The Republic of Wine (33 page)

Picking up an electronic pen, she wrote two words on the magnetic board with a flourish:
STEAMED PLATYPUS
. She turned sideways to face the students as she wrote, polite and charming. Then she threw down the pen and pushed a button under the podium, causing a cloth screen to pull back slowly, the way a general pushes a button to reveal a battle map. Behind the screen was a large water tank in which several small platypuses with glossy fur and webbed feet swam nervously. She said, Now I'm going to give you the ingredients and the actual cooking procedures, so please take notes. This ugly little animal embarrassed the learned and erudite Engels, our great proletarian leader, for it was an aberrant phenomenon in evolution, the only known mammal that lays eggs. The platypus is the one truly exotic animal. So we must take exceptional care during cooking, in order not to waste such a rare animal with a procedural mistake. Therefore, I suggest that, before we make platypus, we should practice on turtles. Now, let me give you the actual cooking method:

Take a platypus, kill it and hang it upside down for about an hour to drain the blood. Please note that you should use a silver knife and cut from under its mouth to make sure the point of entry is as small as possible. After draining the blood, put the platypus in water heated to 75 degrees Celsius to strip the hide. Then carefully remove the innards, the liver, the heart, and the eggs (if there are any). Use special care when removing the liver, making sure you don't puncture the gallbladder. Otherwise the platypus will become inedible and useless. Take out the intestines and turn them inside out to clean thoroughly with salt water. Then wash the mouth and feet with boiling water, rub off the rough shell over the beak and the rough skin between the toes. Make sure to keep the webbing between toes intact. After cleaning, lightly cook the innards in hot oil and stuff them inside the platypus. For sauce, add salt, garlic, shredded ginger, chili pepper, sesame oil - remember not to use any MSG - and slowly cook over a low fire until it turns dark red and gives off a peculiar odor. If the situation permits, sauté the eggs and innards together, then stuff them back inside the platypus. If there are larger, better-formed eggs, you can make them into a separate gourmet dish by following the recipe for braised turtle eggs.

After introducing the recipe for platypus, she brushed back her hair, like one of the nation's top leaders preparing to make an important announcement, and stared at the students, who, in turn, felt her warm gaze touch their faces. I sensed that my mother-in-law had touched my soul With great seriousness, she said, Now we move on to the cooking methods for braised baby. I felt as if a rusted awl had been driven through my heart, and currents of cold liquid poured into my chest, where they congealed and pressed against my organs, putting me on tenterhooks, while sticky, cold sweat seeped into the palms of my hands. Every one of her students' faces turned red, excitement accelerating the beating of their hearts. Like a group of medical-school students performing their first dissection of human genitalia, they feigned nonchalance, but their efforts were wasted - excitement was revealed by twitching muscles on their cheeks and nervous coughs. My mother-in-law said, This is the Culinary Academy's pride and joy. We cannot give everyone an opportunity for hands-on practice, because the ingredient is so difficult to come by and so incredibly expensive. I'll show you the procedure in detail, and you must watch attentively. At home you can use a monkey or piglet as a substitute.

She first stressed that a chef's heart is made of steel and that a chef should never waste emotions. Rather than being human, the babies we are about to slaughter and cook are small animals in human form that are, based upon strict, mutual agreement, produced to meet the special needs of Liquorland's developing economy and prosperity. In essence, they are no different than the platypuses swimming in the tank waiting to be slaughtered. Please put your minds at ease, and do not let your imagination run wild. You must recite to yourselves a thousand times, ten thousand times: They are not human. They are little animals in human form. Gracefully she picked up a switch and banged it several times against the tank: In essence they are no different than platypuses.

She picked up the phone on the wall and barked a command into the receiver. Then she put down the phone and said to the students: This, of course, is a famous dish that one day will shock the world, so we cannot tolerate the slightest carelessness in the creative process. Generally speaking, the emotional pressure an animal experiences before being slaughtered affects the amount of glycogen in the meat, which in turn decreases the quality of the finished product. Therefore, an experienced butcher always prefers ending the animal's life with lightning speed, in order to improve the quality of the meat. In comparison with average domesticated animals, meat boys are more intelligent, so we must try everything possible to maintain their happy spirit, thus preserving the quality of the main ingredient of this famous dish. The traditional method of slaughtering was to brain them with a club, but this method bruises the soft tissues and can even smash the skull, thereby affecting the appearance of the finished product. It has gradually been replaced by anesthetization with ethanol. The Brewer's College has just distilled a new liquor that is sweet and not too strong, but has an unusually high alcoholic content, which is perfect for our purposes. Experience has shown that anesthetizing the meat boys with alcohol before slaughtering reduces the milk odor that used to be the most troublesome aspect of the cooking process, and lab tests have shown that the nutritional value of anesthetized meat boys increases dramatically. Once again she reached for the receiver on the wall, and said:

Send it in.

That's all my mother-in-law said, and without fanfare; five minutes later, two young women in snowy white hospital gowns and square caps carried a naked meat boy into the lecture hall in a specially designed gurney. The women would have been considered good looking, but their pale faces made me squirm. They set the gurney on the chopping block, then stepped aside, their arms hanging down stiffly. My mother-in-law bent over to inspect the pink meat boy, poked him in the chest with a soft, dainty index finger, and nodded with satisfaction. Then she stood up to remind the students one more time, with great solemnity: You must never ever forget that this is just a little animal in human form. She'd barely gotten the words out when the little animal in human form on the gurney rolled over. The students let out a suppressed gasp. Everyone, myself included, thought the little guy opening on his foot. In a strangely beautiful manner, a string of bright red drops of blood like gemstones hung down to merge with a glass jar under his foot. The lecture hall was unusually quiet. All the students - male and female - their eyes bulging, were staring at the meat boy's foot and the string of blood that hung from it. The camera from the local TV station was also trained on the foot and the blood beneath it, which sparkled in the bright lights. Gradually I heard the students' heavy breathing, deep like the swelling tide, and the clear, crisp, ear-pleasing sounds of blood dripping into the jar, like a creek flowing through deep ravines. My mother-in-law said, The meat boy's blood will be completely drained in about an hour and a half. The second step is to remove the innards while keeping them intact. The third step is to loosen the hair with water heated to 70 degrees … I really don't feel like describing my mother-in-law's actual cooking lesson, which was boring and nauseating at the same time. Since night was falling, Doctor of Liquor Studies' brain, which was full of wonderful ideas, and stimulated by alcohol, had to concentrate on creating a story entitled ‘Swallows' Nests' instead of wasting his talent on a banquet for cannibals.

The lady trucker's comment knifed into the investigator's heart. He pressed his hand against his breast like a love-struck teenager and bent over in agony. He saw her pink feet, which were livelier than her hands, rubbing back and forth across the carpet. His heart was inundated with a wicked passion. Clenching his teeth, he cursed - ‘Slut!' - before turning and striding toward the door. He heard a shout thud into his back: Where do you think you're going, you whoremonger? Who the hell do you think you are, bullying a woman that way?' He kept walking. A sparkling drinking glass whizzed past his ear, bounced off the door, and landed on the carpet. Turning to look back, he saw her standing there, thrusting her chest out and breathing heavily, moisture glistening in her eyes. Beset by mixed emotions, he struggled to keep his voice under control: ‘How could you be so shameless as to sleep with a dwarf? Was it for money?' She burst into tears, sobbing and sobbing, until suddenly she raised her voice, hoarse yet shrill, setting the metal decorations of the frosted-glass hanging lamps tinkling loudly. She tore open her blouse, began pounding her breasts, scratching her face with her fingernails, tearing her hair, and smashing her head against the cream-colored wall. In the midst of her frenzied self-abuse, she shrieked hysterically, nearly bursting the investigator's eardrums:

‘Get out - get out - get the hell out -'

The investigator was scared witless. Nothing like this had ever happened to him before. He felt as if the Angel of Death were rubbing his nose with its cold hand and red-painted nails. Spurts of urine ran down his leg. He knew how inelegant, not to mention uncomfortable, it was to be pissing his pants, yet he couldn't help himself. It was all that kept him from falling apart. But even as he was pissing his pants, he experienced the joy of shedding an enormous emotional burden. Voice cracking with emotion, he said:

‘Don't do that… please, I beg you …'

Unmoved by his plea or by his loss of bladder control, the lady trucker forged ahead with her self-abuse and loud wails. As she banged her head with increased vigor, the wall protested loudly, until it seemed inevitable that it would soon be splattered with her brains. The investigator ran over and threw his arms around her waist, only to have her straighten up and break his grip. Now she changed tactics: instead of banging her head against the wall, she began tearing at the back of her hands with her teeth, as if gnawing on a pig's foot. She was really digging in, not play-acting, for soon her hands were a bloody mess. The investigator, in an act of desperate futility, fell weakly to his knees and began knocking his head on the floor in supplicating kowtows.

‘Dear woman,' he said. ‘Does that help, calling you dear woman? My dearest woman, don't be offended by someone as worthless as I. Be forgiving, like a wise and tolerant prime minister. Pretend that what you heard was a fart, a loud, stinky fart.'

Surprisingly, that did the trick. She stopped chewing the backs of her hands, closed her eyes, opened wide her mouth, and bawled like a baby. The investigator straightened up. Then, like something right out of the movies, he started slapping his own face - hard -first one cheek, then the other, berating himself as he did:

'I'm not human, I'm a bastard, a bandit, a hooligan, a dog, a wriggly maggot in a vat of shit. Smack, I'll smack you to death, you lousy son of a bitch …'

The first few slaps stung, but by the fourth or fifth one, it was about the same as hitting a piece of cowhide - no pain, no sting, just numbness. Several slaps more, and even that disappeared, leaving only the horrible, loud smack, as if he were slapping the carcass of a debristled hog or the ass of a dead woman. And he kept it up, one vicious slap after another, gradually feeling an odd sense of pleasure from this act of self-vengeance. At some point, he stopped berating himself, and the energy conserved by not speaking was transferred to his hand, increasing the force of each slap and turning up the volume of the resounding smacks. He watched as her mouth closed and the wails died out; she watched his performance as if in a trance. The investigator was pleased with himself. So after a few more vicious slaps, he dropped his hands. He heard a commotion on the other side of the door. Very tentatively, he asked:

‘You're not mad at me any more, are you, young lady?' She didn't move. With staring eyes, a gaping mouth, and an expression that sent shivers through the investigator, she simply stood there like a malevolent statue. Slowly he got to his feet and began to sweet-talk the woman, masking the anger in his heart, as he edged toward the door. ‘Don't be mad at me anymore, please don't be mad. I've always had a filthy mouth, as filthy as any asshole. My mouth has always gotten me into trouble, and nothing I do seems to help.' His backside brushed against the door. ‘You didn't deserve that, and I apologize with all my heart.' He applied pressure on the door with his backside. It creaked loudly. I'm the lowest of the low, a disgusting creature, I mean it,' he mumbled as a cool breeze brushed against his back. Giving her one last look, he slipped through the narrow opening and let the door close behind him. With her now on the other side, he ran toward the far end of the corridor without a second thought; but halfway there he was met by a neatly dressed little man rushing along behind a tiny serving girl. With a long stride he virtually leaped over both short people's heads, ignoring the girl's frightened shriek. Finally reaching the end of the corridor, he turned the corner and pushed open a greasy door, where he was greeted by a potpourri of smells - sweet, sour, bitter, spicy - and a cloud of hot steam that swallowed him up. A bunch of little men were rushing around in the steamy room, coming in and out of view as they bustled about like a covey of little sprites. Some, he saw, were carving, others were plucking hairs and feathers, yet others were washing dishes, and others still were mixing ingredients. Chaotic at first appearance, there was a distinct sense of order there. He tripped over something, and discovered it was a string of frozen donkey vaginas. He immediately thought of Dragon and Phoenix Lucky Together and the all-donkey banquet. Several of the little kitchen helpers stopped what they were doing to size him up with curious looks. Backing quickly out of the room, he turned and ran until he spotted a staircase, which he descended, guiding himself along by holding on to the banister. When he heard a woman's heart-stopping scream, what was left in his bladder ran down his leg. Deathly silence followed that single scream, and an unhappy thought flashed through his mind. ‘To hell with her!' Without a thought for the gaily dressed boys and girls dancing nimbly across a dance floor laid with Laiyang Red marble, and unavoidably shattering the beautiful rhythms of the dance music, like a whipped, mangy dog smelling of rancid piss, he crashed through the main hall of Yichi Tavern, a place noted for scenes of debauchery.