Across the Spectrum (13 page)

She slices each half-onion, holding it firmly, keeping its
shape—then turns it ninety degrees and dices it crosswise. For this first dish,
she needs a small dice, pieces that are less than a quarter the size of her
thumb. When the onions are finished, she slides them into one of her large
Teflon pots. Her brother in America, Sundar, has tried to send her money; she
refuses it, over and over. But one Christmas, he and his wife, Sushila, sent
her a beautiful set of Teflon-coated pots and pans. Those, she kept. She
imagined Sushila in the store, choosing each pot with her delicate hands;
Mangai found that she couldn’t bear to send them back. And besides—she loves
the way the food slides right out of the pan, the fact that she can just rinse
it and be done. She has no interest in the gadgets they send as well; one
corner of the kitchen holds cardboard boxes full of unused kitchen toys: lemon
zesters, garlic presses. Mangai sent back a television recently; she doesn’t
know what her brother was thinking. These days, it would only bring news of the
fighting in Trincomalee, in Colombo. Young men dying, and now women too. Mangai
suspects Sundar has sent money to the guerrillas. He has tried over and over to
convince her to join him in America, but this is her home, and she is old.
Sundar worries endlessly over her, and the war. Mangai sees no purpose in
dwelling on what she cannot help. But the Teflon—that, she likes.

She sautées the onions in ghee, adding black mustard seed,
cumin seed. She chops three tomatoes while she waits, chops them small and
juicy. When the onions are golden, she adds a teaspoon of raw red chili powder.
As it cooks, the smoke rises and makes her cough. That’s her cue to add the
tomatoes, a few tablespoons of vinegar, a little sugar, and a mix of
dry-roasted spices, dark and fiercely aromatic. As the tomatoes cook down she
quickly peels and chops three large potatoes; this first dish is a potato
curry, because that takes longest to cook. Into the pot. She stirs hard,
turning up the rich blend of onion and spice, coating every piece of potato.
She lowers the heat on the gas range (another gift; she remembers cooking over
an open fire), covers the dish, and turns back to the cutting board.

One of the tricks to cooking a feast is to think about the
timing of it as you plan the dishes. If you are making
hoppers,
soft
pancakes with high, crispy sides, then it is important to remember that they
are best eaten entirely fresh—that you will have to make them one by one and
serve them to your guests. So you can’t expect to have ten or twenty minutes
before the meal in which to make an array of sambols and chutneys. You must
make those in advance, or do without. Certain flavors go together, but so do
certain timings. If the timing is off, the entire meal may be ruined.

When Mangai was sixteen, Sundar had married. Her mother,
along with several aunts, had prepared the wedding feast. The bride and groom
had stayed at their home for eight days, before taking the train to Colombo, to
her parents’ home. Mangai’s mother had had her making the midday meals during
the week following the wedding as well. Mangai had never cooked for so many
before, and while she made enough food, there was always something wrong with
it. After every meal, one of the aunts would point out, kindly, that Mangai
really had to be careful not to put too much tamarind into the fish curry, or
too little salt in the sambar. After all, with her looks, it was important that
she be a good cook. None of those meals came out perfectly—somehow, she always
managed to ruin them. Secretly, she was glad.

But now she has been cooking for sixty years; she has become
better than a good cook; she is the best cook for miles around, and everyone
knows it. That is why the children huddle in the rain, why young Rani, fifteen
years old, peers boldly through the window. The girl is eager to catch the
police chief’s son, and Mangai’s cooking skills would be a potent lure. Mangai
could tell the girl that this kind of cooking is not learned by watching, or
even by teaching—that it is only the passage of time that grinds the lessons
into the muscles and bones. But she cannot be bothered.

Mangai pauses before starting the second dish. She undoes
the top of her sari, pulling the loose end of the fabric back over her
shoulder, down across her breasts. She tucks it into her waistband, leaving her
upper body covered only in her thin white blouse, less constricted. It will be
easier to cook this way, though that is not why she does it. She chops three
more onions, chops them finely this time. As they sauté, she sets eight eggs to
boiling; they will be ready when the sauce is finished. Timing, again. Cumin
and mustard seed, but this time only turmeric and salt are added. The onions
cook gently, caramelizing, filling the room with their sweet scent. Nothing to
make her choke; eggs should be sweet and slick, they should slide down your throat
as delicate and ephemeral as honey. She had made eggs for those bridal
breakfasts; she watched Sundar’s bride swallow them greedily, the muscles of
her slender throat shivering down. Mangai had made eggs every morning for the
pleasure of that throat.

The onions have almost burned. She must pay closer
attention—nothing can be made perfect without the closest of attention. That is
one of the first lessons. It is important to understand that onions cannot be
allowed to burn for even five seconds—the slightest burn will coat the dish
with an aftertaste that no amount of chili powder can disguise. Once things
have started going bad, they are forever changed; there is no going back to
that perfect moment, the one that could have been. Although sometimes, there
may be a going forward. Burnt food has its own flavor, and sometimes, you can
work with it, make it into something else that is, at least, interesting. But
that is not her current goal. Today she is creating perfection, and the memory
of it to savor. She pours cold water over the cooked eggs; she cracks their
shells, slices them into the yellow sauce. She scatters golden sultanas over
the top, and slivered almonds. This dish will keep well; she turns a plate over
it and sets it aside.

She stirs the potatoes. They are half done, and so is she.

Mangai’s hands move to the front of her sari blouse. She
undoes the hooks one by one, working from bottom to top. When it is entirely
undone, she slips out of it, folds it neatly, sets it on a corner stool. Her
breasts had always been small; now they are further shrunken. The cold still
makes her nipples harden, and she can hear the children’s sudden whispering.
There are no boys outside, only girls. That is one of the rules, strictly
enforced, imposed by the parents, not by Mangai. Only girls outside, to see
what they will become in time. They have seen this before—still they whisper,
every time. They enjoy whispering, as do their parents. That is one reason why
Mangai can live in peace in this village; she brings her neighbors more
pleasure as present scandal than she ever could as past expulsion. It is at
times like these that they have an excuse to tell her story again, what they
know and what they guess. It will give them something to talk about for days,
something other than the war. In a way, it’s almost a gift she gives them.
Perhaps they know it. But she does not do it for them.

She takes a bundle of leeks in her hands, four thick stalks.
She cuts off the ends, then begins slicing them, again, paper-thin. The thinner
they are, the better. Her mother loved saying that. When not a single family
offered for Mangai, her mother insisted that it was because she wasn’t thin,
not like her brother, her sisters. Small and squat and dark. Like a potato.
Mangai lived at home until she was almost forty; then her father died, and her
mother became unbearable. Mangai left then, bought her own small house with her
share of her father’s money. Her mother had screamed her rage but had been too
feeble to stop her. The house was many miles away, far enough that she never
needed to see her mother again. She heard, years later, that the old woman had
died.

Mangai finishes slicing and ends up with two large bowls
full of leeks. She washes them in cold water, sluicing off all the dirt that had
lain hidden under the skin. It takes some time. This is the simplest dish; four
ingredients are enough. When she is done washing, she fries the leeks briefly
in ghee, then adds turmeric and salt. She covers the pan and lets them cook on
a low flame.

The leeks will take half an hour to soften, and all she has
left to make is the fish, which will not take so long. But it takes time to
unwind her sari from around her waist, pulling the fabric out of its tucks in
front, spinning slowly as she unwraps each layer of fabric. She would like to
dance, but her hip does not allow for quick movement. It aches in this weather,
in the rain. The place where the bullet went into her skin, grazing the bone,
feels twice as large, twice as sore, when the rain is pounding down, thumping
against the ceiling, the ground outside. In America, it wouldn’t have been a
serious wound. Sundar, or his wife, would have been treated at a white-walled
hospital, half an hour and out again, all patched up, good as new. Here, she
had lain on her dirt floor, bleeding until she lost the world and faded into
darkness. Her servant woman away, visiting relatives—Mangai had been left
alone, unprotected in that house. She will never know if her neighbors waited
at all when they found her. Did they run for help right away, for Pettiah’s
son, who was studying to go to medical school in India? Or did they wait,
deliberate? A chance to be rid of the scandal in their midst. The woman who had
lived with her servant, Daya, for decades, in a house with only one bed. A
woman they had insulted, behind her back and to her face. Did they wait, or did
they run?

It doesn’t matter. Pettiah’s son had bandaged her up, and
she had healed. She had refused to tell them if the man with the rifle had been
Tamil or Sinhalese. They left her alone after that—her hip had, inexplicably,
won her peace with her neighbors. It was not a small blessing, after all those
years—it made days like today a little easier. She finishes her slow turning,
the layers of fabric cradled in her arms. Mangai folds up the sari with care,
not letting any of the wet white chiffon drag across the dirt floor, and places
it on top of the folded blouse.

She stirs the potatoes one last time and then starts the
rice, lacing the water with saffron threads, a sprinkle of salt, and a
tablespoon of ghee. She cooks the last curry standing in only her underskirt, a
straight shift of unbleached cotton from waist to ankles. This is the most
difficult dish—not because it is so complex, but because fish is fragile. It
must be handled with care, neither over- nor underdone. All the preparation
must be done first, the sauce built carefully. Onions and ghee, cumin and
mustard seed, fenugreek and cinnamon, cardamom pods and cloves, chili powder
and a spoon of the dry-roasted spice mix. Salt. Tomatoes and vinegar and
tamarind pulp, turning the sauce dark and tangy, so that already it smells of
the sea. The rice is boiling; she pauses to turn down the rice to a simmer, to
cover the pot with a lid. Then she returns to her sauce.

Add a little water, cook it down until it is almost
ready—and then slide the cubed fish in, so gently. Make sure all the fish is
covered with the sauce, then just let it simmer until it is done, without
stirring at all. If you stir too hard, the fish will break apart, will dissolve
into fragments. Her fish are soon simmering; she stirs the potatoes one final
time; they have been cooking for an hour now, and are meltingly soft. Mangai
turns off the heat on the pot. The rice finishes, and she turns off that one as
well. And then she is only waiting for the fish, counting the time in her head,
watching seconds slide by.

When Daya died, Mangai went to the funeral. The priest had
carefully not looked at her as he spoke the final words. She had not cried, not
in front of the villagers. That night, she rowed her boat out into the
merciless sea; she lay down in it and let the water carry her where it would.
But when the sun rose, she found that she was not so far out that she could not
row back. She returned to the barren shore. Mangai gave away all her saris and
began dressing in white. At first the seconds, minutes, and hours had seemed
unendurable, but eventually she began taking pleasure in them, in every second
that slid by with her still in the world. It was a quiet pleasure, most days.
Quiet was enough. Most days.

When the fish is ready, Mangai turns off the last burner.
She takes a plate down from the shelf, battered tin. She fills a tin cup with
cold water. She serves herself rice, fish, leeks, potatoes, eggs. There is
enough on her plate to feed a man four times her size. She undoes the tie on
her underskirt and lets it fall to the floor. Mangai carries the plate and cup
over to the wall; she sits down, cross-legged on the dirt floor, with her naked
back against the wall, with the water sliding down, running along her wrinkled
skin, over her ribs, pooling in the hollows of her hips. She takes a drink from
the cup, and a sharpened edge cuts the corner of her lip. She balances the
plate on her bony right knee, and, shuddering with pleasure, she eats.

Back in the dark ages, I got hold of an anthology called
Demons!
In it was a story by Manly Wade
Wellman called “Oh, Ugly Bird!” featuring a Appalachian-wandering,
guitar-playing hero called John the Balladeer. It knocked my socks off. I was
instantly in love. I raved about it at the dinner table, and my father says
casually “Oh, yeah, there’s a whole bunch of those.” I demanded to know where,
and when I got my hands on the collection of “Silver John“ stories, I read it
to the point of memorization. So when the opportunity came to be part of a
Manly Wade Wellman tribute issue for
The Tome,
I leapt at the chance. The result is “The Fiddler’s Price.” Warts and all, it
remains a favorite of mine, because it was truly a labor of love.