Cheese!
Even the sound of the word excited him. Cheese. Cheeeeeese. Like
the whirring of some marvellous contraption, a futuristic machine designed for
pure human delight. He could see it in mind's eye: gears spinning, pistons
pumping, steam bursting joyfully from the chimney atop the device, whistling to
let all know that the cheese was ready; the Delight-O-Tron spitting forth
divine hunks of yellow and white, and even blue and green, magical slabs of
pungent paradise for all to consume and sate themselves with ecstasy.
This is what he saw. Reality was sadly different, and as the wrappers piled
high in the corners of his flat, he knew he must be content with daydreams. In
this harsh capitalistic world, nobody else saw cheese the way he did. The other
invention he fantasised about was a new kind of nuclear-powered spectacles,
attuned to a specific cheese-friendly frequency. When you put them on, your
appreciation of cheese would intensify beyond belief. Looking at cheese with
these glasses, one would experience such dizzy heights of joy...everyone would
know what it was like for him. He had been born with Cheese Specs. He yearned
to bring them to the world. Alas, he lacked the technology. The fact was that
all the time he could have spent learning of physics and electronics and
mechanical engineering had been entirely taken up with the consumption and
appreciation of cheese. And so, his love of cheese had robbed him of the
ability to fulfil it. This thought could at times reduce him to such despair that
he would collapse in a puddle of paradox and lie weeping for hours, nibbling
melancholically at a wedge of Jarlsberg.
He knew there must be, somewhere, the answer to that question that had burned
inside him as long as he could remember, like a dairy-based blowtorch. It was
hard to bear, and even harder to understand: cheese satisfied him, more than
man has ever been satisfied by anything, at least as far as he knew. Casanova
looking back on his legions of female conquests, Michaelangelo recalling his incomparable
catalogue of artistic supernovas, Caesar himself surveying all the lands he had
brought to heel before his standard, none could possibly have felt such surges
of euphoric content, such electric bolts of all-consuming happiness, as were
his at the end of a day getting to grips with a consignment of Gorgonzola. And
yet...
And yet it
seemed that satisfaction, so far from being dissatisfaction's mortal
foe, was in fact its meek and humble handmaiden. For no matter how satisfied he
became, it was not satisfied enough. Always, the gnawing began again...
Cheese was his,
and it was glorious. But the glory of his personal affair with the sublime curd
was nothing, a speck of plankton in a wall of baleen, when compared to the
glory he imagined, saw in the distance, felt tingling at his extremities, heard
echoing within his skull, tasted, dancing, on the tip of his tongue...the glory
of spreading cheese to all the world and bringing that indescribable joy to the
masses, disseminating his love infinitely and watching the whole world rejoice
in cheese's benevolent embrace. The glory imagined dwarfed the glory realised
by so far that every day he woke up with a hollowness in the pit of his
stomach, a metaphysical famine that a quickly scoffed Camembert wheel could
dissipate only temporarily.
And so, finally,
after years of enduring the burning ache, he made a decision. A decision that
would change not only his own life, but the very world itself. A decision that
in the pursuit of the ultimate goal, he would make the ultimate sacrifice.
He would give up
cheese.
He could see,
all too clearly, that cheese was standing in its own way. Eating cheese took up
too much time; the buying, the unwrapping, the setting out, the savouring of
aromas and tender prodding of textures. The long, lingered-over consumption,
the reverent afterglow. The recording of details in his dark blue Cheese Log.
The agonised composition of words to do justice to the delicacy, lest he
someday forget a single bite. It devoured his time, and left not a second for
planning and plotting, for devising of schemes to encircle the globe with
cheese.
He must,
therefore, set cheese aside, and bend every sinew towards his greater goal.
Though it would be torture, his reunion with cheese at the completion of his task
would be all the sweeter for the knowledge that it was earned.
Torture, in
fact, was far too mild a word for what the coming weeks brought him. Every day,
as he sketched blueprints, constructed scale models, sat in the library behind
piles upon piles of weighty, sombre volumes, he felt the siren song of Lady
Mold calling him. Every night, as he sat by the light of an inadequate lamp,
scribbling madly in exercise book after exercise book, ruling lines, measuring
angles, feverishly tearing pages out of phone books and pasting them in
esoteric configurations on huge slabs of cardboard, he felt the knives of
cheese-lust hacking away at his flesh.
Oh, he ate, but
poor fare. Bread. Butter. Meat. Vegetables. He drank waters and juices, and
even milk - O sweet tantalisation, so near yet so far - but cheese passed not
his lips. Passed not even his doorway; he knew the limits of his willpower.
And so he
worked. He became gaunt and ragged. His clothes grew filthy and began falling
to pieces. His eyes assumed a staring, haunted look. His face was pale and
pinched. The marks of obsession were stamped upon him like the imprint of
Surchoix upon an Appenzeller. Soon, soon, he would waste away to nothing. Soon,
the cheese would claim him, as it had his forebears.
Oh, nobody knew
of them, of course. It was not widely reported when a lone lunatic fell victim
to the ravages of cheese. Felled before their plans could reach fruition, they
were anonymous, unloved and unmourned. But he, yes, he knew them. He had read,
he had learnt, he had come to know just what a lethal endeavour he had embarked
upon. The names floated like ghosts before his weary, bulging eyes.
Lippinziger, Rothwell, Gerdell de la Bosconi. Noble men, men who had believed
in cheese, who had looked cheese in the face and smiled as it took their lives.
He knew he was
destined to join their ranks. Perhaps, then, he would know peace, he would know
bliss. He would be transported to Cheese Heaven, where even Brocciu is
endlessly available, and the only company would be those other brave men who
understood his passion. But one way or another, he was heading down that road.
The cheese was coming for him. Fate had drained the whey. The desire for just
one wedge, just one slice, just one smear across a cracker...it would overwhelm
him. To go without cheese for a day was agony. This...this was the Inferno.
And that's when
it happened.
This emaciated
shell of a man, this ghoul, this half-crazed banshee, sitting one night, eight
weeks past the start of his project, staring at his notes, his blueprints, his
maps, his scrapbooks, his models, his painstaking graphs...found the answer.
And when it came
it struck him with the force of an Emmental fired from a Howitzer. It had been
there all along. He was a genius without knowing it. The Cheese Conundrum had
been solved.
And suddenly,
that cold night, flickering candle dimly lighting his laughing, dirty,
whiskered, madman's face, he knew that the world was his for the taking.
The rest of the
night, he sat happily in the doorway of the shop across the street, rocking, a
contented smile upon his face, and when they opened, he bought every last scrap
of Gruyere in the place, and ate it right there, grinning from ear to ear.
Not that it was
that simple, of course. Yes, he had the answer, but the practical work had
still to be done. Construction was undertaken. A score of strong men were hired
and told of a hefty share of the profits if they bent their arms to the task
with all possible vigour. Day and night they laboured in his new makeshift factory,
hammering, riveting, bolting, welding, scraping and oiling, but still their
hours were as nothing compared to the work he himself put in.
The word went
out. Clever men in suits were employed to spread the message, to bring
habringers of the coming of the new age. Rumours of the miracle of this fresh
invention were carefully and scientifically placed and propagated in all
corners of the green earth.
And after months
of preparation, it was ready. He rented a suit. He stood nervously on the steps
of the Town Hall, dignitaries surrounding him, press confronting him, a crowd
hanging on his every word as he stammeringly, haltingly, did the best he could
to put into words what he knew words could never describe. His vision, his
dream, come to life. The device that would change all of their lives, and so
much for the better.
He knew as he
spoke that they were there, not to celebrate cheese, or to experience the
possibility of altering their lives forever. They were there to capture failure
in its first blush. They were there to see him fall. And he prayed, as he
prepared to pull aside the drapery, that it was not all for naught. It had been
tested...it would work now, wouldn't it? His dream...it was not a foolish
fantasy? It really was real, yes?
It was time.
He unveiled.
And...the gasp.
The gasp that
was heard around the world. Such a thing of beauty. Of impossible elegance and
perfection, yet of such undeniable, irresistible substance and functionality.
The first sight of it sent a shockwave of excitement through the crowd. When it
was turned on...the thrill went to the core of every human present and struck
outwards, like ripples on a stone-addled pond, like an exploding wheel of Brie.
Within a day the
world was abuzz. Within a week seven hundred more devices were in production.
Within six
months cheese consumption had multiplied tenfold. Within a year, a
thousandfold.
Cheese had
conquered the world. The plan had worked. Good had triumphed. Now, he could
rest. And rest he did. Fabulously wealthy, wanting for nothing, he spent his
days reclining in luxury, bringing forth from his vast refrigerated cheese
vaults such a cornucopia of wonders as he would never have considered possible
for such a poor, unremarkable specimen as himself. Now and then he spoke, he
lectured on cheese, its significance, its history, its inimitable beauty and
unparalleled mystique. He gained more honorary doctorates than he knew what to
do with. He was in demand from social sets the world over. And always, the
cheese. Whatever cheese he wanted. Soft, hard, pressed, unpressed, cow's milk,
goat's milk. He discovered the exquisite taste of cheeses he had hitherto only
dreamed about. Rare cheeses, exotic cheeses. Brie, Camembert, Roquefort,
Geitost, Mozzarella, Ricotta, Mascotta, Cheshire, Gloucester, Romano, Edam,
Gouda, Colby, Pecorino, Munster, Stilton, Urda, Cas, Neufchatel, Paneer, Queso
Fresco, Brousse, Chevre...these were a mere appetiser for the universe he was
now wandering through. He had all he wanted, but far more importantly, to him,
he had made a difference. He had opened the eyes of the world to cheese and all
its possibilities. His goal was achieved, his purpose fulfilled. The world was
a better, more fragrant, more joyous and lovely place because of him. People
everywhere were happy, and cheese-filled. With this in mind, he could have
remained a stick-thin pauper and been happy.
And then one
day...not long after the unveiling...
He awoke and
strode to the kitchen. Days of emaciation and filth long behind him, now sleek
and filled with joie de vivre, he felt he would start another wonderful day
with a hearty breakfast. His mood was mellow and old-fashioned. He decided on
staunch traditionalism, withdrawing a mighty hunk of blazing yellow Swiss magic
from its shelf. Seated at his broad breakfast table, he plunged in his knife,
and took a weighy slice from the body, biting into it with the enthusiasm of
the perfectly balanced. And as he bit, he felt something he had never before
felt while eating cheese.
Nothing.
He blinked,
confused. He bit again. Still nothing. No thrill, no tingling, no explosion of
flavour, no electricity, not even the smallest frisson shooting through his
body.
Perhaps, he
thought, he had been overdoing the Swiss lately. Returning to the fridge, he
withdrew a pungent slab of Limburger, and devoured the whole thing on the spot.
Nothing.
His tastebuds
remained stoically indifferent. A sense of unease rising within him, he pulled
out a ball of mozzarella, and gulped it down, with no more reaction from his
physiology than if he had gorged himself on week-old rice cakes. No pleasure,
no fizzing fireworks in the brain.
A wheel of
Camembert, a scrap of Edam, a desperate scraping of Monterey Jack, all
shovelled down, all with no result but a slightly heavier sensation in the
stomach. Unease had turned to panic. Tears pricked his eyes and he fought them.
This was cheese, he couldn't be feeling nothing. He simply had to
find the right one to spark his old self to life again. Perhaps he had
overslept and his system was not yet fully awake. He would perk himself up, and
in the blink of an eye, his love affair with the curd and the mold would resume
as passionately as ever.
And so, as he
frantically boiled and downed a jug of coffee, he hurled as much cheese as he
could into a saucepan and turned up the heat. Within minutes, he tipped the pan
up and poured the cheese like boiling wine down his throat. The stream of
boiling yellow fire scorched his oesophagus, but no more. Gasping, he fell to
his knees and rummaged through his stocks some more.
Pulling cheese
after cheese out, he tried each one. Yellow, white, blue, red, green...the most
exotic cheeses from the most far-flung lands, the most unexpected animals, the
most bizarre of homespun and high-tech techniques...and none of it changed a thing.
Tears streamed down his face, his burning throat screamed at him, and his heart
felt near to melting and running out his pores.
Finally he got
to the back of the cabinet and brought forth the last. With wrappers and
discarded pieces of cheese littering the floor around him, he sat miserably in
the centre of his dairy graveyard and held the chunk of ordinary everyday
cheddar in his lap. Cheddar was the beginning of his journey, and now...the
end? Of late he had forgotten about good old cheddar, intoxicated by the
enormity of his gift to humanity and the seemingly endless variety of
impossible rarities hurled at him by the world's grateful cheesemakers. And
yet...cheddar was the heart and soul of cheese, was it not? Cheddar. His old
friend cheddar. He nursed it against his cheek, enjoying the coolness on his
skin and whispering to it as to a secret lover. Cheddar would save him. he
angled it wearily towards his aching, exhausted lips, and took a bite.
He chewed.
He swallowed.
And he knew, as
the fragment travelled to its final destination, that he might just as well
have bitten into the polystyrene packing the fridge arrived in. The truth fell
on him like a ton of Parmesan.
He was dead.
Dead to cheese.
He threw back
his head and howled. All his work, all his striving and passion, returned in
the shimmering air before his eyes, taunting and cackling at him.
And he fell face
down on the kitchen floor, as the gutted Camembert mingled with his tears.
