Welsh Losser’s Venus Baby Adopted
This is me, John Smith, and I’m writing this review for The Hunched Cornish – the giant freak with terrifying looks who sometimes lunches and dines with me.
That’s usually to the exclusion of other dining partners, unless The Half Guinea intrudes and imposes himself on The Hunched Cornish’s sublime serenity. But if he brings the dog around (Milk Bone for those who are loyal and believe in his powers), he won’t stand it for a minute.
I’ve done this before, with a place called Mozzarella, here also in Podil, up on the main Sahaydachnoho strip running from the Poshtova Ploshcha metro. But when I did that one, back at the height of summer, I was just being a dick. To bug The Hunched Cornish, get on his nerves. I don’t know why – I do that sometimes.
But this time it’s a little more serious. In fact, things may be far more serious than I can currently gather. The Hunched Cornish seems to have suddenly become incapable of writing – these reviews or just about anything else. I know for certain it goes beyond writer’s block. I mean, what kind of a block can you have if all you have to do is come to a place like this Centrale at 28 Mezhyhirska, which is where we’re at as I take down these mental notations, eat its damn food and write what it tastes like. Add the prices. Talk a little about what the inside of the joint looks like, it’s décor. Add a few more smart-sounding and smarmy comments that are supposed to pass for insightful and highbrow, like you really know what you’re talking about while having kept the reader mildly entertained without falling asleep – and there you go.
Yeah – and it’s a classy joint, too. I said the address is Mezhyhirska, which goes up-and-down on the Podil grid, but you enter on Yaroslavska, which goes across, making it a couple of blocks down from Andrew’s Irish Pub – reviewed for this publication by The Hunched Cornish and The Half Guinea, but not by the dog.
You can look it up.
So there I was, finally finding the dark hidden men on Kyiv Unedited’s Secret Editorial Board just as they were about to bring down the gavel and hand down the judgment on The Hunched Cornish, firing him – for bad writing, infrequent submissions to The Checkout, and incompetence.
But I made a long and impassioned speech, in which I reminded them that, although the monster fucked up the New York Bagel review – one of his first for The Checkout – by slipping in some mildly distasteful yet ultimately harmless anti-Semitic comments, apparently doing nothing more than making fun of the Jews as a people and trashing their Kabbalah (“But lo, and la, and yea,” I said, “and yet, are we not all human, do we not all make mistakes, bleed, eat, laugh, cry,” and so on), wrote Webronsky for Chevransky, and got perhaps every price for every food item wrong – but only because he had been stuck there for 14 months, out of his great love for The Good Witch, who lightheartedly paralyzed him and then hopped away – I reminded the Board that, although they filed their own corrected version of the review with apologies to the readers, they nevertheless ALSO fucked it up. This shocked the Board into silence, leaving the way open for me to take the stage.
“Bagels on the menu at New York Bagel” – like Lox (salmon) with Cream Cheese – one version going for 37 hryvnias and another for UAH 43 at the moment of this writing – I told them, reaching the pinnacle of my peroration after having moved them to becoming but malleable nincompoops in my oratorical hands… “uh, bagels, as I was saying, appearing in one column on the menu under one price and then appearing in another column at a higher price under the same name, were not distinguished by what was inside the bagel, with the difference in price between the two versions being characterized by – and I quote the Editorial Board in all its glaring and shameful incorrectness, ‘the more expensive one [bagel] having more fillings, like peppers, according to the menu, piled on the starring ingredient.’
“For the difference, gentlemen,” I said, fairly averring, “is in the bagel itself!”
After waiting for the begrudged shocked gasps and obligatory incoherent murmuring that raced around the table in diminishing waves to pipe down, I then proceeded to use the Editorial Board’s own example of the Chevransky Bagel – which it itself had used to correct The Hunched Cornish – against it.
“Thus, you, that’s right, YOU, the Editorial Board, went on to conclude that you get the French-named goat cheese chevre in the more expensive version of the Chevransky Bagel. But does not that then defeat the logic of and reason for calling the less expensive version of the same bagel a Chevransky as well? For, I submit to you, gentlemen, that you get no less goat cheese in the less expensive Chevransky than in the more expensive Chevransky, Jews or no Jews, for the essence of the higher price is in the bagel itself – the less expensive version perhaps being on a caraway seed bagel, while the more expensive, on one with poppy seeds. I rest my case.”
Needless to say, the Editorial Board shut its mouth and reversed its decision on The Hunched Cornish.
“I know the shit you’re writing about me, Tiny,” The Hunched Cornish says, right at this moment as we eat at Centrale. “You think I give a damn.”
“I know you don’t, but what I’m writing is nothing bad. It’s simply the Truth.”
“The Truth? What is the Truth, Tiny? And can it truly SIMPLY be that – as you say?”
“No need to be a smart ass, The Hunched Cornish. So now, if you don’t mind, I will enjoy this steak served with potatoes au gratin, string beans and a spill of gravy, and then write about it in this review, adding a comment on its taste (simply superb) and not forgetting to note the price (Hr 124, or thereabouts). What you do with yours, that’s your business.”
“That’s so fucking stupid, Smith.”
“Fuck you.”
The Centrale interior’s 19th century salon style is tasteful and elegant, the ambience quiet, at table you will have reclined into an easeful dignity, the wait service is prompt, attentive and competent without being fawning and goofy. Tables are far enough apart that privacy and conversation are mutually ensured between them. The atmosphere lends itself to lowness of key. Even the waiter hovering over any other table is incapable of intruding into your space – unless you request he does. And that goes for the waitress, too.
“Smith… Smith! I’m fucking talking to you!”
The price range is just at the start of the low end of high, but for really good, even superb, if occasional, dining, it’s worth it.
“I said SMITH!!!”
“What is it, The Hunched Cornish? No need to yell. You see what kind of joint we’re in.”
“What the fuck do I care what kind of joint we’re in?”
“I’m busy here. What do you want?”
“Did you take my cufflinks?”
“Your cufflinks?”
“That’s right, my fucking cufflinks. You heard me.”
I can’t say I’m shocked that The Hunched Cornish is accusing me of taking, which would be tantamount to stealing, his cufflinks. But the feeling is pretty close to it.
“You mean the ones that were on your dresser?”
“That’s right. On the highboy, Smith. They were a little higher up than you’re inferring.”
“I know where they were. And as we left your place, they were still there.”
“The cufflinks.”
“Why would I take your cufflinks? I don’t even have any shirts I could wear them in.”
“Why are you telling me this, Smith? Did you take them, or not?”
“I’m not answering the question.”
“Did you take the cufflinks?”
Before my steak and au gratin spuds, I had a salad (Hr 87) of delectable marinated duck breast slices in a variety of salad leaves, surrounded by crumbly chunks of Roquefort cheese, walnuts, a small round plum-like fruit I am incapable of naming, slices of passion fruit, raspberries, and an ingredient or two I may be forgetting – and just absolutely delicious.
“Smith!”
The dessert was a slice of apple pie (Hr 57), which is less the strudel you get in most other places around here, and more a glazed, but substantially portioned, pastry, with caramel sauce and a dollop of vanilla ice cream, and berries of the rasp and cran kind. Maybe some more passion fruit got in there, too. Yum-yum.
“I said SMITH!!!”
“What is it?”
“How’s that book?”
The Hunched Cornish is referring to “Pilgrim’s Progress”, which lies next to me on the table.
“Oh, it’s all right, I guess.”
“Hmmm…”
And then, out of an inside pocket, with two fingers The Hunched Cornish pulls out this baby and plops it on its ass on the table, where it sits, gurgling, goo-gooing, and drooling, laughing like there’s no tomorrow and it doesn’t have a care in the world. The baby is so beautiful in a sort of lewd, demented and depraved way, that it is actually repulsive. It is as though the baby expects you to orgasm just by looking at it. I’m thoroughly revolted.
“You shouldn’t have done that, The Hunched Cornish.”
“It’s none of your damn business what the hell I do.”
“It’s interference. Deus ex machina. It’s not supposed to happen, and it doesn’t.”
“That’s where you’re wrong, Smith. Deus ex machina happens all the time.”
There is nothing I can tell him.
John Smith, December 31, 2013