The parentheses of my father’s hands closed, as if to wring the last, long, soft note out. The view became bright and empty, the fields desolate.
“They’re demons now,” he said, snapping his fingers. “Their sordid history has overtaken them.”
“Call them!” the Professor cried out, wringing his hands. It was like the cry of a woman who has been told her husband is dead. “Call them back!”
Father called out their names in a high, clear voice, more to comfort his friend than anything. Then he blew on the horn of bone and finally the steel whistle, an ear-splitting military pitch of the last resort, though he knew better. On the overgrazed hill beyond the forest, we could make out the stag lumbering up the slope, pausing every now and then to aim a labored hindquarter kick. And behind him, losing ground like their names, the two spittle-sucking stumblebums in blind pursuit. They disappeared into the hooded Cannonian landscape of uncomprehending beasts and unskillful hunters.
“They’re too far to hear,” the Professor said agonizingly.
“Oh, they hear all right,” my father said, “but it’s just one voice among others now.”
The Professor turned tearfully. “Nothing to be done?”
“Absolutely nothing. It’s not that they have forgotten exactly. They are simply beyond their own faculties. Now we can only pray the stag does not run them into wire, or that some besotted shepherd does not shoot them. And when they come back down the road in a few days, full of burrs, their tongues hanging out like blood sausage, you will notice that your love and concern has been turned to an urge to punish. No, they will not look you in the eye. They will not even come to the house. They will go and beg to be let into the kennel. Remember the scene, Herr Doktor, not the individuals.”
“If we had accompanied them,” the Professor broke out accusatorially, “this would not have happened.”
“Precisely,” my father said calmly and politely. “They reached the end of the field, and seeing themselves in the mirror, like children, they chose to look behind it. But don’t forget, dear friend, just before, the pride of our cooperation! And for all that, remember the field before the forest, before they broke the civilzonnen, where the voluntary reigns. It is almost exactly eighty meters long, sixty wide, and one inch deep, and in my lifetime I have enlarged it by twenty percent! As things get beyond that, sir, we are only custodians. There is no return on capital.” The double harness hung like a gallows rope in his hands. “It’s time for a little lunch, and a bit of oblivion,” he announced without emotion.
As the Professor followed Father into the White Wings, Black Dog, he noted a small, hand-painted sign above the door.
YOU ARE APPROACHING EARTH’S CENTER
IF YOU DON’T BELIEVE IT
JUST ENTER
The jolly, almost-too-rosy serving girl waved them back to The Brainery with a butter knife. While all their fellow diners were male, the room itself had an eternally feminine quality. Disdainful of mere prettiness, the colors were sweetly mysterious shades of pale yellow, which unfolded rather than pleased the eye, and the floating draperies blurred the precise lines of the room with profound sensuality. Just as they were seated in a green booth with curtains, a platter of tiny steaming birds, a woodcock fricassee, was brought to the table.
“Served only one week a year,” Father announced with a wink. “If a mouflon is shot in the mountains of Vop, it is brought here; if a fine salmon is hauled from the Augesee, it is packed in ice and brought here; if an especially fine jar of sheep’s milk cheese should appear in Chere Muchore, it is also brought here.”
Then the Professor was amazed to see his host lift up the tablecloth, and placing the platter in front of him, drape the cloth over his head and dish, making a tent so as to fully inhale their woodfern aroma. He did not reappear for fully ten minutes.
While Father was thus preoccupied, the Professor perused the menu, at the top of which was only the motto “Hic Carnem Comedemius.” (“We are not vegetarians here.”) Like a true dog’s dinner, it was divided not into courses or even genres: minced chick soup, larks in crumbles, sandpipers in gondolas, fish sausages, blancmange fritters, quince stew with scarlet jelly, griddlecakes with nut paste and Spanish wine. Marzipan love-flakes, macaroon trifle, refreshing fennel and almond essences, maraschino ices. Cockscombs in pagodas and champagne, turkeys daubed with stewed grapes, stuffed pike and river birds garnished with oysters. Aspic of carp with frog dumplings, calves’ ears stuffed with lamb gizzards, grilled peach stew with aniseed, collapsed yearling boar with creamed eggplant and pomegranate molasses. Oxtongue and asparagus ragout, parboiled artichoke bottoms piled with pounded duck livers. Young rabbits with anchovies, minute cold boned thrushes, salad of oranges, herbs, olives, and marigold petals. Braised doe-shanks glazed with sumac and hazelnuts, thrush pate with cardamom fritters, sheeps’ tongues in curled papers, boiled beef skirts rubbed with saltpeter and stuffed with snipe. Roe tarts with shrimps and partridges in their own juice, chilled eels in dill frockcoats, perch and baby quail patties, bass aghast in green garlic. Marrow fried in crumbs, minced pigeon in cream, pig trotters in milk, marshfed veal rubbed with mint and wild thyme in four stocks, and as a single concession to the French, an omelette au joli coeur.
At the bottom was an asterisked dish (“For guaranteed success in courting fair ladies”): sliced bear’s paw atop pork filet stuffed with chicken liver and rolled in bacon slices, garnished with truffles, onion rings, and pickles.
The Professor was about to order this intriguing dish, but once the woodcock had disappeared, the courses were simply brought without order, timing, or explanation. He had little idea what the dishes were until each new joy was consumed; then he could make out various layers, fragrances of unusual clarity superimposed on one another like a fugue, which made him want to live forever. Nor could he discern the various wines which were automatically poured, as the wine list was not only in an unknown language but an alphabet he had never seen. At one point he glanced up to the only art in the room, an embroidered pennant which announced:
THE USE OF BOTTLED ESSENCES FOR
SEASONING IS FORBIDDEN AND WILL
LEAD TO INSTANT DISMISSAL.
The White Wings, Black Dog had a calculated double ambience in its strategy for exercising goût. The front rooms gave off to a courtyard hidden from the street where men and women sat whispering at tiny pearwood tables large enough for only a drink and an ashtray. Further inside were a series of pine booths arranged at angles to an enormous walk-in fireplace, partially lit even in August and hung with various kettles of stew from which one could serve oneself with a large, enameled tin plate. Occasionally a serving girl would slip out the back door with a huge knife, and after an incredible series of shrieks and squeals, something spitted and juicy would be turning over coals where just five minutes before a pot of chrysanthemums sat.
At the center of the room was a long bar in the shape of a quarter-moon where only first-time visitors stood, surrounded by a series of long common tables. Depending on the evening, here one might find an Astingi gelder, animal blood still fresh on his hands, in deep conversation with a befurred and bechained Foreign Minister Zich, his shooting break and his grays both emblazoned with a cadmium orange “Z.” Or the village doctor with his head in his hands. Or Öscar Ögur, passed out in a corner. Or Catspaw, trying and failing to make conversation with the most beautiful girl in the world, dressed in pink and white, and not once elevating her eyes from an edition of The Count of Monte Cristo. Aged Chetvorah, disdaining any scraps not given them by hand, stood arthritically on guard, displaying the white whorls on their chests like veterans’ medals.