…sans taste, sans everything. (Shakespeare, As You Like It, II, 7)
The discovery of a new dish does more for the happiness of mankind than the discovery of a new star. (Jean-Anthelme Brillat-Savarin)
No sooner have April showers made way for May flowers than Emilia catches a cold. Eight days, one bottle of cough medicine, and six boxes of tissues later, her symptoms still persist. On the morning of the ninth day, Emil carries her out to the car and buckles her into her seat. Mom is going to take you to the doctor, he whispers to her.
The doctor smiles at Emilia and says that he is sorry to hear that she is feeling so sick and he is going to see what they can do to get her feeling better quickly. He passes a piece of cold metal under her shirt and presses its weight to her chest and her back, tells her to take deep breaths, listens to the ebb and flow of the battle for air. Next he touches his gloved fingers to her neck and throat, tickles the inside of her ears with what feels like the end of a whipped-cream can, shines a flashlight in her eyes, peers at them through a window at the top of the flashlight, tilts her chin up so she is looking at the ceiling, shines the light into her nose. Pulling off his gloves, he tells her she is all done, she has done a great job, and she can put her sweatshirt back on, it’s almost time to go home.
When they get home, Emilia hears her mother tell her father that she has a bad sinus infection but it should clear up within a week. Yet the week passes and still her symptoms endure. By mid-morning of each day she is exhausted, her three-year-old body shaking and shuddering under the alternating blows of coughing and crying until exhaustion overcomes her and she is asleep—over her plate at lunchtime; on the floor, mid-effort in play with her sister; on the couch, book in hand, chin to chest; and, at last, in her bed, with the warm mist of the humidifier wafting over her face and into the heavy and tangled worlds of her dreaming.
In the dream, she carries a ladder through the backyard, leans it against the oak tree, and begins to climb. The ladder grows as she climbs and soon she passes the first line of branches and is part of the play of light and shade, movements so subtle, changes so sudden, silence so strong, and herself the reason for it all, the queen of a leafy castle pushing up into the clouds. And when she reaches the clouds she feels herself begin to descend. As she descends, the shade makes way altogether for the light and the light grows stronger until it is a full-force glare and she is putting one foot after the other on the ladder by faith and not by sight. Her arms grow heavy and her hands sweaty; she slips from one rung toward the next but cannot catch herself; her grip on the ladder gives way and she cries out and now she is no longer climbing but sliding down, falling like a stone from the tree toward the earth, her head on fire with the scream of her own voice. The ground rushes into view, roars up at her. Suddenly she is caught, held, secured in the strong branches of the tree. The ground disappears, the air turns warm again, the branches are not the arms of the tree, but of her mother. She is awake but her head still rages with the scream of her own voice.
At the hospital, Emilia undergoes a barrage of tests, receives the sympathy of a battalion of doctors and residents and nurses, watches and listens as her mother calls her father on the phone, tells him they will need to stay the day at the hospital but then they will be home and she should be all better soon. As that day passes quickly into night, she sleeps a dreamless sleep, oblivious to the new waters that course through her body. When she wakes, she feels—dimly, timidly—that a lost sense has been restored, a balance recovered, and she asks if it is time to go home.
The first five days Emilia is home she stays in her room, sits on her bed, reads through the stacks of books that lean against either side of her; when she is not sleeping, she is resting, drinking juice, eating crackers and pouches of applesauce. By the third day, she is well enough to entertain her most persistent visitor. Anna reads to her, smuggles the speaker into the room, takes requests, cranks the volume to her sister’s satisfaction. On the sixth day, Emil bounds up the stairs to the room and the sight that greets him sends a surge through his soul that he can feel on his face: out of her bed, standing in the shaft of sunlight from the window, Emilia winds the key on the music box, sets it on the sill, and spins away into dancing. Are you all better today, Emil asks. All better, she replies. That’s great. We have to celebrate. Like a birthday, she asks. Yes, like a birthday, but just without the cake. What do you want for dinner. Noodles. I want noodles for dinner, she says, smiles and dips and sways in her dance.
This, Emil thinks to himself, as he eats his spaghetti and drinks his wine, this is what it feels like to eat. The last two weeks were not without food, but they were without a meal. On the first page of the cookbook on the counter reads: “The pleasures of the table belong to all times and all ages, to every country and every day; they go hand in hand with all our other pleasures, outlast them, and remain to console us for the loss of the rest.” For the first time in his life, Emil knows what that means and is glad. It must be nice to have a real meal again, he says to Emilia, after all those crackers and all that applesauce. How is it. Emilia looks down at her plate, turns her fork over in her hand. It’s good, she says. It’s good. But why does it taste like forks.
Emil looks at her and she stares back, unsmiling, serious. What do you mean it tastes like forks. It just tastes like the fork does if I bite it. She bites the fork, looks over at him, at Savannah, takes the fork out of her mouth. See, it tastes the same as the spaghetti does. Emil takes a bite of his own dinner. Mine doesn’t taste like a fork, he says. He takes a bite of Emilia’s dinner. Doesn’t taste like a fork either. If you’re not hungry anymore, he adds, you don’t have to finish. You just got better today, after all. No, she says, no, I’m still hungry. I just don’t want to eat forks. Okay, okay. How about you just eat the bread, then. Eat the bread and when everyone is all done we will have some ice cream. Emilia bites into the bread, chews and swallows, looks around the table again. Now, how about that. Is the bread good. Doesn’t taste like forks, does it. No, Emilia says, no, not like forks. She takes another bite and swallows it and smacks her lips. Not like forks. Just not like anything.
In the morning they call the doctor and he tells them that anosmia can occur during or after a severe bout of sinusitis. Anosmia: loss of smell. Our sense of smell, he tells them, is crucial for our sense of taste. Without her ability to smell, she is unable to really detect the flavor of the food she is eating—hence, it will taste less like it should, or it will taste wrong, or, with some foods, it will taste like nothing. There you go. Hypogeusia. He mentions taste papillae and taste buds by the thousands, each with a cargo of hundreds of specialized cells, the scent receptors and olfactory cortex and the countless instinctual, instantaneous, invisible operations of the autonomic nervous system.
Anosmia. Hypogeusia. No smell. No taste. A three-year-old girl in a tutu and ballet slippers and a paper crown powerless to identify flavor. I know, I know, the doctor continues. Sounds terrible, but it should only be temporary. He advises that they maintain her usual diet and take care to increase flavor and aroma as much as possible. Power will eventually be restored to the senses and the brain can’t be allowed to forget what it used to know via those same senses. If there’s no improvement in five to six weeks, bring her in, we can run some tests. But she should be good in no time. Kids are resilient. His voice wears a sympathetic smile. Kids are resilient.
The girls dash down the stairs to the table when their mother calls them for breakfast. Emilia tears a corner from her toast, uses her fingers to scoop scrambled eggs onto it, lifts it to her mouth. This tastes not good, she announces. The eggs are not good. Her mother steps away from the stove. It’s just because you’re sick, sweet pea. Just eat the toast for now and I’ll make you something else. Emilia scrapes the eggs from the toast, eats the toast, and drinks from her cup, looking inside to see what it is; seeing that it is milk, she takes another drink, watches her sister eat her eggs and her toast and drink her milk. Does it taste bad, Emilia asks her. No, Anna answers, it tastes good. Just tastes like eggs. I can taste it because I’m not sick. I don’t feel sick, Emilia tells her. I’m all better now. Anna appeals to her mother for explanation but she is not listening; she is looking through a book and taking things from the cabinet and the refrigerator: flour and salt and pepper and butter and cheese and more eggs and more milk. What are you making, Emilia asks. Eggs that will not taste bad to you, she says. Can we help. Yes, you can help. Come over here.
They push chairs against the counter and watch carefully as their mother follows the steps of the recipe in the book. Anna points to the title of the recipe. That is an E, like in Emilia, she says. But it has a line on it. What does it mean. It’s an accent, her mother says. These are a French food: they are called gougères. She directs Anna to place the pat of butter in a saucepan and Emilia to pour in milk and water and she pelts the mixture with salt and pepper. When the mixture boils, she moves it off of the burner and dumps the flour into it, takes a wooden spoon and begins vigorously to beat the batter. Can you count to one minute, she asks. Anna in the lead, the girls count to sixty. Good. Now count another one and when that’s done and the batter cools—and she smiles—it will be time to save eggs for Emilia.
Saving eggs for Emilia, the girls learn, means simply adding the eggs, one at a time, and turning the faint blonde of the batter into a smooth, shining, yellow goodness. The cheese quickly follows the eggs and the girls watch closely as their mother spoons the dough onto a sheet, brushes the mounds with milk, covers them with more cheese, and whisks them into the oven. When they emerge as puffs of gold, Anna breathes deeply and tells her sister that they smell so good, so good. Emilia breathes deeply also, but she smells nothing. Just wait until you taste one, her mother says to Emilia. Sit down. Emilia sits down, watches her mother cautiously pick up the gougère and pull it apart, watches the steam burst from its hollow center, watches the progress of the plate from her mother’s hand to the table. When there is no more steam, she picks the gougère up and sinks her teeth into it. Well, her mother asks. Well, Anna echoes. Emilia smiles. It tastes good. It does. Yes, Emilia says. It tastes like watermelon, like summertime—and she laughs.
Every morning, every afternoon, every evening, like that first morning with the gougères, Emilia and Anna help their mother, sometimes their father, prepare something to eat. Each time they hope that with this dish, with these flavors, Emilia will not only eat it but also enjoy it for what it truly is. Memories crowd into Emilia’s mind as they work. When they make cinnamon rolls, Anna commands her sister to close her eyes, holds a handful of cinnamon sticks up to her sister’s nose, tells her to smell them. When Emilia smells nothing, she opens her eyes, sees the cinnamon sticks, and a memory whisks her to the kitchen in farmor and farfar’s house: she is sitting on the floor and she opens a cupboard and jar after jar of mysterious smells greet her—allspice and bergamot and clove and cardamom and ginger and lavender and nutmeg and star anise and cinnamon. Cinnamon.
This, in my sister’s hand, is cinnamon, but I can’t smell it. That, in the cupboard, in farmor’s kitchen, is cinnamon. I smelled it. Cinnamon smells. I smelled cinnamon. Cinnamon smells and you can smell it.
The stronger the smell, her father insists, the stronger the flavor. So the stronger the smell, the better. In the afternoons he stops work to walk home and make a snack for Emilia. The first time he does this he chooses the item most potent in smell and flavor he can imagine, garlic, and searches for the bluntest mode of delivery. In one of their cookbooks he finds a recipe for baked garlic that promises a “sweet, mellow and buttery flavor.” When she comes downstairs from her nap, he is there to greet her with a slice of bread, generously covered in the baked garlic. She chews diligently and swallows and then takes another bite. After the fourth bite, Emil finally dares to ask if she likes it, if it is good, what does it taste like. Yes, she answers. I like it. It’s good. It tastes. She pauses. It tastes like candy butter. The words sweet, mellow and buttery flavor explode in Emil’s mind and he knows it worked.
Every afternoon after this, when she awakes and walks downstairs, he is there, ready with a new snack. He gives her sardines on rye crackers. A pita filled with feta cheese and a glass of ice-cold lemonade. A bar of dark chocolate. Slices of pink grapefruit. Toast with a thick spread of peanut butter and chocolate sprinkles. A bowl of rice, doused in soy sauce and arrayed with pickled cabbage and cucumber. A bag of sugar-coated candy that turns out to be crystalized and sweetened ginger. Emilia eats it all. When he asks her how it tastes and if she likes it, she invariably says good and yes. When he asks her what it tastes like, she flips through her mind like she does through a book—words and images and memories blur together, the pages containing a story that they seem no longer capable of telling—and she guesses. The foods are strong and strange, and their names, their descriptions, are at times on the very tip of her tongue. But each time, her tongue betrays her, taps and touches the food and tastes a nothing that she knows is not a nothing but a something she just cannot say.
Sardines are fish and fish live in the ocean and the ocean is cold and wakes you up and sticks sand on your feet. Sardines taste like ocean. The cheese comes from a box with a sheep on it and sheep are soft and eat grass and grass is soft but it tickles, too. Cheese from sheep tastes like tickles. Chocolate warms you all over and makes you want to close your eyes. Chocolate tastes like swinging in the sunshine.
You are my sunshine, my only sunshine. You make me happy when skies are gray. You’ll never know, dear, how much I love you. Please don’t take my sunshine away.
What does sunshine taste like.
As the summer wears on, her father’s enthusiasm for the cooking wanes, but his insistence on the principle of smell and flavor does not diminish in the least. To lend force of persuasion to his insistence, he combs through cookbooks, ransacks books about culinary science, about nutrition, about physiology. While they cook, he reads aloud to them particularly compelling or illuminating passages; calls through the kitchen noise for quiet, for their attention; exclaims, over the sound of the cocktail shaker, the fundamental miracle of food, glorious food; marvels at how the Greeks of old ate in wisdom, enjoying their wine and fish and olives and weeds, yet we today fast in ignorance. Here, he tells them. Listen to this. This is the pseudo-science that dictates how we think about food. He reads to them from the book:
That taste is not a true guide to what should be eaten; that one should not simply eat what one enjoys; that the important components of foods cannot be seen or tasted, but are discernible only in scientific laboratories; and that experimental science has produced rules of nutrition which will prevent illness and encourage longevity.
And this, he adds, this is how you know all of that is humbug. Just Listen.
The cook does not need to know, as the scientists have recently informed us, that cooking the tomatoes with olive oil makes the lycopene in them more available to our bodies. No, the cook already knew that olive oil with tomatoes is a really good idea.
His main reminder, issued over and over again, is of how fragile is the gift of flavor. You don’t know what you’ve got until it’s gone, he declares to them one night. Emilia is the only one who knows which way is up around here. I know up, too, Anna protests. Let me finish, Emil says. When her sense of taste returns—not, if but when—she will be wiser than Solomon and we will be able to learn more about the good life just by watching her eat than most people do by a lifetime of study. He takes Emilia by the hand, dances her to the dining room, swings her into her seat. Do you hear that, sweet pea. Wiser than Solomon.
Credit: Vincent van Gogh, Grapes, Lemons, Pears, and Apples (1887), courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.