Member Choice Winner for February, 2004, Congrats to..... Options

[Cleo_Serapis]

The February, 2004 Member's Choice results are in!  

Congrats to orestes for winning our February Member's Choice Award with his tile, 'The Reluctant Vegetarian' !!

WAY TO GO "O"!

Your entry will be displayed along with a 'special graphic' in your signature! You have led your Muse to bask in the glory of the crown jewel.    

Congratulations! You have added a tile to our Mosaic in style. Thank you!   JOY to you, oh mighty one!            

Cheers!
Mosaic Musings Staff              

Member Choice Award Winner

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The Reluctant Vegetarian

In those days I had many friends, all of them fairly interesting compounds of good and bad, common sense and absurdity, but when I try to remember them now, I can think of them only as personifications of the seven deadly sins.  I have always been obsessed with the seven deadly sins, and with identifying them in the people I know. For instance, I had a dear friend called Nora, whose chief failing was her utter laziness, both at home and at work; but when I think of her now, I think of her not as Nora but very much as Sloth. Another friend, Linda, was terribly insecure about and easily upset by the success of others; I duly remember her now not as Linda but as Envy. And I had another friend at this time, called Norman, who exists in my memory these days in no other form except as a devout lover of food, more specifically of meat; he is set down in my mind as Gluttony, but I also think of him as The Carnivore, that being as much of a sin in my book as anything else.

             Norman’s obsessive love of meat aggrieved me much at this time. For I was and am a vegetarian, and something of a prig with it, I must confess.  To intensify the situation, we reviewed for the same food magazine, entitled Nosh; his reviews, however, were concentrated on meat dishes, whereas I held sway over the vegetarian section, being much smaller and narrower in scope.  Looking back, he was equally as bitter about me as I was about him; he used to call me “The Queen of the Vegetables”, which I told him I took very much as a compliment.  And when the office was shutting in the evening, and he would pronounce himself to be starving, he never failed to add, “I’m looking forward to devouring something’s flesh,” as he headed off to whatever restaurant was on his hit-list that night.  I never dignified this cruel joke with a response.

             Yet we were friends of sorts, as though our untiring opposition on the subject of the rights and wrongs of carnivorism provided us with a common bond. We drew the line at going to dinner together, but would sometimes go for pre- or post-dinner drinks at a pub nearby our office.  And it was at one of these meetings that I first heard about Norman’s trouble.

              We were due to meet at half-past-eight.  By a quarter to nine Norman had still not arrived.  I was starting to get impatient as I had already finished my whisky-and-soda and didn’t want to risk getting another until I was sure Norman was going to arrive.  It was not safe for a woman to drink alone at that time, any more than it is now. I was becoming annoyed and kept glancing at the clock on the wall, looking away, then glancing up again a few seconds later. Finally I saw his shape loom up against the glass door, and got ready to scold. Yet, as he came towards me, I noticed that his face was pale and wore a troubled expression.  So I contented myself with pointing to my almost empty glass and saying “Same again.” He nodded and went up to the counter, coming back a minute later with my whisky and with what looked like a double brandy for himself.  

            “What on earth’s the matter?” I asked him.

            He didn’t answer for a minute, just kept looking down the table.  It was all most unlike him.  “Sorry I’m late,” he finally said.  “I had to run home and get my sedative tablets.  My nerves, you know,”

           “Why, what happened?”

            He drained his glass practically in one go, and gestured to the bar for another.  Then he said, all in a rush:

            "It was all so strange.  I was at that restaurant just off Birnam Lane.  You know, the one that’s just opened. I skipped on the hors d’oeuvres as I knew I was meeting you.  So I just went straight for the main dish and ordered steak done with tarragon sauce. You know how I love steak.”

             I nodded, and tried at the same time to convey my contempt for the fact.

            “So I ordered the steak.  And it arrived with one of those stainless steel covers on it.  And I lifted the cover and…oh, it was horrible!” He downed his second brandy as a sort of dramatic accompaniment to the words, and gestured for another.

             “Too well done, was it?” I inquired, not altogether in jest.  Norman could be very sensitive about his food.

“Oh, you’ve no idea what it was like.  It was…it was…the head of a cow!  Just there, on the plate.  The severed head of a cow! Oh…it was horrible!”

He attacked the third brandy as though to blot out the memory.  I told him to steady on.

“A cow’s head? Oh come on, Norman.  It’s a four-star restaurant.”

“I knew you wouldn’t believe me. But it’s true! And you don’t know the worst of it.”

“Well, what was the worst of it?” I asked, resolving to be patient.

“It was alive!  The head, it was alive! The eyes blinked at me.  It even licked its lips once.  You’ve never seen anything like it.”

“But I thought you said the head was severed?”

“That was the awful thing about it.  It was a dead cow’s head, yet it was alive, it moved!  I swear to you.  But now I come to the really awful part.  I of course put the cover back on at once, I couldn’t look at the dreadful thing any longer.  And I called for the maitre’d. I told him I was appalled and what was he going to do about it? What seems to be the problem, he says.  This! I say, and lift up the cover.  It is not to your liking, sir? he asks.  Not to my liking? is what I say.  Of course it’s not to my bloody liking.  How do you expect me to eat this?  And then I notice that he is looking at me in a very odd way.  So I ask him, what do you see here then? And he says, why sir, I see steak done with tarragon sauce.  And I call to another waiter and he comes up, and he also sees steak and tarragon sauce. Yet what I see is still a cow’s head, staring up at me. I had to leave the restaurant on the spot.  I thought I was going mad.  I think I am going mad.  What do you think about all this?”

            I had just finished an evening course in the fundamentals of psychology, and I thought I would give him some of the fruits of it.  So I said:

“Well, since you ask me, I think it’s all very clear. It is a case, it seems to me, of profound guilt leading to hallucinations.”

“But…”

“Let me finish.  One thing, it seems to me, is absolutely beyond doubt.  There was no cow’s head on the platter, in the objective sense at any rate. Yet the fact remains that, in your subjective sense, there was a cow’s head on your platter.  You saw it there; therefore, it was there, as far as you alone were concerned at least.  Now, what does that suggest to you?”

Norman shook his head at me dumbly.

“Well, it suggests to me that it was a product of your guilt-ridden imagination. It is clear that you have been feeling guilty for some time, and with good reason, about eating the flesh of animals.  So that you yourself have subconsciously created this head of a cow, to prevent yourself from eating meat. You were unable to eat a cow’s head; ergo, you were unable to eat meat this evening.  Now, doesn’t that all make sense?”

“It seems very far-fetched to me,” Norman replied.  “I don’t feel guilty in the slightest about eating meat.  Therefore how could…?”

“You obviously know very little about your subconscious, your id.  But I may as well tell you now, your id has been telling me for some time that you are feeling guilty about being a carnivore.”

Norman seemed to give weight to what I said.  He said he would go to a different restaurant tomorrow evening, and report back to me afterwards as to his success or otherwise in obtaining and eating a properly anonymous-looking meat dish. I must confess that I hoped he would experience similar hallucinations this time around, and I was not disappointed.

             This time he had opted for a roast lamb dish.  His hand had trembled as he went to lift the cover, and with good reason. For he was confronted with the sight of a lamb’s head staring plaintively up at him. He even thought he heard it bleat once, but could not swear to this.  Again he had called the head waiter, and this different head waiter had experienced a similar difficulty in seeing what Norman beheld in front of him.  Again Norman had fled the restaurant, his appetite very much lost, and again he had arrived to meet me as it were a broken man.

             “What am I going to do?” he wailed at me.  “I definitely must be going mad.”

“Guilt,” I agreed, “has been known to lead to madness.  In your case there is only one thing you can do.  You must cut off and destroy your guilt at its source.”

“But how can I do that?”

“It’s quite simple.  You must become vegetarian.  You must no longer eat flesh.” I always told carnivores that they ate flesh, not meat, so that they might think of themselves as I thought of them, as cannibals of the most hardened kind.

“That’s a bit drastic, isn’t it?”

“Well,” I said, “it’s up to you.  Just don’t expect any sympathy from me if the same thing happens to you night after night.”

He seemed to give what I said deep consideration.  He said he would give meat-eating one last try, but that he would give it up forever if the same visions confronted him. This time, he said, he would cook himself a meal at home, and see if that produced a different effect.  I told him I thought that was cheating.

            “You’re taking the easy way out,” I said.  “You have to go back to the scene of the incident, in order to gain closure to that incident.  Don’t you know anything about the fundamentals of psychology?”

But Norman was adamant.  “Let me try it at home,” he said.  “I have a feeling that things will go better there.”

And Norman’s feeling was in fact right.  He prepared himself a beef stroganoff, and beef stroganoff was what he went on to eat that evening.  He rang me up ten minutes later, jubilant.

“It must have something to do with the cover,” he said.  “I didn’t cover the beef stroganoff.  That seemed to do the trick.”

“I think you’re mad,” I said, and rang off, disgusted.  I knew that, after this, Norman would be back to eating meat, no, flesh, with a vengeance.

Weeks went by, and Norman returned to his carnivorous ways, seeming to enjoy them all the more for having been briefly cut off from them. He even persisted in joking that “my id, whatever that is, enjoys devouring the flesh of animals as much as the rest of me does,”, which joke I considered to be in the very poorest of taste.

             And now I must come to an evening about six weeks later, when I was due to meet Norman at the usual place.  I arrived in good time and ordered myself my usual whisky and soda.  And again Norman was late.  I glanced up at the clock, sipped my drink, and glanced up again.  It was after nine and still he hadn’t shown up. I gathered myself up into a righteous rage at thoughtless people, so different from myself, and swept out of the pub.  It’s not safe for unmarried women to drink alone.

I arrived home and put on the kettle. The phone rang and I went to answer it. It was Norman. I arranged my mouth into a thin line, the better to complain, but was stopped in my tracks by the sound of his voice, and by what he said.  He said, “Elaine, please come over at once.  Please.  I think I’m going mad.”

            I said, “I’ll be right over,” and, gathering up my coat and keys, left the house.  I drove to Norman’s apartment, which was in the south of the city.  He buzzed me in and I beheld him, even paler and shakier than he had been on the first of those tremulous evenings.

           “It’s happened again,” he said, his voice trembling.  “Worse than ever this time.”

            It transpired that Norman, having ordered Peking duck at his favourite restaurant, had been confronted by the sight not of a neatly chopped up and sauced duck but by a breathing, moving duck which had not only stared impudently up at him but which had in fact quacked loudly and shook its feathers while doing so.  Norman, not pausing to observe the effect, if any, that this duck caused on the restaurant in general, had cried out, overturned his chair, and ran out of the premises, quite neglecting to pay his bill.  He was now quite convinced that he was losing his mind.

            “There’s nothing else for it,” he said dolefully, “if I want to keep my reason.  I’ll have to become vegetarian.  You were right all along.  My id must have been trying to tell me something, all along.”

             I nodded my head sagely. “I have many books I can lend you,” I said kindly, “about how to get the most out of vegetarianism.  You’ll thank your id in the long run, I promise you.”

“I hope so,” he said. “because, at the moment, my life seems quite empty. The eating of meat was my only real pleasure in life.”

“That’ll teach you,” I said, secure in my own rightness, “not to take pleasure so seriously.” And, having made him a hot, sugary cup of tea, I took myself out of his apartment, promising to teach him the basic principles not only of vegetarianism but of fundamental psychology, the following day.


             I made as if to go home, but didn’t. I went instead to Norman’s favourite restaurant, Mack the Knife, which stood quite near to our office.  I went in and asked to see the head waiter, Thomas, who was in fact a friend of mine.  He appeared and we went around the back of the building. I took an envelope out of my hand-bag and handed it to him. He smiled.

“It worked, then?”

“Like a charm,” I replied, also smiling.  “We have another vegetarian, albeit a reluctant vegetarian, in our midst from this day forth.  Do you know what he said to me? He said “eating meat was my only real pleasure in life.”  What do you think of that?”

“I think that’s rather sad,” Thomas replied.  “Don’t you?”

             And we both laughed, standing there, around the back of the restaurant. And then Thomas headed back to work and I headed home. In the twilight the river seemed to glimmer as I walked by it, and I stopped to look down at my reflection in the shining waters. But it was not my own reflection I saw there, but rather the reflections of all the sins I had sought to identify and root out in others, those Seven Deadly Sins shimmering and dancing in all their terrible glory, Lust, Pride, Envy, Sloth, Covetousness, Anger, and Gluttony.

© 2004 orestes
All rights reserved by orestes as an unpublished work.

[Cleo_Serapis]

Congrats Stephen!

What a wonderful short story with a great twister ending!  

Well deserved!  

Cheers!
Cleo  :pharoah2

[Guest_orestes_*]

Hi Cleo,

Thanks very much for the distinction! I'm thrilled that you enjoyed my story. Must post again soon!

Stephen xx