Her Hidden Life: A captivating story of history, danger and risking it all for love. V.S. Alexander

Чтение книги онлайн.

       CHAPTER 4

      My hands trembled as Cook busied herself with various mushrooms, vials and small bowls containing powders. Her thin arms hovered over the oak table. My first class in poisons occurred early one morning in a corner of the kitchen while the rest of the staff went about their business.

      I had no appetite for breakfast and my stomach churned as I looked at the items laid out before me. I sat because I felt too nervous to stand.

      ‘We will deal with four areas,’ Cook began. ‘Mushrooms, arsenic, mercury and cyanide. We can’t possibly cover everything today, but this will be our starting point.’ She pointed to the mushrooms. ‘One of these is safe to eat, the other isn’t. Can you tell them apart?’

      Dread crept over me. I had no idea. They looked the same to me. She pointed to two white spheres that looked like puffballs. ‘Come now, which of these is poisonous?’

      I shook my head.

      ‘I can see we have a long way to go.’ She pulled on a pair of rubber gloves and held one of the funnel-shaped mushrooms in her hand. ‘This is Omphalotus olearius. It grows in Europe. It’s rarely deadly, but can cause severe illness. It looks similar to Cantharellus cibarius, a Chanterelle, which grows here as the Pfifferling. It has a peppery taste.’ She broke off a small piece of the Chanterelle and held it on the tip of her finger. ‘Go ahead. Taste it.’

      I took the yellowish-orange meat between my fingers and was about to put it into my mouth.

      ‘Wait,’ Cook cautioned. ‘Smell it first.’

      I felt silly smelling and tasting mushrooms, but this was to be part of my daily routine.

      I put the piece to my nose and sniffed. ‘It smells like an apricot.’ I popped the bit into my mouth and let it slowly dissolve until the peppery taste was too much. I swallowed it and swished my tongue trying to get out the taste, worrying that Cook was playing a horrible trick. Did she want to poison me?

      ‘Look at the Omphalotus. It grows in America and Asia as well. It has unforked gills and the interior is orange – not like the Chanterelle.’ She split the two mushrooms in half to demonstrate the difference in color. ‘The Führer rarely eats mushrooms. He doesn’t really like them, but see how easy it would be to grind, chop or mince the Omphalotus and slip it into his egg and potato casserole. You must be aware of the colors and smells of the poisonous foods and be on the lookout for their evidence.’

      Cook then explained the difference between the two puffballs that lay on the table. One was deadly, the second not. My eyes must have glazed over, for other than the size and the amount of soil on both, the mushrooms looked strikingly similar. I could not tell the difference. Cook shook her head as if chastising a lazy student for her stupidity. ‘You will learn,’ she said in a firm voice.

      Or die.

      We moved on to arsenic. Cook took a small amount of the powder and heated it in a pan. It smelled like garlic. She also took a piece of the grayish-white granules and struck them with a hammer, causing friction and heat. The odor of garlic filled the air. ‘The poisoning causes symptoms very similar to cholera: diarrhea, vomiting, cramps and convulsions,’ Cook said. ‘That’s why it was easy to hide such poisoning hundreds of years ago. Cholera was prevalent. The pain from arsenic is acute. Real garlic is an antidote against a slow poisoning.’ She ordered me to put on gloves and sniff the arsenic, which smelled metallic rather than like garlic. My hands shook when she told me to taste a small particle. My jaws clenched shut. Cook gave up, pried my mouth open and placed the tiny piece on my tongue. It tasted faintly of iron, hardly enough to notice.

      She then held up a brown bottle of Mercury Chloride. ‘This was used to treat the syphilitic disease of sexual intercourse, but it can kill as a poison. It causes profuse sweating, high blood pressure and rapid heartbeat. No need to taste it – it has no taste.’ Cook handed me the small bowl of white salts and had me examine it. A faint smell of chlorine wafted from the bowl, but I may have imagined it, the odor was so weak.

      Finally, we dealt with cyanide. This was the poison, Cook said, that would most likely be used against the Führer. The white granules had a faint smell of bitter almonds. Cook was pleased when I noticed the odor. ‘Some can’t smell cyanide. It’s a genetic trait. You’re lucky you did; otherwise, you might have had to find other work.’ I was shocked at my own misfortune. If I had lied about the smell, I might have been assigned as the kitchen bookkeeper or to another less dangerous task. Instead, through my ignorance of poisons, I’d secured my job as a taster.

      Cook swirled her gloved finger in the granules. ‘Cyanide salts are exceedingly poisonous. It knocks you unconscious and you can’t breathe; your skin turns blue.’ She pointed to a metal vial on the table. ‘Unfortunately, a few of our officers have already committed suicide in this manner. Breaking a cyanide capsule with your СКАЧАТЬ