T. Boyle - T. C. Boyle Stories

Jacques-Yves, mon vieux, be reasonable , I will tell him. We are out of butter, eggs, cream, vegetables and herbs, we have less than a gallon of olive oil, no meats to speak of, no shallots or onions or potatoes. Release us. Release me. I’m fed up. Thirty years of clinging to the drainboard while the sea jerks my feet out from under me, thirty years of dicing leeks on a counter that won’t stand still, thirty years of racking my brain to come up with new ways and yet more new ways to prepare fish, and I’ve had it. I want to retire. I want to cook for tourists and the petite bourgeoisie. I want to cook meat, I want an herb garden and a chickenhouse. I want to feel the earth under my feet.

This is my speech, the one gathering itself on my lips as I seek out Cousteau. Unfortunately, I never get to deliver it. Because by the time I get to Cousteau’s cabin and stick my head in the door, he is lost to me, lost to us all, as faraway as if he were on another ship off another coast. The portholes are smothered, the room bathed in shadow: Cousteau is absorbed in the ritual of the voice-over. He sits before the TV monitor, a weird greenish glow on his face, mesmerized by images of the sea. Nothing moves but his lips, his voice murmurous and rapt: “As we go deeper into the somnolent depths, a kaleidoscope of fishes whirling round us like painted stars in a night sky, we cannot help but wonder at the phantasmagoric marvels that await us below….”

That evening, as the grouper appears in the guise of a saffronless bouillabaisse that is short on all ingredients except fish, Sancerre takes me aside. We are in the galley, the ship rolling in a moderate-to-heavy swell, the crew loud and raucous in the main cabin. His skin is the color of a baked yam, his eyes sunk deep in his head. “Bernard,” he says, lowering his voice to a whispery rasp, “I’ve been talking to some of the men….”

The pans rattle. A knife shoots across the expanse of the cutting board and lodges in the wall. I grab hold of the counter to keep from pitching face forward into the dessert. “Yes?” I prompt.

Sancerre’s face is like an old boot. The swell doesn’t faze him — he might as well be a fly clinging to the wall. “We want to go home,” he says finally.

Relief washes over me. I can feel the tears coming to my eyes as I take the blistered hide of Sancerre’s hand in mine and give it an affirmative squeeze. “Me too,” I say, “me too,” and I can hardly contain my emotion.

Sancerre glances over his shoulder, furtive and sly, then comes back to me with a wink. “We were just thinking,” he whispers, and it’s a strain to hear him over the habitual roar of the sea and the brouhaha of the crew at their sorry dinner, “about what you said last night over coffee, standing up to Cousteau like that—”

The ship dips to port, then jerks back at the long leash of its anchor, which is mired in the muck on top of a submerged mountain five hundred feet down. “Yes,” I say, afraid of moving too fast, afraid of scaring him off, “go on.”

But he just shrugs, the big idiot, and jams his hands into his pockets even as the swell rocks the deck under his feet.

“Listen,” I say, “Sancerre, old friend, could you find room for another little morsel of sausage? And some cheese I’ve been saving — some Gruyere?”

Sancerre’s eyes leap at me like caged beasts. The ship heaves back again and there’s a sharp curse from the main cabin followed by the sound of breaking glass. “Cheese? Did you say cheese?”

I am expansive, generous to a fault. Not only do I break out the cheese and sausage but two neat little glasses of the culinary pastis as well, and in the next minute we’re seated side by side atop the deep freeze like two old cronies on a country picnic. I wait till he’s wolfed down half a dozen wedges of the Gruyere and three plump slices of sausage before I say anything, and when I say it I am already pouring his second glass full to the brim with the clear fragrant liquor. “How many of you are in on it?” I whisper.

“Six of us,” he says before he can think.

“And the American?”

A look of disgust creeps across his features, settling finally into the ropy bulge of his lower lip. “The American,” he spits, and I know exactly what he means: if push comes to shove, the American will have to be sacrificed, along with anyone else who gets in our way.

“Falco?” I ask.

“He’s with the Captain, you should know that. They’re like two peas in a pod.”

Am I trembling — or is it just the boat rocking under my feet? Are we really sitting here in the galley over a bottomless pit in a rolling swell, contemplating mutiny? The thought thrills me till I feel as if I’ve been rung like a bell. Strange to say, though, I’m not thinking of Cousteau or fathomless depths or crashing waves or even courts of inquiry, but of forest mushrooms — forest mushrooms growing in sweet pale clumps among the ferns in a deep pool of shade.

It is then that Saôut slips in the door with his old woman’s tits and a broken plate held out conspicuously before him, looking secretive, looking like a spy — or a conspirator. His eyes take in the scene and without a word he goes straight for the sausage. One bite, two: he doesn’t bother with the knife. I watch his jaws work around the bleached-out bristle of his beard. The ship lurches, but he’s glued to the floor. “Are you with us?” he says finally, and as the sea lashes at the porthole and the ship comes back up and shakes itself like an old dog emerging from a bath, I can only nod.

In the morning, though it hurts me to do it, though it goes against every principle I’ve held sacrosanct since I successfully reduced my first Béarnaise some forty years ago, I serve a breakfast even an American wouldn’t eat. The coffee — strained through yesterday’s grounds — is the color of turpentine, watery and thin and without benefit of cream. There is no bread. Instead of baking, I made use of the old crusts I’ve been saving for croûtons, dipping them in a paste made of powdered egg and water and then frying them hard in twice-used oil and serving them with an accompaniment of flying fish poached in sea water and nothing else, not even a dash of pepper or a pass of the bouquet garni. I feel like an imp, a demon, a saboteur. I set out the plates in the main cabin, ring the breakfast bell, and slink away to my berth, heart pounding in my chest.

It doesn’t take long. The rumble of outrage spreads through the ship like some seismic event, radiating outward from the epicenter of the main cabin till every last bolt and iron plate thrums with it. I’m taking a calculated risk, and I know it. For the moment, at least, the gastronomic outrage is directed at me, and I’m not surprised when fifteen minutes later a deputation of the crew seeks me out in my bunk. It is led by Piccard and one of the scientists — Laffite, the sponge man — but to my relief, as I look up long-faced from my pillow, I see that Sancerre and Saôut are hovering protectively in the background.

“What’s the matter with you, Bernard?” Piccard demands. “Are you sick, is that it? Dizzy spells again?”

The sponge man is more direct: “How could you serve such, such”—he’s so overwrought he can barely get the words out—“such offal? It’s nothing short of criminal.”

I gaze up at them with a composed face, calm as the sacrificial lamb. “Sick, yes,” I say. “But not in the body — in my heart.”

Laffite is a bomb choking on its own fuse. He is a big man, bloated with his cravings, a priest worshipping at the temple of the gustatory pleasures. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?” he cries. “Get out of that bed, you slacker, you assassin!”

Fortunately, Saôut is able to wrestle hold of his arms, or the first blood might have been spilled right then and there — and it would have been mine. “Calm yourself, Laffite,” he growls, and only I detect the quick slice of his wink. I let my eyes fall shut, and the sea, quiet now, rocks me in my cradle. A minute passes, the four of them squabbling like schoolchildren, and then I listen to the retreat of their footsteps. But my ears deceive me: when I open my eyes I see that Sancerre has stayed behind. He is grinning, and his jaundiced face seems to be lit from within, glowing like a freshly picked lemon. “We are eight,” he whispers, and I give him a look. Who? I silently mouth.