A portly man knew that he overindulged his palette; yet he was endowed with the sort of unassuming wisdom which breeds both corpulence and contentment. Of late, this peaceful patriarch had been trapped for several nights running in a recurrent oneiric scene, seated at a dreamed feast which left a wretched, revolting taste in his mouth at morning’s light. Each time, he hosted a banquet adorned with the beaming faces of his jovial guests. Members of the assembly had been chosen for the quality of their company, for rapidity of wit, and most importantly, a discerning appreciation of savoury dishes and luscious wines. The group shared a sybaritic flair bordering, in certain cases, upon unfettered gluttony. The party had been called to fête the host’s half-century, and had been organised around a staggering centrepiece that glowed behind the group: in a cavernous fireplace roasted an enormous ox, the entire carcass skewered on a spit. Teams of scullions wearing paper hats wiped perspiration from their faces, and dodged crackling, spitting fat to keep the giant flanks turning over the quick coals.

 

     The feast had been designed to surprise and to enchant with its display of culinary cleverness on a theatrical scale. Hale cries and hearty shouts rang out encouragement to the grunting menials when they lifted the skewered, cooked ox to a colossal carving surface. The exhortations turned to whistles, to sighs of admiration, to stamping and cheers when the ox, with its four limbs in the air, was split down the middle to reveal the rotund body and protruding, stumpy legs of a boar. As the ox’s steaks were served with a vermilion wine, the boar’s flesh was stripped away from a fat sheep that had been tucked inside its ribs. The wrapping of mutton concealed the tender meats of a nearly grown kid; and within that tasty envelope were two suckling pigs. When the pigs were carved a flock of sparrows spilled out. One bird to a guest, each had basted in the juices of the entire envelope. The pampered diners, once served this last course, were to discover that their tiny fowl had been stuffed with an ultimate, unimagined delicacy. Beneath the waterfall of flavours, succulent, soaked in spice, was a translucent serpent’s egg as supple as the finest leather.

     Here the host’s consummate, transcendent joy turned to nightmare as he lifted the minute egg to his lips. The tiny viper it contained reared up, then snapped out to bury its fangs in his tongue. The host crashed back in his chair, and with his legs in the air like those of the ox, expired on the spot.

 

 

   

      The man’s wife seized upon this dream as a rod with which to flog the eating habits which, it was true, had brought to her husband’s complexion a florid hue, and to his girth an ample extension. Friends, relatives, and indirectly, fortune-tellers, mystic readers, necromancers, and mages of all sorts offered uninvited exegesis in which eventual consequences varied from the dire to the burlesque. The chubby fellow, although perturbed by the regularity of his nocturnal apparition, and desirous of an interpretation, some recourse which might steer him clear from trouble, took comfort in the number of years to come before he would reach fifty. He knew himself well enough to consider employing only those precautionary measures not so stringent as to cramp the strapping appetite within him. He soon hit upon a gentle compromise: he might serve himself at the table as he wished, but would renounce after-dinner drinks; he could exercise personal influence in his affairs but must resign the chairman’s post; and should he succeed in wooing a very devious and determined mistress, he would refuse all favours save her counsel and sound advice. During his subsequent years, the social honours proposed him invariably were declined.

 

     At his centenary celebration, dotard guests were assisted to their seats while younger admirers plucked at their host for the secrets of his longevity. He folded his hands on his belly, grinned through his stumpy teeth, and advised all within earshot to forgo eggs.