A strange stillness hung over the restaurant; it was one of those
rare moments when the orchestra was not discoursing the strains of
the Ice-cream Sailor waltz.
"Did I ever tell you," asked Clovis of his friend, "the tragedy of
music at mealtimes?
"It was a gala evening at the Grand Sybaris Hotel, and a special
dinner was being served in the Amethyst dining-hall. The Amethyst
dining-hall had almost a European reputation, especially with that
section of Europe which is historically identified with the Jordan
Valley. Its cooking was beyond reproach, and its orchestra was
sufficiently highly salaried to be above criticism. Thither came
in shoals the intensely musical and the almost intensely musical,
who are very many, and in still greater numbers the merely
musical, who know how Tchaikowsky's name is pronounced and can
recognize several of Chopin's nocturnes if you give them due
warning; these eat in the nervous, detached manner of roebuck
feeding in the open, and keep anxious ears cocked towards the
orchestra for the first hint of a recognizable melody.
"'Ah, yes, Pagliacci,' they murmur, as the opening strains follow
hot upon the soup, and if no contradiction is forthcoming from any
better-informed quarter they break forth into subdued humming by
way of supplementing the efforts of the musicians. Sometimes the
melody starts on level terms with the soup, in which case the
banqueters contrive somehow to hum between the spoonfuls; the
facial expression of enthusiasts who are punctuating potage St.
Germain with Pagliacci is not beautiful, but it should be seen by
those who are bent on observing all sides of life. One cannot
discount the unpleasant things of this world merely by looking the
other way.
"In addition to the aforementioned types the restaurant was
patronized by a fair sprinkling of the absolutely nonmusical;
their presence in the dining-hall could only be explained on the
supposition that they had come there to dine.
"The earlier stages of the dinner had worn off. The wine lists
had been consulted, by some with the blank embarrassment of a
schoolboy suddenly called on to locate a Minor Prophet in the
tangled hinterland of the Old Testament, by others with the severe
scrutiny which suggests that they have visited most of the higher-
priced wines in their own homes and probed their family
weaknesses. The diners who chose their wine in the latter fashion
always gave their orders in a penetrating voice, with a plentiful
garnishing of stage directions. By insisting on having your
bottle pointing to the north when the cork is being drawn, and
calling the waiter Max, you may induce an impression on your
guests which hours of laboured boasting might be powerless to
achieve. For this purpose, however, the guests must be chosen as
carefully as the wine.
"Standing aside from the revellers in the shadow of a massive
pillar was an interested spectator who was assuredly of the feast,
and yet not in it. Monsieur Aristide Saucourt was the CHEF of the
Grand Sybaris Hotel, and if he had an equal in his profession he
had never acknowledged the fact. In his own domain he was a
potentate, hedged around, with the cold brutality that Genius
expects rather than excuses in her children; he never forgave, and
those who served him were careful that there should be little to
forgive. In the outer world, the world which devoured his
creations, he was an influence; how profound or how shallow an
influence he never attempted to guess. It is the penalty and the
safeguard of genius that it computes itself by troy weight in a
world that measures by vulgar hundredweights.
"Once in a way the great man would be seized with a desire to
watch the effect of his master-efforts, just as the guiding brain
of Krupp's might wish at a supreme moment to intrude into the
firing line of an artillery duel. And such an occasion was the
present. For the first time in the history of the Grand Sybaris
Hotel, he was presenting to its guests the dish which he had
brought to that pitch of perfection which almost amounts to
scandal. Canetons à la mode d'Amblève. In thin gilt lettering on
the creamy white of the menu how little those words conveyed to
the bulk of the imperfectly educated diners. And yet how much
specialized effort had been lavished, how much carefully treasured
lore had been ungarnered, before those six words could be written.
In the Department of Deux-Sèvres ducklings had lived peculiar and
beautiful lives and died in the odour of satiety to furnish the
main theme of the dish; champignons, which even a purist for Saxon
English would have hesitated to address as mushrooms, had
contributed their languorous atrophied bodies to the garnishing,
and a sauce devised in the twilight reign of the Fifteenth Louis
had been summoned back from the imperishable past to take its part
in the wonderful confection. Thus far had human effort laboured
to achieve the desired result; the rest had been left to human
genius--the genius of Aristide Saucourt.
"And now the moment had arrived for the serving of the great dish,
the dish which world-weary Grand Dukes and market-obsessed money
magnates counted among their happiest memories. And at the same
moment something else happened. The leader of the highly salaried
orchestra placed his violin caressingly against his chin, lowered
his eyelids, and floated into a sea of melody.
"'Hark!' said most of the diners, 'he is playing "The Chaplet."'
"They knew it was 'The Chaplet' because they had heard it played
at luncheon and afternoon tea, and at supper the night before, and
had not had time to forget.
"'Yes, he is playing "The Chaplet,"' they reassured one another.
The general voice was unanimous on the subject. The orchestra had
already played it eleven times that day, four times by desire and
seven times from force of habit, but the familiar strains were
greeted with the rapture due to a revelation. A murmur of much
humming rose from half the tables in the room, and some of the
more overwrought listeners laid down knife and fork in order to be
able to burst in with loud clappings at the earliest permissible
moment.
"And the Canetons à la mode d'Amblève? In stupefied, sickened
wonder Aristide watched them grow cold in total neglect, or suffer
the almost worse indignity of perfunctory pecking and listless
munching while the banqueters lavished their approval and applause
on the music-makers. Calves' liver and bacon, with parsley sauce,
could hardly have figured more ignominiously in the evening's
entertainment. And while the master of culinary art leaned back
against the sheltering pillar, choking with a horrible brain-
searing rage that could find no outlet for its agony, the
orchestra leader was bowing his acknowledgments of the hand-
clappings that rose in a storm around him. Turning to his
colleagues he nodded the signal for an encore. But before the
violin had been lifted anew into position there came from the
shadow of the pillar an explosive negative.
"'Noh! Noh! You do not play thot again!'
"The musician turned in furious astonishment. Had he taken
warning from the look in the other man's eyes he might have acted
differently. But the admiring plaudits were ringing in his ears,
and he snarled out sharply, 'That is for me to decide.'
"'Noh! You play thot never again,' shouted the CHEF, and the next
moment he had flung himself violently upon the loathed being who
had supplanted him in the world's esteem. A large metal tureen,
filled to the brim with steaming soup, had just been placed on a
side table in readiness for a late party of diners; before the
waiting staff or the guests had time to realize what was
happening, Aristide had dragged his struggling victim up to the
table and plunged his head deep down into the almost boiling
contents of the tureen. At the further end of the room the diners
were still spasmodically applauding in view of an encore.
"Whether the leader of the orchestra died from drowning by soup,
or from the shock to his professional vanity, or was scalded to
death, the doctors were never wholly able to agree. Monsieur
Aristide Saucourt, who now lives in complete retirement, always
inclined to the drowning theory."
_________
-THE END-
[Author Hector Hugh munro] Saki's short story: The Chaplet
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