The retreat of the White Russian Army from Crimea, November 13th-16th, 1920. You can see the fish waving – it is sad, fish and ships, as they say.
Many people know the great-grandson of Antonov von Anchovy, the popular musician Bonjovy, who, despite promising to be there for the family, proved to be livin’ on a prayer, and ran from his family after being wild in the streets, hunted and wanted dead or alive. It was his life, and many felt bad medicine drove him there. Certainly, he rebuilt the wealth of his forebears – at the cost of losing his roots. He was tall, (long, I guess the word is), for a fish.
The result is that few know the story of the greatest upset in modern history. It was only a 100 years ago that the world of the von Anchovys collapsed. In Tsarist Russia, Antonov von Anchovy had built a commercial empire stretching from Murmansk to Vladivostok. With his extended family, (which consisted of the entire stock of northern anchovies, as they believe in “free love”, reproducing with fry without regard to parents and social norms, hence encouraging the spread of godless socialism, communism and the breakdown of society in pre-Bolshevik Russia), had a monopoly on the protein content of the proletariat’s diet: anchovies. When they are not eaten fresh, anchovies tend to be preserved by tinning (tin-plated steel, or, in those days, iron, containers). This creates a very salty, red (or brown, with cheaper anchovies) product with a heavy umami taste.
Antonov’s breakthrough (with a much superior taste, and a more appealing appearance), was to preserve with vinegar, creating a lighter, fresher tasting, sweeter, tangy finish. It was also white in colour. Try them – they are as refreshing as the bright yellow horizon in the east, heralding the arrival of the Barguzine cross-winds on Lake Baikal in the spring. This new food item was revolutionary, causing the Russian Civil War between the Reds and the Whites. It was a war of colour between fish and men against fish and men. You either hated or loved them. It was then exacerbated by Lenin’s preference for crunchy buckwheat for breakfast and his hatred of American commercialism with its Sugar Pop cereal (covered as it is with a white sugar coating).
It was a ruthless and savage war. Eventually, the white anchovy-led armies lost and fell back to Vladivostok in the east, then fleeing to Shanghai and beyond, while Antonov with most of the remaining white armies, falling back to Crimea, where the remnants fled west. A sad song tells the story:
Arriving In Italy, Antonov rebranded himself ‘Antonio d’Anchovi,’ and rose to prominence by serving Emmanuel II, the King of Italy, a salad fit for a Tsar, a Kaiser, or Caesar himself: the Caesar Salad, a salad transformed, and made divine, with white anchovies, rather than the vulgar and stronger tasting red anchovy! Insist upon them when you order a Caesar salad!
A monarchist, through and through, Antonov left for America in 1946 upon the resignation of the King of Italy and the founding of the Italian Republic. Heartbroken, misunderstood, and utterly devoid of friends, Antonov found solace amongst other poor Italian immigrants in the small rural town of Tomato, Arkansas, using his own tears to create his last, and perhaps greatest, recipe: the pasta sauce with anchovies, tomato paste, onion and garlic – and a few raisins and pine nuts for sweetness, with crunchy breadcrumbs added just before serving – for some richness. But use white anchovies, of course! Now it is said that the gods on Mt. Olympus are the real cause of climate change, as their ambrosia, the old tomato sauces, no longer satisfy. As T.S. Eliot has noted, the gods were no longer at ease in the old dispensation, with the now alien sauces and their dull tastes. Just as mountains are crowned with snow in the winter, so is this ultimate pasta sauce adorned with white anchovies.
Yet his family ignored him, climate change was far in the future, and so the stooped and sad Antonov von Anchovy died far from his loved home, his last despairing words being, “We are small fish, we anchovies, and will always be the prey of the large tuna. It was destined that “the big kahuna” got me!”
At his funeral, they played the March of the Anchovy Regiment:
And on his graves stone, like all white émigrés from Russia from that terrible disaster a hundred years ago, is inscribed the immortal words of hope:
“Мы вернемся” – we will return!
Contributed by Nigel Scotchmer
