The Guest of Honor at the Bren Club

The guest of honor was eating slowly, methodically, making no comments.

The turkey was stuffed with maggots, the salad had been bathed in grease, the potatoes had been spat up. The grapefruit tree must have been grown in a soil of mothballs, the mushrooms smelled like steel, the pâté stank of armpits. The wine could have been permanganate.

Plume, without lifting his head, was patiently eating. A snake fell from a bunch of bananas and slithered toward him; he swallowed it out of sheer politeness, then readdressed himself to the meal at hand.

To attract his attention, the mistress of the house exposed one of her breasts. Then, averting her eyes, she gave an awkward laugh.

Plume, without lifting his head, went on eating.

“Do you know how to feed a baby?” she asked, suddenly agitated, as she sniffed him. To play the gentleman, he sniffed her right back, gently. Shortly thereafter, his neighbor to the right started sobbing as she choked on a sheep’s tongue she had stupidly decided to swallow. Everybody came to her aid. Without appearing to do so, somebody pinched her nostrils closed, while others tried to be of help by pressing down on her glottis. But she never coughed up the tongue that she so wished she had never eaten in the first place.

Life, always eager to settle the score, drained out of her in silence.

“Don’t take it badly,” Plume then said to the mistress of the house, his eyes wide and gleaming. “When it comes to swallowing tongues, someone always messes up. It could have been you. It could have been me. Let’s congratulate ourselves. Let’s celebrate. If only the kids could see us now. They so love the sight of happiness.”

And she gave him a good beating, kissing him all the while.