Possibly the synthesis of all delectable dishes that can be prepared with fish is that marvel of a soup called bouillabaisse, which according to one version of the story was conceived by Venus to prod Vulcan to new and more ardent amorous feats, and according to another, more Christian version was brought to the three Marys of the Gospel by angels. The best place in the world to eat bouillabaisse is in one of the popular restaurants of the port of Marseilles, and fortunate are the sybarites to whom this possibility presents itself in a lifetime. I have never personally experienced that pleasure; the one time I passed through Marseilles, I was wearing a backpack and didn’t have a centime in my pocket. Fortunately, I was unaware of the existence of such a culinary wonder and considered myself lucky to nibble on sausage and bread. My knowledge of bouillabaisse comes by reference, from stories pirates and sailors passed from mouth to mouth, stories that traveled the seven seas to reach my ears.

  Still Life with Oil Lamp and Herring, painting by David Sterenberg, 1920, Russian State Museum, St. Petersburg, Scala/Art Resource, New York.

  Not knowing the authentic soup, I content myself with the imitations, unnecessarily theatrical, that appear on menus of restaurants on many coasts—it goes without saying that there are as many versions of fish soups and chowders as there are ports on the shores of every continent. One of the first recipes registered by history dates from the second century, at the height of the Roman Empire. In the section on main courses we offer one of them, but Panchita, a more determined woman than I, felt that we must include an authentic bouillabaisse. She set out for Europe under the pretext of obtaining the secret of the most eminent chef she could find. She traveled from Chile to Paris and London, where for two weeks she plunged into a binge of extravagant purchases and then on her swift passage through Marseilles made the necessary inquiries in her quest for the coveted recipe. How she got it is something she will never reveal as long as her husband is alive. Enough to say that she prepares it from a variety of fish and, following mysterious processes of heat and loving care, comes up with a soup befitting the gods on Mount Olympus, a true aphrodisiac bomb. All this, plus the advantage that if you have the ingredients ready in advance, it can be prepared in fifteen minutes. This recipe makes too much for one couple, so I recommend it for an orgy of six participants—but no more than that because it must be served the moment it reaches the precise point of perfection. That doesn’t afford time for a larger group of bacchants to gather, relax, and sit down to eat.

  Bouillabaisse

  This is a soup that must be made on the coast, because it requires six kinds of fish, all fresh from the sea, which will be washed and then chopped in large pieces without the least respect, discarding tails, heads, and other parts that look unappetizing to a sensitive eye. In an iron pot, preferably black and ugly, sauté 3 minced garlic cloves in 2/3 cup of good vegetable oil. Now, with one flourish, you add 3 large peeled and chopped tomatoes, a pinch of saffron, and 1 teaspoon sugar—the latter for pure superstition because you won’t be able to taste it. And salt and pepper, of course. Add 8 cups of water and 1 cup of good dry white wine (don’t think that just because it will be diluted in the broth you can use any old cheap label). Bring to a boil over a high flame. Immediately add another 2/3 cup of oil, then the fish, beginning with the varieties that have the firmest flesh—let them boil for about 10 minutes—followed by the more delicate ones, which will need no more than 5 minutes. At last, serve this simple, aphrodisiac soup in large ceramic bowls. In Marseilles the broth is served separately, with croutons, but that’s a bother; put it all together, and accompany it with a good country loaf or the ineffable baguette.

  “Ode to Conger Chowder”

  Chilean bouillabaisse is called caldillo de congrio, and though less pretentious and demanding, it is equally aphrodisiac and delicious. As my mother said, it really wasn’t worth all that effort of traveling clear to Marseilles. You don’t need five kinds of fish for this caldillo, only a good-size hunk of conger, the enormous eel that inhabits cold seas, and the good right hand of a humble cook or the sensual verses of a lover of the good life. This is the recipe of the Chilean poet Pablo Neruda:

  In the storm-tossed

  Chilean

  sea

  lives the rosy conger,

  giant eel

  of snowy flesh.

  And in Chilean

  stewpots

  along the coast

  was born the chowder,

  thick and succulent,

  a boon to man.

  You bring the conger, skinned,

  to the kitchen

  (its mottled skin slips off

  like a glove,

  leaving the

  grape of the sea

  exposed to the world),

  naked,

  the tender eel

  glistens,

  prepared

  to serve our appetites.

  Now

  you take

  garlic,

  first, caress

  that precious

  ivory,

  smell

  its irate fragrance,

  then

  blend the minced garlic

  with onion

  and tomato

  until the onion

  is the color of gold.

  Meanwhile

  steam

  our regal

  ocean prawns,

  and when

  they are tender,

  when the savor is

  set in a sauce

  combining the liquors

  of the ocean

  and the clear water

  released from the light of the onion,

  then

  you add the eel

  that it may be immersed in glory,

  that it may steep in the oils

  of the pot,

  shrink and be saturated.

  Now all that remains is to

  drop a dollop of cream

  into the concoction,

  a heavy rose,

  then slowly

  deliver

  the treasure to the flame,

  until in the chowder

  are warmed

  the essences of Chile,

  and to the table

  come, newly wed,

  the savors

  of land and sea,

  that in this dish

  you may know heaven.

  More Creatures from the Sea

  Andrea, one of my California friends, a pleasingly plump siren, beautiful and eternally good-humored, says that peeling squid is a sensual experience. I’m sure it must be, for people who like handling slippery cadavers. Andrea can turn any activity into an erotic adventure. She took a course to learn to swim with dolphins—an innocent enough experience that has become fashionable in this New Age because people believe that the spiritual vibrations of these animals cure assorted ills. In one of her aquatic pirouettes, our siren was nearly raped. She felt a bull-like charge from the rear, an enormous kiss on her neck that shot her to the bottom of the tank, and then something like a firehose ripping her bathing suit to shreds. Two guards pulled her from the water half drowned, and while the roguish would-be beau made two Olympian revolutions, balancing on his tail, she, naked, was fished out kicking and churning in a net before the astonished eyes of the other participants in the class. This is what happens when you go swimming with strangers. My friend has never recovered from that epiphany: the memory of the dolphin’s prodigious manhood, or should I say porpoisehood, which reduces that of any other mammal to the ridiculous, keeps her awake nights.

  Marine mollusks and crustaceans are believed to have the highest aphrodisiac value, first among them, oysters. The word aphrodisiac comes from Aphrodite, the Greek goddess of love, born of the sea foam after Cronus castrated his father Uranus and threw the genitals into the deep—a rather unnatural means of fertilization, but in that case it worked well and the beautiful Aphrodite was procreated in the foam of the waves. In Botticelli’s celebrated painting The Birth of Venus, the goddess emerges from the sea clothed only in her flowing hair and standing upon a scallop shell.

  Shellfish are delicious and do not require complicated or protracted cooking methods. Many are served raw with pepper, lemon, and a little cilantro. Furthermore, as they rarely have expressive eyes or an audible voice, they seem to lack a soul and we therefore have less compunction about eating them. As for crabs and lobsters that go living into the pot of boiling water to die in the throes of horrible agonies, it’s the cook who deserves punishment.

  Shellfish, and especially crustaceans, have been accused of contributing to high cholesterol, but don’t worry, that’s yet another North American obsession the rest of the world has never heard of; mention that to gastronomes from Italy or France and see the faces they make. The greatest drawback to shellfish is that they often cause allergic reactions and also, if not absolutely fresh, can poison you—but, look, you have to die of something. Sometimes you have to struggle to get them out of the shells, as is the case with oysters, or put up with a revolting appearance, as with octopus.

  The strangest saltwater fare I’ve ever eaten I encountered on a cruise through the waters of southern Chile: shoe clam, round-tail shrimp, purple prawns and hairy prawns, barnacles (the abalone of the poor), and some untranslatable varieties like culengue, piure, and others. We were sailing through small, abandoned islands and mythological coasts where the rain is eternal and there is an extraordinary variety of cold forest vegetation. The ship steamed for a few days across open seas and a few more through the passageways of a vast archipelago, headed for one of the most beautiful blue glaciers in the world, located in the bay of San Rafael. From time to time on the steep cliffs of the coastline we glimpsed villages bowed by solitude. The ship would put up at a rickety dock, sounding its whistles in greeting, and the villagers would come down to celebrate their only contact with a remote reality that they had heard lay beyond the horizon.

  The first to approach the ship would be the local officials, dressed in their Sunday clothing: the mayor; the nurse, if they had one; the evangelical pastor or Catholic priest who tended souls; and the proud school-teacher with her students all in little white pinafores but carrying their shoes in hand in order not to get them dirty. We tourists would explore a muddy street and immediately be surrounded by skinny dogs and children who were at first shy and then laughing, poor, dignified, with unforgettable faces, coarse hair, small hands nervous and scaly as harmless insects, their black eyes enormous and wise, their cheeks cracked by the blustery winds. Meanwhile, the men come aboard carrying on their heads huge baskets filled with shellfish and fish fresh from the waves.

  Other times, the ship would interrupt its course in the midst of steel-colored waters and soon we would see emerging from the fog the ghostly silhouette of a rowboat bringing cargo to replenish the galley. Using a system of ropes and baskets, the crew would haul up the bounty of the sea and lower money, along with a few bottles of pisco or wine, which the fishermen received ceremoniously, with that immutable courtesy of Chile’s poor. That day we tourists would huddle on the upper deck bundled in rough ponchos and shearling jackets bought for the trip and devour the raw creatures directly from their shells: sea urchins, razor clams, oysters. The captain, a square-built, astute man from the south with the name of a Greek pirate, would always pour a round of alcoholic drinks as he revealed to us the mysteries of strange provender we had never seen before, such as the picoroco, which looks for all the world like a dirty rock. Knowledgeable folks identify it by a beak that is occasionally extended and which then they tug on, twisting off the head and extracting the flesh, which is white and long as a strip of intestine. We ate it raw, swimming in lemon, between sips of white wine. It requires courage.

  Following, we offer a list of the most aphrodisiac seafood:

  Abalone In Chile we call it loco, maybe because to tenderize it you have to pound it unmercifully, the way mental patients once were treated. It lives in a thick shell, adhered to rocks, usually in cold waters. Harvesting it is not an agreeable task; you have to sink into icy water, equipped with an iron bar to pry the abalone from the rock. There is a science to cooking it, and the person who doesn’t know it usually ends up gnawing on a piece of hard rubber, but when properly prepared it is delicious. It is widely used in Chinese and Japanese cuisines.

  Clams and mussels These humble relatives of the oyster may be eaten raw with lemon, but they are better in soups and casseroles and also briefly baked in the shell with grated Parmesan, pepper, and a few drops of white wine. In shape they recall female genitals; in Italy, nonetheless, they are called cozza, one of several names for a very ugly woman.

  Nocturnal Menina, painting by Vladimir Zabaleta, 1989.

  Scallops The flesh, plump and white, normally is sold cleaned and ready to be cooked. If you do find them with shells, it’s a good idea to have some on hand for your romantic dinners; filled, they work well for French dishes like the acclaimed coquilles St. Jacques.

  Squid and octopus These creatures seem to be from another planet but are a delicacy for those who learn to eat them. In Spain they use octopus ink to make a black rice so erotic that it would be inadvisable to serve it to nuns or widows.

  Shrimp, prawns, crabs, lobsters, and other crustaceans Tasty, decorative, and very aphrodisiac, these are also easy to prepare—simply boil or broil them—but sometimes you must have a heart of ice to kill them. To use the example of the lobster: you have to peg and bind its claws and submerse it head first in boiling water, turning a deaf ear to its faint moans, and cook it until the shell turns red. Keeping in mind that some lobsters are the size of a rat, this is not a task recommended for the faint of heart or for maidens. Before you offer a crustacean to a new lover, be sure to find out whether he has any allergies. Many years ago I served prawns to a man I was trying to seduce, but the dinner, alas, led to horror instead of lovemaking. Five minutes after putting the first bite in his mouth, he was turned into a monstrous vision of a hanged man, his tongue so obscenely swollen it hung down over his chest as he strained for breath and an icy sweat coursed down his temples.

  Sea urchins The first person to open a sea urchin and place it in his mouth must have been very hungry. The mere look of it is daunting. It is eaten in Asia and South America, where it is thought to be more aphrodisiac than the oyster, but the rest of the world looks upon it with revulsion. It comes inside a dark ball covered with spines; the tongues—which aren’t tongues but genitals—are fleshy and sensual, the color of peaches. They emit the intense odor of the ocean depths and something more, something indefinable but frankly erotic. The taste is pure iodine and salt to the noninitiate; for the cognoscenti it makes a mouthful, as we say, worthy of a cardinal. For me the sea urchin is related to a forbidden experience. I was eight years old and alone on the beach; a fisherman emerged from the waves and offered me a sea urchin. Later he led me to the forest . . . but that is another story.

  Oysters The beautiful and frivolous Pauline Bonaparte was sent by her brother Napoleon to Santo Domingo, in lightly veiled exile, to silence the gossip about her scandalous behavior in Paris. On that island of heat, distance, and boredom, her senses were exacerbated and, seeking relief from cupidity and the desolation of rejection, she became addicted to black men. Hysterical, spoiled, and in bad health, La Bonaparte bathed in milk, slept a good part of the day, and occupied the rest of her time with her wardrobe and her beauty. But at night she liked to escape to revel with slaves in filthy hovels and to eat from their lips, between kisses and nibblings, the coarse food of the poor; meanwhile, in the dining room of his palace, General Leclerc, a cuckolded and complaisant husband, was enjoying the refined cuisine and best wines of France. Pauline returned to Europe with four African female slaves to serve her and a handsome, husky black man who carried her every morning naked to her bath and fed her breakfast: fresh oysters and champagne.

  Oysters are the queens of aphrodisiac cuisine, protagonists of every erotic scene recorded in literature or on film. The best way to eat them is raw, after squeezing lemon over them to test whether they are alive, because otherwise they are very toxic. The miserable creatures writhe in the acid. The flesh must look firm and plump, creamy in color, and float in a transparent, inoffensive-smelling liquid. If you buy them in their shells, I warn you that opening them takes strength and skill. Buy them already opened or eat them at restaurants, where someone else has been responsible for the work of preparing them. Oysters are so highly prized that the duke of Lauzun, before being led to the gallows, ordered a serving of oysters with white wine, which he shared with the hangman: “You have some, too,” the duke told him, “because to carry out your office, you need courage.”

  The Harem

  Although it seems unimaginable, there once was a time before television. I grew up playing house with rag dolls and reading anything I could get my hands on, especially serials, which my grandfather abominated but nonetheless made their way into the house as contraband. It was in serial form that I read classic novels and countless romantic tales, most of them set in past epochs and exotic climes. The only one that left its mark on my mind was the tragedy of a noble Englishman whose sweetheart was stolen from him by Turkish pirates on the Mediterranean Sea. The author must have found his inspiration in the story of Aimée de Rivery, a young French cousin of Josephine Bonaparte kidnapped by Levantine pirates on the high seas toward the end of the eighteenth century and sold as a slave into the harem of the sultan Abd al-Hamid I.