Jim Crace - The Devil's Larder

So she will bring us Curry No. 3 in her good time. It isn’t done to ask what she will use for meat, although the boy is eyeing us and could be bribed, with cigarettes, to talk. We simply have to take our chances. There might be lizard in the pot or some unlisted insect, in no book. We are prepared for monkey, rat or dog. Offal is a possibility, a rare and testing part we’ve never had before, some esoteric organ stained yellow in the turmeric. Tree shark, perhaps. Iguana eggs. Bat meat. Placenta. Brain. We are bound to contemplate, as well, the child who went astray at the weekend, the old man who has disappeared and is not missed, or the tourist who never made it back to her hotel; the sacrificed, the stillborn and the cadavers, the unaccounted for.

And we are bound to contemplate the short fulfilment we will feel and then the sated discontent that’s bound to follow it, that’s bound to come with us when we, well fed, begin descending to the coast, not in a group, but strung out, five weary penitents, weighed down by our depravities, beset by sulphur clouds, and driven on by little more than stumbling gravity.

How silent the forest is, now that our senses have been dulled by food. How careless we’ve become as we devour the path back to the river and the road. How tired and spent. We are fair game for any passing dogs or snakes. Those flies and wasps are free to dine on us. Those cadavers can rise up from the undergrowth and seize us by the legs if they so wish. For we’re not hungry any more. We found the path up to the restaurant and it was punishing.

NOW I WILL tell you what to eat outdoors when it is dark. Cold foods will never do. The key to dining without light is steam. And cold food does not steam, excepting ice. No, you must warm the night about you with the steam of soup, a dozen foods in one. You cannot tell the carrots from the beans until you have them in your mouth. You cannot, even then, distinguish what is leek from what is onion.

The bowl should not be shallow, but deep and lipped so that what steam there is must curl and gather at the centre. The steam contains the smell. And so you warm your nose on smell, and warm your mouth on flavour, and warm your hands on bowl. You should, of course, be standing and your coat should have its collar up. You do not talk. There is no time. You have to finish what you have before the steam has gone.

Once you have finished, there is a chilling residue of steam. It cowers in the bowl. It dares not chance the darkness and the cold. And if you do not take your hands away, and if you press your face onto the rim, and if you close your eyes so tightly that your darkness is complete, the steam and smell will kiss your lips and lids and make you ready for the slow digestion of the night.

IF THOSE children had been mine I would have shouted out and stopped them. But they were strangers, only passing through, and I was irritated. So I stood and watched. They’d find out soon enough.

The family had pulled their car into my field, as if the farmland had been set aside for picnickers. Their mum and dad had spread their blankets in the shade of our horse pine, with its inviting mattress of orange needles, and sent the children off, across my land, to stretch their legs.

I’ve seen it all before, a dozen times. What child of five or six — as these two seemed to be — would not be drawn to our fine crab? In every way but one it is a grander tree, dramatic and more showy than any of its sweeter apple cousins on the farm. That day, as he and she in all their innocence went hand in hand across the field, the fruit was at its best, in clumps as tightly packed as berry strigs, and ripening unevenly on its crimson pedicels through all the blushing harvest colours, yellow and orange to purple-red.

My crab’s a vagrant, seeded more than thirty years ago, by some rogue animal no doubt, and not put there — as all the creaky grandads claim — by a bolt of lightning souring ground where lovers from opposing villages were kissing. ‘That’s why the fruit is bitter,’ they say. And that explains the blush.

To these two youngsters, as they reached the crab, it must have seemed they’d found a magic tree, with all the warmer tints and shades of a paintbox or Christmas coloured lights or some exaggerated textile print, and with such low branches that all they had to do was help themselves.

I watched them reach up to the lowest fruit and hesitate, a warning trapped behind my teeth. At first they touched but did not pick. This surely must be theft. Such tempting treats could not be free. Besides, they were not sure what kind of fruit it was. They’d not seen these on supermarket stands or in their gardens. Too small to be an apple, too large to be a rosehip. Too hard, despite its cone-like oval shape, to be a plum tomato. The open bases of the fruit were hairy and protruding like on a pomegranate. Yet these were clearly not pomegranates. At last, they pulled the fruit down from the tree. Here was their perfect contribution to the family picnic. Their harvest would, they knew, be irresistible.

But first, of course, they each rubbed an apple against their clothes, to get a shine, and (almost at my silent prompting) tasted it. My mouth was watering. I saw the children shake their heads and spit. They’d never pass a crab again without their unforgetting mouths flooding with distaste.

I did not stay to watch their picnicking. There’s always work to do. But I imagine that, when they sat cross-legged on their fine blankets beneath the pine while mum and dad dished out a harmless meal from plastic containers, tin foil and flasks, the children brought the food up to their mouths with just a touch of fear and half a glance towards the tree that had betrayed their hopes. Here was a lesson never to be forgotten, about false claims, and bitterness, and trespassing.

Sometimes, in a certain mood, I walk down to the bottom fences of my land, where my gate, ever open on to the road, gives access to picnickers, and find myself a little sad that no small child is running, full of hope, across the field. Then the small child that still survives in me shoves me in the back. I walk across to taste the fruit of that one crab for myself. I never swallow any of the flesh, of course. I simply plunge my teeth into the tempting bitterness. Even after all these years — misled, misled, misled again — I like to test the flavours of deceit. And I still find myself surprised by its malicious impact in my mouth. It’s bittersweet and treacherous, the kiss of lovers from opposing villages.

IT WAS MONDAY, almost noon, and he still suffered from the aftermath of Sunday’s garlic. Bad breath and a stinking conscience, too.

He walked about the offices as usual, distributing client folders and the gossip, leaning over colleagues at their desks. He noticed how their heads went back, an instant recoil from his face, his speech. He noticed how their hands went up to hide their mouths and noses. He noticed how they frowned at him.

Was there some unexpected tangent from his working life that touched the private circle of his friends? He racked his brains and found no link. They could not possibly have heard how badly he’d behaved the night before, how slyly and how grossly. They could not know what harm he’d done. No, the disapproval that his colleagues were so obviously displaying had to be intuitive, instinctive, from the heart. The evidence of his misdeeds was hanging round his shoulders like a heavy, garish shroud, he guessed. He shrugged it off. Raised his voice. Would not lose face.

OUR MERCHANT-TRADERS’ CLUB behind the warehouses is still better known to members as ‘the Whistling Chop’. Here’s why. Soon after it was founded in the 1870s by the great-grandfather of our present mayor, the resident manager came out of his office one evening to find a waiter in the corridor carrying a tray of food. A not unusual sight. Except that this waiter had gravy on his chin. The man had helped himself to some of the cut chicken breast intended for the members in the dining rooms. ‘Not only is this common theft,’ the manager said, ‘it’s also unhygienic in the extreme. If the gentlemen had required dirty fingers in their meal, they would have ordered them. And had they wanted you to join them here for dinner, they would have had a card delivered to your home.’