Eating Mammals

When I arrived back in the kitchens, I found the place unusually quiet. Dinner preparations were being conducted in a strangely subdued manner: hard beating had become feather-light whisking, brusque chopping replaced by slow, painstaking slicing, all eyes turned downwards. Either someone had died, I thought, or someone had got the sack.

At that moment I heard a crash nearby. I looked down; a metal bucket lay at my feet. I realised, rather too late, that I had abandoned it in my room. Immediately I deduced the source of the abnormal quiet. Chef, from whose hand the bucket had fallen, knelt down and ran his finger around the inside of it. He closed his eyes in mock appreciation as he sampled the sweet, oily mixture. Then he stood up and faced me. He was a big man, but I was bigger. In a kitchen, though, physical size is of little consequence, as well I knew.

‘Three questions,’ he said as a sharp, aching silence fell around us. ‘One: have you by any chance read tonight’s menu?’

Instead of pronouncing the sentence with its appropriate interrogative intonation, though, he punctuated his delivery with a cuff to the side of my head, delivered with the full power of his considerable upper body. My ear crackled and buzzed, and immediately half my head began to numb over. Of course, I had not read the menu, yet I had little doubt that it included recipes proclaiming their citrus content, or their basis in finest Italian olive oil.

‘Two: did you use the whole bottle of oil?’

The singular form sang out ominously for me. I began a forlorn nod, but even as my head dipped for the first time I felt my jaw rocket back upwards, as his forearm swung into my face, my teeth slamming together with a sliver of tongue still between then. I felt no pain, but, incredibly, a slight sense of relief that I had already survived two out of three.

‘And finally,’ he shouted, breaking into an exaggerated goose-step and circling me several times, ‘DO YOU KNOW WHERE THE FUCKING LABOUR EXCHANGE IS?’

He bawled it into my ear from behind me and then, grabbing me by the collar, pulled me off balance and punched me three times in the back of the head as I went down.

Then nothing. And even from the floor I could detect quite clearly the horrified stillness in the kitchen, spatulas sinking unattended into batter, whisks suspended in mid-air, dripping half-beaten egg on to the floor. The blood ran cold from the side of my mouth, almost as cold as the icy floor onto which it trickled, and then the various sites of localised injury began to get their screaming messages through to my brain.

‘We need that veal stock in five minutes, eh!’ Chef called out suddenly, breaking the silence. Back came a clipped reply. And things returned to normal. Some of my colleagues threw me sympathetic glances as they stepped over my crumpled, aching body. But no one offered assistance.

By slow, agonising degrees, I made my way to the door, and got myself to a low crouch. Then, as I stumbled out of the kitchen, a young trainee who I had come to know hopped out after me, making sure nobody had seen him, and asked: ‘What did you do with it? Everybody wants to know, especially Chef. It’s been driving him mad, but he’s too proud to ask. What the hell were you cooking?’

It was a second or two before I recalled.

‘Mulligan!’ I said, more to myself than to my friend.

‘What?’

‘Le Grand Michael Mulligan! I cooked him a chair!’

I reached his room just as he was about to leave. He ushered me back inside and helped to clean my blood-smeared face. I attempted to explain what had happened, despite my damaged tongue, and then, suddenly, as he dabbed my chin with a damp towel, he furrowed his brow as if something striking had occurred to him.

‘My word!’ he said, patting first the top of my head and then his own, ‘you’re almost my height! Not as broad, naturally, but, by Jiminy, you’re no stripling either!’

With that he dashed over to the wardrobe, pulled out a black dinner suit and threw it at me.

‘Put that on, my boy, and forget your woes. You’re coming with me!’

With not a moment’s hesitation I changed into the suit. It hung about me like an untethered tent, but the length was not too far off the mark, and all in all it lent me an almost eccentric aspect.

‘The car’s ready,’ he said, lighting another cigar and consulting his watch. ‘Tonight, you will be, let’s see … Captain Gusto! Yes, that’s it! Captain Gusto, assistant to The Great Michael Mulligan!’

And that was the second stroke of good fortune to befall me that day: to be beaten senseless by a furious chef and, as a consequence, to be invited by Mulligan, the great man himself, to share the stage for his most enduring act.

The car was a shining Rolls-Royce. I climbed inside, and Mulligan backed his ample frame in through the opposite door and on to the driver’s seat, which had the appearance of being rather flatter and less bouncy than the others in the car, somewhat like an over-egged sponge that has risen enthusiastically and then turned sad in the oven.

He reached behind him and took one of the pint bottles from the crate on the back seat.

‘Care for some?’ he said, before polishing off half its orange contents. ‘I have a long evening ahead,’ he added as way of explanation.

On the way to the event I tried to get him to elaborate upon the stories he had told me earlier that afternoon. At last, perhaps somewhat exasperated by my incessant questioning, he said: ‘My art is something which really must be observed. No manner of description will suffice. Have patience, and you will see …’

‘Seeing is believing,’ I chuntered, as an errant strand of incredulity wrapped itself around my thoughts and introduced doubts not only as to the true nature of his act, but also about where this monster fruitcake was taking me.

Mulligan brought the car to an abrupt halt, right there in the middle of a twisting, coastal road. I lunged forward, sliding to the edge of the shiny leather and getting halfway to an involuntary squat in the footwell. His wry, twinkling eyes had turned dark, all fire, and stared menacingly into mine.

‘Seeing, my friend, is comprehending. Seeing is understanding.’

And with that, his eyes still fixed on mine, he reached behind him for the half-finished bottle, and proceeded to empty its contents down his throat.

We resumed our journey, and my apprenticeship began. From that day on I began my education in the lore and history of our trade. Mulligan would talk about the distant past, of old, famous, forgotten names: The Great Eusebio Galante, Franz ‘Fledermaus’ Pipek and Rocco ‘La Rocca’ Fontane; of Sammy Ling (‘He’ll eat anything!’) and his predilection for neckties; of who’d eaten most; of scandalous, illegal records set in the back streets of hardly remembered Bavarian towns; of the rotten and the rancid, eaten and (allegedly) digested for a bagful of the local currency; of the unfortunate demise of Henry ‘Tubby’ Turns; of the great American masters like Nelson Pickle, who at the height of his powers had eaten a grand piano (baby, no frame) in little over nine weeks as a promotion for a new Detroit music store – those were the Prohibition days, great times for professional gluttony! – poor Nelson, who came to Europe to give eating demonstrations at the great German beer festivals and died of alcohol poisoning after assuming that beer was beer the world over and drinking a keg of Belgian Trappist in a single weekend for a bet.

That night was also to be my first appearance on stage with Mulligan. The evening began inauspiciously. After a long drive we finally turned into the forecourt of a large, somewhat podgy Edwardian building. He smiled and said, ‘Well, Paris it’s not, and it’s no palace. And, I assure you, there will be no crown princes in the audience! But this, for tonight, is work.’

We unloaded some heavy wooden crates from the car and wheeled them around to the back of the building. A cheery but nervous man in a tight-fitting dinner suit greeted us, a glass of gin in his hand, and led us into a large, modestly elegant dining hall. The place smelt of Sunday school, but with the added aromas of overcooked meat and aftershave. Forty or fifty place settings announced, by means of the sorry array of cutlery at each, a rather strained attempt at luxury. The man with the gin pointed to a small semicircular stage at one end of the room.

‘Everything is as you requested,’ he said to Mulligan, looking around the hall a little anxiously. Mulligan himself surveyed the tables, and then turned his gaze to the stage.

‘Yes, yes indeed. All appears to be in order. Quite acceptable. So, there remains only that small transaction which my accountant constantly reminds me must never be overlooked …’

The gin man stared down into the glass.

‘We do … you know, it was rather felt that, that … that that would normally come after …’

His voice tailed off. Mulligan said nothing. The three of us stood there, a very distant murmur of cocktail chitchat in the background, Mulligan’s amenable, matter-of-fact smile fixed on his face. After a handful of long, cringing seconds, the poor chap reached into his breast pocket and drew out a brown envelope.

‘You’ll find it all there,’ he said in a soft, defeated voice.

‘Ah, splendid!’ said Mulligan, bursting into activity. ‘I’ll make you out a receipt—’

‘No, no, that won’t be necessary,’ the other replied, hitching down his jacket and turning away. ‘If you could begin after coffee and be finished by twelve,’ he said over his shoulder as he started out towards some elaborate double doors at the other end of the hall.

Mulligan opened the envelope, smirking.

‘The people one meets in this job! I don’t know! Get me another bottle of the mixture, would you?’ he said, quickly thumbing through what appeared to be a considerable wad of banknotes.

Our preparations that evening were meticulous. On the little stage we erected the apparatus, each of its separate cast-iron pieces removed one by one from the crates and taken from their wrapping of soft, oily cotton cloth. I assisted where I could in the assembly of the main frame itself, a four-legged structure which bolted down on to the bottom of the largest crate, which itself unhinged on all sides to become a sort of stabilising floor for the machine. From then on I was useful only in passing the maestro one greasy rag bundle after another. He pushed, slotted and clamped such a number of cogs, grinding cylinders and levers on to the growing contraption that I began to wonder if he was going to attach wheels and a petrol tank and drive off into the distance.

Mulligan’s concentrated industry began to yield results. The nascent iron structure slowly grew into The Machine – the very largest hand-cranked mincing machine you could possibly imagine. If, I told myself, just if he really does plan to eat furniture this evening, just if, then at least he has something which is of potential use. I peered down the funnel and saw huge, menacing teeth poised like bunches of iron knuckles, ready to pound raw granite to a crumble, or so it seemed; I peeped around the back at the intricate system of gears mounted around a series of progressively smaller grinding chambers; I studied the tiny opening from which the mince would emerge, hardly bigger than a bottle neck. The Great Michael Mulligan, then, was going to eat a ground-up chair.

Still in shock, and for the first time truly believing that such a thing could be done, I looked around the hall, wondering where the chosen item had been positioned. Surely, but surely, it would be a special chair, its legs partially hollowed out, or made of balsa wood. Meanwhile, Mulligan put the final touches to The Machine and gave the plaque bolted to the funnel a brisk polish. Mulligan & Sons it read, gleaming brass against racing green. Later I learned that his father, the owner of a Dublin foundry, had disowned his son Michael on learning of his new career as a ‘bloody glutton’. The plaque had been sent secretly from Ireland by a brother.

Mulligan stopped and admired the plaque for a moment, and then came up to me and stood by my side.

‘Now, Chef, why don’t you select a nice, plump chair for me?’

For the duration of the dinner itself we sat in a back room, glad not to be partaking of the paltry feast which four dozen Freemasons were busy praising through grinning, shiny faces, each one of them eager no doubt to disguise their disappointment. Mulligan decanted six pints of the orange liquid into a tall, vaguely Egyptian-looking jug, and took occasional sips from the one remaining bottle. He explained the part I would play: I would be dumb, although only for effect, not as a stated disability. To this I had no objection, since I am by nature a retiring person, and of course my tongue was still throbbing. I was also beginning to feel unwell, although I would later recognise this as stage fright.

The rumbling, masculine conversation out in the dining hall turned by degrees to a controlled, middle-class raucousness. They sang a song, or perhaps it was a hymn, it was hard to tell, and there were a few short speeches which were greeted with hearty approbation. Then The Great Michael ‘Cast Iron’ Mulligan was introduced, to a combination of polite applause and a good deal of muttering.