Actually, I’d advise you not to open it at all.
Dimanche 27 juillet 2008‘The controversial Milk Levy from which the unpopular “Cheese Duty” is derived was instigated in 1970 by the then Whig government, which needed to raise funds for a potential escalation of war in the Crimea. Wuth the duty now running at 1,530 per cent on hard and 1,290 per cent on smelly, illegal cheese-making and smuggling had become a very lucrative business indeed. The Cheese Enforcement Agency was formed not only to oversee the licencing of cheese but also to collect the tax levied on it by an overzealous government. Small wonder that there was a thriving underground cheese-market.
[…]
We climbed out of the van. The industrial unit was empty except for a large Welsh-registered Griffin V8 truck, a long table with leather sample cases lying on it and four men all wearing black suits with black ties and sunglasses, and looking vaguely menacing. It was all bravado, of course - Scorcese movies were big in Welsh Republic. I tried to detect whether any of them were packing heat by the swing of their jackets and guessed that they weren’t. I’d only carried a gun once in the real world since SpecOps was disbanded and hoped I never had to again. Cheese smuggling was still a polite undertaking. As soon as it turned ugly, I was out.
‘Owen Pryce the Cheese’, I said in a genial manner, greeting the leader of the group with a smile and a firm handshake, ‘good to see you again. I trust the trip across the border was uneventful?’
‘It’s getting a lot harder these days’, he replied in a sing-song Welsh accent that betrayed his roots in the south of the Republic, probably Abertawe. ‘There are dutymen everywhere and the bribes I have to pay have a bearing on the price of the goods.’
‘As long as it’s fair price, Pryce,’ I replied pleasantly. ‘My clients love cheese but there’s a limit to what they’ll pay.’
We were both lying, but it was the game we played. My clients would pay good money for high-quality cheese, and as likely as not he didn’t bribe anyone. The border with Wales was a hundred and seventy miles long, and had more holes than a hastily matured Emmental. There weren’t enough dutymen to cover it all, and to be honest, although illegal, no one took cheese smuggling that seriously.
Pryce nodded to one of his compatriots and they opened the sample case with a flourish. They were all there - every single make of cheese you could imagine, from pure white to dark amber. Crumbly, hard, soft, liquid, gas. The rich aroma of well-matured cheese escaped into the room and I felt my taste-buds tingle. This was top-quality shit - the best available.
‘Smells good, Pryce.’
He said nothing and showed me a large slab of white cheese.
‘Caerphilly’, he said, ‘the best. We can–’
I put up a hand to stop him.
‘The punks can deal with the mild stuff, Owen. We’re interested in Level 3.8 and above.’
He shrugged, set the Caerphilly down and picked up a small chunk of creamy-coloured cheese.
‘Quintuple Llanboidy’, he announced, ‘a 5.2. It’ll play on your taste-buds like the plucked strings of a harp.’
‘We’ll have the usual of that, Pryce,’ I muttered, ‘but my clients are into something a little stronger. What else you got?’
We always went through this charade. My speciality was the volatile cheese market, and when I said wolatile, I didn’t mean the market - I meant the cheese.
Pryce nodded and showed me a golden-yellow cheese that had veins of red running through it.
‘Quadruple-strength Dolgellau Veinclotter,’ he announced. It’s a 9.5. Matured in Blaenafon for eighteen years and not for the faint-hearted. Good on crakers but can fonction equally well as an amorous skunk repellent.’
I took a daringly large amount and popped it on my tongue. The taste was extraordinary; I could almost see the Cambrian mountains just visible in the rain, low clouds, gushing water and lime-stone crags, frost shattered scree and–’
‘Are you all right?’ said Millon when I opened my eyes. ‘You passed out for a moment there.’
‘Kicks like a mule, doesn’t it?’ said Pryce kindly. ‘Have a glass of water.’
‘Thank you. We’ll take all you have - what else you got?’
‘Mynachlog-ddu Old Contemptible,’ said Pryce, showing me a whitish crumbly cheese. ‘It’s kept in a glass jar because it will eat through cardboard or steel. Don’t leave it in the air too long as it will start dogs howling.’
‘We’ll have thirty kilos. What about this one?’ I asked, pointing at an innocuous-looking ivory-coloured soft cheese.
‘Ystradgynlais Molecular Unstable Brie,’ announced Pryce, ‘a soft cheese we’ve cloned from an original supplied by our cheese-making brethen in France - but every bit as good. Useful as a contact anaesthetic or paint stripper. It can cure insomnia and ground to dust is very useful self-defence against muggers and wandering bears. It has a half-life of twenty-three days, glows in the dark and can be used as a source of X-rays.’
‘We’ll take the lot. Got anything really strong?’
Pryce raised an eyebrow and his minders looked at one another uneasily.
‘Are you sure?’
‘It’s not for me,’ I said hastily, ‘but we’ve got a few serious cheese-heads who can take the hard stuff.’
‘We’ve got some Machynlleth Wedi Marw.’
‘What the hell’s that?’
‘Really strong cheese. It’ll bring you in a rash just by looking at it. Denser than enriched plutonium, two grams is enough to season a macaroni cheese for eight hundred men. The smell alone will corrode iron. A concentration in air of only seventeen parts per million will bring on nausea and unconsciousness within twenty seconds. Our chief taster ate a half-ounce by accident and was uncounscious for six hours. Open only out of doors, and even then with a doctor’s certificate and well away from areas of population. It’s not really a cheese for eating - it’s more for encasing in concrete and dumping in the ocean a long way from civilisation.’
I looked at Millon, who nodded. There was always someone stupid enough to experiment. After all, no one had ever died from cheese ingestion.
‘Let us have a half-pound and we’ll see what we can do with it.’
‘Very well,’ said Pryce. He nodded to a colleague, who opened another suitcase and very gingerly took out a sealed lead box. He laid it very gently on the table ant then took a hurried step backwards.
‘You won’t attempt to open it until we are at least thirty miles away, will you?’
‘We’ll do our best.’
‘Actually, I’d advise you not to open it at all.’
First among sequels, Jasper Fforde
J’ai de plus en plus de difficultés à trouver des livres réellement captivants.
Jasper Fforde fait partie des exceptions.
J’adore l’univers qu’il a créé autant avec Thursday Next, sa première héroïne qui narre le deal de fromage ci-dessus, qu’avec la Nursery Crime Division, sa deuxième série.
J’aime beaucoup ces enquêtes absurdes qui se déroulent dans un monde remodelé au gré de l’imagination de l’auteur.
J’ai fait trois librairies différentes pour parvenir à mettre la main sur l’édition poche anglaise son dernier opus en date, le cinquième épisode des aventures de Thursday Next, dont est extrait le passage précité.
En effet, le rythme des traductions est beaucoup trop lent. Seul ses trois premiers romans sont disponibles en français à ce jour, c’est à dire les trois premiers épisodes de la série consacrée à Thursday Next.
Jasper Fforde est une de mes meilleures découvertes de ces dernières années.
C’est un des rares auteurs qui parviennent à me faire rire parfois à la surprise de mes voisins dans le métro.
