John Barlow - Eating Mammals

He reached behind him and took one of the pint bottles from the crate on the back seat.

‘Care for some?’ he said, before polishing off half its orange contents. ‘I have a long evening ahead,’ he added as way of explanation.

On the way to the event I tried to get him to elaborate upon the stories he had told me earlier that afternoon. At last, perhaps somewhat exasperated by my incessant questioning, he said: ‘My art is something which really must be observed. No manner of description will suffice. Have patience, and you will see …’

‘Seeing is believing,’ I chuntered, as an errant strand of incredulity wrapped itself around my thoughts and introduced doubts not only as to the true nature of his act, but also about where this monster fruitcake was taking me.

Mulligan brought the car to an abrupt halt, right there in the middle of a twisting, coastal road. I lunged forward, sliding to the edge of the shiny leather and getting halfway to an involuntary squat in the footwell. His wry, twinkling eyes had turned dark, all fire, and stared menacingly into mine.

‘Seeing, my friend, is comprehending. Seeing is understanding.’

And with that, his eyes still fixed on mine, he reached behind him for the half-finished bottle, and proceeded to empty its contents down his throat.

We resumed our journey, and my apprenticeship began. From that day on I began my education in the lore and history of our trade. Mulligan would talk about the distant past, of old, famous, forgotten names: The Great Eusebio Galante, Franz ‘Fledermaus’ Pipek and Rocco ‘La Rocca’ Fontane; of Sammy Ling (‘He’ll eat anything!’) and his predilection for neckties; of who’d eaten most; of scandalous, illegal records set in the back streets of hardly remembered Bavarian towns; of the rotten and the rancid, eaten and (allegedly) digested for a bagful of the local currency; of the unfortunate demise of Henry ‘Tubby’ Turns; of the great American masters like Nelson Pickle, who at the height of his powers had eaten a grand piano (baby, no frame) in little over nine weeks as a promotion for a new Detroit music store – those were the Prohibition days, great times for professional gluttony! – poor Nelson, who came to Europe to give eating demonstrations at the great German beer festivals and died of alcohol poisoning after assuming that beer was beer the world over and drinking a keg of Belgian Trappist in a single weekend for a bet.

That night was also to be my first appearance on stage with Mulligan. The evening began inauspiciously. After a long drive we finally turned into the forecourt of a large, somewhat podgy Edwardian building. He smiled and said, ‘Well, Paris it’s not, and it’s no palace. And, I assure you, there will be no crown princes in the audience! But this, for tonight, is work.’

We unloaded some heavy wooden crates from the car and wheeled them around to the back of the building. A cheery but nervous man in a tight-fitting dinner suit greeted us, a glass of gin in his hand, and led us into a large, modestly elegant dining hall. The place smelt of Sunday school, but with the added aromas of overcooked meat and aftershave. Forty or fifty place settings announced, by means of the sorry array of cutlery at each, a rather strained attempt at luxury. The man with the gin pointed to a small semicircular stage at one end of the room.

‘Everything is as you requested,’ he said to Mulligan, looking around the hall a little anxiously. Mulligan himself surveyed the tables, and then turned his gaze to the stage.

‘Yes, yes indeed. All appears to be in order. Quite acceptable. So, there remains only that small transaction which my accountant constantly reminds me must never be overlooked …’

The gin man stared down into the glass.

‘We do … you know, it was rather felt that, that … that that would normally come after …’

His voice tailed off. Mulligan said nothing. The three of us stood there, a very distant murmur of cocktail chitchat in the background, Mulligan’s amenable, matter-of-fact smile fixed on his face. After a handful of long, cringing seconds, the poor chap reached into his breast pocket and drew out a brown envelope.

‘You’ll find it all there,’ he said in a soft, defeated voice.

‘Ah, splendid!’ said Mulligan, bursting into activity. ‘I’ll make you out a receipt—’

‘No, no, that won’t be necessary,’ the other replied, hitching down his jacket and turning away. ‘If you could begin after coffee and be finished by twelve,’ he said over his shoulder as he started out towards some elaborate double doors at the other end of the hall.

Mulligan opened the envelope, smirking.

‘The people one meets in this job! I don’t know! Get me another bottle of the mixture, would you?’ he said, quickly thumbing through what appeared to be a considerable wad of banknotes.

Our preparations that evening were meticulous. On the little stage we erected the apparatus, each of its separate cast-iron pieces removed one by one from the crates and taken from their wrapping of soft, oily cotton cloth. I assisted where I could in the assembly of the main frame itself, a four-legged structure which bolted down on to the bottom of the largest crate, which itself unhinged on all sides to become a sort of stabilising floor for the machine. From then on I was useful only in passing the maestro one greasy rag bundle after another. He pushed, slotted and clamped such a number of cogs, grinding cylinders and levers on to the growing contraption that I began to wonder if he was going to attach wheels and a petrol tank and drive off into the distance.

Mulligan’s concentrated industry began to yield results. The nascent iron structure slowly grew into The Machine – the very largest hand-cranked mincing machine you could possibly imagine. If, I told myself, just if he really does plan to eat furniture this evening, just if, then at least he has something which is of potential use. I peered down the funnel and saw huge, menacing teeth poised like bunches of iron knuckles, ready to pound raw granite to a crumble, or so it seemed; I peeped around the back at the intricate system of gears mounted around a series of progressively smaller grinding chambers; I studied the tiny opening from which the mince would emerge, hardly bigger than a bottle neck. The Great Michael Mulligan, then, was going to eat a ground-up chair.

Still in shock, and for the first time truly believing that such a thing could be done, I looked around the hall, wondering where the chosen item had been positioned. Surely, but surely, it would be a special chair, its legs partially hollowed out, or made of balsa wood. Meanwhile, Mulligan put the final touches to The Machine and gave the plaque bolted to the funnel a brisk polish. Mulligan & Sons it read, gleaming brass against racing green. Later I learned that his father, the owner of a Dublin foundry, had disowned his son Michael on learning of his new career as a ‘bloody glutton’. The plaque had been sent secretly from Ireland by a brother.

Mulligan stopped and admired the plaque for a moment, and then came up to me and stood by my side.

‘Now, Chef, why don’t you select a nice, plump chair for me?’

For the duration of the dinner itself we sat in a back room, glad not to be partaking of the paltry feast which four dozen Freemasons were busy praising through grinning, shiny faces, each one of them eager no doubt to disguise their disappointment. Mulligan decanted six pints of the orange liquid into a tall, vaguely Egyptian-looking jug, and took occasional sips from the one remaining bottle. He explained the part I would play: I would be dumb, although only for effect, not as a stated disability. To this I had no objection, since I am by nature a retiring person, and of course my tongue was still throbbing. I was also beginning to feel unwell, although I would later recognise this as stage fright.