27th of Yaris, 2719 | Brunnhold Kitchen
Damsons ripened at the end of summer, late in the season. Some cultivars, Aurelie remembered, fruited earlier or later. When she thought of this, she thought of the slow, careful voice of the farmer's son who had told it to her when she was all of twelve years old. He had seemed to her then very adult, but thinking of it now he couldn't have been more than sixteen or seventeen. Helping with the deliveries to Brunnhold's massive kitchens, the backbone of a University that would rather have pretended that neither of them existed.
Similarly easy to dismiss was the damson. A small plum, bitter and astringent in flavor when eaten fresh, they had proven less popular than their larger, sweeter cousins. And of other preparations? There was argument, of course, that the difficulty of removing the pit from the flesh rendered this, too, undesirable. A man who planted plums, so the saying went, planted for his sons. And a man who planted damsons planted for his grandsons. Slow to fruit, slow to ripen, astringent in the skin and difficult to prepare--what virtue could such a fruit have?
Ah, but if one was patient, if one was careful? The little damson would reward the patient cook with a beautiful magenta preserve, the astringency disappearing and the sweetness coming through. Sweet, and just a bit spicy. Aurelie loved them. Well worth the effort of carefully removing the pits from the boiled fruit, straining it back into the pot. She imagined this was what meditation might be like, that careful and patient work. And the tree itself was strong and hardy, able to protect more delicate cousins from the vagaries of rough weather.
She had in front of her a great vat of them, watching them boil. They had been delivered just the day before, and Aurelie had known their destiny from the moment they arrived. Now, just now, they were boiled. Aurelie took the pot off the heat, busying herself with other work as she allowed them to cool.
Work, no thought. Her mind would not wander, and her hands would not rest. There were vegetables to prepare, dough to roll, sauces to make. An endless series of tasks, one after another. Aurelie threw herself into them all, drowned in them. Work and work and work, because if she sought rest she found she thought too much in her foolish idleness.
Yaris was a long month; it had seemed shorter, somehow, in years before this one. Shorter and kinder, too, but at the end of it there were damsons and there was jam to make and for that Aurelie was grateful. It was enough; it was all she had.
Now the boiled flesh was cooled enough to touch, just--some of it was still too hot, but Aurelie was not as patient a woman as she pretended to be. No matter; she had been burned before, and her hands hardly registered the damage anymore. A large colander was fetched, shining copper. Aurelie set it atop a large bowl, and then emptied the plums inside. With clean, bare hands she pressed the juice out into the bowl. Gentle and firm, picking up handfuls of the slurry to carefully squeeze out the pits. The flesh and skin she returned to the bowl with the juice; the pits she discarded. It was difficult, to rend the heart from the flesh, but she got there in the end.
Although one wouldn't know it to bite into one, there was a suitable amount of sugars in the plums themselves. Less needed to be added then to make a jam. One should always err on the side of less sweet, rather than more. For every cup of plums, Aurelie added two-thirds cup of white sugar, finely milled. She measured it out carefully now, not wanting to waste any. Just enough, and no more. No one rewarded wastefulness. And just a little lemon juice, too.
Aurelie brought the damson slurry and the sugar and the lemon juice back to a boil in a large, heavy-bottomed pot. There was quite a lot of it; it was almost too big for her, but she moved with the ease of long practice. The jam had to be stirred as it boiled down, and though this occupied her hands it couldn't contain her mind.
Yaris was long, and things said in the dark burned away in the heat of it. A dream, she had thought then, and nothing else. She hadn't thought it would feel quite so true. What were dreams, when you woke? Gossamer and nothingness. Aurelie held a kind of faith, and she held a kind of pain too. They seemed, to her, one and the same. Once, she might have thought, might have wished, to have a friend to talk to. She didn't allow herself the indulgence now. They left in the end, something inside her broken right down to the foundation. A drab little thing, she thought with each turn of the spoon, unworthy of love.
Ah, but, the jam was ready now. She tested it against a cold plate; it rippled, just as it should, when she dragged a finger through it. Poured the jam carefully, still hot, into jar after jar after jar. Sealed them tight, and put them away to wait the day when she would open one for some final purpose. Until then they would wait in the cool and the dark, knowing nothing of what they might become.
Cookies, she thought. Aurelie would make cookies, with jam in the center, just like Nurse had let her make as a child. Aurelie thought of that small and serious girl, little face screwed up and solemn as she pressed her thumb firmly into the center of each ball of dough. Of the gentle hands that had touched her head, and the rough, kind voices of Nurse and Cook. Aurelie had never even known their names, and now they were gone.
So she would make them, if she was able, for that child she had been who was gone now. Someone must mourn her, Aurelie thought. Ana--but how could you mourn what you did not seem to know was passed? And she would make them for herself, as she was now, because she wanted to. Each one a careful prayer for something she was afraid to name.
