Savour
The candle flickered its light out onto the plastic table. The yellow light, born of fire, danced across the surface and flitted up the stained walls in its brief illuminating existence. Before the weak light was devoured by the shadows that hung in every corner it revealed the contents of the small room. A man dressed in a grey t-shirt, the front carrying some sign of a football team, and a woman dressed in an elegant red cocktail dress sat at the worn plastic table. They looked equally uncomfortable together and with their surroundings. The woman, whose hands were engaged in a nervous act, watched the sputtering candle with the flame reflected in her pupils. The man fiddled with his wedding band and glanced at his wife’s ring, whose flawless diamond shattered the candles light into a myriad of sparkles. He had grown tired of his wife many years before. It had become a marriage filled with nothing but a routine of complacency. Divorce was out of the question. Although he had considered it, yet to just give half of his money, half of what he had worked for, half of himself, was unquestionable thus a continuation of the loveless marriage was the only solution he had come to. They had both had affairs. He had his lover, a young artist who lived in his Madison apartment and he knew that his wife had numerous lovers scattered around the Hamptons. It was an unspoken arrangement that suited them both. The emptiness in their marriage had been temporarily filled by indulging in the desire to taste everything the world had to offer. The desire for satisfaction through gastronomy was the only emotion they seemed to share now. With this desire they were as one. The man believed that this was the benefits to someone of his own wealth. Tastes sublime were his for the taking. The desire for searching out the world’s gastronomic delights had carried them for the past few years but after tonight what was left? Any continual pleasure becomes the mundane after repetition. The joy is lost and the spirit should seek more. Mans grasp must always exceed his reach he had read once. His grasp was for that thing that was just beyond what most of his acquaintances could even comprehend. His wife agreed with him that tastes were becoming tiresome. She had accompanied him on the trips to Japan to try the tongue tingling flesh of the deadly fugu and the weekend away in Malaysia to try the rotten aroma yet succulence of the bizarre Durian fruit amidst chaotic streets. She had gone with him on the supposedly romantic weekend away to Paris, where the only emotions present were those when their teeth crunched through the tiny bones of the Ortolan. They both had felt the live octopus fighting for life inside their mouth as they chewed and chewed in a fluorescently lit restaurant in Korea. They both felt nauseated at the smell of the fetid surstromming in Sweden but both smiled when the different taste enveloped their taste buds. It was only in these moments that they both felt happy being with each other. They had often talked, half-jokingly, about the last bastion of the gastronomic pilgrimage to venture on, that one immoral feast that only deranged serial killers, crazed Roman emperors or twisted homosexual Germans indulged in. It was here they had discovered that money could get them the very same meal. To get to the place where it was possible to do so they had to venture far away from the crystal champagne flutes and artic air conditioning sanctuary, where they had spent their last evening deciding to take this opportunity, and delve into the depths of the urban sprawl. False smiles had carried them through the streets to here. The weathered locals pleaded out to them in a language they didn’t understand as they walked by. They both ignored them and had long ago given up trying to interpret anything that was said outside of the perfect English of their hotel staff. They had strode through the humid streets packed with people trying to sell them everything; from carved bones in the shape of mythical creatures to cheap imitations of the very clothes he owned back home. They waded through the sea of neon which burst out from the seams of crumbling buildings, lighting up the evening with its ethereal light. They drifted through the menagerie of smells which hung in the air from food stalls, incense offerings and perfume shops to the smell of effluent and rotten food that seeped from black holes and piles of refuse. They had scurried through a world built of sounds, smells and sights they were not accustomed to, to where they now sat and waited for their meal. They both scanned the room, looking at whatever the flickers of waxen light revealed to them rather than settling on one another. The room was small with only one table and from the walls hung various pictures; people next to a waterfall, a photo of a dog, a small child holding a cheap plastic doll and a black and white photograph of the Eiffel tower. All faded yellow with the passage of time, all memories for someone. A plastic red dragon hung on the opposite wall, its tail snapped off and the true whiteness of the plastic revealed. On a small shelf, below the dragon, the dusty remains of incense sticks danced in a faint draught created by a humming fan hanging off the ceiling. The draught did not make it as far as the guests. Even now, at night time, the heat never relented. The man’s college football T shirt was stuck firmly to his back and he had long ago given up trying to fight the discomfort. Tonight was the longest they had strayed away from the safe coolness and westernised sanctuary of their hotel.
A curtain of multi-coloured plastic beads separated the other room from the one they waited in. the sounds of chopping and hissing gas indicated that what they had come for was being prepared somewhere back there. The door they had entered through was shut, a series of thick metal bolts locked in place keeping the outside out and the inside in. Although the room was windowless the sounds of the street still came ushering in through; the relentless clamour and shouts, the endless drone of scooters, the clambering of horns. The woman looked suspiciously at the beige plastic chopsticks in front of her, the ends showing the signs of a fidgety smoker having chewed his impatience upon them. This was not the elegant service she was used to and her expression revealed her distaste for the crude implements.
He looked across at his wife, searching his mind for what he really thought about her and found nothing. All he had was an emptiness, a deep void which should have been filled with something more. He wasn’t even attracted to her anymore. Sure, he was not the man he had used to be. His hair was thinning and the grey would take over if it wasn’t for the skilled Manhattan hairdresser. His stomach was no longer the washboard of ten years ago but he was successful. He had created an empire of successful car washes and his brilliance was written about in well-read business journals. She on the other hand had achieved nothing. Everything she had was due to him, to his success. Age had taken away whatever he had once loved in her. The wrinkles were all hidden of course, thousands of dollars of powders and creams saw to that and she still kept a slim figure, not that they had even seen each other naked for the past year, but it was her eyes, they carried the weight of years upon them, they no longer looked at him with that sparkle of admiration they once had, those eyes that he had looked into twenty years ago and promised his life to, now they gave nothing but seemed to just pull everything in. He had forgotten the last time he had been able to stare into those once beautiful eyes without feeling anything but hatred. He hated her eyes. He had asked her to dress down this evening, to remain inconspicuous yet here she sat, dressed in the Stella McCartney number. Sure it was one of the cheaper things she had bought on his credit card, being only a few hundred dollars, but it was hardly what he had in mind. He knew that it was only his money she was with him for, but what could he do. To tolerate one another was the base of their relationship now.
The aroma came through to their senses first, the unmistakable scent of meat cooking on a hot pan, the faint sound of the sizzle as the flesh contracted against the hot metal. They both looked up, their eyes meeting across the table, the understanding in their eyes of what they were about to venture shared in their deep silence. They said no words but in that moment he understood everything. Everything made sense. Pleasure was the apex of existence. Death was no concern if pleasure could be reaped.
He didn’t even notice the short man who came out carrying two plates and placed them in front of them. His mind was absorbed in his wife’s eyes and hers with his. Such a trip through the world’s pleasures they had undertaken together and here they were, together, about to taste that which is forbidden. They would never be able share this experience with anyone else. This was their experience and theirs alone.
The man lifted up a piece of the human flesh, deftly, with his chopsticks and took the flesh into himself as his wife’s eyes smiled back at him.
