At that moment I heard a crash nearby. I looked down; a metal bucket lay at my feet. I realised, rather too late, that I had abandoned it in my room. Immediately I deduced the source of the abnormal quiet. Chef, from whose hand the bucket had fallen, knelt down and ran his finger around the inside of it. He closed his eyes in mock appreciation as he sampled the sweet, oily mixture. Then he stood up and faced me. He was a big man, but I was bigger. In a kitchen, though, physical size is of little consequence, as well I knew.
‘Three questions,’ he said as a sharp, aching silence fell around us. ‘One: have you by any chance read tonight’s menu?’
Instead of pronouncing the sentence with its appropriate interrogative intonation, though, he punctuated his delivery with a cuff to the side of my head, delivered with the full power of his considerable upper body. My ear crackled and buzzed, and immediately half my head began to numb over. Of course, I had not read the menu, yet I had little doubt that it included recipes proclaiming their citrus content, or their basis in finest Italian olive oil.
‘Two: did you use the whole bottle of oil?’
The singular form sang out ominously for me. I began a forlorn nod, but even as my head dipped for the first time I felt my jaw rocket back upwards, as his forearm swung into my face, my teeth slamming together with a sliver of tongue still between then. I felt no pain, but, incredibly, a slight sense of relief that I had already survived two out of three.
‘And finally,’ he shouted, breaking into an exaggerated goose-step and circling me several times, ‘DO YOU KNOW WHERE THE FUCKING LABOUR EXCHANGE IS?’
He bawled it into my ear from behind me and then, grabbing me by the collar, pulled me off balance and punched me three times in the back of the head as I went down.
Then nothing. And even from the floor I could detect quite clearly the horrified stillness in the kitchen, spatulas sinking unattended into batter, whisks suspended in mid-air, dripping half-beaten egg on to the floor. The blood ran cold from the side of my mouth, almost as cold as the icy floor onto which it trickled, and then the various sites of localised injury began to get their screaming messages through to my brain.
‘We need that veal stock in five minutes, eh!’ Chef called out suddenly, breaking the silence. Back came a clipped reply. And things returned to normal. Some of my colleagues threw me sympathetic glances as they stepped over my crumpled, aching body. But no one offered assistance.
By slow, agonising degrees, I made my way to the door, and got myself to a low crouch. Then, as I stumbled out of the kitchen, a young trainee who I had come to know hopped out after me, making sure nobody had seen him, and asked: ‘What did you do with it? Everybody wants to know, especially Chef. It’s been driving him mad, but he’s too proud to ask. What the hell were you cooking?’
It was a second or two before I recalled.
‘Mulligan!’ I said, more to myself than to my friend.
‘What?’
‘Le Grand Michael Mulligan! I cooked him a chair!’
I reached his room just as he was about to leave. He ushered me back inside and helped to clean my blood-smeared face. I attempted to explain what had happened, despite my damaged tongue, and then, suddenly, as he dabbed my chin with a damp towel, he furrowed his brow as if something striking had occurred to him.
‘My word!’ he said, patting first the top of my head and then his own, ‘you’re almost my height! Not as broad, naturally, but, by Jiminy, you’re no stripling either!’
With that he dashed over to the wardrobe, pulled out a black dinner suit and threw it at me.
‘Put that on, my boy, and forget your woes. You’re coming with me!’
With not a moment’s hesitation I changed into the suit. It hung about me like an untethered tent, but the length was not too far off the mark, and all in all it lent me an almost eccentric aspect.
‘The car’s ready,’ he said, lighting another cigar and consulting his watch. ‘Tonight, you will be, let’s see … Captain Gusto! Yes, that’s it! Captain Gusto, assistant to The Great Michael Mulligan!’
And that was the second stroke of good fortune to befall me that day: to be beaten senseless by a furious chef and, as a consequence, to be invited by Mulligan, the great man himself, to share the stage for his most enduring act.
The car was a shining Rolls-Royce. I climbed inside, and Mulligan backed his ample frame in through the opposite door and on to the driver’s seat, which had the appearance of being rather flatter and less bouncy than the others in the car, somewhat like an over-egged sponge that has risen enthusiastically and then turned sad in the oven.
He reached behind him and took one of the pint bottles from the crate on the back seat.
‘Care for some?’ he said, before polishing off half its orange contents. ‘I have a long evening ahead,’ he added as way of explanation.
On the way to the event I tried to get him to elaborate upon the stories he had told me earlier that afternoon. At last, perhaps somewhat exasperated by my incessant questioning, he said: ‘My art is something which really must be observed. No manner of description will suffice. Have patience, and you will see …’
‘Seeing is believing,’ I chuntered, as an errant strand of incredulity wrapped itself around my thoughts and introduced doubts not only as to the true nature of his act, but also about where this monster fruitcake was taking me.
Mulligan brought the car to an abrupt halt, right there in the middle of a twisting, coastal road. I lunged forward, sliding to the edge of the shiny leather and getting halfway to an involuntary squat in the footwell. His wry, twinkling eyes had turned dark, all fire, and stared menacingly into mine.
‘Seeing, my friend, is comprehending. Seeing is understanding.’
And with that, his eyes still fixed on mine, he reached behind him for the half-finished bottle, and proceeded to empty its contents down his throat.
We resumed our journey, and my apprenticeship began. From that day on I began my education in the lore and history of our trade. Mulligan would talk about the distant past, of old, famous, forgotten names: The Great Eusebio Galante, Franz ‘Fledermaus’ Pipek and Rocco ‘La Rocca’ Fontane; of Sammy Ling (‘He’ll eat anything!’) and his predilection for neckties; of who’d eaten most; of scandalous, illegal records set in the back streets of hardly remembered Bavarian towns; of the rotten and the rancid, eaten and (allegedly) digested for a bagful of the local currency; of the unfortunate demise of Henry ‘Tubby’ Turns; of the great American masters like Nelson Pickle, who at the height of his powers had eaten a grand piano (baby, no frame) in little over nine weeks as a promotion for a new Detroit music store – those were the Prohibition days, great times for professional gluttony! – poor Nelson, who came to Europe to give eating demonstrations at the great German beer festivals and died of alcohol poisoning after assuming that beer was beer the world over and drinking a keg of Belgian Trappist in a single weekend for a bet.
That night was also to be my first appearance on stage with Mulligan. The evening began inauspiciously. After a long drive we finally turned into the forecourt of a large, somewhat podgy Edwardian building. He smiled and said, ‘Well, Paris it’s not, and it’s no palace. And, I assure you, there will be no crown princes in the audience! But this, for tonight, is work.’
We unloaded some heavy wooden crates from the car and wheeled them around to the back of the building. A cheery but nervous man in a tight-fitting dinner suit greeted us, a glass of gin in his hand, and led us into a large, modestly elegant dining hall. The place smelt of Sunday school, but with the added aromas of overcooked meat and aftershave. Forty or fifty place settings announced, by means of the sorry array of cutlery at each, a rather strained attempt at luxury. The man with the gin pointed to a small semicircular stage at one end of the room.
‘Everything is as you requested,’ he said to Mulligan, looking around