Dwilight University/Arts/There Is No Such Thing as a Simple Meal
There Is No Such Thing as a Simple Meal
A whimsical essay on the folklore of Gonophor by Ven Dhalgren
We know of the different tongues of men, and how speech can possess ink and travel through the islands on a vessel of parchment. As I write, I hear voices from the marketplace outside slowly raising and mixing like butterflies on a spring afternoon, distinctive sign of the presence of men. But I once lived with a tribe, far away in the Zuma lands, where termite mounds and rocks would busy themselves with speech and debate, inviting a woman on riverbank to hunt some termites or a young warrior to put down the spear to sit and rest.
“Can things speak?”, I asked myself once, sitting at a table outside an inn in the region of Gonophor. In front of me, an advisor was talking about recent affairs and taxation, her tongue moving incessantly like a feverish snake in a pit, while my mind was distant and unaware of her meanings. In front of me, a traditional regional meal, the plates steaming while my stomach refused to eat. In this strange mood, with the heath of the early afternoon enveloping everything in stillness, I wondered what those dishes would say if indeed they could speak.
In that strange mood I looked at the plate in front of me: eight small dumplings filled with smew meat lied there like sleeping cows.
The smew is a small duck that migrate to the Far West for its warm winters. When I was young, the game master of my family's estate used to take me for long walks in our forests and point at plants and animals, bestowing scientific knowledge and superstitions alike into my not yet pierced avid ears. There was a pond, somewhere far into the forest, that I particularly liked: after a difficult walk through a maze of branches and roots the eyes were met by a huge clearing of soft grass and wild flowers, with the pond shining at its far end as a precious jewel. “Look”, would say the game master, pointing at a group of ducks, “the smew flies down from the lands of ice in the north, and its feathers are made of frost and icicles”. Indeed the smew, with its black and white plumage, looks like ice cracking over dark waters at the approaching of spring, and it is not until much later that I would find a carcass and, after a quick gaze behind me (as anyone could read my mind and laugh at my empirical assessment of an old superstition), I touched its plumage. What I found was not the cold of the northern ice expanses, but the cold of death.
In Gonophor the smew is not however feathered frost, but a board where battles are fought and realms conquered. A game of tactic is known throughout the lands where pieces of carved wood, marble or stone, battle each other on a black and white checked board; a mirror of the duality and blood-thirst of the human mind. The smew, it is said in Gonophor, carries on it the shifting balance between good and evil, war and peace, life and death, and one day, when human troubles will have met an ending, there will just be either white or black smews. For now however, the craftsmen of Gonophor do a great job in carving game boards in the shape of smews, of which the market stalls are full.
I wonder if the eternal battle between black and white that rages between its feathers, could not end with a grey smew, perhaps akin to the grey dough of this dumplings. I wonder if this new plumage that wraps the smew's flesh, fresh dough steamed on a tray of straw, is an omen. The smew dumpling omen says to us: all battles will carry on, until we will forget who was black and who was white, what is good and what is evil. The smew dumplings look at me from the plate and teach me about the inevitability of oblivion.
I found myself emerging back to reality for a second, my advisor still speaking and the inn-keeper pouring something in a bowl in front of me. I could see drops of sweat on his forehead, maybe he was worried I didn't like the dumplings for I did not touch them. I looked at his fat back walking back inside, then my gaze fell on the steaming bowl.
The Gonophor twin soup is a map and a record. Sometimes, when events rise and cease on the stage of existence, something does remain. Sometimes, the vapours of history condense in precious crystal, in something that contains and protects the essence of those happenings. The twin soup is one of such crystals, and in it are refracted the images of things and peoples, of their dreams and their aspirations, their demise and lost memories.
If you were to get lost in the forests of Gonophor – and, mind you, it is all too easy - and be lucky enough to find an inhabited small hut to spend the night in, perhaps poor hunters or lumberers, your dinner would certainly be a bowl of twin soup. If you were to arrive in my estate, and ask the inn for the best dish on the menu, well, that would be a twin soup. The twin soup is many things but it is always consists of two dishes, cooked in separate pots. In the first pot, a vegetable soup: some root vegetables if your are eating with peasants, perhaps with some berries to add a sour aftertaste; in an expensive inn, you will find fresh greens and peppers, with some milk to make it thick and creamy. In the second pot, a thick red paste boils for hours with exotic spices, filling the room with its pungent smell. The main ingredient is an imported root that people brought with them from the lands of the Zuma, from which an almost constant stream of impoverished peasants comes to settle in the neighboring Gonophor. This flow of people is not easy thing to administer, for many people come here poor and desperate, but many invaluable things are gained. In fact, these people bring with them their customs and skills, beautiful fabrics and bizarre spices, entertaining stories and games. The pungent paste made from yoom root and a mix of spices is one of the things we have gained. In the Zuma territories, I am told, the paste is usually ate with flat bread or rice, for it is a dish of the poor and not much more is available; but the delicate palates of Gonophor cannot stand the paste on its own.
Whether you are in a forest hut or in a pricy inn, what you will be presented with in your bowl is history itself. A ladle, perhaps the spirit of history, would pour the vegetable soup, filling the bowl evenly. Here is the green Gonophor, in front of you, if you look well you could perhaps see the hut where you are siting right now. The same ladle, riding the winds of change, would now dive in a different pot and slowly pour a thick red paste to float in the middle of your soup. You have just been a witness of the great migrations from the Zuma territories to Gonophor, look at the contrast between red and green, two different worlds that meet, not without problems and diffidence. It is your spoon now, that slowly will merge the two, in mutual exchange of knowledge and sentiments. And suddenly, your bowl is empty, history marched forward, the past lies in your belly and an uncanny feeling of solemnity looms in the poorly lit hut.
That day, I pushed the bowl away and looked at the sky, it was getting cloudy. I threw the wine jug on the floor - before the vineyards of Gonophor tried to teach me about death or philosophy - and it broke noiselessly.
“Dame Ven..”, the worried voice of the advisor. The wine formed strange patterns in the dust near my boot. “I don't feel very well”, I said.
Walking back she said: “is it your stomach? Would you like me to call the doctor? I will make sure tonight you receive a light simple meal”
Through a splitting headache I muttered: “there is no such thing as a simple meal” and watched the black clouds gather over the estate and my mood