The Birdwoman's Palate

by Laksmi Pamuntjak

  I still can’t imagine such a place.

  That fiendish es kacang: I never thought it would taste exactly how Mr. Zachri described it, just hours before his final breath.

  Chocolate diamonds. Holy fuck.

  It isn’t too hard to imagine one Zachri Musa sitting in a corner of this restaurant from week to week, sometimes day to day, year after year, enjoying a plate of pempek and a bowl of es kacang. To him they must taste of what folks mean by “heaven on earth.”

  The next morning, I hear that the mean nurse has been found out. She received a bribe from Mr. Zachri Musa—a whopping 500,000 rupiah—for falsifying his diagnosis to make it look like avian flu.

  “Mr. Zachri asked me to do it,” the nurse said in her defense. “It was so he wouldn’t have to pay for his treatment. He was tired of living anyway.”

  17

  HEAVENLY CURRY

  Angel: All right, let’s see here. Your name is Aruna, and you’re thirty-five.

  Me: Correct.

  Angel: My name is Nigella.

  Me: All right.

  Angel: You may address me as Goddess.

  Me: All right.

  Angel: “All right, O Goddess.”

  Me: All right, O Goddess.

  Angel: You know I’m not God, right?

  Me: Yes.

  Angel: Yes, what?

  Me: Yes, O Goddess. I know you’re not God . . . O Goddess.

  Angel: So you know the final decision is out of my hands.

  Me: Yes, I do, O Goddess.

  Angel: Whether someone should go to heaven or hell is no easy matter. The criteria are very fluid.

  Me: (Silence)

  Angel: And only God has the authority to guarantee anything.

  Me: Yes, O Goddess.

  Angel: But this time, God is genuinely baffled. So I’ve been given the task of interviewing you. Usually, God doesn’t need my help. Unlike mortals, he doesn’t need judges, mediators, investigation committees, or selection panels. But yours is an interesting case. First of all, I’d like to ask: Do you know what your crimes are?

  Me: Yes and no, O Goddess.

  Angel: What do you think they are, in your opinion?

  Me: I know I wasn’t at my father’s side when he breathed his last. I rarely look in on my widowed mother. I enjoy being mean to my friends and co-workers because when it comes down to it, I don’t like people. Sometimes I’m even mean to other people’s cats because I love my cat best. I can cook, but I can’t bake cakes. Every time I take a flight or stay in a hotel, I swipe the forks and spoons. I’ve also been to a restaurant and kept quiet when they gave me the wrong check because they charged me a lot less. My job is to research birds, but I don’t like birds. I once slipped a Dulcolax into a friend’s drink in middle school because I didn’t want her to win the singing competition. I’m often jealous of my own best friends because one of them is an expert chef and the other is an expert writer, thinker, and speaker. Both of them are also expert eaters, whereas I’m just an expert eater, period.

  Angel: You don’t remember what you did when you visited Bangka last year?

  Me: I . . . I went there to look around a village, O Goddess.

  Angel: And what was your intention in looking around that village?

  Me: To search for kulat mushrooms.

  Angel: And what are they—kulat mushrooms?

  Me: The kulat mushroom is one of the most delicious mushrooms in the world, O Goddess. And also one of the rarest. And most expensive. It is found only on the island of Bangka and grows only at the base of the pelawan tree. It’s so unique that many erroneously equate it with a truffle, even though true truffles only grow underground. But the kulat—let’s just call it a rare mushroom. Two pounds can command prices of up to 1.15 million rupiah.

  Angel: And how are they prepared?

  Me: Simple. Put them in a Bangkanese lempah stew seasoned with bumbu putih or bumbu merah—white mixed spice or red mixed spice—and some coconut cream, perhaps. Oh, and the chicken bones you use to make the stock should be free-range. That’s a must.

  Angel: Then you must know how important the kulat mushroom is to the people of Bangka.

  Me: And I’m always saying, instead of chopping down trees, razing forests, and opening gold and nickel mines, it would be better to plant as many pelawan trees as possible. It would guarantee the prosperity of Bangka’s people for decades—no, centuries. Not only that, to preserve the kulat mushroom is to preserve their traditions. The process of cleaning the mushrooms must be done manually and sometimes takes hours. You have to open each one, and the debris has to be scraped out very carefully. . .

  Angel: If you know all this, then why did you steal twelve sacks of kulat mushrooms from the village storehouses and bring them to Jakarta? How could you do such a thing?

  Me: (Silence)

  Angel: Did you hear what I asked you?

  Me: Yes, O Goddess.

  Angel: So, why did you steal twelve sacks—

  Me: I—I don’t know, O Goddess. The opportunity suddenly presented itself . . . and I . . . I couldn’t refuse.

  Angel: But stealing is stealing, and stealing food supplies is a transgression of the highest degree. Surely you know that from the Foundational Food Ethics classes you took in elementary and middle school. They’re a mandatory component of the national curriculum.

  Me: I do know, O Goddess. I have sinned.

  Angel: And your sins are multiplied because you stole from people who are utterly dependent on the food supplies you stole.

  Me: I know, O Goddess.

  Angel: Is there anything you have to say that might explain your egregious act?

  Me: But those mushrooms . . . they’re so delicious, O Goddess. I can’t stop eating them.

  Angel: (Silence)

  Me: I’m addicted, O Goddess. I don’t know how to explain it.

  Angel: And I probably wouldn’t understand if you did. I don’t know what it means to eat good food. I wouldn’t know whether it was “good.” I don’t know what it means to eat, much less to be addicted to anything.

  Me: I stole those kulat mushrooms because I couldn’t bear to part with their flavor. It’s beyond compare, O Goddess.

  Angel: Do you repent it, then—obeying your fleshly desires to the point of not caring whether other people would suffer?

  Me: I . . . I . . .

  Angel: It is with a heavy heart that I must submit my recommendation to God. I feel like there is no other way. You must go to hell.

  Me: I repent of causing other people to suffer, O Goddess.

  Angel: Well, surrender all your worldly possessions. Your time has come.

  Me: It was a pleasure to meet you, O Goddess, O Goddess Nigella. Before I sinned and had to go to hell, I must tell you I always watched your cooking show on TV. My friend positively worships you—he’s . . . he’s the expert chef.

  Angel: Believe me. When you’re in hell, you’ll understand how much better it is to be consumed by fire for eternity than to be an angel. Alive, yet unable to feel.

  There are always cities that inhabit our imaginations long before we visit them. Medan is one of them—every time I hear “Medan,” I immediately think: Commerce.

  The word “Medan” is practically synonymous with money and trade, buying and selling, bargaining and haggling, duplicity and deception, cunning fraud, consumerism, market power, chaos, violence, traffic, pollution, the law of the jungle. It’s a virtual embodiment of every unsavory thing we know about politics and capitalism: dirty politics, pork-barrel politics, the politics of survival, hired thugs. Nothing is pretty and nothing comes free in Medan. Everything is brutal and ugly.

  But these days the impression that has attached itself to the city is that of a food paradise. And if someone from Medan recommends eating at this place or that, I take their word for it. Who knows why, but their palates seem to be accustomed to various options in abundance, all more or less above average. As a result they have to be much more selective when d
eciding which is the choicest.

  Bono, who has many Medanese friends, has made a list, as usual. Sitting between me and Nadezhda on the plane ride over, and during the entire taxi ride to the hotel, he’s been talking nonstop about that list, that catalogue of Medan’s culinary delights. Kari Bihun, “Chicken” Bakmi, Nasi Campur, “Crack of Dawn” Kwetiau, “Crack of Dawn” Bihun Bebek, Sangsang, all the crazy assorted noodles they sell on Jalan Selat Panjang.

  “Why don’t we go to Jalan Selat Panjang and get something to eat?”

  Never mind that it’s 11:00 p.m. and I’m completely pooped.

  “You two go ahead,” I say to Bono and Nadezhda as I drag my suitcase to the elevator, room key in hand. “I’m going to crash.”

  But as it turns out, I don’t. Too accustomed to having Nadezhda around, she who so commands a room, I feel lonely and sad. For some reason, the space feels too large.

  I feel like a drink.

  There are only two guests at the hotel bar: men. One a foreigner. One a local.

  I don’t care that I’m a woman or that I’m by myself. Medan doesn’t give a damn. It’s seen too much.

  I order a Campari Orange, my longtime favorite aperitif. Sweet, elegant, safe.

  I spend a long time staring at the giant television screens on either side of the bar. Nadezhda would refuse to drink in a place like this. Or if she didn’t refuse, she’d grumble, “Why are people so dumb? Why drag yourself to a restaurant to do something you can do in your own home?”

  And if we reminded her, saying, “But this is a bar, baby, not a restaurant, and people often go to a bar for the express purpose of, say, watching a soccer match with other people—or badminton, or tennis, or whatever—and drinking at the same time,” she would call into question the entire premise behind people’s obsessions with sports and quote some obscure Italian or German intellectual about the absurdity of group sports and what makes them so ridiculously addictive.

  Basically, she’d opine, the obsession with such physical competition produces nothing but mindless chitchat about sports. In other words, something shallow, superficial, almost akin to a parody of a political discussion: what strategy Team A or Athlete B should have put into play and what they did wrong, what happened versus what should have happened. But, more than that, this shallow and superficial thing would make its discussants feel powerful, incisive, verbally aggressive, as if they were the ones in competition. In short, they themselves would be part of this larger competitive spirit, which requires an outlet for its release.

  But I know that all this isn’t the main reason for Nadezhda’s hatred of restaurants that have television screens. I’m certain the main issue actually has to do with aesthetics. In this matter, she can be positively fascist. It’s like she can’t tolerate in the least anything she considers gaudy, or ugly, or mass-produced, or kitsch. And yet at the same time, she never treats other people badly, nor does she humiliate them. How can two such opposing attitudes coexist within one person?

  Farish approaches my table with his glass of beer and sits beside me, and for some reason I’m not that surprised. Everything about him tonight makes him look handsome. His cool blue-collared shirt. His curly hair, which he wears a little long. The color of his skin in the dim light. His air of spontaneity.

  I wake up around six with a startle. Nadezhda’s already up. Less than two and a half hours ago, when I came back to the room, she’d already fallen asleep—sprawled on the bed on top of the covers. She’s still wearing the same clothes. She’s still wearing the same makeup. Clearly, after wandering off in search of food, she and Bono went out drinking, too.

  “So, where’d you go last night?”

  “Nowhere. I was just downstairs.”

  “Seriously?”

  “I swear!”

  “By ‘downstairs,’ you mean . . .”

  “The bar. Where else?”

  “Why didn’t you ask me to come along? Were you alone?”

  “Nah,” I say hesitantly. “I was . . . well, I was with Farish.”

  She keeps her thoughts to herself, but her eyes are wide. And then it comes out: “Farish!”

  I feel a pinch of annoyance. Am I supposed to feel guilty? Even though my accuser has made a profession of hooking up here, there, and everywhere on different continents without ever feeling the need to explain herself.

  At that moment I really dislike Nadezhda, with her beautiful, accusatory eyes and her slightly aquiline nose—Nadezhda who looks lovely even at this ungodly hour, though her hair is a mess and her makeup is smudged. I’m not your rival. I—the one who’s always giving, practicing self-control, letting things go. In no way, at no time have I ever been your rival.

  “Yes,” I say irritably. “Farish. Who are you, the moral police?”

  Something tenses in Nadezhda’s expression. Her eyes are cold. Five minutes later, or thereabouts, I find myself absurdly trying to apologize.

  “It’s okay,” she says, lying back down. “All forgotten.”

  It’s hard to tell who’s won—me, with my oversensitivity, or her, with her refusal to deal with the fallout from a situation she’s created and by making the wronged feel bad.

  Only two hours later, once we’re all crammed in the car OneWorld has hired for our use, do I realize that Nadezhda wasn’t trying to accuse me of having sex. She was just a little vexed, and for good reason: What happened? How could Farish Chaniago and Aruna Rai sit together in the same place for an extended period of time, alone, and not tear each other apart?

  You tell me.

  The annoying truth is that seeing Farish again has unhinged me. Since I met him in the lobby, my tongue has gone dry, as if we did something indecent the night before. Even though we didn’t sleep together, there were moments during our conversation at the bar when I was dying to see the body beneath the blue-collared shirt.

  Bono seems ignorant of it all. Typical chef. Typical man, for that matter! Just look at him: he’s still reading off restaurant names from that sacred list of his, as if uttering them one by one will make him feel like he’s been to them already. Still, I’m secretly relieved. It means Nadezhda hasn’t mentioned the matter of my returning to the room so late.

  And how about the princess herself? Is there any way of knowing? Look at that flawless face, the tip of its nose pressed lightly against the car window, as if she doesn’t care about how the smog and scorching sun will distort her profile. (Because they won’t.) Is there any way of knowing what’s going on inside her ridiculously fine-formed head?

  There are those who get and those who give. There are those who eat in the morning and those who think about the morning.

  Of the four of us, Nadezhda is the only one who always thinks up a reason for not eating breakfast. We heard her theory on the subject in Palembang the other day. Thus, no one forces her to join us in ordering something at the crowded restaurant we go to. Especially since they only serve one dish: Medanese soto—Soto Medan.

  Here, old, young, poor, rich, Malay, Chinese, Bataknese, Javanese, Indian, pure Minangkabau (Farish), Balinese-Minangkabau (me), Chinese-Surabayan-Madurese (Bono), and French-Sundanese-Acehnese (Nadezhda) are united. People come on motorbikes and motorized becaks, by car and on foot, alone and in packs.

  To the right of the entrance, a tall man behind a glass partition chops up meat and gizzards and puts them into large bowls. Behind him a woman with a cheerful face and a head scarf stirs the soto broth before ladling it into serving bowls. Meanwhile, a potbellied man scoops rice from a large tray onto orange melamine plates.

  To the left of the entrance, a skinny man stands facing a table and wall made filthy by flecks of sweet soy sauce. He can’t be more than fifty but moves like someone twice his age. Two enormous drums of sambal kecap, almost filled to overflowing, stand side by side along the wall. Next to them are rows of boxes and plates filled with Perkedel Kentang, a type of potato fritter, to be served to each guest.

  The man stands there, humped, silent, looking
dejected. But such is the fate of a soy-sauce station manager: his duty from dawn to dusk consists entirely of making sambal kecap and plonking it into small bowls arranged in rows across a table.

  I feel bad for thinking this and therefore don’t say anything, but if you ask me the broth’s texture is neither here nor there, as if unsure whether it should be robust and full-bodied or colorless and light. The flavor of the spices, not to mention the aroma from the meat, fails to linger on the tongue, and the impression of overall dirtiness formed from the outset affects its taste.

  Even Bono is quiet. Usually he’s the one who feels compelled to defend restaurants that are liked by so many, even if their food is nothing special or tends toward the bad. His expression is that of a man wrestling with disappointment but too proud to show it.

  After we finish eating, we return to our car parked by the side of the road. I give Farish’s arm a deliberate poke. I don’t want my awkwardness to continue. The longer I let it go on, the harder it will be for me to return to how things were.

  “Hey,” I say.

  “Hey,” he replies.

  Is that a blush I see spreading across his cheeks?

  But that’s as far as my courage goes. I see Nadezhda glance briefly in our direction. Or maybe it’s just my imagination.

  In our respective confused states, Farish and I are almost oblivious to the fact that our two stowaways have conspired with the driver. He takes us to a fruit market. Nearby, on a street corner, is an eatery—one that has attained legendary status.

  Secretly, I’m relieved that I don’t have to make decisions—not about what to do with the bizarre avian flu cases and not about what kind of food is needed to erase the bitter taste of our first meal in this supposedly culinary city.

  It’s only ten o’clock, and almost all the tables in the place, no wider than the small porch at the entrance, are filled with customers. The husband and wife who own the restaurant are busy at their respective stations, and occasionally patrons throng them, wanting to settle their checks or watch them cook.