There are many curious routes to insight; and as many, often more banal, routes to ruin. It was certainly curious to receive a call from Paul ten years after we had divorced. Not that it had been particularly bitter. We just wanted different things. He wanted kids; I did not.
We went our separate ways. Such are the everyday maneuvers of life. He had moved to New York to be with his younger partner, who duly provided him with his required progeny; three of them, all girls. I stayed in Coventry and purchased a flat, from where I managed a little online enterprise making homemade bags and jewelry. And thus a decade passed.
He had called me because his father had just died. There was no one to help. His brother was in New Zealand and was due to go out on a crew ship to Antarctica the following week for three months. His partner was seriously ill and he couldn’t leave her, or the kids, with anyone, so that he could make all the necessary arrangements. He was desperate. He needed my help also to deal with the authorities in Poland, where his father had moved to eight years previously. I had studied Slavic languages as my degree, and had begun an MA in Polish Literature, before funds had run out and, on meeting Paul, I’d deferred my place for a year, and then further deferrals until they got fed up with me and terminated my studies. I had only used my Polish a few times in the intervening years, talking with some of the local immigrants and in one of the specialist Polish food shops, but I was still fairly fluent.
I don’t really know why I agreed, but then again why wouldn’t I? As I said we didn’t part on bad terms—I had no grudge against him. He offered to pay me well enough. Perhaps I fancied a change from the routine, and a little glimpse back into the past. I had also liked his father, Dieter—he was a kind, calm and quiet man. I did it as much for him as for either Paul, or myself.
A few days later I found myself stepping off a budget flight onto the frosty tarmac at Krakow airport. Paul had booked me a rental car for as long as I might need it and I slung my bags into the boot and got out the maps I’d printed off for my journey to a little village called Sobolów, some thirty kilometers south-east of Krakow. I’d asked Paul why on earth his father had moved there. He didn’t know, he was never one to pry—he was too self-absorbed for that. It seemed peculiarly out of the way; Dieter was hardly a recluse. It was early November and the snows would soon be coming. I needed to get everything arranged for the funeral quickly and then the house up for sale; the rest could be done from a distance.
It was lovely seeing the Polish countryside again. The area around Krakow had always called to me; the great, stunning expanses of land, punctuated here and there by copses of trees that seemed to then huddle together the further you got from the city into long sprawling woodlands and denser decaying forests. It was not simply the natural world that fascinated me about this landscape but its collision with the modern; suddenly train tracks would appear from nowhere and great yards of rusting carriages and engines. Then up would pop, miles from a town or village, an industrial estate, busy with trucks and diggers. And then there were the many isolated little houses—never lit, or with sign of any inhabitation—holiday homes perhaps, the Polish were very fond of their houses in the country. Beyond all of this, or perhaps beneath it, is the ubiquity of the little kapliczki, whether they be elaborate communal things on the outskirts of small villages, or the idiosyncratic wooden constructions that appeared throughout the countryside.
Seeing them again reminded me of a road trip I had taken with a friend from university, Daisy Simmons, over twenty years previously. We had travelled Eastern Poland and the Ukraine, taking pictures of all the little shrines we came across. Most do not record the reason for their erection but many that stand by the roadside mark a traffic accident and are memorials for the dead. I remember being particularly affected by a very strange one near some woods a few kilometers from Przemyśl. It had pieces of long colored twine hanging from it tied to which were numerous small dolls, each in varying states of decay. We stopped and read the dedication; it was a plea to Saint Philomena to watch over the souls of three sisters that had been murdered nearby in 1978. Daisy and I spent an hour sitting there by the roadside, first in tears and then in quiet contemplation. We ended the trip a few days later, that small shrine casting a dark shadow over the holiday.
It was weird to be thinking of Daisy Simmons again as I drove into Sobolów. Her father had been a building developer and he had been one of the first to take advantage of the fall of the iron curtain. He was straight into Poland, employing good tradespeople at good rates, to build countryside bungalows for the growing middle classes. The outskirts of Sobolów looked as though it could have been built by Daisy’s father, all orange roof tiles and freshly-painted render. The center of the village consisted of a great wooden church, a small shop, large restaurant, and a long cemetery that seemed to go on forever up a steep hill leading out of the village—bright with the usual offerings of plastic and real flowers, colored glass vases with floating candles and numerous pictures of the saints; something about Polish cemeteries seemed so alive, so active, compared to the desolation of the English equivalent; private, isolated affairs, as if to say that none other than oneself might have the privilege of death.
I had got some vague directions to Dieter’s house from Paul, over the phone, but these were not to be relied upon; he was never good at explaining things to other people. I thought it best just to ask at the local shop, whilst getting a few groceries to tide me over. The owner was very helpful, a Mrs. Szczepanska. She had been a friend of Dieter and was pleased to hear that I had come to arrange the funeral and the estate. If I needed anything I was just to ask, and she would set up an account for me at the shop, even offering to close the shop and go with me to show me the house. I said that wouldn’t be necessary; if she could just mark precisely on the map where it was and offer a few pointers to any issues on the way. She duly did and I soon found myself driving down a very steep road, heavily wooded on both sides, which opened out onto a long track through a valley. Given the amount of run-off water already across the road in the wood I guessed that it would be pretty impassable in heavy snow, or icy frost, and resolved again to get my tasks concluded as soon as possible before the real winter came.
Dieter’s bungalow was not quite as modest as Paul had described. It had large metal gates that opened onto a curving drive ending with a triple garage; a summerhouse; a large wood store; a shed and the main house itself. There was an ample garden, with many well-tended beds and borders, all carefully prepared for the winter. There was clearly a large allotment area too, that had only recently been dug over, but still with a few winter vegetables now going to seed.
I unlocked the main door with the key that Paul had sent me. The house was very cold and it had that sad stillness about it that accrues after a death—a melancholy compounded by the fact that everything seems to speak of their last moments; as though the objects of the home are somehow questioning where their owner may be. I cried a little. It brought back the sudden death of both of my own parents, five years previously. They had been on their way to Heathrow to catch an early morning flight to Venice as part of a dream cruise they had been planning for years. They ended up in a five car pile-up on the M1. I remembered my first time walking back into the family home after they had died.
I sighed and set to busying myself with practical things. The house was heated by a large stove in the center of an open plan lounge, dining room and kitchen. This also powered the hot water, Paul had told me. A pile of logs and kindling were stacked neatly beside it. I raked the ashes out from the last fire that Dieter had set, laid a new one, and soon the place was warming up.
I brought my few groceries in from the car, and my bags, and thought it best to get things arranged for sleeping that evening. Two doors led off from the dining room, one into a small bathroom area with a lovely walk-in shower. The other opened into Dieter’s bedroom. Again, it looked sad; the bed still disheveled from the last night he had slept there, a half-drunk glass of water on the bedside table, and a green hardback book open next to it. I closed it and read the spine, Of Herbs and Spices by Colin Clair. A little odd, I thought; Dieter had never been one for cookery. I opened it again and the title page fell open. There was a simple, colored print of a foxglove in green and pink, striking and attractive. I flicked through. There were many colored plates of plants and even more in black and white. The whole thing was filled with Dieter’s annotations, in pencil, blue and black pen, and even in places in a thick felt tip. I put the book down again and thought I’d look over his marginalia later. For now I needed to get the bedding changed and think about some supper.
There was plenty of clean bed linen and once I’d hung a few of my own clothes up on the rail it was starting to look a bit more like my room. I went through to the kitchen and put a can of soup on to simmer and cut some thick pieces of bread to go with it. There was a small utility area off to the side and I dropped the dirty bedding in there, to put on to wash later. Just beside the washing machine a small door opened into a large pantry cupboard, big enough to walk into, cooled by unplastered outer walls. As I opened the door a pungent waft of herby air rushed out. I saw above me an old clothes drying rack, tied up to the ceiling on a pulley. Hanging from it were bunches of dried herbs of every kind imaginable. It had clearly been well used, the sagging wooden shelves had a good number of tins and cans—beans, fish, sauces and soups—neatly arranged in rows. There were also packs and packs of salt and many jars with spices and further dried herbs, all neatly labelled up by Dieter. Beside the salt there was bottle after bottle of every type of vinegar one could think of. More practically there were some cartons of UHT milk and various powdered products; bottles of juices and water and a few wines and bottles of beer. I spotted a row of at least six green bottles with a very distinctive shape—Becherovka! God, I hadn’t had any of that in years. It was a wonderful, herbal Czech spirit that again brought back memories of Daisy Simmons. We had spent an outrageous New Year in Prague in 1998 and had got so drunk on it in a touristy restaurant, endlessly supplied with shots of the stuff by roving waiters that seemed to deposit the glasses like water at our table.
With everything that was stored in the pantry one could have easily lived for a few months without venturing from the house. At the back there was a tall metal rack on which many kilner jars were stacked, each crammed with various pickled vegetables and fruits. The whole rack had a strange air about it; as though I had walked back into another century. As my eyes scanned the jars I had an awful sense of eeriness; pickled eggs bulged against their glass prisons like dead cows’ eyes; pickled cucumbers floated in brine like the fingers of drowned men, gnawed by long fronds of dill; sliced beetroot was stacked like shavings of rotting flesh submerged in blood; brown chutneys were pocked like piles of dark manure—all of it a desperate attempt to halt the inevitability of rot and the relentlessness of decay. I shivered.
In the furthest corner, beside the metal rack of preserves, there was a small wooden cabinet— more like a bedside table—with a cupboard below and a drawer above. I tried the cupboard. It was locked. The drawer opened easily enough and inside I found a green account ledger with well-thumbed pages. A darkened sticker on the front read, in Dieter’s familiar script, Dieter Helm ~ Other Preserves ~ January 2005–May 2017. I flicked through; neatly copied out recipes, scraps of notepaper with little recollections of old memories, a few newspaper clippings about gardening, mushrooms, foraging, and further recipes ripped from magazines and other odd bits a bobs. It looked rather intriguing so I decided to take it back through to the main house and look at it in more detail later that evening, along with the annotated book on herbs and spices.
My soup had caught in the pan but enough was salvageable to keep hunger at bay. I opened a bottle of red wine from the pantry, which was quite decent. As the silence of the dark evening wrapped about the house I realized there was one further room to check. It was on the other side of the building, beyond the lounge. It was supposed to be a second bedroom, and had a small en suite, but Dieter had used it as a study and it was crammed with his books on Marxism and Socialism and his stacks of paperwork and notes. He had been an historian and I had always found his books—he wrote only a few—to be meticulously researched and written with a passion and energy that was absolutely infectious. I looked across the shelves at all the editions of Marx and Engels; Kapital in German, Polish and English translation, and so many different editions of The Communist Manifesto. Other book spines revealed the names of the great and the good, and indeed the downright bad and wicked, of the Revolutionary Ideal; Trotsky, Lenin, Lafargue, Kautsky, Pashukanis and the wider, associated thinkers, writers and theorists; Gorky, Benjamin, Habermas, and Marcuse. I noticed a whole shelf of books by Ted Grant. I knew they had been great friends until Grant’s death a few years before Dieter moved to Poland. I took out a well-worn copy of The Unbroken Thread and opened it up. It was inscribed, “To my good friend Dieter, A little token of my vanity! With all best wishes, Your comrade, Ted.” The book was very dusty, as indeed were all of the books on these shelves.
The other side of the room seemed more used. On the few, low bookcases there I found many books on cookery, gardening, herbs and spices, folklore and myth. It seemed that these latter books were all fairly recently read and clearly marked something of a new departure for Dieter in his interests, and chimed with the book I had found on his bedside table. Perhaps he had given up on the project of a socialist utopia; finally realizing it was impossible in a world obsessed with itself. Or maybe he had merely become absorbed in a new project for a while, before intending to return to his politics and history. I would never know now. I smiled to see a half-full bottle of Becherovka on the desk and next to it a sticky shot glass. I plucked up the bottle and took it through to the lounge to toast the memory of Dieter. I closed the door on the study; it would take a lot of sorting out.
I sat down with Dieter’s book of Other Preserves and looked at the first entry. It was in a green ink and was dated December 2004:
1. Herb and Spice Blend – For Other Preserves
Ingredients:
A whole Nutmeg, grated
One Cardamom, ground
Three inches of Cassia bark, ground
A good head of dried Yarrow flowers
Ten leaves of fresh Rosemary
Fresh Mallow root
1 tsp dried Lavender
One stem of Lovage
A spike of Plantain seeds
A drop of Oil of Sage
[Caveat: the provenance of the ingredients is of little importance, as long as they are of good quality, apart from the Oil of Sage, Mallow, Rosemary, and Yarrow, which should always be picked by the one producing the blend; the latter should be dried for a minimum of thirty days, in total darkness, before use. The Oil of Sage should be made in the month of May and matured for at least six months.]
Method: The entirety should be ground inside a mortar crafted of the rough-scraped skull of a red stag; the pestle of the base of a thick young Ash tree, taken no more than one inch from the root in one fell of an iron axe, and then, crudely, and swiftly, wrought, so that its sap may contribute to the making of the blend. For the duration of the grinding, which should take no less than one hour, but not more than two, the names of the maker’s nearest deceased kin should be intoned, in a ceaseless mantra. Use only the given names, and never the family names (the latter can attract unwelcome, violent spirits!). The nature of the ancestral link is of vital import! Of most powerful application to the blend is the naming of the maker’s parents, should they be departed. Beyond that proximity through the matrilineal is to be favored. Never, under any circumstance, reverse the lineage . . . do not—DO NOT—invoke the names of departed siblings, or offspring! I cannot emphasize this last point enough!
The whole powder should be mixed to a paste with Fennel water using the same pestle and mortar and then dried again on a thin metal tray over a very smoky fire using thin sticks of well dried cedar; when the fire begins to light too much dowse with a little of the fennel water to create as much smoke as possible. Once dried, and before fully cooled, return the blend to the mortar and grind again to a fine powder in small batches. The entire blend should then be mixed together for an hour with a bone spoon (fashioned from the tibia of the same beast used for the mortar) and stored in a solid silver casket used solely for the purpose.
(Note: use precisely as directed in the recipes. If the described effects of each are not achieved it will be a result of a failure in the blend. The defective blend must be discarded, along with the silver casket, which will be forever tainted by it. A new blend must be produced in precise adherence with the above instructions.)
I put the book down, a little unnerved. It was so clearly Dieter’s writing, but the subject was so strange, so oddly pagan and irrational that I could only think it was part of some fiction he was writing. He had always been an atheist, and certainly had no interest—when I knew him anyway—in anything to do with magic or mysticism. But this seemed to be like a kind of, well, witchcraft—I could not think of any other word for it. I flicked through the annotations in the bedside book on herbs and found little notes, again in Dieter’s hand, about the efficacy of herbs in given months, for certain ailments, but I also found odd little diagrams and insignia; the kind of thing I had seen only in those tacky 1970s books on the occult—popular pulp on the supernatural. I sat, staring into the fire, topping my glass up regularly, listening to the wind howl about the house.
The following morning, nursing a rather sore head, I put all thoughts of strange preserving methods and silly superstitions from my mind. I concentrated on getting arrangements made for the funeral. It would be a simple affair, I told myself—probably just me and the priest at the graveside, a few short poems and prayers and then on to sorting out the will and the house. I gathered many of the necessary documents from Dieter’s study through the morning and thought it a good idea to have a decent warm meal in the village. The restaurant was owned by a Czech man, Marek, and his Polish wife, Teresa. They welcomed me and said how much they had loved Dieter, who often dined there. A plate of steaming pierogi appeared for me, with a vast bowl of barszcz czerwony, without me even placing an order. They talked and talked as I tentatively ate, enjoying the intense evocation of memory that the food gave me. Mrs. Szczepanska made an appearance as I was trying to force down the last of my pierogi. She was with another of Dieter’s friends, a younger woman called Marta, probably in her mid-thirties, who had helped Dieter with his garden and vegetable patches. Once they all knew I was arranging the funeral they all began planning the wake, which they insisted take place there in the restaurant, and entirely at their expense. They started listing names of Dieter’s friends, both locally, and in towns and cities further away, all of whom must, they insisted, be invited. As I began to protest Mrs. Szczepanska held up a hand, as though to silence a moody child, and asserted that she would deal with it all and provide me a list of the guests the following day. All I needed to do was make the arrangements with the authorities and everything else would be dealt with. I was then presented with a large slice of excellent cheesecake, peppered with fat raisins soaked in brandy—the deal was done, apparently.
And so it proved to be. I had a couple of difficult days in Krakow, trying to deal with overzealous bureaucrats, entailing two return journeys to Dieter’s house to find documents that then were deemed to be unnecessary. But finally all was in place for the funeral the following Friday. As I had no mobile reception at Dieter’s house, and there was no internet connection either (Dieter and computers just never seemed to click) I spent a lot of time in the main village, making plans with Marek, or Teresa, as they offered their thoughts and opinions. I kept Paul informed as I went along. He was happy with whatever I suggested. I had chosen everything to be as basic as possible, as he had instructed—simple coffin, no flowers, and so on; just frugal and functional. The turnout though was quite overwhelming, at least fifty people, all of whom seemed to want to introduce themselves to me and just assumed that I was still married to Paul. The wake was far from austere. I think Marek and Teresa had planned to feed at least a hundred, and provided wine and vodka for nearly two hundred. It became a superb celebration of Dieter’s rich life; he was clearly well respected and loved by these people. I understood now why he had moved here. If I could ever find such care and friendship I would do the same.
I left the wake while it was still in full swing, tired from all the planning, and just relieved to have seen it all go off ok. I slipped away from the crowd, a little tipsy, and drove back to Dieter’s just as it was getting dark; a gentle snow was beginning to fall.
Back at the house things seemed even quieter than they had before. I had left the fire blazing well, but it was now reduced to a few embers. I stoked it up again and realized that in all the preparations for the funeral I had neglected to get any more food in for myself. I would have to fall back on Dieter’s pantry. I rummaged around to find something appetizing. A can of vegetable broth would do. I also found a few hard cheeses wrapped in cloth and grabbed a pack of crackers. A jar of Dieter’s homemade piccalilli would go well with them. I hadn’t had piccalilli in years; it always reminded me of Christmas at my parents’ house. The preserves were on the higher shelves and as I took the jar down a small key slid off the shelf and jingled on the tiled floor. I found it soon enough and realized that it should fit the cupboard door of the little cabinet unit.
As I opened it a waft of musty air escaped; vinegar and mold, damp leather and the mushroomy scent of soil. Inside there were two shelves, on the lower one very small jars were stacked, higgledy-piggledy, on top of each other. Beside them were a number of brownish muslin cloth packages, loosely bound with green twine. On the shelf above there were some very odd things indeed; a small twig all splayed and crushed at one end, where it was also blackened, as though from a fire; a thin knife—I guessed it was silver—very crudely wrought, and clearly much used as its blade was exceedingly worn. There was a hand axe, again well-used, its cracked handle held together with black electrical tape. There was also a small silver box. I recalled the ludicrous recipe I had read the night I arrived. No, surely, I thought, you can’t be serious, Dieter. You didn’t believe this drivel, did you? You didn’t actually try to make that stuff. I opened the box. Sure enough, there was a fine brown powder within. I scoffed in disbelief. I started looking at the little jars. They were each labelled with numbers, mostly number five, and a few sevens, many had the initials D. H. on them, and two had P. H.; each was dated. One, half consumed, read 5. Marta, 15/05/15, A delight! I didn’t know what to think. I wondered what could be in the muslin packages. My hand was shaking a little as I reached for them, but I pulled myself together. It’s just a load of hocus-pocus, I assured myself. I undid a couple and the stale smell became stronger. In one there were long, thin strips of meat with white, moldy rinds, tied into bundles; small labels were tied to each strip, again numbered, initialed, and dated, all with the number three and the initials D. H.; the dates were all within the last six months. My hands shook again as I unwrapped another package. Meats again, but knotted into roundish, dry sausages, almost black, but with a yellowish mold. The labels on these were stained with grease and were harder to make out. They all seemed to have the number twelve, and again the initials D. H., but with dates from 2014 to within the last three months. I looked at the contents of the cupboard, now spread before me on the pantry floor. Suddenly I had an overpowering sense of dread and scrambled to my feet and ran through to the kitchen where I poured a large glass of red wine and, in an attempt to get my composure back, busied myself getting some cheese and crackers together to eat. It really is all just some silly nonsense to do with something Dieter was writing about, I kept thinking. He was such a stickler for research; he must have got rather consumed by it all and started experimenting so that he could get the details right.
I sat down with my supper—get a bloody grip! I thought. The snow was really coming down now and the wind was getting up again. Against my better judgement I reached for the ridiculous book I had taken from the pantry cupboard and flicked further on.
12. To Relive a Memory from Youth – A Blood Pudding.
Ingredients:
A pint of one’s own blood (or that of another requesting the
sausage and who is trustworthy with the knowledge
of such things.)
4 oz of hard back fat, finely diced
4 oz shallots, finely diced
1 tbsp fine oatmeal, soaked in caraway water and goat’s milk
overnight
1 tsp herb and spice blend (of the kind previously described)
1 tsp salt
1 tsp white pepper
1 head of coriander flowers, finely chopped
Natural casings
1 buttercup, 1 daisy, 1 dandelion (dried together in five days
of midday sun and then ground into a powder in a pestle and mortar)
Method: Rub the required length of casings in the powder of buttercup, daisy and dandelion and set aside.
Sweat the fat, with the shallots, until they are tender, remove from the heat and spit upon it (or add the fresh spit of the one requesting it). Stir in the drained oatmeal, herb and spice blend, salt, pepper and coriander flowers.
Sieve the blood to remove clots and stir into the cooled mixture.
Fill the casings using a funnel and wooden spoon, as they are easily broken. Do not overfill as you will need to separate into smaller sausages tied with homespun twine. Leave room for the mixture to expand upon cooking, which should be for merely ten minutes in boiling water freshly taken from a free running spring. This quantity will make twenty small sausages. Under no circumstances must they be reheated, or chilled. They should be stored in a cool, dry place. They will be preserved from undue decay for up to three years by the blend, but will taste of rot when eaten. This is normal.
(Note: Should a specific memory be desired then care must be taken to recall this [as best one can] during the consumption of the sausage. A light reverie will ensue, during which one will feel as though one were present at the memory, sometimes this may involve a dislocation from it, especially if many years have passed, and one may feel as though one witnesses the event, rather than it being one’s own experience.)
“Oh, you are fucking joking with me, Dieter, ‘A pint of one’s own blood,’ ” I laughed, glancing up at the heavens. “You silly old man! You don’t think I am taking this crap seriously do you?” I urgently looked further back in the book.
5. To Dwell in Another’s Dreams
Ingredients:
1 lb apples (any variety)
2-3 ripe plums
1 large onion finely chopped
1 lb demerara sugar
½ pint white wine vinegar
A pint of spring water
A whole garlic bulb, roughly chopped (including skin)
A large stem of ginger, roughly chopped (including skin)
1 tsp herb and spice blend (as previously described)
A single strand of hair from the chosen dreamer (this may be
procured from a hairbrush or any where really. The length of hair is immaterial.)
One long dark root of Wormwood
A larva (any species will do, but beware, maggots will
invariably result in the production of a nightmare—if this is what is required then a blow fly maggot will be sure to deliver! I have found mosquito larvae particularly useful for this purpose and merely leaving a bucket of water outside within a week or two there will be ample larvae to select from.)
A handful of ashes from a Laurel Fire
Method: Rough cut the apples into 1 inch chunks. Halve the plums, retaining the stones. Taking a large pan place all the ingredients in (save for the hair, wormwood root, larva and ashes) and bring to the boil, stirring continuously, then simmer for at least two hours, stirring occasionally until the surface of the mixture retains a furrow when a wooden spoon is dragged across it. Allow to cool for half an hour before adding the live larva, hair and wormwood root. Allow to cool fully before adding the ashes and then mix thoroughly before bottling into small jars.
(Note: The finished preserve will last up to five years but must be labelled with the name of the person and the date of bottling. Do not consume beyond the point of five years as it will induce frightful hallucinations. Only a little need be consumed—say, a teaspoon—before sleep, to enable the dreams to be reproduced. These will be in full and may come from any age of the person selected. It may take some time to become fully acquainted with these dream patterns, but once one has done so it is frequently possible to guide the dreams to a particular period in their life. Remember that childhood dreams frequently move back and forth into more nightmarish territory and care is advised in seeking out these dreams.)
“Right, then,” I said, angrily. “Let’s put you to the test, Dieter.”
I threw the book down on the sofa and stormed through to the pantry. I rifled through the little jars and found the one labeled “Marta.” I took it through to the kitchen and got out a small spoon. I unscrewed the sticky cap and sniffed at the gloopy brown mess inside. It had a sweet aroma to it, but the abiding smell was fungal. I scooped up a loaded spoonful and swallowed it. It was smooth, and quite sweet, but the aftertaste was woody, like damp bark.
I swigged some wine straight from the bottle to wash it down. It did not take the taste away. “There you go, Dieter,” I shouted. “Let’s see what dreams may come, eh?”
Despite my bravado I had a sudden feeling of regret, followed by an irrational fear. What if it were poisonous? Surely it wouldn’t actually work and induce dreams, but maybe the mix itself would do me some harm. The nearest other bungalow to Dieter’s was nearly half a kilometer away and with the snow coming down like it was at the moment it would be unlikely that anyone would find me for days if I did get sick.
I panicked and wandered the house, desperately trying to find a place with a signal so that I could at least send a text to Paul to make him aware that I may be in danger. There was no signal anywhere. I stared at the darkness outside, watching the great flurries of snowflakes being plastered across the whitening countryside. I was alone. I would have to deal with it.
It took me many hours to get to sleep, mainly because my mind was racing with all of the connections I was making between the things I had read in Dieter’s recipe book and what I had found in the small cupboard. It just couldn’t be possible that this little spoon of homemade chutney would induce another’s dream. It just wasn’t possible.
I awoke at nearly midday, feeling better than I had in years. I did dream; the clearest, most lucid dream I could ever recall; and I recalled it in great detail. There were a group of us, children, playing in an alpine landscape. We were holding hands with badgers and bears, owls and otters, all of them the same size as us, chanting nursery rhymes and singing nonsense songs. We were dancing around a single giant daisy that grew from a mound of purple soil, ringed with white rocks, almost glowing with their brightness. The sky kept changing color, as though going through phases of sunset; dark oranges, bright reds and then an ominous mauve that darkened everything about us. We children then also became animals and we all then dispersed into a wood to hunt. I seemed to be some kind of bird and flitted through the dark trees in search of insects, which appeared to my birdish sight as little glowing specks of red in the gloom. When I had had my fill I burst into a shower of glittering embers that cascaded to the woodland floor, from each erupted a huge block of grey concrete that shattered the trees around it. As my dream sight floated up into the sky, below me the whole earth was splintering into a dull block of grayness. Then all was darkness.
I shuffled through to the kitchen in my nightdress to make a coffee. The house was illuminated with the brightness of the snow outside. I looked out. It must be at least three feet deep. The sky looked dark though, heavy with another impeding bout of it. I was here to stay for the next few days, at least. But I had survived the night, and chided myself for my foolish fit of terror, and impetuous risk in consuming the damned thing in the first place.
I wandered about in a daze. Had the dream been mine, or Marta’s; how could I possibly know? It was certainly unlike any dream I had had before, and the sense of it too was somewhat alien, as though I did not belong there. I sat down with a pot of coffee and re-read the two recipes from the previous evening. Again I sank back with incredulity. Did this really indicate that sitting through in the pantry, in an old bedside table, there were little pots of people’s dreams—that the strings of nasty looking sausages were dried up chunks of childhood memory; preposterous, I affirmed, but the doubt was already within me, quite literally.
By mid-afternoon the snow was back again. I had spent the previous couple of hours trying to occupy myself with anything to avoid thinking of the book and the things in that cupboard. I couldn’t wait a moment longer though and suddenly rushed through and grabbed the package of small sausages. I searched for the most recent label I could find, 12. D. H., 20/03/17. I cut it into small slices and crammed one in my mouth, chewing rapidly. As it described in the recipe there was a rotten taste, indeed that was the only taste; similar to the chutney, but much more intense, and without any relieving sweetness, or fruity flavor. I stood there at the kitchen sink, wondering whether I should just stick my fingers down my throat to bring the awful thing back up again. Then I began to feel very light-headed. I stumbled through to the bed to lie down, again admonishing myself for such rash behavior.
What happened in the following hour was simply magical. I seemed to drift beside a large ship moving steadily through light, dark waves. I kept swooping in towards the deck, as though I were a gull. I was circling around a man and a small child. The man looked so much like Dieter, I was amazed. But Dieter was tall and thin and this man was short and quite heavily built. He also had a thick, brown moustache. Dieter had always been clean-shaven. On the horizon land appeared, and a city came into view, just as evening began to descend. As the ship drew closer, my sweeping, free-roaming perspective got closer and closer to the little boy, until it seemed that I was looking through his eyes. On the skyline the glimmering lights of the city came into view, and I was filled with a sense of awe and trepidation, of excitement and joy. Then there was a striking image—the Statue of Liberty. We were approaching America.
I had not been asleep during this; merely in some kind of stupor. It was as though it happened inside my mind, the way I would recall my own memories. But this, this I knew belonged to Dieter. He had talked of it at great length on any occasion we had seen him. He had travelled to America with his father, from England, in the late 1940s. His mother had died shortly after he was born and his father, a dedicated socialist, was in danger in the Germany of the late thirties. He had fled to England in 1939, with Dieter still a baby, and had stayed somewhere in Kent, with a distant relative. Despite his clear opposition to Hitler he was interred in a holding camp for much of the war and never really forgave the British for what he saw as an unnecessary cruelty. Dieter, in those early years, had been raised by this relative but on his release Dieter’s father had planned the move to America, which promised a new life for them both. This image came straight from the description Dieter had always given. Or, was it possible that I had merely projected this, given the intensity of my current emotions?
I then remembered the thin strips of meat, labelled number three. What were they intended for? I felt as though I were drunk, tottering through to the lounge to find the entry for them in Dieter’s book.
3. To Recapture a Recent Moment
Ingredients:
Either 1 lb Venison Loin or fillet of Beef (venison will recall
more cerebral or emotional experiences, beef the more corporeal)
30% brine solution
3 tsps herb and spice blend (as described for these purposes)
2 tsps Salt
2 tsps Pepper (coarsely ground)
The sweat of your body, required for air drying to further
preserve (see below):
3 tsps ground coriander seed A pint of cider vinegar
Enough salt (mixed with one tbsp saltpeter) to roll the joint in
and entirely cover
Method: Soak the meat for one day and night in the brine. Remove and pat dry. Rub the meat all over your body gathering as much sweat as possible. Rub together the blend, salt and pepper and rub over the meat. Cover and allow to stand in a cool place for a further day and night.
To smoke the meat one must use a crude smoker. This can be fashioned from any wooden crate, the principal being that there must be much aeration. Choose a windy day to do this. Light a fire of alder wood and allow to smoke. Suspend the meat on hooks from the top of the crate, ensuring that there is at least a foot above the smoking wood. Leave for four hours. The meat is ready to use as soon as it is cool. See below though for notes on its consumption at this stage.
To further dry to the consistency of biltong (which is recommended) then soak the cooled meat in the cider vinegar for one day and night. Then pat dry and roll in the salt and saltpeter mixture. Leave for one hour. Rub in the ground coriander seed and then leave for a further hour.
Finely slice the entire meat joint and thread onto wooden skewers, leaving a half-inch gap between each. For the drying box one can use the same crate as for the smoking. Simply suspend the skewers from the top of the crate and leave in a cool, airy space to dry. This is best assisted by the use of a cable lamp, if the latter is used drying should take 2-3 days, if not then it will be 6-8 days.
Note: This will recapture experiences within the previous 6-12 months of the life of the producer. It is best to keep some of the first smoked cure to access those more distant memories (of 8-12 months) and the drier meat for the more recent. The former will last 2-3 weeks in a sealed container, the latter up to a year. As only one sliver need be consumed at a time this should produce enough to recall many moments. The first cure will also produce an intensity of experience that is shorter in duration—normally a few minutes. The tougher, dried meat will produce a longer recollection—even up to an hour—but one that is rather clouded, as though viewed through a slightly distorted window.
If a specific memory is required then care should be taken to begin to recall it immediately upon eating, otherwise the meat will randomly activate memories dependent upon one’s mood.
I rushed through and grabbed the bundle. I took them into the kitchen and shaved slivers off of a few of them with a potato peeler. I put them on a plate and sat on the sofa, pausing a brief moment before I took the first one. It was quite chewy, and didn’t have that rotten taste the other two had. A few seconds later I was experiencing a sensation of intense lust and then my eyes fogged a little before closing. I seemed transported to Dieter’s bedroom. What I saw there revealed a rather deeper relationship with Marta than I had initially thought. A few minutes later I was back to myself again. It felt strange to be a voyeur into recent moments in Dieter’s life, but the urge to do so was compelling. I took another sliver of meat and was walking through the woods, looking for herbs and mushrooms. I looked down to see Dieter’s boots striding through emerging bluebells, and then glanced up into the trees at shards of bright sunlight. On and on I ate, binging on moments of another’s existence, from the most ordinary to the most private and intimate. It appeared that Dieter had been quite the man about town; numerous recollections involved some of the women I had seen at the funeral, but there seems to have been a genuine passion for Marta.
After a few hours I stopped. The fire had burnt out entirely and a blizzard was raging outside.
What am I doing, I thought. What kind of madness is this? I must stop.
I tried everything to occupy myself. Nothing worked though. All I could think about were those shards of meat and the fantastical visions they promised me; ways of knowing another person that one could never achieve otherwise.
The storm howled on, and inside its icy inferno I fell into an addict’s wonderland. No drug, no drink, no physical pleasure had ever given me anything as intoxicating as this. I binged on spoonfuls of fantasy; loitered through other lives and minds in a crazy kaleidoscope of images, memories and moods. Days passed as I dozed on the bed, sipping Becherovka and nibbling shavings of the past or inducing hours of dreams, or nightmare.
I was awoken, quite when it was I cannot say, by a loud hammering at the door. I pulled on a thin dressing gown and answered the urgent knocking.
It was Mrs. Szczepanska, looking distraught. She warbled on about how they had been so worried about me, with it being almost three weeks since the snows had arrived and nobody had been able to make it down to this part of the village. She hoped I had survived on the well-stocked larder that she had helped Dieter to assemble. On and on she rattled, her words jumbling together into a bizarre, hallucinatory incantation. The real world was crumbling around me, in favor of another realm.
When she had finished I stirred from my reverie.
“What do you want,” I said, curtly. “I’ve got to sort through Dieter’s affairs, I’m very busy.” It was true, in so many ways. All his affairs were magically arrayed before me to indulge my prurience; yet also, I was meant to be dealing with his estate. The latter could wait.
She was visibly shocked, probably as much by my appearance as by my attitude. I did not care. She left in a huff of bewilderment.
After I had seen her off I returned to those other’s realities. Perhaps it was a few days later, in a rare moment of lucidity, that I recalled the other recipes in the book. Why were there only jars of a certain recipe, and the, rapidly dwindling, stocks of the two types of meat? There were other pages to explore; perhaps further stashes of even more revelatory things might be discovered.
The other numbered recipes were disappointing, and seemed to be of relatively mild effect, compared to these astounding concoctions. There were love potions, and cures for various ailments—number thirteen was for a potent poison made from simple soil. The last entry, number fifteen, tempted with something else entirely though:
15. To See Beyond the Threshold
Ingredients:
1 lb of flesh of the departed
1 lb Saltpeter
3 tsps of herb and spice blend
Enough grave clothes, or the shroud of the same departed, to
wrap the flesh to cure
Method: The departed must have been known to the one making the cured flesh. The stronger the bond the deeper the knowledge revealed will be. The deceased must be no more than six months gone and the flesh retrieved on the first night of a waning moon. The cut of meat is of no matter, but it must be whole, rather than comprised of smaller pieces. Often a lower limb is the most convenient for this purpose.
Wash the flesh in a stream for an hour at dusk, then rub with the soil from the roots of an oak tree. Immediately rub the blend into the flesh and then rub again with more soil. Pack the saltpeter around the flesh and wrap tightly in the grave clothing, or shroud, and then bind with ivy at intervals of one inch.
The wrapped flesh must be hung in a cool, dry place to cure. The cure will take only five days.
(Note: Once the curing is complete then one must observe the following strictly! The meat must only be consumed on the first night after the cure is complete. A day beyond and nothing will happen, a day before and you will sicken and die within three days. On that very particular night a single thin strip of the meat should be sliced, using a bone knife fashioned for the very purpose. The meat should then be left to infuse for one hour in red wine of any kind alongside root of valerian and the whole plant and flowers of Euphrasy. Upon the completion of that hour the whole strip of flesh must be consumed at once, without the aid of any liquid to assist. It will taste foul but must not be spat out, or regurgitated, or a terrible sickness will afflict you. Go to sleep immediately and the reality of the life beyond will be revealed to you. Immediately upon awakening you must take the remaining flesh and bury it beneath the root of an elder tree. The root must be as thick as the meat itself. If this final task is not done you will be forever plagued by nightmares so foul that your waking hours will be entirely lived in terror of them. Your mind will wither until your existence cannot be tolerated a moment longer and you will, if you are lucky, be able to take your own life, before being taken to the madhouse. The production, and consumption of this meat is only to be undertaken by those knowing in the craft, in the full awareness of what it is they do, and the ultimate nature of the truths that will be revealed to them—you have been warned!)
And so I sit here, Eve with the apple; what am I to do? Given the promise of such knowledge how could anyone resist? I must see! Tonight the moon begins to wane. I have a spade and shall shortly make another visit to Dieter to see what final teachings he has for me. Soon I shall know the truth of paradise or abide forever in hell.