toilette each morning! You are deezgusting! A shoe-maker! You have
destroyed my life! . . . You will never be a chef! You are a disgrace!
Look! Look at this merde . . . merde . . . merde!" At this point, Bernard
would stick his fingers into the offending object and fling bits of it on
the floor. "You dare call this cuisine! This . . . this is grotesque! An
abomination! You . . . you should kill yourself from shame!"
I had to hand it to the old bastard, though, he was fair. Everyone got ten
minutes. Even the girls, who would, sad to say, invariably burst into
tears thirty seconds into the chef's tirade. He did not let their tears or
sobs deter him. They stood there, shaking and heaving for the full time
while he ranted and raved and cursed heaven and earth and their
ancestors and their future progeny, breaking them down like everybody
else, until all that remained was a trembling little bundle of nerves with
an unnaturally red face in a white polyester uniform.
One notable victim of Chef Bernard's reign of terror was a buddy of
mine—also much older than the other students—who had just returned
from Vietnam. He'd served in combat with an artillery unit and returned
stateside to attend the CIA under the GI Bill and had made it through the
whole program, had only four days to go before graduation, but when he
saw that in a day or two his number would be up and he, without
question, would be working the dreaded soufflé station, he folded under
the pressure. He went AWOL, disappearing from Hyde Park forever.
Boot camp and the Viet Cong had not been as bad as Chef Bernard's ten
minutes, I guess.
When my time came to stand there in front of my fellow students, and
all the world, and get my ten minutes, I was ready. I could see Chef
Bernard looking deep into my eyes as he began his standard tirade, could
see him recognize a glimmer of something familiar somewhere in there.
I did the convict thing. The louder and more confrontational the
authority figure got, the more dreamy and relaxed I became. Bernard saw
it happening. I may have been standing at rigid attention, and saying all