Free Anything Considered by Peter Mayle

increasingly curious. Was Poe trying to grow them? Why had he underlined a particular passage? “A spore from a previous year’s truffle, at the moment of putrefaction, is transported (by insect, animal, rain, or wind) into the soil. It germinates into an embryo fungus, whose vegetative part, or mycelium, consists of threadlike filaments called hyphae. These attach themselves to tree roots, whose sap nourishes the parasitical truffle in a symbiosis known as mycorrhiza.” This was followed by notes on soil types, orientation, altitude, rainfall,tree species, and a regional breakdown of France’s apparently dwindling truffle production.
    The shortage had failed to affect Monaco, as Bennett found with his main course, a
colinot
just hours out of the Mediterranean, grilled on a wood fire, coated with melted butter and crushed truffles, and served with lightly fried basil. He couldn’t remember having tasted anything so fine, and glanced with sympathy at the Riviera Girl two tables away, grazing on what looked like a plain salad. He wondered if she sucked her emeralds between courses for sustenance.
    The unhurried ritual of clearing the table for the final course took place—plates removed, bread crumbs swept into a miniature silver coffin, the cloth smoothed, dessert cutlery placed—while Bennett sipped his wine and wished he could take what was left in the bottle home with him. Ordinary wines he swigged, but his rate of consumption dropped sharply when he was lucky enough to drink something exceptional. Somewhere here, he thought, was an argument in favor of the economies of buying nothing but great vintages. All it would take was three or four hundred thousand francs to start you off. With a last, lingering swallow, he put his glass to one side and watched as the waiter put the
gratin
of wild strawberries and pine nuts in front of him, in the manner of a supplicant making an offering to the gods. What was it going to be like to live like this every day? Addictive, Bennett decided, and set to with an eager spoon.
    Over coffee and a
fine
, he came to the end of the notes.The last section was devoted to Poe’s calculations, in which he had assumed an average retail market price of four thousand francs a kilo. In the margin, Poe had written,
five tons minimum per year
, and had underscored it heavily. At the assumed price, which was on the conservative side, Bennett worked out that five tons of truffles would be worth twenty million francs, or four million dollars. A year. Bloody hell. Was he buying, or selling? Either way, the odd four-star dinner was a drop in the bucket, and Bennett signed his new name on the bill with a flourish, adding an impressively large tip. Nowhere does good news of this sort travel faster than in a restaurant, and Bennett’s departure was personally attended by the headwaiter and the sommelier, both of whom expressed a deep and sincere desire to see him again very shortly.
    And so you will, Bennett thought. He took a turn around the casino gardens, and went to his oversized bed a contented man.

6
    THE tiles of the main terrace were still morning cool under Bennett’s bare feet as he laid the table for breakfast: coffee, sunglasses, address book, and telephone. The sky was as blue as a postcard, with only a faint whisker of cloud hanging above Monaco’s mountainous backdrop, the Tête de Chien. Heat was in the air already, and Bennett slipped out of the toweling robe to let the sun get to work on his winter skin. He had inherited his mother’s Italian pigmentation, and within a week would darken to the color of chocolate, an annual transformation that he never ceased to enjoy. No matter how often the medical establishment shook its cautious head and warned of the horrors of a fried epidermis and premature aging, Bennett felt better when he had a tan, wrinkles or no wrinkles. He moved his chair so that he could sit in the direct path of the sun, and started leafing through his address book in