Something twinkled in my soup
Something twinkled in my soup. I laid down my spoon and peered into the wide bowl. Grey clouds hung from a clear surface. The twinkle was gone. Could there be something alive in the soup? A fish maybe? No. I had been eating the house soup at this tavern for months and nothing as wholesome as fish had ever been presented.
I picked up my chopsticks and stirred the liquid. The clouds whirled and fragments of peppercorn spiralled up from the murk. A pea and a section of bean pod span into view. There was one end of a small bone. But nothing twinkled. I withdrew the chopsticks. Slime gathered into a drop and hung between the tapered tips.
I took hold of the candle on the table. The base was set in a puddle of wax that had hardened to a grip on the worm-furrowed wood. My hand set to break off the candle but then stopped. Perhaps I ought not to look? The house soup was a dish best eaten in darkness, and ignorance. Perhaps I could push the twinkle from my thoughts?
As I sat, one hand holding the chopsticks the other holding the candle, the twinkle reappeared. But this time I could tell that the soup did not glint itself but reflected. I looked up.
The fingers on a white-gloved hand were articulating. This is what I had taken for a twinkle in my soup. Beyond the glove were the further clothes and wig of a dandy. The dandy smiled at me and I stared back. I released the candle.
The dandy laid a cup and saucer on my table with his other hand.
“This table is occupied, sir,” I said.
“Only half occupied, I think sir.”
“Others are not at all occupied.” I gestured to the rest of the tavern.
“Indeed, but I specify an occupied table.”
“You’ll get no conversation from me,” I said.
“I do not seek conversation,” said the dandy. “I seek poetry.”
“You’ll find none here. I detest poetry.”
“As do I, so we have that in common.” The dandy sat down. “We also have in common that we despise the source of our income.”
I ignored the young man and ate a spoonful of soup.
“I despise slavery yet I am a slave-trader, originally by parentage. You despise poetry yet you are a poet.”
“Was a poet,” I said between mouthfuls. “Now I am a novelist.”
“A novelist? That well explains your destituted estate. It was seven days ago I first saw you huddled at this very table. I asked myself, what can have befallen society’s favourite poet? Once he dined himself and others at the best of our hotels, now he can barely feed himself in the gutter. Will you allow me to take you to dinner?”
“No, I prefer to eat within my means.”
“You know that what you leave in the bottom of your bowl today will make the stock for tomorrow?”
“Aye. ‘Tis called the house soup, or the soup of the soup.”
The dandy took a sip from his cup.
“Then and by the same token this is the coffee of the coffee, although it is overwhelmingly chicory.”
He pushed his cup away.
“Well, there must be some offer I can make,” he said. “Do you also smoke within your means?”
“Aye.”
“I have a spare pipe here.” The dandy dropped a felt pouch on the table. “This is a very fine tobacco.”
“I do not need a smoke from you.” I produced my own pipe from my pocket and lit it from the candle. I drew and puffed so that a cloud of acrid smoke blew across the table.
The dandy choked out a cough and said “That is appalling. Please, take some of my tobacco.”
“I smoke within my means,” I said. “There are some fine smokes burning across the room. Perhaps you should sit yonder?”
He wiped his eyes on his lace cuff and said “There’s no need. I see that yours is nearly out.”
“I shall refill it with the same mixture.”
“Horse dung and cow dung perhaps?”
“Hair.”
“Hair?” said the dandy, no longer weeping. “I see you are still a poet.”
“How a poet?”
“Smoking a person’s hair, why, ‘tis an intimacy. In poetry it might be a kiss to smoke the hair of one’s lover. Ah, I’ll wager it is not hair from the head, eh?”
“In that you are right,” I said.
“I knew it, I knew it. I have done the same.”
“The same? It’s unclear what you mean.”
“Then, and since we both despise poetry, I will say it in plain words: I have had a cunt shaved. What a sight it was, that object of our desire. It is usually hidden by clothes, and underclothes, and even overclothes. And if not clothes, then it is hidden by darkness. And if not by darkness then by hair. I never thought to keep what I had shaved off though. The sight of the starkers cunt impelled me to another action, one of release not of retention.”
“I see.”
“No, it is I who see. You have moved beyond the poetry that is written on the page.”
“Although I value your understanding at nought I will say that it is not that hair which I smoke.”
“You have a compulsion to be honest?” said the dandy. “Another debarment from the poets’ circle. I must guess again ….. is your lover ….. of a certain kind? A bearded kind?”
I leaned to my left and plucked a generous pinch of stuffing from my chair.
“You smoke horsehair?” said the dandy. “But that must be the lowest a man can stoop? Careful sir, that’s too hot to push in with your bare thumb. Here, borrow my tamp.”
He took a granite plug from his tobacco pouch.
“No sir. I can find my own means.”
I picked up my chopsticks and fished out a bone from my soup. The wider end was the right size for tamping.
“I’ll warrant that bone has spent more time in soup than it has in chicken,” said the dandy.
I met his smile with a blank expression and returned the bone to my soup.
“Your quips and ….. adventures ….. are of no interest to me,” I said. “I would like to finish my dinner without company, if you please.”
“If I please, he says, politeness at last,” the young man said. “Very well, I will say something that may interest you. I want to commission a poem from you.”
“But you despise poetry, or was that another quip?”
“This poem would not be for me but for a young lady with whom – egad. A lizard.”
I followed the dandy’s staring eyes and saw that there was indeed a small black reptile walking across the table. The creature stopped. Ahead of it, a beetle emerged from a crack in the pitted table. There was a pink flash and the beetle was drawn to the lizard’s mouth on its tongue. I stabbed my chopsticks down. The lizard’s skin stretched and yielded in an instant. I worked the sticks back and forth, stirring the creature’s flesh and cracking its bones until I scraped the unyielding wood beneath it. I held my hand still, pinning the squirming lizard in place, lest its death throes allow it to escape.
“The beetle emerges from eating the wood. The lizard catches the beetle on its tongue. The poet kills the lizard with his cutlery,” said the dandy. “In two blinks of an eye there is the pyramid of civilisation, from the insect to the beast to man, each tier built on the bodies of the one below.”
I picked up my chopsticks. The lizard dangled, showing a white belly.
“Surely you don’t mean to eat it?” said the dandy. His chin and shoulders twitched with a stifled retch.
Could I sicken him into departing? The dandy’s eyes followed the lizard as I raised it to my mouth. Just as I parted my lips he seized my wrist.
“Stop,” he said, squinting at the lizard.
“Come come, sir,” I said. “A moment ago you waxed lyrical about the perversity of smoking your lover’s golden fleece. Now you balk at what is far more natural and no more than the last link in the food chain.”
“But,” he said, “a lizard?”
“Is that all, young man? No quip about a meal that brings itself to your table? No piece of wit on the circular identity of it being diner, waiter and dish all at once? Your gags are choked by your gagging, it seems. Now release my hand, I weigh the known poison of this beast safer than the unknown pollution of the house soup.”
I jerked my hand from the dandy’s grip. The lizard fell off my chopsticks and splashed into my soup. A few drops must have landed on the dandy’s face for it snapped back.
“You add the known to the unknown,” he said, wiping his face. “You may be accused of alchemy.”
“My defence will be poverty,” I said.
“If you really intend to eat that foulness then I can do no more than pray that the toxic fever drives you to creativity and not madness.” The dandy stood up. “I had hoped to find you frothing words in a twinkling plenitude of drollery. Instead I find you taciturn to the point of dullardry. And as I have no use for a dullard’s love poem you may consider my commission withdrawn and void.”
The dandy turned on his elevated heel and clicked away leaving me to my dinner.
I fished the lizard out of its watery grave. For such a small creature it was quite plump. What harm could a leg do? I held the black corpse to my mouth, fixed my back teeth on a rear member and pulled. A taste harsher than the stiffest of salamis filled my mouth. I chewed and something ground on my tooth. I spat onto the table.
There was a small mess of pale flesh in which something twinkled. I pushed the quid apart with my finger. A metal ring sat amidst the strands. I picked it out and shook off the debris of chewed lizard. A piece of string was tied through the ring.
I sold the ring to a gypsy, bought a glass of sweet wine and a biscuit and thought no more of it until a week later, when the dandy again disturbed my dinner.
This time he did not sit but placed a silk-wrapped package on my table.
“You wish to commission me?” I said. “Allow me to conject. You attempted your own love poem and were rejected.”
“No sir,” said the dandy.
He lifted a corner of silk, revealing a silver cage. Inside the cage, a black lizard scuttled in ungainly circles. Straight away I saw the reason for its circuits. In the centre of the cage was a clip through which a piece of string was tied. The other end of the string was attached to one of the lizard’s hind legs by a metal cuff.
“The proprietor of this filthy tavern has a daughter.” The dandy leaned over the cage and whispered. “From her bearing I believe her to be equally filthy. Last week I thought to win her affections with a saucy love poem, to be written by your goodself. But the advent of the lizard obviated that plan.”
“So this is a gift, a saucy love lizard instead of a saucy love poem?” I said.
“Very good. But no. Do you remember you picked up the lizard last week? I noticed a collar on its ankle, unlike you-”
“I noticed it”, I said, “later.”
“Ah, but I did better, I recognised it. I had the advantage, having seen the lizard before. You see, it’s her pet, or was. It lived upstairs, in a cage much like this one. She showed it me once, with a great display of affection I might add. It must have escaped and run down here.”
“A brief escape, or a long one, depending on your view.”
“In either case it was a great loss for the young lady. A loss that I will make good with this little fellow.” He replaced the silk. “And as a lizard is cheaper than a poet I have some surplus.”
The dandy flicked a coin into my house soup. It twinkled once and descended into the murk.
by autran
I picked up my chopsticks and stirred the liquid. The clouds whirled and fragments of peppercorn spiralled up from the murk. A pea and a section of bean pod span into view. There was one end of a small bone. But nothing twinkled. I withdrew the chopsticks. Slime gathered into a drop and hung between the tapered tips.
I took hold of the candle on the table. The base was set in a puddle of wax that had hardened to a grip on the worm-furrowed wood. My hand set to break off the candle but then stopped. Perhaps I ought not to look? The house soup was a dish best eaten in darkness, and ignorance. Perhaps I could push the twinkle from my thoughts?
As I sat, one hand holding the chopsticks the other holding the candle, the twinkle reappeared. But this time I could tell that the soup did not glint itself but reflected. I looked up.
The fingers on a white-gloved hand were articulating. This is what I had taken for a twinkle in my soup. Beyond the glove were the further clothes and wig of a dandy. The dandy smiled at me and I stared back. I released the candle.
The dandy laid a cup and saucer on my table with his other hand.
“This table is occupied, sir,” I said.
“Only half occupied, I think sir.”
“Others are not at all occupied.” I gestured to the rest of the tavern.
“Indeed, but I specify an occupied table.”
“You’ll get no conversation from me,” I said.
“I do not seek conversation,” said the dandy. “I seek poetry.”
“You’ll find none here. I detest poetry.”
“As do I, so we have that in common.” The dandy sat down. “We also have in common that we despise the source of our income.”
I ignored the young man and ate a spoonful of soup.
“I despise slavery yet I am a slave-trader, originally by parentage. You despise poetry yet you are a poet.”
“Was a poet,” I said between mouthfuls. “Now I am a novelist.”
“A novelist? That well explains your destituted estate. It was seven days ago I first saw you huddled at this very table. I asked myself, what can have befallen society’s favourite poet? Once he dined himself and others at the best of our hotels, now he can barely feed himself in the gutter. Will you allow me to take you to dinner?”
“No, I prefer to eat within my means.”
“You know that what you leave in the bottom of your bowl today will make the stock for tomorrow?”
“Aye. ‘Tis called the house soup, or the soup of the soup.”
The dandy took a sip from his cup.
“Then and by the same token this is the coffee of the coffee, although it is overwhelmingly chicory.”
He pushed his cup away.
“Well, there must be some offer I can make,” he said. “Do you also smoke within your means?”
“Aye.”
“I have a spare pipe here.” The dandy dropped a felt pouch on the table. “This is a very fine tobacco.”
“I do not need a smoke from you.” I produced my own pipe from my pocket and lit it from the candle. I drew and puffed so that a cloud of acrid smoke blew across the table.
The dandy choked out a cough and said “That is appalling. Please, take some of my tobacco.”
“I smoke within my means,” I said. “There are some fine smokes burning across the room. Perhaps you should sit yonder?”
He wiped his eyes on his lace cuff and said “There’s no need. I see that yours is nearly out.”
“I shall refill it with the same mixture.”
“Horse dung and cow dung perhaps?”
“Hair.”
“Hair?” said the dandy, no longer weeping. “I see you are still a poet.”
“How a poet?”
“Smoking a person’s hair, why, ‘tis an intimacy. In poetry it might be a kiss to smoke the hair of one’s lover. Ah, I’ll wager it is not hair from the head, eh?”
“In that you are right,” I said.
“I knew it, I knew it. I have done the same.”
“The same? It’s unclear what you mean.”
“Then, and since we both despise poetry, I will say it in plain words: I have had a cunt shaved. What a sight it was, that object of our desire. It is usually hidden by clothes, and underclothes, and even overclothes. And if not clothes, then it is hidden by darkness. And if not by darkness then by hair. I never thought to keep what I had shaved off though. The sight of the starkers cunt impelled me to another action, one of release not of retention.”
“I see.”
“No, it is I who see. You have moved beyond the poetry that is written on the page.”
“Although I value your understanding at nought I will say that it is not that hair which I smoke.”
“You have a compulsion to be honest?” said the dandy. “Another debarment from the poets’ circle. I must guess again ….. is your lover ….. of a certain kind? A bearded kind?”
I leaned to my left and plucked a generous pinch of stuffing from my chair.
“You smoke horsehair?” said the dandy. “But that must be the lowest a man can stoop? Careful sir, that’s too hot to push in with your bare thumb. Here, borrow my tamp.”
He took a granite plug from his tobacco pouch.
“No sir. I can find my own means.”
I picked up my chopsticks and fished out a bone from my soup. The wider end was the right size for tamping.
“I’ll warrant that bone has spent more time in soup than it has in chicken,” said the dandy.
I met his smile with a blank expression and returned the bone to my soup.
“Your quips and ….. adventures ….. are of no interest to me,” I said. “I would like to finish my dinner without company, if you please.”
“If I please, he says, politeness at last,” the young man said. “Very well, I will say something that may interest you. I want to commission a poem from you.”
“But you despise poetry, or was that another quip?”
“This poem would not be for me but for a young lady with whom – egad. A lizard.”
I followed the dandy’s staring eyes and saw that there was indeed a small black reptile walking across the table. The creature stopped. Ahead of it, a beetle emerged from a crack in the pitted table. There was a pink flash and the beetle was drawn to the lizard’s mouth on its tongue. I stabbed my chopsticks down. The lizard’s skin stretched and yielded in an instant. I worked the sticks back and forth, stirring the creature’s flesh and cracking its bones until I scraped the unyielding wood beneath it. I held my hand still, pinning the squirming lizard in place, lest its death throes allow it to escape.
“The beetle emerges from eating the wood. The lizard catches the beetle on its tongue. The poet kills the lizard with his cutlery,” said the dandy. “In two blinks of an eye there is the pyramid of civilisation, from the insect to the beast to man, each tier built on the bodies of the one below.”
I picked up my chopsticks. The lizard dangled, showing a white belly.
“Surely you don’t mean to eat it?” said the dandy. His chin and shoulders twitched with a stifled retch.
Could I sicken him into departing? The dandy’s eyes followed the lizard as I raised it to my mouth. Just as I parted my lips he seized my wrist.
“Stop,” he said, squinting at the lizard.
“Come come, sir,” I said. “A moment ago you waxed lyrical about the perversity of smoking your lover’s golden fleece. Now you balk at what is far more natural and no more than the last link in the food chain.”
“But,” he said, “a lizard?”
“Is that all, young man? No quip about a meal that brings itself to your table? No piece of wit on the circular identity of it being diner, waiter and dish all at once? Your gags are choked by your gagging, it seems. Now release my hand, I weigh the known poison of this beast safer than the unknown pollution of the house soup.”
I jerked my hand from the dandy’s grip. The lizard fell off my chopsticks and splashed into my soup. A few drops must have landed on the dandy’s face for it snapped back.
“You add the known to the unknown,” he said, wiping his face. “You may be accused of alchemy.”
“My defence will be poverty,” I said.
“If you really intend to eat that foulness then I can do no more than pray that the toxic fever drives you to creativity and not madness.” The dandy stood up. “I had hoped to find you frothing words in a twinkling plenitude of drollery. Instead I find you taciturn to the point of dullardry. And as I have no use for a dullard’s love poem you may consider my commission withdrawn and void.”
The dandy turned on his elevated heel and clicked away leaving me to my dinner.
I fished the lizard out of its watery grave. For such a small creature it was quite plump. What harm could a leg do? I held the black corpse to my mouth, fixed my back teeth on a rear member and pulled. A taste harsher than the stiffest of salamis filled my mouth. I chewed and something ground on my tooth. I spat onto the table.
There was a small mess of pale flesh in which something twinkled. I pushed the quid apart with my finger. A metal ring sat amidst the strands. I picked it out and shook off the debris of chewed lizard. A piece of string was tied through the ring.
I sold the ring to a gypsy, bought a glass of sweet wine and a biscuit and thought no more of it until a week later, when the dandy again disturbed my dinner.
This time he did not sit but placed a silk-wrapped package on my table.
“You wish to commission me?” I said. “Allow me to conject. You attempted your own love poem and were rejected.”
“No sir,” said the dandy.
He lifted a corner of silk, revealing a silver cage. Inside the cage, a black lizard scuttled in ungainly circles. Straight away I saw the reason for its circuits. In the centre of the cage was a clip through which a piece of string was tied. The other end of the string was attached to one of the lizard’s hind legs by a metal cuff.
“The proprietor of this filthy tavern has a daughter.” The dandy leaned over the cage and whispered. “From her bearing I believe her to be equally filthy. Last week I thought to win her affections with a saucy love poem, to be written by your goodself. But the advent of the lizard obviated that plan.”
“So this is a gift, a saucy love lizard instead of a saucy love poem?” I said.
“Very good. But no. Do you remember you picked up the lizard last week? I noticed a collar on its ankle, unlike you-”
“I noticed it”, I said, “later.”
“Ah, but I did better, I recognised it. I had the advantage, having seen the lizard before. You see, it’s her pet, or was. It lived upstairs, in a cage much like this one. She showed it me once, with a great display of affection I might add. It must have escaped and run down here.”
“A brief escape, or a long one, depending on your view.”
“In either case it was a great loss for the young lady. A loss that I will make good with this little fellow.” He replaced the silk. “And as a lizard is cheaper than a poet I have some surplus.”
The dandy flicked a coin into my house soup. It twinkled once and descended into the murk.
by autran
posted by autran at 9:59 pm
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