Ortolans

Speaking of blindness, the man told his one-eyed fiancée, have you heard about the ortolans? Fig-peckers of yellowhammer descent. Thumb-sized or tongue-sized. Kings used to catch them at summer’s end, knife-blind them so that in their darkness they’d feast on millet all day, all night, a break from beetles and seeds, until they grew from one ounce to four. Drowned in Armagnac, plucked, placed in a saucepan, roasted, you eat them whole, so the head dangles between your lips, crunch bones like hazelnuts, underneath the linen napkin you must place over your head to create a scent tent or, so God won’t see your shame. (Proust paired them with sips of Yquem, a sauterne born of noble rot — grapes like ashes, their wet dried in the nick of time, so honeysuckle turns to bitter finish.) Mediterranean salt emerges as flight bursts in your mouth. Imagine yourself a memory, a body full of meal, as Mitterrand must have, eating ortolans eight days before dying, his last illegal act. Fifteen minutes of savoring a supple, burning ball of fat until you exhaust its roast juices. When you finally swallow, you will regret the end of a sensual experience. At least once in your life, you must pay the price for this princely folly.