Of course, there’s no point writing oneself into a corner or being labelled a one trick poet. So I’ve started writing fiction. Actually, I’ve always written prose. Poetry is for – oops.
In 1989 a Stockton, CA, band known as Pavement self-releases its first E.P., the angular Slay Tracks: 1933-1969. Opening cut ‘You’re Killing Me’ sets the tone for the band’s entire recorded output. Lead singer Stephen Malkmus (played here by Kyle MachLachlan of Twin Peaks and Blue Velvet fame) cheerfully screams lyrics about killing, murder, mayhem and death.
Read moreÅsa Strålande realized, the instant the third Jägermeister touched her lips, that there might never be a better moment to leave NSA. Sure, she’d managed to drink many more shots here on previous occasions—and not just Jäger but Gammel Dansk and Minttu, too—but it didn’t take a rocket scientist to work out that five beers, one tequila and three Jägermeisters—let alone five, or fifteen—was not going to cure her insomnia. And let’s not even get started on the amnesia.
Nevertheless, to her credit, Åsa finished the shot, placed the empty glass back on the bar and said to the barman, Mikael (who had seen all of this before):
—Micke, jag är klar.
Ever the professional, Micke took the shot glass away and brought her a small water.
—Tack, said Åsa, emptying the glass in one long, exaggerated gulp, and signalling for a second. Micke brought her a Loka Citron instead.
—Så, var är han nu?
—Niklas?
—Ja. Herr Märsta.
Åsa and Micke exchanged an awkward grin.
—Han åker till Märsta med tåget. Hemma.
—Självklart.
—Precis.
—Japp.
More smiles. Pause.
—Vi ses nåsta vecka, Micke?
—Ja, visst. Ta det lungt, Åsa.
—Hej då!
Åsa fought her way through the post-gig crowd towards the door, but not before running into Jakob, bass player with Efter Pausen, tonight’s headline act.
—Heeeeej, Jakob purred, his face still covered with sweat from what tomorrow’s Dagens Nyheter would be sure to describe as a fantastiskt gig, were it not for the fact that Efter Pausen—not to mention NSA—were so far to the left of DN’s target audience that any mention of the band—whose style was firmly in the ‘wall of stop-start noise-mayhem’ category, and whose debut EP, Att Minnas, had not even hit Bandcamp yet, and whose line-up tended to shift and change depending on which members were in town at any given moment—in the DN reviews section might as well be considered a minor miracle.
—Hej, Jakob. Häftigt.
—Tack, tack. Detsamma.
—Ha ha. Ha det så bra, man.
Jakob nodded, looking at his beer, which was almost empty.
—Skål? he not so much asked as joked.
—Ja, visst. Hej då.
The crowd milling in front of the cramped stage area parted for a moment to allow Jakob in and then he disappeared from view. Åsa continued upwards on her journey towards the exit of the club, climbing the stairs to the mezzanine level, where the musical vibe was subtly Nordic metal, and then up one more set of stairs to the casual-themed ‘street’ bar, whose soundtrack was provided by a mix of Melodifestivalen and Lilla Melodifestivalen covers courtesy of a semi-visible duo in the corner advertising themselves as Strax. Åsa felt herself going against the flow as she headed for the door, barely recognizing the band’s execrable version of Danny Saucedo’s ‘Amazing’ as she brushed against multiple sweat-drenched t-shirts and leather-Thunderdome armbands, bumping into the odd friend, acquaintance or—okay, let’s be honest—one-night-stand along the way.
The queue outside was still snaking along the footpath, even though it was late November, and bitterly cold, and NSA would only be open for another hour or so. Down the street, an even longer queue was slithering in slow-motion towards the entrance to Smashed Hits, the less said about which, at this point, the better.
—Leaving us already, Åsa? asked the doorman, Danny Gloucester, who may or may not have been instructed earlier in the night to let Åsa and her date for the evening (the afore-mentioned Niklas) in for free, and who may also have been harbouring a crush on Åsa for several years.
—Your accent is fading fast, Glock. Better get back to England before you turn Swedish. Eller hur? Åsa added, with a wink.
—Ha ha, ‘ja precis’, or whatever, said Glock, who was nowhere near as bad-assed as his nickname implied, and who had in truth been living in Stockholm for so long that his Swedish was almost intelligible.
Åsa grinned encouragingly.
—SÅsa, big night, hej?
—Oh, huge! Efter Pausen, wow, what can I say? Heavy. I mean, häftigt, eller hur?
—Mitt i prick, Glock. Mitt. I. Prick.
—Lulz. Take care, Åsa.
—I will. Hej då.
The back streets of Östermalm were normal, as they usually are late at night, in any season but, when she turned onto Birger Jarlsgatan, Åsa was hit by the perennial tragedy that is the top end of town at closing time. She headed for the Östermalmstorg T-bana entrance, passing a dizzy parade of girls mostly younger than herself in short skirts or cocktail dresses, congregating in the gutter or lining up to get into clubs that were nowhere near as exclusive as the drink prices implied, pretending to ignore their boy chaperones with razor-sharp haircuts, tailored pants and bow ties that could not never be mistaken for ironic. Older couples gave these privileged street waifs a wide berth, strolling arm-in-arm as if through a bygone era, when Stureplan was the refuge of old sea captains and clubs like Smashed Hits did not exist. The occasional tiggare could be seen threading through the crowds, and one or two more slept in seemingly permanent encampments below the windows of TGI Friday’s, huddled in their Nordic winter-proof sleeping bags, like dark blue silkworms, not even their faces visible. Åsa looked for a little paper Pressbyran cup in which to drop fem kronor but, finding none, slipped the coin back inside the warm pocket of her fleecy jacket.
The short trip to the subway entrance had stripped the sheen from Åsa’s Jäger buzz, and by the time she hit the escalators she was wide awake again. Åsa stood to the right as she descended, the people passing her—possibly hurrying to catch the Ropsten tunnelbana before the buses to Lidingö stopped, or possibly just drunk—smelt of aftershave, alcohol and the international scent of subway tunnels. Those heading up in the opposite direction towards Östermalmstorg and what passes for crazy in Scandinavia leaned forwards as if to try and taste the champagne they hoped soon to be chugging. Åsa let the escalator take her where it would, although there was obviously only one way it could go—unless some joker flipped a switch somewhere and sent them all shuddering in reverse.
The first train to arrive at the platform was named Jan Erik, and he was headed for Norsborg. Åsa watched as he disgorged his passengers, then admitted most of those who were waiting on the platform. A warning sound announced the imminent closing of the steel doors, and Jan Erik was gone. The LED board indicated that the Fruangen train was due in a couple of minutes, which Åsa spent staring vacantly at the subway art on the opposite wall of the tunnel. Gradually, the platform filled again and the blue train, whose name was Frida, arrived. This time, almost all of her passengers got out, leaving Åsa to experience one of Stockholm’s rare late-night pleasures: a four-seat cluster all to herself.
Åsa looked at her reflection in the window but all she could see was her black beanie and the outline of her pale face, featureless. She turned quickly away and checked her phone for messages, of which there was only one: an offer from Media Markt featuring an image of the company’s infamous maniacal pink puppet, Mark, a swimming pool, some kind of all-in-one home sound system and a banner flashing the word SLUTREA. With a swipe she consigned the message to her trash folder, regretting, not for the first time, that she had ever signed up to receive beta versions of these promotional campaigns—although, as Åsa would also be the first to admit, she’d done so at the behest of her ex-boyfriend, Per, and these cheesy communiqués from the far side of bogan capital were her one remaining link to his long-gone downy moustache and semi-serious affection for Allsång.
Three young men got on at T-Centralen, shattering Åsa’s momentary trip down melody lane when they crashed-landed, drunk, into the vacant seats in her cluster. However, they paid her little attention at first, pulling beers from purple Systemet bags and proceeding to drink, leisurely, and with laid-back conversation. Between sips, they passed around a small bottle of aquavit. One of them offered the bottle to Åsa, who waved it away. Perhaps relieved, he returned to his friends’ conversation.
It seemed, according to Åsa’s slightly bewildered understanding, that this guy had just had a tattoo inked on his left arm but was having doubts about its aesthetic and artistic merits. His two friends naturally demanded to see said tattoo and so, putting his beer on the floor of the train, the boy took off his heavy coat, rolled up the sleeve of his fitted FCUK shirt and pointed, not exactly proudly but with some conviction, at the hideous train-wreck someone had just charged him 4000 SEK—or was it 5000—to permanently mark there in blue-green ink, glistening under its temporary cling-wrap skin.
The two boys gasped simultaneously and then roared with laughter.
—Fy faaaaaan! One of them swore, while the other almost spat out the beer he had just chugged but managed to say nothing.
—Vad? Asked the tattooed one, a note of panic entering his voice.
—Precis, answered his friend, still laughing. Vad är det?
—Håll käften!
—Nej, seriös. Vad är det? Jag vet inte.
—Ser du inte?
—Naj.
—Du också?
—Nej. Ingen aning, kille. Ingen-fy fan-jävla-aning. Jösses!
—Hålla truten! Vad tycker du?
Åsa realized the distressed boy was speaking to her, and managed to tear herself away from staring at the garbled ink for a second or so to register the pleading look in his eye.
—Egentligen, she said, pointing to the now-half-empty bottle of snaps, kanske ska jag ta en liten sip, bara en eller två centilitres. Är det okej?
The first friend passed her the bottle eagerly, and she took several swigs—each of around six centilitres, but hey, who was counting—before handing it back. Despite the aquavit’s strength, she could clearly see that, despite their drunkenness, all three of them were waiting for her response.
—Jag tycker att det ser ut som ett kvinna—eller en man. Nej, vänte—
But the two friends had already burst into laughter again, if anything even more uproariously this time.
—Tjoooo-ho!
—Jösses, vad roligt. En kvinna–man!
—Ha ha ha ha ha! Jättebra!
—Daniel Johannson, en kille med en kvinna–man tatuering! Eller hur?
Even Åsa had to laugh at that. Humiliated, the boy yanked at his sleeve, struggled back into his coat and made as if to get up. Still laughing, his friends placated him, but he sat there in silence until Frida pulled into Hornstull, at which point he sprang up and exited the train without further comment.
—Förlåt mig, Åsa apologized as the two remaining boys hurried to collect their beer cans.
—Ingen fara, said the one who had first passed her the aquavit. Det är inte första gången.
—Oj, vad trist, said Åsa, smiling.
He offered her the almost empty bottle once more.
—Tack, she beamed.
—Vad heter du? he asked as the second friend began to drag him out of the train.
—Åsa, she answered. Åsa Strålande.
—Jag heter Karl, he shouted from the platform. Ta det lungt, Åsa Strålande!
Frida accelerated out of the station and into the relative safety of the tunnel bored out of the bedrock under the body of water dividing Hornstull from Lijleholmen. Åsa looked around her at last to find that not only was the train packed with people returning to the suburbs from beer missions in Mariatorget and Zinkensdamm, but that those nearest to her cluster had of course been listening in on her conversation with the three boys. A young couple in the cluster opposite her grinned openly but did not go so far as to say anything to her, their smiles passing for what, in Stockholm terms, was honestly just a little over-the-top.
At Liljeholmen almost everyone got out again, leaving Åsa sitting there, for the second time that night, alone in her cluster, experiencing a moment of inner-city stillness, holding the aquavit bottle with both hands as if she were praying. By the time she got out at Midsommarkransen she had completely forgotten about Niklas, NSA, Efter Pausen and the rest. Perhaps it was the crystalline effect of the aquavit moving through her system like some kind of memory disinfectant, an amnesiac tunnelbana for the brain, or the fireman in the Galieve commercial, hosing away her heartburn with his soothing blast of creamy gooze.
There were probably two shots worth of aquavit remaining in the bottle. Åsa walked up the ramp from the station, turned right onto Svandammsvägen and looked up to the clouds that might well be harbouring snow. The cars on the E4 purred in the distance but Kransen was otherwise silent, although not eerily so. She punched in her doorcode, took a penultimate swig from the bottle and got in the elevator, sitting down in the little collapsible wooden stool. She was slightly relieved to look in the wall-length mirror and see that her face, which had appeared featureless in the train window’s reflection, had returned to its natural state. Her lips, however, were chafed from the cold, and she had what looked like the beginnings of a cold sore in the corner of her mouth.
Once inside her etta, Åsa removed most of her clothes and went into the bathroom to pee before taking three Treos dissolved in a large glass of water as a precautionary measure. She checked her phone for messages one last time before connecting it to its charger. She’d left the window slightly open before going out that night, just to freshen up the air in the flat, but she closed it now and drew the curtains. The almost empty bottle of aquavit stood on the sink, its label coming off slightly. Åsa drank the last couple of centilitres, turned off the light and not so much lay down as fell onto her single bed.
*
The amnesia falls away like a shot glass slipping from her grasp. The glass shatters on the tiled floor of some faraway imaginary bar and she finds herself walking, as she always does, through the allotments in Tantolunden. The evening air is cool but it could be late summer. The twilight blends with the electric glow of the lamps to create a milky, aquamarine effect. She is walking . . . but that is it. The memory is too choked up for her to progress any further. She sees the man’s head, or the back of it at least. Then there is her hand, and the rock, and she is finally, terrifyingly, asleep.
Aldo said, in his very own voice, meet me here at half to nine in the morning – here at the top of the stair, by the locked door, when the sunlight creeps through the street doorway below, at the bottom. I am here now, here in enough time to see my normal self rushing across the square, gripping a perfect orange in my hand, my satchel thrown roughly over my shoulder, my hair still wet, the water freshly drawn from the well.
That is not myself, merely an imaginary person. Aldo is also imaginary unless he turns up now. The wooden stairs creak beneath my feet, the passageway in semi-darkness.
The table in the house, scratched and scorched by the years, my mother seated by the window, smiling as I place the orange in my bag, along with my books, along with my secret books. She calls me to her, holds my head in her hands: everything will be fine now, this is our new home, this is where we will stay. We can smile now. Go. Peace to you, she says, touching my cheek. I return: Peace.
Then walk out the door, wishing I had said the better word.
Half to nine, ahead of time, I watch the village wake. I head for the square, where the old church, with its catechisms and seasons, has been abandoned. The Town Hall replaces it in the people’s consciousness – a clock has been installed there, the only one for miles around.
Only here does time really exist. Here, in this sunlit stairway, by the locked door, the cobblestones faintly visible through a door downstairs.
The day awaits me, stirring half-excitedly like dogs in the street. My aunt’s dogs, wrestling in the dust in front of her house. She sits reading beneath a tree as wizened as herself; reading to me, from the book. My mother need not know of my tuition, nor of the old words I am learning.
When my father returns from the war and I am able to greet him in the old fashion, imagine how much greater my mother’s happiness will be. Reunited with her lover and with the ties that bind her to me and to him and to my aunt.
There is nothing I want more than to make my mother happy. So I sit and I read; so we sit and speak to each other in what for her are half-remembered mutterings stolen from elsewhere, such as my father and my uncle also used.
Some time in the past, yes.
Learning to copy the strange symbols scrawled in the books she has stored away beneath the winter clothes in her trunk, by the stove in the kitchen, beside the pile of wood I have chopped for her.
My uncle’s cold, blunt axe.
Today, after I have finished here, I will go to her house. We will sit beneath the old tree and I will listen, we will talk, we will read, I will write in the dirt at her feet. I read with enthusiasm; my aunt tells me I am progressing well.
My mother does not talk to my aunt.
Her brother is dead. She is all alone. She is waiting to wake up.
I often sleep. Often she will let me doze until mid-morning. I wake to find her sitting at the window with a faraway expression on her face. But today I have not been dozing; the sun has not been crawling across the room towards me. The boy with the orange clasped firmly in his sweaty hand is not me today. It is not yet the time for me to be late.
I hear the bells strike the half hour. At the same time Aldo’s boots begin stomping up the stairs.
But it is not Aldo. It is an old man I do not recognise. He rests for a moment at the top of the stairs, unaware that I am standing by the door.
You must recognise him! He is the old man whose teeth are cracked and yellow. He sits every day by the woodpile, wearing an old grey suit that is too short in the legs. He wears a yellow flower in his lapel and at night he wanders through the village, prowling.
He is the type that mothers tell their children not to talk to.
Take the image of this man, by whom you are so repulsed, and explode it. Posit him in a narrative, along with yourself and as many of your friends as you wish, until it becomes unbearably complicated.
When he looks up, his face is flushed and unshaven. He sees me and is startled – then smiles and walks towards me.
So you’re the young man. More a statement than an expression of curiosity.
Mandarin seeds on the window, the rats dancing mainly in the drain. The new moon last night was slowly making itself apparent. The fonts were full of Antiqua.
Never trust the story-taker, tour-guide, lie-maker. There’s a dead man, look at that! And a monkey, strapped in Parliament.
They buy coconuts in the marketplace. Why? They change the language. Why? They build water fonts all over the place. Why?
In every town square (why?), in every courtyard (why?), in every.
Do not buy coconuts, do not prance in the marketplace. Your fonts are filled with rust and your blood will wither.
Father! I exclaimed, you are now real.
Mother, I thought, do not cry, I am progressing very well.
CLINT MALVERN couldn’t help sighing when he walked into Aussie Eats. He took off his hat and let out the biggest sigh he could muster, then he sighed some more. It was no use, though. The place was empty. The Galaga machine offered an occasional melancholy beep to the two stools squatting like reversible salt and pepper shakers in the corner. The insect-like spaceships hovered over the glass window of the bainmarie, casting an alien shadow on the trays of lettuce, tomato and cucumber. As the demonstration game came to its predictable conclusion, Clint looked on glumly. The tractor beam carried the fighter off into outer space, from whence it would not return, unless he (or someone else) put twenty cents in the slot. The countdown wound its way down to zero. Game over.
The smell of oil emanating from the deep fryer, as if in response to the absence of truckies and kids, occupied literally every cubic inch of air. The rotating fan suspended from the ceiling did its best to keep the odour moving but it had been too hot that Friday afternoon to make much difference. Everywhere, chickens stood still in their coops; fleas, in search of cooler climates, emigrated from dog pelts; and altar boys refused to attend Mass, judging (wisely) that they would surely boil to death in their pre-Vatican II outfits.
Clint looked away from the game and saw the oil-spattered Chiko Roll advertisement on the counter; beneath it, on a metal tray, a stack of potato scallops, pre-cooked.
— Hi Clint, called the young girl, Sam, from the kitchen. I’ll be with you in a minute.
— Sure.
Clint peered through the bainmarie glass to the spot where Sam shovelled flour into a huge mixer. He admired its steel stirrers, its important-looking controls — speed adjusters, pulse and the like. Suddenly the coolroom door opened. Out strode Old Mrs Liebermann, Sam’s aunt, dragging a giant sack of potatoes. Clint waved to her.
— Hey Auntie Coral, they for me?
— Ha ha, good one, boy. Come through and make yourself useful. I’ve got something for you.
She stood up, groaned and exited through the side door, presumably heading for the back office, from which her father, Old Laurie, seldom ventured nowadays. Clint looked at his watch, shrugged and squeezed past the counter, stepping carefully across the greasy floor of the kitchen. It was a transgression not of personal, familial or proprietorial territory – rather, a familiar ritual, performed at various times by virtually every man, woman and child in Dulton.
Clint picked up a tea-towel and began drying the bainmarie trays with a nonchalant air. Sam grinned.
— You’re a natural.
— Yeah, right.
— Where’s your dad?
— Next door getting drunk, last I heard.
— Ah.
The old bastard’s pissing the family fortune up against that crawling vine out in the beer garden at the Commercial, thought Clint. Family fortune, indeed. The Commercial Hotel! Full of deadheads and alcoholics, not to mention the crazy bastard who couldn’t say anything except “Go the Bombers! Windy Hill! Go the Bombers!” over and over again. He used to barrack all the way up and down Farrar Street, a white line of froth at his mouth.
— So, Grog Malvern, Jnr. got sent to buy chips for his daddy, did he?
Sam pouted as she spoke, teasing Clint while she poured water into the mixer. She grinned again and he couldn’t help smiling back.
— Got it in one. Catch.
He threw the tea towel at her head and bolted for the still-open coolroom door. Sam evaded the flying cloth easily, watching it slap into the wall next to her. Putting on a kung fu fighter’s voice, she peeled the towel off the wall and wound it up, intending to use it as a whip. Slowly, with soft meow sounds, she crept towards the coolroom doorway, where stood Clint, shivering and laughing.
— Wanna fight … he challenged.
— Fight me … Sam purred, grabbing a handful of his shirt.
All of a sudden Clint’s face was tense and hot. Little did he know but Sam was just about to try and kiss him full on the lips.
— Samantha! Leave the poor boy alone! shouted Aunty Coral, reentering with a tray of something.
— Auntie, Sam moaned, exasperated.
— I’ve got no time for your mischief today, young lady. Now go out and check on your grandfather.
— Sieg Heil! Sam shouted, petulantly.
— Samantha!
— See you at the basketball, Clint?
— Ah, maybe.
What just happened, Clint wondered, his mind racing. I have absolutely no recollection of what just happened.
— Gee, don’t get over-enthusiastic or anything.
— Oh yeah, and it’s so exciting to watch a bunch of amateur girls dropping balls. Yeah, can’t wait.
Why did I say that?
— Well, it’s better than playing with model aeroplanes!
— Shut up, the two of you! yelled Mrs Liebermann.
The walls reverberated with the echo of her booming voice.
— Now, she continued, passing Clint the tray, give this to your father and tell him it’s a gift from Laurie and myself. And this, she said, drawing a string of rosary beads from her apron, is for your mother.
Old Mrs Liebermann slipped the beads smoothly into the pocket of Clint’s ice-blue Midford school shirt with a meaningful look. Then she plomped herself back on her stool and resumed the potato peeling.
— Well then, see ya, Clint said, though he didn’t know exactly who he was addressing, not to mention why.
Readers familiar with William Shakespeare’s dramatic works will recall Act I, Scene V of Romeo and Juliet, wherein the first Servant, whilst clearing away plates, says:
Away with the joint stools, remove the court cubbert, look to the plate. Good thou, save me a piece of marchpane; and as thou loves me let the porter let in Susan Grindstone and Nell. Antony, and Potpan!
William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet
That this ‘piece of marchpane’, a confection known today as Marzipan—but also marci panis, march payne, martiapanes, panis marcius, marzepaines, mauthaban, marzapane, mazapán, massepain, martaban, martevaan, mawtaban, matapan, mazapan and marzapanetti—should hold such high value for a Servant clearings scraps speaks volumes about the peculiar mystery of this particular Stuffe but also the vicissitudes of human hunger.
In 1926 the German novelist and future Nobel Prize winner Thomas Mann made a speech on the 700th anniversary of his home town of Lubeck, Germany, in which he too discussed Marzipan:
Now if anyone wishes to vent a little spite against me, or take a casual swipe at me, I can count on his bringing up my Luebeck origin and Luebeck marzipan. If some ill-wisher can think of nothing else, he invariably thinks of connecting me with comic marzipan and representing me as a marzipan baker. Such stuff goes by the name of literary satire. But it does not bother me … And I certainly do not feel in the least insulted about the marzipan. In the first place it is a very tasty confection, and in the second place it is anything but trivial; rather it is remarkable and, as I have said, mysterious … And if we examine this sweet more closely, this mixture of almonds, rosewater and sugar, the suspicion arises that it is originally oriental, a [Haremskonfekt] confection for the harem, and that in all probability the recipe for this barely digestible delicacy came to Luebeck from the Orient by way of Venice … And it turns out that those wits are not so wrong as they themselves think, that Death in Venice is really ‘marzipan’ although in a deeper sense than they ever meant it.
Thomas Mann, ‘Lubeck as a Way of Life and Thought’ (1926)
I discovered the text of this incredible speech serendipitously, while searching for a copy of Death In Venice in the Baillieu Library at the University of Melbourne. The speech, given on the occasion of the seven hundredth anniversary of Luebeck’s founding, can be found in the 1980 Knopf edition of another of Mann’s novels, Buddenbrooks, which describes the daily lives of a prominent Merchant family in Luebeck. Mann’s reputation in Luebeck, it is said, suffered a downturn upon the publication of the novel, when various real-life Luebeckers recognised themselves in the book’s cast of characters.
Mann’s descriptions of the drowning city in Death In Venice were echoed by a late-20th-century historian, Peter Lauritzen, who provides the following description of the Church of the Gesuiti in Venice:
The Gesuiti’s pulpit is an elaborate confection swathed in the heavy folds of a voluminous brocade curtain . . . This white curtain decorated in a handsome green damask pattern is in fact made of marble; all of the walls of the church are covered with this same white and green imitation damask made of verde antico inlaid in slabs of white marble. The illusion is extraordinary.
Peter Lauritzen, Venice: A Thousand Years of Culture and Civilization
Mann’s creation of a triumvirate of Confections—Marzipan, Venice and Lubeck—may well have been palatable to the guests listening to his speech. This is all very well. However, Mann’s addition of a fourth characterisation of Marzipan as a Haremskonfekt, surely, would not have gone down well in Lubeck.
For it is in Lubeck—a UNESCO World Heritage city, an island in the middle of a River, quite close to the Baltic Sea—that a strange myth, concerning the invention of Marzipan, has been propagated. According to the bare bones of the story, Marzipan was invented in Lubeck in 1407 during a Famine, or Hungersnot so severe that all there was left to eat were some almonds, eggs and sugar. When these three ingredients were combined, so the story goes, Marzipan was invented, and the villagers (presumably) escaped death at the hands of the Hungersnot.
Indeed, by implication, the Marzipan could be said to have saved the people of Luebeck from hunger forevermore, thus constituting a miraculous substance, not unlike the breadtree explorers dreamt of transporting across entire oceans, or manna flung down from Heaven.
Luebeck’s manufacturers of Marzipan have at various stages helped propagate the myth, despite the overwhelming evidence pointing to Marzipan’s origins lying much further east: towards Persia (or even further east, in India, maybe even New Guinea) many hundreds (if not thousands) of years earlier.
Therefore for Mann to describe Marzipan, or to be exact the Marzipan made in Lubeck, as a confection originating from a Harem must have sounded completely depraved to some ears that night back in June, 1926.
Today, Lubeck’s makers of Marzipan (including the Carstens and Niederegger companies) freely admit to the improbability of the Luebeck Marzipan myth. Their company websites, which in the mid to late 1990s spoke about the Famine in Luebeck and the invention of Marzipan as though it actually happened had, by the turn of this century, been toned down somewhat:
Today, everyone agrees that Luebeck is not the origin of Marzipan. Simply the fact that within our northern climate there is, understandably, a lack of almond trees, demonstrates that this is not the place to look for its origins. Even so, due to the high level of awareness of “Luebecker Marzipan”, one is tempted to associate its origin with Luebeck … some ancient accounts state that the recipe for Marzipan came via Italy directly to a Luebeck merchant. However there are no documents or other form of proof for this or for the many anecdotes and sagas.
Carstens GmbH, ‘History of Marzipan’ (2003)
and:
The origin of marzipan is now known to be the Orient where the delicate almond-sugar mixture was served at the Sultan’s table as the crowning of a meal. Through Arabian rule marzipan reached Spain and Portugal, and during the Crusades spread through the rest of Europe via the trading port of Venice.
Niederegger GmbH, ‘Lubeck Marzipan conquers the world’ (1999)
Some people just can’t help themselves, however. The following text from the German-language website Marzipanland has been translated using the Babelfish translation engine:
Everywhere on earth one knows Luebecker marzipan. The mad taste is simply unmistakable! There one does not think at all of the emergency situation, from the marzipan developed. There are several stories, but the probably most well-known one means that during a hunger emergency at the disposal were to the bakers of Luebeck nothing different one than almonds, sugars and rose oil, in order to protect the citizens death. From this the bakers developed “the Marcus bread”, our current Marzipan, is subject to which strict regulations and high quality requirements. Only marzipan, which consists to 60% of almonds and at the most 40% sugar, may call itself Luebecker noble edel-Marzipan.
Marzipanland, ‘Marzipan’ (2002)
In 2002 I visited Luebeck, an act which would effectively bring me full circle in my investigations into the Stuffe, a journey of some ten years now, and counting. Inside a store in the centre of Luebeck I discovered a museum dedicated to the Stuffe, featuring a table at which sat eleven statues, each composed entirely of Marzipan.
I found a Santa Claus (or Weihnachtsmann), a Nun, J.G. Niederegger (the founder of the Niederegger company), Thomas Mann himself, a Merchant (Burgermeister Jurgen Wullenwever), a Baroque novelist by the name of Hans Jakob Christoffel von Grimmelshausen, the Emperor Karl IV, his Mother Luise Charlotte, a child, an Apotheker and a Persian.
The photocopied notes accompanying the exhibit suggested that each of these figures (or figurines) had played a key role in the history and development of Marzipan, in Luebeck at least.
The Niederegger Marzipan table (detail), featuring Thomas Mann et al.
When I saw this astonishing scene, I experienced the kind of feeling one suspects historians seeking confirmation of inexplicable connections or correspondences must enjoy. Almost a decade before I had set out to write a novel about Marzipan, beginning with a small child sleeping inside a box.
I first read about the Luebeck Marzipan myth in 1997, using Internet search engines, drawing inferences and connections from translated materials, as well as various Cook Books, confectionery histories, books for children (including Virginia Arpadi’s delightful story of a Marzipan-coloured cat), vague hunches and a pinch of the imaginary. Here, before me, was a sixteenth Century novelist holding a strange object out in front of him, made entirely of Marzipan! What more confirmation did I need?
Under normal circumstances, this tableau alone might have proved sufficient stimulus for a writer wishing to reconstruct the events surrounding the fabled invention of Marzipan in Luebeck, substituting this table of statues for the presumed star or stars of such an historical drama — that is, the real inventors of Marzipan, who may well have been Dutch invaders, Venetian monks, a wily Apotheker, a snow storm, a well-fed Merchant or some desperate Bakers.
The accumulated knowledge with which I arrived in Luebeck however constituted an accumulation of fragments, sinews and bones. Here, finally, positioned behind a long flat table, was a set of bodies within which to insert the few historical fragments I had found, like relics of saints embedded in plaster.
Furthermore, inside the Marienkirche in the centre of Luebeck I experienced the full majesty of the Gothic culture in both architecture and painting which has produced such extraordinary monuments as the reconstructed Totentanz (‘dance of death’), an elaborate stained glass tapestry of skeletons and townsfolk engaged in not so much a dance as a grim tug of war, alternating panels in which either the villagers or the skeletons have the upper hand. At its base, the glass panels burn red, with the famous Luebeck spires engulfed in flames. Meanwhile, two of the skeletons kneel in prayer over the baby Jesus.
All of these scenes, tableaux, snippets of information and direct experiences informed, to some degree, my master’s thesis. It acknowledges the many stories about Marzipan propagated in other parts of the world. It nods its head at the island of Sicily, where Almonds have a rich and deep connection with that sandy piece of earth. It extends a hand of faith to the Orders of Nuns throughout Europe whose clandestine manufacture of Marzipan continued almost without pause throughout the Middle Ages, due in part to St Thomas Aquinas’ famous dictum that the ingestion of this exquisite Confection did not break the fast.
Nevertheless, even St Thomas would have resigned himself to the inevitability of secrecy surrounding the exact details of the Nuns’ exact Recipes for Marzipan, and would surely have noted also the practice within such orders of hiding such Recipes inside the mind of the Mother Superior, to be passed on only at the instant before death, via the ears of her successor.
In my Confection, Marzipan is assumed to be composed of three basic ingredients: Eggs, Almonds and Sugar. Some recipes substitute honey or rosewater for sugar, egg whites for eggs – but it is the Almond that gives Marzipan both its bittersweet taste and its creamy colour.
Marzipan is remembered differently elsewhere. Charles Butler’s The History of Bees contains the following recipe for Marchpane:
Marchpane may be made after this manner. Boil and clarify by it self, so much Honey as you think meet; when it is cold; take to every pound of Honey the white of an Egg, and beat them together in a basin, till they be incorporate together, and wax white: and when you have boiled it again two or three walms upon a fire of coals, continually stirring it: then put to it such quantity of blanched Almonds or Nut-kernels stamped, as shall make it of a just consistency: and after a walm or two more, when it is well mixed, pour it out upon a Table, and make up your marchpane. Afterward you may ice it with Rose-water and sugar. This is good for the Consumption.
Charles Butler, The History of Bees (1634)
Fourteen years later, in 1648, poet Robert Herrick immortalised the Stuffe in verse:
This day my Julia thou must make
For mistress Bride, the wedding Cake:
Knead but the Dow and it will be
To paste of Almonds turned by thee:
Or kisser it thou, but once or twice,
And for the Bride-Cake there’ll be Spice.Robert Herrick, ‘The Bride Cake‘ (1648)
Although the authenticity of Leonardo da Vinci’s Codex Romanoff is highly questionable, one also notes with interest according to that unverified collection of his sketches and recipes that Marchpane was sculpted by (let’s call him) Leonardo into bricks and used as foundation stones for his elaborate models.
Interestingly, though the Marzipan he used was made by the Sisters of Santa Corona, Leonardo believed that only a man could be a confectioner, ‘on account a woman’s frame is unsuited to lifting great weights of Marzipan’. He supposedly went on to list the pre-requisites for attaining the station of Confectioner:
Secondly, he should be clean and clear-skinned—for little is so off-putting to those about to eat his creations as a spotted Confectioner, or one with long hairs which may have transferred themselves from his body into his confection. Thirdly, he should have studied in architecture. For without a true knowledge of weights and stresses he cannot create confections which will stand on their own and not be liable to subsidence or even total collapse.
?, Codex Romanoff
The confectioner finally speaks of his confections thusly:
I have noted, sadly, that my Lord Lodovico and his court digest the carvings I give to them to the last crumb and now I am set to find some other substance their palates shall less appreciate that my works may survive.
?, Codex Romanoff
This leads so-called Leonardo to speculate on a form of the Marzipan which his audience would not be tempted to eat. A mixture so bitter-tasting that after even the smallest nibble, the offender would be forced to put any further thought of ingestion out of his mind. One could speculate upon many ingredients for such a Confection, which would not constitute Marzipan per se but some derivative or substitute substance (e.g. persipan, a Confection containing not almonds but peach kernels).
The adaptability of Marzipan to the confectionary and decorative arts is well-documented, in both modern day and historical Cook Books. According to a source identified only as ‘Dr Cabanes’ in the Nouveau Larousse Gastronomique, the author Balzac was also reputed to have written endorsements for the Stuffe on the streets of Paris:
In 1884 a rumour began to circulate that the author of la Comedie humaine (BALZAC) had set himself up as a confectioner. No one talked of anything else on the stock exchange, in the foyer of the opera, at the [theatre] and in all the cafes on the Paris boulevardes. Several thousand copies of a curious circular [exhorting its readers to frequent a particular shop selling Issoudon Marzipan, and also containing what purported to be an extract from one of Balzac’s novels] had just made their appearance in Paris . . . This circular bore no signature, and it was inferred that it came from the pen of Balzac or that of a friend, editor or colleague. No one else had ever thought of the idea of launching a confectioner’s shop with a paragraph from a novel. After making inquiries it was discovered that Balzac, though he did not go to the length of taking a hand in the work, patronised the confectioner’s shop in the rue Vivienne.
Montagne, P., Nouveau Larousse Gastronomique (1960)
In Persia the use of Marzipan or Marzipan-like substances (in some places called Mawtaban, or King on a Throne) has been constant in wedding ceremonies and other occasions relating to fertility and prosperity. Venice, at the cross-roads between Europe and the Middle East, was naturally one of the places in which Marzipan initially became available. The situation was similar further west in Verona, if Romeo and Juliet is anything to go by.
Meanwhile in Luebeck, also known as the Venice of the North, a trading town through which all manner of goods, including boxes of what the Venetians called St Mark’s Bread (Marci Panis), must have passed — in Luebeck it seems, there was a Famine … or the Marzipan ran out … or an invasion …
One final item in the exhibition I saw that day in Luebeck was a Marzipan globe of the world, placed on the table in front of the statues. The dull sheen of its surface bore no marks indicating landmasses or national borders — just a smooth, unwrinkled sand-coloured expanse, upon which the viewers themselves could draw imaginary empires. Such a premise might have infuriated an historical character such as Clemens von Metternich, philosopher-King of the Hapsburg Empire in the time of Napoleon, who wrote in his memoirs:
I was born to make history not to write novels and if I guess correctly this is because I know. Invention is the enemy of history which knows only discoveries, and only that which exists can be discovered.
Clemens von Metternich, Memoirs (Volume VII)
While not exactly a metaphor for my own work, the Marzipan globe reminded me that some myths still have the ability to outlive their inventors, discoverers, manufacturers and archivists.
Marzipan is far more complex than the myth invented in Luebeck would have one think. It squats in a ditch, like an animal awaiting extinction. Further vestiges of this miraculous Stuffe, including Relics, lie ever beneath us, and shall one day be discovered again.
The fact that it still exists makes my task as a modern day confectioner (in Leonardo’s terms anyway) that much easier. I look forward to sharing the results of my recipes with you.
This piece was originally presented at the University of Melbourne, as part of the Department of English and Cultural Studies’ Secrecy Colloquium (2003), and later published in the refereed journal Antithesis (2004).
