Brigits-Flame June 02 Entry - Oil and Vinegar
From the writings of Abdul Al'Canhazred:
I am not one to wax readily on the pleasures of the flesh - not since the Adventure of the Steel Poltroon, anyway - but in the recounting of this, the tale of the LOL of Catthulhu, a food metaphor is in order. In Paris, in the summer of 1873, just before the Revenants overtook the 14ème Arrondissement, I learned the art of the vinaigrette from a chef friend. He has long since been torn to shreds by those shimmering horrors, but I remember his lesson well.
“My dear Abdul,” he said to me, “a vinaigrette is a beautiful coincidence. It is a confluence of ingredients that lift the palate and further one’s understanding of a green vegetable. A drizzle of walnut oil, a hint of vinegar, and some bacon lardons? Abdul, your understanding of salade frisée reaches another plane.”
“I don’t eat bacon,” I said.
“It doesn’t matter! Behold,” he said, reaching for a mixing bowl. “I present you with olive oil. A supple-tasting thing, fragrant and green. And here, the balsamic vinegar from Modena - sweet, deep, and rich like the kiss of a Baltic woman.”
“I have never kissed a Baltic woman,” I said.
“Next you will tell me you have never stood on the rocks on the shores of Normandy at night, smoked a long Arab pipe, and watched the stars bless the waves.”
“We did that last fall,” I said.
“Then there is hope for you yet,” he said, and turned his attention back to the bowl, pouring out some liquid from both bottles. “Now, you see, the oil and vinegar - they care not for one another; no matter how I whisk!” and here he whisked furiously, and still they would not combine. “No, like a marriage, the vinaigrette must be joined in order to work! What does a marriage need?” He paused. “What does a marriage need, Abdul?”
“The clergy?” I said, grasping at straws.
“No! Love! Sex! And what does a vinaigrette need?”
“Sex?” I said, growing wearied of his metaphor.
“Almost! Mustard.” And he put a tiny dash of mustard from a jar into the mixing bowl and whisked; presently the mixture came together in an unctuous, delicate mess. “You see, the vinegar and oil complement one another, once this third element is introduced!”
I say all this, patient reader, to illustrate my own point: Mr. Hobart’s venture into the hill country would have been a tremendous success, had not two factors come afoul of a third - a confluence of unfortunate coincidence in the form of a vinaigrette: Hobart’s greed, my curiosity, and that damned statue.
Acosta found it the second day out, when we were some distance from the Perdito, and we had stopped for a water break. Nestled in the elbow of a creek was the tiny statue, made of some grayish-green metal I couldn’t immediately identify. Acosta brought it to us and I was stopped cold; the fist of primal fear grabbed hold of my genitals and punched my heart with them. Metaphorically.
Reader, I cannot bring this pen to describe its curves visually, so I must describe it with words. Imagine a laughing cat, sitting on its haunches as a man would sit, with a hand on its stomach, as though it is laughing uncontrollably, guffawing at the folly of man. And imagine this cat’s mouth is not a mouth but an endless cosmic maze of grasping tentacles, the spiral arms of a hundred negative galaxies defending the maw of the universe. Imagine a six-inch statue so heavy that a grown man must carry it with both hands, with significant exertion. Imagine the Lol of Catthulhu.
And imagine my horror when Hobart asked me to pick it up and look at it. And though every ounce of my eldritch training said no, said no in squalling, chorusing voices of a million, billion dead, I… I picked it up.
And it was as light as a feather.
To be continued.