The Chef, the Bird and the Blessing

by Andrew Sharp

  The concierge assisted Mr Summerberg out of the vehicle with precise consideration. Mr Summerberg turned, leaning on the concierge, and said to Mr Bin, ‘Six o’clock!’ He pointed the makeshift walking stick at him, pinning him to the commitment.

  Miss Camlyn deported herself modestly and smiled pleasantly at Mr Bin although he was not looking. ‘Six am! See you tomorrow. Can’t wait!’

  Mr Bin thumbed his chin, but he did not contradict her. Maybe he was becoming conflicted, as Miss Camlyn had hoped.

  Our VIP guests turned to go. What a fantastical emolliation. I became light of heart. We had swerved at the last moment and so had avoided the car wreck. Miss Camlyn had learned fast how to soothe Mr Bin. Mr Bin had accepted to go with Miss Camlyn. Surely the bird would sing on such a romantic occasion and, after, I would have another opportunity to ask for an introduction to Miss Camlyn’s mother. The fruit of my labours had ripened. Tomorrow I would eat.

  That’s what I concluded, but the fruit was soon to foul. Mr Bin had only just lifted his hand to acknowledge our guests’ departure when a woman appeared at the top of the steps of the hotel. She had dark cigarette-thin trousers and a most fashion-fitting blouse of a black satin nature. Her hair gleamed like a wet puma. She stayed a moment in the light of the portico like a pointy-bosomed manikin in the window of a high-end departmental outlet, an imperious hand poised on the arch of her hip. She bore a glossy crocodile-skin satchel from her shoulder, embossed in an upmarket font of silver calligraphy. I much admired her modern look. She no doubt flew in fast jets and dined in top restaurants. She strode towards us, her knee-high boots spanking the paving.

  ‘Ag shame! I’ve tracked you down at last, Robert Benjamin Du Plessis!’ I looked around to see who she was addressing so forthrightly without so much as a greeting. ‘You thought you could hide, did you? Out in the gammadoelas with your twitchers. With all the other losers. But I was never going to give up, was I?’

  Miss Camlyn and Mr Summerberg stopped to bug-eye this handsome but discourteous woman who was, perhaps, in a tiffle with a boyfriend. There were only four men in the proximity. Who was this Robert? It was not me, of course, and not Mr Summerberg, certainly not. It was not the concierge; the woman was not fixing at him. It could not be Mr Bin. He had no one. In any case, I saw that the lady must have been perhaps ten years older than Mr Bin.

  I leant out of the window and said, ‘It’s a case of mistaken identity, good madam.’

  ‘I know where you hide. My fiancé found your … hovel … this morning and he’s been driving around looking for you.’

  ‘Please, Jemima, cool it. I’m with guests!’ Mr Bin spoke without looking at her, holding the steering wheel to his chest as if it was a shield.

  She stopped only a hand away from Mr Bin’s window and said too loudly, as if Mr Bin was deaf, ‘You’re a useless unproductive domkop! You’re an ambitionless … spineless … indecisive … timid … aimless yellow jelly. But I told you that a million times before.’

  Mr Bin could only remain dead still with unblinking eyes, like a chameleon that has fallen under the shadow of a hawk.

  ‘All you’ve got to do is sign!’

  The woman who Mr Bin had called Jemima reached into her crocodile-skin satchel —by Gucci, I noted with further respect for the lady— and presented a bundle of papers to the window.

  Mr Bin actuated himself and fired the vehicle. I impacted the back of my seat as we spin-wheeled away as if escaping said puma, determined to claw him.

  ‘Stop!’ I heard the woman scream without restraint. We did not. Her papers scattered like a flock of panicked white fowl.

  We arrowed along the track, Mr Bin and I, flying deeply into the dark, which promised to hide us from the discourteous woman. I was perturbed by this unexpected state of affairs.

  For a long time we were silent together until Mr Bin slowed down, allowing me to release the handgrip. He said to me, ‘Do you want to know who that was, Mozzy?’

  ‘Only if you wish to say so.’ I had no wish to intrude on a private matter but there was no escaping from the catastrophic chaos of Mr Bin’s life, the runaway sixteen-wheeler truck of his failings.

  ‘I guess I’ve got to admit it to myself. To face it again. I have a wife.’

  Chapter 5

  We arrived at Mr Bin’s residence with no more words. He told me to stay in the vehicle whilst he collected my bicycle and my backpack and dropped them into the load area. He said that he was taking me home. I wondered then whether, for the very last and final time, Mr Bin was enacting my sacking. Surely, he no longer required my services. The impediment in his personal life was not conducive to attending to his business any longer. It would be essential for him to return to the civilised world to attend to his wife’s request and to apologise to her for his behaviour. To seek her forgiveness.

  Of course, I wanted to escape Mr Bin and his backwards and primitive habitat. In every respect except the fiscal one, I wished to quit in order to pursue my career. Furthermore, my estimation of Mr Bin’s personal character had fallen still further. I would be even more uncomfortable in his employ. Jemima was his legal wife. He had made vows. He was subject to a wed lock. He should not have been hiding from her. For myself, I found it important to respect my employer. I could respect Miss Camlyn’s mother for her achievements in creating the finest restaurants in the world, but Mr Bin had no redeeming accomplishments. I could only think of this: he had been disloyal to his wife and run away from her. I thought again of my father, how he was never disloyal to his wife, my mother, despite worst circumstances. Mrs Bin seemed to me a most respectable woman even if understandably upset and concerned by her husband’s running. So, yes, I would be glad to move on and upwards. But it would be a convenience to quit at a time of my choosing, when I had received an alternative posting.

  ‘Shall I tell you about my wife, Mozzy?’

  ‘No need.’

  ‘She’s my wife of two years. The first year? Ended horribly. Shall I tell you about it? I suddenly feel a need to blab.’

  ‘No, no, please don’t.’

  ‘The second then? But you know about that. Out here. Evading her.’ He glanced in his mirror as if she could be pursuing us down the road in her spanking boots, sleek hair and puma eyes burning red in the night. I saw that he was cavern-eyed and pale.

  ‘Ja … sorry … gonna tell you anyway. I made a mistake, Mozzy. I got carried along. I should have said no when she told me to marry her. She make-believed I had some sort of potential … my first-class degree and a Masters. She thought I’d become a banker or an entrepreneur. Make a load of dosh. For Piet’s sake … my Masters was in avian ecology!’ He frowned. ‘I think I wanted her to be someone else as well. Not sure what. We both ended up disappointed. Ja, I was … despondent but she was … spitting. No. She was more than that. She was … apoplectic.’ He blew out his lips. ‘You heard her … tuning me like that in front of guests.’

  We drove on for three minutes, both quiet, and myself ill at ease. Home affairs should not be talked about on the public square.

  Then he said, ‘Spineless.’ Then, ‘Unproductive.’ Presently he added, ‘Ambitionless … indecisive … timid.’ He furrow-browed. ‘Oh yes, a yellow jelly. What the — does that mean? Can you think of anything else she said about me, Mozzy?’

  I was happy to have the opportunity to help with that. ‘You’re useless, as well.’

  ‘I guess so,’ he said.

  But I thought how Miss Camlyn did not think that this was the case. She had seen the worst of Mr Bin and yet she did not hold negations against him. On the contrary, Miss Camlyn had expressed love. It was a tragedy that she had been misled by Mr Bin. He had many opportunities to inform her that he was already married, but he had never had the courtesy to do so. I thought of her now, how she would be sitting on her hotel bed, bent over with her hands in her distraught hair, weeping from her pretty bu
t wounded heart. She would be oblivious to the eases of civilisation that surrounded her: the memory foam mattress, the embroidered pillow cases of Egyptian cotton, the bedside lamp by Tiffany, the soft white bathrobe and slippers, the silent-running ceiling fan, the dressing table spread with body lotions and scents of highest expectations. My heart was bruised for her.

  I was also in pained cognisance of the negative outcome of my proposed application for a head chef position.

  ‘She’s with Tarquin Wallington-Williams Junior and she wants to marry him,’ said Mr Bin. ‘He’s a proper businessman. He’s got the MBA from Harvard or somewhere important. Like his Daddy. He’s got the connections … the stocks. And he’s got the spine. She wants me to sign the divorce papers. Then she can fly away to Florida.’

  I coughed.

  ‘Thanks for hearing me out, Mozzy. Thing is, I’d agree to a settlement if she agreed to share a few coins. A little pocket money, crumbs of her geld. She won’t notice it. They cosy up in larney hotels, do their shopping in Joeys. It’s the principle. It would help me to pay for your cookery, damn it.’

  ‘Am I dismissed from your service?’ I said.

  Mr Bin continued to fish in the dismal waters of his thoughts but after we had travelled further, he said, ‘Why would I ever dismiss you, Mozzy?’

  ‘You already dismissed this morning and this afternoon, and on many previous occasions,’ I reminded him.

  ‘Heat of the moment, Mozzy. Believe it or not, you’re my only broe out here in the bush —after Freddy and Caterpillar, of course. I don’t care for your cooking, but I’ll say this … you’re reliable. And you suck up spectacularly to the guests. But the strangest thing is this. I like you. I really don’t know why. We could almost be friends.’

  That did it. I had to go. I had to dismiss him. He had crossed a line. I could not let Mr Bin distract me from my career path by sentimental leanings, by breaking the proper positions of professional relations, by this ‘could be friends’ nonsense. It would lead to disaster and deep regret. That I knew from experience.

  He slowed to negotiate a deep ravine across the road, the headlights making hazardous dark valleys of the ruts. I always had to step off my bicycle for this dangerous perturbation on my way to and from work.

  ‘Jemima just wants me to sign.’ He crunched the gear as I gripped the handrail again. ‘Thing is, I’m not that spineless.’ He nodded to himself as if this reassured him that he was not as useless as all believed.

  We turned onto a side-track on the untidy edge of the village, past the standpipe from where I collected water and then past the barbed euphorbia until we arrived at my gate, which my good wife had made with a latticework of branches. Our small house was overlooked by the moon of a small satellite dish on a makeshift scaffold and a looping wire which brought power from six to ten evening from an entrepreneur with a generator. I saw how it was like a jail on account of its breeze block walls and window bars, but these ensured security against the elephants and other night poachers, which strayed out of the close-by National Park. A cull of the animals was truly overdue.

  I thanked Mr Bin for the transportation home and exited with my bicycle, then I leant to his window.

  ‘Mr Bin, I thank you for your employment.’

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘I’m needing to step up, to take higher employment in another location. It’s been satisfactory gaining experience in your employ, and I’m grateful to you of course, but now I need to select a higher gear.’

  ‘Is it the money?’

  ‘No, you’ve paid me well. I thank you.’

  Mr Bin looked away. ‘That’s it then?’

  ‘I wish you success. As you said, there are hundreds of cooks looking for work. I’m sure you’ll find it easy to replace me. It’s simple to boil an egg.’

  Mr Bin did not respond.

  ‘I thank you again,’ I said.

  ‘I guess it’s for the best. I can’t go back to the hotel in case Jemima’s waiting for me. It means tomorrow’s off. In any case … there’s no way our clients will want anything more to do with me. Not after that shameful scene. Bookings are thin. I’ll have to downsize.’

  I felt I needed to say more. This dismissal of my employer was not as easy as I expected. Mr Bin and I had worked in close proximity for a whole year, I noted in belation. Sun up, sun down, through rains and drought, clients in, clients out, we were close at hand. ‘We’ve made guests happy,’ I said to concede some positive and because —it was true— we had indeed achieved for guests.

  ‘Um, Mozzy?

  ‘Yes, Mr Bin.’

  But he put into gear and said so quiet that I could hardly hear him, ‘Totsiens Mozzy.’ He revved and departed.

  I stood there in a muddled mingle of thought, seeing the red light from the single working bulb at the back of his vehicle become as small and faint as the glow of an ember in the night. The ember died. Mr Bin was out of all sight. He had disappeared into the infinite weave and tangle of the bush. He had fled to where no one else lived, where he would not be troubled by personal matters. I surmised that he would like it that way. Now he could be truly on his own. He would not have to converse with guests. He could freely enter my kitchen with cats, apes and snakes. He would no longer have to eat ‘curries’. When day came, he could trek out where the beasts roamed, binoculars in hand, an easy giraffe gait, his footprints cavorting with the hooves of the beasts, clouds of insects rising as he passed, to flutter whitely in the sunlight. He would have the freedom to listen all day to birds carolling and to search for the brackish fowl without distracting and probing talkative company. Truly, I did not understand Mr Bin, his lack of a dream for his future. His wife had spoken honestly when she said that he had no ambition. He was indeed an unfitting individual to be the proprietor of a safari business and my father spoke truly when he said, The heart of another is a hidden place that we can never know.

  Chapter 6

  My dear wife, Dorothea, was watching TV in our principal room when I opened our front door. She was attired in the plain colours and shapeless, spiritless vestments of the Divine Prosperity Assembly, namely a purple headscarf with a white headband and a leg-concealing purple dress under a white pinafore. I was momentarily nostalgic for those days when she outfitted in hoop earrings, a gold blouse, pepper-red skirt and sheer tights. She had tuned the TV to the Sanctified Success channel, as was her recent custom. A preacher orated with a mighty voice, pouring the sweat of forceful sincerity. He called on the unsanctified to come forward to receive said sanctification and so, as a sure consequence, blessings, harmony and prosperity. Personally speaking, I preferred watching a cooking competition named MasterChef.

  ‘Ah! My beloved husband’s home,’ Dorothea said. She turned off the TV and skipped to me to peck the air next to both my cheeks as was her delightful custom. No holy outfit could suppress her light, dancing movements or her glittering eyes.

  ‘My dear wife, thank you as ever for your unfading greeting.’ I was so sorry that it was necessary to break what would be uncomfortable news to her concerning my employment. Whilst readying myself, I asked, ‘How was the Assembly?’

  ‘We were blessed, truly blessed!’ She clapped her hands. ‘Pastor Cain preached with overwhelming power. With such authority! And look, see, he’s bestowed on us a precious gift. I’m so excited.’

  She gestured the wood table with a throw of her hand. On the table was a tower of promotional leaflets for Pastor Cain’s More Blessings Campaign, which she energetically distributed in the village. In the centre of the table was the trumpet-like vase, which we had received as a wedding gift. This was most fittingly made of unbreakable glass. A purple and white flower, of a durable plastic variety, bloomed from the vase as symbolic of Dorothea’s late piety. There was also a brick, a russet brick squatting on silver-starred wrapping paper and a purple ribbon of the high gloss synthetic kind that is machined in
China. The said brick was burnt at its edges and I recognised it as typical of the bricks that were fired at the small kiln outside the village.

  ‘Where is the most precious gift?’ I asked.

  ‘Open your eyes!’ She held a reverential hand above the brick and spread her fingers as if to catch invisible rays. ‘This is the gift of course. Look, it came beautifully wrapped.’

  I came closer to inspect said gift. I took it and lifted it with a studious disposition to see if I was missing a concealed compartment underneath, but no, it was solid through and through, and heavy. Indeed, each of its six sides presented a brick-like face. I lowered it again with care as Dorothea had tensed in case I dropped it.

  ‘But surely, this is a common brick,’ I said to my dear wife.

  ‘Oh, ye man of little faith! That’s not a brick. It’s been consecrated by Pastor Cain. It’s an ordained stone. A spirit-fired rock from the clay of the earth.’

  ‘My mistake,’ I conceded. ‘To me it looked like a brick.’

  ‘We’ll lay it in the wall of our new house. It’ll be the founding stone.’

  ‘What new house, dear wife?’

  ‘Dear husband!’ She threw her arms in the air to have to hear her slow-witted husband. ‘Pastor Cain’s prophesied that we’ll be blessed with a new house now we’ve received this sanctified stone. The timing’s perfect. We’re ready right now for new blessings. See how our sofa’s far too large for this small room.’

  My wife spoke with veracity. We could not pass our table and our two simple wooden chairs without impacting our knees on the pink leather sofa. That sofa was much admired by Dorothea’s friends in the village. It stretched the length of the wall and sported polished wood detailing on the frontage of each arm and large pink buttons on the back of the seat. Some said that it was like a buffed limousine, smooth and shining, even opulent and progressive. Some said that the arms were like the sunburnt thighs of a heavy tourist: fleshy, curved and soft. It depended on the light of the time of day. Whatever, it was splendid and sumptuous. Furthermore, the seat was truly voluminous. Even the obese village policeman, Mr Bambatiwe, looked diminished when he occupied the sofa on those occasions when we were obliged to entertain him and feed him cake. The villagers concluded that the pink sofa was a sure sign of spiritual blessings on my wife. Indeed, the proof and the fulfilment. They aspired to the same. For myself, I was content that it brought a modern comfort to our small house, but I also concluded that without my salary from Mr Bin, we could not have purchased such an amenity. This point of fact was on my mind as I examined again the brick on the table. It would make only a solitary and, in truth, negligible contribution to the walls of a new house.