Cold War - Jerome Preisler [22]
Morgan could have none of these dishes. Or rather, he could have any of them, if he was prepared to pay the price. His intestines had plagued him intermittently over the past six or seven months; the doctors offered different theories and countless remedies, though their advice came down to the same thing: eat plainly. No cream sauces, no spices, no exotic meats. They would prefer that he stay out of restaurants entirely, but if he must go, he should order something simple—baked capon, with no spices, no sauce, no salt, no pepper, no skin. They might just as well have told him not to have sex.
Perhaps not, for he could exert enough willpower most days to limit his diet. His other appetites, however, were more difficult to curb, as the Mieser twins, sitting across from him at the table in A’s exclusive red room, would surely attest.
He glanced at the girls, who had already settled on what they would eat—salmon and turnip daube in a radish-mango sauce for Lucretia, who loved the cornichons that came with it; American Cajun-style blackened catfish for Minz, who hungered for all manner of heat. Lucretia met Morgan’s gaze with a smile that hinted his hunger might be easily satiated. Minz, always so competitive with her sister, reached her hand beneath the table and raked his leg gently with her fingernails.
Morgan liked to bring the girls here mostly for the scandalous effect they had on the natives who considered themselves daring enough to venture beyond the traditional German-inspired restaurants in the town’s exclusive residential sections. Besides their Italian actress mother, the twins’ ancestors included three different dukes and an uncrowned German prince. And while the exact content of their father’s extensive pharmaceutical holdings were the subject of much local rumor and debate, their own assets were hardly obscured by the sheer blouses they wore above only slightly more modest black skirts. Morgan returned to the menu. He could choose the planked salmon, which was relatively plain and had not upset his stomach in the past. But it bothered him considerably that, rather than being cooked on American northwest cedar, it was prepared on local pine. Whether that made a major difference in its taste, he could not say, but the knowledge that he was eating a dish flavored by ersatz wood reminded him that he was doomed to an existence removed from the real thing, perhaps forever. And the fact that he could not easily return to the States vexed him far more severely than serial indigestion.
Morgan put off the question of the main course to review the salad choices once more, hoping the diversion would take his mind off America. Switzerland was not a horrible prison, certainly, and he suspected that his fondness for the U.S. was rather like that of the fox for the unreachable grapes. His family had made its fortune here. While he had lived abroad most of his adult life, Morgan had been raised in Zurich not far from this very restaurant. His childhood had not been unpleasant, but it had been constrained; his parents were not rigid so much as antiseptic, if one excepted his father’s activities to enhance the family fortune. The feeling of constraint came over him like a cloud every time he returned to the city or even the country. He felt it in his mouth every time he formed a word in his native Swiss German—one reason he tried to avoid the language whenever possible.
But really, Zurich, with its tidy streets and marvelous guildhalls, its medieval facades and peerless banks, was the perfect setting for the family businesses. The Morgans had been dealers in art and antiquities for many generations, both in Europe and in America. While it was true that the World War and its aftermath had given the family incredible wealth, it was equally true that they