Colin Harrison - The Havana Room

"How does it work?" came a voice from the room.

"I'm not a doctor," said Allison, "but my understanding is that the poison blocks the sodium channels in nerve tissue. That means nerves can't fire, can't make muscles contract. There's paralysis, the degrees of which we'll get to in a minute. But full-blown poisoning means respiratory arrest, cardiac dysfunction, central nervous system failure, that kind of thing."

"Do you have the antidote on hand?"

"No."

"Why not?"

"There is none." While the room absorbed this difficult fact, Allison paused, nodded at Ha, then went on. "Where was I? Oh, the deaths. Yes, indeed in the last few decades there've been many hundreds of documented deaths, the great majority of them in Japan. The fish's attraction has always been the genuine chance that it might be one's last meal." She smiled dangerously. "The fugu fish has been generally banned from time to time throughout history, and specifically banned for certain populations at other times. To this day, it remains the only delicacy which cannot, by law, be served to the Japanese emperor and his family."

"I don't see the attraction," muttered someone.

"Oh, I do," came another voice.

"The taste is said to be enslaving," Allison responded. "But beyond the taste there does appear to be a desire in human beings to taste that which is prohibited them." She studied the men before her, as if to see if they possessed such an impulse. "While we appreciate that some people enjoy the Japanese fugu fish, it seems a somewhat tame entertainment, not particularly provocative, not particularly interesting. It has not caught on here in New York City, and maybe that reflects the genuine scarcity of the fish and the chefs who can prepare it, or it may reflect the fact that New Yorkers are inured to certain dangers, the regular dangers, if you will, and are not compelled by the idea of paying four hundred dollars for a piece of fish that may just cause only a little numbness around the mouth."

She paused, and in this interlude each man appeared to privately assess what might represent the regular dangers of life in the city, and whether he had, in fact, become inured to them. No one protested Allison's description, and in this there seemed to be a collective acknowledgment that she was right, and that, moreover, the burden of the usual dangers was itself tiresome and might require diversion.

"When people think of the most dangerous fugu," Allison resumed, "they usually refer to the torafugu, which is caught off the coast of Korea in the winter. But what is not known by many people is that there are more than three hundred varieties of the fugu, with the one served in Japan the most common. Also not generally known is that the delicacy is originally from China, as are many of the fish in the fugu family. In fact the dish has only been eaten in Japan for the last few hundred years, whereas in China the fugu, both in forms still alive and others now extinct, have been eaten for almost three thousand years. So, when I said we were interested in history here in the Havana Room, I didn't just mean good old Franklin Roosevelt and his pince-nez."

She waited and swept her eyes across the room. Several men were leaning forward attentively. "Of those three-hundred-odd varieties of the fugu, there is one very rare variety, the Shao-tzou, which comes from the Jiangsu region of China. It's pronounced show-zoo." Allison stepped next to the tank that Ha had wheeled out and gazed down into it. "For the last twenty years," she continued, "this fish was understood to be so rare- if not outright extinct- that the occasional specimen never made it out of Jiangsu. This despite the famous willingness of the Japanese to pay nearly any price for a prized fish." Allison looked up. "But somehow Ha discovered a source- a story you'll hear in a moment. Even so, the fish is exceedingly rare and exceptionally expensive. It must be delivered live to the cook, and you can imagine the difficulty of getting living fish from some muddy riverbed in China to this room in New York City. We have a standing order with our supplier, but we never quite know when we'll get a fish. Generally we're able to procure only one or two per month, sometimes none, and when we do get a fish, we immediately schedule the event you are about to witness and perhaps participate in." Allison smiled at me directly, and I wondered if she pushed her jaw outward at me ever so subtly in playful aggression. But then she blinked and resumed her presentation. "This month we've been lucky- I think we've gotten two. The Shao-tzou is also only seasonally available, only dependably caught five months out of the year, when it moves in from deeper waters to feed and spawn off the coast of Jiangsu. Sometimes the fish arrive dead or so damaged as to be useless. The cost is close to two thousand dollars wholesale for one fish. I know that's surprising, especially when you consider that the number of culinarily acceptable portions per fish is only two, three, or four. And never more than that. Once above a certain size the flesh of the Shao-tzou becomes almost inedible and the toxins too concentrated to be safe at any dose. But the cost and trouble are worth it, gentlemen. Because to compare the Shao-tzou with regular fugu fish is like- well, it's like comparing one of our Texan long-horn steaks to a burger at McDonald's. There is no comparison. Both are extremely dangerous, but the effects are different and various."

Ha now wheeled a butcher-block table forward. A white dinner napkin covered whatever lay on the table. He appeared more erect and dignified than when I'd seen him earlier.

Allison looked about the room. "Any questions so far?"

"I'd like to know what the fish does to you if you actually dare eat it," called a man.

Allison nodded in anticipation of this question. "There are a number of effects, but only one that interests us."

"Which is?"

"Paralytic euphoria."

"What?"

She spoke more slowly this time. "Paralytic euphoria. For a short period of time, less than five minutes, the diner is rendered nearly paralyzed- he can breathe and blink his eyes but not much moreand yet he feels euphoric. It's the very inability to move that intensifies the pleasure."

The room fell silent as the men weighed the probability that Allison's statements were true. Given her poise and intelligence and forthright presentation, they well might be. But if such statements were true, the men seemed to ask themselves privately, what did that mean? How might such an altered state compare to the remembered effects of the various opiates, amphetamines, psychotropics, stimulants, antidepressants, or hallucinogens they might or might not have ingested over the years? Allison said nothing in these long seconds. It appeared that, as the roomful of men shuffled through what was, if taken as a whole, no doubt a voluminous drug-taking experience, there were many remembered experiences that might have been called euphoric, and even a few in which a near-paralytic state was achieved, but there were none that could be recalled as both paralytic and euphoric, and so the period of individual contemplation recombined to a collective mood of curiosity.

"Is it sexual euphoria?" came a voice. Some laughter followed, most of it worried.

"This is always asked," said Allison solemnly, somewhat like a clinician responding to an overly earnest patient. "My answer is that different diners explain their experience differently, but they do seem to suggest a general effect, a universal pleasure." Her eyebrows shot up. "However, I confess I have read accounts that claim that the testes of the fish, if served in hot sake, is an aphrodisiac."

This information seemed unnerving, at best, for none of us knew if it was true, few of us wanted it to be false, and everyone now had to reconsider the notion of paralytic sexual euphoria, a concept that seemed as paradoxical as it did tantalizing. Yet Allison would not indulge further speculation. She shook her head coyly and said, "Chinese culture makes many such claims- for deer, bulls, bears, all sorts of creatures. But we're not interested in wishful thinking. And anyway, we're seeking high art here, gentlemen, not low sensationalism."