Читать книгу The Discovery of Chocolate: A Novel онлайн | страница 17

And then I saw the lady who had served me the previous evening, sitting at a stall, carefully grinding cacao beans on a low basalt table. I was lost in amazement, realising that this drink must surely be one of the greatest of delicacies, for she was destroying the actual coinage of the realm in order to create it. If one could only find the source of these beans, and the flower in which they grew, one might perhaps find the secret of all future wealth.

By the lady’s side stood a man whom I took to be her father, roasting beans over a fire, sweeping them backwards and forwards with a fan made from rushes. He then sieved them, removed the husks, and poured them onto the lady’s table.

Here she crushed the beans with a roller, creating a thick, dark-brown paste which was scraped away into a large gourd and given to a second woman, who now added a little water.

My lady then took the heart of a sapota seed, and began to grind it. This too was added to a small quantity of water, and passed to the second woman.

Then she took some maize, ground it in a gourd and mixed it in the same manner, until the time came to combine all three pastes, which were aerated by vigorous whisking and the slow addition of more water.

And, at last, my lady stood on a chair and poured the finished mixture of cacao, sapota seed and maize down from a great height into a new, larger bowl, where it was whisked into a foaming liquid, and poured into a richly decorated calabash gourd which she held out for me to taste.

I drank of the heady concoction, the foam stretching up towards my nose. It was a strange, almost bitter drink, more spicy in nature than the previous evening. I reached into my knapsack for one of the small sets of bells I had brought with me for barter and the lady smiled so invitingly that I found I could not but meet her gaze.

But then: disaster.

Aguilar, the interpreter, tried to pull me away, arguing that I was neglecting my duties by indulging in flirtation. He told me that I must rejoin Cortés immediately, and keep a note of the sights we saw.