The Decadent Cookbook (13 page)

I know it’s customary to serve coffee at the end of a meal, but I suggest in this case that cocoa from Caracas should be offered. This is on the basis of the entry on ‘cocoa’ from Alexandre Dumas
père
’s Dictionnaire. He writes:

“It is the practice to ‘earth’ cocoa in the ground, in order to make it lose its bitterness; and one must be careful, before using it, to get rid of this cover of earth, which makes it a bit musty. This does not prevent the cocoa of Caracas, the only one subjected to this preparatory burial, from producing the best of all known chocolate.”

And to accompany the cocoa? A Mexican pastry in the form of a skeleton perhaps? And a reading …

by Homer

“Now when we had gone down to the ship and to the sea, first of all we drew the ship unto the fair salt water, and placed the mast and sails in the black ship, and took those sheep and put them therein, and ourselves too climbed on board, sorrowing, and shedding big tears. And in the wake of our dark-prowed ship she sent a favouring wind that filled the sails, a kindly escort, — even Circe of the braided tresses, a dread goddess of human speech. And we set in order all the gear throughout the ship and sat us down; and the wind and the helmsman guided our barque. And all day long her sails were stretched in her seafaring; and the sun sank and all the ways were darkened.

“She came to the limits of the world, to the deep-flowing Oceanus. There is the land and the city of the Cimmerians, shrouded in mist and cloud, and never does the shining sun look down on them with his rays, neither when he climbs up the starry heavens, nor when again he turns earthward from the firmament, but deadly night is outspread over miserable mortals. Thither we came and ran the ship ashore and took out the sheep; but for our part we held on our way along the stream of Oceanus, till we came to the place which Circe had declared to us.

“There Perimedes and Eurylochus held the victims, but I drew my sharp sword from my thigh, and dug a pit, as it were a cubit in length and breadth, and about it poured a drink-offering to all the dead, first with the mead and thereafter with sweet wine, and for the third time with water. And I sprinkled white meal thereon, and entreated with many prayers the strengthless heads of the dead, and promised that on my return to Ithaca I would offer in my halls a barren heifer, the best I had, and fill the pyre with treasure, and apart unto Teiresias alone sacrifice a black ram without spot, the fairest of my flock. But when I had besought the tribes of the dead with vows and prayers, I took the sheep and cut their throats over the trench, and the dark blood flowed forth, and lo, the spirits of the dead that be departed gathered them from out of Erebus. Brides and youths unwed, and old men of many and evil days, and tender maidens with grief yet fresh at heart; and many there were, wounded with bronze-shod spears, men slain in fight with their bloody mail about them. And these many ghosts flocked together from every side about the trench with a wondrous cry, and pale fear gat hold on me. Then did I speak to my company and command them to flay the sheep that lay slain by the pitiless sword, and to consume them with fire, and to make prayer to the gods, to mighty Hades and to dread Persephone, and myself I drew the sharp sword from my thigh and sat there, suffering not the strengthless heads of the dead to draw nigh to the blood, ere I had word of Teiresias.

“And first came the soul of Elpenor, my companion, that had not yet been buried beneath the wide-way earth; for we left the corpse behind us in the hall of Circe, unwept and unburied, seeing that another task was instant on us. At the sight of him I wept and had compassion on him, and uttering my voice spake to him winged words: ‘Elpenor, how has thou come beneath the darkness and the shadow? Thou has come fleeter on foot than I in my black ship.’ “

“So spake I, and with a moan he answered me, saying: ‘Son of Laertes, of the seed of Zeus, Odysseus of many devices, an evil doom of some god was my bane and wine out of measure. When I laid me down on the house-top of Circe I minded me not to descend again by the way of the tall ladder, but fell right down from the roof, and my neck was broken off from the bones of the spine, and my spirit went down to the house of Hades. And now I pray thee in the name of those whom we left, who are no more with us, thy wife, and thy sire who cherished thee when as yet thou wert a little one, and Telemachus, whom thou didst leave in thy halls alone; forasmuch as I know that on thy way hence from out the dwelling of Hades, thou wilt stay thy well-wrought ship at the isle Aeaean, even then, my lord, I charge thee to think on me. Leave me not unwept and unburied as thou goest hence, nor turn thy back upon me, lest haply I bring on thee the anger of the gods. Nay, burn me there with mine armour, all that is mine, and pile me a barrow on the shore of the grey sea, the grave of a luckless man, that even men unborn may hear my story. Fulfil me this and plant upon the barrow mine oar, wherewith I rowed in the days of my life, while yet I was among my fellows.’ “

“Even so he spake, and I answered him saying: “All this, luckless man, will I perform for thee and do.”

“Even so we twain were sitting holding sad discourse, I on the one side, stretching forth my sword over the blood, while on the other side the ghost of my friend told all his tale.

“Anon came up the soul of my mother dead, Anticleia, the daughter of Autolycus the great-hearted, whom I left alive when I departed for sacred Ilios. At the sight of her I wept, and was moved with compassion, yet even so, for all my sore grief, I suffered her not to draw nigh to the blood, ere I had word of Teiresias.

“Anon came the soul of Theban Teiresias, with a golden sceptre in his hand, and he knew me and spake unto me: ‘Son of Laertes, of the seed of Zeus, Odysseus of many devices, what seekest thou
now,
wretched man, wherefore hast thou left the sunlight and come hither to behold the dead and a land desolate of joy? Nay, hold off from the ditch and draw back thy sharp sword, that I may drink of the blood and tell thee sooth.’ ”

“So spake he and I put up my silver-studded sword into the sheath, and when he had drunk the dark blood, even then did the noble seer speak unto me, saying: ‘Thou art asking of thy sweet returning, great Odysseus, but that will the god make hard for thee; for methinks thou shalt not pass unheeded by the Shaker of the Earth, who hath laid up wrath in his heart against thee, for rage at the blinding of his dear son. Yet even so, through many troubles, ye may come home, if thou wilt restrain thy spirit and the spirit of thy men so soon as thou shalt bring thy well-wrought ship nigh to the isle Thrinacia, fleeing the sea of violet blue, when ye find the herds of Helios grazing and his brave flocks, of Helios who overseeth all and overheareth all things. If thou doest these no hurt, being heedful of thy return, so may ye yet reach Ithaca, albeit in evil case. But if thou hurtest them, I foreshow ruin for thy ship and for thy men, and even though thou shalt thyself escape, late shalt thou return in evil plight, with the loss of all thy company, on board the ship of strangers, and thou shalt find sorrows in thy house, even proud men that devour thy living, while they woo thy godlike wife and offer the gifts of wooing. Yet I tell thee, on thy coming thou shalt avenge their violence. But when thou hast slain the wooers in thy halls, whether by guile, or openly with the edge of the sword, thereafter go thy way, taking with thee a shapen oar, till thou shalt come to such men as know not the sea, neither eat meat savoured with salt; yea, nor have they knowledge of ships of purple cheek, nor shapen oars which serve for wings to ships. And I will give thee a most manifest token, which cannot escape thee. In the day when another wayfarer shall meet thee and say that thou hast a winnowing fan on thy stout shoulder, even then make fast thy shapen oar in the earth and do goodly sacrifice to the lord Poseidon, even with a ram and a bull and a boar, the mate of swine, and depart for home and offer holy hecatombs to the deathless gods that keep the wide heaven, to each in order due. And from the sea shall thine own death come, the gentlest death that may be, which shall end thee foredone with smooth old age, and the folk shall dwell happily around thee.’ ”

Homer,
The Odyssey,
Book XI (transl. Butcher & Lang).

The Marquise had gone from doctor to doctor - seeking out the celebrated and the obscure, the empirically-inclined and the homeopathic - but at every turn she had been met with a sad shake of the head. Only one of them had taken it upon himself to indicate a possible remedy: Rosaria (the Marquise’ daughter) must join the ranks of consumptives who go at dawn to the abattoirs to drink the lukewarm blood freshly drawn from the calves which are bled to make veal.

On the first few occasions, the marquise had taken it upon herself to lead the child down into the abattoirs; but the horrid odour of the blood, the warm carcasses, the bellowing of the beasts as they came to be slaughtered, the carnage of the butchering … all that had caused her terrible anguish and had sickened her heart. She could not stand it.

Rosaria had been less intimidated. She had bravely swallowed the lukewarm blood, saying only: “This red milk is a little thick for my taste.”

J
EAN
L
ORRAIN,
T
HE
G
LASS
OF
B
LOOD

Coming as it does from the decadent pen of Jean Lorrain, this story might seem little more than the perverse outpourings of a particularly overheated imagination. But an illustration from the magazine
Le Monde Illustré
of 1890 shows precisely this scene. A well-heeled young Parisian woman is standing in the courtyard of the slaughterhouse at La Villette. All about her is carnage. Nearby, a slaughterman, meat cleaver in hand, stands over the body of a freshly despatched cow. The woman, meanwhile, sips delicately from her glass, while others, similarly demure, wait patiently by the gate to receive their portion.

This puts one in mind of a favourite figure of the Decadent imagination - the Vampire. In Decadent poetry, the vampire is often used as a metaphor for the poet’s mistress. She sucks the lifeblood and vitality out of him, leaving him dull and listless. For this he curses her and wishes her dead, but she has an appalling power over him, from which he can never break free.

Although the vampire has come down to us as a male character, loosely based on the Romanian king Vlad Dracul, alias Vlad the Impaler, it seems more probable that the original vampire was a woman - the 17th century Hungarian Countess, Elisabeth de Báthory.

The Countess occupied the castle of Csejthe and belonged to one of the most powerful families in Hungary. She was a vain, sadistic and thoroughly debauched woman, who took delight in pinching the flesh of her serving girls with special silver pincers. Her husband may have curbed some of her more depraved practices, but after his death in 1604, she went on an orgy of blood-letting. By now she was forty three years old and her once considerable beauty was fading rapidly. The creams, lotions, magic herbs and spells were of no avail in this struggle with nature and the Countess was becoming obsessed with her loss. One day, she slapped a chambermaid so hard that blood from the girl’s nose splattered the Countess’s face. On washing it off, she became convinced that where the blood had splashed her, the skin was whiter and less wrinkled than before. Given the properties that had been ascribed to blood in medicine, alchemy and witchcraft, the Countess reasoned that virgins’ blood would be the substance to restore her lost youth.

With the aid of a sinister old peasant woman named Dorotta Szentes, the Countess began procuring and murdering young peasant girls. They were drained of their blood, which was warmed, and, just before dawn, the Countess would lower herself into a bath of it. She is also said to have drunk the blood of young girls she was torturing, and there was talk of cannibalism at the castle.