He was drinking apple brandy when we came in.
“A job? Loyal je serai durant ma vie! I hire only the best. Shall we eat?”
“What have they here?”
Belloc smiled. “A beef, and with it l'oignon tarte.”
Onion pie with beef is something so rare here I might as well explain it. Make a crust of flour, lard, a little salt, and enough water to hold it all together. Fill a well-larded pie pan with the crust. Melt a half cup of butter and sauté three large onions chopped fine. When the golden color is perfect, sprinkle in three or four tablespoons of flour, stir in a half pint of cream. Add salt and pepper to taste and stir continually until the mixture is thick. Remove from the fire and add two well-beaten eggs. Pour the mixture into a crust, add a top crust, and bake in a hot oven for half an hour. Serve very hot with a slice of beef. Onion pie should really move across the Atlantic…
“Food is wonderful,” said Belloc. “A man who likes good food never gets into political trouble. Maybe this may seem simplified morality to you.”
Sethos said, “Simplified morality is staying out of jail and marrying the right girl, in time. But our friend wants a job.”
Belloc gave us the faint ambiguous smile of a demented Buddha.
“A girl? Ah, the thorn in the rose of love, cruel as rusting spears. More pie?”
“No, thank you. About the job.”
“Don't hurry a lunch. From the outside how can we ever understand the inside?”
I agreed.
“Of course,” said Belloc, “I like Americans.”
“I like the French,” I said.
“Fine, fine. You know I have a cousin.… an English writer, I think… so you see I am part American, almost. You want to be vegetable cook on the ship “France”?
Sethos shook his brown head. “Second violin.”
“Ah!” Belloc held some grapes in his hand and pushed the fruit out of the skins with his dumpling fingers and swallowed some of the pulp. “Second violin? Now if you wanted to be decksport marker, or dishwasher…”
“I want him near me,” said Sethos. “He doesn't know the ropes.”
“Second violin? I was thinking of hiring a Greek prince. Wonderful chap… a bit reactionary, but the British have promised him his palace back. While he was waiting, I thought a second violin job. But he would collect his pay… and you…”
I said I would turn it over to my friend, M. Belloc. M. Belloc nodded and pulled a much soiled paper from his pocket, made some notes on it, and then had me sign a slip of blue paper. After that there was nothing much to do but drink another round of wine and have Sethos pay for the meal.
Three days later I was on the boat train, and France passed by the window too fast, and the next time I was to see it I wasn't going to like it very much, but then who did in 1940?
The “France” looked even bigger than I remembered her, and I got on board by tipping the right people and went to look for Sethos, who had had to get down early to rub the violins with olive oil to keep the damp out of them. He said it was olive oil, but I have a feeling it was some secret formula of his own that the chef used for salad dressing. The music and the salads on the ship never amounted to very much.
I couldn't find Sethos but I did find a flunky in blue with much brass, and he looked down a long list, and chewed on the shortest pencil stub in the world.
“Longrue… Longrue. Ah yes.”
He made a ball of some dirty gray linen and hit me in the face with it. “Second class kitchen, third vegetable cook. Longrue, blow!”
“Wait a minute. I'm a second violin.”
“And I'm Walt Disney. This is Belloc's own list. Marches!”
“Like hell.”
“Then get off the ship. There will be a charge of fifty francs for the linen held for you.”
He took back his bundle of soiled laundry, and I stood there a moment thinking how sorry I was for myself. I didn't have the fare back to Paris and the pocket of the nearest friend… I took back the linen. “Brother, you just got yourself a vegetable cook.”
Pinterest
