The Devil's Larder

10

IN THIS PART of the world, where manac beans grow as commonly and readily as moss, coddled by the salty coastal air and the nipping temperatures of night, no one with any money would choose to add them to their stews or use their greyish flour in their baking. Manacs are ‘the poor man’s weeds’. That is to say, they’re food for pensioners, peasants, paupers and livestock. To buy a kilo in the stores is to advertise your misfortune, or to boast the recent purchase of a sow.

Yet my neighbour’s daughter tells us that the well-heeled ladies who often drive past the farmers’ market, where she works, on the way up to their villas in the hills have started stopping off for bags of manac beans. ‘That’s really slumming it,’ she says. ‘Next thing, they’ll be having all our turnip tops. Our pigs’ll have to swill on caviar.’

I think I’ve guessed the actual motive of these women, though. They’re poisoning their husbands, in a way. They’re looking for a break in their routines. About two weeks ago, driving into town, I heard a radio report on livestock infertility and impotence. Stud animals, it said, would not perform reliably if fed on feeds which were rich in iogranulates. They’d suffer from fibrous swellings in the urinary and reproductive tracts. Even though their testes might swell to twice their normal size and the penis could enlarge appreciably, they would have problems with presenting an erection. Feeds to avoid in excess were brassicas, root grass and certain pulses.

I hardly paid attention, until I heard the radio presenter’s final words. Medical records from the famines and recessions of the thirties, when manac beans became a staple foodstuff, he said, showed a tripling of impotence referrals and genital swellings amongst men from humble backgrounds. Manac beans, he warned, were ‘marginally addictive’ and contained the highest concentrate of iogranulates in any vegetable.

My neighbour’s daughter, obviously, is overjoyed to hear my explanation for the sudden vogue for manac beans. She says it’s brightened up her day. She’s keen to play her part. She carries produce from her stall to the curled-down windows of the cars, looks down onto the nyloned knees, the painted nails, the bracelets and the little skirts of women from the hills, and passes over bags of toxic, regulating manacs. As evening comes and she is packing up her stall, the husbands hurry home in their long cars, their cocks enlarged, their testicles like coconuts, and with nothing to present to their ever-patient, ever-thankful wives except a firm and growing appetite for beans.