The Picnic and Suchlike Pandemonium

by Gerald Durrell

  ‘Monsieur,’ he boomed as he set the tray carefully on the table, ‘welcome to my hotel. You are our first guest of the season and so are especially welcome.’

  He wrung my hand with courteous enthusiasm and then sat down opposite me. The force of his personality was like a blast furnace. He exuded kindness and good will and humour in equal quantities and so was irresistible.

  ‘I do hope that you will like this wine,’ he continued, pouring it out carefully into the glasses. ‘It is a Beaujolais from my own little vineyard. I have enough grapes to make some twenty bottles a year, for my own consumption, you understand, and so I only open it on special occasions such as this.’

  ‘I am honoured,’ I said, raising my glass. The wine slid into my mouth like velvet and the fragrance illuminated my taste buds.

  The old man rolled it round his mouth and swallowed thought-fully. ‘It is a truthful wine,’ he said.

  ‘Very truthful,’ I agreed.

  ‘You are en vacances here?’ he enquired.

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I have a little house down in Provence and I try to go there every summer.’

  ‘Ah! Provence! . . . the country of herbs,’ he said, ‘what a lovely area of France!’

  ‘The whole of France is beautiful. I think it is one of the loveliest countries in the world.’

  He beamed at me and nodded. We drank for a while in respectful silence that one gives to a special wine, and then the old man refilled our glasses.

  ‘And now you wish for the menu?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes, please,’ I said. ‘I was reading about some of your specialities in the Michelin. You must be an excellent chef to have obtained your star.’

  He closed his eyes and an expression of anguish passed for a moment across his fine face.

  ‘Ah, the star, the star,’ he groaned. ‘You have no idea, monsieur, what I had to suffer to get that star. Wait, I will get you the menu and after you have chosen I will tell you about the star. It is, I assure you, a romance such as Dumas might have invented and yet it is all true. A moment while I get the menu.’

  He went off into the hotel and returned presently with the menu and the wine list and placed them in front of me.

  ‘If I may venture to make a suggestion,’ he said, as he recharged our glasses, ‘the “Pigeons for the Sake of Marie Theresa” is something I am really proud of and I have some fine, plump, fresh squabs. As you are our first customer of the season I will, naturally, broach another bottle of my Beaujolais to accompany the pigeons.’

  ‘You are very kind,’ I said. ‘The pigeons sound admirable. Tell me, I notice that you give curious names to all your specialities. I presume they have some special significance?’

  ‘Why yes, monsieur,’ he said gravely. ‘When one invents a new dish I think it is only befitting that its name should commemorate some event. For example, take the pigeons. I invented this dish when my wife was pregnant with our first child. You know the strange humours women get at such times, eh – ? Well, my wife developed a passion for tarragon and pigeons. Enfin! It was incumbent upon me to invent a dish that would not only feed her and our unborn child, but would appeal to the finicky appetite of a pregnant woman of great beauty and sensibility. So, I invented this pigeon dish for the sake of Marie Theresa, which is my wife’s name.’

  ‘What a fascinating idea,’ I said. ‘I must start doing that myself, for I am something of a cook and I always think that so many lovely dishes have the dullest names.’

  ‘It is true. I see no reason why imagination should not go into the creation of a dish and also into the naming of it.’

  I perused the menu for a few moments.

  ‘I think,’ I said at last, ‘that with your “Pigeons for the Sake of Marie Theresa” as a main dish, I would like to start with the “Pâté Commemorating the passing of Albert Henri Périgord” and then finish with some cheese and perhaps “Tart of Wild Strawberries for the Delectation of Sophie Clemanceau”.’

  ‘An admirable choice, monsieur,’ he said, getting to his feet. ‘Now, please help yourself to more wine. I will just tell my wife of your wishes and then I will return and tell you the story of how we got our star.’

  He went off into the hotel and presently reappeared with a dish of olives and some small but delicious cheese puffs.

  ‘Yes, monsieur,’ he said thoughtfully, easing himself into the chair and taking a sip of wine, slouching easily in the attitude of the professional raconteur. ‘The fact that we have a star is, to my mind, a small miracle as I am sure you will agree when I tell you the full story. This all happened, of course, before the fourteen-eighteen war, for as you will have discerned, although I am a fine upstanding man, I am no longer in the first flush of youth.

  ‘In those days I was something of an artist, albeit an unsuccessful one. I still dabble a bit and do the odd oil or watercolour, but I found my true artistic métier was in the kitchen. However, in those days, as I say, I tried to earn a few francs by doing the odd portrait and pictures of people’s homes. In this way I earned a rather uneven living, but I enjoyed myself tramping through France and if no one bought my pictures I did whatever job was offered. I have mended roads, picked grapes and cherries and even been, for a short time, a snail farmer.

  ‘Well, one spring in just such a season as this, my wanderings led me to this village. As you may imagine the countryside was looking magnificent and I was captivated by the colours and the scenery. I decided that if I could stay in this vicinity for a while I would be able to paint some really remarkable pictures. But, as was often the case with me, I had no money, so I had to set about looking for a job. As you may well believe in a village of this size jobs were as rare as a goose with five livers.’

  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 fel
l 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 Perigord. 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 took 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 Liévre 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.