In a back street in a small town somewhere in Canada, there is the Charcuterie-Boulangerie Arlene, owned by a bad-tempered and rather corpulent man called Rouvert. Many people know it, or at least the foodies and restaurant snobs pretend to. Arlene's is the only place that sells locally-sourced maple-smoked bacon, and belly of pork rubbed with a mixture of spices and ash from the maple fires, and then scorched lovingly on a grill until the fat starts to harden and roast. Its oven-cooking, though, finishes off the process and makes a ham that was said to be wholly unsurpassable for a cold-meats buffet. Half of Arlene's is empty, and the floor (though free of dust) is empty of customers. The baker who helped run the boulangerie had a cerebral stroke in the kitchens some years ago and (it is said) decided to give up his share in the business without more recompense than would allow him to live in the closest retirement home. So, the baking remains undone, and customers to Arlene's soon learn never to ask when the next batch of fresh, crusty bread or pastries will be ready. Many are surprised Rouvert doesn't let it out, but then they guess that perhaps the owner will not let him sub-let part of the shopfront, it being such a small space after all. Others wonder why he doesn't simply bring out a new line, like pickles or sauces, something that would go so well with meat. But he remains resolute when he's asked about it, and if someone ever should ask him outright he just nods and says:
"That part of the business died when Pierre Jouet did."
M. Jouet, it must be noted, has never been heard of since 1989, when he took his payment for the part of the shop and left. And so it remained, until one fateful day, when a gangly youth called Timothy Gaugon walked into the shop doorway and asked Rouvert for a job. It happened like this:
It is a warm day for September. Usually, the snow will be about a foot deep in town, and worse everywhere else, but the passage of people out shopping and walking and making deliveries around the streets have made the snow mash down to a greyish pack, something slippery to tread on as you march past each doorway. Gaugon is hungry: he can smell the pork smoking from at least halfway down the street, just by the intersection where trucks go roaring by. Diesel and bacon. More specifically, Gaugon is hungry because his last meal was about a day and a half ago, at the Youth Home. Having been kept there for five years, he is now considerably taller than when he first went in there at the compulsion of the courts and both his parents, and so his appetites have increased (despite the portions at the Youth Home remaining the same size for a seven-year old as they are for one who is seventeen). Gaugon is now a young man driven by his quite considerable appetites. Whilst other boys would have taken this as a chance to 'go straight', Gaugon feels no such desire: time in the Home has given him ample time to learn a whole host of skills he would never have learned at school. Lockpicking, burglary, arson and card-sharping are now amongst his panoply of skills. Ones that can never, for obvious reasons, be listed on a resume.
It is with this bent that after having gone to the strangely-shaped courtyard behind Arlene's and unable to gain entry to the smoking shed (that haven of dark and spicy mutable odours) that he decides the best course of action is to escape the cold and see if he can be gainfully employed for the short-term. That the short-term might only be for two or three days until he could get access to the shop safe was a trifle. Gaugon had plans, and they certainly did not include staying in Canada for longer than he physically had to. He was itching to head to a warmer climate and somewhere where the sour taste of his own failures were not around to remind him of how much he had fallen in the eyes of others. Idly, looking at his clothes, he decides to go to the front of the shop and see what kind of an effort he has to put up in order to get into Arlene's for a hot meal without a cent in his pocket (again, all thanks to the Youth Home).
Rouvert is wary. The gangly young man in his shop doorway has just asked him for a job: the truth is that yes he could use an assistant to help haul the chunks of meat out from the smoker and to move the carcasses out to the refrigerated shed, and a dozen other little jobs that he can no longer bend down to do. But this man looks hungry, and quite frankly, out of place in Arlene's. He looks as though a few good meals wouldn't go amiss. Rouvert realises with a sigh that this is probably because the man in question has had more than a few brushes with the law.
"Please, Mister. I'll work for a meal."
That pleading look. Rouvert scratches his arse and makes a decision. "If you can shift crates and don't mind about blood, I'll take you on."
Gaugon smiles. He doesn't care much for blood, but that's not something he has much to worry about as the plan remains at its best - a simple one. Get in, get a meal, take as much food with him as he can, and clean out the safe. He's no intellectual when it comes to planning, but this doesn't seem so bad as plans go.
For the rest of the morning, Rouvert has him clearing out an old freezer. It isn't so much the cold that bothers Gaugon, but the smell. Old blood. It's coppery, and old, and as he sweeps the trash out into a can it melts slightly and drips over his shoes. They're only sneakers and the liquid insinuates itself between the laces and the faux leather and the smell becomes appalling.
Rouvert sniffs as he comes back upstairs to the shop. "Here. Have these." He rummages in a little cupboard and brings out a pair of - it can't be - shoes that look very much like Air Jordans. Shoes that, nevertheless, are very new and very expensive. He looks, dazed. "For me?"
Rouvert sighs and goes to put the old sneakers, bloody and ripe, into the trash. Gaugon looks again at the newness of the shoes, and slips them on - their overly large laces flapping on the floor. A son, a nephew who had expensive tastes or who didn't have the right size? All possibilities. And these are prestigious items. A boy in the Home would have had them ripped off his feet in minutes. He decides to look in the cupboard once Rouvert goes off and has his afternoon nap, or whatever it is that old farts do when they get too tired to mind the shop.
What Gaugon has not reckoned on is the sheer force of life that Rouvert has. From 8:30 in the morning he goes on, chopping and slicing and serving until 3 PM when he stops and goes to fetch a roundel of bread from the bakery express two streets away. Gaugon is careful - he notes when he heads off, if he stops for a cigarette, how long it takes him to return. It is stupid to steal on the first day. Best to leave it to the second or third, depending on how naive the guy is about the new apprentice.
Rouvert, however, is no old fool.
Whilst he waves to the boy whom he's left in charge of the shop, he mentally totals up how much he has inside the register. He will know if the boy likes the idea of small change and a meal, or the longer game. He smiles, and deliberately saunters slowly through the streets. If the boy's genuine...who knows. He might have some help throughout the winter months for once, not like that streak of piss Vernon who claimed he was a good hard worker. He was no loss to the business, although several of his ladies commented on how much they missed his smile and his soft, fawning way with them. Rouvert hawks up a clot of phlegm at the memory. His return to the shop is much later than a short stroll to the bakery, and Gaugon rocks on his heels in his new Nikes, and makes a show of keeping his hands outside his pockets. Inside, old Rouvert smiles and makes another mental note: check the refrigerator that's inside the store-room.
Time, as it usually does, passes slowly in small Canadian towns.
September gives way to October, and Timothy Gaugon is still working in Arlene's. No, he has not stolen money from the till. (He may make a habit of short-changing the officious policemen when they pass through the region, but this is something that Rouet heartily approves of). After all, dicks paid by the government can afford however many francs a really really good piece of saucisse costs. This month, in this part of Canada, is when hog-butchering season starts; soon Gaugon is hauling animal carcass after carcass off the lorries that thunder through the snowy, frigid streets at night. Rouvert insists on making all his sausage-meats the old fashioned way, and the smoker starts to emit long and pungent breaths of charcoaly smoke into the air of the yard. It scents the shop with delicious musky odours, and soon the customers are queuing in at the door to order half a ham, saucisse de Holonne, back bacon and trotters and loin and mince.
If it hadn't been for the fact that Rouvert was an old and crotchety man who refused to pay extra for lighting down the back stairs, our tale would end here.
Instead, Rouvert makes the first real mistake he has made in years since old partner Jouet closed up the bakery. He places one foot out onto the cold stairs at five AM, and reaches for the rail. He grasps cold air instead, and the thumping noises that his fat old body makes as it tumbles down the flight of hard wooden steps onto the concrete of the shopfloor wake Gaugon from a dream of being back at the Home. His cries of pain, though, are louder and more voluble, and after Gaugon has pulled him up from the floor and mopped the blood off his shocked face, they both discover that Rouvert's right ankle is thoroughly and demonstrably broken. Curses that would make Satan blush rise from that cold and dark place, and Gaugon carefully manoeuvres the old goat into the delivery van's rear. There, amids the crates and the bacon wrappers, Rouvert is taken to the local hospital.
Two days. Two long days, as Rouvert sits in borrowed pyjamas and frets about the shop. When Gaugon appears in a bloodied apron to come and take him home, he is relieved in more ways than one. The apron means that at least the boy's been working - the blood means that he's been attempting some of Rouvert's specialities. During those two long days, Gaugon has made some discoveries of his own. After trying to find some more rusk filler for the cheaper sausage, he gives up and look inside the large freezer in the cold room. It's normally locked, but this has never been a bar to a boy of Gaugon's calibre. A quick piece of work with the lock, and he's free to rifle inside, desperate to find some cheaper fatty meat to mix in with the rich and pungent smoked pork. Instead, he places his hand on a long shank of meat that he knows in shape as intimately as can be. He draws it out. It's smooth, and shaved clean of hair, and there is a freckle just above the ankle. Nice, smooth muscle and little fat. Just above the ankle-bone, there is a tattoo of a teddy-bear and the name 'Francois' and a date of birth that means the tattoo's only about three months old. Gaugon estimates that the owner of the leg must have been perhaps twenty or twenty-one. Not old. The skin's smooth and without a blemish. He closes the freezer silently, and the leg is left in the peace of the deep-freeze.
Gaugon suspects that M. Jouet never actually did make it to that retirement home in Ontario. That is, if there really was a retirement home in the first place. His mind is alive with various thoughts, and only some of them involve running away. None of them involve running to the police, but that's just a bad old habit. If what he suspects is true, then he can imagine that there are several aged saucisses de Boulogne hanging in the shop that might well contain elements of the errant baker, like skin and thigh and hamstring. But then, that's the problem with meat. A sophisticated crime lab might be able to reconstruct the DNA of a few pigs that made one sausage up, and perhaps pick up traces of a non-pig element that made up the entire contents of a pate. Liver, after all, looks very much like any other liver. When fried up as mince, meat resembles nothing else but the constituent parts of a living creature mashed and seasoned with a little salt and pepper to taste. There is nothing to tell you what else that very heavily seasoned and herbed terrine might conceal. After all, they can make it from tofu and mushrooms these days, so who can tell, indeed? Rouvert shrugs his shoulders when Gaugon makes a lazy speculation about this. "It isn't the vegetarians that'll put us out of business, boy, it's people's tastes changing. But I very much doubt they will. Man is, after all, an omnivore."
Gaugon has to look this word up later in the local library, but he is not at all surprised when he finds out the meaning.
There is now an unspoken understanding between these two. It is now much more than just apprentice and master: Rouvert seems to be far more confident of Gaugon using the major equipment like the slicer and the mincer, and Gaugon for his part does his best work at night, moving the more unusual meats quickly to the butchery block and removing the bones to the grinder where they make and sell the bonemeal that does so well on gardens. Eventually, one evening, Rouvert places a slabby hand on his shoulder.
"Get your coat. We're taking a delivery tonight."
Imagine a long, cold night-time ride out into the forest, and you have perhaps a quarter of the journey they took that night. Mostly it wended the way through the town, with a few wrong turns, and Rouvert's crap driving making them skid on icy roads. Finally, the loaded van bumps across the gravel drive of a place Gaugon has certainly never seen before. He doesn't think he'd even be let into the front gates.
"C'mon. Get unloading, you lazy cretin." That's Rouvert for you - all love and kindness when it comes to the workplace.
What Gaugon does not know, and will not know for the next three weeks, is that the place he's visiting is rented and the cost of the rental is far higher than the salary of the judges he has met in his career as a petty criminal. What Rouvert does not know is the identities of the people they work with in the kitchens (which are all marble and granite and polished copper. You could cook for an army there and still have room free for a five course banquet.) However, after laying out cold cuts of meat and slices of the more special treats from Charcuterie-Boulangerie Arlene, they are treated to a glass or two of wine in an adjoining room. Gaugon stares and stares. Everything seems to be gilded. Tables, chairs. The carpets are thick and soft and inches deep. Rouvert looks at him eyeing up the silverware and kicks him on the ankle underneath the table. They've almost finished the excellent wine (fuck knows what it was, but the scent alone seemed to be deliciously expensive) when one of the waiters comes in with a dinner-plate. Leftovers.
Rouvert nods, and the man withdraws silently like a good waiter should. Gaugon hesitates with a fork - after all, which one is the speciality? The smell of the spiced smoked meat teases him. They've not had anything to eat since lunch, and that was just bread. This is....this is... "Delicious."
Rouvert crunches his way through rind and flesh, its salty tang gentle and fulfilling. He looks across at Gaugon. The wine's burning in his blood now, and he feels reckless. Intoxicated with the smell of meat and cheese. "Go on. Try it."
Almost without thinking, Gaugon takes up some bread and butters it thickly with white saltless butter. He stabs a large flap of freshly sliced meat, and places it delicately onto the bread. Bites, and savours. Chewing, he could be any hungry man enjoying a delightful repast. There is utterly no guilt in him whatsoever.
"Good boy," murmurs Rouvert. "Bon appetit."
It is, in reflection, that moment which changes young Timothy Gaugon's life as he has known it. Why settle for being a petty criminal when you could be a gourmet in one of the most exclusive clubs in the world? The fact that he knows exactly where the meat he supplies comes from does not bother him. After all, back in the Youth Home, there were boys and girls far younger than he who did things to and with older, richer men for money. It was the currency of life, he had decided - sell what you have, or be devoured by those who can afford it. He'd just never thought that it would be taken so literally.
Back in the charcuterie, Rouvert supplies fairly often to the rich and famous - although Gaugon can never quite say who they are. They often come disguised - some in ridiculous wigs, others in scarves and dark glasses. Occasionally their minder buys the order whilst someone sits muffled up inside a car that's deliberately a thing of understated luxury. Rouvert has the worst times with hysterical wannabes who claim that there's a special that they simply must have. He points them to the window - Saucisse de Toulouse, 8.99/lb. The worst ones shriek the place down, and he shows them the door with a resounding thump on the back: the official line drilled into Gaugon throughout that day is that the only special offer is in the window. There are no 'specials'. There is nothing in the shop and indeed nothing in the smoker that the customer cannot buy at the counter.
More evenings pass, and the club d'gourmets moves from location to location. One time, it is a flat in the most expensive part of town - the special is pate and brawn. A petit chateau somewhere besides a private lake gets a set of baby back ribs and tenderloin. An innocuous hotel du ville somewhere three towns over hosts a banquet with veal and something special as the main course. Our boys taste it all, of course. There are no other staff to eat the leftovers.
One night, a few days after the town hall (champagne and blinis, he remembers) a delivery arrives very early in the morning. On it are several wild boar, some deer, and a single white cooler packed with dry ice. It's taped shut. Rouvert motions to him to bring it all into the cold room, and then with deliberate care, lifts a tiny portion of very bloody flesh out of its bath of bubbling, witches-brew dry ice. Gaugon looks at it blankly as Rouvert waves him away from the bench and starts the mincer. Delicious, special meats. Meat that's so easy to come by for some. Meat where you don't ask where it's come from. All delicious because you know...or you think you know...
Rouvert looks Gaugon dead in the eye, cleaver in his hand. "Want to know what's more delicious? The most forbidden meat." The cleaver slams down onto the block, hard. The flesh parts under the weight and smooth slicing action of the ice-cold stainless steel.
It is six months later. Our reformed thief is still with the fat old cantankerous codger who still smokes the best meats in the whole area. It turns out Gaugon is a diamond in the rough, and learns at the hands of the other baker in town for weeks after work. Even a former sneak-thief, it seems, can be taught how to bake well. Charcuterie-Boulangerie Arlene now make marvellous meat pastries, buns, bread: the air in the morning becomes vital with the scent of baking and roasting, out onto the fresh air of the deserted streets in the small hours of the morning. Young apprentice Gaugon, however, walks with a limp. If anyone asks, it is an old athletics injury, or perhaps a slip on the ice - after all, it's no simple life being the apprentice to the most exclusive charcuterie in the area.
At night, Rouvert helps the boy upstairs. It's not easy on him, but old Rouvert feels he has something to do - after all, the kid works ten hours straight some days.He kneels down, pulls up the boy's pants leg, and slowly helps him remove the prosthesis that replaces his lower leg and foot. The trainer doesn't pull off it any more, but rather stands upright in the corner, grotesquely full whilst the other remains empty. It's suppertime: Rouvert brings in to him a small card table, and a carafe of cheap wine. It's good enough, after all - this is what Rouvert himself drinks. He sets a dish before him, like a waiter in one of those starred restaurants in the cities so far away. A single poached duck egg. A sprig of parsley, and some truffle oil. Three thick, tender slices of aged meat that smells just as heavily-seasoned pork should...
Submitted September 24, 2017 at 01:08AM by MVoltaire http://ift.tt/2fItW2w libraryofshadows
No comments:
Post a Comment