All, it seemed, had at one time or another savoured condemned meat, yoghurts so far past their sell-by date they were on the point of running out the door, or even, in one case, tinned cat food, the dismal foie-gras of lonely geriatrics, tasted however not out of impoverishment or confusion, but instead out of nothing more than jaded curiosity, the most insatiable appetite of all.
And then there was Alex. In the realm of dangerous food, Alex took, so to speak, the biscuit. A congenital victim of nut allergy, he had diced with death in dinner halls and restaurants throughout his short but hectic life, aware at every moment that his next bowl of breakfast cereal might be his last. As a child, he declared, he’d played Russian roulette with a packet of Revels. We drank his health, suitably humbled.
Portrait of an Englishman in
his Chateau
André Pieyre de Mandiargues
The shit was very tasty. I helped myself to as much of it as I had the fish sperm. I would have taken more if the negroes hadn’t carried it away. The next dish to arrive was stuffed cow’s vulva, so I was informed. From the gastronomic point of view, they were full of the most refined ingredients imaginable. Very white in colour and plump, they floated in a bone marrow sauce like little inflatable boats. To accompany them, we had giant asparagus. These Edmonde served to us one at a time with mock prudishness. Having consumed all that, the black waiters returned from the kitchen with two dishes of seabird brains. At first sight I was rather taken aback by their curious arrangement; for each brain, somewhere in size between a hazelnut and a walnut, had been stuck onto a beak. The idea was to pick up the little skull (which had been thoroughly cleaned), raise it to your lips and pull off the mouthful of brain which was crisp on the outside and a little raw in the middle.
‘Go ahead, eat!’ said Montcul, surprised by my reluctance. ‘They’re exceedingly rich in phosphorus, you know’.
I ignored his advice, however. The brains had an after-taste of fish oil which put me off. And then I began thinking, not without a certain unease, about the bloodbath this dish must have entailed – several hundred seagulls killed for just two plates! And yet, why hadn’t I considered that it must have required slaughter on a similar scale to provide one dish of vulvas? The reason, no doubt, was because I found the vulvas delicious, whereas the brains were disgusting. This opinion was not shared by the negroes. They polished off both plates of brains avidly.
When the dishes of seabird brains had been removed, Viola stuck her tongue out in such a way that made my balls tingle and informed me that dessert was about to appear. I assumed this meant fruit, gateaux and such like, but when I saw Gracchus and Publicola enter, staggering under the weight of an enormous dish, I wondered if I hadn’t become drunk without realising it, or perhaps I was having some sort of mystical hallucination. Their dish was piled high with lobster, langoustine, crab and prawns. At moments it looked as if they were about to drop the lot (if this was just play-acting, we were certainly taken in by it) but finally they succeeded in placing it on the table. Nothing could have provided a more elaborate adornment for the silver table than this monstrous prickly bush made up of claws, humps, antennae and spikes. However, an even greater delight awaited us. The chef had removed the salty meat from these crustaceans and replaced it with confectionery. So, when we tore off a limb or cracked open a shell, we found inside creme bavaroise, citron and rose jam, chestnut puree, walnut, vanilla and chocolate paste, praline or coffee fondant, pistachio marzipan and sugar flowers. The pleasures of the palate were mixed with the delight of unexpected and heedless destruction. After a while (during which time I had consumed the contents of a small lobster, an edible crab, two velvet swimming crabs and a handful of prawns) the serving dish was almost empty. Nobody spoke during this course, except to announce, like in a card game, what we had in our hand. It was a veritable feast – but then, the voice of our host returned us to other matters.
‘Edmonde’, he stated, ‘If I were you I’d be stuffing myself less and thinking more about my arsehole. No matter that you have been put to the test by Caligula’s weapon and every other cock that’s visited this chateau! I tell you, taking a great prick made of ice in the arse is another matter. It’s been known to split a person’s guts.’
‘Oh please no, anything but that!’ she begged. ‘Punish me any way you wish, if you think I ought to be punished. Let me be buggered by everyone here, even the women, with those dreadful dildoes of yours. Have me beaten. Bring in the dog. Anything you want, but spare me the ice.’
‘You will be spared nothing. Have the great penis brought in immediately.’
While Gracchus went out to the refrigerator, our host turned to me and said:
‘My dearest Balthasar, you will carry out this operation. The honour is yours as it’s your first evening at Gamehuche. But above all, do not let this whore off lightly. I’ll be most put out if you do. I was exaggerating just now when I said she was almost indispensible. There is nobody here who couldn’t be replaced from one day to the next, if that’s our pleasure.’
It was a most gentlemanly offer, and I’d have liked to thank him in a similar fashion, but Gracchus had already returned with the great prick. My words were interrupted by cries of joy when this object appeared. It was lying in a long vessel lined with seal skin. This vessel in turn had been placed in a dish of crushed ice so there would be no reduction in its size during preparations for its use. Wearing woollen gloves, I took hold of the prick by the balls and felt the weight of it in my hands. It felt like one of those wild west Colts which could shatter an alligator’s eye as effectively as a rifle. Viola lent me a little tape measure which, no doubt for shameless reasons, she kept in her stocking. With this I measured the implement before returning it to its cold store. Thirty nine centimetres long, with a diameter of twenty four centimetres in the middle and twenty five at the glans! Its dimensions made it a formidable weapon.
Meanwhile, Edmonde, realising that tears were to no avail, handed herself over to our black waiters in preparation for the sacrifice.
St Agatha
Medlar Lucan & Durian Gray
We first heard about Alberto G while attending a symposium on Chaos Magic in Cefalu. We were chatting with our friend René De Vere-Maudsley after his lecture on Egyptian burials in Victorian London, when we happened to mention that the next day was the feast of our favourite martyr, Saint Agatha – an occasion which we hoped to celebrate in suitably baroque style. René immediately became excited, and begged to introduce us to Alberto G’s Pasticceria dell’Oriente in Catania – an establishment which he described as ‘a vision of Lourdes in marzipan.’
On the road to Catania René told us more of Alberto. Born in poverty in Taormina, he had posed as a youth among leopardskins and Greek urns for the photographer Wilhelm Von Gloeden, that exquisitely perfumed purveyor of classical erotica to the nobility. He later moved to Catania, where he worked as a tout among the glittering carcasses of tuna and scabbard-fish in the street-market. His piercing blue eyes and muscular good looks soon attracted the attention of the wives of local potentates, and a flourishing career as a gigolo appeared to open up before him. But the Allied invasion of 1943 robbed him of his clientele. In Rome after the war he found employment as a stunt-man at Cinecittà, and was doubling for Charlton Heston in Ben Hur when a javelin entered his throat, nicking the carotid artery. Close to death, he was granted a vision of the martyred St Agatha, who stood before him with tears of pity in her eyes, offering her severed breasts to him on a platter. Alberto made a miraculous recovery and vowed to perform a ritual each year in honour of his saviour.
The Pasticceria dell’Oriente did not disappoint. Among hanging gardens of rose neon and chrome, the display cabinets revealed a lurid anatomical theatre of cannoli, cassate, puddings and creams – all lovingly shaped as organs of St Agatha. In the centre of the room, on an ornate silver stand, lay the pièce de résistance: a pair of pink dome-shaped blancmanges, each luxuriously nippled with a green glacé cherry.
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Through the door came an eruption of voices as St Agatha’s chariot, a vast devotional armoured car pulled by teams of grunting young bucks, rumbled past with cries of Siete tutti devoti, tutti?
Cettu! Cettu! roared the crowds lining the street.
Alberto walked in. Bare-chested, in the surgical white trousers of a pilgrim, he entered the room straight-backed, the light glinting from his polished head. From the counter he picked up a sharp knife, unnecessarily large for slicing blancmanges. Intoning a hymn in praise of St Agatha, he jabbed the point of the blade repeatedly into his chest. As the blood welled up from a series of penetrations, he leaned over the dishes of confectioneries, sprinkling them with crimson drops and moaning, Io sono tuo martire. Io sono il pelicano.
The Pelican straightened up and wavered uneasily before taking the knife to each of his nipples and carefully cutting around them until a circle of blood appeared and flowed like red milk in two lines down his chest. The room broke into solemn applause as the old man was led away and the sweet breasts of St Agatha, stained with his blood, were distributed among the faithful.
Saturday 3 February 2001
Into Catania for Saint Agatha. We begin by visiting the church of San Nicolò, an unfinished building with a jagged crown of black volcanic rock. Closed for years, it is supposedly used for satanic rituals. Next door is the university’s Faculty of Letters, once a Benedictine convent, a huge monstre gai of grey stucco, where the monks were accused of attempting to create paradise on earth.
On to the Pescheria, with fishmongers shouting like crazed preachers from pulpits of glistening silver sea-creatures. Beyond them greengrocers, salumieri, butchers with neatly bisected lambs hanging from rails above quivering piles of jellified meat stew known as zuzu. The decadence continues in a dried fruit shop selling dense black medallions of grape concentrate stamped with heraldic eagles, lions and shields.
The streets are packed. A great fever is in the air. St Agatha’s day is approaching.
Sunday 4 February
The festival begins. There are queues to enter the dungeon where St Agatha was martyred. Outside, in the streets the faithful assemble according to their guilds (fishmongers, butchers, bakers, pastrycooks, etc.) each around a candelora. These are complicated wooden structures, half folk art half wedding cakes. Each candelora has heavy bars for carrying, which pass through a massive box surmounted by sculpted lions, eagles or kneeling dwarfs. These in turn support gilded theatrical stages where scenes from St Agatha’s life are played out by miniature painted figures. St Agatha herself is topless, with two bloody circles where her breasts should be. Her torturers brandish iron forceps. Above them fly cherubs, holding out symbols of her martyrdom among wreaths of flowers and circlets of twinkling electric bulbs. Groups of fedeli, stocky young men in white night-shirts and black berets, sit around, chatting, smoking, talking into their mobile telephones.
Rosario leads us up to the fifth floor apartment of Dr Z , retired Head of the Sicilian Tax Office. We take limoncello and cakes in his elegant rooms while waiting for the procession to begin. His balconies give a wide view of the entire urban scene. As well as the candelore, there are lumbering devotional chariots like silver-plated Sherman tanks, dragged by teams pulling on ropes that are three or four hundred metres long. These squeeze through the swarming streets while shouts of Cittadini, cittadini, siete tutti devoti, tutti? roll up to us like the smoke of sacrificial fires through the darkening air.
A Renaissance Dessert
David Madsen
During the carnival week last year, Leo and I attended a most extraordinary banquet given by Lorenzo Strozzi, the banker, brother of Filippo Strozzi, who is well known in Rome (and perhaps beyond) for his epicurean inclinations; Leo came dressed as a cardinal, wearing a silly sort of eye-mask of black velvet. Nobody was supposed to know he was there, apparently, but as Cardinals Rossi, Cibo, Salviati and Ridolfi were also present, this absurd attempt at incognito was somewhat futile.
We were all led up a flight of steps to a door which had been painted black, through which we entered a large hall, entirely draped in black silk and velvet; in the middle of this hall stood a black table on which reposed two black glass flagons of wine and two human skulls, filled with the very choicest viands.
‘Do you think the poor man is depressed?’ Leo whispered to me.
‘No. We’re meant to be mystified, or a little frightened, or perhaps both.’
After nibbling for a while, everyone was ushered into an adjoining hall, even larger, which was blindingly, brilliantly lit by innumerable candles and oil-lamps, some of the most exquisite execution, in gold and silver, adorned with precious stones. I caught Leo eyeing them enviously. We sat down at the huge table, and after some moments were surprised – not to say shocked – by a deep rumbling beneath our chairs; one or two of the ladies swooned, and Cardinal Ridolfi, ridiculous old actress that he is, leapt to his feet with a squeal of horror and announced:
‘The apocalypse has begun!’
In fact, it was the sound of a mechanical contrivance beneath the floor, which was so designed (cleverly, I concede, but all rather de trop) as to allow a great circular board to rise up from the room below, through the floor, until it was precisely level with the table at which we sat, and on it was heaped great dishes of victuals. Relieved more than anything else, several of the guests burst into applause. Lorenzo Strozzi allowed himself the faint trace of a smile, like a magician gratified at the success of his first trick, but knowing that there are even better ones to come. As indeed there were.
Servants placed a chased silver platter in front of each guest, who found, to his or her consternation, that what it contained was quite inedible. There were little cries of horror or delight or bewilderment; there was oddly forced laughter; some people began to look more than a little frightened.
‘What have you got in yours?’ I asked Leo.
He peered down at his plate and sniffed.
‘It would appear to be half a pair of female undergarments,’ he answered. ‘Boiled.’
‘I’ve got a raw sausage.’
‘An empty eggshell!’ a voice cried.
‘A toad – oh Jesus – a live toad!’ shrieked another, less enthusiastically.
‘The heel of a shoe –’
‘A kerchief, fried in batter…’
‘Good God Almighty – a penis! No, no, wait a moment – ah! A blanched baby marrow, I think –’
Suddenly, the lights were extinguished. Quite how Strozzi managed it, I do not know; maybe there were servants hidden behind the drapes – in fact, now I come to think of it, this is the only way it could have been done. The great hall immediately rang with the shrill screams and shrieks of all the ladies, and Cardinal Ridolfi. Then we heard the slow rumble and shudder of the mechanism again, which was clearly being lowered, freshly loaded, and sent up a second time. After this, the candles were relighted (which took some time), and – behold! – the great table at which we sat was laden. This time the applause was strenuous and prolonged.
For the first course we were served vegetable soup with stracciatelli, and potage à la royne, which were accompanied by enormous slices of bread fried in oil and garlic and piled high with finely minced and seasoned partridge and pheasant, decorated with funghi porcini, artichokes deep-fried in the Jewish manner (Strozzi was a banker, after all), and baby onions. There was also potage garni accompanied by all manner of offal (which I heartily dislike, but in any case my Gnostic principles would not permit me to eat any of the meat.)
The second course consisted of venison broiled in stock, pies of every variety, pressed tongue, spiced sausages and salamis served with chopped melon and figs, and savoury egg flans. These delicacies were followed by huge roasts: more partridges and pheasants, larks (their tongues, basted in honey and orange with basilico, served separately), wood doves, pigeons, young chickens, and whole lambs. Then came a huge array of dishes made from butter, eggs and cheese – pies, flans, pastries, and so
on; bowls of melanzane marinated in white wine and sprinkled lavishly with fragrant herbs, celery chopped with onions and peppers drenched in oil, also put in an appearance. The wines flowed as freely as a drunkard’s piss.
After several hours of continuous eating, I was feeling quite faint; indeed, I could not imagine how so many of the other guests were still happily cramming themselves. Leo, unsurprisingly, chomped his way through the lot; however, he had not as yet farted (although I expected a real stinker at any moment), which was some small blessing. Lorenzo Strozzi, at the head of the table, finally rose to his feet a little unsteadily.
‘Your Holiness – ah – Your Eminences, I meant to say, of course! – my dear and very special guests! I offer you now the climax, the apotheosis, the summit of this rather unusual evening.’
He clapped his hands, and four servants entered the hall, bearing on their shoulders a massive silver dish, in which was heaped what looked like half the cream in Rome; it was decorated more richly than Leo’s tiara, with bright red cherries, brown pine kernels, thin green strips of angelica, all kinds of nuts and berries, and was wound about with a great length of dried leaves that had been dipped in gold. The entire assembled company (including myself, I readily admit) drew in its breath.
Strozzi went on, clearly drunk:
‘Ah, but all is not what it seems to be, my very dear and special friends! No indeed. What you see before you is but the phantasm of the thing itself – the accidents which occlude and conceal the substance, as our good Tomaso d’Aquino would have said. You see, Your Eminences? I am not entirely unversed in the queen of sciences. Excuse me, I digress. Yes, invisible to your eyes, most cherished guests, is a delight more subtle, more – what shall I say, what term to employ? – more sensuous (for that must surely be the word!) than the simple sweetness which mere appearances promise. And let me give you a small clue, a tiny hint, so to speak, of the secret which is shortly to be revealed: I provide no implements for this, my final and most exquisite offering; you must use only your tongues.’
The Decadent Handbook Page 25
