Sunday, September 28, 2008

Poached Ratfish and Sour Buttermilk

The morning sky was black with crows, the sun barely risen above the lowest treetops. Dejesus sat under the Waymart clock, his eyes on the alms man sitting across the way. ‘When will that pip understand that tomorrow is today and today tomorrow?’

Malcolm Firmin toiled as a cook’s assistant in a small unkempt café run by an equally unkempt cook by the name of Hugh Bustamante. Dejesus met Malcolm Firmin in the park behind the Waymart one rainy afternoon where both men were feeding the pigeons, Dejesus, bits of watercress, Malcolm Firmin leftover porkpie. Dejesus noticed that the man next to him tossing porkpie tidbits at the pecking birds was wearing an apron dusted with flour and stained in cooking fat, finding this odd, as today was Lent, he inquired of the man ‘…might I inquire of you where a hungry man can get a decent meal…?’ The man who he came to know as Malcolm Firmin, cook’s assistant, turning said ‘…certainly not where I work…’. Dejesus, his face tightening, said ‘…I’d eat the ears off a ratfish…’. The cook’s assistant, turning a second time said ‘…ratfish we have, come with me my hungry man…’. The cook’s assistant turned a third time, cocked his head and said ‘…mind you it’ll have to be fricasseed, we’re all out of cooking oil…’.

After a short walk, the day unfolding like a map of the world behind them, they arrived at the unkempt café. Upon reaching the swinging front doors Malcolm Firmin turned a fourth time and said ‘Every life is many days, day after day’. The swinging door swinging shut, the inside of the café as dim as a whore’s bedsit, Dejesus came face to face with Hugh Bustamante, his apron a black mass of fryer grease and flour. On the counter next to the flat stove, the top littered with burnt things and grease, sat a baker’s hat, the top half cut away with a boning knife. The assistant cook, Malcolm Firmin, addressed the head cook Hugh Bustamante in a low sotto loco voice ‘…this man would like a ratfish steak with boiled potatoes and a glass of our finest buttermilk...’. Afterwards all three men shared a pantagruelian cigar and glass of buttermilk, Hugh Bustamante picking the head lice from the white of his scalp while Malcolm Firmin recounted a tale his great-great granddad told him when he was a boy. Having had his fill of poached ratfish and sour buttermilk Dejesus crept from the unkempt café, the fusty smell of smoldering cigars and soiled bed linen burning his nose.

‘Every life is many days, day after day’, the thought taunted Dejesus. What if all those days one after the other amounted to nothing, day after day after day? What if each day was the same day but he didn’t know it, what then? How could he know? His stomach soured, a pissoires of buttermilk and poached ratfish. The next day, day after day, he met the man in the hat behind the Seder grocer, his stomach fulminating with gas and fish oil. He stood facing the man in the hat’s hat, a beige fedora with an imprint hatband, and sighed, the corners of his mouth slackening, a burgling in his guts.

No comments:

About Me

My photo
"Poetry is the short-circuiting of meaning between words, the impetuous regeneration of primordial myth". Bruno Schulz
Powered By Blogger

Blog Archive