French Lessons (7 page)

The town hall
was fragrant with the scent of freshly cooked frogs’ legs, and I saw my
fellow
confrère
the Labrador stop for a long and thoughtful
sniff as he came through the door. He seemed completely at ease in his cap and
waistcoat, wagging politely to his neighbors as he took his place in the front
row, reserved for VIPs.

Up on the stage, Monsieur Roussel, the master
of ceremonies, made final adjustments to the microphone while senior members of
the order lined up behind him next to the president, Monsieur Loisant.
Expressions were serious, befitting the solemnity of the moment, and the
spectators did their best to assume an expectant hush as Roussel opened the
proceedings.

Solemnity didn’t last long. The ritual of initiation
starts with some brief and not always flattering comments about each of the new
confrères,
the more embarrassing the better, and Roussel had
done his homework. One after the other, he called his victims up onstage to
describe their backgrounds and achievements, their follies and idiosyncracies,
even their physical appearance (with a special emphasis on the state of their
thighs). The
confrère
was then asked to eat a small dish of
frogs’ legs, drink a glass of Chardonnay, and swear fidelity to the frog
before receiving his medal and retiring to welcome obscurity at the back of the
stage.

An hour or so passed, until the only remaining new
confrères
were myself and the Labrador. He behaved with the
aplomb you would expect from a dog that had already been honored twice
before—scampering up on the stage and polishing off his frogs’ legs
in two great gulps, his performance only slightly marred by turning up his nose
at the Chardonnay. And then it was my turn. I made my way onto the stage,
feeling very dowdy in my jacket and flannels, among the robes and velvet caps.
Even the Labrador was better dressed for the occasion than I was.

Roussel dealt with me gently, possibly because he hadn’t had the
chance to discover anything truly incriminating about me. In any case, my
nationality was enough to give him plenty of material, since the French and the
English have enjoyed saying appalling things about each other for several
hundred years. Curiously enough, they’re often the same appalling things.
For instance, each accuses the other of arrogance, bloody-mindedness, unashamed
chauvinism, and barbaric eating habits. The French say the English are
cold-blooded and untrustworthy. The English say the French are hotheaded and
untrustworthy. But, as Roussel said, close neighbors are often a little hard on
each other, and he let me off with no more than a passing rap across the
knuckles for having ignored one of the great delicacies of France—the
frog—for most of my adult life.

I ate my thighs, I drank my
Chardonnay, and then I bowed my head to receive my medal. I had become an
official member of the Confrérie des Taste-Cuisses de Grenouilles de
Vittel, the first organization I had belonged to since the age of eleven, when
I left the Boy Scouts under a cloud after a personality clash with Leaping
Wolf.

And now, as if the various tipples of the morning hadn’t
been enough, the moment had arrived to have a drink with the mayor. This time,
no attempt was made to form up in an orderly line. The spectators, who
hadn’t been dosed with Chardonnay up onstage and were pawing the ground
for something wet to settle the dust of all those speeches, led the charge over
to the
mairie.
His Honor, supported by the Pastis 51 lobby in their
red coats, received us with open bottles and yet another speech, while
confrères
loosened their cloaks and flexed their medals. The
cheerful atmosphere provided no hint of the drama that was about to unfold on
the very steps of the
mairie
.

In fact, it was some time before
those of us who had drifted back to the Palais des Congrès, where lunch
was to be served, had any idea that a drama had actually taken place. But as we
found our seats and deliberated over the choice of aperitif, it became clear
that all was not well. Whispered conversations were taking place in corners,
with much glancing at watches. Waitresses had to be restrained from descending
on us with the first course. Looking around the room, I saw that every seat was
taken—except one. Loisant, thigh-taster in chief and our esteemed
president, was missing.

What could have happened to him on the
five-minute stroll from the
mairie?
Rumor and theory spread from table
to table with the speed of a brush fire, but nothing prepared us for his
eventual appearance. He came through the door looking like a man who’d
just lost an argument with a hammer, his forehead bruised and swollen, his
right eye puffy and half-closed, black stitches visible against discolored
skin.

The presidential sense of humor, however, was uninjured, and as
he took his place at the head of the table, he explained that he had been
wounded in the course of duty. Coming out of the
mairie,
he had been
ambushed by a snail—
un perfide escargo
t—
which was
lying in wait on one of the steps. He remembered hearing two crunches—one
as his foot crushed and then skidded on the snail’s shell, the other as
his head cracked against the stone. But after a trip to the hospital for repair
work, he claimed to be as good as new and hungry as a lion.

“I
have heard,” said the lady sitting on my left, “that although the
frog is not popular in your country, the English have a fondness for eating
toads.” She shuddered. “How could you possibly eat a
toad?”

This put a stop to all other conversation at our end of
the table. Heads turned toward me as I tried to describe the only toad recipe
I’d ever heard of—
crapaud dans le trou,
or toad in the
hole, a leaden dish that I had been made to eat once or twice in my youth. As I
remembered the recipe, a large ball of sausage meat is concealed inside a thick
coating of rubbery batter before being thoroughly overcooked. The result is not
unlike a booby-trapped Yorkshire pudding—heavy, stodgy, and highly
indigestible.

“Ah,” said the lady, “so it is not a
veritable toad.”

“No,” I said. A veritable toad would
probably have tasted better.

“Nor is it, strictly speaking, a
hole.”

“I’m afraid not,” I said.

She
shook her head at the peculiarities of traditional English cuisine and we went
back to studying the menu. In honor of the occasion, this offered not only the
list of dishes—including, of course, sautéed frogs’
legs—but some artistic nourishment as well, in the form of a poem
specially composed by Roussel—“Ode à Mesdames les
Grenouilles.” Written with tongue firmly in cheek, it was couched in the
language of romance:
“Tendre grenouille de nos
étangs,”
it began, and then flowed into the springtime song
of love and the arrival of Prince Charming before the inevitable occurred and
our heroine was summoned to meet her fate in the kitchen. Even here, she was
not just cooked but also transformed by the poet into “the queen of our
plates,” which I hope was some small consolation to her.

The
unfortunate Prince Charming also came to a sticky end, according to one version
of frog legend. Once upon a time, so the story goes, a beautiful princess came
across a frog by the side of a pond. Said the frog to the princess, “I
was once a handsome young prince, until an evil witch put a spell on me. But
one kiss from you and I will turn back into a prince. Then we can marry and
move into the castle with my mother. You can prepare my meals, scrub my
clothes, clean up after me, bear my children, cook for my friends, and live
happily ever after. Just one kiss, and all this will come to pass.” That
night at dinner, the princess smiled to herself. Not bloody likely, she thought
as she tucked in to a dish of frogs’ legs.

Wine and conversation
flowed, the courses came and went, and I was treated to a demonstration of the
French genius for the gastronomic marathon, the ability to spend as long at the
table as other nationalities spend watching television. The size of French
appetites never fails to impress me, nor does the Frenchman’s ability to
absorb vast amounts of alcohol without falling headfirst into the cheese. The
physical effects of a river of wine are evident in flushed complexions and
loosened collars, in louder voices and more risqué jokes, but I’ve
never seen any ugly or argumentative behavior. Perhaps the secret is years of
practice.

By now, the accordion band was starting to limber up with a
few exploratory riffs, and I saw that Loisant and his master of ceremonies, the
poetic Roussel, had left their table to take up positions at the edge of the
dance floor. Chairs were pushed back, glasses were refilled, and the microphone
was switched on. It was the moment of truth in the contest to see who had the
most delectable thighs in Vittel.

The judging criteria, so I had been
told, were more or less the same for Miss Grenouille as for a frog. Any thigh
with half a chance had to be long, but not skinny, and shapely, but not fat.
Tone and texture were of crucial importance, and the judges were not to be
influenced by any fashionable embellishments such as tattoos. A smooth,
unmarked sweep of thigh was what they were looking for, and it was clear from
the president’s confident manner that this exemplary specimen had been
found.

“
Mesdames, messieurs!”
Roussel had
our attention, and I half-expected him to burst into verse, despite the
difficulties of finding words to rhyme with
cuisses.
Instead, he
confined himself to a brief introduction that ended with a stirring drumroll as
Miss Grenouille herself was announced and came tripping across the floor to
receive an enormous bouquet from the hands of the president. Amélie was
her name, and a delightful young lady she was, too, smiling and rosy-cheeked
from the applause. Alas, the prize-winning thighs were encased in tight black
toreador pants, and therefore more hinted at than revealed. I think there might
have been a murmur or two of disappointment from some of the gentlemen
connoisseurs in the audience.

But all thoughts of frogs and thighs were
now put aside. There was dancing to be done, and the French take their dancing
seriously—above all, the
paso doble.
This stately maneuver,
somewhere between a fox-trot and a tango, is a particular favorite, possibly
because it accommodates the Gallic fondness for expressive use of the upper
body. Three or four gliding steps are taken in one direction, and
then—with a twist of the shoulders, the hint of a shrug, and sometimes
the flick of a heel—the dancers change course. Movements are smooth and
unhurried; correct form is everything. Heads are held up, backs are kept
ruler-straight, and elbows are cocked out at right angles. And I noticed that
several of the older men had preserved the tradition of extending the little
finger of the left hand as they steered their partners in courtly zigzags
across the floor. It was a fine sight, and could only have been finer if the
dancers had still been dressed in their cloaks and feathered hats. In this way,
Sunday afternoon passed into Sunday evening, and lunch threatened to spill over
into dinner. The frog had been well and truly celebrated.

By the
following morning, there was little trace of the great
weekend des
grenouilles.
The fairground rides and shooting galleries were
gone—dismantled, packed up, and shipped out overnight. The flow of free
pastis had dried up with the departure of the gentlemen in red jackets.
Restaurants were revising their menus to make them less frog-heavy. Miss
Grenouille was back at her job, the president’s wound was mending nicely,
the
confrères
were on their way home, and the yellow bicycles
were being pedaled sedately along the paths of the park. Peace had returned to
Vittel.

Aristocrats with Blue Feet

Over recent years, we have become more and more
curious about what exactly it is we put into our stomachs every day—where
it comes from, what it contains, what it does to us. We are hungry for
information, and the response from those who supply our food and drink has been
voluminous. They have swamped us with nutritional facts and analyses,
guarantees of goodness, testimonials from dieticians, proof of genuine
identity: These assurances are attached to almost everything edible, from those
indigestible little stickers on apples and pears to the longer and more learned
texts on the back of cereal boxes.

Some of these illuminating notes,
however, do nothing to allay the innocent customer’s fears and
suspicions. Wine, for instance, which we’ve learned should not be
consumed by pregnant women operating heavy machinery, has now owned up to
another dark secret, at least in America. Almost every bottle, we are informed
by a label on its back, contains sulfites.