So is this my trade? It’s a marvelous thing creating a legal deed out of nothing, forging a letter that looks genuine, drafting a compromising confession, creating a document that will lead someone to ruin. The power of art…to be rewarded by a visit to the Café Anglais.
My memory must be in my nose, yet I have the impression that centuries have passed since I last savored the aroma of that menu: soufflés à la reine, filets de sole à la vénitienne, escalopes de turbot au gratin, selle de mouton purée bretonne…And as an entrée: poulet à la portugaise, or pâté chaud de cailles, or homard à la parisienne, or all of them, and as the plat de résistance, perhaps canetons à la rouennaise or ortolans sur canapés, and for entremets, aubergines à l’espagnole, asperges en branches, cassolettes princesse…For wine, I don’t know, perhaps a Château Margaux, or Château Latour, or Château Lafite, depending on the vintage. And to finish, a bombe glacée.
I have always found more pleasure in food than in sex, perhaps a mark left upon me by priests.
I feel as if my mind is in a continual cloud that prevents me from looking back. Why, all of a sudden, do memories resurface about my visits to Bicerin in Father Bergamaschi’s robes? I had quite forgotten about Father Bergamaschi. Who was he? I’m enjoying letting my pen wander where my instinct takes it. According to the Austrian doctor, I ought to reach a point where my memory feels true pain, which would explain why I have suddenly blotted out so many things.
Yesterday, which I thought was Tuesday, the 22nd of March, I woke up thinking I knew perfectly well who I was—Captain Simonini, sixty-seven years old, but carrying them well (I’m fat enough to be described as a fine-looking man). I assumed the title of Captain in France, in remembrance of my grandfather, making vague references to a military past in the ranks of Garibaldi’s Thousand, which in this country, where Garibaldi is esteemed more highly than in Italy, carries a certain prestige. Simone Simonini, born in Turin, father from Turin, mother French (a Savoyard, but when she was born, Savoy had been invaded by the French).
I was still in bed, allowing my thoughts to wander…With the problems I’d been having with the Russians (the Russians?), it was better not to be seen at my favorite restaurants. I could cook something for myself. I find it relaxing to labor away for a few hours preparing some delicacy. For example, côtes de veau Foyot: meat at least four centimeters thick—enough for two, of course—two medium-size onions, fifty grams of bread without the crust, seventy-five of grated gruyère, fifty of butter. Grate the bread into breadcrumbs and mix with the gruyère, then peel and chop the onions and melt forty grams of the butter in a small pan.
Meanwhile, in another pan, gently sauté the onions in the remaining butter. Cover the bottom of a dish with half the onions, season the meat with salt and pepper, arrange it on the dish and add the rest of the onions. Cover with a first layer of breadcrumbs and cheese, making sure that the meat sits well on the bottom of the dish, allowing the melted butter to drain to the bottom and gently pressing by hand. Add another layer of breadcrumbs to form a sort of dome, and the last of the melted butter. Add enough white wine and stock until the liquid is no more than half the height of the meat. Put the dish in the oven for around half an hour, basting now and then with the wine and stock. Serve with sautéed cauliflower.
It takes a little time, but the pleasures of cooking begin before the pleasures of the palate, and preparing means anticipating, which was what I was doing while still luxuriating in my bed. Only fools need to keep a woman, or a young boy, under their bedcovers so as not to feel alone. They don’t understand that a salivating mouth is better than an erection.
I had almost everything I needed in the house, except for the gruyère and the meat. For the meat, on any other day I could go to the butcher in place Maubert—goodness knows why he closes on Tuesday. But I knew another one, two hundred meters away on boulevard Saint-Germain, and a short walk would do me no harm.
I dressed and, before leaving, stuck on my usual black mustache and fine beard at the mirror over the washstand. I then put on my wig and made a part in the center, slightly wetting the comb. I slipped on my frock coat and placed the silver watch into my waistcoat pocket with its chain clearly visible. While I’m talking, in order to give the appearance of a retired captain, I like to fiddle with a tortoiseshell box of licorice lozenges, a portrait of an ugly but well-dressed woman on the inside lid, no doubt a deceased loved one. Every now and then I pop a lozenge into my mouth and pass it with my tongue from one side to the other. This allows me to talk more slowly—and the listener follows the movement of your lips and doesn’t hear what you’re saying. The problem is trying to keep up the appearance of someone of less than average intelligence.
I went down to the street, turned the corner, trying not to stop in front of the brasserie, where the raucous voices of its fallen women could be heard from early morning.
Place Maubert is no longer the court of miracles it was when I arrived here thirty-five years ago. Then it teemed with sellers of recycled tobacco, the coarser variety obtained from cigar stubs and pipe ash, and the finer variety from cigarette butts—coarse tobacco at one franc twenty centimes a pound, fine at between one franc fifty and one franc sixty (though the industry had hardly ever been profitable, and once they’d drunk away most of their profits in some wine cellar, none of those industrious recyclers had anywhere to sleep the night). It teemed with pimps who, having lazed about until at least two in the afternoon, spent the rest of the day smoking, propped against a wall like respectable pensioners, then going into action at dusk, like shepherd dogs.
It teemed with thieves reduced to stealing from each other because no decent person (except for the occasional idler up from the countryside) would have dared to cross the square, and I would have been easy prey if it were not for my military step and the way I twirled my stick. And, in any event, the pickpockets of the area knew me, and now and then one of them would greet me, addressing me as Captain. Apart from that, they thought I belonged in some way to their underworld, and dog does not eat dog. It teemed with prostitutes whose beauty had faded—for those who were still attractive would have been working in the brasseries à femmes— and they therefore had no choice but to offer themselves to rag-and-bone men, petty thieves and foul-smelling secondhand-tobacco sellers.
On seeing a respectably dressed gentleman with a well-brushed top hat, they might dare to sidle up to you or take you by the arm, coming so close that you could smell their terrible cheap perfume mixed with sweat, and this would have been too appalling an experience (I had no wish to dream of them at night), so when I saw one of them approaching I would whirl my stick full circle, as if to form an inaccessible area of protection around me, and they understood at once, since they were used to being ordered about and knew how to respect a stick.
Last of all, place Maubert teemed with police spies who were there to recruit their mouchards, or informers, or to gather valuable information about villainies that were being hatched and which someone was whispering too loudly to someone else, imagining his voice would be lost in the general din. They were immediately recognizable by their exaggeratedly sinister manner. No true villain looks like a villain, but they do.
Nowadays, tramways pass through the square and it no longer feels like home, though there are still some useful people around if you know how to spot them, leaning in a corner, at the entrance to Café Maître-Albert or in one of the adjacent passageways. All in all, Paris isn’t what it used to be, ever since that pencil sharpener, the Eiffel Tower, has been sticking up in the distance, visible from every angle.
Enough. I’m no sentimentalist, and there are plenty of other places where I can find what I need. Yesterday morning I wanted meat and cheese, and place Maubert still served my purpose.
Having bought the cheese, I passed the usual butcher and saw he was open.
«Open on Tuesday? How come?» I asked as I went in.
«Today is Wednesday, Captain,» he answered with a laugh. I felt confused, and apologized, saying that you lose your memory with age. I was still a young lad, he said, and it’s easy for anyone to lose track of what day it is when you get up in a hurry. I chose my meat and paid without asking for a discount (the only way of gaining respect from tradesmen).
I returned home, still wondering
