitress tipped for her classical education.’

  ‘You’d be surprised,’ Voltz said.

  ‘I told Voltz that I had many, many letters after publication of the book.’ I said, ‘From all over the world.’

  ‘The one that warmed me most,’ I said, ‘was a letter from the daughter (not mine) of a former mistress. The secret delight of it was that I described meeting this daughter in an essay written about twenty years ago when the then daughter was a babe in arms.

  ‘I was at lunch way back then with a Former Mistress who had with her a very small baby, at one of Bilson’s earlier establishments.

  ‘We had not been together since a year or so earlier, when I had experienced for the first time the Lunch Where a Mistress Announc
es She Is To Have a Baby (Not Yours).

  ‘Further, she was, it seemed to me, to be breast-feeding the baby. At the table. That too was a first. The last time I had anything to do with breast-feeding, I’d been the baby.

  ‘I did not know, I realised, where to look.

  ‘Far from being prepared for breast-feeding in public, I mean. To be honest, I am, from time to time, still bewildered by male nipples – by what they mean and what we are supposed to do with them. Except to enjoy them.’

  Voltz moved uncomfortably – this sort of talk took us down thorny paths.

  I went on, ‘I felt that it was probably unacceptable to show too much interest in a particular living woman’s breasts, unless invited – at a restaurant table. Sometimes I feel, though, that certain clothing contains an invitation to look. I am really very confused.

  ‘There in the restaurant, looking down at my plate, I nervously mumbled these reflections on the breast, and so on, to my Former Mistress while wondering how long I could watch the breast-feeding without it becoming more than “natural attention” given the confusion of my responses both to breast-feeding and to this particular woman’s breasts who was A Former Mistress Now a Married Woman and Mother.

  ‘I suppose I felt that maybe if lunch went well the breasts might also be again a subject of invited interest too. Who knows? She might become a Mistress Returned.

  ‘She said, generously, “Go ahead – watch as much as you wish – don’t keep averting your gaze with such deliberate casualness.” ’

  Jo-lene came in. ‘What about the letter from her daughter?’ she asked impatiently, turning to gesture to a customer that she would be with him in a second or so.