The Foreigner | Page 7

Anka was determined that in providing for the feast
this demand should be fully satisfied.
For a long time she was torn between two conflicting desires: on the
one hand she longed to appear garbed in all the glory of the Western
girl's most modern bridal attire; on the other she coveted the honour of

providing a feast that would live for years in the memory of all who
might be privileged to be present. Both she could not accomplish, and
she wisely chose the latter; for she shrewdly reasoned that, while the
Western bridal garb would certainly set forth her charms in a new and
ravishing style, the glory of that triumph would be short-lived at best,
and it would excite the envy of the younger members of her own sex
and the criticism of the older and more conservative of her compatriots.
She was further moved to this decision by the thought that inasmuch as
Jacob and she had it in mind to open a restaurant and hotel as soon as
sufficient money was in hand, it was important that they should stand
well with the community, and nothing would so insure popularity as
abundant and good eating and drinking. So to the preparation of a feast
that would at once bring her immediate glory and future profit, Anka
set her shrewd wits. The providing of the raw materials for the feast
was to her an easy matter, for her experience in the New West Hotel
had taught her how to expend to the best advantage her carefully
hoarded wages. The difficulty was with the cooking. Clearly Paulina
could not be expected to attend to this, for although her skill with
certain soups and stews was undoubted, for the finer achievements of
the culinary art Paulina was totally unfitted. To overcome this difficulty,
Anka hit upon the simple but very effective expedient of entrusting to
her neighbours, who would later be her guests, the preparing of certain
dishes according to their various abilities and inclinations, keeping
close account in her own shrewd mind of what each one might be
supposed to produce from the materials furnished, and stimulating in
her assistants the laudable ambition to achieve the very best results.
Hence, in generous quantities she distributed flour for bread and cakes
in many varieties, rice and beans and barley, which were to form the
staple portion of the stews, cabbage and beets and onions in smaller
measure--for at this season of the year the price was high--sides of pork,
ropes of sausages, and roasts of beef from neck and flank. Through the
good offices of the butcher boy that supplied the New West Hotel,
purchased with Anka's shyest smile and glance, were secured a
considerable accumulation of shank bones and ham bones, pork ribs
and ribs of beef, and other scraps too often despised by the
Anglo-Saxon housekeeper, all of which would prove of the greatest
value in the enrichment of the soups. For puddings there were apples

and prunes, raisins and cranberries. The cook of the New West Hotel,
catching something of Anka's generous enthusiasm, offered pies by the
dozen, and even the proprietor himself, learning of the preparations and
progress, could think of nothing so appropriate to the occasion as a case
of Irish whiskey. This, however, Anka, after some deliberation,
declined, suggesting beer instead, and giving as a reason her experience,
namely, that "whiskey make too quick fight, you bet." A fight was
inevitable, but it would be a sad misfortune if this necessary part of the
festivities should occur too early in the programme.
Gradually, during the days of the week immediately preceding the
ceremony, there began to accumulate in the shacks about, viands of
great diversity, which were stored in shelves, in cupboards,--where
there were any,--under beds, and indeed in any and every available
receptacle. The puddings, soups and stews, which, after all, were to
form the main portion of the eating, were deposited in empty beer kegs,
of which every shack could readily furnish a few, and set out to freeze,
in which condition they would preserve their perfect flavour. Such
diligence and such prudence did Anka show in the supervision of all
these arrangements, that when the day before the feast arrived, on
making her final round of inspection, everything was discovered to be
in readiness for the morrow, with the single exception that the beer had
not arrived. But this was no over-sight on the part of Jacob, to whom
this portion of the feast had been entrusted. It was rather due to a
prudence born of experience that the beer should be ordered to be
delivered at the latest possible hour. A single beer keg is an object of
consuming interest to the Galician and subjects his sense of honour to