The Chef

1

‘Maravan! Siphon!’

Maravan promptly set down the sharp knife next to the finely cut vegetable strips, went to the warming cabinet, grabbed the stainless-steel siphon and took it over to Anton Fink.

The siphon contained the paste for the wild garlic sabayon to go with the marinated mackerel fillets.

Maravan was convinced the sabayon would collapse before it got to the table as he had watched Fink, the molecular-cooking expert, use a mixture of xanthan gum and locust-bean gum – rather than xanthan gum and guar gum, as was advised for hot foams.

He placed the siphon on the work surface beside the chef, who was standing there impatiently.

‘Maravan! Julienne!’ This time it was Bertrand, the entremetier, for whom he was meant to be preparing the julienne vegetables. Maravan hurried back to his chopping board. A few seconds later he had finished slicing the rest of the vegetables – Maravan was a virtuoso with the knife – and brought Bertrand the vegetable matchsticks.

‘Shit!’ The scream behind him came from Anton Fink, the molecular maestro.

The Huwyler – nobody ever called it ‘Chez Huwyler’, the name written outside – was pretty full given the economic situation and the weather. Only a keen observer would have noticed that tables four and nine were empty, and that the reserved signs on two others were still waiting for their guests to arrive.

Like most of the top restaurants from the nouvelle cuisine era, this one was somewhat over-decorated. Patterned rugs, imitation brocade curtains, gold-framed oil prints of famous still lifes on the walls. The underplates were too large and too colourful, the cutlery too unwieldy and the glasses too original.

Fritz Huwyler was fully aware that the latest fashions had passed his restaurant by. He had detailed plans for ‘repositioning’ the place, as his interior design consultant called it. But this was no time for major investments; he had decided to ring the changes in small steps. One of these was the colour of the chefs’ jackets, trousers and neckties: everything in fashionable black. The entire team was dressed like this, down to the commis chef, although the kitchen helps and office staff wore white as before.

He had also made a few tentative moves to push the food in a different direction: some of the classic and semi-classic dishes were accentuated with molecular highlights. So when the position of chef garde manger became vacant he had employed someone with molecular experience.

Huwyler himself had no more personal ambitions in this area. These days he helped out in the kitchen only rarely, concentrating instead on the administrative and front-of-house duties of his business. He was in his mid-fifties, a prizewinning chef many times over, and thirty years beforehand had even been one of the pioneers of nouvelle cuisine. He felt he had done his bit for his country’s culinary development. He was too old to learn anything new now.

Since the messy separation from his wife – whom he had to thank for a large chunk of Chez Huwyler’s success, as well the unfortunate interior decoration – he had performed all the meet-and-greet duties. Before they split up, he had found it a real burden to do the rounds of the tables, night after night; since then, however, he had warmed to the task. More and more often he would find himself chatting away at one table or another. This late discovery of a talent for communication had also led him to get involved with the Association of Restaurateurs, to which he devoted a lot of his time. Fritz Huwyler was a board member and the current President of swisschefs.

He was now standing beside table one, a table for six which had been set for only two that evening. Eric Dalmann was there with a business acquaintance from Holland. As an aperitif, Dalmann had ordered a 2005 Thomas Studach chardonnay from Malans at 120 francs, instead of his usual bottle of Krug Grande Cuvée at 420. But that was his only concession to the economic crisis. As always he had chosen the Menu Surprise.

‘What about you? Are you feeling any effects of the crisis?’ asked Dalmann.

‘None at all,’ Huwyler lied.

‘Quality is crisis-proof,’ Dalmann replied, lifting his hands to make room for the plate covered by the heavy cloche which the waitress brought to the table.

All this cloche business was something else he’d get rid of soon, Huwyler thought, before the young woman gripped a brass knob with each hand and raised the silver domes.

‘Marinated mackerel fillet on a bed of fennel hearts with wild garlic sabayon,’ she announced.

Neither of the two men looked at their plates; their eyes were fixed on her.

Only Huwyler stared at the wild garlic sabayon, a green sludge flooding the plates.

Andrea had become used to the effect she had on men. For the most part she found it tiresome; just occasionally it was quite useful and she would exploit it – especially when looking for work. This was a frequent occurrence in her life, because her appearance did not only make it easy for her to find a job; it made it hard to keep one.

She had not been at the Huwyler for ten days, but already she could see developing those familiar and tiresome petty rivalries in the kitchen and among the waiting staff. In the past she had tried to react in a friendly, jokey way. But on each occasion this had led to misunderstandings. These days she would keep her distance from everybody equally. It earned her the reputation of being stuck up, which was something she could live with.

‘The food was better when his wife was still here,’ Dalmann remarked when he and his guest were alone again.

‘Did she take care of the kitchen too?’

‘No, but he did.’

Van Genderen laughed and tried the fish. He was the Number Two at an international firm based in Holland, one of the largest suppliers in the solar industry. He was meeting Dalmann because the man could get him certain contacts. Putting people in touch with each other was one of Dalmann’s specialities.

Dalmann had turned sixty-four a few weeks previously, and he bore the traces of a life in business where cuisine had always been a key instrument of persuasion: a little excess weight to which he tried to give some shape with a waistcoat, bags under his watery, pale-blue eyes, droopy, large-pored skin on his face, somewhat reddish over the cheekbones, narrow lips and a voice that had boomed ever louder as the years passed. All that remained of his yellowy blond hair was a semi-circular patch reaching below the collar at the back; to the sides it turned into two dense, medium-length cutlets, in the same greying-yellow tone as his eyebrows.

Dalmann had always been what today would be called a networker. He systematically cultivated contacts, brokered deals, gave and got tips, brought people together, gathered information and passed it on again selectively, knew when to keep quiet and when to talk. That is how he made a living, and a pretty good one at that.

At the moment Dalmann was keeping quiet. And while van Genderen talked at him in his gurgling Dutch accent, he discreetly looked around the restaurant to see who else was in the Huwyler that evening.

The media were represented by two board members (each with a female companion) of one of the big publishing houses that had recently been in the news on account of its drastic cost-cutting measures. Politics was represented by a party politician who had somewhat fallen into obscurity, with his wife and two younger couples, probably fellow party members whom the leadership had instructed to celebrate the older man’s birthday. Medicine could boast the director of a clinic, who was in serious discussion with a senior doctor. At the neighbouring table a high-ranking official of a crisis-hit football club, currently without a sponsor, was dining with the finance director of an insurance firm, both men accompanied by their wives. In addition to these there were a car importer, the owner of an advertising agency and the former chairman of a bank whose resignation had not been wholly voluntary. All of these were sitting with their tall, thin, blonde second wives.

The room was filled with the comforting murmur of quiet voices, the delicate clinking and clanking of cutlery and the unobtrusive aromas of carefully composed dishes. The lighting was warm and flattering, and the torrents of rain which towards evening had started turning the fresh fall of late snow into grey slush could be heard only by diners with window seats. Even for them it was no more than a distant rustling through the curtains. It was as if that evening the Huwyler had cocooned itself against the world outside.

The world outside was looking pretty ugly. The day of reckoning had finally come for the financial markets, who had been dealing for years in fool’s gold. Unsinkable banks were now sending out SOS calls as they listed heavily. Every day, more and more sectors of the economy were getting sucked into the vortex of the financial crisis. Car manufacturers were introducing short-time working, suppliers filing for insolvency and financiers committing suicide. Unemployment rates were on the rise everywhere, countries on the edge of bankruptcy, deregulators throwing themselves into the arms of the state, prophets of neo-liberalism went quiet and the globalized world experienced the beginnings of its first crisis.

And, as if it could survive this imminent hurricane by retreating under its diving bell, the small Alpine country started to shut itself off again. It had barely opened up.

Andrea had to wait until Bandini, the announceur, had scrutinized the dishes for table five and checked them against the order. She was watching Maravan, the nicest guy on her team.

By Tamil standards he was a tall man, certainly more than one metre eighty. Sharply defined nose, trimmed moustache and a bluish-black five o’clock shadow, even though he had arrived for the afternoon shift freshly shaven as ever. He wore a kitchen help’s white overalls with a long apron like a traditional Hindu dress. The white crepe chef’s hat looked like a Gandhi cap on his black hair, which was parted with precision.

Maravan was standing by the sink, rinsing plates with a hand spray to shift the remains of sauces, before stacking them in the dishwasher, moving with the grace of a temple dancer. As if he could sense she was watching him, he looked up briefly and revealed his snow-white teeth. Andrea smiled back.

During her short career in the catering industry she had come across a lot of Tamils. Many of them were asylum seekers with ‘N-authorizations’, which gave them the right to work in specific catering jobs for a low wage. Moreover, this was only permitted at the specific request of the employer, on whom they were more dependent than someone with a residence permit. She got on with most of them; they were friendly, unassuming, and they reminded her of the trip she had taken as a backpacker through southern India.

Since she had started at the Huwyler she had already seen Maravan working at every station. He was a virtuoso in his preparation of vegetables; when he shucked oysters it looked as if they were opening for him of their own accord; he could fillet a sole with a few practised movements of the hand, and was able to hollow out rabbit legs so carefully it looked as if the bone was still there.

Andrea had seen the love, precision and speed with which he composed artworks on the plate, or how skilfully he was able to alternate marinated wild berries with crunchy puff pastry arlettes to create three-layered millefeuilles.

The chefs at the Huwyler often used Maravan to carry out tasks that were their own responsibility. But Andrea had never seen one of them pay him a compliment for doing so. On the contrary, no sooner had he delivered one of his works of art than he would be redeployed as dishwasher and dogsbody.

Bandini approved the order; the two waiters placed cloches over the plates and brought them to the table. Andrea could now call up the next course for table one.

2

It was long past midnight, but the trams were still running. The passengers on the Number 12 were tired night workers on their way home and high-spirited revellers in a party mood. The area where Maravan lived was home not only to most of the asylum seekers, but also the hippest clubs, discos and lounge bars in the city.

Maravan was sitting on a single seat behind a man with a greasy neck whose head kept tipping to one side – a fellow restaurant worker, judging by the kitchen odours emanating from him. Maravan had a sensitive nose; it was very important to him that he did not smell of anything, even when he came home from work. His colleagues used eau de toilette or aftershave to cover up the kitchen smells. He kept his clothes in a zip-up, moth-proof carrier inside a locker, and whenever possible he would take a shower in the staff changing room.

Some kitchen odours he accepted, but these did not exist in the kitchens here. They could only be found in Nangay’s kitchen.

Whenever Nangay dropped nine curry leaves – freshly picked by Maravan from the small tree outside – into hot coconut oil, the tiny kitchen would be filled with an aroma that he wanted to hold on to for as long as possible.

The same with the aroma of cinnamon. ‘Always use more cinnamon than necessary,’ Nangay would say. ‘It has a lovely smell and taste, it’s a disinfectant, helps the digestion, and you can buy it cheaply everywhere.’

Maravan had thought of Nangay as an ancient woman, but at the time she was only in her mid-fifties. She was his grandmother’s sister. He and his siblings had fled with the two women to Jaffna after his parents had burned to death in their car near Colombo during the 1983 pogroms. Maravan, the youngest of the four children, would spend his days in Nangay’s kitchen, helping her to prepare meals which his siblings sold at the market in Jaffna. Nangay gave him all the school education he needed in her kitchen.

She had worked as the head cook in a large house in Colombo. Now she ran a food stall at the market, whose excellent reputation spread quickly and gave her a modest but regular income.

Besides the simple dishes she made for the market, however, Nangay also secretly prepared special meals for a growing clientele for whom discretion was paramount. These were usually married couples where there was a large age gap.

Even today, whenever Maravan fried fresh curry leaves or simmered a curry on a low heat on his stove, he could picture a small, thin woman, whose hair and saris always gave off an aroma of curry leaves and cinnamon.

The tram stopped, a few passengers got on, nobody got off. When the doors closed again the man in front of him was jolted out of his sleep and rushed to the door. But they were already on the move. The fat man angrily pressed the button to open the door, cursed loudly and gave Maravan a reproachful stare.

Maravan looked away and gazed out of the window. It was still raining. The lights of the night-time city shone in the drops which traced slanting paths across the window. A man outside a nightclub was holding his head in the rain, his elbows jutting out. A few young people were sheltering under some overhanging masonry and laughing at his antics.

The party crowd got out at the next stop, followed by the fat man reeking of kitchen smells. Maravan watched him appear on the other side of the carriage and sullenly take a seat in the shelter for trams going in the opposite direction.

There were only a few passengers left in the tram, and it was obvious that most of them came from other countries. They were either dozing or lost in their thoughts, apart from one young Senegalese woman who was having a lively chat on her mobile, safe in the certainty that nobody could understand a word. Then she got off. Maravan watched her turn into a side street, still laughing and chatting.

It was silent on the tram now, save for the recording which announced the stops. Maravan got off at the penultimate one, put up his umbrella and continued walking along the same road. The Number 12 drove past him, the illuminated windows heading off into the distance, until they were no more than just another patch of light on the rain-drenched road.

It was cold. Maravan wrapped his scarf more tightly around him and turned into Theodorstrasse. Rows of grey houses on either side, parked cars, wet and glinting in the white light of the street lamps, the occasional shop – Asian specialities, travel agent, second-hand, cash transfer.

When he came to a brown 1950s block of flats Maravan fished his keys out of his pocket and went through a graffiti-filled passageway, past two overflowing dustbins, to an entry door.

He stopped in the hallway by the wall lined with pigeonholes and letterboxes. He opened the one marked Maravan Vilasam.

His post consisted of a letter from Sri Lanka addressed in his eldest sister’s handwriting, a flyer from a firm hiring out cleaning ladies, election propaganda for a xenophobic party and a catalogue from a wholesaler dealing in specialist kitchen appliances. He opened the last of these while still beside the post box, and leafed through it as he climbed the stairs to his fourth-floor flat – two small rooms, a tiny bathroom and a surprisingly spacious kitchen with a balcony, all connected by a hallway covered with well-worn lino.

Maravan turned on the light. Before entering the sitting room he popped into the bathroom to wash his face and hands. Then he removed his shoes, put the post on the table, and struck a match to light the wick of the deepam, the clay lamp which stood on the domestic shrine. He went down on his knees, put his hands together in front of his face and bowed before Lakshmi, the goddess of prosperity and beauty.

It was chilly in the flat. Maravan squatted in front of the oil burner, pulled the ignition and let it spring back. The resonant sound of metallic hammering echoed through the flat five times before the burner ignited. Maravan took off his leather jacket, hung it on one of two coat hooks in the hallway, and went into his bedroom.

When he came out again he was wearing a batik shirt, a blue-and-red striped sarong and sandals. He sat beside the burner and read his sister’s letter. The news was not good. Deliveries were being stopped at checkpoints on the border of Tamil-held areas. Very few of the food deliveries from February and March had reached Kilinochchi District. Prices of basic foodstuffs, medicines and fuel had risen exponentially.

He put the letter back on the table and tried to soothe his bad conscience. It had been almost three months since his last visit to the Batticaloa Bazaar, the nearby Tamil shop, to give money and his sister’s ID number to the owner. It had been 400 francs, 37,800 rupees after commission.

Although he earned 3,000 francs per month, lived alone and paid a reasonable rent of 700, after the Huwyler deducted health insurance and tax at source, Maravan had just enough money left to eat. Or, more accurately, to cook.

Cooking was not just Maravan’s profession, it was his great passion. Even when the family still lived in Colombo he had spent most of his time in the kitchen with Nangay. His parents had worked in one of the city’s large hotels, his father at reception, his mother as a housekeeper. When not at school, the children were in their grandmother’s care. But because Maravan did not yet go to school, his great aunt Nangay would often take him with her to work, so that her sister could do the housework and shopping. Nangay had six helpers in the large kitchen. One of them always had time to look after the little boy.

Thus he grew up among pots and pans, herbs and spices, fruit and vegetables. He helped to wash rice, pick over lentils, grate coconut, harvest coriander, and when he was as young as three he was allowed, under supervision, to chop tomatoes and slice onions with a sharp knife.

From an early age Maravan was fascinated by the process of transforming a few raw ingredients into something quite different. Something not merely edible, not merely filling and nourishing, but – something which could even make you happy.

Maravan would watch carefully, taking note of ingredients, quantities, preparation techniques and sequences. At the age of five he could already cook entire menus, and at six, before he was meant to start school, he learnt how to read and write because he could no longer keep all the recipes in his head.

For Maravan the first day at school was almost an even greater tragedy than the death of his parents shortly afterwards, the details of which he did not discover until he was almost an adult. As far as he was concerned, all that had happened was that they had not come to Jaffna with the rest of the family; most of the time they had not been around anyway. He found the journey to Jaffna chaotic and his relatives’ house, where they stayed initially, small and cramped. But he did not have to go to school and could spend his days in the kitchen with Nangay.

The oil burner had brought some warmth into the small sitting room. Maravan got up and went into the kitchen.

Four fluorescent bulbs bathed the room in white light. It contained a large fridge and a freezer of the same size, a gas stove with four burners, a double sink, a work table and a wall unit covered with stainless steel, on top of which were various appliances and food processors. The room was spanking clean and resembled a laboratory more than a kitchen. Only by taking a closer look could you see that the various units were not all exactly the same height and that they had slightly different fronts. Maravan had bought each one individually, either second-hand from markets or from specialist exchanges, and installed them with the help of one of his compatriots, who had been a plumber back in Sri Lanka and who worked here as a warehouse assistant.

He put a small frying pan on the lowest flame, poured in some coconut oil and opened the door to the balcony. Almost all the windows opposite were dark; the back courtyard far below him lay silent and abandoned. It was still raining – heavy, cold drops. He left the balcony door slightly ajar.

Pots with mini curry trees were lined up in his bedroom, each with its bamboo cane and each a different age. The largest reached up to his armpits. He had got it as a sapling some years back from another Sri Lankan. Taking cuttings from this plant he had raised one tree after another, until he had so many that he could sell the odd one. He did not like doing this, but when winter came he did not have enough space. The mini trees were not hardy: it was only during the warm months that they could sit on his kitchen balcony; in winter he had to put them in the bedroom under a grow light.

He broke off two of the nine-leaved twigs, went back into the kitchen, threw them into the hot oil and added a ten-centimetre piece of cinnamon. Slowly the aroma of his childhood rose from the pan.

In a small cupboard under the wall unit he kept his distillation equipment: a flask, a bridge with a cooling jacket, a receiving flask, two flask holders, a thermometer and a roll of PVC tubing. He carefully assembled the glass elements so that the distillation flask sat over a gas burner, put the roll of tubing into one sink, and connected one end to the tap, the other to the cooling jacket. Then he filled the sink with cold water, took a plastic bag of ice cubes out of the freezer, and shook them in.

Meanwhile the fragrance of coconut oil, curry leaves and cinnamon had opened out fully. Maravan emptied the contents of the pan into a tall-sided heatproof glass jar and processed it with his wand mixer into a thick, nut-brown liquid, which he then poured into the distillation flask.

Maravan lit the gas flame under the flask, pulled up his only chair and sat beside his improvised distillation plant. It was important to control the process. He knew from experience that unless the liquid was heated gently, the aroma would change. He had often tried to capture the essence of this smell, the smell of his childhood. But he had never succeeded.

Now the sides of the glass flask were beginning to steam. Drops appeared, increasing in number, and ran down the misty condensation, creating clear lines. The temperature of the vapour rose quickly to fifty, sixty, seventy degrees. Maravan turned the flame down and the tap on slightly. Cold water made its way up the transparent tubing, filled the double wall of the cooling jacket, exited the cooler, and flowed through a length of tubing into the plughole of the second basin.

The only sound in the kitchen was the occasional gurgling of the cooling water going down the plug. From time to time he could hear steps in the attic room above him. This is where Gnanam lived, another Tamil, as were all the inhabitants of Theodorstrasse 94. He had not been here long, and after the standard six months of not being allowed to work had found a job as a kitchen help, like most of the asylum seekers from Sri Lanka. He worked in the city hospital. The fact that Maravan could hear him wandering around at this time – it was just before two – meant that Gnanam must be on early shift.

Maravan had only asylum-seeker status and had to work as a kitchen help. But compared to Gnanam he was privileged.

There was no early shift starting at four at the Huwyler. When he was on days he had to be in the kitchen at nine o’clock. And he did not have to deal with 200-litre pots or scour blackened frying pans that were a square metre in size. At the Huwyler he was able to learn new things, even though they gave him no opportunity to do so. He had eyes in the back of his head; he picked up new techniques just by watching and learned from other people’s mistakes. He was not bothered that the other chefs did not treat him particularly well. He had suffered worse treatment. Both here and back in his homeland.

Marvan stood up, tossed two handfuls of wheat flour into a mixing bowl, added some lukewarm water and a little ghee, sat down again with the bowl and began to knead the dough.

During his chef’s apprenticeship in Jaffna, his teachers found it hard to accept that he was more skilful, talented and imaginative than they were. He had had to learn that he needed to play dumb in order to get on. And later, when he left Jaffna and worked in a hotel on the south-western coast, the Singhalese treated him with the usual condescension they showed Tamils.

The dough was now smooth and elastic. Maravan put the bowl to one side and covered it with a clean dishcloth.

Recently he had enjoyed working at the Huwyler. Or, more precisely, since Andrea had started there. Like everyone on the team, he was fascinated by this peculiar, slender, pale creature who looked straight through everybody with an absent smile. But he fancied he was the only one she ever paid any attention to – not very often, maybe, but it did happen. His suspicions were confirmed by the fact that the chefs behaved even more patronizingly towards him whenever she was around.

Today, for example, while he was rinsing plates and Andrea was waiting for Bandini to check a course, she had looked over at him and smiled. Not smiled through him, but at him.

Maravan did not have much contact with women. The unmarried daughters in the Tamil community were too sheltered to strike up relationships with men. A Tamil woman had to be a virgin when she got married. And traditionally her parents decided who she married.

There were some Swiss women who had shown an interest in him. But the Tamils considered them to be bad women because of their permissive lifestyles. If he got involved with one of them it would bring shame to his family in Sri Lanka. They would find out sooner or later; the community of Tamil refugees, the diaspora, would make sure of that. He had come to terms with the fact that he would have to lead a bachelor life, comforting himself with vague thoughts of a future as a husband and father in Sri Lanka.

But since Andrea had appeared on the scene, feelings were stirring within him which he had hoped to suppress with his intense and overwhelming passion for cooking.

The first drop of the distillate fell into the separating funnel, bright and clear. Another followed, then another. Soon, the distillate was trickling at short, regular intervals into the container. Maravan tried to think of nothing else except the drops. How they kept on falling, like the seconds, minutes, days and years.

He did not know how long it had taken for the contents of the flask to be reduced to a few centilitres and the trickling to stop. Maravan opened the small tap of the separating funnel and allowed the water to run off until all that was left in the lower part of the conical vessel was the essential oil. He mixed it with the concentrate from the flasks and put it to his nose.

He could smell the curry leaves, the cinnamon, the coconut oil. But he could not find what he was looking for: the essence of what these three things had combined to produce in Nangay’s iron pan over the wood fire.

Maravan took a tawa, a heavy iron pan, from the wall and put it on the gas. He sprinkled some flour on to the work surface beside the stove and made a few chapattis out of the dough. When the pan was hot enough, he put the first one in, browning it on both sides. Another aroma rose up from the pan, which transported him back to his childhood.

When Maravan was fifteen, Nangay sent him to Kerala in southern India. An old friend of hers was working there as an Ayurvedic chef in a newly opened hotel complex, the first in the country offering a broad range of Ayurvedic treatments. Maravan would work in the hotel kitchen and be initiated into Ayurvedic cuisine.

He had already learnt a lot from Nangay and made little effort to hide this. Like a child starting school who can already read and write, he got on the nerves of his teachers and fellow students with all his knowledge. Although they lived on top of each other in the cramped staff quarters, he could find little in common with his colleagues and superiors. Even Nangay’s friend distanced herself from him. She feared that he might have a more difficult time if he were seen as her protégé.

For the most part Maravan kept himself to himself, focusing on learning; this made him even more unpopular. In his spare time he would take long walks along the unending beach where not a soul could be seen. Or he would spend hours practising his elegant dives into the waves that rolled in unremittingly from the Indian Ocean.

In Kerala Maravan became a loner. And had remained one ever since.

The chapattis were ready. He took one, drizzled a little of the fresh concentrate on it, closed his eyes, and breathed in the aroma. He took a bite, chewed it carefully, then, instead of swallowing, pushed it to the roof of his mouth with his tongue and breathed slowly out through his nostrils – of all his failed attempts, he would give this one the second highest score: a nine. In a notebook labelled ‘Extracts’ he jotted down the date, time, ingredients, distillation time and temperature.

Afterwards he ate the product of his experiment as a seasoning on the chapattis, quickly and without much gusto, then washed the flasks and tubes in his kit, put them to dry on the draining board, turned off the light and went back into the sitting room.

On a small table by the wall was an obsolete, second-hand computer. Maravan switched it on and waited patiently for the machine to boot up. He connected to the internet and checked the auction for the rotary evaporator, which he had been following for some days. One thousand, four hundred and thirty, the same as yesterday. There were two hours and twelve minutes until the end of the auction.

A rotary evaporator would allow him to do precisely what he had unsuccessfully attempted again just now – in the correct time, at the right temperature, without any burning and no impairment of the taste. The only problem was that such a piece of kit cost over 5,000 francs, far more than Maravan could afford. Sometimes second-hand models were auctioned on the Internet, like the one on the screen in front of him.

Anything under 1,500 was a good price. Maravan had 1,200 put aside. And he could rustle up the rest somehow, so long as the price did not rise any further. He would sit tight for the next couple of hours and make a bid just before the auction closed. Maybe he would get lucky.

He took his sister’s letter from the table and read it all the way through. She only came to the point on the last page: Nangay was ill – Diabetes insipidus. It was not real diabetes. She was thirsty all day long, drinking water by the litre, and had to go to the loo constantly. There was a medicine to treat the condition, but it was expensive and very hard to find in Jaffna. But if she did not take it, the doctor said she would dehydrate.

Maravan sighed. He returned to the screen. Still 1,430. He turned off the computer and went to bed. In the stairwell he could hear the footsteps of Gnanam on his way to the early shift.

3

A few days later there was a scene in the Huwyler kitchen which would have consequences for Maravan.

Anton Fink had created a starter which he called ‘Glazed langoustines with rice croquant on a curried gelée’, and which he wanted to put on the Menu Surprise for the following day. From the washing-up sink Maravan watched the chef preparing the curry sauce for the gelée: he sautéed some finely chopped onions, stirred in some curry powder and called out, ‘Maravan! Coconut milk!’

Maravan fetched a tin of coconut milk from a cupboard, gave it a good shake, opened the tin and gave it to the demi chef de partie. As the latter was emptying half of the tin into the pan, Maravan said, ‘If you like I’ll make you a proper curry next time.’

Fink put the ladle beside the pan, turned to Maravan, looked him up and down and said, ‘Oh right, a real curry. So some kitchen help is going to show me how to cook, are they? Did you hear that?’

His voice was raised and the chefs nearby looked up.

‘Maravan here has offered to give me a cookery course. Maybe one of you would like to enrol too.’ Fink had noticed that Andrea had come in holding her order pad. ‘How to make a real curry. Introductory course for beginners.’

Maravan had just stood there silently. But now he noticed Andrea and said, ‘I only wanted to help.’

‘That’s exactly what you should be doing, helping. That’s why you’re a kitchen help. You should be helping scrub pans, clean dishes, wash salads and wipe up spillages. But teach me how to cook? Thanks, but I think I’m all right, I can just about manage to put together a little curry on my own.’

If Andrea had not been there to witness the exchange, Maravan would have apologized at this point and gone back to his pans. But now he said bravely, ‘I’ve been cooking curries all my life.’

‘Oh really? Did you study curry? I’m terribly sorry, Doctor Curry. Or is it Professor?’

Maravan did not know how to respond. Breaking the silence that ensued, Andrea said, ‘Well I’d like to try one of your curries sometime, Maravan. Will you cook one for me?’

Maravan was so astonished he could not answer. He nodded.

‘Monday evening?’ The Huwyler was closed on Mondays.

Maravan nodded.

‘Deal?’

‘Deal.’

Smoke was now rising from Fink’s curry, and it smelt burnt.

Maravan suspected that Andrea’s intervention would do him more harm than good. It had not only made Fink hostile towards him, but also stoked the envy of all the others. In spite of this, his heart was lighter than it had been in a long time. He blithely carried out the most mundane tasks and was not in the least bit bothered by the fact that nobody gave him anything more challenging to do that day.

Had she meant it seriously? Did she really want him to cook for her? And where? At his place? The idea of his receiving and entertaining a woman like Andrea in his small flat made him doubt whether he would really be happy if she had meant it seriously.

She left him stewing in this double uncertainty. When he was finally able to knock off from work she had already gone.

Hans Staffel had never been to the Huwyler with his wife. For business purposes he had been forced to eat in the restaurant two or three times before, and after each occasion Béatrice had made him promise that he would take her there, too. But Staffel was like all managers: the moment he had the chance of an evening off, he would rather spend it at home.

This time, however, there was no excuse. He had something to celebrate which, for now, he was able to share only with his wife. The chief editor of the most important business magazine in the country had told him in the strictest confidence that Hans Staffel was May’s Manager of the Month. In ten days’ time it would be official.

Béatrice did not know this yet. He wanted to tell her between the amuse-bouche and meat course, when the time was right and the sommelier had just refilled their glasses.

Staffel was the CEO of Kugag, an old family business that manufactured machinery. He had taken over twelve years previously and – in the words of the chief editor – regenerated the firm. He had convinced the owners to invest in a reorientation of the product range towards environmental technology, and to procure more capital by floating the company on the stock market. Kugag had bought a small firm with a number of patents for solar panel components and had rapidly become one of the biggest suppliers in the solar energy industry. Its market price had bucked the general trend by rising steadily, and Staffel himself had become a wealthy man. He had arranged for part of his salary to be paid in shares when the company floated, and these were still very valuable.

They had ordered two Menus Surprises, Béatrice’s without any of the offal or frogs’ legs that might appear in the various dishes. Out of consideration he had advised the kitchen of these requirements in advance.

The tall, pale waitress with the long, black hair all combed to the right had just brought the fish course: two giant glazed prawns on a rather nasty-tasting jelly. The sommelier poured out some champagne – they had decided to pass on the white wine and stay with champagne until they finished the fish course. It was as if this moment had been created for them specially.

Staffel raised his glass, smiled at his wife, and waited for her to lift her glass too. As she did it she knew she was about to discover what it was she had to thank this evening for.

At that moment somebody arrived at the table and said, ‘I don’t wish to disturb your celebrations, but I’d just like to offer my warm congratulations. Nobody deserves it more than you.’

He gave the startled Staffel, who had made to stand up, a friendly handshake and then introduced himself to his wife. ‘Eric Dalmann. You can be rightly proud of your husband. If there were more like him we wouldn’t have to worry about any crisis.’

‘Who was that?’ Béatrice wanted to know when they were by themselves again.

‘I don’t know. Dalmann, Dalmann? Some sort of consultant, I don’t really know.’

‘Why was he congratulating you?’

‘I was just about to tell you: I’m Manager of the Month.’

‘And of course I’m the last to know as usual.’

Maravan was busy putting away crockery when Andrea brought the plates back from table three. Fink rushed over to her, because he wanted to know what the customers had thought of his ‘Glazed langoustines with rice croquant on curried gelée’. It was the first surprise of the evening.

The plates were empty apart from the heads of the langoustines and most of the curried gelée.

Maravan pretended he had not noticed. But Andrea looked at the plates with a disbelieving shake of her head, offered Fink a pitying smile, turned to Maravan and said, ‘Is seven o’clock OK on Monday? Oh, and write your address down for me.’

The following morning Maravan was the first customer in the Batticaloa Bazaar. It was his second visit in a few days. The first time he had given the owner 800 francs for Nangay’s medicine.

The shop was not well stocked, only tinned foods and rice, no fruit, hardly any vegetables. There were, however, posters and flyers for organizations and events in the Tamil community and a few LTTE stickers: the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam. The Batticaloa Bazaar was less a grocer’s than a liaison office and contact point for the Tamils in exile, and the first port of call for unofficial money transfers to the north of Sri Lanka.

Maravan went to work in a cheerful mood and kept up his good spirits in spite of all his team’s efforts to ruin them. His rendezvous with Andrea had of course become common knowledge – Monday evening, seven o’clock, at his place! – and it was as if they had all sworn to make his life as difficult as possible before then: Maravan, fetch this. Maravan, fetch that. Maravan, do this. Maravan!

Kandan, the other Tamil kitchen help, was on duty. He was powerfully built, all brawn, slow on the uptake and without the slightest talent for cooking. And like many Tamil men in exile, he had an alcohol problem which he was able to disguise skilfully, although not from Maravan’s sensitive nose. Today he was assigned all the more demanding tasks, while Maravan rinsed, scoured, cleaned, scrubbed and lugged stuff around.

An edgy atmosphere prevailed in the kitchen. There were few customers in the restaurant and a birthday party of twelve had cancelled their booking for the following evening. Huwyler was getting in the way, venting his bad mood on his chefs. And they passed it on to the demis chefs, who gave hell to the commis, who in turn laid into the kitchen helps.

But Maravan was on top form. The moment Andrea started her shift he had discreetly slipped her his address. She had smiled and said – loudly enough so that Bertrand, who happened to be standing nearby, could hear – ‘I’m looking forward to it.’

Maravan knew what he was going to cook, apart from the odd detail which he would attend to the following day. And he also had a cunning plan for his technique of preparing the dinner.

Maravan was sitting in front of the computer with headphones on. Nangay’s voice sounded weak, even though the connection was surprisingly good. He ought to have kept his money and let her die, she said reproachfully. She was tired.

Nangay was over eighty, and ever since Maravan could remember she had wanted to die in peace.

To begin with she was mistrustful and did not want to answer his questions. But when he said that it would allow him to earn more money, she listed ingredients and recipes, and freely explained everything to him in detail.

It was a long conversation. And by the time it had finished Maravan’s notebook was almost full.

4

Happily, there had been a good number of covers at the Huwyler the following Sunday afternoon. The evening was quiet, the last diners left early, as ever on a Sunday.

Maravan was the last member of staff left in the kitchen. He was at the pan-cleaning sink, busy with the more intricate kitchen appliances: thermostats, jet smokers and rotary evaporators.

He waited until the cleaners had come into the kitchen, took the gadgets to the equipment store, then went into the changing room.

He deftly removed the glass elements of the rotary evaporator, rolled them up in two T-shirts, tucked them into a gym bag, making sure that they were well padded against the heavy main unit with its heat-bath holder and electronics.

Maravan undressed, wrapped a Turkish towel around his waist, shoved his underwear into the gym bag, took shampoo and soap out of the side pocket, and went into the shower. Five minutes later he came out again, took the clothes bag out of his locker, and got dressed.

On his way out he glanced again past the wine store. When he left the kitchen via the delivery entrance carrying a heavy gym bag, he was wearing black trousers, a dark-blue roll-neck sweater and his leather jacket. He did not smell of anything.

He got going that same evening. He broke up the panicles of long pepper into their tiny corns, deseeded some dried Kashmir chillies, measured out black peppercorns, cardamom, caraway, fennel, fenugreek, coriander and mustard seeds, peeled turmeric root, broke up cinnamon sticks and roasted all of these in the iron pan to the point at which the full aroma of the ingredients unfurled. He mixed the spices in various, carefully weighed combinations, and ground them into fine powders which he either used that night or kept for the following day, sealed in airtight and labelled containers.

The evaporator rotated well into the early hours with diverse ingredients: white curry paste, sali rice whisked with milk and chickpea flour, and – of course – the inimitable coconut oil with curry leaves and cinnamon.

Some fresh butter was clarifying in a pan to make ghee, while in clay plots warm water and grated coconut were being mixed into a milk.

Dawn was already breaking when Maravan lay down on his mattress on the bedroom floor for a short sleep full of strange erotic dreams. These were always interrupted when they got to the best bits.

Andrea had been on the verge of calling Maravan and finding an excuse to cancel. She cursed herself for her Good Samaritan syndrome. Maravan would have managed without her. Maybe even better. Perhaps her stupid intervention had only made things more difficult for him. No, not perhaps. Definitely.

Maravan was fortunate that these were the thoughts churning around Andrea’s mind. Otherwise she would not now have been sitting on the tram, with her handbag and a plastic bag containing a bottle of wine on her lap.

She had decided to bring him a bottle of wine because she did not know whether Tamils drank. If they did not – and so did not offer any to their guests either – then she would be able to fall back on this bottle of Pinot Noir. Not a great wine, but decent enough. Probably better than anything a kitchen help could afford. If he had any wine in the house at all.

The reason why she had stood up for Maravan was because she could not bear those chefs, especially Fink. Not because she had the hots for Maravan. She would have to let him know this straight away, a diplomatic mission she was well practised in.

Her dislike of chefs grew with each change of job. Maybe it was because of the strict hierarchy that prevailed in kitchens. Because chefs behaved as if they had some sort of entitlement to the female waiting staff. That is how it seemed to her, anyway. In kitchens, even the humblest ones, a star cult prevailed which encouraged chefs to think they were irresistible.

Every day Andrea asked herself why she did not simply change profession. And every day the same answer came back: because she had not learnt how to do anything else. She was a waitress and that was that.

To begin with, she had wanted to manage a hotel or run a pub. She had started a course in hotel management, but got stuck in a traineeship as a waitress. She was soon fed up with college, and the possibility of working in a variety of hotels after a short apprenticeship – in summer by Lake Como or in Ischia, and in winter in the Engadin Valley or the Berner Oberland – seemed to suit her restless personality. If you looked as she did and knew how to get tips, the work was not badly paid. She had good references and experience, and had made it to the rank of demi chef de rang.

She had also tried out other jobs. One of these had been as a tour rep abroad. The job had mainly consisted of holding up a sign at Kos Airport bearing the name of her tour operator, allocating the arriving guests to the various hotel buses and receiving their complaints. Andrea soon found that she would rather deal with underdone or overdone steaks than missing luggage or rooms that had a view of the street instead of the sea.

Once she had even entered a beauty contest. She got past the first rounds and was thought to have a good chance of winning. Until she – the silly cow – had a moment of madness during a bathing costume photoshoot: when the photographer asked her whether she had ever modelled professionally before, she replied, ‘Not with so many clothes on.’

Chez Huwyler was a well-respected establishment and would make a good impression on her CV. But only if she stuck it out longer than the usual few months. Half a year; a whole one would be even better.

On the other side of the tram, opposite her, sat a man between thirty and forty. She could see him staring at her in the reflection of the window. Each time she turned her head he smiled at her. She took a well-thumbed free newspaper from the seat next to her and barricaded herself behind it.

Maybe she should try to start from scratch again. She was only twenty-eight; she could still start a course. She had her secondary school certificate, which meant she could go to art school. Or at least sit the entrance exam. Photography, or even better, film. With a bit of luck you could get a grant. Or some other government assistance.

Her stop was announced. Andrea stood up and went to the farther door to avoid having to pass the staring man.

Okra was cooking in a pan with green chillies, onions, fenugreek seeds, red chilli powder, salt and curry leaves. The thick coconut milk was still in a bowl by the stove. Maravan had decided on okra as a vegetable because of its English name: ladies’ fingers.

The pathiya kari was a female dish, too: it was prepared specially for breastfeeding mothers. He had simmered some poussin meat in a little water with onions, fenugreek, turmeric, garlic and salt, added to this broth one of the spice mixes from the previous night – coriander, cumin, pepper, chilli, tamarind paste – brought the whole thing to the boil, then taken it off the heat, and covered it. He would heat it up again shortly before serving.

The male element of his menu was a dish of shark meat: churaa varai. He had mashed a cooked shark steak with grated coconut, turmeric, caraway and salt, and put this to one side. In an iron pan he had fried some onions in coconut oil until they were translucent, added dried chillies, onion seeds and curry leaves, stirring until the seeds started jumping, and taken the pan off the heat. Shortly before serving he would reheat it, add the shark-and-spice mixture, combining everything thoroughly.

These three traditional dishes were Maravan’s proof that he knew how to cook curry, and an excuse for the other things he was creating on the side. He would make small, manageable portions and, as his one homage to experimental cooking, serve them with three different airs – coriander, mint and garlic foams – and curry leaf twigs glazed in nitrogen.

Maravan owned an isolation tank in which he could store liquid nitrogen for a short period. It had cost him a fifth of his monthly wage, but it was an indispensable aid for his culinary experiments and his efforts to outshine the chefs at the Huwyler.

What this dinner was really about, however, was the courses in between. Each one contained Ayurvedic aphrodisiacs, but in new, bold preparations. Instead of dividing all the purée of urad lentils marinated in sweetened milk into portions and drying these in the oven, he mixed half of it with agar. Both halves of the purée were spread on to silicon mats and cut into strips. The half without the agar was dried in the oven and twisted into spirals while still warm. He let the other half cool down and then wound the elastic ribbons around the spirals, which were now crunchy.

Rather than serve the traditional mixture of saffron, milk and almonds in its usual liquid form, he used cream instead of milk, whisking it into an airy mixture with saffron, palm sugar, almonds and a little sesame oil, and then put three heaped plastic spoons of the saffron and almond foam into liquid nitrogen, for just long enough to form spheres, which were frozen on the outside and soft inside.

He would serve them with sweet saffron ghee, which he spread on to strips of honey gel topped with threads of saffron, and then rolled them up. The saffron threads shone dark yellow through the opaque walls of these light yellow cylinders, which would be placed around the spheres.

He gave a new structure to the mixture of ghee, long pepper, cardamom, cinnamon and palm sugar. He mixed still water with the palm sugar, reduced this by half in the rotary evaporator with the spices, added alginate and xanthan gum, allowed the air to escape from the bubbles and made little balls with the portion spoon. He placed these in a mixture of water and calcium lactate. Within minutes the balls were smooth and shiny, and he injected a small amount of warmed ghee into each one. He quickly turned them to make the prick close up again. The balls were kept warm at sixty degrees. They were for dessert.

To go with the tea, he had prepared three varieties of sweetmeats, all made in the traditional way, of course, and all proven aphrodisiacs. He extracted the liquid from a pulp of sali rice and milk, and made a thick paste together with chickpea flour and sugar. He then added almonds, sultanas, dates, ground ginger and pepper, and worked it into a pastry, from which he cut little heart shapes. These were then baked and finally glazed with red fondant.

Maravan had steeped some dried asparagus in water, puréed it with the wand mixer and extracted the essence using the rotary evaporator. This essence was then combined with ghee and algin, and when the mixture had thickened he shaped it into little asparagus spears whose tips he coloured green with chlorophyll.

Taking the most popular Ayurvedic means of stimulating sexual arousal – a simple combination of ground liquorice, ghee and honey – he had created ice lollies by making patties, inserting wooden sticks, decorating them with chopped pistachios, then freezing them.

At twenty to seven he took a shower, changed and opened all the windows in his flat again. The only thing to smell of food should be the food itself.

5

On the short walk from the tram stop to Theodorstrasse 94 Andrea was approached by a junkie begging for money, accosted by a dealer and propositioned by a driver. She would book a taxi for the journey home, even if it was still early. And it would be early, she was absolutely determined about this. The moment she entered Maravan’s flat she would tell him that she had almost not come because she was feeling so unwell.

In the stairwell it smelled as it always did in blocks of flats around this time of the evening. Here, however, the smell was not of meat loaf, but curry. On the first floor, two Tamil women were standing in the half-open doors to their flats, nattering away. On the third floor, a young boy was waiting on the landing; when he saw Andrea he disappeared into his flat, looking disappointed.

Maravan was waiting for her at his door. He was wearing a colourful shirt and dark trousers. He had just showered and was clean-shaven. He held out his long, slim hand and said, ‘Welcome to Maravan’s Curry Palace.’

He showed Andrea in, took the wine, and helped her out of her coat. Candles were burning everywhere; just a few spotlights here and there provided some more sober lighting.

‘The flat’s not nice if there’s too much light,’ he explained in his Swiss high German with a Tamil twang.

In the sitting room, a table no more than twenty centimetres high was set for two. The seating was provided by cushions and blankets. On the wall was a domestic shrine with a lit deepam. In the centre of the shrine a four-armed goddess was sitting on a lotus flower.

‘Lakshmi,’ Maravan said, making a gesture with his hand as if he were introducing another guest.

‘Why has she got four arms?’

‘Dharma, Kama, Artha and Moksha. Virtuousness, desire, prosperity and liberation.’

‘Right, I see,’ Andrea said, as if she now understood much better.

On a table by the wall an ice bucket stood next to a computer covered with a batik cloth. Maravan took a bottle of champagne from the ice bucket, wiped it with a white napkin, popped the cork and filled two glasses. She would have preferred the other scenario: no wine in the house; he would have had to open her gift, and she would have been able to talk about feeling groggy with a better conscience.

When they drank to each other’s health she noticed that all he did was merely moisten his lips.

He pointed to the table. ‘We eat special meals on the floor. Does it bother you?’

She briefly considered how he might take it if she said yes, then answered, ‘But I am going to get a knife and fork, aren’t I?’

It was meant as a joke, but Maravan asked in all seriousness, ‘Do you need them?’

Did she need a knife and fork? Andrea thought about it for a moment. ‘Where can I wash my hands?’

Maravan took her to his tiny bathroom. She washed her hands and did what she always did in other people’s bathrooms. She opened the mirror cabinet and inspected the contents: toothpaste, toothbrush, dental floss, shaving soap, shaving brush, razor, nail scissors, two tins with Tamil writing on them, one yellow, the other red. All clean and tidy, like Maravan himself.

When she returned to the sitting room he had vanished. She opened the door to what she thought was the kitchen, but it was his bedroom. Also tidy, and with just a cupboard, a chair and a bed without a frame. On the wall was a poster of a white beach with a few coconut palms, their crowns almost touching the sand, and in the foreground a weathered catamaran. Along the opposite wall was a row of flowerpots with plants she did not recognize. On the wall behind the pillows a picture of the same Hindu goddess as in the sitting room, a few family photos, women of Maravan’s age, children, teenagers, and Maravan with his arm around a small, white-haired woman. And an older, formal, retouched and coloured studio photograph of a serious-looking young couple, maybe his parents.

Andrea closed the door and opened another. She entered a room which looked like a miniature version of a professional kitchen. Lots of steel, lots of white, and pots, pans and dishes everywhere. It occurred to her now that this was the only room in the flat that had a smell, even though the balcony door was wide open.

Maravan came up to her with a tray. ‘A greeting from the kitchen,’ he said, realizing that this phrase sounded a little odd when uttered in a kitchen. They both laughed and Andrea went to sit down at her place.

The small plates contained five miniature chapattis and nothing more.

Andrea took one, smelt it, and was about to pop it in her mouth.

‘Hold on.’ Maravan took a pipette from a glass container on the tray and squeezed out three drops of liquid onto the chapatti. ‘Now.’

Straight away an aroma rose from the tiny bread that was so mysterious and yet so familiar that she gave up her plan to make an early exit. ‘What’s that?’

‘Curry leaves and cinnamon in coconut oil. The smell of my childhood.’

‘And how did you capture it?’

‘Chef’s secret.’ Maravan squeezed a few drops of the essence on all the chapattis. Then he sat opposite Andrea.

‘You must have had a lovely childhood to remember its smell so fondly.’

Maravan took his time to answer, as if he had to make up his mind whether his childhood had been a lovely one. ‘No,’ he said finally. ‘But the little of it that was lovely smelled like this.’

He told her of his time in Nangay’s kitchens, the large posh one, and the small, crudely constructed one. Midway through a sentence he excused himself, sprang up from his cushions, nipped into the kitchen and came back with the first course.

It consisted of two intertwined brown ribbons, one hard and crunchy, the other firm but flexible. Both had been made from the same strangely sweet and earthy ingredients, but because of the fundamentally different methods used to prepare them, they tasted like day and night. Andrea could not recall ever having eaten anything so peculiar with such pleasure.

‘What’s this called?’ she wanted to know.

‘Man and woman,’ Maravan answered.

‘So which one’s the woman?’

‘They both are.’ He poured her some more champagne – Bollinger Special Cuvée, on the Huwyler menu at 130 francs – cleared away the plates and went back into the kitchen. She took a sip and looked at his full glass in which only the odd bubble, filled with candlelight, rose from the bottom.

‘And what’s this called?’ she asked when he placed the next dish in front of her.

‘North-south.’

On the plate were three irregular pale yellow shapes, like sulphur stones. When she touched them they felt hard and cold, but when she copied Maravan and bit into them, the contents were lukewarm, light and airy, and the whole thing melted into something softer, more friendly, which had the sweet taste of exotic confectionery.

Surrounding these small ice spheres were gel cylinders in another shade of yellow, through which yellowy-orange threads of saffron shone in the candlelight. In the mouth they turned into another reward for having had the courage to bite into the lumps of sulphur.

‘Did you make this up?’

‘The ingredients are from an ancient recipe, it’s only the preparation which is my work.’

‘And the name too, I bet.’

‘I could have called this one man and woman too.’

Was she just imagining it or was there a hint of suggestiveness in his voice? She did not care.

So far she had found it easy to eat with her hands, all the dishes had been as manageable as finger food. But now Maravan served the curries.

Three plates, three small portions of curry, each one presented on a platform of a different variety of rice, and decorated with an arc of foam and a glazed sprig.

‘Ladies’ fingers curry on sali rice with garlic foam. Poussin curry on sashtika rice with coriander foam. Churaa varai on nivara rice with mint foam,’ announced Maravan.

‘What’s churaa varai?’

‘Shark.’

‘Oh.’

He waited for her to start eating.

‘You first,’ she urged him, and watched him use his thumb, index and middle fingers to form little balls from the rice and curry and put them in his mouth.

Andrea’s first attempt was pretty clumsy, but as soon as she had taken her first mouthful she stopped focusing on the technique, just the taste. It was as if she could taste every spice. As if each one were exploding individually and the whole thing a continuously changing firework.

The level of heat was just right. It did not burn her tongue, was scarcely noticeable in fact, only revealing itself at the finish. It also acted as an additional spice, a final intensification of the taste experience, leaving behind a pleasant warmth which gently ebbed in the time it took for Andrea to prepare another mouthful.

‘Are you homesick?’ she asked.

‘Yes, but not for the Sri Lanka I left behind. Only for the one I’d like to return to. A peaceful one. A just one.’

‘And a united one?’

Maravan’s right hand moved as if it had become disconnected from his brain and was now executing the task of feeding its owner independently. He had fixed his gaze on his guest and when the mouth spoke, the hand with its morsels waited respectfully and at a discreet distance.

‘All three? Peaceful, just and united? That would be nice.’

‘But you don’t believe it’s going to happen.’

Maravan shrugged. As if this were the sign it had been waiting for, the hand set itself in motion, placed a ball of rice in the mouth, and began to make another.

‘For a long time I did believe in it. I even gave up my job as a chef in Kerala and went back to Sri Lanka.’

Maravan told her of his training in Kerala and his career in a number of Ayurvedic wellness resorts. ‘One more year and I would have been the head chef,’ he sighed.

‘Why did you go back then?’ Andrea was holding a morsel of chapatti with coriander foam and could not wait to put it in her mouth. She had never realized how much more sensual it was to eat with your hands.

‘In 2001 the United National Party won the elections. Everybody thought there would be peace, the LTTE called a ceasefire and peace negotiations began in Oslo. It looked as if finally we would see the Sri Lanka I wanted to return to. And I had to be there at the start of that.’

He dipped his finger into the finger bowl, dried it with the napkin, piled the plates, and stood up, all in a single flowing movement, or so it appeared to Andrea.

She watched him disappear into the kitchen. When he came out again a few moments later he was carefully carrying a long, very narrow platter, in the centre of which there was nothing apart from a row of precisely positioned, shiny balls. Looking like mini versions of old ivory billiard balls, they had the consistency of candied fruits, were warm, sweet and spicy, and tasted of butter, cardamom and cinnamon.

‘And then?’

‘I got a job as a commis in a hotel on the west coast.’

‘As a commis?’ she interrupted him. ‘I thought you were almost a head chef.’

‘But I was a Tamil, too. That wasn’t a big deal in Kerala. But it was in the Singhalese part of Sri Lanka. I spent almost three years working as a commis.’

Andrea was already onto her second polished ball. ‘You’re an artist.’

‘My chance came in 2004. The hotel chain I was with had turned a tea factory in the Highlands into a boutique hotel and they made me chef de partie.’

‘So why didn’t you stay?’

‘Because of the tsunami.’

‘In the Highlands?’

‘It destroyed the hotel on the coast, and one of the Singhalese chefs who survived got my job. I had to go back to the north. And from there I watched how both the LTTE and government used all the world’s relief supplies to advance their own political aims. It was then that I knew this wasn’t the Sri Lanka I’d wanted to return to.’ He was nibbling one of the balls now too, and put it back on his plate. ‘And won’t be for a long time.’

‘But the tsunami was not that long ago.’

‘A little more than three years.’

‘So how come you speak such good German?’

Maravan shrugged. ‘We’ve learnt to adapt. This includes learning languages.’ After a brief pause he uttered the classic example of Swiss dialect: ‘Chuchichäschtli.’

Andrea laughed. ‘So why Switzerland?’

‘There were many Swiss people in the Ayurveda resorts in Kerala and in the hotels in Sri Lanka. I always found them friendly.’

‘Here too?’

Maravan thought about it. ‘Here Tamils are treated better than back home. There’s almost 45,000 of us over here. Tea?’

‘Why not?’

He removed the dirty crockery.

‘Do you mind me just sitting here and being waited on?’

‘It’s your day off,’ he replied, dashing into the kitchen.

A short while later he returned with a tray carrying a tea service. ‘White tea. Made with the silver tips of tea leaves from the Highlands near Dimbula,’ he explained, going back into the kitchen and bringing out a plate of sweetmeats for each of them. An ice lolly with sprinkles of green, surrounded by small asparagus with tips a toxic shade of green and dark-red, heart-shaped biscuits.

‘I don’t think I can eat any more.’

‘You can always eat sweetmeats.’

He was right. The lolly tasted of liquorice, pistachios and honey, like something you might find at a funfair. The asparagus could be eaten like jelly babies and had an intense flavour of – asparagus. The hearts were sweet and spicy, with the aroma of an Indian market, and tasted – she could find no better word to describe it – frivolous.

All of a sudden she was aware of the silence that had descended on the room. The wind had also stopped blowing sheets of rain against the window. Something made her say, ‘Would you show me some photos of your family?’

Without saying a word, Maravan stood up, helped her to her feet, and took her into his bedroom, to the wall with the photographs.

‘My brothers and sisters and some of their children. My parents – they died in 1983, their car was set on fire.’

‘Why?’

‘Because they were Tamils.’

Andrea put her hand on his shoulder and said nothing.

‘And the old lady is Na…’

‘Nangay.’

‘She looks like a wise woman.’

‘She is.’

Another silence. Andrea’s gaze wandered to the window. In the weak light that seeped out from the bedroom into the darkness, she could see snowflakes dancing. ‘It’s snowing.’

Maravan glanced at the window and then drew the curtains. He looked at her uncertainly as he stood there.

Andrea felt full and satisfied. And yet there was still a tiny hunger niggling away at her. Only now did she realize what it was she was after.

She went up to him, took his head between her hands and kissed him on the mouth.