The Art of Travel

I met him at a book presentation in one of the larger bookstores of the city. I don't usually go to the big chain suppliers of books, but my friend Anastasia had invited me. She had just published her third cookbook and it looked like it would be the most successful. The first book had been called East Coast Cooking: From Maine to Maryland. The second one had been Celtic Fare, Then and Now. The third one, the one just out, had quickly made it to the top of the nonfiction titles and was Secret Ingredients, Secret Poisons. 

Obviously the title of the third book had been chosen to pique readers' curiosity, although it wasn't clear whether it had cooking recipes to make for one's enemies (with poison) or was a serious compilation of creative ways to use unexpected ingredients to prepare food. I figured it was likely that 'poisons' was not to be taken literally and that it just suggested little tricks a chef might use to impress guests. Instead of that word, Anastasia might have chosen a less intiminating one, like 'unique flavors' or 'ways to impress dinner guests'.

At the same time, many people know there are foods that, if not prepared properly, can make the persons consuming them very ill. The book could have that useful characteristic: it alerts cooks to plants and animals that must be treated with care: cleaned, cut, or cooked properly. Maybe there would only be poison if the instructions for the preparation weren't heeded.

I enjoyed the presentation and was among the many people asking the author to autograph their books. We spoke briefly, but the crowded table area let me know I couldn't take up too much time, even if Anastasia was one of my best college friends from years ago. People needed to get books signed, even if they might never read the books or recall they'd been dedicated to them. 

When the crowd thinned out, I wandered back to the table and saw my friend talking quite animatedly with a blond fellow who looked familiar and turned out to be Granger Randall, a star of global culinary culture. He was in his fifties, very fit, very outspoken, extremely knowledgeable. He could cook almost anything under the sun and also knew how to write about it. On top of that, he was - and this is a really bad joke - a big ham. He liked attention, but he also earned it through his vast food lore, his technical skills in the kitchen, and his ability to learn quickly. Granger was rapidly moving toward billionaire status.

I know all of this because Anastasia filled me in after the damage was done. By damage I mean after I had (jokingly) offered to take Granger along with me on a trip my friend and I had planned for mid-October. When I made the offer, I was merely saying something like "You could help us find all the good places to eat." Granger ate it up. (Sorry. I won't do that again.) He immediately agreed to accompany my friend and me to Europe and even offered to bring along a companion for himself, ostensibly so my friend and I could have some time to ourselves, given that we had planned to travel to see if we could repair some damage done to our relationship. I don't want to talk about that, just that the trip mattered to us and we had planned some things to do that were very much associated with things we had done together in the past.

If I were to provide every detail of the trip, this story would become as long as a Betty Crocker cookbook and I think a few examples will suffice. Granger said he'd like to meet us overseas and indicated he and his friend would be arriving at our hotel the same afternoon, but that we could meet the following morning, all four of us, for breakfast. He was looking forward to seeing what the hotel served. For my part, breakfast fare consisted of coffee, maybe juice, and a croissant, with coffee being the most important part.

Granger was at our breakfast table at 8 am sharp, having already surveyed the buffet style morning dishes. He dismissed the scrambled eggs and sausage as foul-tasting and swore when talking about the waffles, totally inedible. The juices were synthetic and the best part of the meal was the curly kale garnish on the fruit tray. I had no idea what to say, and my companion was in the same boat. We pretty much lost our appetites, even for coffee. The croissant I'd happily snagged from the rack was dry and disintegrating; the fresh cheese was a blob of grease; the jam was so cloyingly sweet I could smell the sugar.

Granger's companion spoke at last. It was not about the food, but about the city. Since she was a poet, she saw poetry in everything. That isn't so bad, but reciting poetry about everything soon gets old. Eve was oblivious to this as she recited all three stanzas from Kevin Craft's "Toulouse":

Toulouse in April is fonder of marble,

pink-veined, nonplussed, the dreaming blood

frozen in an emperor's head.

Civil servants appear with the day's wage

on the square, their grievances aging

in smoke and beer as the music ungarbles,

Toulouse in April is the fondness of marble.

It was hard to know what to do with this non sequitur, but we (my companion and I) smiled politely and one of us must have said oh yes that was a great poem. The poem talks about the city of Toulouse in February, March, and April. It was mid-October, so we would have to use our imaginations.

The four of us were strolling down the street when Granger dragged us all into a pastry shop. I rarely go into such places because I don't care for sweet food, but Granger made sure we understood all the terminology of pastries, and proceeded to ask the woman behind the counter about the preparation of the creams, whipped cream, meringues, fondant, and (I think) toasted pine nuts. He wanted to inquire further, but I grabbed his arm and pulled him out onto the sidewalk. "You can't do that," I admonished him.

My companion and I had planned to go to at least two museums and a bookstore before going to the outdoor flea market around Saint-Sernin, an 11th-century basilica we were anxious to see. We had debated going on a guided tour, but had to desist, because Granger never stopped talking. He didn't know French, either, so he assumed people speaking that language didn't hear him. (?) He arrived at the temple with us, but did not find anything interesting either inside or outside Saint-Sernin, and started wandering off to look at the menus a lot of restaurants posted in the windows. He started to count off on his fingers the places we couldn't eat.

After listening to the reasons for eliminations, I decided to just let him choose. Obviously, it mattered to him whether a restaurant served caviar, steak tartare, truffles, or mango soufflé. I couldn't summon up enough energy to disagree, so he led all of us to virtuallly the only acceptable eatery in Toulouse (and whose name I've forgotten) where he had two dishes sent back to the kitchen and my companion and I kept our eyes mostly on the table, trying to enjoy our salads without truffles. The poet evidently felt inspired, and recited something by Leanne Guenther:

A prince invited me to tea,

In a far away country.

He offered rare delights galore,

Stuffed pigeon and hearts of boar.

Black truffles snuffled up by pigs,

Goat cheese stuffed in tiny figs.

And for dessert some minced meat pies,

Ick! I’m taking him for fries!

It didn't leave us with much margin for commentary, seeing as how it was a children's poem and too full of rhymes. We smiled politely, because what else could we do? We sighed as well, thinking of all the great poetry there is in the world and that Toulouse had a really big but quirky bookstore where we ought to go to buy a book or two.

Needless to say, there were a lot of food truck owners's feelings hurts on our walk. Plus, at least twice Granger dragged us inside a restaurant to check out the menu, observing all the things that were lacking in a virile monologue. The second time, the owner came to grab the menu out of his hands. At least when we went by a produce market, he was willing to rave about the exquisite tomatoes, muskmelons, fennel, and leeks in a positive manner. Something, he thought, happened to the food between the market and the table, but he hadn't solved the mystery yet.

Poet lady continued to source her poems from well-known and obscure writers. in the street, her recitations became even more chaotic and disconnected from our conversations. She summoned the Chilean Pablo Neruda when we went by the market, and we listened to his odes, to the tomato, salt, garlic, things like that. Poems that have truly been over-recited. When Granger dragged us to look at menus, she dredged up verses about fried chicken, potatoes, and tiramisu. All of them left a bad taste in my mouth and a heavy feeling in the pit of my stomach. Surely a famous chef and culinary star could have found a writer companion who knew how to combine words better, whether by using vintage formulas or avant-garde freeform; she hadn't a clue as to how to prepare a curried sonnet or a Villanelle, or even a haiku, short and sweet.

With this sort of company, it's hard to recall now what my companion and I actuallly did. If we went to a museum, there was no concentrating on the art itself, because the talk of food and the poetry kept drowning out our thoughts. We tried other cities and other countries, even to see if we could throw our by now less-than-welcome company a curve ball. By this I mean we hoped we could find something on the trip that would leave not one, but both, of them speechless. We sought out the most obscure little museums, Romanesque churches, Roman or Celtic ruins, launching ourselves into a conversation about the history and development of the sites. After all, my companion and I were both art historians and that shared career path had originally brought us together - until we had hit that fork in the road about interpreting a certain female painter. We were trying, not to retrace our steps, but to discover where the painful difference had arisen. We still thought it had a solution.

We would find that solution, surely, as soon as we tossed our chef friend overboard along with his sidekick the pseudopoet. They bored us, yet we couldn't sleep remembering their chatter.

Author's Note:

We were able to give the two superfluous travelers the boot because they were our own creation. Arrogant academics, I had bought a book on eating in Europe when I attended Anastasia's presentation. Its author was Granger Randall. My companion had found a book, a huge anthology, of poetry written to great cultural concepts. Apparently, the concepts even included truffles, judging from the poet lady's recited piece. And yes, the editor of the anthology was Granger's lady poet friend, selected to come along with us on our trip. I haven't used her name here because I don't recall it for some reason. Maybe she never had one.

My companion and I just thought it would be amusing to create two traveling companions, because it reminded us of silly things we'd done in the past. So you see, the two that have now been disposed of were nothing more than our own inventions. Characters who didn't behave, or didn't fit, like in Pirandello's play.

We haven't decided yet if we're going to keep the books, though.