Faces of Fear (15 page)

“Not too long. I have to find you the ingredients, you understand, and they must be fresh.”

Craig stood up. “I'll call you tomorrow.”

“Yes. You will,” said Hugo Xawery, with an imperative tone in his voice.

“Don't you trust me?” asked Craig.

“I don't know. You could cause me a great deal of embarrassment, as well as disappointment. I've already promised this treat to several very influential people.”

“I've given you my word. What more can I do?”

“You don't have to do anything more. Because I've taken one simple precaution, in case you welsh on your agreement. Somewhere in one of your freezers, amongst the rest of your meats, there are human remains – packed, of course, in completely anonymous freezer-bags, just like all of your other meat. I'm sure the police would be interested in having a rummage
among your livers and your kidneys and your loin chops.”

“You didn't have to do that,” said Craig, tersely. “I don't have any intention of welshing on my agreement.”

“Let's just call it insurance. And they're very high-quality remains. Even if you cook them and serve them up, they won't harm anybody.”

On the way out, Craig saw the girl standing in a half-open doorway at the end of the corridor. She was wearing nothing but the thinnest of silk slips, so short that it scarcely covered her. She was watching him with those slanted, sphinxlike eyes, her skin shining smooth in the lamplight. He stopped, and stared back at her. She made no attempt to turn away, or to close the door.

“You like her?” asked Hugo Xawery.

“She's beautiful.”

“I call her Xanthippa. Of course that's not her real name. Her mother and I lived together for a while, in Carmel. One day her mother left and never came back. So I suppose you could call me her guardian.”

Craig took one last look at Xanthippa, and then walked across the hallway to the front door, where the Mexican servant was waiting with undisguised displeasure to show him out.

Early next morning, he found his Uncle Lee in his back yard in Westwood, hosing his roses. Uncle Lee was over seventy now, and his face was wrinkled like an aerial view of Death Valley. He wore a coolie hat and a loose blue shift.

“Uncle Lee?”

“Hallo, Craig. I was wondering when you would come.”

“I've read it, Uncle Lee.
The Secret Shih-Tan.
I read it yesterday evening, from cover to cover.”

“Then today you will be different.”

“Yes, I'm different.” He watched the hosewater splattering into the flowerbed, and then he said, “Why did you tell Hugo Xawery that I knew about it?”

“Because
The Secret Shih-Tan
is as far as any chef can go; and you would never have been satisfied with anything less.”

“Hugo Xawery let me look at it on one condition.”

Uncle Lee looked up at him, his eyes slitted against the seven o'clock sunlight. “Don't tell me. You have to cook one of the recipes for him.”

Craig nodded. “I've been awake all night. I don't know which one to choose.”

“Which do you
wish
to choose? The greatest of all the recipes, or the recipe which causes the least human suffering?”

“I don't know. It's not just gastronomy, is it,
The Secret Shih-Tan
? It has so many inner meanings. We kill thousands of people in war, and that's supposed to be moral and glorious, even though war is totally destructive. But if we sacrifice half a dozen human beings to create one of the greatest meals in gastronomic history, that's supposed to be so goddamned evil that we're not even allowed to
talk
about it.”

“So which dish are you going to choose?” Uncle Lee repeated.

“I don't know. I'm still trying to work out what it is that
The Secret Shih-Tan
is trying to tell me.”

Uncle Lee turned off the faucet, and laid a withered hand on Craig's shoulder. “If you do not see it for yourself, then I cannot tell you.”

“You can't even give me a clue?”

“All I can say is that whatever you decide to cook, make sure, above all, that you do it justice.”

Craig didn't open the Burn-the-Tail restaurant that day, although he spent a half-hour in thick insulated gloves, sorting through his freezers. He couldn't find any packages of meat that looked human, but how could anyone tell if there was one human kidney amongst thirty lamb's kidneys, or one escalope of human thigh amongst ten escalopes of veal? He would either have to throw away his entire stock, or else he would simply have to wait until he had fulfilled his promise to cook Hugo Xawery's meal.

Later in the afternoon, he drove up to Stone Canyon Avenue. Hugo Xawery was sitting alone in the sun-room, behind tightly-drawn shades. Through the open door, however, Craig could see Xanthippa sitting on the patio under a large green parasol.

“Ah, Mr Richard,” said Hugo Xawery. “What a pleasure to see you so soon. Have you come to a decision?”

Craig nodded. “There's no point in playing around with
hors d'ouevres
,” he said. “I'm going to cook the Whole Woman Banquet.”

Hugo Xawery's face slowly lit up with unholy relish. “The banquet! I knew you would! The greatest challenge that any chef could ever face! The greatest feast that any gastronome could ever imagine!”

“You won't be able to eat it all on your own, will you?”

“I have no intention of eating it on my own. I have – friends.”

“Can you get in touch with them? I'd like to start making preparations right away.”

“Of course I can get in touch with them. And I can procure your main ingredient, too. In fact, I have it already.”

Craig looked out onto the patio. “Xanthippa?”

“Isn't she beautiful? You can't make the banquet of banquets out of inferior raw materials.”

“You know what it says at the foot of the recipe?”

“About the chef making love to his uncooked banquet? Of course. And you shall. Xanthippa has been expecting this day for many years.”

“You mean she already knows what you're going to do to her?”

Hugo Xawery smiled. “She lives only to serve me; she always has. Her greatest pleasure has always been to know that one day, I shall ingest her. Why do you think she never wears perfume or cosmetics? She doesn't wish to taint the taste of her flesh.”

“How about tomorrow evening?” Craig suggested. “Or is that too soon?”

Hugo Xawery wrapped his long arm around Craig's shoulders. “Tomorrow evening will be perfect. Expect six for dinner, including myself. You can stay here tonight, with Xanthippa, and early tomorrow morning you can start your preparations. You will, of course, allow me to watch you at work?”

“You're very welcome, Mr Xawery. In fact I'd be very disappointed if you didn't.”

“How about … the butchery? Do you need any assistance?”

“I prefer to do my own, thanks.”

Hugo Xawery gripped Craig's shoulder, and stared into his eyes with such emotion that Craig thought for a moment that he was going to weep. “You're a great, great chef. Do you know that? After tomorrow, your name will rank with the very finest.”

“We'll see,” said Craig.

Without taking his eyes off Craig, Hugo Xawery called out, “Xanthippa!”

She turned and frowned at him.

“Xanthippa, I have a surprise for you!”

The bedroom that Hugo Xawery lent him was silent and painted a silky gray. In the centre stood a massive carved-oak bed, heaped with Moorish cushions. It was a warm night, so Craig left the French windows open. The net curtains billowed silently in the breeze, like the ghosts of nuns.

Craig was sitting up in bed reading
The Secret Shih-Tan
when the door quietly opened and Xanthippa came in. She was wearing nothing but a thin shirt of aquamarine linen and small brown beads around her wrists and ankles. She came across the room and climbed onto the bed next to him. She smelled of nothing but the natural biscuity aroma of an aroused young woman.

“You're reading that book,” she said, although not accusingly.

Craig closed it, and dropped it down by the side of the bed. “I'm sorry,” he said.

“Why should you be?”

“It isn't very good taste, is it, considering what I'm supposed to do to you tomorrow?”

“You don't understand. I'm looking forward to it. Hugo is one of the greatest men in the world. He's intellectual, he's refined, but he doesn't believe in limits. With Hugo, everything is possible. I've already had enough pleasure for five lifetimes. Why should I worry if it ends now?”

Craig gently touched her cheekbones, and then traced the outline of her lips.
Carefully remove the eyes, and
set aside on a dish.
Then he leaned forward a little and kissed her.

“You're very beautiful,” he told her.

She smiled, and kissed him back. She kissed him like no woman had ever kissed him before, sucking and teasing his lips, and then sliding her tongue into his mouth and stimulating nerve-endings he didn't even think he had. Underneath the blanket, his penis stiffened.

Xanthippa crossed her arms and took off her shirt. She was lean and small-breasted, but her skin was so exquisite that Craig couldn't stop himself from sliding his hands up and down her bare back. Her pubic hair was shiny and black, and she had plaited it tightly and decorated it with small coloured beads, so that the lips of her vulva were exposed.

She said, “Lie back … you can taste me first.”

He lay back on the pillow and Xanthippa drew aside the blanket. She climbed astride him, with her back to him, and then she lifted her bottom so that he was confronted with her vagina. He kissed all around it, and then he ran the tip of his tongue down the cleft between her buttocks and tasted her tightly wrinkled anus. She sighed, and kissed him all around his penis in return.

The room was so quiet that he heard the moistened lips of her vagina opening, like the softest click in the Xhosa language. He slid his tongue into her wetness and warmth, and tasted saltness and sweetness and something else as well, like highly purified honey. At the same time, she slowly sucked his penis, flicking it and drumming it with her tongue.

They made love for hours, and she showed him all of the tastes of love. He licked her perspiration-beaded armpits, and the soles of her feet. He swallowed her vaginal juices when they were thick with early arousal; and again when
they thinned out, just before orgasm. He tasted her saliva when she was excited, and again when she was drowsy. She had eaten a salad for lunch with wildflowers in it, and he could actually taste it.

Eventually, as it began to grow light, she rubbed his penis so that he climaxed into her mouth, and she drank his sperm with long, appreciative swallows. “Did you know that you can
chew
sperm, and that it actually changes texture as you chew it?”

They lay together in silence for a long while. At last Craig sat up and said, “Would you do something for me? Something really special?”

“I'm yours now,” she said, her voice husky. “You know that.”

“Well, that's the point. I feel like you're not really mine at all. I'm just the chef. I'm a craftsman, not a lover. If you belong to anybody, you belong to Hugo.”

She propped herself up on one elbow. “So what do you want me to do?”

“The recipe says that there should be lovemaking before the meal is prepared, to give it spiritual tenderness. But I can't give you anything like the spiritual tenderness that Hugo can give you. I mean, think of it, Hugo's the one who's actually going to—”

“You think I should make love to Hugo?”

“Yes, I do.”

She smiled, and kissed him. “If you want me to make love to Hugo, one last time, then I will.”

It was nearly six o'clock in the morning. The house was already bright. Craig stood silently outside the door of Hugo Xawery's enormous white-carpeted bedroom. The door was only a half-inch ajar, but that was enough for him to be able to see Hugo Xawery lying on his back on
the white silk sheets, while Xanthippa rode up and down on his dark, erect penis as if she were taking part in some dreamlike steeplechase.

He didn't know if either of them knew he was there, but Hugo Xawery looked over Xanthippa's shoulder toward the door, and gave a wide, knowing, lubricious smile.

Craig watched his purple glans disappearing into Xanthippa's stretched open vagina and tried to think of all the spiritual tenderness that was passing between them, one to the other. Hadn't Yuan Mi said that spiritual tenderness flows both ways?

At eight, Craig was woken by a soft knock at the door. Hugo Xawery came in and stood over the bed. “Good-morning, Mr Richard. It's time for the kitchen.”

“I'm ready,” said Craig.

“Xanthippa … was she enjoyable?”

“Oh, she was more than enjoyable. She was a revelation.”

Blood hurried down the grooves in the butcher's table and he carefully collected it for blood puddings and gravies. His knives slit open skin and fat, and sliced through connective tissue.

On the stove, pans of stock were already simmering, and the ovens were warming up. The kitchen echoed to the sound of chopping and dicing.

By the middle of the day, the house was already filled with extraordinary fragrances … frying liver, poaching lungs, heat-seared filet of human flesh – all of them mingled with the aroma of basil and rosemary and coriander and soy sauce.

Craig worked non-stop, swallowing ice-cold Evian to keep himself going. By six o'clock in the evening he
was almost ready, and the Mexican servant knocked at the door and announced that the first two guests had arrived.

They sat at the long mahogany dining-table, none of them speaking. The room was lit only by candles, and the plates and glasses gleamed and sparkled. The cutlery shone like shoals of fish. The sense of drama was immense.