“Get along.”
The kitchen of the “France” was big, and it shook when the boat moved. There were enough cooks to keep a good-sized city well fed. My job was to stand over a huge copper vat and chop up vegetables which the second cook drowned in living steam and which the first cook seasoned with quarts of salt. After which I had to climb inside the vat and scrub it clean with towels tied to my feet. That is, I was supposed to, but I could always get the job done by giving an American cigarette to some garbage collector.
I spent the first two days (when not boiling vegetables alive) in the meat room, where the steers, in cut-up sides, were brought out to warm up after their cold storage. It wasn't a nice place, but a one-eyed fry chef, called Cadol Boursault, had made himself a hideout out of sides of mutton, and we used to sit there by the hour smoking, while he told me lies about Chicago (where he claimed his wife ran a respectable house and his son was the left machine gun in Al Capone's armored car).
The third day out I got up on deck to deliver some raw onions to the steward of the bar, and Sethos caught me between a deck game and a big game hunter showing off his best tiger skin.
“You are alive!” said Sethos.
“I am a vegetable cook. May your friend Belloc be peeled alive with a potato knife.”
“The rat! And me, I'm playing jazz with no second fiddle.”
“Well, I'll see you in New York.”
“No. Get out of those white rags, muss up your hair, and come with me.”
He dragged me down to the cabin where the band lived, a mouse nest filled with odd people who talked of Irving Berlin and Bach as if they were related. Sethos took me aside and put a rancid violin under my arm. “Now listen. All you need to know are the positions. When you hold it like this… we are playing the French national song. Like this, ”My Country 'tis of Thee.“ For jazz roll the eye balls and tap the feet and show all the teeth. For sweet smaltz, gypsy, or Alt Wien, look at the ceiling and close the eyes.”
“But what do I do with the fiddle?”
“Keep sawing wood. There is soap on the strings and you don't make the lowest sound. You are a silent violinist. Years ago I had Bing Crosby in a band crossing to England. He blew a horn with no mouthbit and sang two songs an evening. No one ever caught on. So?”
It was very easy work. We played at dinner. I wore Sethos' second best evening jacket and bedroom slippers, but they didn't show as I sat to one side, under some palm trees in brass pots full of cigarette butts.
After dinner we went down and had our dinner, and a very good dinner it was, as the headwaiter of the first-class dining rooms was a deserter from the French Army, and Sethos spent all his spare time forging a perfect passport for him. The headwaiter was a wonderful looking man who was related, he proudly said, to Pétain, the old soldier, but the old man hadn't made him anything more than a major. So the headwaiter was going to Beverly Hills to open a swank eating place.
He really knew food, and all through the war, when France was dying and the Germans were murdering Frenchmen, the headwaiter ran his wonderful Beverly Hills place and entertained all the rich French refugees who were waiting in California for the war to end. How nice of the Americans to win it for them. Crude people, Americans. Just good enough to fight for Europe…
While Sethos worked on the passport or practiced his swordsmanship on the ship's cat, the headwaiter cooked for us special little things, just to keep his hand in, he said. For Sethos, who had been away from home a long time, he made Dumyat Rozz, a dish of old Egypt, which turned out to be the best chicken giblets and rice I had ever had.
He would clean the giblets from four chickens, sauté them, and then chop them. He would brown two ounces of pine nuts in butter. After washing four cups of rice, he would add it to the pine nuts, one cup of seedless raisins, the prepared giblets, and cover the whole thing with one quart of chicken stock. This he would boil for one hour in a covered pot. Toward the end of the hour, he would add salt and pepper to taste, a clove of garlic, and some chopped parsley. Continue to boil it until it is almost dry. Serve with a salad of mint aspic. Very good.
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