The Birdwoman's Palate

by Laksmi Pamuntjak

  I never thought Bono and Nadezhda would be this upset about the prospect of leaving.

  “But, Run,” says Bono, “there are so many restaurants we still have to try . . . if we want to go to that famous bihun bebek place we have to go early in the day. The same goes for the Medan-style Kwetiau Goreng place, too. And then there’s that barbecued pork restaurant we just have to visit—they’re usually completely sold out by noon. Not to mention the restaurants all along Jalan Selat Panjang. We didn’t get a chance to sample anything last night except for that incredible nasi campur. I can’t leave Medan without trying all the different kinds of bakmi.”

  “Excuse me,” Nadezhda says irritably. “I was hoping to go to Lake Toba while you two were busy at the hospital. I’d hoped to experience more than just restaurants . . . I wanted to check out all the nooks and crannies, to see how the locals themselves cook, the spices they use, their views on the staple foods of their surroundings.”

  “I wanted to do all that, too, Nadz,” I say, my sadness genuine. “But my work is the only reason we’re here, after all.”

  Nadezhda doesn’t seem to hear me. “A friend was telling me about Naniura—Lake Toba’s version of ceviche. It sounds like an interesting dish—more than just a traditional food unwittingly perceived as ‘modern’ on the other side of the world. It also has an important social function. In fact, it plays an important part in traditional ceremonies, like Maksuba cakes do in Palembang—”

  Farish interrupts. “Actually, there’s nothing forcing us to go back.” His tone is light, casual. And I like that he’s looking at me, not at Nadezhda. “Let’s just stay in Medan another day. Go to Lake Toba. Or to Pematangsiantar for some fried paddy squab. And when we’re done, let’s just keep going anyway and wander around Banda Aceh, Pontianak, Singkawang, and Mataram. We have an eating agenda, don’t we? And we can’t let your friends down after they’ve come all this way.”

  The possibility never even crossed my mind. But it’s true that there’s nothing in my contract with SoWeFit that says I have to put an end to anything as long as I don’t claim any expenses once the project has been discontinued—especially in this case, since SoWeFit was the party who hired me and drew up the terms of my employment. As a consultant who gets paid by the day, one might say that I’m the one who’s losing out.

  I don’t know the details of Farish’s terms of employment. He probably has a lot of days left on his current contract with OneWorld, and as such is still getting his pay for this project from OneWorld, not SoWeFit. But because the project is being cut short, it might work out if he takes a few days of impromptu leave before returning to Jakarta. Anyway, his job is safe, as evidenced by him being so calm, and desirous, even, to speedily extricate himself from the project.

  The prospect of continuing our eating mission without being burdened by work makes me feel relieved. There’s just one thing. I should hurry up and e-mail Talisa—ask her to forward a letter from me officially stating that I’ll compensate DOCIR for the full cost of all the flights they’ve already paid for from this point on. And I should send an e-mail to Diva, my supervisor at OneWorld, saying that I want to take a short leave of absence.

  Suddenly I realize there’s a good chance I’ll never work at DOCIR again—never have lunch with Irma, just the two of us, while we discuss the conflict between public professional roles and private life, or where to find the most delicious Bakso Lohwa in the Tangerang district or the most mouthwatering Sambal Kecombrang in Jakarta, or even being willing to make sacrifices for our work, despite how polluted it’s been by greedy hands.

  I ask Farish why he’s still proposing that we visit the hospital.

  “Idle curiosity can be useful,” he says.

  And what was it that made me say yes? When we arrive at the hospital, we don’t even try to meet with the people we should have met, those whose names are listed on the itinerary that Talisa put together a week ago. We’re not here to look for anything or see anyone. Maybe we’ve come for the sole purpose of honoring what we said we would do. We don’t want to betray ourselves.

  Funny that Nadezhda and Bono are dead set on coming with us. They seem to take our misfortune as a blow to them as well. Or else they feel responsible, too. Maybe. Or maybe they have nothing better to do.

  On the way to the hospital, which is some distance from the city center, we pass that famous Medanese institution, Kedai Durian Ucok. The driver immediately slows our car down and asks if we want to stop by. Durians are cheap right now because they’re in season, he says. It might be as low as 15,000 to 20,000 rupiah per fruit.

  From where I sit in the car, all I can see are piles of durians. They fill the little kiosk and the area around it. It’s unclear whether you’re supposed to just buy them and leave or if you can eat them there.

  I’m not a durian fanatic, but I’m also not a durian hater. Something in this riles Nadezhda. She accused me once of being abnormal. “A person can’t be neutral when it comes to durians, Aruna,” she said in an admonishing voice. But it’s clear to me that with regard to fruit, people like Nadezhda are no different from, say, Suharto or Bush. Either you’re with us or you’re against us. That’s how they see the world.

  “Or we could stop here on the way back from the hospital,” the driver suggests, confused by our lack of response. “If you don’t know how to choose a good one, the staff can help you. Just tell them if you like your durians sweet-sweet or bittersweet. They have all kinds.”

  Now why is Bono suddenly so quiet? Isn’t this place also on his sacred list?

  Just imagine. What justice there would be in the world if we discovered a secret shed behind this hospital filled with actors who’ve been paid by this company or that to pretend they were on their deathbeds infected with avian flu! What sweet revenge if I could interview them one by one and upload the videos to YouTube!

  And with that, the web of collusion that surrounds the politics of vaccine production would be swept away, all thanks to me—that’s right, me—a tiny cog in the larger system that they failed to take into account.

  But no chance of that. Instead, the hospital is exemplary for a medical institution outside the capital. It’s almost sickeningly well organized and well run. When I arrive at the isolation room dedicated to infectious diseases, I’m both annoyed and relieved to see that it’s locked tight and that the security guard pacing back and forth in front of it asks us what we’re doing there.

  Somehow, I feel like something’s been salvaged from this world of mine as it falls apart.

  20

  SELAT PANJANG

  In my dream I see a young woman behind a bar. The bar is inside an exclusive club for rich men. The woman is pretty, but not too pretty; sexy, but not too sexy; and in her eyes there is sadness, or terror—sometimes it’s hard to tell where one begins and the other ends.

  From her brief conversation with the bartender, I learn a number of things about her. She’s from Yogyakarta. She’s the oldest daughter of five siblings. She’s come to Jakarta to earn money and help her family support her younger siblings, three of them still in school. And she’s just come down from one of the club’s rooms—“Mr. R. F.’s,” she says, her cheeks suddenly a bright red—carrying dirty dishes and glasses.

  The bartender appears to be interested in the woman without really paying any attention to her. Perhaps, like many men, he’s too used to looking without ever really seeing. “Oh, Mr. R. F.,” he says lightly. “He’s been coming here for a long time. He’s a bit of a mystery—not like the others. But he’s polite. And not stingy.”

  The woman looks down at the ground, yet her eyes are shining. Then she hurries away and heads toward the kitchen. But before she gets there, she stops at a deserted, partially enclosed spot where there used to be a cash register. After glancing to the right and to the left to make sure that she hasn’t been followed, she slowly puts down the tray. Then, with trembling hands, she picks up one of the dirty glasses and raises it to her lips. There are
still one or two drops left, whiskey by the look of it, but she doesn’t seem to care what it is—she sucks it down. I see her eyes narrow, her tongue slowly dancing on the rim of the glass. Sometimes it moves; sometimes it stops. Sometimes she kisses, licks, and sucks on it as she would a lover’s lips. Every now and then, I see her moan.

  I’m so stunned that I almost don’t see the bartender appear behind her. Unexpectedly, he puts his arms around her waist.

  “So . . . ,” says the bartender. “You’re imagining you’re kissing him, are you?”

  The woman tries to free herself. But he’s too strong.

  “It’s a secret, eh? This unrequited love?”

  Again, she gives no answer.

  “Let me guess. He’s never asked you to sleep with him, but you know he sleeps with other women. Meanwhile, here you are, lusting after him. So you’re devouring that glass of his instead.”

  Her face is pale.

  “How about this? I’ll help you keep your secret. But you have to sleep with me. I guarantee you’ll be hooked.”

  He tightens his hold around her waist. His hands begin to grope at her firm, full breasts.

  Suddenly the glass comes down and puts a hole in the bartender’s forehead. Blood sprays all over every surface, including the woman’s face and clothes, before he finally topples to the floor.

  Ten seconds pass, then twenty, before the woman calmly stoops down over the pool of blood and picks up what’s left of the glass.

  On the way back from the hospital, we stop at Jalan Selat Panjang. Night has fallen, the streets are bathed in light. Old buildings stand at the road’s entrance, shadowy and marvelous in the great auto repair garage of the present. The entire street, from start to end, is made up entirely of eateries—rows and rows of them.

  For a while, walking is akin to dreaming: the plumes of smoke and steam from barbecues and simmering vats of broth that penetrate the luminescent shophouse lights; the mad rush of customers and food vendors calling out to one another; the booths crammed with hot-water thermoses and canned and bottled beverages; a lively assortment of vegetables, herbs, meats, and eggs, of dumplings, buns, and noodles, of sweets of every kind. Magazine and pirated DVD hawkers scurry in and out of restaurants; they are joined by swarms of small children selling durian pancakes. In the street, the motorcycles and motorized becaks jostle for space with vendors and pedestrians, leaving them in constellations of dust.

  Nadezhda speaks, a dazed look on her face. “Joseph Conrad once wrote about ‘inhabited desolation.’ But this is more like inhabited chaos.”

  For a while we just walk, not yet willing or able to decide where we want to eat. All smells, sounds, and colors offer themselves up for contemplation and consideration.

  Bono stops at a bakpau stand a little farther away from the activity. “All right, cik! Give me five jumbo meat buns, five red-bean buns, six lotus-paste buns, and six pork buns.”

  Nadezhda snaps dozens of photos: the langsat yellow of the buildings in the lamplight; the faces that peep out from behind room windows on the upper floors of the shophouses; details of a restaurant’s wooden frame and antique doors. We stare at eels and fish, still thrashing around in their bowls, and live frogs in buckets on the floor, eyes bulging in terror.

  Farish. Where is he? Ah, over there, busy chatting on his phone and every once in a while drawing near a glass display case of food to study its contents, half amazed, half bewildered.

  We end up eating at two places in succession: a restaurant specializing in Hainanese chicken rice, even though it’s Bono’s and Nadezhda’s second time there, and a restaurant that serves Hokkien noodles. As with the curry paradise of that morning, we agree unanimously that the sensations we experience in both places transcend language.

  “If it goes on like this,” says Bono, gazing deep into the fishballs, prawns, wontons, and ground-meat mixture garnishing his Hokkien noodles, “wouldn’t it all become boring? Even perfection gets dull after a while, doesn’t it?”

  “Not everyone is as excitable as we are,” says Nadezhda. “We’re like this because we think about what to eat. To us it’s not just food. Whereas most of the people here—I mean, just look at them. They love what they’re eating, sure. But it’s not an . . . oh, I don’t know. It’s not an experience to them.”

  Nadezhda’s right. In Jakarta it’s not like a good Ketoprak here or Asinan there leaves us breathless anymore. For us, they’ve become the norm. And with the formation of a norm, the subject becomes hardened. Today we are at once happy and shaken, because experience has just demonstrated that we have yet to attain the furthest limits of knowledge. Or more precisely, experience has shown us such limits don’t exist.

  Feeling the uncomfortable ache of my belt digging into my waist, I lean back in my chair and stare at the ceiling fan. Irma’s betrayal still plagues my mind. When will she stop playing this game of hide-and-seek?

  Faintly, I hear Bono urging us to go to a place that allegedly serves the city’s best Tiong Sim noodles. “If we don’t eat there, we haven’t been to Medan,” he tells us with a sense of ownership that is rather touching.

  “Seems like everything around here is ‘the best,’ Bon,” Nadezhda chuckles.

  Wordlessly, Bono turns and leads the way along Jalan Selat Panjang.

  There are rare moments when the most unimaginable things happen and we stop to think, Wait. I’ve seen this before. In a dream, maybe. Or in a past life. And for a fleeting second, we let ourselves believe that these moments, encased in a sense of familiarity, are pregnant with meaning.

  When I stumble across Leon Basri seated at a restaurant along Jalan Selat Panjang, I slow to a halt. My mind flickers to my dream of him at the strange bar named Dominica, ordering the cocktail that convinced me he was my true intended. It seemed nothing but a screwed up idea at the time—just me willing myself to find meaning in a frivolous dream. But now, I’m seeing the man himself right before my eyes. But he’s not sitting with a woman, not downing his preferred alcoholic beverage. He’s digging into a bowl of noodles.

  The first thing I feel isn’t sadness, or anger, or even heartache. What I’m thinking is: So this is the face of my executioner. So this is the face of death.

  It turns out my downfall has long since been planned. The logic is clear: to make sure that people at the Ministry—including the consultants—don’t get suspicious. I’ve been sent here on an investigation, under close surveillance. They made sure not to send me into the field with just anyone. They sent me with a colleague from the same consulting firm, a colleague who has an excellent relationship with the NGO we’ve been working for, so that when the time came to kick me off the project, people wouldn’t chalk it up to bad blood between SoWeFit and OneWorld—wouldn’t start asking, “So what’s the deal there?” Once they saw how many questions my reports from the field were raising and how negative they were, Leon was dispatched into the field to replace me. As would happen in a military operation.

  But then I hear Farish’s voice in my ear. “Don’t worry. We’ll face this together.”

  In my mind, I experience three more revelations: (1) Only someone stupid would go to a marquee destination like Jalan Selat Panjang while on a secret mission, (2) it turns out Farish really is on my side, whatever his personal motives may be, and (3) Leon isn’t that fabulous-looking after all—and he’s scrawny and graceless, like someone who needs to eat more. And shifty-eyed. Like a rat. And look at the way he grips his fork and spoon—as if he were trying to scale a rope.

  Still, my heart is pounding.

  21

  THE ANIMAL-LOVER

  I often see myself in that room—black, rectangular, with arctic air-conditioning. In the middle of the room are a chair and table illuminated by a single light bulb. So far, in my dreams, my fate is always decided at that table: with a high school math exam, with an exam from my final year at university, with a qualifying exam for a scholarship.

  It always ends in failure. (Also from these dre
ams: After I screw up my high school exam and fail to get into university, I see myself selling siomay dumplings by the side of the road. After failing to graduate from university, I receive a reminder every morning when I wake up that I haven’t completed my studies and could go to jail for it. After I’m denied a scholarship, I flee to Thailand and become a plaything for white tourists in Phuket.)

  But today, something’s different. A middle-aged woman enters the room five minutes after I sit down. There are several sheets of paper in her hands, and she arranges them next to each other on the table in front of me. Without any pleasantries, much less a good morning, she says, “Today you will be taking the Life Values Examination. This exam consists entirely of one question. Eighty percent or above and you pass. Anything below eighty percent constitutes a fail.”

  I nod.

  “The main criterion: honesty. The second your brain tries to shy away from its first instinct, our sensors will pick it up. The answer will be considered a forfeit, and you will lose points. Understood?”

  I nod.

  “Because this is a new kind of exam, I’ve brought four examples of possible responses to the question you’ll be given so you can have some idea of what’s being asked of you. Please take a moment to study them.”

  1. List the first seven things that come to mind when you hear the word “poison.”

  Sample Response 1: arsenic, cyanide, belladonna, puffer fish, snake venom, Snow White’s poisoned apple, poison-tipped arrow.

  (Score awarded: 6/7)

  Sample Response 2: mercury, arsenic, cyanide, insecticide/pesticide, tetrodotoxin, polonium, botulinum.