The Devil's Larder

56

EVERYBODY — rich or poor — had soup stones in those days. I found ours a half an hour’s bike ride out of town on what, before the container port was built, used to be Crescent Beach. I had to wet my shoes and trouser legs to retrieve it from the plunging tide. Amongst the million grey-white granite rocks, it caught my eye, distinguished by a circling band of black, which made the stone appear as if it had been split in two then fixed with tar gum. It was a glinting and dramatic gem, still wet in that hard light, a perfect fit in my small hand.

It was less glinting when I got home that afternoon. The granite had dried and dulled. A half an hour from the sea was all it took to rob my stone of light. But still I prepared it for my mother’s kitchen, full of hope. You had first to boil the ocean out, or else your soups would always taste of fish.

My mother used that stone in every soup she made. She couldn’t make good soup without its help, she said. The flavours wouldn’t mix. The bottom of the pot would burn or stick. The ingredients would tumble on the heat and boil over. A soup without a stone was as heartless as a peach or plum without a stone. But with its help, she claimed, she could even make good soup out of just tap water. No stock, no meats, no vegetables. Perhaps the granite had a flavour of its own. We’d have to try one day. Perhaps it stored a memory and aftertaste of everything that had ever shared its pot.

Whenever she made soup and I was home, she used to let me add my piece of granite to the pot before she lit the gas. And, when the soup was cooked, it was my job to take the colander spoon and lift the soup stone out. I used to marvel at its fleeting smell and how it had briefly regained the light and colour of the beach.

I keep the family soup stone on the windowsill of my apartment now. I haven’t cooked with it for years. Who makes soups these days? There’s such a choice of ready-mades in shops. Occasionally I use the stone as a pocket companion for travelling, a granite talisman to keep the plane from crashing, but otherwise I hardly notice it. Except sometimes, when I’m reminded of home, I run my soup stone underneath the tap to bring the smells and colours out, the beach, the sea-tricked light, the gems of silica, the small boy stepping in the tumbling tide, retrieving flavours for his mother’s thousand soups.