The Chef (20 page)

‘Are you transforming?’

‘Yes, coconut schnapps into schnapps coconut.’

For the first time she gave a slight smile.

Maravan put the form into the deep freeze and took Sandana into his living room. When he opened the door, the draught caused the flame of the
deepam
to flicker. Maravan closed the
window.

‘Sit down, sit down. Would you like some tea? I was just going to make one for myself.’

‘Then I’ll have one too.’ She put her hands together in front of her face, performed a quick bow before Lakshmi, and sat on one of the cushions.

When Maravan returned from the kitchen with the tea, Sandana was sitting exactly as he had left her. He sat down and listened to her story. He could have guessed it.

Some time back Sandana’s parents had agreed with the parents of a young man called Padmakar – like her, they were Vaishyas – that the two youngsters should marry. The caste was
right, as were the personal histories and the horoscopes. But Sandana did not want to. Now that the wedding was approaching, the quarrel had escalated. The argument that Maravan had witnessed from
a distance at Pongal had been about this very matter. And tonight had seen the climax of the drama. She had packed a few things and left. Her mother had cried and her father kept on saying,
‘If you go now, don’t ever bother coming back.’

‘So what now?’ Maravan asked when she had reached the end of her tale. She started crying. He watched Sandana for a while, then sat next to her and put his arm around her.

He would have loved to have kissed her, but after what she had just told him this would cause even more problems: she was a Vaishya, he a Shudra. Forget it.

She had stopped crying; she wiped the tears from her eyes and moaned, ‘You know I’ve never been to Sri Lanka.’

‘You should be happy about that.’

She gave him a look of astonishment.

‘It means you can’t be homesick.’

‘Aren’t you?’

‘Always. Sometimes more, sometimes less. But it never goes away completely.’

‘Is it really so beautiful there?’

‘If you go into the interior on the narrow roads, it’s like driving through a single huge village. The roads are lined with trees, and in their shade you can see the houses standing
there very secretly, very secure. Sometimes there’s a paddy field, then trees and houses again. Sometimes a class of schoolchildren in white uniforms. And then more houses. Sometimes
there’s more of them, sometimes fewer, but they never stop altogether. Just when you’ve thought you’ve seen the last one, the first of a new lot comes into view. One big,
inhabited, fertile, tropical park.

‘Oh stop! I’m getting homesick.’

Sandana slept in Maravan’s bed, watched over by his little curry trees. He had made a bed for himself from the cushions where he ate. After giving each other a friendly
kiss goodnight, both lay awake for hours, chastely and full of regret.

The following morning Maravan started out of a short, deep sleep. The door to his bedroom was open, the bed was made. On the duvet was a note:
Thanks for everything – S
. And a
mobile number.

Her travel bag was still there.

Maravan turned on his computer and went on the internet. He was now checking the LTTE and Sri Lankan government web pages on a regular basis. Neither could be trusted, but if he combined these
with reports from the western media and international organizations he could build up an approximate picture of the situation.

The Sri Lankan armed forces had taken Mullaitivu and were pushing further north. The Tamil Tigers would soon be surrounded, as would around 250,000 civilians, according to estimates by the aid
organizations. Both sides were accusing each other of using civilians as human shields. In the Swiss media there was little or nothing about the looming humanitarian crisis.

In spite of these chaotic circumstances the Batticaloa Bazaar had begun functioning again as a point of contact. Even before he sat down in front of the screen, Maravan got a call from the
Bazaar. He was told he should ring the usual number at eleven the following morning. His sister wanted to speak to him.

Maravan braced himself for bad news.

After breakfast he called Sandana. Her phone rang many times before she answered.

‘I can’t talk at the moment, I’ve got customers,’ she said. ‘I’ll call you in my break.’

‘When is your break?’ he asked. But she had already hung up.

So he waited. Waited and thought of the travel bag on the floor beside his mattress, as if it now belonged there.

What was Sandana planning to do? Did she want to risk a scandal and move in with him? And did he want that? He knew of such cases. Of girls who had been born and grew up here, and who refused to
conform to the traditions and customs of a country that was alien to them. They accepted the inevitable break with their families and moved in with the men they loved.

Mainly these were men from here. But even in cases where a Tamil woman lived with a Tamil man – especially one from the wrong caste – without the blessing of her parents, the couple
would be banished from their families and the community.

Would he want that? Would he want to live with a woman who was excluded from the community? They would have to stay away from all those religious and social occasions or accept the fact that
they would be personae non gratae. Could he do that?

If he loved the woman, yes he could.

He pictured Sandana in his mind. Rebellious and resigned, as she had been at the Pongal. Determined and unsure, as she had been yesterday. With her slight Swiss accent when she spoke Tamil. In
the jeans and sweater that looked so wrong on her.

Yes, he could.

She finally returned his call.

‘You should have woken me. I’d have made you egg hoppers.’

‘I looked in on you, but you were in a deep sleep.’

They chatted like lovers after their first night of passion together.

Suddenly she said, ‘I’ve got to go, my break’s over. Are you home at lunchtime? I’d like to pick up my bag. I can move in with a colleague of mine.’

The time that the owner of the Batticaloa Bazaar had given Maravan was not very handy for Love Food’s schedule: eleven in the morning.

They had a job in Falkengässchen, and at that hour Maravan really ought to have been in the kitchen in the middle of his preparations. It had required some organization on his part, and
some flexibility from Andrea, to enable him now to be sitting punctually at his computer with headphones and notepad, his heart pounding and hands trembling.

He dialled the number and the connection was instant. The shopkeeper’s voice answered. Maravan gave his name and a few seconds later the tear-choked voice of his older sister said,
‘Maravan?’

‘Has something happened to Ulagu?’ he asked.

Hearing sobbing, he waited.

‘Nangay,’ she uttered.

No, he thought, no, not Nangay. ‘What’s wrong with her?’

‘She’s dead,’ she stammered. Then only sobs again.

Maravan put his head in his hands and said nothing. Said nothing until he heard his sister’s voice, now clearer and more composed. ‘Brother, are you there?’

‘How?’ he asked.

‘Her heart. One moment she was alive and the next she was dead.’

‘But her heart was so strong.’

After a pause, Maravan’s sister said, ‘Her heart was weak. She had a heart attack two years ago.’

‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

‘She didn’t want you to know.’

‘Why not?’

‘She was afraid you might come back.’

When Maravan had finished talking to his sister he went into the bedroom, took Nangay’s photo from the wall and placed it by the domestic shrine. Then he kneeled and said a prayer for her.
Was Nangay right? Would he have gone back if he had known about her heart attack?

Probably not.

That evening Maravan varied the
Love Menu
. He cooked all the dishes exactly in the way Nangay had shown him.

He did not prepare the
urad
lentil purée marinated in sugared milk as ‘man and woman’, but dried it in portions in the oven.

The mixture of saffron, milk and almonds he simply served as a warm drink. And he made a paste out of the saffron ghee, which was eaten with warm milk.

He used neither the rotary evaporator nor jellification, and made no attempt to defamiliarize textures or aromas.

The meal that evening was a homage to the woman to whom he owed everything. Just for tonight, he did not want to abuse her art for something she would never have approved of.

All the while, curry leaves and cinnamon bark sat in hot coconut oil, filling the whole apartment with the aroma of his childhood. In memory of Nangay.

Andrea had noticed instantly that something was wrong. Maravan did not turn up until late into their preparation time. When he finally arrived, the whole apartment was soon
smelling more strongly of curry than his obsessively aired kitchens ever had in the past. And what she served up had nothing to do with the
Love Menu
she knew.

Right at the start she had made a comment about the changes and received an angry glare in return. ‘Like this or not at all,’ was all he had uttered, and throughout the remainder of
the afternoon and evening he only spoke when necessary, to discuss timings.

The client – a regular – was visibly disappointed when she brought the ‘greeting from the kitchen’. It was a small spoon with a dark paste next to a shot glass of hot
milk, which she had to announce as ‘
urad
lentils in hot milk’. But the woman he had booked for the evening was new and so excited that he did not let it show.

Shortly before Andrea left the apartment – Maravan had gone long before, almost without saying goodbye – the client, wrapped in a Turkish towel, came out of the room, handed her
three 200 franc notes and grinned: ‘At first I thought it was the alternative version of the menu. But I must say, it got me going even more. Compliments to the chef.’

Once again Maravan had spent more than two hours in Dr Kerner’s waiting room. The well-thumbed newspapers lying around all carried the same lead story: the forthcoming
swearing-in of the first black president of the United States, Barack Hussein Obama.

This event was also the main topic of conversation among those waiting. The Tamils were hoping for a Sri Lanka policy that was less government-friendly, the Iraqis for a rapid withdrawal of
American troops from their country, and the Africans for greater engagement in Zimbabwe and Darfur.

When Maravan was finally called into the surgery, Dr Kerner looked up from his patient file and asked, ‘How’s your great-aunt?’

‘She’s dead.’

‘I’m very sorry to hear that. You did all you could. Why have you come to see me?’

‘It’s not me. It’s about my great-aunt. You asked me last time whether her heart was OK. Why?’

‘If she’d been suffering from certain circulation problems she should not have taken the Minirin. It works as a blood-thinner. It cancels out the effects of anticoagulants and so
could bring about a stroke or a heart attack. How did she die?’

‘From a heart attack.’

‘And now you’re worried the medicine may have been to blame. Not very likely. She would have had to have had a prehistory of circulation problems.’

‘She had a heart attack. Two years ago.’

Now Dr Kerner cast him a look of mild horror. ‘You should have told me.’

‘I didn’t know. She kept it to herself.’

Towards the end of January a small piece of business news caused astonishment in professional circles. It even found its way into the daily papers.

Kugag, the firm defying the economic crisis by manufacturing in the renewable energy sector, had announced it had entered into a joint venture with hoogteco, a Dutch company, the biggest
European supplier of solar and wind energy – and Kugag’s biggest competitor.

All who knew – and some commentators did know – just how rapidly developments progressed in this area, and how sensitive technological knowledge in the sector was, were amazed by
this move. Because it could not occur without sharing know-how.

Experts asked openly what Kugag, the smaller but more dynamic of the two firms, would gain from this collaboration. It was considered to have one of the leading research departments in the
world; its production capacity had recently expanded to meet future demand; its order book was full and analysts knew of some promising product innovations that were in the pipeline.

Kugag did not have any image problems either. Its CEO had recently been chosen as manager of the year in the ‘new technology’ sector.

If anybody was going to profit from this deal it could only be hoogteco.

Hans Staffel, Kugag’s CEO and normally a good communicator, raised eyebrows on this occasion with his botched information policy. It was hoogteco that went public with the news. To begin
with, Kugag refused to make any comment, then announced that the matter was not yet definite, and very belatedly issued a terse communiqué that confirmed everything stated in the Dutch
report.

On the following Monday, Kugag was hit hard on the stock exchange. By contrast, hoogteco had an outstanding start to the week.

A spokeswoman for Kugag – the firm had hired a spokeswoman, no doubt on the advice of its communications consultant – played this down and described the deal as a completely normal,
very specific business venture, entered into from a position of strength.

One commentator expressed doubt at this strength and wondered about possible financial difficulties that may have resulted from speculation on the American sub-prime market.

Another commentator wondered why the board had not prevented this development. Or whether Staffel had not exceeded his authority here.

There was no reaction forthcoming from the CEO himself, who usually did not shy away from the public eye.

Maravan was busy most evenings at the moment. But he was able to interrupt his preparations at lunchtime, when he met Sandana. He waited for her outside the travel centre and
then they would go to a café, restaurant or snack bar at the station.