Free The Chemistry of Tears by Peter Carey Page A

me.
    “
Spargelzeit
,” said he.
    “
Spargelzeit
,” I said, and raised my glass.
    “In English,” said the precise little Arnaud, who had been left to fill his own glass, “you might translate
Spargel
as
edible ivory
.”
    “
Königsgemüse
,” said the musical boy, and happily suffered being squashed against the clockmaker’s massive chest.
    “It is the King’s vegetable,” announced Frau Helga placing in front of me a plate of white asparagus and small unpeeled potatoes.
    So
Spargelzeit
was not a toast. Far from it—a curse—I cannot swallow egg whites, liver, brains, cod, eel, anything soft and slimy. If they had given me a plate of maggots it would have been the same.
    My companions at Furtwangen were hogging in, sighing and making very personal noises. Frau Helga, in particular, was so emotionally affected by this spectral
Spargel
that she made me quite embarrassed.
    I selected a small unskinned potato and scraped the sauce away.
    “Eat up,” instructed Herr Sumper, picking up the long white vegetable, the secret organ of a ghost which he sucked into the mawbeneath the bush of upper lip. “We have yet to agree on what you will pay for board. But at this meal you are our honoured guest.”
    The potato tasted of wet jute. The asparagus lay before me naked. I cut its tip off and washed it down with wine.
    Sumper narrowed his eyes.
    “You like it?”
    “Immensely.”
    He considered me closely.
    “You don’t know how to taste it,” said Herr Sumper. “I can read your thoughts.”
    I did not comment. He winked at the boy, who squealed with laughter. I was not sorry when Frau Helga slapped his leg. I thrust my plate away from me.
    “The more for us,” he said, dividing my meal between the other diners. When the gluttons had eaten my meal, Sumper wiped his mouth and spoke to Carl behind the napkin.
    Immediately the boy sprang from his chair and up the stairs. To work, I thought. I put aside my pride and followed him.
    There is nothing better to soothe the stomach acids than the company of an artisan when he is at his careful labour. When my wife’s first “portrait” had commenced, I would often walk into the village to the workshop of my widowed friend George Binns, whose father had been the clockmaker to Her Majesty the Queen. There amidst all the quiet ticking I found some peace. So I expected it would be in Furtwangen. The child slipped through the workshop door but a large hand restrained my shoulder.
    “You are the patron,” said Herr Sumper, dancing me around then blocking my path through his doorway. “I am the artist.”
    Well, of course this was preposterous. He was not an artist, he was a clockmaker. I had already endured a surfeit of
Artist
in the place from which I had been sent away. I thought, you damned rascal. It would serve you right if I was sick all over you.
    “I cannot work with you at my shoulder.”
    So I must eat insults too.
    “I wish to assist,” I said.
    “Yes,” he said. “I have brought you this.”
    He placed in my hand the sort of ruined book you find in barrow carts, its pages freckled brown, its boards bowed.
    “It is
The Life of Benvenuto Cellini
. In English. This book will teach you how artists suffer from their patrons and will instruct you on how to play the important role you have chosen for yourself. By the time you have read it, I will be able to tell you when the work will be complete.”
    Thus did I abase myself to achieve my end and I, Henry Brandling, not only permitted a foreign tradesman to pretend he was an artist, but allowed myself to be sent to bed without a decent meal.
    NO SLEEP, MY MIND a carousel of memory. For instance: the night before my departure from home I informed Percy that I might not return until Christmas. “How lovely, Papa,” he said. “What a Christmas we will have.”
    Round and round I saw it once again, our conversation then, the following morning when I bade my brave red-eyed boy goodbye. I should never have