The Cask of Amontillado by Edgar Allen Poe

A nice creepy story by Poe involving a large amount of fortified wine used as a lure to bump someone off, The Cask of Amontillado is narrated by Montresor, an Italian nobleman, who wreaks a terrible revenge on another noble, Fortunato, whom he believes has insulted him.

Montresor has gone out to the local carnival in search of his quarry. He needs to bait the line and remembers that Fortunato, a braggart and a bullshit artist, likes to think of himself as a master wine-buff:

He had a weak point—this Fortunato—although in other regards he was a man to be respected and even feared. He prided himself on his connoisseurship in wine. Few Italians have the true virtuoso spirit. For the most part their enthusiasm is adopted to suit the time and opportunity—to practise imposture upon the British and Austrian millionaires. In painting and gemmary, Fortunato, like his countrymen, was a quack—but in the matter of old wines he was sincere. In this respect I did not differ from him materially: I was skilful in the Italian vintages myself, and bought largely whenever I could.

Fortunato himself is discovered stumbling around the carnival in jester’s motley:

He accosted me with excessive warmth, for he had been drinking much. The man wore motley. He had on a tight-fitting parti-striped dress, and his head was surmounted by the conical cap and bells. I was so pleased to see him, that I thought I should never have done wringing his hand.
I said to him—"My dear Fortunato, you are luckily met. How remarkably well you are looking to-day! But I have received a pipe of what passes for Amontillado, and I have my doubts."
"How?" said he. "Amontillado? A pipe? Impossible! And in the middle of the carnival!"
"I have my doubts," I replied; "and I was silly enough to pay the full Amontillado price without consulting you in the matter. You were not to be found, and I was fearful of losing a bargain."
"Amontillado!"
"I have my doubts."
"Amontillado!"
"And I must satisfy them."
"Amontillado!"
"As you are engaged, I am on my way to Luchesi. If any one has a critical turn, it is he. He will tell me—"
"Luchesi cannot tell Amontillado from Sherry."

The bait taken, Montresor takes Fortunato back to his palazzo and then down to the cellars beneath the house. It’s cold and damp and the walls are white with nitre so he warns Fortunato, who has a terrible cough already, that it might prove injurious to his health:

"Enough," he said; "the cough is a mere nothing; it will not kill me. I shall not die of a cough."
"True—true," I replied; "and, indeed, I had no intention of alarming you unnecessarily—but you should use all proper caution. A draught of this Medoc will defend us from the damps."
Here I knocked off the neck of a bottle which I drew from a long row of its fellows that lay upon the mould.
"Drink," I said, presenting him the wine.

They knock out a couple of glasses, before setting off further into the vaults. Montresor tries one more time to time to dissuade his adversary from continuing. The unwitting victim scoffs, downs a glass of De Grâve in one go, then pretends he’s a Mason:

"The nitre!" I said: "see, it increases. It hangs like moss upon the vaults. We are below the river's bed. The drops of moisture trickle among the bones. Come, we will go back ere it is too late. Your cough—"
"It is nothing," he said; "let us go on. But first, another draught of the Medoc."
I broke and reached him a flagon of De Grâve. He emptied it at a breath. His eyes flashed with a fierce light. He laughed and threw the bottle upwards with a gesticulation I did not understand.

Montresor responds by producing his trowel from under his cloak. Unperturbed, Fortunato carries on towards the prize, the nonexistent cask of sherry. He is guided into a small niche at the back of the cellar.

It was in vain that Fortunato, uplifting his dull torch, endeavored to pry into the depths of the recess. Its termination the feeble light did not enable us to see.
"Proceed," I said; "herein is the Amontillado. As for Luchesi—"
"He is an ignoramus," interrupted my friend, as he stepped unsteadily forward, while I followed immediately at his heels. In an instant he had reached the extremity of the niche, and finding his progress arrested by the rock, stood stupidly bewildered. A moment more and I had fettered him to the granite.

The vengeful Montresor then proceeds to wall up the niche, leaving the unfortunate Fortunato immured...

Blood on the Saddle by Rafael Reig

Perhaps it was the translation, but Rafael Reig’s Blood on the Saddle reminds me more than a little of Charles Bukowski, especially his novel Pulp (qv).

Carlos Clot is a private detective in the Madrid of the near-future, a city that’s been swamped by water and half buried in the sand. One of his cases involves a character who has gone missing from a cowboy novel by Phil Sparks, better know to his family as Luis Peñuelas. Peñuelas can’t finish the book without her coming back, and Clot somehow has to find her in an increasingly surreal city filled with body snatchers, adulterous housewives and a sinister genetic engineering corporation run by the ruthless Manex Chopieta...

Clot is having no luck finding the heroine of Peñuelas’s new book, and the hapless writer, already a souse, hits the bottle for the last time. By the time Clot catches up with his old friend the man is in the throes of delirium:

It was hard for me to recognise him. Peñuelas/Sparks had deteriorated a lot since the last time. Out of the corner of his eye he watched his elasticated blue folder while he drank Bombay as if it were tap water. –There’s now way out, he kept repeating. Nothing to be done... He heard voices, received instructions and fended off invisible interlocutors with his hands. He described what seemed to be the DTs to me with their corresponding zootropic hallucinations and anatomical deliriums. He saw insects or was convinced he had one arm longer than the other, things like that. He spoke of his heart as a puddle of rainwater; his blood, the shadow of a tree that went on growing once day was done... –They’re coming for me, Peñuelas went on. You have to help me, Clot, my friend.

There’s nobody there but the two of them, of course, not that Peñuelas will listen:

In a supine position he went on drinking directly from the bottle. When the pins and needles started he began to scream. Hundreds of insects were running over his arms. He admitted he couldn’t see them, but he felt them, they were there, on his body, tiny and tireless. He lit the anglepoise. Nothing. Maybe there were too small to pick out with the naked eye, as he revealed to me. he scratched his arms with his nails, completely beside himself. –Peñuelas! Control yourself! You’re raving. This is formication, that’s all. –Oh shit! Fornication! Oh fuck! I knew it! The treacherous cow! –With an M, Peñuelas. It means you’re imagining ants, that’s all. Next he seemed to see it all clearly: the insects had to be under his skin!

After scratching his arms to pieces he feels as if he’s burning up. Tearing off his shirt, he makes for the bath:

He decided he couldn’t faint; that was precisely what they were waiting for! If he fainted they’d throw themselves upon him, so he began banging his head with ever increasing force against the edge of the bath. This seemed to him a very intelligent idea, a stratagem or ruse, as he termed it. I saw that the enamel of the bathtub was chipping off. I didn’t see, on the other hand, that his skull had sustained a similar kind of impact. I gave him two slaps in the face and called an ambulance. He screamed. We wrestled. I subdued him... They took him away. He died at dawn, without managing to wake up from the other dream, the overwhelming, violent nightmare of arriving, sure, but where?

Probably the most gruesome warning about the perils of drinking neat gin I’ve read since starting this blog...

The Book of Household Management by Mrs Beeton

Often and erroneously referred to as Mrs Beeton’s Cookbook, The Book of Household Management has a great deal more to it than just recipes. A portion of the book is set over to the duties of staff, including those responsible for the cellar:

2163. ...but the real duties of the butler are in the wine-cellar; there he should be competent to advise his master as to the price and quality of the wine to be laid in; "fine," bottle, cork, and seal it, and place it in the binns. Brewing, racking, and bottling malt liquors, belong to his office, as well as their distribution. These and other drinkables are brought from the cellar every day by his own hands, except where an under-butler is kept; and a careful entry of every bottle used, entered in the cellar-book; so that the book should always show the contents of the cellar.
2164. The office of butler is thus one of very great trust in a household. Here, as elsewhere, honesty is the best policy: the butler should make it his business to understand the proper treatment of the different wines under his charge, which he can easily do from the wine-merchant, and faithfully attend to it; his own reputation will soon compensate for the absence of bribes from unprincipled wine-merchants, if he serves a generous and hospitable master. Nothing spreads more rapidly in society than the reputation of a good wine-cellar, and all that is required is wines well chosen and well cared for; and this a little knowledge, carefully applied, will soon supply.
2165. The butler, we have said, has charge of the contents of the cellars, and it is his duty to keep them in a proper condition, to fine down wine in wood, bottle it off, and store it away in places suited to the sorts. Where wine comes into the cellar ready bottled, it is usual to return the same number of empty bottles; the butler has not, in this case, the same inducements to keep the bottles of the different sorts separated; but where the wine is bottled in the house, he will find his account, not only in keeping them separate, but in rinsing them well, and even washing them with clean water as soon as they are empty.
2166. There are various modes of fining wine: isinglass, gelatine, and gum Arabic are all used for the purpose. Whichever of these articles is used, the process is always the same. Supposing eggs (the cheapest) to be used,—Draw a gallon or so of the wine, and mix one quart of it with the whites of four eggs, by stirring it with a whisk; afterwards, when thoroughly mixed, pour it back into the cask through the bunghole, and stir up the whole cask, in a rotatory direction, with a clean split stick inserted through the bunghole. Having stirred it sufficiently, pour in the remainder of the wine drawn off, until the cask is full; then stir again, skimming off the bubbles that rise to the surface. When thoroughly mixed by stirring, close the bunghole, and leave it to stand for three or four days. This quantity of clarified wine will fine thirteen dozen of port or sherry. The other clearing ingredients are applied in the same manner, the material being cut into small pieces, and dissolved in the quart of wine, and the cask stirred in the same manner.
2167. To Bottle Wine.—Having thoroughly washed and dried the bottles, supposing they have been before used for the same kind of wine, provide corks, which will be improved by being slightly boiled, or at least steeped in hot water,—a wooden hammer or mallet, a bottling-boot, and a squeezer for the corks. Bore a hole in the lower part of the cask with a gimlet, receiving the liquid stream which follows in the bottle and filterer, which is placed in a tub or basin. This operation is best performed by two persons, one to draw the wine, the other to cork the bottles. The drawer is to see that the bottles are up to the mark, but not too full, the bottle being placed in a clean tub to prevent waste. The corking-boot is buckled by a strap to the knee, the bottle placed in it, and the cork, after being squeezed in the press, driven in by a flat wooden mallet.
2168. As the wine draws near to the bottom of the cask, a thick piece of muslin is placed in the strainer, to prevent the viscous grounds from passing into the bottle.
2169. Having carefully counted the bottles, they are stored away in their respective binns, a layer of sand or sawdust being placed under the first tier, and another over it; a second tier is laid over this, protected by a lath, the head of the second being laid to the bottom of the first; over this another bed of sawdust is laid, not too thick, another lath; and so on till the binn is filled.
2170. Wine so laid in will be ready for use according to its quality and age. Port wine, old in the wood, will be ready to drink in five or six months; but if it is a fruity wine, it will improve every year. Sherry, if of good quality, will be fit to drink as soon as the "sickness" (as its first condition after bottling is called) ceases, and will also improve; but the cellar must be kept at a perfectly steady temperature, neither too hot nor too cold, but about 55° or 60°, and absolutely free from draughts of cold air.

She also explains the correct way of opening wine and champagne:

2192. In opening wine, let it be done quietly, and without shaking the bottle; if crusted, let it be inclined to the crusted side, and decanted while in that position. In opening champagne, it is not necessary to discharge it with a pop; properly cooled, the cork is easily extracted without an explosion; when the cork is out, the mouth of the bottle should be wiped with the napkin over the footman's arm.

Now you won’t find any of that in Nigella...

Parrot and Olivier in America by Peter Carey

In the alternate universe of Carey’s 2010 novel, Olivier de Garmont is a thinly disguised cipher of Alexis de Tocqueville, the French political thinker who travelled to the USA in the nineteenth century and wrote Democracy in America after his observations there. In this version of events, Olivier is accompanied by a frustrated artist called Parrot, who has the misfortune to end up working as the former’s servant.

Carey flits between the two narrators – cynical, world weary Parrot and cosseted, naïve Olivier – although it could be argued that the whole text is in fact written by Parrot, who acts as Olivier’s secretary in an effort to hide the fact of the noble’s atrocious handwriting.

In his travels across the US, Olivier meets and falls in love with Amelia Godefroy, the daughter of a prison owner in Connecticut. Smitten, he allows himself to be taken on a tour of the south by his prospective father-in-law, a journey that does not bode well for his already parlous health.

After several weeks on the road, they make it as far as South Carolina, where their guest house boasts a wine list of some providence:

I forget the name of our hotel except it was considered the best place in Charleston. Godefroy had written to secure our lodging while we were still in Georgia. What he wrote, I do not know, but clearly an impression had been made, for although we arrived late at night we were greeted with much bowing and scraping and a boy was sent to the chef with an order to keep the fires alive. The landlord then held us under close engagement – I presumed to cover any likely delay in the kitchen – so by the time we were seated at table we knew he had purchased the cellar of the late Thomas Jefferson and had himself driven all the way to Monticello to collect his loot, sleeping beneath his carriage on return as he feared he would be robbed of his treasure by bandits or oenophiles or worse. Who knows how much he paid for his fifty cases? More, certainly, than he could afford, for we had been but a moment in the dining room – a place of extraordinary pretension – when hew as looming over us ready to discuss his carte de vin.

It’s the perfect opportunity for Olivier to indulge in a touch of wine snobbery:

He presented us each with his wine list explaining, ha-ha, that it would have been a good deal longer if my countryman Lafayette had not had such pleasure from it. I thought him tedious. Godefroy raised an apologetic eyebrow as the man happily recounted how the late president had died impoverished, and he had managed to get a great bargain from the estate. “The prices, monsieur,” the landlord said to me, “will gratify you, I am sure.” Grave-robbing to one side, the list saddened me, for it was not what you would expect in the cellar of a head of state. There was a Bergasse, a wine mixed together in some cellar in Marseille which was labelled claret in the English manner, also some Blanquette de Limoux, a great deal of Minervois and Languedoc. Only a Beune Grèves Vigne de l’Enfant Jésus seemed to rise above the ordinary.

Clearly the evening has not got off to a good start, and when Olivier finally leaves America, he has failed to secure Godefroy’s daughter’s hand in marriage...

The Cutting Room by Louise Welsh

I complained last week of having read a run of dud books, but this brilliant debut proved a glorious exception. I picked it up on a whim when passing the recommended titles pile in the local library and was hooked from the off.

Dissolute Glasgow auctioneer Rilke gets a lucky break when he’s offered the contents of a big house for clearance. It’s easy money, the furniture and nick-nacks are of high quality and he’s bound to make a tidy sum in fees. The elderly lady who has hired him is clearing the house for her recently deceased brother. She only asks that Rilke will be discreet. Of course he will...

Up in the old boy’s bedroom Rilke finds a hatch into an attic. With keys for the whole building, he makes his way up the ladder:

I was standing in a long, thin room, perhaps half the length of the house. Bare floorboards, clean for an attic. The ceiling began midway up the walls, angling to a peak. Three small windows that would let in a little light during the day. Along the right-hand wall were racks of metal shelving holding tidily stacked cardboard boxes. The left wall was covered in waist-high, dark oak bookcases, books neatly arranged. In the centre were a plain office desk and a chair, to their left a high-backed armchair, comfortable but scruffy, inherited from some other room, beside it a bottle of malt, Lagavulin. Dead man’s drink. I unscrewed the cap and inhaled a quick scent of iodine and peat which caught the back of my throat. It was the good stuff, right enough. There was no cup so I too the end of my shirt and rubbed it along the mouth of the bottle before taking a good slug.

Rilke has stumbled on an Aladdin’s cave of pornography and erotica. Worth a pretty penny some of it as well, although he’s been sworn to secrecy if he finds anything scandalous. Even so, he gives the drawers and boxes a good going over. He finds a strange card for a ‘camera club’ before realising it’s probably time to knock off for the day:

I considered stopping, almost left right there. It was the whisky that drew me back. One more drink, leave the van in the driveway until morning, last orders at the Melrose, then a walk through the park and see what gave. It was the good stuff. A reward for working so hard, being clever enough to arrange a big deal, a pat on the back from me to me. I should have known myself: that bottle was too full and I was too empty.

His next discovery is a bundle of sexually horrific photographs. Ignoring his better judgement to leave well alone, Rilke decides to investigate, and begins a disturbing journey into Glasgow’s underworld...

Guernica by Dave Boling

It’s highly frustrating that the first post I’ve managed in several weeks is from a dud, but I’ve had a run of bad luck with books in the past month, partly my own fault, partly the choice of reading groups. Well, that’s the way it goes.

Guernica is the back story to the terrible dive bombing raid that the Luftwaffe perpetrated on the Basque town of the same name. Picasso’s most famous painting is a vision of the hell that took place there, so it’s a shame that a novel based on the atrocity and the work it inspired is such a mess of hackneyed prose and clichéd characterisation.

Even so, there are moments of diversion. The heroine’s dance on top of a wine glass during a traditional Basque dance is lively enough, and took my mind off the fact that there are still over 200 pages to go at this point:

Miren alone was the focus of the next dance, and cheers rose when she gathered a glass off a nearby table, filled it with wine, and placed it in the middle of the dance area. To a quickening beat, she stepped lightly on all sides of the glass. Without looking down, she stepped over it and beside it, side to side, front to back, barely missing it as her feet wove an intricate pattern. The breadth of her skirts at all times impeded her vision of the glass, making her avoidance of it an act of unfathomable precision. Then, impossibly, she rose and seemed to hover before gently landing atop the glass, one slipper on each side of the lip. And she was off again, levitating, flitting on each side, and then once more leaped back onto the glass, alighting softly with bent knees. Miguel was stunned to watch a girl so feathery and deft that she could dance on the lip of a wine glass. It was not stemmed crystal or a delicate flute, but it was nonetheless glass, and she danced so joyfully atop it, oblivious to the possibility that it could shatter beneath her. She not only didn’t break the glass but didn’t spill a drop of wine, either.A final leap, on and off, coincided with the last bar of music, and a greater cheer echoed across the courtyard. Accepting the applause with a deep curtsy, Miren retrieved the wineglass and drained the deep-red contents in a single gulp. She saluted the cheering crowd with the empty glass and licked her lips in theatrical enjoyment of the wine.

It’s a real feat and Miguel is suitably impressed:

“How could you possibly dance on a glass?” Miguel asked before she could speak. “Well, first you have to get a very strong wine,” Miren said.

Now there’s a thought...

Red Carpets and Other Banana Skins by Rupert Everett

There are a few books that I come across that fall into the category of ‘too good not to share’. I was only partway into Everett’s first volume of memoirs when I found myself sending paragraphs by email to friends. It really is that good...

His account of making the film Hearts of Fire qualifies it for this blog as he seems to have spent the whole shoot permanently soused, although that could be said for quite a few other occasions. The finished film was a disaster, the full-on, no-survivors crash of my career, as he puts it. He hasn’t made The Next Best Thing with Madonna by this point...

Things don’t really get off to a good start with Hearts of Fire, despite Bob Dylan being cast. Everett really doesn’t gel with his leading lady, and when it comes for them to film a ‘bedroom’ scene, she runs screaming from the set. Help is at hand from his make up team, however:

Meinir sidled up to the bed, as the producer, the director and the lighting cameraman stood around my naked body, deciding what they could shoot instead. She winked as she opened her little Aladin’s cave of a kit. Inside gleamed a bottle of vodka. Well, if one couldn’t get legless after one’s leading lady had fled the lovemaking scene, when could one? I settled down on the floor in the corner of the set and drank the whole bottle with the help of hair and make-up; when the powers that be finally decided on the next scene, I could barely walk.

Meinir seems to be keeping the cast properly refreshed, including the star, Dylan, whose tipple is Jim Beam:

One day Meinir was walking across the lot at Shepperton when a bottle broke inside her kit and began to leak, leaving an incriminating and odorous trail in her wake. The producer was following behind. Pat and I were behind him. We watched in horror as he bent down and sniffed. “Meinir, what have you got in your kit?” he asked. Meinir gasped slightly as she observed the stream of whisky dripping from Aladdin’s cave. But this girl was quick on her feet. “I’m washing my brushes. It’s alcohol. Must have spilt! Oh dear, I’d better nip back to the truck, hadn’t I?” And she beat a retreat before our producer could move on to the next question.

The production moves to Toronto, where they are to film a live show in front of a crowd. Unfortunately, they have time to kill before the shooting starts, and make use of the minibar in Dylan’s trailer:

We all piled into his trailer before the show and got incredibly drunk. Bob strummed on his guitar. Assistants came and went. Richard dropped in. By the time we got to the wings we were in extremely high spirits, but Bob was too wobbly to make it up the very steep steps to the stage.

Somehow they keep it together long enough to film the gig. The shoot finally comes to the end with one last scene to do:

On the last day, we shot a scene in a limo... We played the scene over and over. We chatted between takes. We had drinks in the scene and they were constantly refilled – the real thing, needless to say. The props guys who were in charge of administering the drinks didn’t even ask. Apple juice was for babies. Bob dozed off, sinking into himself like a parrot. We must have been there for a couple of hours. When we finished the first assistant opened the car door. Bob climbed out. He looked around, squinting. “Where’s the hotel?” he said, apparently confused, thinking he had been driven home.

The end result wasn’t a hit, or, in Everett’s words:

The film brought my career to a standstill...