The Chef

32

It was not long before Andrea saw Herr Schaeffer again.

They were making their final preparations for a Love Food menu for four people in Falkengässchen. She was just about to light the candles when she realized her lighter had run out of fuel and she could not find the box of matches she usually had to hand for such an eventuality.

The kitchen had no gas stove, and there were no lighters or matches in the drawers. She looked through the furniture in the other rooms, but found nothing.

‘I’m just going to pop to the bar opposite,’ she said to Maravan, slipping her coat over her sari. She went down in the lift, crossed the street and got a book of matches from the barman. When she left the bar she could see the two of them coming, more than a quarter of an hour early. She ran to the door and just got there before they did. She went up, threw her coat onto a kitchen chair, and asked Maravan to let the guests in while she lit the candles.

She had recognized one of them: Schaeffer, Dalmann’s dogsbody. She thought she knew the other man, too.

When the candles were alight and the man had greeted her in a thick Dutch accent, she remembered where she had seen him before: in the Huwyler. Schaeffer had shown him the way, but had not come up with him.

Having checked to see he was the first to arrive, the Dutchman was shown the room where dinner would be served, whistled his approval, and insisted on waiting for his guest in the sitting room.

The other man arrived before the women. Andrea had seen him at the Huwyler, too. He was a slightly portly chap in his late forties with a hedgehog haircut. He was wearing a dark blue business suit with trousers that were slightly too short, and he looked embarrassed.

‘How exciting!’ he said several times as the two of them were taken into the room. Just like Esther Dubois before the first test dinner.

It would have been easy to cancel, and now Staffel regretted not having done so. He felt the same as he had done with his first cigarette aged fifteen. His parents had said they would give him 10,000 francs by the time he was twenty if he had never smoked. He was still convinced it was this agreement that had caused his moment of weakness back then. He had got away with it; they never found out. Nor the other times. And he had wisely invested the 10,000 francs in hardware and software while studying engineering.

There was one other occasion when he had felt like this: in Denver about eight years ago. Not wanting to appear dull, he had gone with the other guys to a table-dancing club. He must have drunk far too much and had woken up in his hotel room at five o’clock the following morning next to a fake blonde whose perfume he was only able to eradicate from his suit using an express cleaning service.

He had got away with this incident as well. Béatrice had never found out.

He would make sure this evening remained under wraps, too.

Dalmann had been in touch shortly after their second meeting in the Huwyler. He said he was a friend of van Genderen, who just happened to be in the country at the moment and would like to meet him.

Of course, Staffel knew who van Genderen was. The Number Two at hoogteco, a large supplier in the renewable energies sector. There could be no harm in having an informal meeting with this major Dutch competitor.

They had agreed, therefore, to have a drink in Dalmann’s beautiful house overlooking the lake. The two men hit it off and arranged to have dinner the following evening.

They had enjoyed an excellent Japanese meal, spoken hardly a word about business, and laughed a lot. Van Genderen had a more inexhaustible repertoire of jokes than anybody he had come across since Hofer, a former comrade of his at military training school.

As the evening went on the anecdotes became more risqué, and then they started talking about risqué matters in general – which is how they arranged the dinner that, in van Genderen’s words, was ‘spicy in every way’.

Now that he was being served champagne in a luxury apartment in the old town by a pretty Indian girl – or was she not Indian? – talking Swiss German, Staffel was already feeling slightly queasy. And jittery too.

He would go along with it until it got too colourful and then stop. That way nothing could happen.

This time it was no surprise that Makeda was one of the party. She had told Andrea beforehand.

Just before the new year they had their first argument. Andrea had said, ‘Please stop it. I’m earning enough for two.’

‘Am I hearing you right?’ Makeda said. She burst out laughing, then sighed.

‘Why?’ Andrea said.

‘Hearing that coming from you of all people. It’s what men say: “Come, let me save you from this life. You can move in with me and cook for me and wash my socks.” Are you crazy?’

‘I’m being serious.’

‘You’re earning enough for two. And what about the other fourteen? My family in Addis Ababa?’

They had dropped the subject, but Andrea kept asking her what job she had on that evening. She found it bothered her less if she knew. It put it on a different level: a professional one.

On the other hand, it was not that simple at the Love Food dinners. Andrea knew from experience how randy they made you feel. How could Makeda keep a professional distance? And how could Andrea ever mention the incident with Maravan to Makeda? Although they had told each other many intimate things, she had kept quiet about that.

A few days after the Staffel and van Genderen dinner, Thevaram and Rathinam were in touch again. They had news for Maravan and asked whether they could come round.

Every previous meeting had cost money. So Maravan took 1,000 francs from behind the Lakshmi shrine and waited for the bell to ring.

The news was a job. Maravan had been asked to cook the Pongal menu for the TCA, the Tamil Cultural Association.

Pongal was the festival in which Tamils offered their thanks for the harvest. An important festival and a nice job.

Thevaram suggested a fee of 1,000 francs, which, of course, Maravan would donate to the good cause. He would then be able to earn money from the commissions that would surely come his way as a result.

Maravan was totally fed up with his sleazy work – one customer had recently called him a sex chef – and the attraction of cooking a normal Tamil celebratory meal for normal Tamil compatriots was so great that he said yes.

‘What about Ulagu? Have you heard anything?’

Thevaram and Rathinam exchanged glances. ‘Oh yes,’ Rathinam said, ‘he was rejected.’

‘As a soldier?’ Maravan’s blood raced to his head.

‘No, as a Black Tiger.’

When the two had left Maravan put the 1,000 francs behind the shrine again.

On a gas ring, rice, lentils, palm sugar and ginger were cooking in a new clay pot, around which fresh turmeric and ginger had been tied. The families were sitting in a semicircle by the cooker. Everybody had new clothes on; the women and girls adorned with flowers were wearing colourful saris or Punjabis.

Suddenly the contents of the pot frothed over the edge, causing the blue gas flame below to flicker yellow.

‘Pongalo Pongal!’ the guests shouted.

Maravan had made the rice pudding, but he could not take part in the boiling-over ceremony. Since the previous day he had been working in the community centre kitchen.

The Tamil Cultural Association had rented and decorated a room there. A few women had been seconded from the Association management to give Maravan a hand. They did it voluntarily, but with little commitment. Given the number of people they were expecting, Maravan had also called up Gnanam, his compatriot who lived above him in the mansard and worked as a kitchen help. He needed someone with experience, so he would have to pay for him out of his own pocket.

The ventilation system in the kitchen worked poorly and the room had no windows. There was a strong smell of lentils, rice, ghee, chilli, cardamom, cinnamon and hing, an essential ingredient of many Pongal recipes and a strange herb which only lost its foul smell when cooked, hence its other name: devil’s dung.

Maravan cooked four classic vegetarian recipes: Avial, a paste made from two different types of lentil, and coconut with hing and mixed vegetables. Lemon rice with lentils, mustard seeds, turmeric and hing. Parangikkai puli kuzhambu, a spicy, sweet-and-sour pumpkin dish with onions, tomatoes and lots of tamarind. Sakkarai pongal, a rice pudding with almonds and cashews, lentils, saffron and cardamom.

He was just about to roast the almonds and cashew nuts in a heavy iron frying pan when somebody tapped him on the shoulder. Maravan turned his head with exaggerated haste to show how busy he was and how inopportune the interruption.

Sandana was standing beside him. ‘Can I help?’

He thought about it briefly, then handed her his cooking spoon. ‘Keep on stirring them around, they mustn’t blacken. When they’ve all turned golden-yellow put them in this bowl and… erm… call me.’

He hurried to his assistant at the next pot, checked everything was OK, gave a few instructions and moved on to the next.

When he was a child he had seen a Chinese artist in a circus spinning plates on the tops of bendy poles. One to start with, then two, then more until there were about twenty or thirty – he was not so good at counting back then. She had her hands full trying to keep the plates spinning, running between the dancing poles, and always managed to prevent a teetering plate from crashing to the ground at the very last moment.

This is how he felt now as the only chef between a dozen pans, the contents of which could lose their balance at any time.

However, he always spent a bit longer next to Sandana.

33

Pongal is a joyful festival. People look forward to a new beginning and put the past behind them. But here, in the purpose-built community centre on this cold, stormy fourteenth of January 2009, very little of the light-heartedness and confidence that usually accompanied this occasion was palpable.

Almost all those present had family or friends they had to worry about. The Sri Lankan army was at the gates of Mullaitivu, the LTTE was engaged in a fierce fightback, and the civil population was trying in vain to flee.

Many of those at the festival had not been in contact with their relatives for a long time. It was quieter in the hall than in previous years. The faces were more serious and the prayers more ardent.

Maravan had not had any news from his family, either. A rumour was circulating that the shop in Jaffna through which the Batticaoloa Bazaar maintained contact and transferred money had been closed after a raid. It was not the first time; in the past it had always been able to resume its activities after a little bribe. But each time it had taken a few days.

Maravan was sitting at one of the long tables covered with rolls of paper. It was only half full now and the table decoration was askew and full of holes. Some of the guests who had already left had taken flowers with them.

The reason Maravan stayed behind was sitting two tables away, surrounded by parents, aunts, uncles, siblings and friends. Sandana kept looking over at him, but gave no sign he should come and join them.

Several times he had been on the verge of going up to them to ask whether they had enjoyed the meal. He was the chef, after all. That is what chefs do.

But what then? Supposing they said it was nice and thanked him for asking, but did not invite him to sit with them? The thought of standing by their table like a lemon, looking for a way to make a dignified exit, was what kept him at his own table, which was becoming emptier and emptier.

He noticed an argument had started at Sandana’s table, an angry exchange of words with her parents. Sandana’s eyebrows, which were practically straight, formed a continuous line with the spot above the bridge of her nose.

Now she stood up and, ignoring the calls of her parents, walked to his table.

‘Don’t look over,’ she said, sitting next to him.

Her pottu, the spot on the forehead, was still creased by wrinkles of anger.

‘An altercation?’

‘Culture clash.’ She tried to laugh.

‘I see.’

‘Say something to me. I don’t want them to think we’ve got nothing to say to each other.’

‘What do you want me to say?’ Maravan realized how stupid the question was, and added, ‘I’m not so good at talking.’

‘What are you good at?’

‘Cooking.’

‘Talk to me about cooking then.’

‘I must have been about five when I first watched my great-aunt making puttu. She transformed rice and lentils into flour, grated coconut into milk, then worked everything into a dough, and from this made lots of little balls, which she transformed with steam, coconut milk and palm sugar into sweet fake banyan figs. It was then that I learnt that cooking is transformation and nothing more. Cold into warm, hard into soft, sour into sweet. That’s why I became a cook. Because I’m fascinated by the process of transformation.’

‘You’re a wonderful cook.’

‘Today was nothing. I’d like to go on from here. Keep on transforming what’s already been transformed. Take the thing that’s been turned from hard to soft and transform it into something crunchy. Or something foamy. Or something melting. Do you understand? I want…’ – he searched for the right words – ‘… I want to turn what’s familiar into something new. What’s expected into something surprising.’ He was astonished by his flow of words, and especially by what he was saying. He had never been able to express it so well before.

‘We’re going now,’ a voice said from behind them. Sandana’s father had approached their table unnoticed.

‘Father, this is Maravan. He did the cooking for all of us today. Maravan, this is my father, Mahit.’

Maravan stood up and made to shake the man’s hand. But the latter ignored the gesture, merely repeating, ‘We’re going now.’

‘Fine. I’ll come later.’

‘No, you’re going to come now, with us.’

‘I’m twenty-two, father.’

‘You’re coming with us.’

Maravan watched Sandana battling with herself. In the end she raised her shoulders, dropped them again and said, ‘Another time, then.’ And followed her father.

Maravan was practising making drinks. Not all Love Menu diners were content just to have champagne and wine. They asked for cocktails and aperitifs. Maravan’s ambition would not allow him to serve mere Camparis or Bloody Marys.

He was currently mixing thick coconut milk with crushed ice, arrack, ginger ale, white tea, xanthan and guar. He was going to freeze the pastel-yellow mass for twelve hours at minus twenty degrees, and then serve it on china spoons, together with some pop rocks, as an explosive arrack confection. As with all his alcoholic creations, Andrea would be the guinea pig.

The doorbell rang. Maravan glanced at his watch: almost half past ten at night. He looked through the spyhole – nobody. He picked up the antiquated intercom handset and called out, ‘Yes?’

He could detect a woman’s voice through the static hissing and crackling. But he could not understand what she was saying. ‘Louder, please!’ he shouted. Now he was able to make out a word which might have been ‘Andrea’. Andrea? At this time? Without having called him first?

He pressed the button to open the door and waited at the entrance to his flat. He could hear soft, rapid steps on the stairs. Then he saw his late guest: Sandana.

She was wearing western clothes: jeans, sweater and the quilted coat he recognized from their first meeting. He thought she looked better in traditional clothes.

He invited her to come in. It was only then that he noticed she was carrying a travel bag. She put it down and greeted him in the Swiss style, with three kisses. It was meant to be totally natural, but she did it rather awkwardly.

‘Can I stay the night here?’ was the first thing she asked.

He must have looked so surprised that she added, ‘On the sofa or the floor, I don’t care.’

Maravan knew Hindu Tamil families very well, and he could see an avalanche of consequences ready to descend on him. ‘Why aren’t you staying at home?’

‘I’ve moved out.’

‘I’ll give you some money for a hotel.’

‘I’ve got money.’

Maravan recalled her telling him that she worked in a railway travel centre.

Sandana looked at him beseechingly. ‘You don’t have to sleep with me.’

He smiled. ‘Thank God!’

Sandana remained serious. ‘But you have to say you did.’

He helped her out of her coat and showed her into the kitchen. ‘Just let me finish off what I’m doing here, then you can tell me everything.’ He turned the mixer on again, let it run for a few moments, and poured its contents into a flexible form.

‘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.’

34

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.’

35

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.’

36

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.