[story] appetites
author: akaVertigo (akavertigo)
email: musesan [at] gmail.com
"What does cookery mean? It means the knowledge of Medea and of Circe, and of Calypso, and Sheba." -John Ruskin
After my father died, my mother starved.
She was a cook by birth, my mother, inheriting the ability from a river of ancestors, a blood gift passed between mothers and daughters like a cherished bottle of fine oil. The tradition forbade written recipes; instead, all cooking rules arrived through instinct and the senses. The feel of condensed steam flushing your face, the crack of a white egg against a bowl's rim, the virgin glow of butter smeared across black bread, the crackling scent of seared onions, the lingering kiss of salt: these made the legacy my mother brewed and swallowed over her stovetop, and it was powerful. But it wasn't enough to satisfy the gluttonous cancer sucking my father dry; when he died, my mother gave up and forgot her magic. Our kitchen became a wasteland, its gleaming kettles and potential abandoned to the power of her sorrow. The few obligatory meals she crafted were pitiful, colorless and appetizing as dust. Likewise, she ate without relish, hopeless, acting like her tongue could not tell the difference between hot or cold, sweet or bitter, oil and water.
"Grief is a wolf," my grandmother, Babi, explained. "A beast. It eats without gratitude, always slavering for more. It will not stop until it has devoured the heart and liver, and nothing is left." With those words, Babi rushed to the rescue armed with a century old bottle of wine vinegar, thick glass jars full of salted pork, and grapefruits wrapped in tissue paper. She exorcised our kitchen, banging pot against stove and knife against board, chasing out every bit of dead, cold air with a storm of garlic and honey.
Slowly, my mother's skin regained succulence; she became once again a beauty instead of a ghost. I celebrated the return of her rosy cheeks and juicy mouth, thinking the danger to be over with the death of the wolf. Babi, older and wiser, knew better. She understood that the disappearance of one wolf was fresh room for another. Grief had cored a hole inside my mother's heart, a vulnerable opening ripe for exploitation; eventually the lure of such a ready dish would fetch a predator. It was only a matter of time, Babi whispered with the same faultless conviction used to judge the density of a sauce or tenderness of fish.
Two weeks later, Randolph showed up at our doorstep, looking for dinner.
Randolph was a city animal, urbane and well dressed, clever about knowing what to say to get what he wanted. He approached my mother with confidence, sticky with compliments and opera tickets, and succeeded in wearing her on his arm like a cuff link through the cold months that followed. I learned to recognize that the sight of a long, polished hood parked at the street corner meant there'd be lush roses sitting on our dinner table and small pearls gleaming in my mother's ear as she was led out the door. Staying up waiting for her, Babi gave me baked apples stuffed with raisins and sharp with the tang of lemon. One apple, its flesh pulpy and rich, would be set aside and kept warm to welcome our third member home.
I did not hate Randolph because he wasn't my father and was taking my mother away; I hated him because he took without giving, a thief. After some time in his shining company, my mother's look of abandonment turned to exhaustion. Disoriented, she followed him out each evening with the gaze of someone unaware of her location or destination. It was painful to see, frightening, like watching someone choke to death on the other side of a glass window. Finally, Babi's tolerance reached its limit. She turned on the stove and told me to chop some parsley. "Time to break his teeth and boil the bones," she said, handing me a knife. I accepted it without argument.
The net of Babi's intentions was thick with rosemary and butter, white rice and salt, garlic; it sizzled in wait for its target. None of Randolph's deft steps or words could guard against it; he became a willing victim the moment his nose passed across our doorstep. An elegant appointment at another soulless high-class restaurant evaporated before the command of Babi's kitchen. She invited him to dinner on my mother's behalf, but she was doing it for all of our sakes. I marveled at her courage; the calm lift and fall of her arm she ladled out thick soup, the unhurried glide of her knife slicing generous chunks of meat glazed to look richer than gold, the patience with which she took his expressive, overblown compliments and discarded them over her shoulder. It was a battle; her skill versus his flattery, and the only difference was that Babi was a true veteran. She knew how to judge the elements at hand and plan their course. Randolph, on the other hand, wasn't used to thinking beyond his next plate of satisfaction.
What chance does a young wolf have against an old witch?
None.
In the weeks that followed, Babi stole back every ounce of control Randolph had acquired over my mother. The restaurant invitations trickled down into nothing; instead of the two of them going out, he was beguiled into coming in. His eyes fell into the habit of straying towards the kitchen instead of the bedroom, and talk of opera fled our house; I toasted its departure with a fistful of grapes and the laughing fizz of lemonade.
Slowly, my mother quit the lost look in her eyes and found her way back into the kitchen to help Babi prepare each evening's helping of bait. If Randolph noticed his target's growing lack of obedience to his calls, he had no time to mull the change; we kept him too busy chewing. He continued to bring flowers, chocolates, and wine, organic efforts to buy territory in our lives. Babi transformed his attempts into rose butter, hot fudge pudding, and a red, red sauce for veal. She smiled when she served them, not out of malice, but to remind him of who was the true warden of the situation. No meal ended with a promise of another but the contract hung like a threat over the table nonetheless: as long he continued to come, he would eat but not without eventually paying the price for it.
In this way, my grandmother used the wolf's nature against him.
With the arrival of every new perfect dish, a piece of Randolph's influence would break off to fall into Babi's boiling pot and my mother took steps back to what she was before my father's eyes closed. Gorging on what was before him, mouth stained with grease, Randolph did not grow fatter; Babi had no intention of making him a bigger vessel for his own greed, or our inconvenience. She focused on overfilling every notch inside him, while skillfully forbidding any room for growth. The skin around his lying eyes became pudgy, overripe; I tracked Randolph's steady progress from a slim, hard grain into a soft, white morsel, the kind even a toothless baby could squash.
Still he continued to eat.
Is it cruel to lead an animal so steadily, so easily, to the ending of his fate? Perhaps. But that, as Babi would quip, was sapless vegetarian thinking; her steel hands and chili heart has no patience for it. Randolph had barged into our lives without permission; he deserved no kindness in being escorted out.
It was on the last evening of winter that Randolph fell defeated. Babi had braised pork to taste like boar, massaging the meat with a coarse powder of berries, cloves, and peppercorns three days in advance, and whipping up a creamy garlic puree with the last of Randolph's proffered wine. She served it simply, with fresh bread and a few leaves of salad, smiling. It was a smile without teeth, mysterious, but warm towards my mother and I. In the case of Randolph, however, it was the beam of a guillotine, a butcher's blade catching the sun. He stuffed shreds of pork into his jaw, too far gone to rely on fine manners for protection, and sat dumb to the danger falling down his gullet. Bite after bite, his skin grew rosier and rosier, glistening, and the whites of his eyes began to thicken into stupor. I could hear his breath labor, worn out, but the speed of his jaw never slackened to offer relief. Not once did Randolph let go of the fork, not even when his body sagged and crashed out of the chair and onto the floor. The EMT had to pry it out of his greasy hand when they checked his pulse.
Poor wolf. Poor stupid beastie. You didn't think you'd win, did you?
I haven't seen, nor heard about, Randolph since he got out of the hospital. He was lucky; the heart attack did little damage to his oil soaked hide. Then again, perhaps it wasn't luck but a warning; Babi is a generous hearted woman, after all.
But she has no taste for wolves.
the end
email: musesan [at] gmail.com
"What does cookery mean? It means the knowledge of Medea and of Circe, and of Calypso, and Sheba." -John Ruskin
After my father died, my mother starved.
She was a cook by birth, my mother, inheriting the ability from a river of ancestors, a blood gift passed between mothers and daughters like a cherished bottle of fine oil. The tradition forbade written recipes; instead, all cooking rules arrived through instinct and the senses. The feel of condensed steam flushing your face, the crack of a white egg against a bowl's rim, the virgin glow of butter smeared across black bread, the crackling scent of seared onions, the lingering kiss of salt: these made the legacy my mother brewed and swallowed over her stovetop, and it was powerful. But it wasn't enough to satisfy the gluttonous cancer sucking my father dry; when he died, my mother gave up and forgot her magic. Our kitchen became a wasteland, its gleaming kettles and potential abandoned to the power of her sorrow. The few obligatory meals she crafted were pitiful, colorless and appetizing as dust. Likewise, she ate without relish, hopeless, acting like her tongue could not tell the difference between hot or cold, sweet or bitter, oil and water.
"Grief is a wolf," my grandmother, Babi, explained. "A beast. It eats without gratitude, always slavering for more. It will not stop until it has devoured the heart and liver, and nothing is left." With those words, Babi rushed to the rescue armed with a century old bottle of wine vinegar, thick glass jars full of salted pork, and grapefruits wrapped in tissue paper. She exorcised our kitchen, banging pot against stove and knife against board, chasing out every bit of dead, cold air with a storm of garlic and honey.
Slowly, my mother's skin regained succulence; she became once again a beauty instead of a ghost. I celebrated the return of her rosy cheeks and juicy mouth, thinking the danger to be over with the death of the wolf. Babi, older and wiser, knew better. She understood that the disappearance of one wolf was fresh room for another. Grief had cored a hole inside my mother's heart, a vulnerable opening ripe for exploitation; eventually the lure of such a ready dish would fetch a predator. It was only a matter of time, Babi whispered with the same faultless conviction used to judge the density of a sauce or tenderness of fish.
Two weeks later, Randolph showed up at our doorstep, looking for dinner.
Randolph was a city animal, urbane and well dressed, clever about knowing what to say to get what he wanted. He approached my mother with confidence, sticky with compliments and opera tickets, and succeeded in wearing her on his arm like a cuff link through the cold months that followed. I learned to recognize that the sight of a long, polished hood parked at the street corner meant there'd be lush roses sitting on our dinner table and small pearls gleaming in my mother's ear as she was led out the door. Staying up waiting for her, Babi gave me baked apples stuffed with raisins and sharp with the tang of lemon. One apple, its flesh pulpy and rich, would be set aside and kept warm to welcome our third member home.
I did not hate Randolph because he wasn't my father and was taking my mother away; I hated him because he took without giving, a thief. After some time in his shining company, my mother's look of abandonment turned to exhaustion. Disoriented, she followed him out each evening with the gaze of someone unaware of her location or destination. It was painful to see, frightening, like watching someone choke to death on the other side of a glass window. Finally, Babi's tolerance reached its limit. She turned on the stove and told me to chop some parsley. "Time to break his teeth and boil the bones," she said, handing me a knife. I accepted it without argument.
The net of Babi's intentions was thick with rosemary and butter, white rice and salt, garlic; it sizzled in wait for its target. None of Randolph's deft steps or words could guard against it; he became a willing victim the moment his nose passed across our doorstep. An elegant appointment at another soulless high-class restaurant evaporated before the command of Babi's kitchen. She invited him to dinner on my mother's behalf, but she was doing it for all of our sakes. I marveled at her courage; the calm lift and fall of her arm she ladled out thick soup, the unhurried glide of her knife slicing generous chunks of meat glazed to look richer than gold, the patience with which she took his expressive, overblown compliments and discarded them over her shoulder. It was a battle; her skill versus his flattery, and the only difference was that Babi was a true veteran. She knew how to judge the elements at hand and plan their course. Randolph, on the other hand, wasn't used to thinking beyond his next plate of satisfaction.
What chance does a young wolf have against an old witch?
None.
In the weeks that followed, Babi stole back every ounce of control Randolph had acquired over my mother. The restaurant invitations trickled down into nothing; instead of the two of them going out, he was beguiled into coming in. His eyes fell into the habit of straying towards the kitchen instead of the bedroom, and talk of opera fled our house; I toasted its departure with a fistful of grapes and the laughing fizz of lemonade.
Slowly, my mother quit the lost look in her eyes and found her way back into the kitchen to help Babi prepare each evening's helping of bait. If Randolph noticed his target's growing lack of obedience to his calls, he had no time to mull the change; we kept him too busy chewing. He continued to bring flowers, chocolates, and wine, organic efforts to buy territory in our lives. Babi transformed his attempts into rose butter, hot fudge pudding, and a red, red sauce for veal. She smiled when she served them, not out of malice, but to remind him of who was the true warden of the situation. No meal ended with a promise of another but the contract hung like a threat over the table nonetheless: as long he continued to come, he would eat but not without eventually paying the price for it.
In this way, my grandmother used the wolf's nature against him.
With the arrival of every new perfect dish, a piece of Randolph's influence would break off to fall into Babi's boiling pot and my mother took steps back to what she was before my father's eyes closed. Gorging on what was before him, mouth stained with grease, Randolph did not grow fatter; Babi had no intention of making him a bigger vessel for his own greed, or our inconvenience. She focused on overfilling every notch inside him, while skillfully forbidding any room for growth. The skin around his lying eyes became pudgy, overripe; I tracked Randolph's steady progress from a slim, hard grain into a soft, white morsel, the kind even a toothless baby could squash.
Still he continued to eat.
Is it cruel to lead an animal so steadily, so easily, to the ending of his fate? Perhaps. But that, as Babi would quip, was sapless vegetarian thinking; her steel hands and chili heart has no patience for it. Randolph had barged into our lives without permission; he deserved no kindness in being escorted out.
It was on the last evening of winter that Randolph fell defeated. Babi had braised pork to taste like boar, massaging the meat with a coarse powder of berries, cloves, and peppercorns three days in advance, and whipping up a creamy garlic puree with the last of Randolph's proffered wine. She served it simply, with fresh bread and a few leaves of salad, smiling. It was a smile without teeth, mysterious, but warm towards my mother and I. In the case of Randolph, however, it was the beam of a guillotine, a butcher's blade catching the sun. He stuffed shreds of pork into his jaw, too far gone to rely on fine manners for protection, and sat dumb to the danger falling down his gullet. Bite after bite, his skin grew rosier and rosier, glistening, and the whites of his eyes began to thicken into stupor. I could hear his breath labor, worn out, but the speed of his jaw never slackened to offer relief. Not once did Randolph let go of the fork, not even when his body sagged and crashed out of the chair and onto the floor. The EMT had to pry it out of his greasy hand when they checked his pulse.
Poor wolf. Poor stupid beastie. You didn't think you'd win, did you?
I haven't seen, nor heard about, Randolph since he got out of the hospital. He was lucky; the heart attack did little damage to his oil soaked hide. Then again, perhaps it wasn't luck but a warning; Babi is a generous hearted woman, after all.
But she has no taste for wolves.
the end