The Blind Assassin - Margaret Atwood [85]
The cookbook had a plain cover, a no-nonsense mustard colour, and inside it there were plain doings as well. Fannie Merritt Farmer was relentlessly pragmatic – cut and dried, in a terse New England way. She assumed you knew nothing, and started from there: “A beverage is any drink. Water is the beverage provided for man by Nature. All beverages contain a large percentage of water, and therefore their uses should be considered: I. To quench thirst. II. To introduce water into the circulatory system. III. To regulate body temperature. IV. To assist in carrying off water.V. To nourish.VI. To stimulate the nervous system and various organs. VII. For medicinal purposes,” and so forth.
Taste and pleasure did not form part of her lists, but at the front of the book there was a curious epigraph by John Ruskin:
Cookery means the knowledge of Medea and of Circe and of Helen and of the Queen of Sheba. It means the knowledge of all herbs and fruits and balms and spices, and all that is healing and sweet in the fields and groves and savory in meats. It means carefulness and inventiveness and willingness and readiness of appliances. It means the economy of your grandmothers and the science of the modern chemist; it means testing and no wasting; it means English thoroughness and French and Arabian hospitality; and, in fine, it means that you are to be perfectly and always ladies – loaf givers.
I found it difficult to picture Helen of Troy in an apron, with her sleeves rolled up to the elbow and her cheek dabbled with flour; and from what I knew about Circe and Medea, the only things they’d ever cooked up were magic potions, for poisoning heirs apparent or changing men into pigs. As for the Queen of Sheba, I doubt she ever made so much as a piece of toast. I wondered where Mr. Ruskin got his peculiar ideas, about ladies and cookery both. Still, it was an image that must have appealed to a great many middle-class women of my grandmother’s time. They were to be sedate in bearing, unapproachable, regal even, but possessed of arcane and potentially lethal recipes, and capable of inspiring the most incendiary passions in men. And on top of that, perfectly and always ladies – loaf givers. The distributors of gracious largesse.
Had anyone ever taken this sort of thing seriously? My grandmother had. All you needed to do was to look at her portraits – at that cat-ate-the-canary smile, those droopy eyelids. Who did she think she was, the Queen of Sheba? Without a doubt.
When we got back from the picnic, Reenie was rushing around in the kitchen. She didn’t look much like Helen of Troy: despite all the work she’d done in advance, she was flustered, and in a foul temper; she was sweating, and her hair was coming down. She said we would just have to take things as they came, because what else could we expect, since she could not do miracles and that included making silk purses out of sows’ ears. And an extra place too, at zero hour, for this Alex person, whatever he called himself. Smart Alex, by the look of him.
“He calls himself by his name,” said Laura. “The same as anyone.”
“He’s not the same as anyone,” said Reenie. “You can tell that at a glance. He’s most likely some half-breed Indian, or else a gypsy. He’s certainly not from the same pea patch as the rest of us.”
Laura said nothing. She was not given to compunction as a rule, but this time she did seem to feel a little contrite for having invited Alex Thomas on the spur of the moment. She couldn’t uninvite him however, as she pointed out – that would have been miles beyond mere rudeness. Invited was invited, no matter who it might be.
Father knew that too, although he was far from pleased: Laura had jumped the gun