Jim Crace - The Devil's Larder

He had of course to compromise by preparing an ‘unfitting’ base for the meat. It must seem edible, at least. He assembled a casserole of equal parts water and milk, with onion, turnips, carrots, chopped fennel and haricot beans, added the strips of leather and its mulch of seaweed, and left it all on a low heat, with the lid on the pan, to reduce and tenderize.

‘Shoe stew’, they called it in the kitchen. But on the menu card, that evening, it was described as ‘ragout dell’Ova’.

Professor McCormick was generous with wine, and so his study group was game, if a little hesitant, at least to try the celebration stew. Their evening was memorable. The amateur historians held up their forks, heavy with thick leather laces, for the benefit of the professor’s video camera, plus the television news crew, and the photographers from two provincial papers, who had, thanks to the hotel’s PR manager, been summoned to the feast. A splendid photograph of Thomas Luken from Columbus, Ohio, and his wife Martha was reproduced in magazines throughout the world, including Time and, all too obviously, the National Enquirer . Mr and Mrs Luken were shown tugging with their teeth on opposing ends of a strip of handbag.

Did anybody really eat the stew? Some people tried, of course. The leather itself was tasteless and beyond chewing, but the gravy was delicious, as you’d expect from such a five-star chef. When the meal was over, though, and what remained had been carried to the kitchens, it might have appeared that ‘ragout dell’Ova’ must have had its admirers. Not one of the plates was untouched. Some, indeed, were clean. Professor Myles McCormick would write, in his report, that ‘dell’Ova’s conviction that men and women can develop a taste for almost anything, if the circumstances so prescribe, was more than fully proven on this occasion.’

Indeed, most of the leather had disappeared somewhere. The amateur historians had carried off their rich experience, but not inside their stomachs. They’d simply licked the gravy off and slipped their leather memories of that fine week into their pockets, or wrapped them in their napkins, or tucked them into their handbags. This was a siege they’d not forget. This was a history lesson that had made its mark. They’d had such unexpected fun.

A YOUNGISH MAN, a trifle overweight, too anxious for his age, completed his circuit of the supermarket shelves and cabinets and stood in line, ashamed as usual.

He arranged his purchases on the checkout belt and waited, with his eyes fixed on the street beyond the shop window, while the woman at the till scanned all the bar codes on his medicines, his vitamins, his air freshener, his toilet tissue, his frozen Meals for One, his tins, his magazines, his beer and his deodorant, his bread, bananas, milk, his fat-free yoghurt, his jar of decaf and his treats — today, some roasted chicken legs, some grapes, a block of chocolate and two croissants. He rubbed his thumb along the numbers embossed on his credit card, while each item triggered a trill of recognition from the till.

The till’s computer recognized the young man’s ‘Distinctive Shopping Fingerprint’ as well, the usual ratio of fat to starch, the familiar selection of canned food, the recent and increasing range of health supplements, the unique combination of monthly magazines. The pattern of the shopping identified the customer. Even before the woman at the till had swiped the credit card, the computer had lined up the young man’s details — his list of purchases for the previous seven months, his credit rating, his ‘Customer Loyalty Score’. It knew broadly who he was and how he lived. It could deduce what his modest rooms above the travel shop were like, how stale they were, how flowerless, how functional, how crying out for change. Here was the man whose cat had died or run away three months ago. No cat food purchased since that time. Here was the customer who had not left the neighbourhood for more than seven days in living, byte-sized memory. Last spring, he’d tried — and failed — to cut down on patisseries and sugar. Today, for once, he had resisted his usual impulse purchase of a packet of cheroots.

Computer screened a message on the woman’s till: Cheroots. . Cheroots. . it said. Remind the customer he has not purchased cereals or cheese or vegetables this month. Remind him of our special offers : 12 cans of lager for the price of 10. Buy one bottle of our Boulevard Liqueur and get a second free. Remind him that time is passing more quickly than he thinks — his washing powder should be used by now, as should the contraceptives that he bought two years ago. He must need basics, such as rice and pasta, soap, toothpaste, flour, oil and condiments. Inform him of our retail schemes and that we open now on Sunday afternoons. Advise him that he ought to do more cooking for himself. He ought to tidy up and clean the bathroom tiles with our new lemon whitener. He ought to start afresh. Suggest to him he tours our shelves again. At once. For what we choose is what we are. He should not miss this second opportunity to recreate himself with food.

LIKE ALL THE best ideas, the old man’s was a simple one. Foods nourished by the heat of sunshine should be able to relinquish that same heat and that much sunshine at a later date. It is, after all, a basic law of physics that no energy is ever lost.

Wine masters always say that the better reds release their ripening summer heat as soon as they are poured. Subtle palates can detect the year by quantifying sunshine in the grape. If that’s allowed, then an orange, say, matured and coloured by the sun in some hot place, must radiate as much. It should be the perfect hand warmer in winter. A southern plum, likewise, should have the knack of stewing itself in cold water. A kilo of bananas dropped into the garden pond should, for a week or two, keep the water nicely free of ice and save the goldfish from the chill. Ice cream, surely, could be softened slightly by the presence of some dates.

‘There ought to be a range of packaged fruits and vegetables — Sunbeam Meals, perhaps — that cook themselves,’ our old man said. ‘Picnics would be transformed by such convenience. Think of the benefits for miners, trawlermen and Eskimos. I’d be a millionaire.’

The only problem he encountered was discovering the trigger to reactivate and then release the buried heat without using means that would themselves consume an equal energy. He dedicated all his time to problems such as this when he retired. We learned to live with it and him, and only thought it strange when he was glimpsed about the town on winter nights, an orange gripped in each of his blue hands.

OUR NEIGHBOUR’S husband rented a strip of land and an angling hut by the river. He had no children or dog, but he had six fruit trees, some currant bushes and a plot of meadow, where he grew vegetables. I used to pass him on the way to school. In that uncertain light, he seemed the loneliest of working men, sometimes tackling the grey-brown soil with his trenching spade, sometimes sitting on the angling bench with a hand line or a short rod, sometimes struggling up the river bank with his two buckets to irrigate his vegetables, never idle, never anything but occupied, and frightening.

He’d still be on his land when I came home from school, limping on his gammy leg, and always wearing sky-blue jeans so that, even in the grimmer half-light of the afternoon, he could not disappear. I never saw him walking to or from his home. My sisters said he slept in the angling hut, washed in the river, lived on what he grew, wee’d on his lettuces, crapped on his greens and poisoned strangers with his crops. His wife, for reasons more weighty than her loathing of his muddy boots, had not allowed him in the house for months.