The Birdwoman's Palate

“Aruna,” she says, her voice trembling, “Leon was on that plane.”

  Ten seconds. Twenty seconds. Maybe a full minute that feels like an eternity passes before I’m able to speak.

  “But . . . surely, Leon’s still . . .”

  “No, Aruna. Leon’s gone.”

  I feel something shatter inside me, breaking into a million pieces.

  Amazingly, Farish permits me to mourn for the man I once worshipped. When I run to the hotel lobby and slip into his arms with another man’s name on my lips, he pulls me close, strokes my hair, and whispers, “It’s okay, it’s okay. He didn’t feel anything. It all must have happened so fast.” There is not the faintest sign of resentment or jealousy.

  But there’s always a disparity between news and fact, history and story. That night, I cry until my tears run dry.

  In the morning, the details of Leon’s last days start to come to light.

  After Lombok, which he visited after Pontianak, he went back to Jakarta. Because Farish and I had backed out of the project, he had to take on the workload we’d left behind.

  Five weeks after that he was asked to go to Makassar. Which is fishy from the start, I think. The cases of avian flu in Makassar were reported at least two weeks before Farish and I started our own investigation. What was the point of him going to Makassar so belatedly? But this is no time to trouble myself with unproductive thoughts about conspiracies and the like.

  We already know the rest. Fate picked that ill-fated plane out for him, and he was cast into the depths of the open sea with 215 other people. And that, most likely, only after the flames and the impact of the crash had completely incinerated his body.

  From late morning to midday, I walk around in a daze, like a motherless chick. Bono and Nadezhda seem unsure of how to behave toward me. True, the situation’s a strange one—Leon wasn’t anything to me, strictly speaking, and as such, expressing condolences seems both too much and inappropriate. Yet they all know he had a special place in my heart.

  In the midst of it all stands Farish, steadfast and kind. Not once does he make me feel guilty, or even a little ridiculous, for weeping over another man who never made an effort to know me when he could have.

  At half past eleven Bono and Nadezhda go out for lunch.

  The two of us are left alone in the lobby—Farish and me. He holds my hand tightly in his. He knows food is the last thing on my mind.

  “How about we visit the hospital nearby?” he suggests out of nowhere. “Just for fun. There’s a public hospital down the road, not even a mile away. It looks pretty big.”

  The thought crosses my mind that he’s crazy, taking me to a hospital when Leon’s just died; when his body’s been smashed to pieces, never to be found; when he can’t even be laid out in a mortuary, bathed, anointed, and given a proper burial.

  But it gradually dawns on me that I miss going to hospitals, that I miss the sense that I may be of use, that I miss the responsibility of being someone trained to wipe out disease. Maybe this is one way of paying my respects to Leon, whom I had no power to save.

  Unexpectedly, I nod. We still have time. Our flight doesn’t leave until five.

  The sight that greets us at the hospital can’t be described in words. Order lies in ruins everywhere I look. The stairs are broken in places and covered from top to bottom in moss. The walls and floors are filthy and coated in dust. The ICU unit has “Staff Only” printed above the entrance yet is wide open and packed with visitors, as is the elevator, despite the “Only For Patients, Oxygen, and Food Trolleys” sign above it. The leftover food from patients’ trays lie rotting outside their rooms. There’s a sea of patients’ relatives sleeping in hordes in the corridors, with their straw mats, prayer rugs, and clothes. Food and drink spill all over the floor. Empty plastic food containers are strewn across the lawn.

  But two things make me especially queasy. The first is a six-bed inpatient room with at least fifteen people surrounding one of the beds as they pray over a patient in critical condition. They’re scandalously noisy. And they’re everywhere: congregating at the patient’s bedside, sitting in front of or next to the other patients’ beds, spreading out mats and sitting on the floor and leaning against the wall. Several of them have brought drink cartons and bottled water with them.

  And this is all happening in the presence of a large sign on the wall that clearly states:

  WE REQUEST THE COOPERATION OF PATIENT FAMILY MEMBERS & VISITORS

  1. OUR PATIENTS NEED REST IN ORDER TO RECOVER. PLEASE BE QUIET.

  2. TO KEEP THE ROOMS ORDERLY, PLEASE DO NOT BRING IN CARPETS OR MATS.

  3. ONE VISITOR PER PERSON.

  POLICY OF NURSING Management DIII KLP1 & III

  THE YARSI MATARAM NURSING SCHOOL

  2013

  The state of the Infectious Diseases Unit is just as nauseating. I deduce from the whiteboard in the hall that there are no avian flu patients, only hepatitis patients. A little before this, at the unit entrance, I felt my energy level rising when I saw the nurse’s station, which looked reasonably neat and clean, and the first nurse I’d seen since arriving at the hospital.

  Farish and I request permission to look around a bit. As usual I explain that we’re from the Ministry of Livestock.

  “Any recent cases of avian flu, nurse?” I ask once we’re done looking around and are walking away from the area where the confirmed hepatitis cases are being treated.

  “No, none,” she answers.

  But then her colleague, who’s just emerged from behind a curtain, whispers something to her.

  The nurse changes her story. “Oh, right. Actually, there were.”

  “When? About seven weeks ago?”

  “Oh, way before that. About six months ago.”

  “How long were they treated here?”

  “They weren’t. By the time they were brought here, they’d passed away.”

  And this she says in an even voice, without the slightest hint of empathy, eyes still glued to her records book.

  “But the room was quarantined, wasn’t it?”

  “Not really,” says the nurse.

  Not really? My hands tremble. I almost can’t believe it. Even before my anger subsides, I see—and this almost makes me faint—a mangy cat saunter into the unit past the nurse’s station and head right into the patient treatment area.

  I point a panicked finger at the cat’s footprints. “Nurse, nurse! There’s a cat in the patient treatment area!”

  The nurse doesn’t budge. “Oh, that must be Miss Yeller,” she says calmly. “She often comes by. We all know her.”

  I feel like I’ve taken part in a pilgrimage, thanks to Bono and Nadezhda, who go on and on about this dish and that: how this luffa squash was more tender than that luffa squash; how this fried pigeon was crispier than that fried pigeon; how this oyster sauce tasted fishier than that oyster sauce. It turns out they went back to Ampenan, to Jalan Pabean, and ate at a Peranakan restaurant there.

  Meanwhile, my hands are still trembling so much I can’t hold my water glass. I feel weak and nauseous. I scold myself. You aren’t fit to eat. Not with that excessive appetite of yours and a brain that thinks of nothing but food 24/7. You aren’t fit to be blessed with good digestion and an educated palate. You aren’t fit to live—not when others are being ambushed by stray cats on their deathbeds or soaring through the air to their graves.

  That evening, as we’re once again waiting for a flight at an airport, all I want to do is return home to the things that give me peace: the warmth of Gulali’s body, my father’s grave, and maybe even my mother’s house.

  36

  DOING AND DREAMING

  This is my favorite dream.

  One day my grandmother is telling me about certain months in her childhood, when the twilight hours would last for ages and be drenched in violet. “At times,” she says, “when you walked toward the horizon, away from the call to prayer summoning men and beasts homeward, it was as if you were drowning in the orange
of the setting sun. It was as if you were in another world—one that made you believe that you had to befriend spirits if you wanted to prosper in this earthly life. The twilight and the spirits themselves were friends, as all shape-shifting creatures are. And you’d see for yourself how a tranquil afternoon would bring a glorious morning the next day. And this is why people always pair pagi with sore, siang with malam—morning with evening, noon with night. Aruna, I bet someday restaurants will be naming themselves after these pairs.” (And of course, she’s right: Pagi Sores and Siang Malams—you’ll find them all over the country.)

  Then the dream starts all over again. Sometimes a few details change. But whenever I reach that point—when I behold my grandmother’s face, surrounded by her beloved turkeys—I realize just how much I know. I know things that have never been uttered or acknowledged, things never even written down in secret to be discovered later, things that have nothing to do with how much my grandmother loves me.

  I know she loved my father—not because he was her youngest or most like her in appearance but because he was the only one of her children to give her a grandchild. She also loved my father because he was willing to yield to his wife and became a quiet man in order to do so. I know my mother didn’t like my grandmother, and I also know my mother loved another man and thought my father wasn’t smart or ambitious enough for her. I know my father didn’t really like my mother, mainly because he knew she looked down on him and that she was her father’s daughter (and Pekak I Wayan Gede, her father, certainly wasn’t the most sincere person in the world; everything he did was for his image, for prestige, for everything but love). But what prevented my father from leaving my mother was how much she wanted a child, even if he wasn’t sure he was ready to become a father. My mother really was the wiser one in this matter.

  And I know that only when I was born did my father understand what love meant.

  A year has passed since that trip to Lombok. I don’t believe in celebrations, whether they’re for birthdays or wedding anniversaries, religious holidays or holidays in memory of specific individuals.

  But exactly one year after that harrowing day, the day of Leon’s death, I revisit a few things: hospital reports (I kept some files for myself), the bills from hotels and restaurants we visited, the photos I’ve downloaded onto my computer, the notebooks I was keeping at the time.

  In one of the notebooks, I find incomplete rosters of curiosities: recipes, the composition of various spice mixtures, restaurant names, street names, names of acronyms for this organization or that, names of chefs and restaurant owners, names of actors and actresses I liked, names of television dramas I was addicted to, snatches of conversation, a few stanzas of poetry about solitude, some vague charts, an unfinished short story, a few swear words I won’t mention here, three mentions of Leon and at least a dozen of Farish.

  Naturally, a few things have changed in my life. Farish and I have agreed that at our age we don’t need to announce that we’re officially a couple—we’re not in middle school or high school anymore. After much consideration we’ve decided to live together, unmarried, with all the social ramifications thereof. We don’t want to get married for a while. We have so many friends who had kids, then got divorced because they never experienced what it was like to live as a couple.

  It turns out that forgetting Leon isn’t a hard thing to do because, really, nothing ever happened between us—except for me stupidly letting myself become “an owl pining for the moon.” But my outlook on death is still the same. I’ve visited his grave twice because, however you look at it, he did die young, and so tragically, and that seems a great injustice to me. Especially since he once made my heart race and my head spin, and such things still deserve gratitude.

  My outlook on work, however, has changed a bit. At the beginning of 2014, Indonesia officially became a producer and exporter of vaccines, and of the seven vaccines being developed nationwide—for tuberculosis, hepatitis B and C, rotavirus, HIV, hemorrhagic dengue fever, and avian influenza—the most advances have been made when it comes to avian influenza. Yet I’m no longer caught up in every new move the virus decides to make. The most important thing for me was finding an opportunity to “set things right” with Irma, whom I’m still fond of, though she’s decided to remain at DOCIR despite the hot mess that it is. We met at a Turkish restaurant, ordered various mezze and grilled lamb, and drank glass after glass of apple tea. She asked me to come back and work for her, as my own agent, not OneWorld’s. But I refused.

  “Let’s just be eating buddies,” I said. “It’s more fun that way.”

  My relationship with my mother is improving as well. I see her once every two weeks. Even though our opinions frequently clash, and she expresses hers harshly more often than not, she’s never once commented on my unorthodox lifestyle. Gradually, my love for her has turned into what it wasn’t before—now, there’s a certain equality between us that puts me at rest. Sometimes we cook together and exchange recipes.

  Two times a week I swim. Once a week I have a meal with Nadezhda, who I know is still secretly seeing that cretin, Gabriel, and Bono, who is busy starting up Siria II. I’ve invested in Siria II. Not a lot, but enough to make my opinions heard. Sometimes, the three of us conduct kitchen experiments based on our travels. Appetizers reminiscent of ko kue and chai kue, but with slightly different fillings and sauces; a soup reminiscent of pindang patin, but with a Western touch; a French-style salad with a pinch of Thai basil.

  Based on my observations, as well as Nadezhda’s, it appears Bono’s gotten quite close with a woman who’s apparently a foodie as well. But he’s also gotten close with a middle-aged Caucasian woman who visits the bar at Siria almost three times a week. Some people think he’s going out with both of them. Some people also say he’s dating someone who lives overseas. We’re not interested in speculating. We’re just relieved he’s finally made friends outside of our triangle.

  I no longer wear a size large or extra-large. My jeans are even a size small. Like Nadezhda, my new religion is Pilates. Farish and I have set up a small consulting firm. Sometimes SoWeFit asks for our help on health-related projects. In keeping with my promise to myself, I agree only to projects that don’t involve Irma.

  And even though Farish and I never talk about children, much less plan to have any, I remain open to the possibility of becoming a mother.

  There really are, it would seem, things we do and things we dream. I want to live both.

  NOTES

  I am indebted to several texts on food and wine for information and inspiration:

  Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin’s The Physiology of Taste: Or Meditations on Transcendental Gastronomy (translated by M. F. K. Fisher with an introduction by Bill Buford; New York: Vintage, 2011)

  Felipe Fernández-Armesto’s Food: A History (London: Pan Books, 2002)

  D. Johnson-Davies’s translation of Al-Ghazali on the Manners Relating to Eating (Kitab adab al-akl) (Cambridge: the Islamic Texts Society, 2000)

  Muriel Barbery’s The Gourmet: A Novel (London: Gallic Books, 2009)

  Daniel Boulud’s Letters to a Young Chef (New York: Basic Books, 2006)

  Jonathan Safran Foer’s Eating Animals (London: Penguin Books, 2011)

  Michael Pollan’s In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto (New York: Penguin Press, 2008)

  Peter Kaminsky’s Culinary Intelligence: The Art of Eating Healthy (and Really Well) (New York: Vintage, 2013)

  Steven Poole’s You Aren’t What You Eat: Fed Up with Gastroculture (London: Union Books, 2012)

  Jane Kramer’s “The Reporter’s Kitchen” in Secret Ingredients: The New Yorker Book of Food and Drink (edited by David Remnick; New York: Modern Library, 2009)

  Jay McInerney’s Bacchus and Me: Adventures in the Wine Cellar (New York: Vintage, 2002)

  Kevin Zraly’s Windows on the World: Complete Wine Course, 2008 Edition (New York: Sterling Publishing, 2007).

  Additional information was gleaned from mailing lists
and articles online.

  The stanza of poetry in chapter 33 is excerpted from Farid ud-Din Attar’s The Conference of the Birds (translated by Afkham Darbandi and Dick Davis; London: Penguin Classics, 1984).

  I-tsing’s description of Palembang is excerpted from Paul Michel Munoz’s Early Kingdoms of the Indonesian Archipelago and the Malay Peninsula (Singapore: Editions Didier Millet, 2006), which in turn was adapted from a passage in I-tsing’s A Record of the Buddhist Religion as Practiced in India and the Malay Archipelago (AD 671–695) (translated by J. Takakusu; Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1896).

  Nadezhda’s analysis of group sports and the concept of kitsch was inspired by “Sports Chatter” and “Travels in Hyperreality” in Umberto Eco’s Travels in Hyperreality (London: Picador, 1987).

  Nadezhda’s quote about grief is excerpted from Joan Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking (New York: Vintage, 2007).

  The first course on Bono’s menu at Aditya Bari’s abode was inspired by Jason Atherton’s signature dish from Pollen Street Social in London.

  The parts about kulat mushrooms and naniura were inspired by my talks with leading Indonesian food activist Lisa Virgiano.

  The idea for foie gras noodles, Wagyu-beef-fried rice, and spicy stir-fried bitter beans atop a sliver of fried tuna belly sprang from the creations of Adhika Maxi, chef of the Union Brasserie, Bakery, & Bar in Jakarta. I am greatly indebted to him and his wife, Karen Carlotta (K. C.), one of the finest pastry chefs in Indonesia.

  The tips for serving Indonesian dishes with a Western touch were inspired by an episode of Kulinaria, which I co-hosted with William Wongso and which aired in 2003 on Kompas TV.

  Information about the 1918 Pandemic spreading to Java and Kalimantan was drawn from the abstract of a study entitled “Menguji Ketahanan Bangsa: Sejarah Pandemi Influenza 1918 di Hindia Belanda,” sent to me by Pandu Riono.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS