The Birdwoman's Palate

by Laksmi Pamuntjak

  “To be honest,” she says, stroking the sophisticated pieces of equipment in the observation unit as if they’re her children, including a special fridge for storing cultures from patients before they’re sent to R&D. “I’m constantly worrying all this billion-dollar equipment will rust because it’s never been used. I keep asking the higher-ups why we don’t put it to use in other parts of the hospital. It’s a shame, don’t you think? It cost so much money. But they never listen to me. So there you have it—all because they had so much money, they didn’t know how else to spend it.”

  “Ma’am, you said the equipment is rarely used. So there aren’t many patients being treated here?”

  “‘Aren’t many’? More like practically none.”

  “Really? How many patients have there been this year?”

  “This year, none. Last year there were only two cases, and they were only suspected ones. Both of them were treated in the inpatient area, and their conditions were monitored. Once they were stable, they were free to go. They were here for four days at most.”

  Secretly, I’ve already made note of this information—it was written down on the whiteboard in the corridor:

  1. Date of admittance: 17 July 2011.

  Date of discharge: 21 July 2011.

  Status: Susp. H5N1.

  2. Date of admittance: 1 September 2011.

  Date of discharge: 4 September 2011.

  Status: Susp. H5N1.

  “Sometimes I get so bored supervising this annex. Especially since everything has to be kept confidential and doing anything requires permission and strict procedure. It feels like we’re wasting away here.”

  “But I heard there was a new case.”

  For a moment the woman looks confused. Then something seems to spring to mind. “I remember now. Yesterday two people from Jakarta came to visit, saying they were from the central branch of SoWeFit. They looked around, but only briefly. However, they did speak with the head of the hospital in the new wing for a long time. When they were gone, he called me into his office.

  “He began talking about how all the people who worked in this hospital were honest and professional and that there was no higher calling than to provide the best possible care for the sick. Everything else, especially anything to do with politics and business, we should avoid as much as possible, and that should be the case in all matters, no matter how tempted we might be to do otherwise. Integrity is more rare than knowledge, he said.

  “Then he got up from his seat and thanked me. But before I left his office, he whispered, ‘We don’t have any avian flu patients, right?’ ‘No, sir,’ I answered, and he shook his head again. ‘That’s what I thought,’ he said with a smile.”

  Amazing. Massive fail for Team Leon this time around.

  Because I’ve just obtained evidence of Leon’s rottenness, I almost forget that Farida is still with us when we leave the Leuser Annex and head down the corridor of the old hospital wing to the parking lot. She seems thrilled at being able to leave her post for a while.

  “This part of the hospital is actually very susceptible to flooding. When the tsunami happened, the water was almost seven feet high.” As she speaks, she points toward a grassy area that’s been turned into a cluster of pleasant public gardens.

  Before we go out to meet our car, which is picking us up outside the lobby, I turn and shake Farida’s hand again. She’s like an older version of the two nurses in the Lampisang health clinic: sweet-natured, generous, without any pretentions. She squeezes my hand in return. For a very long time.

  “Are you married, my dear?”

  For some reason I laugh. Everyone I know has stopped asking me that question or is tired of asking it.

  “Not yet, ma’am.”

  But Farida isn’t willing to let go of my hand just yet. Her expression turns serious. “Loving someone isn’t easy, dear,” she says. “Because loving someone means you have to be prepared to lose them. But it’s better to have loved than to never have loved at all.”

  I feel like I’ve heard someone else say those words. My mother, maybe, or a character in a film. But before I can recall whom, Farida says, “Today is my husband’s birthday. When the tsunami hit, he was on the beach with our youngest grandchild. If he were alive today, he would be sixty-five years old. I loved him very much.”

  29

  CREAM, OYSTERS, AND THAT FISH SCENT OF MINE

  In my dream I see Nadezhda at a very upscale restaurant in some European city. With her is a man of unlimited funds and means. Each dish is placed before them with great flourish and respect, with a different wine each time, accompanied by long, drawn-out oohs and aahs from Nadezhda and her dining companion, as if they’re being surprised every twenty minutes by some new, soul-stirring work of art.

  I don’t find it strange at all that Nadezhda looks a lot like Julia Roberts from My Best Friend’s Wedding. Long, disheveled locks; hands constantly in motion; an ample laugh bursting from her lips every now and then. Even her dining companion—who calls her Jules, Julia’s character in the movie—looks a lot like Rupert Everett.

  Suddenly Rupert tells Nadezhda—“Jules”—that there’s something she must do. He acts as if she’s committed some sin and wants her to repent.

  Indeed, Nadezhda-Jules has sinned: by being an inspector for that notoriously elitist restaurant handbook, the Michelin Guide.

  “What do you want me to do?” asks Nadezhda, half in tears.

  “I know how much pain it’ll cause you,” says Rupert, bringing his super-handsome face close to Nadezhda-Jules’s super-lovely one. “But I think it would be best for you to join Le Fooding.”

  “All right,” says Nadezhda-Jules, looking like she’s trying to be brave despite the spasms she feels in her chest. “But on one condition.”

  Rupert waits expectantly, eyes gleaming.

  “Help me steal Dermot from Cameron.”

  Dermot Mulroney, as we all know, is the actor who plays Jules’s friend in the film, and Cameron Diaz plays his fiancée, of whom Jules is crazy jealous.

  Rupert smiles. Then he kisses Nadezhda-Jules’s hand and immediately orders the most celebrated wine on the menu to mark the momentous occasion.

  When Nadezhda-Jules reports to the Le Fooding office the next day, she is immediately given an assignment. Her first task is to slip into a small village in the south of France. It doesn’t appear on Google Maps. There, she must look for any and all restaurants worthy of being included in the annual Le Fooding guide.

  “Remember, we are the antithesis of the Michelin Guide,” says the man briefing her. “We’re different, independent, down to earth.”

  When he says this, Nadezhda-Jules looks like she wants to protest: How can you be down to earth if you have a private plane? But she remembers, perhaps, that appearances aren’t always an accurate reflection of reality. Anyway, with that famous face—and wide mouth—of hers, she has to try extra hard not to seem like she’s used to being pampered and fussed over.

  After she lands safe and sound (that is, with limbs and head intact), Nadezhda-Jules wastes no time. With the help of the GPS on her wristwatch, which also functions as a camera and a knife, she immediately sets to work. So deeply in character is she that I’m positive she’s secretly regretting having such a well-known face. Though Nadezhda-Jules herself, as an observer of culinary affairs, doesn’t seem overly concerned that the inhabitants of Pezenas, Languedoc-Roussillon—with its total population of less than 2,600 people—will recognize her, I think of what Julia Roberts’s friend, Hugh Grant, might say at that very moment. Something like: “Remember, you’re the most famous woman in the world.”

  Yet, I know how Nadezhda-Jules thinks. To her, men are always wrong for some reason when it comes to assessing reality—especially when that reality involves rescuing famous women. Just look at how much effort Hugh put into protecting Julia from being targeted by the paparazzi in Notting Hill those many years ago. So I understand completely when Nadezhda-Jules decides to foll
ow the example of the very wise Ruth Reichl, who, when she first started her career as the restaurant critic for the New York Times, protected herself and her integrity by donning disguises.

  She’s just about to take a bite of dessert, a modest pear tart, when she’s suddenly set upon by a group of people and forced into a truck. I examine them closely. It turns out that they’re all internationally renowned restaurant critics—five men, one woman. The woman looks a bit sorry for Nadezhda-Jules, but she’s the only other woman in that truck; she’d be outnumbered from the get-go. I can’t imagine that any female restaurant critic would have any sympathy for someone who looks like Nadezhda-Jules.

  “You write for Le Fooding,” says one of them. He spits on the ground: pah! “Do you know what this means? You have deliberately spit on the foundation so laboriously laid down by the gods and goddesses of all that is civilized. You have deliberately mocked the standards they have put in place regarding how to weigh a dish’s good and bad points. Therefore, as punishment, you shall be exiled to a deserted island.”

  “Don’t you know who I am?” says Nadezhda-Jules piteously. “What am I supposed to do on a deserted island?”

  They don’t give a damn. The American food-critic legend is impatient to get to a famous seafood restaurant in Montpellier about forty-five minutes away. The female critic refuses to eat any bread except that of the Pôilane bakery in Paris and immediately gets slammed for snobbery by the other American critic—a popular one—who’s boasting about his latest list, The Top Twenty Pizzas in America. The two critics from Asia are squabbling about the origins of satay and Nasi Padang—or to put it another way, dishes that come from Indonesia but are claimed by other countries as theirs.

  Suddenly a voice speaks in a soothing British accent.

  “Well, what about a tropical island? You’d have an abundance of food to eat there.” The owner of the British accent, as it happens, is also a famous novelist. “Not only that, you’ll have plenty of time to devote to godly submission and prayer. And with that face, who knows? You might even meet a hot Latin lover in a paddy field and live happily ever after in sexual and spiritual bliss. And wouldn’t that just be perfect?”

  “Pengkang!” exclaims Nadezhda, repeating the same word she’s been exclaiming all day—at the airport in Jakarta, on the plane heading to Pontianak, at the airport in Pontianak, on the car ride to the hotel. Her manner is that of a child hankering after some new toy, pestering her parents to purchase it.

  Every time I hear the word, I can’t tell whether I’m tickled or annoyed. Tickled because it really is quite a funny-sounding word and annoyed because “pengkang” sounds akin to pekak or kak—“grandfather” in Balinese—though I was taught by my mother to call my grandfather pak mem or kaki, the latter being the source of some debate during my childhood since it was also the Indonesian word for “foot.” It was confusing enough whenever his feet (kaki kaki) got involved (e.g., “There’s an ant on my grandfather’s/foot’s foot/grandfather”). Imagine when “kaki” began springing up in other contexts: “A ceremony will be held at the foot/grandfather of Mount Agung.” Or, “I lay my fate at the feet/grandfather of the God of Love.” Or, “I offer up my prayers at the foot/grandfather of that banyan tree.”

  “Pengkang,” however, doesn’t have the same wealth of meaning. It’s the Pontianak term for lemper. That’s right: those now ubiquitous glutinous rice rectangles of Javanese origin stuffed with shredded chicken and wrapped in banana leaves, aka lemper. But with a twist. Pengkang is stuffed with dried shrimp and shaped like a cone.

  “It’s a local specialty of Chinese extraction,” says Nadezhda, as if this fact enhances its culinary value. “The interesting thing is that pengkang should always be eaten with a dish called Sambal Kepah, though the sauce the clams are served with is more like a sweet-and-sour sauce than a spicy sambal one. Also, pengkang always come in pairs—they’re tied together before they’re grilled. Cute, huh?”

  “And where must we go to get this extraordinary dish?”

  “To a restaurant called Pondok Pengkang, outside Pontianak,” Nadezhda says with that enthralling nonchalance of hers, as if giving us the address of the nearest convenience store.

  “Outside Pontianak? How far?”

  “A street called Jalan Peniti, in Siantan. In the Regency of Mempawah.”

  “That’s like an hour away, Nadz,” says Bono, staring at Google Maps.

  “We could just go on to Singkawang from there,” says Nadezhda. “Since we only have one night.”

  “But Singkawang’s too far away,” I protest, even as I realize how tragic it would be to come all the way to West Kalimantan, unfunded and out of wounded pride, and not go to the city of Singkawang. “It’s ninety-three miles from here, give or take. It’s practically on the Malaysian border!”

  With her usual brazenness Nadezhda turns to Farish—my Farish—and bats her eyes. “Can we go to Singkawang? Pleeeaaase?”

  Not long after I give in (when have I ever said no to Nadezhda?), it occurs to me: there was a time when we used to say, before setting out on trips, that we wanted to “discover new things”—“be surprised” by unexpected experiences. And that’s exactly what would happen. In those days, we didn’t have any assumptions, or even expectations. We’d discover and celebrate all of it: the wonderful and captivating, yes, but also that which wasn’t. And for a while there would be something sacred about the relationship we had with those experiences, as if they belonged to us and us only—for that which was new to us was that which was new to the world.

  Now in this age of technology, of information galore, we may say the same things, when in fact we are no longer talking about discovering something new. Rather, we are talking about something already discovered, already widely known and shared, so all that remains for us to do is sharpen our personal perceptions. If we think pengkang is really nothing special and there’s no art in it, or that it’s a culinary gem worthy of esteem, more interesting than Javanese-style lemper, say, only then do we make it our own.

  But these are complicated thoughts I’d rather avoid, and there are too many of them running through my head. I especially want to avoid those involving a certain someone who’s trying not to stare at me from behind Nadezhda’s dense thicket of hair that she didn’t have time to blow dry this morning. The same someone who, yesterday, on that strangest of nights, surrendered himself to me for some reason—let me breathe him in. Not all of him, mind you. Just his notes of coffee and wood. And the aroma of cheese that has long been giving him away (though he was embarrassed about it, and faintly melancholy). And in return I surrendered myself to him, though not all of me either: the cream, oyster, and fish scent of my body.

  Nadezhda’s probably right about a lot of things. But she’s not entirely right in this particular matter.

  She’s telling me about women who flare up like a candle the second a man parts their vulva—who instantly lap up and devour, with the flames of their new knowledge, the pastures of manhood. Women who, after sleeping with their first man, start asking their men to touch this spot or that jot, this comma or that semicolon, for how long, yes, longer, yes, longer, don’t stop!

  She’s probably talking about herself. But how many people in the world are like Nadezhda?

  I deeply suspect that there are different levels of readiness. Young women aren’t like men—they don’t immediately start out thinking about their bodies being with those of other people, of two bodies becoming one. Thoughts of sex will come, of course, but those thoughts usually come later. Still, it doesn’t mean that there’s nothing there.

  Young women touch themselves once in a while, yes, but the pleasure they feel, unlike older, more experienced women, is akin to that of eating alone. It’s a singular pleasure—one that wouldn’t be as pleasing, I’m pretty sure, if the experience was shared. And yet in other respects, women share so much with other women—the boys they like, the pervs and creeps who try to woo them, that first kiss . . .

&n
bsp; Maybe this is why so many young women tend to idolize certain men, otherworldly men. They fall for them precisely because they are unattainable and belong to another world. They aren’t sinful because they’re not real.

  They’re not the man lurking by the tree outside your house at certain hours of the night who whips out his penis whenever you pass by. They’re not that friend of your uncle’s who likes to make eyes at other women, including you, even (or perhaps only) when his wife is in the same room, and who offers to buy you a drink at the bar after running into you and your friends at a nightclub.

  Nor are they the men you revere, who inhabit the same world but are much older—my high school PE and English teachers, in my case—those you consider safe and beyond reach because of those demarcations: teacher versus student, old versus young, those who are married versus those who’ve never had sex.

  So when I bare every inch of myself to someone, I know he’s the one and want him to be the one. Of all the men in the world, I’ve picked Farish because I just know he’ll never leave me. Even when he already knows how I smell and taste down there.

  As I hear Nadezhda blathering on about the “madwoman” who sat next to her on the flight to Pontianak, I see what are starting to become very familiar sights: an enormous house that belongs to the governor of the province (“Mr. Cornelis has served two nonconsecutive terms, seven years total,” our driver boasts); the regent’s office, of similar size; the district head’s office, enormous as well and resplendent in bright candy hues; the local headquarters for the national organization for civil servants’ wives unwilling to be bested by the others. In short, shows of government grandeur that provide points of contrast with their surroundings: the little bridges that cross the streams, connecting the main roads with citizens’ houses; the channels of water flowing parallel to the streets; the Duri River in all its beauty; the houses that remind me of those in Banda Aceh, sans the zinc roofs.

  “So I thought the woman was a typical ibu-ibu. You know the type. The wife of some rich regional government official who makes trips to Jakarta to throw money around and who feels superior to her ibu-ibu friends because she’s ‘part of the metropolis.’” Nadezhda speaks with some vehemence. “But also the kind who’ll immediately revert to narrow-minded parochialism when her part of the country is criticized or misunderstood by those in the capital.”