The Perfect Meal Read Online Free

dipped in chocolate, but I love them. The true essence of good food is that it brings back the taste of childhood. And these are just like the mint candies my mother used to dole out on special occasions.”
    I’d been in France ten years before I met another of these gifted individuals, and it took a further five to become . . . well, I won’t say “friendly with”: a better expression would be “tolerated by.” But at least we were on sufficiently good terms to share the occasional meal, and for me to provide an audience as he delivered his jaded commentary on the decline of food not only in France but around the world.
    I’ll call him “Boris” because he reminds me of Boris Lermontov, the ballet impresario in the film The Red Shoes . He even looks a little like Anton Walbrook, the suave Austrian who plays Lermontov. Both are pale, as if they shun sunlight. Both have thick, dark mustaches and full heads of hair, in each case a little too long. Their pouchy, skeptical eyes mirror a dry humor just this side of bitterness.

    Anton Walbrook
    Boris and I were first thrown together at one of those fund-raising banquets for a worthy expatriate cause. Had either of us been paying, we would not have attended. I’d been invited as the Token Writer. As for Boris . . . well, who knew? He may have known something incriminating about the event’s organizer. It was equally possible he’d seen the well-dressed crowd outside and simply strolled in.
    Dinner was the cliché salmon with dill sauce, broccoli and new potatoes, all in boil-in-the-bag portions from some industrial restaurant supplier. Everyone got the same thing.
    Everyone, that is, but Boris. He got an empty plate.
    Was this an insult, to emphasize that he hadn’t paid? In that case, my plate should have been empty, too. Whatever the reason, he made no comment, just picked up his knife and fork and started to eat an imaginary meal.
    The imitation was perfect. He cut and chewed nonexistent salmon, took sips of invisible wine, mopped up illusory sauce with a phantom scrap of bread. Once, he even asked a neighbor to pass the salt. The people on either side simply didn’t notice the empty plate or, if they did notice, just didn’t believe their eyes.
    As everyone finished, he, too, put down his knife and fork and for the first time met my eyes across the table.
    Leaning forward, he murmured, “Diet.”
    I might have forgotten all about Boris if I hadn’t, by chance, run into him again a few weeks later. A friend who knew the more obscure byways of literary Paris had once taken me to a little restaurant tucked away in the maze of streets in the tenth arrondissement around the Gare de l’Est. It’s called La Chandelle Verte—The Green Candle. In other respects ordinary, it’s a place of pilgrimage for admirers of Alfred Jarry, author of the absurdist classics Ubu and Ubu Roi . (Ubu’s preferred expletive was “ De par ma chandelle verte! ”—By my green candle!) Jarry memorabilia decorates the walls, and the café frequently figures in events staged by those hard-core Jarryists, the College of Pataphysics.
    Boris was studying a portable chess set. There was no sign of a plate.
    Wondering if he would remember, I asked, “Still on that diet?”
    It took him a second to recognize me. When he did, he just nodded to the opposite chair. I sat down.
    “Who’s winning?”
    His game hadn’t progressed far. In fact, not a single piece had moved.
    “Too soon to tell.”
    As the waiter approached, Boris said, without looking up, “He’ll have the cabbage soup.”
    We sat in silence till the soup arrived. To cook a good cabbage soup is a challenge. I expected the conventional gray sludge with the consistency of wallpaper paste. This was different. Potatoes had gone into it, cubed, with the skins still on. White beans, garlic, and onion enlivened a robust stock. There was cabbage, of course, but not too much. The cook had peeled off the tough outer leaves and used