"Now, a few more words before we begin. This is how the evening works. Ha will kill the fish, clean it, examine it, and then he will tell me how many Sun, Moon, and Stars portions he has. He will have at least one of each. Sometimes he will have an extra Sun or Moon. But only sometimes, depending on the individual fish. The order always goes Sun, Moon, Stars. Those of you who are interested in a certain portion may bid using the slate paddles that Shantelle will provide. Please write your bid with the chalk she will give you, and hold it up. Write in large numerals please. Those of you who are not bidding are asked to remain silent. There is only one round of bidding per portion, which means it's blind bidding, understand? One bid only— except for the last portion, which I will auction off like a conventional live auction, in which bidders bid against each other. Once your bid is accepted, you make a credit card payment. No tipping or gratuity is necessary. As I said earlier, the billing to your card will be the same as any other billing here at the restaurant. It will not say Havana Room, or Shao-tzou fish, or anything else unusual. There's complete confidentiality."
She looked at Ha. He was stirring the water in the fish tank, and a tail slapped the surface. He withdrew his hand, folded back his white sleeve, then pulled from beneath the tank a wide rectangular screen attached to a handle. This he dropped into one end of the tank.
"Okay, what else?" continued Allison. "There will be no splitting of portions between people, and if the diner inexplicably decides not to eat his portion, or part of his portion, then it will be thrown away. The fish will be killed and prepared in front of you, gentlemen, cut sushi style. You may use your hands or a fork or chopsticks, but in any case we suggest that you try to consume the entire portion within thirty seconds or so, for maximum effect."
"What do we do after we eat the fish?"
"Good question. Shantelle?"
Shantelle had retreated to the dark back corner, and now she whisked off a heavy blanket, revealing a luxurious, wide-armed leather chair. This she pushed forward into the square of light.
"Before you eat your portion, or certainly just after, we advise that you quickly sit in this very comfortable chair. You will lose most muscle control, and if you are seated, you will not fall or injure yourself. As I said, the total effect lasts only five minutes or so." She looked at her watch. "Let's get started. First, though, does anyone want to see the fish?"
We obligingly crept forward from our chairs and peered in the murky tank to see a brownish fish about twenty inches long, boxy, and scaleless, with a blunted, indistinct face. Its eyes were set high, and seemed oddly intelligent. The body of the fish was unappetizingly soft, its skin gluey, its dorsal fin and tail shredded. Not a fish built for speed or beauty, a bottom-feeder, a garbage fish. It lazily circled the perimeter of the tank, reversing direction, idling— a fish, I mused, without a country or an ocean or a future.
"Doesn't look like much," the fellow next to me whispered.
Back in our chairs, we watched Ha move the screen gently toward the other end of the tank, trapping the fish against its glass wall. There was a splash of water as the fish fought its imprisonment. Keeping pressure on the screen, Ha lifted a long gleaming pick and placed it above the fish. We waited.
"Must be just right," Ha muttered.
He stared into the water, and we saw him take a breath, hold it, then plunge the pick downward. Instantly he let go of the screen and lifted the pick and the wriggling, impaled fish into the air. The pick had gone straight down into the fish's nose, through its mouth, and out the bottom side. Ha inspected the fish. "Very healthy," he noted.
He nailed the fish onto his board, held its back with his other hand, drew a short knife, and quickly severed the fish's spinal column. "Now," he announced with the affability of a television show gourmet, "we make very good Shao-tzou fish."
He bent at the knees, hunched himself toward the fish. "First we see what you eat." He sliced open the belly and picked through some greenish-black gunk. "Maybe some crab, some clam. In China bad boy in my village feed cat meat sometime, when too many cat in the town you know. Very ugly fish. In China they call this fish 'river pig.' "
Working quickly, he removed the organs of the fish and dropped them into small blue ceramic bowls. Then he beheaded the fish, cut out the brain, and deposited it into another bowl. After each operation he dropped his knife into a wide bucket on the floor and withdrew from his gleaming array another identical one, so that the fluids of one part of the fish did not touch any from the others. With the organs and brain segregated, he dropped the remains of the head into another bucket, lifted up his board, wiped it, dropped the towel in the bucket, then flipped over the board. Now he quickly skinned the fish and filleted it.
Meanwhile Shantelle was passing through the room with sets of slate paddles and chalk. She handed each man one and I could see that most, like me, were torn between our desire to study Shantelle and our fascination with Ha's activities. Paddle in hand, I watched him lift the fillets onto a new cutting board, whisk the skin and backbone into the bucket, then remove the old larger cutting board completely.
"How many, Ha?" came Allison's voice.
He bent forward to examine his fillets, made an adjusting trim on one— the fleck of flesh flying instantly into the bucket— then checked the organs in their separate bowls. "I have just one Sun, just one Moon, and always just one Stars," he announced.
"Okay, this is the usual number. Those of you bidding on the Sun portion, please write down your sums," Allison instructed. "Remember, the Sun is a portion that involves great heat." She looked about the room. The men appeared tentative, not sure of what to do. But I saw several men leaning over their paddles.
"Please lift your bids… I see $75, that will not do, I see $100, that won't either, $50, you should be ashamed of yourself, sir, this fish came from the other side of the world, I see $250, yes, that's better, I'm ignoring the lesser bids, I see— you may drop your $100 bid, sir— I see $300, I see $600, he's the most motivated, clearly, $600, this will be the cheapest portion of the evening I guarantee you, $600, again, and that's it. Sold to the man in the green tie."
Instantly Shantelle was next to him, a balding man of about forty-five, indeed wearing a green tie, and he gave her a credit card.
"Please come forward."
Allison received him, and he stood before us, a bit embarrassed to be the first one, perhaps afraid to be revealed as a fool before the room. Shantelle returned with the credit card slip and a pen. She smiled helpfully as he signed. Ha, meanwhile, was preparing the portion of Shao-tzou sushi, his fingers patting and rolling rice and seaweed and tucking until the tiny delicacy was done.
"Do I get soy sauce?" the man joked.
"I'm afraid not."
"Okay, here I go." He picked up his sushi, held it before his mouth, looked at Ha, looked at Allison, then gently took it into his mouth. He chewed slowly and swallowed.
"How's it taste?" someone called.
"That is rather good," he said.
"Please," said Allison, leading him by the hand to the chair.
We studied him.
"I feel okay," he announced. "I feel really pretty normal."
Shantelle had collected the slate paddles from the unsuccessful bidders, erased them, and given them back.
"I'm— okay, okay— there… it's—" The first winning bidder gripped the arm of his chair, then tipped his head back. His fingers relaxed, his feet slipped forward, and he eased into the comfortable leather, his eyes still open but blank. He breathed deeply through his nose, as though appreciating a fine wine. Then his mouth sagged open, his eyelids heavy. His eyes fluttered closed, his face still tranquil, attentive to some far pleasure, as if he were listening to exquisitely drifting jazz.
"Is he sick?" asked a worried voice.
Allison held up a hand. "Wait."
The man in the green tie slackened further, his head lolling softly on his shoulder. The muscles around his eyes twitched, as did his lips. These mov
ements suggested surprise and deep internal experience, the pleasurable awareness of light across a sleeping form. His face seemed to set itself within a coma of concentration, eager to receive as much sensation as possible. The fingers on both his hands quivered as if it was all too unbearably good, and he moaned indistinctly, the pleasure forcing its release through his mouth.
"For God's sake!" one of the men called. "Is he dying?"
The room remained hushed, the men looking back and forth at one another, uncertain whether to be worried or outraged or entertained. Allison followed her watch closely.
"This man looks ill!" came a protest. "I insist you call—!"
Allison held up a calm finger, following her watch. "One of the training elements for a Shao-tzou chef is to estimate body weight and size the portion accordingly. Mr. Ha is an artist, gentlemen, not a murderer. Please, have a little faith."
Half a minute more went by agonizingly, then the intensity of the man's pleasure began to subside, and we saw the gradual reassertion of consciousness. He blinked, lifted his head, coughed, focused, lost focus, blinked again, munched his mouth dryly, then sat up in his chair, recognizing the room and the rest of us.
"Oh," he said in a low, thoughtful voice. He sighed a noise of contentment. Then he noticed the expectant eyes upon him and nodded. "Yeah, it was unbelievable…"
He started to stand.
"Just wait a minute or so, sir," said Allison, gently pushing him back down in the chair. "Just let your body figure it all out."
He looked up at Allison and smiled coyly. "Can we do it again?"
"No," Allison said, rejecting his innuendo.
"Wait, you don't understand," he protested. "Just tell me what to pay! I'm good for it." Despite Allison's insistence, he rose unsteadily, but his halting steps seemed caused by his amazement as much as by any infirmity.
He was pacified by Shantelle and escorted to his seat.
"We have two more pieces of Shao-tzou fish," Allison announced. "Next we have the piece of Moon, with the blade wipe coming from the liver. Write your bids, please. Let me remind you that the winning bid in the last round was a mere $600."
This time more men hunched over their slates and I could see a few of them look up, study the other men, then erase whatever had been on the slate and write another figure.
"Bids please," Allison said loudly. "Get the paddles up. Here we go. I see $800, $900, $2,000, $1,000 is it? Yes, very nice, the highest so far is $2,000, please, sir, don't change your bid, ah! $3,316, quite an odd bid, I think we have a winner at $3,316."
This time a younger, heavyset man in a blazer came forward, sporty and confident. He nodded back to the men, stepped forward to Ha, grabbed the piece of sushi, pivoted, faced us, and pushed the whole thing in his mouth.
"No hesitation there," Allison narrated.
He swallowed and stepped forward to the chair.
"Do you have anything to say to us?" Allison inquired. "Any chit or chat?"
"No," he said quietly.
He closed his eyes and tilted his head back. Allison stepped toward him, adjusted his head forward and sideways, then turned to the group. "What you're seeing here is art, gentleman. Mr. Ha's art. The poison in the Shao-tzou is so deadly that even a sliver more of the flesh or an accidentally large wipe through the organ— in this case the liver— would kill. But Mr. Ha is a master."
Ha nodded ever so subtly, then inspected one of his knives. Meanwhile the heavyset man in the chair slumped to one side, face slack, his mouth almost closed, a thin line of saliva dripping down one side of his chin. His lips trembled softly, as if privately repeating a liturgy of devotion. This time the group watched with less trepidation. Several men, I saw, timed the process themselves, looking up at the man in the chair and then at their watches. He continued his private prayer, which deteriorated into speechless puffs, a panting of gratification that became winded breathing even as his eyebrows arched upward in appreciation. We were transfixed. No one doubted his transport to realms of unknown sweetness.
And then, just as it crested, that sweetness fell back, fell away, and his legs stilled and his eyebrows dropped. He began to come out of it. He began to remember that he was alive, and opened his eyes in full consciousness, respiration almost normal, his color good.
"Well?" inquired Allison, on behalf of the rest of us.
"Oh God, the light just came up like a giant moon…" He turned toward Ha and shot out his arm. "You are a rock star, man!" He rose to his feet, pumped the air once or twice, then fell back heavily. "All the time I'm seeing the surface of death, man, the rolling surface of bones or the moon or something, just beaming this white death light that feels so good and I can't move, man."
He started to stand again, fell back into his seat, then stood successfully. He staggered toward Ha. "Hey man, just make me a little one of those, just take some of that stuff you threw away in the bucket, look, look! You got plenty of that brown stuff to wipe on there—"
"Excuse me, excuse me!" cried Ha. He brandished the knife. "No, no! You cannot have this fish!"
The young man held up his hands, backed away. "Okay! Right. Sorry. I just, let me just congratulate you, you are the artist, the—"
"Bids please, gentlemen," Allison called over him. "We have just one portion left, the Stars. The winning bid last time was thirty-three hundred and something dollars. One more portion left, everyone, just one, and it may be weeks again, months even, before we can find another Shao-tzou."
Allison reminded the men that it was open bidding, multiple bids accepted, highest bid wins. "Just like Sotheby's," she added. The bids began at $3,400 and three rounds later reached $6,050, two men bidding against each other from either side of the room. The counterbid increments dropped from five hundred dollars to one hundred to fifty until one of the men shook his head in disgust at a bid of $6,750 and gave up. The successful bidder dropped heavily into the chair, loosened his necktie, swigged a glass of water, checked his watch, which appeared to have cost only a little less than his piece of Chinese sushi, and tossed back the morsel.
"Here we go," he said, looking pleased with himself for displaying that he could spend almost seven thousand dollars for a bite of poisonous fish. I didn't like him, I confess, irritated that he was about to have a singular, expensive pleasure and I was not.
Almost a minute went by and the Stars winner looked at Allison in exasperation. "Nothing's happening here."
"Just wait," she said.
"I am. I did wait. I feel fine."
"Just a minute or so," Allison said.
We waited.
"It's a dud," the winner said. "I want my money back."
"Sometimes if you've had a heavy dinner, then—"
But she didn't need to finish. The Stars winner collapsed backward as if he'd caught a pillow filled with sand. His arms retained a sort of sleep-walker's rigidity. The effect of his portion seemed harsher, arriving not only late and not gradually but with a punitive force. Of the three men, this last one appeared to be the closest to pain. His feet paddled a bit, as if he was suffering in silence.
A minute went by; the man displayed none of the behaviors the first two men had showed, and I wondered if he was truly enjoying the experience. Then it seemed too much time had gone by. Allison checked her watch, the smile on her lips a little frozen, a little worried, I thought, and I caught her glancing quickly at Ha, who received her anxiety with a slow, reassuring blink. At that same moment the man's body lengthened rigidly in the chair, legs straight, arms at his side, his nervous system conducting a lightning bolt of ecstasy, and he lifted his face upward at some unseen spectacle and completely opened his mouth, issuing a kind of silent scream— most unnerving. And then the scream came— a lung-loud hollering that filled the room, a man yelling across a canyon, summoning all of nature's attention, calling the gods down from the sky.
"Holy fuck," another man whispered, weirded out.
At that, the man in the chair dropped silent and seized up int
o the fetal position, having birthed his experience out of himself, and began to wake groggily, apparently exhausted. Allison's posture softened and I saw her exhale.
"It wasn't stars," the man said, opening his eyes.
"No?" Allison came over to be sure he stayed in his seat.
"It was fireworks! Touching my face! I could feel them burning against my face. Three of them went right through me." He lifted his hands and examined his fingers, as if they might have been singed as well. "Swear to God. Burning. Right through me. Little cinders, sparks. One big one went right in my mouth and down through me, right out of my asshole." He addressed the other men. "I'm lying there, my body is dead and I can see these sparks, red little comets coming at me and going right through me. I'll never forget that. I mean, I've done acid and I've done lots of stuff, you know, but nothing like that."
The Havana Room Page 26