But that wasn’t the point. It was the nature of the crime that mattered. Here were the French, self-appointed world champions of gastronomy, being taken in by counterfeit delicacies, their taste buds hoodwinked and their wallets plucked clean. Worse still, the fraud didn’t even depend on second-class domestic truffles, but on pallid castoffs from Italy—Italy, for God’s sake!
I had once heard a Frenchman express his opinion of Italian food in a single libelous phrase: After the noodle, there is nothing. And yet hundreds, maybe thousands, of dusky Italian impersonators had found their way into knowledgeable French stomachs under the crudest of false pretences. The shame of it was enough to make a man weep all over his foie gras.
The story reminded me of Alain, who had offered to take me for a day of truffle hunting below Mont Ventoux, and to demonstrate the skills of his miniature pig. But when I called him, he told me he was having a very thin season, the result of the summer drought. En plus, the experiment with the pig had been a failure. She was not suited to the work. Nevertheless, he had a few truffles if we were interested, small but good. We arranged to meet in Apt, where he had to see a man about a dog.
There is one café in Apt that is filled on market day with men who have truffles to sell. While they wait for customers, they pass the time cheating at cards and lying about how much they were able to charge a passing Parisian for 150 grams of mud and fungus. They carry folding scales in their pockets, and ancient wooden-handled Opinel knives, which are used to cut tiny nicks in the surface of a truffle to prove that its blackness is more than skin deep. Mixed in with the café smell of coffee and black tobacco is the earthy, almost putrid scent that comes from the contents of the shabby linen bags on the tables. Early morning glasses of rosé are sipped, and conversations are often conducted in secretive mutters.
While I waited for Alain, I watched two men crouched over their drinks, their heads close together, glancing around between sentences. One of them took out a cracked Bic pen and wrote something on the palm of his hand. He showed what he had written to the other man and then spat into his palm and carefully rubbed out the evidence. What could it have been? The new price per kilo? The combination of the vault in the bank next door? Or a warning? Say nothing. A man with glasses is staring at us.
Alain arrived, and everyone in the café looked at him, as they had looked at me. I felt as though I was about to do something dangerous and illegal instead of buying ingredients for an omelet.
I had brought with me the clipping from the Times, but it was old news to Alain. He had heard about it from a friend in the Périgord, where it was causing a great deal of righteous indignation among honest truffle dealers, and grave suspicions in the minds of their customers.
Alain had come to Apt to begin negotiations for the purchase of a new truffle dog. He knew the owner, but not well, and therefore the business would take some time. The asking price was substantial, 20,000 francs, and nothing could be taken on trust. Tests in the field would have to be arranged. The dog’s age would have to be established, and his stamina and scenting skills demonstrated. One never knew.
I asked about the miniature pig. Alain shrugged, and drew his index finger across his throat. In the end, he said, unless one was prepared to accept the inconvenience of a full-sized pig, a dog was the only solution. But to find the right dog, a dog that would be worth its weight in banknotes, that was not at all straightforward.
There is no such breed as a truffle hound. Most of the truffle dogs that I had seen were small, nondescript, yappy creatures that looked as though a terrier might have been briefly involved in the bloodline many generations ago. Alain himself had an old Alsatian which, in its day, had worked well. It was all a question of individual instinct and training, and there were no guarantees that a dog who performed for one owner would perform for another. Alain remembered something and smiled. There was a famous story. I refilled his glass, and he told me.
A man from St. Didier once had a dog who could find truffles, so he said, where no other dog had found them before. Throughout the winter, when other hunters were coming back from the hills with a handful, or a dozen, the man from St. Didier would return to the café with his satchel bulging. The dog was a merveille, and the owner never stopped boasting about his little Napoléon, so called because his nose was worth gold.
Many men coveted Napoléon, but each time they offered to buy him, the owner refused. Until one day a man came into the café and put four briques on the table, four thick wads pinned together, 40,000 francs. This was an extraordinary price and, with a show of reluctance, it was finally accepted. Napoléon went off with his new master.