The Devil's Larder

58

YOU’LL NEED a liturgy and a medium pan, a hen’s egg, some bread, some salt, a knife, a spoon, the kitchen to yourself. Put the egg in water over a medium flame. Find, at once, the 37th hymn, God’s way of timing eggs, and when the water starts to boil begin to sing. Not too briskly. Moderato all the way. Sing all three verses and the chorus lines. The hymn is timed to suit the egg.

Make as much noise as you want. Belt out the words: ‘And on this rock Our church will stand,/A gateway to the Promised Land.’ The final word’s ‘amen’, of course, two sinking syllables beyond the tune. The amen is the point when yolk and shell and albumen become discrete.

Now spoon the amen egg out of the pan, decapitate it with a knife. You’ll find the flesh is cooked exactly to your taste, the white precisely firm, the yolk still bright and viscous, the smell of hell and sulphur on the air — as you would wish whenever you sing hymns.