As I entered the dining hall, I was struck by the most obscene sight. There before me was table. The table itself was unimpressive except for its sheer length; it stretched all the way from one of the room to the other. On the table there a vast mountain of food items, completely covering every inch so that not a single grain of wood was visible underneath that mountain. There were casseroles, salads, whole pigs and chickens, roasted potatoes, fruits, more exotic foods from the Orient. Why, every dish under the sun must have had its place on that table. Yet if that was the extent of the feast, then I would have chosen to eat with pleasure. However, the greater part of the table was given over to sweets. Cakes and pies, cookies and scones, entire jars of honey and molasses; there were candies and Turkish Delight, caramel apples. For every dish under the sun, there was at least five desserts. Such a feast, surely, there never was and never will be again.
As I was studying the food on the table, I at first failed to notice three servants in the gray livery of the house. One of these women was continuously bringing food out of the far door which led, I assume, to be the mansion’s behemoth kitchen and setting it at the foot of the table. The one girl, was almost continuously running from one end of the table to the other, exchanging one sort of dish for another and bringing it back to the head where my host sat. This girl was considerably younger that the other two, and, considering how she was rushing, was apparently still in that awkward phase of training. The last woman had the quiet dignity of a lifelong servant, and was quite the opposite of her young counterpart. She would silently glide to where the cook was bringing out the food and search for a good while until finally she chose a dish and brought it back to the head of the table. For every ten dishes the young girl brought to the master, the older servant only brought one.
And there, at the head of the table, sat my host. Given the extent of the feast, I was expecting more guests, as I was running just a little behind, but the entire hall was empty except for the five of us. As I turned my eyes, now with some measure of what to expect, to my host, I was greeted by the sight of a very fat man. He was greedily reaching for any dish his pudgy little hands could grasp, and once captured, the poor food was instantly shoved into his mouth. It was quite remarkable how fast this man could move when it came to eating. After the creature had swallowed, he would always shout out his judgment of the dish. Curiously, the judgments always seemed to indicate his favor and delight in the food. Just as soon as he was finished with his critique, my host would order either of the two servants to bring him another dish which would send the one scurrying and the other serenely gliding to take to the creature another item.
I had decided that it would be best to introduce myself to one of the servants before approaching that thing taking a man’s form. I daresay, this was more to give myself more time to build my own courage than to gather any sort of information. I did vow to myself that I would not touch a single item of food on that table and would give myself over to fasting as a monk for the foreseeable future. Seeing how I did not care to run up and down the table with the girl, I fell into step with the older servant.
“Good day to you, my good woman” I began.
“Good day t’ ya, sir” she replied. Obviously, she was used to people introduce themselves to her rather than deal with the creature. “I am Agatha and that one over there is Ponaera.”
“I’m afraid I am a little out of sorts. Is this a normal sort of occasion?”
“Normal?” she said with a sad little chuckle. “Let us hope that this is not normal. Otherwise, what would be left for the likes of us? But if your asking whether the master is regularly with such a disgraceful appetite; well, my job is to serve and his job is to choose.
“But surely you cannot approve. Why do you continue to feed him?”
With this Agatha’s face became clouded, and she shot a dark look in Ponaera’s direction. “My master has had much that is not healthy for him. Oh, it was much better before the other one came to us. If only you could have seen the master then. He was a good man, and the cook only made wonderful dishes. But all that is gone now; the master is obsessed with the new food. I can only search for the food that once was so plentiful; that is why it takes me so much longer than her, mind you. Such a shame; such a shame. But it is not my place to command him to eat better. I can only suggest by bringing him better things than that old crone over there.”
“Old?” I thought to myself; it was then that I really studied Ponaera. It became clear to me that I made an error by assuming she was young, for she was clearly just as old as Agatha. Her face had once had youthful beauty. And to some extent it still remained in her full lips and her big, wide eyes. Yet, she never blossomed into a mature flower, and her once beautiful face was sagging and wrinkled. Her age combined with the reminders of youth turned her face into a grotesque image of sickness and decrepitude.
“Here ya are,” Agatha said to me as she handed me a platter of fruits, shaking me out of thoughts. “Make ya’self useful and take these to the master. He’s the one to answer all sorts of questions.” I could tell I would get no answers from Agatha; indeed, I do not even know if I could formulate many questions at this stage.
As I was walking back toward the head of the table and to the inevitable meeting between my host and myself, I busied myself by studying the platter of food Agatha had given me. The platter, much like the table, was unremarkable, and the flatware left much to be desired. But all that only served to heighten the appeal of the food. Oh the food! Never had a seen such red apples or lush berries. The melons were glistening with just the right amount of moisture, beckoning me to partake. Indeed, I forgot of my vows of abstinence at the sight of those wonderful fruits. “If these taste as good as they look” I thought to myself, “then it is no wonder that my host is a glutton.”
Yet my new found appreciation for food was short lived. For as I walked up to greet my host, I was forced to watch him in all his barbarism. All appetite fled in a single instant, and I hurriedly shoved the platter on the table, as far away from myself as possible.
Steeling myself, I decided it was time to do my duties and greet my host. “Monsieur Tragédie? I have heard so many interesting things about you.”
At my words my host looked up and smiled, but he did not stop his inhuman consumption for one instant. “Ah company. How are you my good man? Sit down and eat something. There is plenty of scrumptious items for you as well. Here you must try some of this duck, it is très fantastique.”
He had a magnanimous nature and was actually quite charming. At the sound of his voice, I instantly forgot my misgivings and was captivated by the man. “Did you know” he started pleasantly “that I had bought that duck myself from its owner? This is the truth. The man had quite the charming little farm where he raised his animals, and that duck was his prize. Some merchants came from the city and bought the farm from the fellow for a fraction of what it was worth. Well, within a fortnight the farm was ruined. This duck here was the only animal left on the farm worth keeping, but the farmer was happy, poor fellow. And so I decided to complete the irony and buy the duck for myself. The sad little man is still the caretaker on the farm, but since he has money in his pocket, he is right now whistling a happy tune. Ahmm hmm hmm. Yes such a good story. Do you not think so?”
“It does seem like a thoroughly modern story,” I replied cautiously. The duck in question was the saddest roasted duck in the history of roasted duck. The skin was blackened, and it smelled as if the meat had begun to rot before the cook started her work.
“Modern? Why yes, I suppose it is that. But surely you have more to say than it is merely modern.”
“Truthfully, I suppose I find the story a trifle on the sad side for my taste.” I replied to his urgings.
“Aha! That is the answer I was expecting, but why shouldn’t a story be sad?” He obviously had this entire speech prepared for this occasion. “Life is sad, and therefore our stories should be sad. If art does not reflect on society, then it does nothing for anybody.”
“But art can also reflect how the author perceives how society should be. Does that not mean that there can be happy stories as well?”
“You make the mistake, good sir, in thinking that society should be happy. Ponaera, these crepes are tres magnifique; bring me a cake, my dear. Now, where was I? Oh, yes. Take happiness and sorrow if you will. For society to be happy, then every person needs to be happy. However, it only takes one to be full of sorrow for it to be a sad society. And since there always be depressed and morose individuals, society can never be happy. The fact that authors and artists think that society should be filled with happiness only goes to show you their naivety; this itself is a sad story. Ahm hmm hmm. Oh positively delightful.”
His tirade effected a powerful need within me to redeem goodness in his eyes. And so I prepared to argue with him more in depth. “While it might be true that humans can never be happy on their own, does that necessarily mean that we should not strive for happiness where we can? Taking delight in evil seems to me an evil in itself. I think that good stories are necessary to save society from plunging into worse evils.”
“Ahm hmm hmm,” his chuckle was no doubt in mockery of my naivety. “I don’t know about all that. But you see, sad stories are so much more interesting than happy ones. There are only a few happy endings; on the other hand there is a multitude of ways that tragedy can triumph in a story. Why should authors abandon exploration of all these possible routes just to appease the sentimentality of a few fools. No, I refuse to believe that good endings are better on the sheer principle that they are boring. Mmm, superbe. Ponaera, some wine. Can you think of a story full of good things? It would not rightly be a story nothing would happen. Evil is essential to a story. Without bad things happening, there would be no plot. Since evil is so integral to the story, it is only fitting and proper that evil endings are better than good.”
A silence had fallen after this, and I took to studying that great mass of food thinking that anything would be better than the rubbish that my host was spewing. Yet, as I was looking at that feast, I discovered that the vast majority of the food was inedible. The pies were burnt, the fruit was rotten, and the meat was harder than rock. How my host kept eating this filth, let alone enjoying it, is too deep a mystery for me to unravel. Hidden amongst this refuse, I can no longer refer to it as food, were the most delectable items I had ever had the pleasure of seeing. As I was wondering at the presence of these marvels of cooking, I remembered the platter of food that Agatha had given me. As I looked down the table, I saw Agatha carrying another plate filled with nothing but the best while Ponaera was carrying something I would never had guessed was supposed to be food. Watching the two women for a few more trips confirmed my suspicions. Agatha always carried food fit for a king; what Ponaera carried was fit for nothing living.
“Why do you keep eating what Ponaera brings you when Agatha’s plates contain the best food?” I suddenly exclaimed. “Surely, you don’t think that Ponaera’s food is better than Agatha’s.” As I turned back to my host, I noticed the most curious thing. It seemed that my host had lost some small part of his great girth. Yes, I was sure that his hands were not as fat as before. And yet he was consuming food even faster than he was before. Even though he looked thinner, he looked a great deal older, and he had lost that magnanimity that had so captivated me before.
“Agatha?” he asked. “Why would I want the rubbish she brings? I used to eat those things (I was called Monsieur Comédie back then), and you know, I generally liked them. It just goes to show you that people who do not have a multitude of experiences can never really be trusted to give judgment on what is good and bad. What is more, even when they at first do experience new things, they are largely resistant to the appeal. Why, when I first tried Ponaera’s wonderful dishes, I thought they were disgusting. But since that time I have grown to depend more and more upon her choices. No, I will never again eat that boring, bland rot that Agatha calls food.”
There was no doubt about it now. Before my very eyes, my host was becoming thinner. It was if his body could not find any nutrition in the things he was eating and was consuming his tremendous fat reserves for his energy. His figure had once filled his fine clothes, but now it looked like he was a boy trying on an outfit from his father’s wardrobe. “How can you say that these things are better? Shouldn’t we be devoted to good things? If we focus on evil all the time, then do we not run the danger of actually taking delight in it?”
“My dear fellow, you are looking at it in terms of good and evil.” His voice was now the grating bass of an elderly man. “Why, it could be as simple as beauty and ugliness, talent vs ineptitude, et cetera et cetera. Take this story for example. There once was a young musician who lived down the street. Every week, he would set up his show in the local park and play for everyone. Now this was the worst music you had ever heard in your life; I could have sung better than this whelp (and trust me you do not wish to hear me sing). And yet every week, the entire neighborhood would turn out to watch this young man’s show. You see, we could not help ourselves. The music was bad, the young man was the butt of all of our jokes during the week. Yet, he was the general favorite amongst the community. He is now performing his act for the queen, God help him.
“You see, it is not that we all thought that this man was talented and deserved our support. No, we built him up as an object of ridicule, something to despise. But let us get back to your ideals of good versus evil. You think we should all be allied with good and only like those things that are lovely and pure. ‘Rubbish!’ I cry. We would not be able to understand what good is without evil. It is what Eve envied when she took a bite of that wonderful fruit. She did not understand good, and so she embraced evil. This is why I embrace evil as well, so that good can be better understood. And the more prominent that evil is, the more lovely that good looks in the end. And so here I sit, knowing that the world can never understand good in and of itself, and I propagate and idolize evil things. Yes, I daresay that goodness is in reality not actually good. It is the wicked, evil things that we should seek. For it is only when we completely replace our concept of goodness with evil that humans can be truly happy and truly be united in pursuing the good. And when evil finally trium….”
His voice was getting smaller and more grating all throughout this final tirade. And the while he was eating and yet wasting away. It is then that I finally understood the tragedy of Monsieur Tragédie. The food that he loved so much, was not food at all but the opposite. Instead of satiating, the wicked things were in fact fueling his hunger. He ended up being a frightening shell of a man, a living corpse. His hair had turned into string and fell out; his skin had drawn tight around his skull. Finally, his voice quit altogether, although his mouth still tried to move with his words. I would venture to guess that even in his final moments, my host did not know that he was dying from starvation still trying to grasp for that last bit of wickedness that came in the form of food.
Justified Beliefs 