As Meat Loves Salt

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Speaking to these chefs, salters and suppliers, I feel like the man of that fable: not in my egotism or venal daughters, but in my blindness to salt and pepper's inestimable value. They are so small, so seemingly simple – and yet in their cultivation, flavour and history they encapsulate so much of what it means to be human: for worse, but also for better, if carefully used and responsibly sourced. Editor's note: "This collection has been made con amore by a native Venetian gentleman named Bernoni, who took them down verbatim, as they were told by the comari (old wives, gossips) of Castello or Canaregio. Because the ultimate endpoint of keeping out mitts off experience that doesn’t belong to us is that there is no fiction. Someone like me only permits herself to write from the perspective of a straight white female born in North Carolina, closing on sixty, able-bodied but with bad knees, skint for years but finally able to buy the odd new shirt. All that’s left is memoir.

But this latest and little absurd no-no is part of a larger climate of super-sensitivity, giving rise to proliferating prohibitions supposedly in the interest of social justice that constrain fiction writers and prospectively makes our work impossible. Seriously, we have people questioning whether it’s appropriate for white people to eat pad Thai. But, come the evening, Cap o’ Rushes said she was too tired to go with them. Howsoever, when they were gone, she offed with her cap o’ rushes and cleaned herself, and away she went to the dance. Fine. But I still would like to reserve the right as a novelist to use only the characters that pertain to my story.

One day when she was keeping her sheep in a lonely tract of land, she suddenly felt a wish to dress herself in her robes of splendor. She washed herself carefully in the stream, and as she always carried her bundle with her, it was easy to shake off her rags, and transform herself in a few moments into a great lady. Not knowing where to go, she wandered on, and she wandered on, till she came to a big fen where the reeds grew ever so tall and the rushes swayed in the wind like a field of corn. There she sate down and plaited herself an overall of rushes and a cap to match, so as to hide her fine clothes, and her beautiful golden hair that was all set with milk-white pearls. For she was a wise girl, and thought that in such lonely country, mayhap, some robber might fall in with her and kill her to get her fine clothes and jewels. Indeed, so ingrained is salt into Russian and Eastern European cuisine and culture, she explains, that "to say of your friend 'I have eaten a pound of salt with you' is to say 'We have been friends for a long time.'" She decided that as it was now night she had better stay in her palanquin, and go to sleep. "Perhaps the tigers and wild beasts will come and eat me," she thought; "but if they don't, I will try tomorrow to get out of this jungle, and go to another country." I’ll show you,” says she. And she offed with her cap o’ rushes, and there she was in her beautiful clothes.

What stories are “implicitly ours to tell,” and what boundaries around our own lives are we mandated to remain within? I would argue that any story you can make yours is yours to tell, and trying to push the boundaries of the author’s personal experience is part of a fiction writer’s job.

Cap O’ Rushes

I’m hoping that crime writers, for example, don’t all have personal experience of committing murder. Me, I’ve depicted a high school killing spree, and I hate to break it to you: I’ve never shot fatal arrows through seven kids, a teacher, and a cafeteria worker, either. We make things up, we chance our arms, sometimes we do a little research, but in the end it’s still about what we can get away with – what we can put over on our readers. And the king said, "As much as good salt!" And he began to think and think, and, because salt by itself tastes bad, this answer of the youngest daughter did not please him." Source: Ernst Meier, "So lieb wie das Salz," Deutsche Volksmärchen aus Schwaben: Aus dem Munde des Volks gesammelt (Stuttgart: C. P. Scheitlin's Verlagshandlung, 1852), no. 27, p. 99. Well, next day they says to her, “There, Cap o’ Rushes, you didn’t come last night, and now you won’t see the lady, for there’s no more dances.” I won't waste my word count telling you the tale, but suffice to say that by its end, the old man is left in no doubt as to salt's importance. This is true today – who would want a steak that hadn't been thoroughly seasoned before hitting the pan? – but was even more so in the 16th century, when salt was essential for preserving not just meat, but fish, vegetables and cheese for the winter months.

Curiously, across my country Mexican restaurants, often owned and run by Mexicans, are festooned with sombreros – if perhaps not for long. At the UK’s University of East Anglia, the student union has banned a Mexican restaurant from giving out sombreros, deemed once more an act of “cultural appropriation” that was also racist. The king had never heard of such a box, and did not know what it was like; so he went to every country asking all the people he met what sort of box was a sun-jewel box, and where he could get it. At last one day, after a fruitless search, he was very sad, for he thought, "I have promised the servant to bring her a sun-jewel box, and now I cannot get one for her; what shall I do?" They waited until the hen-woman came out, and then the queen said to her, "Why are you always crying so, goody? But, indeed, you're not goody, but a beautiful young girl, and I won't have you stay there any longer."

Illustration from an old Charles Perrault fairytale book

This is a mere undertone, however, to the two opening events that will drive the novel - Jacob's marriage to his beloved Caro, and the recent discovery of the gruesome murder of a young boy from a neighbouring household. These three constituents are the gunpowder that sets off a violent picaresque taking us through action with the New Model Army, a torridly erotic period of recovery in London and finally participation in an idealistic Diggers' commune before its brutal dissolution by the local lord of the manor. We end with that well-established device, the protagonist standing on the quay waiting for embarkation to the New World. So the king made a proclamation through his whole kingdom, and ladies came from afar to lay claim to the honor. But the ring was so tiny that even those who had the smallest hands could only get it on their little fingers. In a short time all the maidens of the kingdom, including the peasant girls, had tried on the ring, and the king was just about to announce that their efforts had been in vain, when the prince observed that he had not yet seen the shepherdess. Then this is it," said the princess. "Will you just oblige me so far as to cook papa's dinner today without any salt in anything? Not the least grain in anything at all. Let it be as good a dinner as you like, but no salt in anything. Will you do that?" No; on the contrary, the hen-woman is most thankful to them, but she is crying over some private misfortunes of her own. But the next evening the young king goes near the outhouse again, ard hears the same lamentations. His curiosity is excited. He makes a hole in the wall with a gimlet, and, peeping through it, he beholds no old hen-woman, but a beautiful young lady; for the princess resumes her proper form in her own chamber every night by the simple process of putting down the fairy's little wand which she carries in her bosom all day. Her first novel, As Meat Loves Salt, was released in 2001. The story focuses on the relationship of two men, Jacob Cullen and Christopher Ferris, and is set during the English Civil War. They desert their posts in Cromwell’s New Model Army to establish a farming commune in the countryside. The novel was well received by readers and critics and has recently been championed by Orange Prize winner Lionel Shriver, but failed to attract what one could call widespread attention.

Significant Monogram: Jacob and Ferris' dead wife Joanna have the same initials, which becomes significant towards the end. That is a good answer too," said the king to himself. "It is true she does not seem to love me quite so much as the eldest; but still, scarcely can one live without wine, so that there is not much difference." Forecast: McCann's novel was greeted with raves in England and will be supported in the U.S. by a national publicity campaign and a five-city author tour. Though it may not be quite as reader-friendly asAnd sure enough, when she had upped and offed with her cap and robe of rushes, there he was at the door waiting for her to come; for he had determined to dance with no one else. Oh!” says he, “I had a daughter. And I asked her how much she loved me. And she said ‘As much as fresh meat loves salt.’ And I turned her from my door, for I thought she didn’t love me. And now I see she loved me best of all. And she may be dead for aught I know.”