The Dinner Read Online Free PDF Page B

as a connoisseur; in my memory it seems to have happened quite suddenly. From one day to the next he became the one who picked up the wine list and mumbled something about the ‘earthy aftertaste’ of Portuguese wines from the Alentejo: it had been a sort of coup, really, for from that day on, the wine list automatically ended up in Serge’s hands.
    After presenting the label and receiving my brother’s nod of approval, the manager began uncorking the bottle. Operating a corkscrew, it became clear right away, was not his strong suit. He tried to disguise that a bit by shrugging and laughing at his own clumsiness, the whole time with a puzzled air that said this was certainly the first time anything like this had happened to him, but it was precisely that air that gave him away.
    ‘Well, it doesn’t seem to want to cooperate,’ he said as the top of the cork broke off and the wreckage came out with the corkscrew.
    The manager was now faced with a dilemma. Should he try to ease the other half of the cork out of the bottle, here at the table, under our watchful eyes? Or would it be wiser to take the bottle back to the open kitchen for some expert help?
    The simplest solution, unfortunately, was unthinkable: to push the stubborn half of the cork down into the bottle with the handle of a fork or spoon. You might find little crumbs of cork in your glass afterwards, but so what? Who cares? How much did this Chablis cost? Fifty-eight euros? The price meant nothing anyway. Or at most it meant that you had an excellent chance of coming across exactly the same wine on the supermarket shelf tomorrow, for €7.95 or less.
    ‘Excuse me,’ the manager said. ‘I’m going to fetch another bottle for you.’ And before we could say a word he went striding off past the other tables.
    ‘Ah, well,’ I said. ‘I suppose it’s like a hospital. You’re better off praying that one of the nurses will take your blood, and not the specialist himself.’
    Claire laughed out loud. And Babette laughed too. ‘Oh, I felt so bad for him,’ she said.
    Serge, though, sat there brooding. The look on his face was almost sorrowful, as though something had been taken away from him: his little toy, his self-important blather about wines and vintages and earthy grapes. Indirectly, the manager’s bumbling reflected on him. He, Serge Lohman, had picked the Chablis with the rotten cork. He had been looking forward to an orderly process: the reading of the label, the approving nod, the thimbleful that the manager would pour into his glass. That last bit, above all. That was, by now, one thing I couldn’t stand to watch any more, couldn’t bear to hear: the sniffling, the gargling, the smacking of the lips, the wine that my brother would roll across his tongue, all the way to his gullet, and then back again. I always had to look the other way.
    ‘Let’s hope the other bottles don’t have the same problem,’ he said. ‘That would be a pity: it really is an excellent Chablis.’
    He was clearly in a bad way. He was the one who had picked out this restaurant, they knew him here, the man in the white turtleneck knew him and had come out of the open kitchen specially to shake his hand. I wondered what would have happened if I had picked the restaurant, a different restaurant, one he’d never been to before, and if the manager or a waiter had failed to uncork the wine at one go: you could bet your life on it that he would have smiled pityingly, then shaken his head – oh yes, I knew my brother well enough by now; he would have given me a look with a message only I could read: that Paul, he always takes us to the weirdest places …
    You have big politicos who like to work in the kitchen, who collect old comic books or have a wooden boat they’ve fixed up all by themselves. The hobby they choose usually clashes entirely with the face that goes with it, going completely against the grain of what everyone has made of them till then. The worst