2.4 Olympe Intervenes
2.4.1 Olympe Enables Alenby's Escape from Prison
Prison Fernand Point
A Morning in Late May, 1987
Alenby rose from the breakfast table humming the melody of Come un bel di di maggio from Act IV of "Andrea Chenier." It's good to be in prison again, he thought. The grand gastronomical tour of France, completed the previous evening, had been a success. Having Curnonsky along had proved no problem--in fact the Commissaire's encyclopedic knowledge of traditional preparations had been an advantage at times. All in all, the swing around the Hexagon fulfilled many of the hopes one had nurtured on that fateful last day in U. Only a few weeks had elapsed since then, but so much had happened in that short time, it seemed like years.... He strolled back to his cell suite still savoring the Mandheling coffee he had taken along with his breakfast grapefruit.
In his living room, he settled in his recliner chair--oof! how pleasant to take the weight off one's feet!--closed his eyes and embarked on a protracted meditation on the subject of today's lunch. After weeks of traditional rustic food, one expected that normal prison fare, though a trifle precious in the haute-cuisine manner, would prove a welcome change. What, he wondered, might the chef have in mind today? As he pondered on this question he picked up the copy of the 1924 Larousse Gastronomique that happened to have been lying on the tabouret beside his chair, and on paging idly through that compendium of classical cuisine it occurred to him that since the culinary superstar of yore, Nicolas Marguery, had been born on today's date, it would be altogether appropriate to encounter at lunch one or other of the dishes invented by that luminary--perhaps the version of tournedos that bore his name: butter-sautéed beef filet garnished with mushrooms, kidneys and cocks' combs in a glazing sauce flavored with port and cream, served on a base of butter-braised artichoke hearts filled with a salpicon of truffles à la crème--
His reverie was interrupted by urgent knocking on the outer door of his cell suite. An orderly, gabbling something about a priestess--yes, a priestess, in the prison basement, demanding to see His Excellency. Highly unusual, the fellow kept saying--unprecedented, in fact--for a priestess to be let into Prison Fernand Point. Of course he'd tried to turn her away, but she insisted on a priestess' right--reluctantly confirmed by the legal department--to enter any PROFATPOL prison and interview any inmate in private. Anyway, she was being held under guard in the basement, in the dimmest and dingiest place in the prison, the düngermischmaschine room, to let her know as forcefully as legally permissible that she was not welcome.
Alenby sighed. Did this priestess person realize he was busy? Probably not. Some foolish mistake, he assumed. Might as well see her and clear up the misunderstanding.
Guided by the orderly, Alenby found the priestess crouching in a corner by the düngermischmaschine. Or to be exact, he found what appeared in the dim light of an energy-saving fluorescent light bulb, to be nothing more than a largish bundle of dirty laundry wrapped in a tarpaulin or something of the sort. But after the guard and the orderly had left and Alenby had followed them a little way make sure they were not eavesdropping, he saw on his return that the bundle was standing up, quite tall actually, and what he'd taken for a tarpaulin was a heavy, all-enveloping green burka, the official outfit of the Priestesses of Gaea.
He was unable to contain his indignation. "Look here, " he burst out, "this visit is damnably inconvenient, you know. Lunch will be served in--" he consulted his watch "--only three and a half hours from now, and I have yet to study the menu! Couldn't you make it another time, after lunch, 17 h for instance?"
The priestess--he was right to assume there was a priestess inside the burka--silenced him with an imperious gesture, and addressed him in a quiet, low-pitched voice that trembled with urgency:
"You are in danger. You must escape immediately. Before lunch. I have a plan."
Ignoring Alenby's expostulations, she explained his situation in her native French, speaking more rapidly but with no less gravity. The gist of it was this:
On a recent gastronomical tour His Extreme Lowness Commissaire Sailland had greatly exceeded his expense allowance. His private funds, originally substantial but now depleted from his long-term practice of subsidizing PROFATPOL food allotments for Prison Fernand Point, proved insufficient to cover this shortfall. Embarrassed at this, the Commissaire naturally decided to commit suicide. Today's lunch will be his Assiette Noire event, Apéritifs at 13 h sharp, sit down at 13:30, attendance mandatory for all inmates, black tie--
The words "Assiette Noire" marked the limit of Alenby's attention span. Unnoticed by the priestess, his mind drifted to the menu, and eddied gently around the various possible components of sufficiently dark color to suit the solemnity of the occasion. Beluga caviar and Kir of Cava and old-fashioned "black" wine of Cahors (a rather harsh malbec, actually) for a start, then black bean soup, tepid, with a drops of lemon juice added just before serving. As for the plat principal, not Tournedos Marguery but rather Tournedos Paul Cezanne, the filet coated with tapenade of black olives, served with a gratin of black Peruvian potatoes and butter-sautéed trompettes de la mort. For dessert, he was contemplating André Daguin's prune ice cream studded with black truffles as one possibility, when the priestess' mention of the succession to the soon-to-be vacated post of Commissaire jolted him back to reality.
As the new Commissaire you will have a very difficult job, she'd been saying, or something to that effect. Costs of substances have exploded--boom! And the costs of substances of sufficiently good quality for Prison Fernand Point--boom boom!
New Commissaire! In a flash, Alenby saw she was right--no other inmate was as fit as he was to take over that post. It was going to be him, or Gaea forbid, an outsider! He had to escape. He signaled his acquiescence.
With a wild laugh of triumph and relief, the priestess flipped up her burka to reveal another, identical coverall underneath. She went to work at once, in the rapid yet unhurried manner of an enterprise already well planned and rehearsed. She pulled off the outer burka and dropped it over Alenby's head, and by the time he had worked his way far enough into the garment's voluminous folds to look out through the tiny front window, she had turned away to remove a side panel from what he recognized as the chumanure conveyer chute of the düngermischmaschine, and was in the act of tossing into the chute the high hat and thick shoulder pads she had also been wearing under the outer burka to bring her apparent height up to within an inch or two of his.
"Now you must aid me into the hole where I have put my hat and things," she said. "Then you will put back the panel and tighten the--"
"Wing nuts."
"The ving nuts. Then you will press the button marked CHUMANURE AUS on the console. When the convoyeur starts you will walk out the exit. The guard will ask the name, and you will whisper "Soeur Vertumne." Practice the whisper, please."
Alenby practiced until he got the whisper exactly right.
"Bon," said the priestess. "The guardian will ask for the identification. It is in the pocket."
As she was saying this, she placed a chair beside the open port preparatory to climbing up into the chute. Alenby moved to help her, but she stopped him with a gesture.
"Attendez--" she said in a low tone clotted with emotion, and on a mutual impulse they embraced briefly. Then breaking away with a whispered "Au revoir," she stepped up on the chair and wriggled into the chute without assistance.
"Au revoir," he returned with genuine feeling of respect and gratitude for the lady's courage in rescuing him from what might have been an untenable situation, as well as equally genuine feeling of prurient interest in the smooth, shapely legs she'd inadvertently displayed before disappearing inside the chute. He replaced the panel, tightened the wing nuts, pressed the button. The conveyer rumbled.
Having followed the escape instructions, in a few minutes Alenby found himself outside the prison, a free man blinking in the sunshine of a beautiful day in May.
He took off the burka and hid it in some shrubbery. He'd kept the ID card as a souvenir of his escape from Prison Fernand Point, and it occurred to him now that, to conceal the complicity of the good Soeur Vertumne, he ought to dispose of it in some secure manner. After all, it was no use being half safe.... He took the card out of his pocket and examined it carefully. Printed on bio-degradable organic cardboard, he noted in the fine print. Perhaps one might be able to eat it?
He was checking that possibility when a black-uniformed PROFATPOL officer happened by and placed him under arrest--attempted ingestion of a refined food-like substance of low nutrient-density index, a misdemeanor. One could have fought the charge, but Alenby opted for another stretch in Prison Simone Weil.