Si algo tiene la literatura victoriana es que está plagada de cocinas, comedores y de actos en sociedad alrededor de una taza de té. En este caso, en la versión canadiense de Lucy Maud Montgomery publicada antes de que el Modernismo rompiera la porcelana de la casa de campo. Ana de las tejas verdes se publicó por primera vez en 1908 y fue el fértil comienzo para toda una longeva serie de libros que narraban la vida de Ana hasta la menopausia. Un bildungsroman que ríete tú de Harry Potter. El libro no está plagado de descripciones de comida como las detalladas meriendas de Los cinco pero la comida lo impregna todo como caracterización del hogar, lo íntimo y personal.
Aquí, Ana invita a su amiga Diana a tomar el té. Siempre pensé que Ana y Diana tenían un rollo algo más que amigas, discúlpenme. El caso es que entre zumo y zumo la pelirroja da rienda suelta al dramatismo adolescente que todos llevamos dentro.
‘How is your mother?’ inquired Anne politely, just as if
she had not seen Mrs. Barry picking apples that morning
in excellent health and spirits.
‘She is very well, thank you. I suppose Mr. Cuthbert is
hauling potatoes to the LILY SANDS this afternoon, is
he?’ said Diana, who had ridden down to Mr. Harmon
Andrews’s that morning in Matthew’s cart.
‘Yes. Our potato crop is very good this year. I hope
your father’s crop is good too.’
‘It is fairly good, thank you. Have you picked many of
your apples yet?’
‘Oh, ever so many,’ said Anne forgetting to be
dignified and jumping up quickly. ‘Let’s go out to the
orchard and get some of the Red Sweetings, Diana.
Marilla says we can have all that are left on the tree.
Marilla is a very generous woman. She said we could have
fruit cake and cherry preserves for tea. But it isn’t good
manners to tell your company what you are going to give
them to eat, so I won’t tell you what she said we could
have to drink. Only it begins with an R and a C and it’s
bright red color. I love bright red drinks, don’t you? They
taste twice as good as any other color.’
The orchard, with its great sweeping boughs that bent
to the ground with fruit, proved so delightful that the little
girls spent most of the afternoon in it, sitting in a grassy
corner where the frost had spared the green and the
mellow autumn sunshine lingered warmly, eating apples
and talking as hard as they could. Diana had much to tell
Anne of what went on in school. She had to sit with
Gertie Pye and she hated it; Gertie squeaked her pencil all
the time and it just made her—Diana’s—blood run cold;
Ruby Gillis had charmed all her warts away, true’s you
live, with a magic pebble that old Mary Joe from the
Creek gave her. You had to rub the warts with the pebble
and then throw it away over your left shoulder at the time
of the new moon and the warts would all go. Charlie
Sloane’s name was written up with Em White’s on the
porch wall and Em White was AWFUL MAD about it;
Sam Boulter had ‘sassed’ Mr. Phillips in class and Mr.
Phillips whipped him and Sam’s father came down to the
school and dared Mr. Phillips to lay a hand on one of his
children again; and Mattie Andrews had a new red hood
and a blue crossover with tassels on it and the airs she put
on about it were perfectly sickening; and Lizzie Wright
didn’t speak to Mamie Wilson because Mamie Wilson’s
grown-up sister had cut out Lizzie Wright’s grown-up
sister with her beau; and everybody missed Anne so and
wished she’s come to school again; and Gilbert Blythe—
But Anne didn’t want to hear about Gilbert Blythe.
She jumped up hurriedly and said suppose they go in and
have some raspberry cordial.
Anne looked on the second shelf of the room pantry
but there was no bottle of raspberry cordial there. Search
revealed it away back on the top shelf. Anne put it on a
tray and set it on the table with a tumbler.
‘Now, please help yourself, Diana,’ she said politely. ‘I
don’t believe I’ll have any just now. I don’t feel as if I
wanted any after all those apples.’
Diana poured herself out a tumblerful, looked at its
bright-red hue admiringly, and then sipped it daintily.
‘That’s awfully nice raspberry cordial, Anne,’ she said.
‘I didn’t know raspberry cordial was so nice.’
‘I’m real glad you like it. Take as much as you want.
I’m going to run out and stir the fire up. There are so
many responsibilities on a person’s mind when they’re
keeping house, isn’t there?’
When Anne came back from the kitchen Diana was
drinking her second glassful of cordial; and, being
entreated thereto by Anne, she offered no particular
objection to the drinking of a third. The tumblerfuls were
generous ones and the raspberry cordial was certainly very
nice.
‘The nicest I ever drank,’ said Diana. ‘It’s ever so much
nicer than Mrs. Lynde’s, although she brags of hers so
much. It doesn’t taste a bit like hers.’
‘I should think Marilla’s raspberry cordial would
prob’ly be much nicer than Mrs. Lynde’s,’ said Anne
loyally. ‘Marilla is a famous cook. She is trying to teach me
to cook but I assure you, Diana, it is uphill work. There’s
so little scope for imagination in cookery. You just have to
go by rules. The last time I made a cake I forgot to put the
flour in. I was thinking the loveliest story about you and
me, Diana. I thought you were desperately ill with
smallpox and everybody deserted you, but I went boldly
to your bedside and nursed you back to life; and then I
took the smallpox and died and I was buried under those
poplar trees in the graveyard and you planted a rosebush
by my grave and watered it with your tears; and you
never, never forgot the friend of your youth who
sacrificed her life for you. Oh, it was such a pathetic tale,
Diana. The tears just rained down over my cheeks while I
mixed the cake. But I forgot the flour and the cake was a
dismal failure. Flour is so essential to cakes, you know.
Marilla was very cross and I don’t wonder. I’m a great trial
to her. She was terribly mortified about the pudding sauce
last week. We had a plum pudding for dinner on Tuesday
and there was half the pudding and a pitcherful of sauce
left over. Marilla said there was enough for another dinner
and told me to set it on the pantry shelf and cover it. I
meant to cover it just as much as could be, Diana, but
when I carried it in I was imagining I was a nun—of
course I’m a Protestant but I imagined I was a Catholic—
taking the veil to bury a broken heart in cloistered
seclusion; and I forgot all about covering the pudding
sauce. I thought of it next morning and ran to the pantry.
Diana, fancy if you can my extreme horror at finding a
mouse drowned in that pudding sauce! I lifted the mouse
out with a spoon and threw it out in the yard and then I
washed the spoon in three waters. Marilla was out milking
and I fully intended to ask her when she came in if I’d
give the sauce to the pigs; but when she did come in I was
imagining that I was a frost fairy going through the woods
turning the trees red and yellow, whichever they wanted
to be, so I never thought about the pudding sauce again
and Marilla sent me out to pick apples. Well, Mr. and
Mrs. Chester Ross from Spencervale came here that
morning. You know they are very stylish people,
especially Mrs. Chester Ross. When Marilla called me in
dinner was all ready and everybody was at the table. I tried
to be as polite and dignified as I could be, for I wanted
Mrs. Chester Ross to think I was a ladylike little girl even
if I wasn’t pretty. Everything went right until I saw Marilla
coming with the plum pudding in one hand and the
pitcher of pudding sauce WARMED UP, in the other.
Diana, that was a terrible moment. I remembered
everything and I just stood up in my place and shrieked
out ‘Marilla, you mustn’t use that pudding sauce. There
was a mouse drowned in it. I forgot to tell you before.’
Oh, Diana, I shall never forget that awful moment if I live
to be a hundred. Mrs. Chester Ross just LOOKED at me
and I thought I would sink through the floor with
mortification. She is such a perfect housekeeper and fancy
what she must have thought of us. Marilla turned red as
fire but she never said a word—then. She just carried that
sauce and pudding out and brought in some strawberry
preserves. She even offered me some, but I couldn’t
swallow a mouthful. It was like heaping coals of fire on
my head. After Mrs. Chester Ross went away, Marilla
gave me a dreadful scolding. Why, Diana, what is the
matter?’
Diana had stood up very unsteadily; then she sat down
again, putting her hands to her head.
‘I’m—I’m awful sick,’ she said, a little thickly. ‘I—I—
must go right home.’
‘Oh, you mustn’t dream of going home without your
tea,’ cried Anne in distress. ‘I’ll get it right off—I’ll go and
put the tea down this very minute.’
‘I must go home,’ repeated Diana, stupidly but
determinedly.
‘Let me get you a lunch anyhow,’ implored Anne. ‘Let
me give you a bit of fruit cake and some of the cherry
preserves. Lie down on the sofa for a little while and you’ll
be better. Where do you feel bad?’
‘I must go home,’ said Diana, and that was all she
would say. In vain Anne pleaded.
‘I never heard of company going home without tea,’
she mourned. ‘Oh, Diana, do you suppose that it’s possible
you’re really taking the smallpox? If you are I’ll go and
nurse you, you can depend on that. I’ll never forsake you.
But I do wish you’d stay till after tea. Where do you feel
bad?’
‘I’m awful dizzy,’ said Diana.
And indeed, she walked very dizzily. Anne, with tears
of disappointment in her eyes, got Diana’s hat and went
with her as far as the Barry yard fence. Then she wept all
the way back to Green Gables, where she sorrowfully put
the remainder of the raspberry cordial back into the pantry
and got tea ready for Matthew and Jerry, with all the zest
gone out of the performance.
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