The doorkeeper’s comment sent shock waves through my heart. Who were those cannibalistic beasts? Was I one of them? I thought back to what the Liquorland dignitaries had said when the famous dish was being served: What we’re eating is not human, but a gourmet dish prepared with special techniques. The creator of this gourmet dish was my beautiful mother-in-law, who was now lecturing to her students in a spacious, well-lit lecture hall. She was standing at the podium, framed by bright lamplight. I could see her large, round, moonlike face, which was as smooth and brilliant as a china vase.
Reporters were indeed videotaping her lecture. One of them, surnamed Qian, a fellow with a pointy mouth and monkey cheeks, was director of the special newspaper column. I’d drunk at the same table as him once. With a video camera on his shoulder, he was sauntering back and forth in the lecture hall. His assistant, a short, pale, fat fellow carrying lights and dragging black cords, followed Qian’s orders to aim the white-hot lights, sometimes on my mother-in-law’s face, sometimes on the chopping board in front of her, and sometimes on the students who were concentrating on her lecture. I found a vacant seat and sat down, feeling the tender, loving rays from her big grayish-brown eyes stop on my face for a couple of seconds. Slightly embarrassed, I lowered my head.
Five words carved deeply into the desk leaped into my eyes, ‘I WANT TO FUCK YOU.' Like five rocks dropped into my mind, they created surging waves. I felt my body go numb; like a frog given electric shocks, my limbs trembled, whereas a certain spot in the center began to stir… My mother-in-law’s well-paced, pleasant talk, like tidal waves, rushed up closer and closer, wrapping my body in a giant warm current and sending spasms of excitation surging up and down my spine, faster and faster…
… Dear students, has it ever occurred to you that, owing to the rapid development following the four modernizations and the constant upping of people’s living standards, eating is no longer simply something to fill one’s stomach, but an esthetic appreciation? Hence, cooking is not simply a skill, but is also a profound art. A master chef these days needs hands more dextrous than a surgeon, a sense of color keener than a painter, a nose sharper than a police dog, and a tongue more sensitive than a snake. A chef embodies a blending of all the arts. Concomitant with this, the standards of gourmet diners are rising. Diners have expensive tastes, they like new things and despise old stuff, wanting one thing in the morning and changing their minds in the evening. It is extremely hard to please their taste buds. But we must study hard to produce new dishes that satisfy their needs. This is closely tied to the prosperity of Liquorland and, of course, to the bright future of every one of you here. Before we begin today’s lecture, I want to recommend a special, rare dish to you -
Picking up an electronic pen, she wrote two words on the magnetic board with a flourish: STEAMED PLATYPUS. She turned sideways to face the students as she wrote, polite and charming. Then she threw down the pen and pushed a button under the podium, causing a cloth screen to pull back slowly, the way a general pushes a button to reveal a battle map. Behind the screen was a large water tank in which several small platypuses with glossy fur and webbed feet swam nervously. She said, Now I’m going to give you the ingredients and the actual cooking procedures, so please take notes. This ugly little animal embarrassed the learned and erudite Engels, our great proletarian leader, for it was an aberrant phenomenon in evolution, the only known mammal that lays eggs. The platypus is the one truly exotic animal. So we must take exceptional care during cooking, in order not to waste such a rare animal with a procedural mistake. Therefore, I suggest that, before we make platypus, we should practice on turtles. Now, let me give you the actual cooking method:
Take a platypus, kill it and hang it upside down for about an hour to drain the blood. Please note that you should use a silver knife and cut from under its mouth to make sure the point of entry is as small as possible. After draining the blood, put the platypus in water heated to 75 degrees Celsius to strip the hide. Then carefully remove the innards, the liver, the heart, and the eggs (if there are any). Use special care when removing the liver, making sure you don’t puncture the gallbladder. Otherwise the platypus will become inedible and useless. Take out the intestines and turn them inside out to clean thoroughly with salt water. Then wash the mouth and feet with boiling water, rub off the rough shell over the beak and the rough skin between the toes. Make sure to keep the webbing between toes intact. After cleaning, lightly cook the innards in hot oil and stuff them inside the platypus. For sauce, add salt, garlic, shredded ginger, chili pepper, sesame oil – remember not to use any MSG – and slowly cook over a low fire until it turns dark red and gives off a peculiar odor. If the situation permits, saute the eggs and innards together, then stuff them back inside the platypus. If there are larger, better-formed eggs, you can make them into a separate gourmet dish by following the recipe for braised turtle eggs.
After introducing the recipe for platypus, she brushed back her hair, like one of the nation’s top leaders preparing to make an important announcement, and stared at the students, who, in turn, felt her warm gaze touch their faces. I sensed that my mother-in-law had touched my soul With great seriousness, she said, Now we move on to the cooking methods for braised baby. I felt as if a rusted awl had been driven through my heart, and currents of cold liquid poured into my chest, where they congealed and pressed against my organs, putting me on tenterhooks, while sticky, cold sweat seeped into the palms of my hands. Every one of her students’ faces turned red, excitement accelerating the beating of their hearts. Like a group of medical-school students performing their first dissection of human genitalia, they feigned nonchalance, but their efforts were wasted – excitement was revealed by twitching muscles on their cheeks and nervous coughs. My mother-in-law said, This is the Culinary Academy’s pride and joy. We cannot give everyone an opportunity for hands-on practice, because the ingredient is so difficult to come by and so incredibly expensive. I’ll show you the procedure in detail, and you must watch attentively. At home you can use a monkey or piglet as a substitute.
She first stressed that a chef’s heart is made of steel and that a chef should never waste emotions. Rather than being human, the babies we are about to slaughter and cook are small animals in human form that are, based upon strict, mutual agreement, produced to meet the special needs of Liquorland’s developing economy and prosperity. In essence, they are no different than the platypuses swimming in the tank waiting to be slaughtered. Please put your minds at ease, and do not let your imagination run wild. You must recite to yourselves a thousand times, ten thousand times: They are not human. They are little animals in human form. Gracefully she picked up a switch and banged it several times against the tank: In essence they are no different than platypuses.
She picked up the phone on the wall and barked a command into the receiver. Then she put down the phone and said to the students: This, of course, is a famous dish that one day will shock the world, so we cannot tolerate the slightest carelessness in the creative process. Generally speaking, the emotional pressure an animal experiences before being slaughtered affects the amount of glycogen in the meat, which in turn decreases the quality of the finished product. Therefore, an experienced butcher always prefers ending the animal’s life with lightning speed, in order to improve the quality of the meat. In comparison with average domesticated animals, meat boys are more intelligent, so we must try everything possible to maintain their happy spirit, thus preserving the quality of the main ingredient of this famous dish. The traditional method of slaughtering was to brain them with a club, but this method bruises the soft tissues and can even smash the skull, thereby affecting the appearance of the finished product. It has gradually been replaced by anesthetization with ethanol. The Brewer’s College has just distilled a new liquor that is sweet and not too strong, but has an unusually high alcoholic content, which is perfect for our purposes. Experience has shown that anesthetizing the meat boys with alcohol before slaughtering reduces the milk odor that used to be the most troublesome aspect of the cooking process, and lab tests have shown that the nutritional value of anesthetized meat boys increases dramatically. Once again she reached for the receiver on the wall, and said:
Send it in.
That’s all my mother-in-law said, and without fanfare; five minutes later, two young women in snowy white hospital gowns and square caps carried a naked meat boy into the lecture hall in a specially designed gurney. The women would have been considered good looking, but their pale faces made me squirm. They set the gurney on the chopping block, then stepped aside, their arms hanging down stiffly. My mother-in-law bent over to inspect the pink meat boy, poked him in the chest with a soft, dainty index finger, and nodded with satisfaction. Then she stood up to remind the students one more time, with great solemnity: You must never ever forget that this is just a little animal in human form. She’d barely gotten the words out when the little animal in human form on the gurney rolled over. The students let out a suppressed gasp. Everyone, myself included, thought the little guy opening on his foot. In a strangely beautiful manner, a string of bright red drops of blood like gemstones hung down to merge with a glass jar under his foot. The lecture hall was unusually quiet. All the students – male and female – their eyes bulging, were staring at the meat boy’s foot and the string of blood that hung from it. The camera from the local TV station was also trained on the foot and the blood beneath it, which sparkled in the bright lights. Gradually I heard the students’ heavy breathing, deep like the swelling tide, and the clear, crisp, ear-pleasing sounds of blood dripping into the jar, like a creek flowing through deep ravines. My mother-in-law said, The meat boy’s blood will be
