Full Spectrum 5 (Jerry eBooks) by unknow

Author:unknow
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Jerry eBooks
Published: 2015-01-15T05:00:00+00:00

Leonora is delighted with Remedios’s new obsession: that the kitchen is an alchemical laboratory, and the art of cooking, the grandmother of alchemy.

“Ancient history, of course. We’ve just forgotten it,” Remedios declares. “While men were running around hunting woolly mammoths and bashing each other over the head, women were tending gardens, growing herbs and vegetables and fruit, working in the kitchen, at the hearth, in the distillery. For nourishment and medicine and magic.”

“What dost thou brew in thy cauldron, O witch?” Leonora laughs. She cracks an egg over a bowl, pours the innards back and forth between the half-shells till the white separates from the yolk and dribbles into the bowl. She sets the white aside for Remedios’s pastries. She has begun to paint with egg tempera on gessoed wood panels, a medieval technique yielding bright, translucent surfaces. “Our Art is an alchemy.” She whisks scarlet pigment with a spoonful of yolk, plus a dash of vinegar for its preservative properties. “Nourishing the spirit.”

The thought is electrifying. Nourishing, yes; if not the public’s spirit, then her own. She cannot reconcile herself to the new play of Sade’s Justine, which B.P. insists will be his next great work. The play is a rift between them, deepening every day he labors over it, as though he had joined the Fascists and engaged in work for the Party. The rift exacerbates other tensions between them, his refusal to secure gainful employment while she must struggle so, her daily exhaustion with work, housekeeping, meals, and her Art. She neglects the apartment, spends more and more time with Remedios. B.P. protests, but, when he finds he cannot dissuade her, continues his work or goes out to cafes alone. She hears rumors he is seeing a prostitute at Mil y Una Noches, which he denies in a mild tone.

She brings all her painting gear, and her journal, to Remedios’s studio. Remedios lends her an easel. They paint together for hours, sipping blanc de blanc from Veracruz or thick raspberry wine called zarzamora, nibbling on ciruela, yellow plums. Cats wind round their ankles, music murmurs on the phonograph.

“Taste this, sweet,” Remedios says, laying her paintbrush down. “My new magic formula.”

She finds a crystal decanter filled with translucent rose-amber liquid, pours a shot.

Leonora sips. A soapy taste, sugary fire, hot spice, a bit of grit. “Smashing,” she says, tears starting in her eyes.

Remedios finds a page in her journal. “Take a cup of habanero—that’s sugarcane whiskey, four cups of rosewater, several dashes each of cinnamon, cloves, and cayenne pepper, two cat hairs, and a pinch of lint from beneath a bed where a couple has just made love.”

“Of course,” Leonora says, refusing to cough before her friend’s teasing glance. “And what does this magic formula do?”

“Discourages insomnia and promotes erotic dreams.”

“Just what I needed.”

“Me, too.” Remedios pours a shot for herself. Her eyes turn suddenly sad. She picks up her brush. “Renato is stuck on another bullfighter. Oh, he never hid his predilections from me. Ours was a marriage of convenience, you know.

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