Sacred Hunger - Barry Unsworth [201]
This was the cue for the club’s Italian sugar chef, Signor Gasperini, to advance into the room in his tall hat and spotless white apron. Behind him, greeted by a rousing chorus of yells and whoops, came three attendants bearing a litter on which stood a three-foot high model of a negress fashioned in chocolate. Except for bracelets, anklets and pearl collar, which were all made of sugar-crystal droplets, and the red sugar-paste rose in her hair, she was naked. To the continuing strains of the fiddle, they made the round of the table with her. At her base was a plaque of chocolate with letters picked out in spun sugar: THE SABLE VENUS.
Kemp rapped with his baton for silence. ‘In accordance with custom, Signor Gasperini will now explain to the company the mysteries of this delectable lady’s composition.’
The chef had a lively eye and a smile so extensive that the corners of his lips and eyes seemed almost to join in a circle. The negretta was made of pasta di cioccolato e cacao, sweetened with fanid, flavoured with vanilla, moulded by his own hands – he threw them up with the gesture of a conjuror. ‘The hairs is made from caramella,’ he said jubilantly, ‘her leeps is pink pasta of sugar, the eyes zucchero fino, she have sugar cherries for neeples, dolcissimi, no? Ecco Signori, a voi!!!’ He swept off his tall hat and gestured proudly towards his creation, who regarded the company with gleaming, affrighted eyes. ‘Only the best sugar go to make this fanciulla,’ Signor Gasperini said.
‘What the devil is fanid?’ muttered the young lieutenant in Kemp’s ear. It seemed he had experienced a moment of intellectual enquiry. His eyes were round with drink and wonderment.
‘It is the juice of the sugar cane after it has been boiled down and skimmed,’ Kemp said. ‘It makes a sweet black dough, like thick syrup.’ He stood up rather unsteadily and inclined his head to the chef. ‘Gasperini,’ he said, ‘you have excelled yourself. My congratulations. The guest may now be served.’
Armstrong, after some fuddled hesitation, and to the accompaniment of much profane advice, chose the left breast with its cherry nipple. He was served with dexterity by the attendants, who could not, however, avoid some of the shoulder coming away with it. Thereafter the others were served, beginning with Kemp, who took her nose and eyes, proceeding down the table, the least senior members having to pick among the fragments. Sauternes was served and a sweet, heavy Malaga wine.
Kemp saw one of the junior members get up suddenly and make for the door, his face overspread with a chalky pallor. Fowler had slumped forward in his chair; his head rested on the table among the remains of his chocolate. So much for the powder-puff, Erasmus thought. He was distinctly drunk himself now, but his stomach felt firm enough. The chanting began again, this time accompanied by a flat-handed striking at the table: ‘Trionfi – trionfi – trionfi.’ The volume rose, drowning out the fiddles. On the crest of it, laughing among themselves, the women came in, sent by the prudent landlord before things started to get broken.
There were eight of them, scantily dressed and painted and high-stepping – they had been given drink while waiting. They sat in the laps of the men who were quickest to catch them, except for one, who came unbidden to Erasmus, a wild-haired, gypsy-looking young woman with a bold mouth. She wore nothing above the waist but a muslin bodice. Her breasts moved unconfined below it, the nipples showing through with a dark glow. She drank from his glass and smiled at him, her eyes shining below the thick fringe of hair.
Erasmus, whose senses were swimming now and whose only care was to see that no one took away his precious baton of office, fumbled with the buttons of her bodice, at the same time trying to explain to Armstrong, with a vestigial sense of his duty as host, that the trionfi were due to appear now: it was these that gave the club its name, little figures made from cast sugar. ‘Cast on marble,’ he said, enunciating