Le Crab
I am not ready for this day. There is nothing occasioned on this god-forsaken day that makes me believe I will be rid of the red demon that haunts my dreams. His little pincers are grasping at my fragile sanity in every moment. This is worse than any hazing I experienced in culinary school. The Ecole De Cusine has nothing on the torturous practices of Le Crab de L'Enfer de Dante.
Oh, no longer do I delight in the delicate Le Poissson, he he he hu hu hu. These few weeks have perchance been the most tragic of my life. It feels as a century ago that I was but a tiny boy, so free and full of love. My home of Marseille was a place of wonder, the wind warm and wild. The air with just a mm, hint of salt. I would spend so many day, laying across mon papa's small yacht, an oyster just drawn from he sea perched upon my finger tips and floor into the mouth. Oh, how I miss the touch of the ocean in my life. The littlest bit of flavor it would add to the mornings, evening, and deepest sleeps lulled by the whoosh whoosh of the waves against the stone docks.
It was foolish of me to believe that my grand plans of moving north, to Denmark, to work in a royal kitchen, that the luxury of it all would bring me fame and fortune as a cook. The Danes, I feign to say are not as touched with the elegance of my countrymen. There is much climbing of ropes and hills and gallantry that I never found an amusing way to pass the time. And while the palace was wonderful, the kitchen was dismal.
Yet, I tried, oh I pined through the sweat in summer and shiver in winter of that wooden box of a kitchen. And to be true, the seafood that was set in my galley was maginifique. Like that of home, but with the kiss of chilled waters. Of velvety cod and salmon I savored, slicing like a seagull through a cloud. And so, as I would every night, presenting dinner to his majesty grand Prince Eric, a name evident of the hard consonant nature of his people, I did my best to display the honest piquancies of his small, but salient ocean kingdom.
If he appreciated it, I would not know. Young as he was, he tastes wandered to other things. Women of auburn hair and sometimes of raven. I could never keep track. I was roused to complain over a shipboard wedding to this or that in which the fluff and airiness of a sponge whipped wedding cake would suffer from the harsh rock and shake of his naval abode. But I did not, and as any distinguished member of his household delivered a divine piece del la resistance of a towering pastry to his young and impetuous love. But I digress.
Of those early days I found joy, particularly in the morning deliveries of what was to be my daily menu. It was a harvest of choices in roots of hardy starch and filets of marbled fish. Of the royals I will say little, but of the farmers I will give medallions of gratitude to their soil.
Until one fateful day, that has lived in the palette of my nightmares, when the fiend of the shore, the bete noir in a gloss of rouge skittered his way in my scullery and forever doomed my mind.
Surely, I said to myself upon seeing Le Crab, "Louis, what treasure we have here!" Oui Chef, for the supplier must not have known that a crustacean so certainly from many thousands miles away, if not even truly from hot waters of the new world, is here in mon petit kitchen. And alive, as the most delicious of dishes are meant to begin. Unaware, I lifted his little body and dressed him for his course, as it would be presently dinner and the Prince, perhaps just this once would be impressed with my toil and artistry in his service. I doubted that he would have ever tasted such a rarity.
A bit of improvisation on my intended menu and I would slip in a bit of crabe en peluche, with just a dusting of flour and note of paprika. It was never meant to be. Instead the creature avoiding the boiling basin that was to be his destiny, took to terrorizing me.
Sacre Bleu! Strength of a thousand men and the speed of Mercury himself, Le Crab mangled my face, ransacked my kitchen, and even toppled a cabinet of fine China passed down for centuries. It occurred all in a blur of pain and panic.
For weeks now, for countless moments in what was once the glory of my day, I peek under lettuce, I tip toe around my own domain, I am petrified of the slight appearance of an apple, as out of the corner of my sight it could be, just maybe, the return of the 8-legged villain to shake me into my final stupor of departure. Even now just the idea of his return might cause me death by fright alone.
Carlotta, my consummate wife, has suggested a long awaited return to my home, for a bit of warmth in my bones and to perhaps shake off this raging terror and fateful manifestations. And so, I am being thrown about in a wagon, as the Prince would never lend out one from his well-attended collection, nor be amiable enough to purchase a sea passage for my travels. I doubt he would even sift through the difference between my succulent Bolognese and Carlotta's parched welsh rarebit, which he will have to naw though in my absence.
As I close my eyes and dream of the pithy wind across the Mediterranean that will settle upon my nose once I reach the shore of my natality. I try to think of nothing else.
"Ahoy! Want for a shell?"
The voice sounds as much as many of the village Danes. My solace in my reliving is interrupted by their racket. I have forgotten it market day and they are surely harassing the passing cart.
And there, on a lesser version of our very own timbered wagon, piled liked coins thrown into a overfull fountain, there on the derelict cart hovered over by a gruff and dusted peasant, was an amass of rouge shelled crabs.
"Came over on a ship from south. Give you a good deal."
I couldn't even guffaw at the yellow of his teeth or the state of the merchant's collar, as my gaze was latched upon the pyramid of lifeless, forsaken enemies.
Pale in their once rich crimson color, a matte patina in lieu of the rich shine, they were still. Torment, they never could again.
One melancholy tear left me. The oaf hadn't even thought to put them on ice.
Before another moment, the driver had pulled us away, bearing down again on our route to the south, where the bodies of my preceding jitters had once scurried in balmy, sparkling waters of aqua and silver.
Could it be that the dreaded, my past villain, had met his end in that assembled graveyard? At the end of my mallet, or in the depths of my boiling pot would have been a grander and deserved end to such a warrior.
I jumped from the cart, filled with the fervor of a man renewed, un homme d'honneur, the driver calling after me, the wayward death merchant bellowing as I passed him.
As I approached the castle, my heart seizing from a speed I rarely reached, I hoped that in the moments I was missing from my kitchen that the petite enemy and not returned for another bout. I would be ready for the next time, and I would be honored to spar with such a champion. And if the day were to arrive that I were to win, and I was gifted with the chance to flash boil, sauté and stuff him, he would only be placed on the finest china.