The Chef Page 7

  To begin with he had tried to do it without a loan. As soon as he had heard that Nangay could not continue with her treatment, he had worked illegally at a used tyre warehouse. He had to spend the whole day sorting through heavy tyres.

  But he did not last. Not because he found the work too strenuous, but because it was too dirty. There was no shower there and he could not get rid of the stink of rubber and the black filth at the wash basin. He could just about put up with the fact that he was slaving away at the very bottom of the social ladder. But his pride did not allow him to look or smell like it.

  He had also tried his hand in the construction industry. He was working for a subcontractor of a subcontractor at a large building site. But on the second day an official turned up from the city authorities checking for black market workers. Maravan and two of his colleagues managed to disappear just in time. The subcontractor still owed him money.

  In the washing-up tent he had no idea how chilly it was outside. Maravan was scrubbing the stubborn remains of goulash from a food container. Apart from that he had nothing to do. Through the side of the tent he could hear the voice of a football commentator. The Italy–Romania game was playing on the small television set. All the food stalls along the tourist strip were hoping for an Italian victory. There were far more Italians than Romanians in town and they spent more money too.

  Finally, in the fifty-fifth minute, salvation arrived in the form of a goal: 1–0. The triumphant screams startled Maravan; he peeped through the curtain which covered the entrance to the stall. His boss was whooping loudest of all. He was skipping up and down with his arms thrust into the air, shouting ‘Italia! Italia!’

  Maravan pretended he was delighted as well, and this was his downfall. At the very moment he beamed through the curtain, Romania equalized. His boss turned away from the television in disgust and caught sight of Maravan’s grinning face. He said nothing, but as soon as the game was over and the flood of euphoric Italian fans they had been hoping for failed to materialize at any point that evening, he paid Maravan and told him not to come back tomorrow.

  Contrary to his usual habit Maravan travelled home in the front carriage of the Number 12 tram. A fan had thrown up in the rear carriage, and Maravan could not stomach the stench.

  A few lone fans were still on the streets, making their way back to the city centre. The scarves in their teams’ colours were now acting as protection against the cold wind, and only the occasional snippet of an anthem or chant could be heard from inside the tram.

  Maravan had never felt such despair. Not even on the day when he gave his entire savings to a people smuggler. At least that had been a way out.

  This time he could not see one. Or only a very humiliating one. If he had committed himself to the Liberation Tigers he would have got that job in the Ceylonese restaurant. The owner did not care that he had been booted out of the Huwyler. He would have taken Maravan on as a kitchen help, with the prospect of promotion to chef. But when he reacted to the crunch question of where he stood on the Liberation Tigers with a shrug of his shoulders, he knew in an instant he would not get the job. The LTTE was ubiquitous within the diaspora. Nobody who was reliant on the help of their compatriots here could afford to distance themselves from the Tigers.

  Maybe he should go back. He could not have less of a future than he did here.

  July 2008

  11

  A summer’s day at the end of July; the temperature had risen above twenty-five degrees, although there was still a light northerly wind.

  Barack Obama, the Democratic presidential candidate, spoke to 200,000 people in Berlin and promised them a change for the whole world. It needed a change: two days previously the second largest mortgage bank in the United States had collapsed, and several others were getting into ever greater difficulties.

  The Sri Lankan army reported that the LTTE had suffered a heavy defeat in Mullaitivu District. And the LTTE reported on the third offer of an amnesty to deserters from the Sri Lankan army that year.

  With a teaspoon, Maravan scooped one of the green split roasted mung beans out of the boiling water and tested it. It was done, but still firm. He poured away the water, spread the beans out on a silicon mat and left them to cool.

  He added shredded coconut, jiggery and finely ground cardamom seeds, mixing everything thoroughly in a bowl. Then he worked roasted rice flour and boiling water into a stiff dough. The amount of water had to be just right: too much water and the dough would come together badly; too little and it would go hard after steaming.

  Maravan washed his hands and rubbed them with some coconut oil. He rolled out little balls from the rice flour dough and made them into small vessels, which he filled with the spicy gram mixture, and then sealed them, making pointy balls. He steamed these, placed them in the thermobox, then set about making the next thirty.

  Maravan had become the supplier of modhakam, the favourite sweet of Ganesh, the elephant-headed Lord of Hosts.

  Every morning and evening he produced around a hundred modhakam, which the faithful could buy outside the temple and offer up to Ganesh. Temple-goers who had cars would take turns to pick up the full thermobox shortly before eight in the morning and just before six in the evening, and return the empty one.

  The idea had been his own. To put it into practice he needed to increase his loan with Ori. He had to buy the boxes and make a donation of 1,000 francs to the LTTE. But now this also allowed him to supply Tamil food shops and two Ceylonese restaurants with biscuits and other sweet things. Business was not exactly thriving, but it was starting to trickle in. Maybe this was the first step towards Maravan Catering.

  The doorbell rang. Maravan looked at his watch. It was only just past five o’clock; the temple courier was early today.

  ‘Hold on!’ he called out in Tamil. He washed his hands and opened the door.

  Andrea.

  She was carrying a bunch of flowers and a bottle of wine. She presented him with both of these. ‘I know you don’t drink. But I do.’

  As with her previous unannounced visit, she had to ask, ‘May I come in?’ before Maravan snapped out of his shock.

  He invited her into the flat. She saw the open kitchen door and his apron and asked, ‘Are you expecting guests?’

  ‘No, I’m making modhakam.’ He went into the kitchen, took two from the thermobox, put them on a plate and offered it to her. ‘Here you go. You can eat it or give it as an offering.’

  ‘I’d rather give it as an offering,’ she decided with a smile.

  ‘I see. No, no, don’t worry, it’s harmless.’

  Andrea did not take one all the same. ‘Have you got any time at the moment?’

  ‘Twenty more, then I’ll have time. Do you want to wait in the sitting room?’

  ‘I’ll watch.’

  When the doorbell rang Maravan was ready. This time the person taking the sweets to the temple was a plump, middle-aged woman he recognized. But he could not recall where he had seen her before. Maybe she would have told him, but the moment she saw Andrea in the kitchen her smile dissolved. She took the thermobox and left almost without saying goodbye.

  ‘Can people order meals from you?’

  They were sitting on the cushions at the low table. Andrea had a glass of wine in front of her, Maravan a cup of tea. Before he sat down he had ceremoniously lit the deepam by his domestic shrine, murmuring something while doing so.

  ‘They can. One day I’d even like to make a living from it.’

  ‘I mean a special meal.’

  ‘I try to make each one special.’

  She took a sip of wine and put the glass down slowly. ‘I mean special in the same way that you made that dinner for me. Can people order that from you?’

  Maravan thought for a moment. ‘Something similar, yes.’

  ‘It would have to be exactly the same.’

  ‘But I’d need a rotary evaporator.’

  ‘What would that cost?’

  ‘Around six t
housand.’

  ‘Ouch!’

  Andrea swirled around the red wine in her glass and pondered. She had a lot of connections in the catering industry. Surely it would be possible to get hold of one of those things.

  ‘What if I were to hire one?’

  ‘Then it would be exactly the same.’ Maravan poured her some more wine.

  ‘Exactly the same effect, too?’

  He raised his shoulders and smiled. ‘We could try it out.’

  ‘Not “we”, Maravan,’ she said circumspectly.

  12

  Andrea lived in roughly the area where, in his dreams, Maravan had pictured the turmeric-coloured delivery van splashed with the words ‘Maravan Catering’. Her flat was on the third floor of a middle-class 1920s house. Three high-ceilinged rooms, a conservatory, an old-fashioned bathroom, a loo with a cistern mounted almost at ceiling height, and a large kitchen with a new, free-standing dishwasher, whose outflow went into the sink.

  It was the sort of flat you could only get with a large slice of luck and good contacts, and you always had the worry that the house might be sold and renovated, and the rent become unaffordable.

  Until the break-up of her last relationship, Andrea had shared the flat with her partner, and now she felt a little lost in it. She lived in the bedroom and the kitchen. Sometimes in the conservatory, too. But she hardly ever used the sitting-cum-dining room, and she never went into Dagmar’s bedroom, which had been emptied of everything.

  Today, however, the sitting-cum-dining room was illuminated by a sea of candles. In the centre was Maravan’s low table and his cushions. The tablecloth was his, too, and she had even wheedled out of him the domestic shrine with the goddess Lakshmi and the clay lamp. Maravan had succeeded in talking her out of the incense sticks and meditative Indian flute music.

  They had brought over in Andrea’s Golf all the kitchen equipment, cushions, table, ingredients and the dishes that he had had to pre-prepare at home.

  He had visited her flat the day before to make and freeze the liquorice lollies. Likewise, he had brought along to put in the refrigerator the crunchy and chewy urad-strip construction, which he had spontaneously named ‘man and woman’.

  Everything else – the saffron and almond spheres, half-frozen in liquid nitrogen, the ghee cylinders threaded with saffron, the very glossy balls of ghee, long pepper, cardamom, cinnamon and palm sugar – he made in Andrea’s kitchen. Even the sweetmeats to accompany the tea – the little red glazed hearts and the jellied asparagus – were served fresh. He also had to make his modhakam. Today Andrea had taken care of the delivery to the temple; he did not want the courier to come to her flat.

  The rotary evaporator had been turning since ten o’clock that morning. After much searching Andrea had obtained it not through one of her catering contacts, but had borrowed it from a female admirer, a university assistant who was working on her chemistry dissertation.

  Maravan had resisted the temptation to tinker with the three normal curry dishes, even though these were the only non-aphrodisiac recipes. Maybe the combination of these dishes with everything else had been responsible for the effect Andrea had experienced.

  Andrea’s guest arrived at eight o’clock. She was a very blonde, very nervous, slightly chubby, twenty-one-year-old, more pretty than beautiful. It was apparent that she did not feel at ease with the situation. She declined the champagne that Maravan served in his sarong and white shirt. He noted this deviation from the menu with some concern and hoped that it was not this particular ingredient which had hastened the effect.

  When the two women had sat down, he brought his greeting from the kitchen, the mini chapattis, which he drizzled ceremoniously with his essence of curry leaves, cinnamon and coconut oil.

  After that he served dishes only when Andrea rang a brass temple bell, another item borrowed from Maravan.

  Each time the bell pealed and he brought in a new dish, Andrea’s guest was more relaxed and, as a consequence, so was he. After serving the tea and sweetmeats, he bid goodbye with a short bow, as arranged.

  He discreetly left the flat just before ten o’clock. Andrea would call him the next day and tell him when he should come past, so they could clear up and bring the stuff back to his place.

  It was a muggy evening and in the sky he could still see the afterglow of the sun which had set a while ago. During the day the temperature had climbed above thirty degrees.

  It was on these sorts of evenings that he felt most homesick. They reminded him of Colombo in the monsoon season. The first drops might fall at any moment, and sometimes he thought he could hear the distant surf of Galle Face Green, and the squawking of the ravens which stalked the food stalls on the promenade.

  Even the smell could be similar just before the rain on muggy days, especially when the aroma of barbecues wafted in the air. Then he could smell them – the food stalls – and thought he could make out their lights twinkling in the distance.

  But his homesickness was not so acute that evening. Today he felt that he had taken a step forwards. He had completed his first proper assignment as a hired chef in a Swiss home. No, hold on. Had he not supplied the furnishings and decoration? And had he not also served everything on his own? In fact, this evening had been Maravan Catering’s first commission.

  He was not tortured by lovesickness, either. Had Andrea been planning to spend the night with a man, he would surely have felt differently. But he was not envious of the blonde. If he were honest, it excited him to be complicit in her seduction. It made him feel a little closer to Andrea.

  The heavens opened without any warning. He stopped, stretched out his arms and lifted his face to the rain. Like the young man he had watched from the tram some months back. Or like himself, as a boy in the first rain of the monsoon.

  August 2008

  13

  If Huwyler’s restaurant was not exactly full, he was busier than most of his rivals. Of course he could not help but know this; as the acting president of swisschefs he had all the figures at his fingertips. He was doing his best to resist the financial crisis, coming up with new ideas – the local press had written short, funny articles about his Menu Surcrise, for example – and now this had to happen!

  That arsehole was having a heart attack on him. A full house on a Friday evening! Throwing up all over the table! And over the shirt front of his guest, a Dutch businessman.

  Everyone must have been thinking: someone’s dying before my very eyes in the Huwyler. What on earth has he eaten?

  In an instant three doctors were attending to the patient, practically undressing the poor man. One of them gave a preliminary diagnosis – ‘suspected myocardial infarction’ – to the emergency services on his mobile, the second tried to revive him, while the third dashed outside, came back immediately with a bag and gave the man an injection. Ambulance sirens were already audible.

  The paramedics and emergency doctor came in with a stretcher on wheels. Three tables had to be moved out of the way. Then they took him out, not a pretty sight: Dalmann, snow-white, oxygen mask, vomit sticking to his hair.

  Of course the whole restaurant was in chaos after that. Dishes that had been called had to be taken back into the kitchen, half-eaten courses remained on tables, some diners wanted to pay, others were waiting for their tables to be put back in place, others felt sick. The wife of a well-known business lawyer was in hysterics. And everybody watched in disgust as the two Tamils cleared Dalmann’s table and cleaned the floor.

  Then came the chef de service with an air freshener – God knows where he got it from – and before Huwlyer could intervene the room no longer smelled of sick, but of pine needles and sick.

  And finally, when Huwyler gave a short speech, which managed to appease those diners who had not vanished – he was confident that, thanks to the fortunate circumstance, albeit not unusual for his restaurant, that three doctors had been on hand immediately, the prognosis for the customer in question was very good – at the very moment wh
en a semblance of normality had returned, Dalmann’s guest came back from the staff changing room – freshly showered and wearing the sommelier’s too-tight and too-short spare black suit – and actually asked to sit down and continue with his dinner! This, he emphasized with a raised voice, was exactly what his host would have wanted. Not surprisingly, his announcement ruined the appetite of a few more diners.

  The following morning, when Huwyler called Schaeffer – Dalmann’s colleague, who always made the bookings – to enquire about his boss’s health, the man replied, ‘As might be expected given the circumstances. Following emergency surgery the patient is in a stable condition.’ He spoke like a medical bulletin.

  There was one blessing: if Dalmann had died in the Huwyler it would have been more damaging to the business. On the other hand, the media might have reported it.

  14

  Andrea did not get in touch until the following afternoon.

  Maravan was preparing the modhakam for the evening when the telephone rang. She sounded happy, but did not say whether the experiment had been a success. Maravan reined in his curiosity and did not ask.

  Even when he was clearing up her kitchen an hour later he left it up to her. She watched him, a glass of water in her right hand, her elbow supported by the palm of her left. She made no move to help him.

  ‘Aren’t you at all curious?’ she asked eventually.

  ‘Yes,’ was all he replied.

  She put the glass on the kitchen table, took his shoulders in her hands, and kissed him on the forehead. ‘You’re a magician. It worked!’

  The look he gave her must have been one of disbelief, because she repeated, a little more loudly this time, ‘It worked!’

  When he still did not react, she started skipping around him. ‘Worked, worked, worked!’ she said.

  Only now did he laugh, temporarily joining in with her dance.