The Birdwoman's Palate

by Laksmi Pamuntjak

  “So what’s wrong with that?” asks Farish.

  It suddenly occurs to me that he may not feel part of the metropolis himself. I’ve noticed that he’s happy to talk about being from Padang, especially when we were with Toba and Rania, or about certain worlds in Jakarta that he knows much about. But he keeps his own counsel when our conversation meanders to the Paris and Melbourne and Cambridge of Nadezhda’s universe. Suddenly I’m assailed by anxiety. After last night—and the nights before when my feelings were building up, layer by layer—I’ve developed another feeling for him: loyalty.

  “Nothing,” says Nadezhda. “What was wrong was that she dared to talk big—to me. Me. Can you imagine? Shameless about it, too.”

  As Bono listens, he titters, like a horse out of a Disney movie. He seems to be enjoying all this immensely. They really are perfect for each other.

  “At first she went on and on about her life and how different it used to be when her husband was still alive and her children were living at home. Now they’re scattered all over the place. Now if she wants to go anywhere, she has to go solo.

  “At the time, I’m still thinking, ‘Oh, she’s probably worried that people think she’s searching for a new husband, or maybe she even feels guilty about it, so now she’s trying to justify traveling around alone.’ And up to this point, I’m still fine . . .”

  Outside, by the side of the road: an Aladdin Optical outlet, coffeehouses and reflexology parlors, a restaurant called Oizumi Ramen, a Padang cuisine restaurant called Siti Nurbaya, little alleys forging paths into the very belly of the city, eateries with no names. They all flash by, one after another.

  “. . . until suddenly this woman says that tomorrow she’s going to Singapore to spend time with her youngest, who’s at Cambridge. At first, I’m thinking, ‘Cambridge? Really?’ But before I can even react, the woman adds for emphasis, ‘Cambridge University. In England.’ So I immediately say, ‘Oh, wow. That’s wonderful. Which college?’

  “‘Cambridge University, in England,’ she repeats a little tentatively. ‘Yes, I know—I’m familiar with both the university and the city,’ I say, trying not to sound like an asshole. ‘But Cambridge University is made up of thirty different colleges. So which college is your youngest attending?’ The woman looks confused. ‘My youngest is at Cambridge University in England,’ she repeats, so inanely that now I’m the one who feels stupid. I think maybe this woman genuinely doesn’t know which college her son is attending. It’s entirely possible. A lot of parents of foreign students don’t understand, don’t care about such details. To them, the main thing is ‘my child has been accepted by a prestigious university.’”

  “So you didn’t say that you went to Cambridge?” asks Bono.

  “Nah,” says Nadezhda.

  I have to admit, in this respect, Nadezhda really is pretty cool: at least she doesn’t show off in front of people she doesn’t know well.

  “But for some reason, I remembered my own days at Cambridge, and how hard it was to get in, much less stay on without overdosing or becoming a lesbian. I was also reminded of how momentous it was when we found out which college had accepted us—Newnham or Murray Edwards, Lucy Cavendish or Clare—because it meant different professors, different dorms, not to mention different traditions. And for some reason I felt so bloody irritated. Anyway, I worked terribly hard to control myself.”

  The Kapuas River, the longest river in the archipelago, stretches before us, fanning out left and right, lush with coconut palms, perfect as a postcard.

  “So, just when I’ve managed to shrug it all off, the woman then says that her super-genius kid is studying medicine, and because he’s so smart, he’s just been asked to be director of the World Health Organization. ‘The World Health Organization?’ I say, my eyes popping out of my head. ‘The director of the World Health Organization,’ she repeats, beaming with pride. ‘He’s still at university, and he’s been asked to be director of the World Health Organization?’ I ask, and the woman simpers once more. ‘Yes. He’s getting a master’s and a PhD degree at the same time.’ At that point I’m so amazed, I’m not sure if I should blow up at her or laugh. And before I can even say anything, the woman says, proudly, ‘He’s just like my late husband. He used to be director of the World Health Organization, too. And he was from Pontianak, like myself.’”

  I laugh along. It is a hilarious story. So hilarious that, for one brief moment, barriers are bypassed, and I see Farish turn back from the passenger seat and cast a gleaming, almost loving grin my way.

  30

  PENGKANG COUNTRY

  Me, twenty-four years old: I burst into tears when the waiter tells me that the restaurant I’m seeking has closed down. “Signorina,” says the waiter, “this is Venice. Here, everything changes so fast.”

  “That’s not true,” I say between sobs. “Nothing ever changes here. You always end up back in the same place no matter where you start out on this island. And I’ve circled the city three times.”

  “But almost all the restaurants in Venice serve linguine alla vongole.”

  “Yes, but I want their version of it.”

  “Signorina, why don’t you try eating here? I’ll bring you a linguine alla vongole a hundred times more delicious.”

  “Grazie. You’re very kind. But I should just go back to my home country. I came to this city for the specific purpose of eating at that restaurant. Many years ago, in my previous life, I ate there with my parents. Their names were Giancarlo and Aurelia. From then on, they never ate at any other restaurant.”

  The waiter stares at me for a very long time.

  “Bene,” he says at last. “If that’s the case, safe travels, signorina. See you in a hundred years.”

  For the first time on this journey, we’re taken hostage by our driver. Shortly after we cross the Kapuas River, he suddenly stops the car. Then he requests that we all get out and pay our respects to Tugu Khatulistiwa—the Equator Monument—as if without doing so we won’t truly internalize the significance of being on the equatorial line, equidistant from both poles.

  But travel requires that we be respectful and considerate to others, so we acquiesce to the wishes of our good driver. He is, after all, the owner of the place where we’re staying in Pontianak (800,000 rupiah round-trip from Pontianak to Singkawang and back, gas not included—a cheap package courtesy of his hotel). And though he keeps repeating that he’s a devout Muslim originally from Palembang with a wife of Dayak descent who’s converted to Islam, and that he’s uncomfortable about being in the vicinity of any food with pork in it, he’s willing to drive us to Singkawang.

  The monument is bizarre. The original structure, a sort of gyroscopic tower built in 1928 by the Dutch and not particularly well designed, has been overshadowed by an enormous structure resembling a mausoleum. From the roof of this second structure, a humongous replica of the old tower protrudes. I’d love to be able to say something nice to our driver, like, “Wow! It’s great!” But I simply can’t. We just circle the structure for a while, unwilling to enter despite our driver’s goading. Fifteen, twenty minutes pass before we finally feel brave enough to get back into the car, nodding enthusiastically, if a little inanely, and showing each other the photos we’ve taken.

  The restaurant—a traditional-style building with a raised floor and located by the main road—is large and empty. The walls at the front of the house resemble large, open windows with latticework carved in traditional patterns. On the inside, on sections of wall covered in yellow paper overhead, drawings of the restaurant’s specialties are displayed in rows, interspersed with photos of a young President Sukarno: Sukarno sitting, Sukarno giving a speech, Sukarno laughing.

  When our food comes out, it’s served on the standard red dishware of Chinese restaurants—patterned with flowers, shells, Chinese characters, and a yellow border with a blue gatelike motif. Nadezhda was right: the two portions of pengkang we order come in pairs so we each get one dumpling. They resemble the Ketupat
dumplings that are often served with satay.

  The sambal-based dish it comes with—Nadezhda was right again—looks more like Chinese-style sweet-and-sour clams, the sauce thick with cornstarch. The Pengkang themselves are a cross between two more familiar versions of glutinous rice dumpling: the Javanese lemper and the Chinese bacang. When I break mine in half and examine its contents, the still-intact shells of the dried shrimp seem to be imprinted into the rice itself. For a moment I’m startled, because in a certain light it’s like looking at gold foil. I can almost hear it crackle, like a copper rod slapping against water.

  Even the taste is far more complex than that of your average bacang. Its savory deliciousness is due to all the oil—that much is obvious—but the combination of sour, spicy, and sweet flavors is almost beyond all conceiving. And this also holds true for the freshwater prawn satays, six enormous pieces to each skewer.

  Another thing I notice: in West Kalimantan cuisine, tomatoes, chilies, and Bombay onions aren’t just used as seasonings to be minced, pounded, or ground into a paste. They’re also used for decoration. Resting on the platter of stir-fried water spinach are Bombay onions sliced into elegant curves reminiscent of the intricate gold pattern of an embroidered songket. The red chilies are lovably chunky.

  It’s a curious palette. The Sambal Teri—anchovies in a sweet and sourish sambal sauce—has exactly that boldness of form and color. I even hold a tomato or two to the light to give them a good look over, and they are interestingly protuberant—fat and long, like potato wedges. As with the onions and chilies, there’s a peculiar charge to the color of said tomatoes that makes them brighter, clearer, more neon than average.

  Then I remember: I’ve had this same impression before, when I ate at a restaurant in South Jakarta specializing in the Samarinda cuisine of East Kalimantan. For reasons unknown to me, it vanished almost overnight, right when they were starting to gain a reputation for themselves. How extraordinary the dishes were—the green, silver, and scarlet! You could practically taste the crispness, the freshness, from the colors alone.

  But this evening, the dish that most pampers my vision and palate is a platter of clam satay. In appearance they resemble your usual Malaysian satays made of chicken, beef, or lamb. They’re slathered in muddy-brown peanut sauce and beautified with a garnish of tiny green scallion rounds, and I’m at pains to find the right words to describe their flavor. It’s so . . . so . . .

  “Cosmic!” says Bono, leaping to his feet, face aglow. It’s as if he’s just discovered a new law of physics.

  We linger in the restaurant for some time, for the afternoon has brought with it a relaxing breeze. It’s also an opportunity for Farish’s fingers and mine to entwine themselves beneath the table every now and then. We watch and giggle as Nadezhda terrorizes the waiters for this recipe and that. We follow Bono with our gaze as he wanders around the restaurant, taking photos at the satay grill and chatting with the family who owns the restaurant before finally ordering an entire box of pengkang—which we’ll eat who knows when—to be delivered to our hotel the following day. There is a new complicity between us, delicious and subversive.

  31

  THE CIK WITH THE PINK ROLLERS

  I kind of regret leaving for Singkawang so late in the day. Getting there from the restaurant in Siantan takes about three hours, and when we reach Singkawang, in the pouring rain, night begins to fall, turning all into shadows and ash.

  But it doesn’t take long for us to see what’s before our eyes: a city that appears to be frozen in time. Old shophouses and coffeehouses unfaded by rainwater; Buddhist monasteries of cotton-candy hues that seem to assert themselves despite the menacing shadows cast over them. Alabaster-pale faces that come from a faraway land, seemingly unweathered by heat or rain.

  After circling around on Jalan Diponegoro, which is as quiet as a ghost town, I finally tell the driver to park in front of a small general store that also sells various manisan—fruits pickled, dried, or preserved in syrup. Bono looks anxious because there’s no trace of a single restaurant from his sacred list.

  “Damn it, don’t they have a sign? The noodle place is supposed to be on this road, near that temple over there.” Bono shakes his head, half panicked, half starving.

  “So tell me,” says Nadezhda with an irritated expression. “Where’d you find this list?”

  “The Internet.”

  “From someone’s blog?”

  “Yes. But all the information is incomplete. Sometimes it just gives the name. Sometimes there’s a note—a hundred yards from this store or fifty-five yards from that temple—but none of it’s accurate!”

  Nadezhda looks as if she wants to make some stinging remark, but for some reason doesn’t. Instead she hurries after me, and we enter the manisan store, as if hoping that it will help her behave. It’s impossible that anyone could have the energy to bicker after our food orgy only a few hours ago.

  As if trying to remain faithful to his convictions, Bono chooses to roam outside, sniffing the air while he’s at it, with his iPad, Internet, and sacred list. He’s quite a sight. But who knows? Maybe these spectral restaurants will materialize, emerging from behind a curtain of rain. As a gesture of brotherly solidarity, Farish chooses to get drenched with him, though I know he couldn’t care less about the food he might miss. Men.

  The store, meanwhile, is delightful. All kinds of manisan, in glass jars, are lined up on the wooden tables at the front of the store, and there’s a special section devoted to dried fruits. A middle-aged man sits in the doorway, a little to the side, his features a combination of Malay, Chinese, and Dayak. Spontaneously, he introduces himself. We ask if he’s the owner. He says no with a friendly smile and nods in the direction of an ethnic Chinese woman, also middle-aged, sitting behind the cash register inside.

  The cik, pale as marble, rises from her seat and invites Nadezhda and me to sample various manisan—“Those are peaches. That’s kedondong. That’s snakefruit in spicy syrup.”—and half an hour later we’ve each purchased around eleven pounds of this and that. How wonderful to become two children again! To be surrounded by all that sweetness and light!

  Moments later Farish approaches us. He immediately sits down next to me and holds out his hand. I place a single ceremai on his palm. I long to taste the sweetness of the tongue caressing the pale berrylike fruit. But life is about delayed gratification. In return for my patience, he offers his sweet and sticky fingers. We watch our fingers interlace for one second, two.

  Not too long afterward, Bono shows up. His face and hair are soaked.

  “Did you find it?” I ask.

  He shakes his head. He looks dejected.

  “Enough already. Let’s not look for noodles now. We’ll try again tonight. How about looking for something lighter first?”

  “Like rujak?”

  “Yeah, what’s that rujak place called? Thai Phui? The one you said was famous.”

  The cik’s face lights up. “I know the place you’re talking about,” she says with an accent difficult to place. “It’s near the market.”

  A quarter of an hour later, after circling the downtown several times, where we pass warungs selling grass-jelly cappuccinos and a bunch of others specializing in “smashed” chicken or Ayam Penyet (fried, then beaten with a mortar and pestle to make it more tender; “A culinary colonizer if there ever was one,” Bono grumbles), we finally find the rujak cart. For a while we just stand there, staring at the modest cart and the tarpaulin behind it, mud-spattered and at a seventy-five-degree tilt, as if it’s just been hit by a hurricane. It’s wedged in among houses in a tiny alley that I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to find again.

  Two simple tables and long wooden benches stand in a covered area behind the rujak cart. The space shares a wall with the house next door, which, once I take a peek, turns out to be very picturesque indeed—an old house on stilts like the ones they use as film sets for Indonesian horror films, with walls of ivory yellow, windows painted a salte
d-duck-egg blue, and maroon tiles. A woman in her sixties sashays onto the veranda in a housedress and a head full of rollers. She leans on the low wall that separates the eating area and the terrace of her house and chats animatedly with the rujak seller in a language we don’t recognize.

  The woman seems intrigued by us. How could she not be? Among the members of our company are the Beauty Queen and the Marvelous Chef, two rare specimens you don’t see every day. Then, in a halting Indonesian, she asks, “Where are you from? What are you looking for?”

  With a surge of hope Bono immediately asks about the location of his noodle eatery. “Cik, would you happen to know where . . .”

  Meanwhile, Nadezhda and I are busy choosing from the menu that’s been painted on the tarp: Fruit rujak? Rujak with peanut sauce? Lim Mui prawn crackers? Lim Mui pineapple? Vermicelli soup with anchovies? Rice porridge with anchovies?

  “What the hell is Lim Mui?” whispers Nadezhda.

  But it’s beginning to get dark, and I’m worried we’ll run out of time before we can sample the special dishes Singkawang is known for—kwetiau goreng and Bubur Babi. And they’re two dishes I don’t want to miss. It’ll take four hours to get back to Pontianak, and once we arrive at the provincial capital, we still have to try its dinner specialties.

  Finally, Nadezhda and I agree to get two orders of fruit rujak to go and bring them wherever we end up eating next. As it happens we don’t need to go far. The friendly but slightly vain cik tells us that there’s a place right next door that’s famous for its kwetiau goreng. “Just take the rujak with you,” she says, as if sending her grandchildren off to play at a neighbor’s house.