How to add spices to scrambled eggs

How to add spices to scrambled eggs

(The story is based on real events, but some facts have been invented for dramatic effect)

He walked into the kitchen, rubbing his eyes. After looking at the mirrored surface of the turquoise fridge, he tried to turn the porcupine on his head into a usual mop-top, but quickly gave up. His stomach was grumbling, demanding eggs with bacon and vegetables after last night's whisky, and as fat as possible. But his mind was elsewhere: he was trying not to forget the melody he had written in his sleep. 

This twenty-something guy was not the first person to create a masterpiece in a dream. And it wasn't the first time he had dreamt of music either. But it was the first time he could hum it so clearly when he woke up. What's more, it wasn't one of his standard songs, those ‘pops for teenagers’, as his friends who had a musical education teased. It was a real music, one of those that were used as jingles for BBC programmes. One that he would not be ashamed to show to the boys from the Manchester City Orchestra. He sometimes performed with them on the same stage; the masters of the classics, they looked down on him during smoke breaks. ‘Da-da-da, da-da-da’, he kept repeating in his head.

However, that would be for naught if he didn't eat and was hungover. The guy took a huge gulp of water, making his thin neck look like an elephant's trunk at a watering hole. He opened the fridge which looked more like fancy 1963 Cadillac DeVille. It was the girl's apartment, not his, so he wasn't entirely sure what he would find inside. To his delight, there were still a few pieces of ham in paper wrapping there, even cut into half-finger slices, perfect for scrambled eggs. There was also one oblong tomato and choice of peppers. Chubby bell peppers, one dark green and two red. A long greenish-yellow jalapeno. A small bright yellow habanero. And a few more peppers of different shapes and colours, for which he didn't even know the name. Oh, that Jane and her love of extreme sensations and spicy food! The spice box on the wooden countertop next to the fridge also contained a pile of peppers, but dried, in jars and paper bags. There was also hot orange turmeric, pale yellow ginger, sharp star anise, and many more colours and names on the labels.

The problem was that he couldn't find any eggs in the fridge or anywhere else in the kitchen. He kept humming the tune he had to remember, he drank a glass of water three more times, he turned over all the straight, square and round boxes and containers in the fridge, in three bedside tables, in twelve drawers, looked under the floral towel on the table and even looked in the oven. In the kitchen, in addition to peppers and other spices, there were ham, remnants of whiskey, vodka, gin, cherry liqueur and some homemade mumbo jumbo. There were no eggs. 

‘Scram-ble-d eggs, da-da da’, – somehow, unbeknownst to him, he began to hum the lyrics. It seems that his head had made peace with his body, and the search for food and the mission to preserve the melody merged into one task. He quickly brushed his teeth, drank another glass of water, put on his coat and ran outside. On the porch, the January wind blew him back into the house to get the cap he had forgotten. But eventually he made it to the grocery store, picked up a dozen eggs and a can of beer, poured a pile of coins to the unfriendly lady behind the counter, and ran back in, not even noticing how she was frowning at his alcoholic fume.  

‘Scrambled eggs... How I love your perfect legs...’ he hummed as heavy cast-iron frying pan sizzled, heating the oil, then evaporating the liquid from the tomato, lightly burning the colourful pepper skins, and finally turning the transparent substance around the yolks into snowy white islands under three hot suns. When this illustration of Clarke or Bradbury stories appeared on his plate, and then on the table, he didn't even think to pick up a knife. He chipped off piece by piece with his fork, quickly threw them into his mouth, chewed and chipped off again, as if he was playing a breakfast eating contest. Only a few times did he stop and take a sharp breath through his rounded lips - when he came across pieces of habanero, the hottest of the peppers. 

Finally, he wiped his lips with the same colourful towel, held his left palm on his stomach for a few seconds, as if to record the moment of satiety, and opened the beer. He took one sip, as long as a guitar solo, picked up the can, and returned to the bedroom, sipping the beer in small gulps. In the bedroom, he put the can on the top lid of the piano, opened the keys and started playing the night tune. He found a G, then an F-sharp minor, and then minor, minor, minor notes. ‘People like sad songs. And I often listen to sad songs myself,’ he thought. And in the end, he just stopped thinking about anything, completely drowning in the melody. 

An hour later, the song sounded as perfect on the keyboard as it did in his head. But there were still two niggles. One was the lyrics. The melody couldn't be about ‘scrambled eggs and beautiful legs’. The second concern was the feeling that he didn't write the song. It just came to him in a dream. Who knows, maybe he accidentally heard someone else's melody, it hid in the depths of his subconscious, and then surfaced as if it had been written by him. 

For the next few months, he dealt with the second problem by asking all his friends, musicians, journalists and people who loved music: ‘Here I'm going to sing to you (or play if there was a piano nearby), tell me what song this is?’ He even arranged it for guitar to show it in companies where there was a guitar. No one had ever heard this song. As spring turned into summer, he accepted that this was his melody.

It was not so easy with the lyrics. With music, but no lyrics, it was as if he had a frying pan with pepper, tomato and seasonings frying beautifully, but no eggs. You can't serve your guests scrambled eggs like that. At the same time, the phrase about ‘eggs and legs’ stuck in his head and didn't let other words come to him. Trying to find a different lyric, he played his melody every time he saw a piano: in his girlfriend's bedroom, at his friends' parties, in pubs and restaurants. And, of course, on the set of the music film he was taking part in. Нe started to climb on stage to the piano and play ‘Scrambled eggs’ every time he had a minute free from his episodes. One day the director came up, red like a cayenne pepper, and shouted in one breath: ‘If you don't stop playing that damn song, I'm going to throw either you or the piano off the set!’

The shooting ended in early June, and in the middle of the month he and his girlfriend were in a cosy house in the south of Portugal. In a few days, he got so warm under the Albufeira sun, so full of seafood and rice and pastel de nata and English breakfasts, which were somehow better prepared here than in England, that he almost stopped being tormented by the song. Besides, there was no piano in the house, only a guitar. One day, watching Jane walk out onto the sunny path towards the ocean steaming in the rays, he imagined that she had left him, and the imaginary situation responded with a very real tugging at his heart. He picked up the guitar and began to sing about the breakup. The eggs dissolved somewhere in the salty air.

***

It was February 1965. This time the filming was in America. He stood in the middle of the stage, enjoying the applause. Meanwhile, John put his guitar against the wall and went backstage. Ringo laid his drumsticks down. George went to the microphone and said, ‘Paul is going to play our new song’.

He took a G, then a F sharp minor, and then the string quartet joined the guitar. It was as if saffron and turmeric had been added to a simple dish. ‘Yesterday all my troubles seemed so far away,’ he sang, and at this point the people in the audience groaned with delight.