[dedicado a Danilo Salamanca, hombre culto y erudito]
"Méfiez-vous du rêve de l'autre,
parce que si vous êtes pris dans
le rêve de l'autre, vous êtes foutu."
(Gilles Deleuze)
(1)
Father had two friends, Sicilians &
stonemasons,
with skills long ago lost in New
England.
Nowadays they would be Mexicans.
They were slow friends and fast—amici.
When they got together Father would
always bring up the small matter of
polenta gat'
& they would
all have a hearty laugh.
(2)
Lenny was from West
Virginia
& one of the
two best hunters
in the wide world.
The other was a
bear hunter, mostly Kodiak and Grizzly.
“I
always kill cats when I am in the field
after small game,”
Lenny said.
“I
see them as competitors”, he said,
“and
better hunters than I am.”
“Do
you eat them?”
A strange look and
at that moment
a garter snake
slithered through green tomatos.
Lenny started.
“A
snake!”, he said, “Kill it!”.
“It's
a garter snake and it eats insects...”
“A
snake is a snake—you can't trust a snake”,
Lenny said.
“Well,
I suppose if you grew up where there
were rattlers and
depended on unthinking
reflex....”
Soon
enough we were at polenta gat'.
“What's
that?”, said Lenny.
“Cornmeal
mush with cat.”
“With
cat?” said Lenny.
“With
cat.”
“Have
to be real hungry to cook that,” said Lenny,
“let
alone look at it and eat it.”
And they all had a
hearty laugh.
The bear hunter
never ran into domesticated cat.
Wolves &
coyotes & cougars ate them.
Who knows, maybe
bears too.
(3)
It had selectmen
so it was a town
but very large
and west of Boston.
Before Suburbs
there was one
Chinese Restaurant.
The Cantonese
family
lived on the second
floor.
When he got his
driver's license
his friend, the
son, every morning
picked up the cook
in Boston
and drove him back
every evening.
The cook, also
Cantonese, was paid
a very healthy
salary.
The food was very
good.
Everyone ate there,
sometimes once a week,
other times once in
a while.
The running gag was
that
chicken was
sometimes cat.
“Flied
lice with cat,” my father said,
“like
the Sicilians.”
They all had a
hearty laugh.
The Cantonese never
serve cat for chicken.
It is considered
too much a delicacy
to waste on most
roundeyes.
(4)
The older and
larger Chinatown
in Chicago is
Cantonese.
Many of the
families came to the city
after building the
transcontinental railroad.
They were very
close-mouthed & clannish.
There were rumors
that there was a whole lot
of gambling going
on in the large building
that housed the
Brotherhood Association.
There were
occasional raids
by disinterested
police.
Mahjong?
The charges never
amounted to much.
What do betting
slips for Mahjong look like?
After the Yankees
climbed into their helicopters
from the roof of
the embassy in Saigon,
large numbers of
Vietnamese arrived Chicago.
Some of the
Vietnamese were Chinese,
but from Vietnam.
Soon they were
speaking three tongues.
Soon there opened a
Chinatown North,
with mostly
restuarants advertising Chinese,
and one or two
serving recipes of 'Nam.
Soon the rumor ran
through all the old neighborhoods,
to wit:
when the Vietnamese
moved in, all the cats and dogs
disappeared,
even pigeons,
& Vietnamese
could even be seen collecting
the fruit that fell
on public sidewalks
in large plastic
bags.
Polenta gat'
came up again.
“With
cat?” she said.
She had learned a
limited amount
during a year in
Italy.
“Sicilians”,
he said.
“The
French and others will always
mention the World
War,” he said,
“The
Sicilians never bother, for
what does war have
to do with it?”
And they all had a
hearty laugh.
The Vietnamese
restaurant in Chinatown North
was superb.
According to a
professoress of German,
on a good day and
if you knew someone
you could get dog.
Of course
immediately after the war
the Germans for
some time ate almost
anything.
It is not recorded
how quickly and easily
the Vietnamese
discovered U. S. beef
to be quite tender.
Or did they already
know?
(5)
Some years ago
long before the
Olympics
the mayor of
Beijing
decided there were
too many dogs
in that fair city.
He ordered that all
dogs owned as pets
be killed.
Food dogs were
excepted.
Surely because
transient.
Patriotic
Beijingers complied & killed
all their pets on
the same day.
And then they....
(6)
It is a Korean
restaurant
with Chinese
horoscopes.
on the placemats.
“Look,” he
says, “it is the year of the Rat!”
“The rat?”, she
says.
“For the Chinese
the Rat is a sign of good luck.”
“The rat?”
“The Rat—shu in
the third tone. Look at the character--
鼠
See
the head with its jaws and teeth? See its legs and tail?
Graphically
it aims at something like 'the Gnawer'...”
“The
rat?”, she says, “Good luck?”
“The
ancient Chinese had no cats,” he says,
“The
domesticated cat originates in Egypt
and
spreads to Europe. But the Chinese
got
it very late. So the rat is a sign of luck.”
“The
rat?”
“Naturally.
From much stored rice and grain
arise
many rats. So rats are a sign of prosperity.”
“Rats?”
“The
Thais and many other people in Asia eat rats.
Which
adds another aspect—animal protein.”
“Rats?”
“Not
city rats. Country rats and well-fed
at
that, like squirrels.”
“Squirrels?”
“The
Romans were very fond of honeyed dormice.”
“Question?”
“Yes?”
“Do
Koreans eat rats?”
“Well,
this beef is too tough to be dog.”
And
they all had a hearty laugh.
E.
A. Costa Granada, Nicaragua 22 December, 2014
