I could hardly believe my ears.The animal in front of me earned more than most senior executives in London last year, and it doesn't need a mobile phone. Buy truffles from Mr. X (1) The whole secret deal started with a phone call from London.The call was from my friend Frank, who was once described by a fashion magazine as a reclusive tycoon.In my opinion, he would be better called a top-notch foodie, someone who puts dinner on par with politics.Frank in the kitchen was like a hunting dog smelling prey, stretching his nose and sniffing here and there, his eyes fixed on the bubbling pot, trembling all over his body, looking full of anticipation look.A whiff of cassoulet was enough to make him dizzy.My wife says Frank is the most comforting eater she has ever met.

As he told me why he made the call, I could hear some anxiety in his voice. "It's already March, and I'm thinking about those truffles, do you still have them?" he said. March is already the season for truffles. Although we live at the foot of Mont Ventoux, where truffles are produced, the vendors selling truffles in the nearby market seem to have disappeared.I told Frank he might be a little too late. There was a terrible silence on the other end of the line. Frank had clearly realized that he was going to face the miserable situation without truffles-no truffle omelette, no truffle pancakes, no truffle-studded roast pig.The phone line suddenly became heavy with disappointment.

"There's someone, and maybe some others, I can ask him," I said. Frank muttered excitedly, "Great, great, I only need two kilograms. I will pack them in an egg carton and keep them in the refrigerator, so that I can eat them in spring and summer. It only takes two kilograms." Two kilograms of fresh truffles may cost more than £1,000 at the current market price in Paris.Even in Provence, bypassing the middleman and buying directly from truffle hunters in mud-stained boots and leather gloves is an astonishing feat.I asked Frank if he really wanted two kilos. "That way we won't run out of food!" he said. "Anyway, let's see how much you can get."

The only thing I have anything to do with the truffle business here is a phone number on the back of a bill that a local chef left for me.He said the man had absolute integrity.This is extremely rare. In the dark industry of truffles, there are so many kinds of fraud that it is not surprising.I've also heard stories of truffles stuffed with buckshot and covered with mud to increase their weight, or worse, simply selling shoddy stuff smuggled in from Italy as French.If there is no reliable supplier, it is likely to spend a lot of money in vain and cause trouble. I called the number Chef had given me and gave his name to the person who answered. "Oh, yes." It seems that the introducer has worked, can he help?

"Any truffles? About two kilograms?" "Ah? Are you a restaurant owner?" said the voice from the opposite side. No, I bought it for a British friend of mine.I say. "British? My God!" This Mr. X (Mr. Truffle, let's call him) smacked his lips and explained that finding so many truffles was going to be a big problem this season.But in the end he agreed to take the dog into the mountains to see what else he could find, and he would notify me then, but I'm afraid it won't be soon, so I have to wait patiently for his call. A week passed, two weeks passed, and one night the phone rang.A voice came, "I have what you want, let's meet tomorrow night."

He told me to wait by the phone booth on the Carpentras road at six o'clock.He asked for my license plate number, and the color.Most importantly, checks are not accepted.He said cash only. (I later learned that this is the norm in the truffle trade. Trufflers don’t believe what’s written on the paper, don’t give receipts, and scoff at the absurd notion of “income tax.”) I got to the phone booth just before six o'clock.The road was empty, there was no one in sight, and I felt uncomfortable with such a large wad of banknotes in my pocket.Newspapers were full of robberies and other ill events in the back streets of Vaucluse. A criminal investigation in Le Provençal newspaper said the area was infested with gangsters and that residents should stay home rather than go out.

And I, in this dark twilight, with my wad of five-hundred-franc bills rolled up like sausages, am I just a big fat duck, well fed, waiting to die?I searched for weapons in the car, but all I found was a shopping basket and an old copy of the Guide Michelin1. After ten long minutes, I finally saw a set of headlights.A dented Citroen pickup parked angrily on the other side of the booth.The driver and I quietly looked at each other from a safe distance across the car.He was alone and I got out of the car. I always expected to meet an old farmer with black teeth and canvas boots, squinting at people with a fierce look in his eyes.But this Mr. X is actually very young, with neatly trimmed black hair and a clean beard, he looks very comfortable, and when we shook hands, he smiled at me.

He said, it's so dark that you can't find my house, come with me. We got in the car, left the main road, took the winding gravel path, and drove straight into the depths of the mountain. It was like Mr. X was on the highway, and I was bouncing and stumbling along behind him.Finally, he turned into a narrow entrance and stopped in front of a house surrounded by carmine oaks with no lights on.As soon as I opened the door, a huge Alsatian wolfhound jumped out of the shadows and looked up and down my leg thoughtfully, hoping it had been fed. As soon as I walked through the front door, I smelled truffles—that familiar, slightly rancid smell that penetrates everything but glass and tin cans.Even put eggs and truffles together, and the eggs will taste like truffles.

On the kitchen table, in an old basket, was a bunch of black truffles, knotty and ugly but tasty and expensive. "Look!" Mr. X put the basket close to my nose, "I've already brushed off the dirt, just wash it before eating." He went to a cupboard and took out a pair of old-fashioned weighing pans, which hung from a hook hanging from a beam above the table.He ran his fingers over the truffles one by one to make sure they were firm enough, then put them on the blackened weighing pan, and told me about his new experiment as he weighed them.He bought a mini Vietnamese pig and plans to train him to be an expert truffle hunter.Pigs have a more sensitive sense of smell than dogs, but the average pig is as big as a small tractor, and it is not convenient to take it in the car to the truffle production area at the foot of Mount Ventoux.

The pointer of the scale circled for a while, and finally stopped at two kilograms. Mr. X packed the truffles into two linen bags, licked his thumbs, and counted the money I gave him. "Just right." He took out a bottle of Marc Brandy 2 and two glass cups, and we had a toast, wishing him success in pig training.He said that when the truffles are on the market next year, I must take a day to come and see his pigs practice on the field.Super Truffle Pig Hunting will be a major development in detection technology.He gifted me a handful of truffles as I left, along with his recipe for omelets, and wished me a happy trip to London.

The smell of truffles accompanied me all the way home in the car.The next day my hand luggage also smelled of truffles and as I was about to take my luggage out to go through UK Customs for X-ray when the plane landed at Heathrow, a strong smell of truffles came from above my head Passed out of the suitcase.The other passengers looked at me curiously, and all of them turned sideways, as if I had bad breath. It was the time when Aviana Carrie issued the Salmonella warning, and I immediately imagined myself being surrounded by a group of police dogs and being locked up in a quarantine facility for carrying unknown foreign items that might endanger the health of Chinese people.I walked through customs cautiously, the customs officer didn't even move my nostrils.But the taxi driver became suspicious. "Oh, what did you bring?" he asked. "Truffle." "Oh, the truffle, it's been rotten for a long time, hasn't it?" He closed the partition window between the front and rear seats, and I was happy to be quiet, so as not to listen to the taxi driver chatting all the way alone.I got out of the car in front of Frank's house, and the driver brother even got out of the car to open the rear window. Mr. Our Recluse Tycoon himself greeted me at the door and pounced directly on the truffles.He passed one of the bags to dinner guests, some of whom had no idea what they were smelling.Frank brought out his house cook from the kitchen, a dignified Scot who I used to take for General Dormer. "Vaughn, we'd better deal with this stuff first," Frank said. Vaughan raised his eyebrows, sniffed it gracefully, and knew what it was. "Ah! What a truffle, perfect for tomorrow's foie gras." Buy truffles from Mr. X (2) Mr. X must also agree! * * * It's been almost two years since I left London, and it feels strange to come back. Everything seems so strange.I am also surprised that I have changed so much.Maybe it's because this is London, and everyone's lips are always on the money, property prices, the stock market or business trifles, big and small.The weather, which was once complained about non-stop, is no longer mentioned, and while it's still as bad, that hasn't changed a bit.The days were spent in the gray drizzle floating all over the sky, and pedestrians on the street hunched their backs to hide from the endless rain.Traffic is almost at a standstill, but most drivers don't seem to feel it - they're too busy on the phone, too busy discussing money, possessions.Missing the brightness, emptiness, and clear, open skies of Provence, I realized that I would never return to live in the city. On the way to the airport, the driver asked me where I was going, I told him, and he nodded to show he knew the place. "I've been there, Frejus, with the convoy, and it's damn expensive." He charged me £25 for the fare, wished me a good trip, and warned me that Fredges had suffered greatly from his drinking water and spent three days in the toilet, but his wife was fine Very happy. I flew out of winter, back into spring, and experienced firsthand how easy it is to land at Marseille's Marignane airport.This is something I will never understand.Marseille is famous as a drug trading center, half of the drugs in Europe are traded here, but here, any traveler who contains marijuana, cocaine, heroin, British cheddar cheese or any other prohibited substances in his suitcase can pass through customs without going through customs. Straight out of the airport.Like the weather, it's a world away from Heathrow. ＊＊＊ Mr. X was delighted to hear that his two kilos of truffles were a hit. "Your friend likes to eat truffles?" "Yeah, but some of his friends don't like the smell." I can almost hear him shrugging his shoulders over the phone. "The taste of truffles is a bit strange. Not everyone will like it. Those who like it are lucky." He laughed, and then his voice became a little mysterious. "I have something to show you, a videotape I made. If you're interested, we can watch it over a drink." After finally touching his house, the Alsatian dog rushed to welcome me, as if I was a long-lost meaty bone. Mr. X hissed at it, as hunters used to do in the woods, and ordered it to get off me. "It's just playing with you," he said, a line I've heard too. I followed him into the shaded kitchen, which smelled of truffles, and he poured wine into two large glasses. "Call me Aaron." When he said "Aaron", he pronounced the sound "Aaron" with a standard Provencal nasal voice.We went into the living room, with the blinds drawn all around to keep out the sun, and he crouched in front of the TV putting a videotape into the player. "Look, it's not Chu Fu's master class film, it's just a friend of mine who has a video camera. Now I plan to make another one, which is more professional." Aaron said. The theme song of "Jean de Florette" (Jean de Florette) played, and then a figure appeared on the screen, Aaron's back, walking up a mountain with two dogs, with Mont Ventoux and its white peak in the distance.The title was played on the screen, Rabasses de Ma Colline, and Alain explained that rabasses are truffles in Provencal. Although the cameraman's hands were slightly shaking, and the editing was not smooth enough, the film was still very exciting.The dogs sniffed carefully, then dug hard with their front paws until Aaron elbowed them aside and cautiously reached beneath the loosened soil.If you find a truffle, reward the dog with a biscuit or sausage.At this time, the camera shakes and zooms in, taking a close-up, with a muddy hand holding a ball of muddy things.There is no narration, just Aaron talking to the camera. "He's doing well, the little one." Then a small, plain-looking dog appears onscreen, poring over the roots of a truffle-growing oak. "But it's old." The dog started digging, Aaron appeared in the camera, close-up, a dog's nose covered in dirt, Aaron's hand pushed the dog away, his fingers groped in the dirt, picked out stone, digging slowly until a hole six inches deep is finally created. The video cuts off suddenly, and the alert face of a ferret pops up on the camera. Aaron stands up and presses the fast-forward button. "This is for catching rabbits. There are still some good things here, but they are not seen much now and will soon become history." He slows down the strap, and the shot shows the ferret, used for rabbit hunting, reluctantly stuffed into a rucksack.The film suddenly cut off again.What came out this time was a large oak tree.A Citroen 2CV van wobbles into the camera, stops, and a very old gentleman comes out, wearing a cloth cap and a blue jacket out of shape.He smiled for the camera, then walked slowly to the back of the car, opened the door and pulled out a rough plank.He looks at the camera, smiles again, leans into the back of the van, stands up straight, holds a length of rope, smiles again, and starts pulling. The truck shook, and little by little, a pig slowly revealed its pink and dirty head.The old man pulled harder, and the gigantic creature wobbled off the plank, shaking its ears and blinking its eyes.I kind of expected it to show up in front of the camera like its owner, but it just stood in the sun, looking nonchalant, indifferent to its identity as an actor. Aaron said, "Last year, this pig found nearly 300 kilograms of truffles, which is a big bag!" I could hardly believe my ears.The animal in front of me earned more than most senior executives in London last year, and it doesn't need a mobile phone. The old gentleman went into the oak woods with his pigs, looking as if they were just walking aimlessly, with the winter sun shining on their chubby bodies.Screen darkens, camera pans down, close-up of a pair of boots and a mound of dirt, a muddy pig nose, about the size of a drainpipe, inserted into the shot, the pig goes to work, nose bobbing rhythmically back and forth, ears twitching every now and then Cover your eyes like a single-minded bulldozer. The pig's head shakes violently suddenly, the camera pans backwards, the old gentleman is pulling the rope, the pig is reluctantly pulled away from a pile of attractive looking things. "To pigs, truffles smell like the opposite sex, so sometimes it's hard to drag them away." The old man was obviously out of luck and couldn't pull the rope, so he bent down and put his shoulders on the pig's side, and the two wrestled for a while until the pig finally moved away.The old gentleman reached into his pocket, took out something and stuffed it into the pig's mouth.He's not feeding it truffles is he?That's fifty francs a mouthful! "That's an acorn. Now look carefully," Aaron said. The figure kneeling on the ground stood up and turned to the camera, holding a truffle slightly larger than a golf ball with one hand outstretched. In the background was the smiling face of the old man, and the golden teeth glistened in the sunlight.The truffle was put into a stained canvas bag, and the old gentleman and the pig moved down the next tree.At the end of the film, the old man stretched out his hands, holding a high pile of truffles covered with soil, a fruitful morning. I was expecting to see the pig being led into the wagon, I thought it would have required a bit of skill and a lot of acorns, but at the end of the credits there was a panorama of Ventoux and the music of "Loving the Mountain". "You see the trouble with normal pigs!" said Aaron, and yes, I did. "I wish my pig had a nose like that, but it doesn't have that..." He held out his arms to indicate the pig's hulking size. "Come and see her. Her English name is Peggy." Peggy lived in the pen next door to Aaron's two dogs, only slightly bigger than the fatter corgis, black with a round belly and a shy look.We leaned over the railing to watch her as she purred, turned away, and huddled in a corner.Aaron said she was friendly and he was going to start training her right away, truffle season was over and he had plenty of time now.I asked him how to train. "Be patient. I've trained an Alsatian to be a truffle hound, even though it's not his instinct. I imagine a pig could do the same." I said I'd love to see this kind of training, and Aaron invited me to come out one day in the winter and go truffle hunting with him.Unlike the suspicious and furtive farmers who supposedly controlled the truffle industry in Vaucluse, Aaron was passionate and willing to share his enthusiasm. Before he left, he gave me a poster announcing a major event in the history of truffles.The village of Bedoin at the foot of Mount Ventoux will attempt to create the world's largest truffle omelette, which will be included in the Guinness Book of World Records.The statistics are scary - 70,000 eggs, 100kg of truffles, 100 liters of oil, 11kg of salt and 6kg of pepper.At that time, it will be stirred together by a group of Hercules from Provence and poured into a frying pan with a diameter of 10 meters.Proceeds from the event will go to charity.Aaron said it would be a day to remember.Now, there is talk of buying a whole new set of cement mixers that will mix all the ingredients to the right viscosity, under the supervision of the most famous chef in Vaucluse. Buy truffles from Mr. X (3) I said that this kind of activity cannot be connected with the truffle industry that people usually imagine. It is too public and transparent, and it is not at all like the legendary shady transactions that take place in the side streets and markets. "Oh, those things, yes, some people compare..." He made a snake twist with his hands, "Sneaky." He looked at me and smiled. "Next time, I'll tell you some stories." He waved me goodbye and I drove home wondering if I could convince Frank to fly over from London to see the world omelette record being made.He will definitely like this kind of novelty about food.Of course, Vaughan, that is, General Dormer, must also come.I can just picture him, perfect in his truffle overalls, directing the cement mixer to gobble up the ingredients, "pour another bucket of pepper in it, hey man, please." Maybe we can find him a chef's hat Wear it with his Scottish skinny tartan trousers.In the end I came to the conclusion that there should be no drinking in the afternoon, it fills my head with crazy thoughts.