The Chef, the Bird and the Blessing

by Andrew Sharp

  Then he activated and shook jubilant fists. ‘Jislaaik, Mozzy! It’s a male brackish akalat!’

  And so that is how I found myself temporarily diverted, walking with Mr Bin in the bush once again, far from the village. I was surprised to find that I did not, on that occasion, fear or curse the wilderness, perhaps because I had a sure escape. I even enjoyed. I did not agitate. The rain in the night had purged the air of dust and haze so that all was pin-clear and evidential. Little meringue clouds floated in the petal-blue sky. The primal earth on which I trod was damp and soft, scented of loam and marrow. The lichens were like molten bronze splashed over the rocks and pooled in the hollows. Leaves were drying out as crisp and golden as my pistachio pastries. Our path ahead was a mosaic in the chromates of plum, lime and pumpkin, and the white and grey trunks and branches of the forest surrounds were sculptures of nature that it would almost be shameful to cut for firewood. Nature had created beautiful order, tasteful decorations, and even sweet familiar aromas from the tangle of the bush —from the mess of the soil and its disordered ingredients. As a chef, I respected that.

  Indeed, I had a certain relaxation, a certain contentment and ease in my heart, not only because of my upcoming posting in London, but for the bird. I was to release it to its rightful place, and I was soon to leave for my rightful place in the big city. I noted that I was thinking in balanced thought and having realistic musings on my future. I knew now what to expect living in the city: the people swerving away, the tight rooms with no companion, the transportations on black canals of tar, but at work I would be in the stainless-steel kitchen of my dreams, creating for appreciative diners, wowing Mr Barstow, no doubt. One day I could be a respectable and respected head chef, maybe with my own restaurant amongst the skyscrapers, or on a Kensington square. Maybe. One step at a time. Yes, I had self-reflected.

  Mr Bin carried the bird in its cage and I saw it turn its head to hear the excited chatter of another bird and then lift its head when it heard a cicada start up its buzzing motor, and then turn its head again to follow a transparent green insect whirring past. It hopped along its perch. Its tail flicked up and down. The living little bird wanted to be busy.

  We heard a bicycle bell some distance away.

  I stopped. ‘A poacher falling off his bicycle?’ I asked.

  ‘A buffalo with a bicycle bell stuck on its horn. A useful warning if it comes near.’

  I was emboldened to speak of the private sphere with a man who had not been reluctant or too proud of his position as my employer to show friendly to me. ‘What of your wife? Did she find you again?’

  We walked further before he said, ‘Something’s happened to me.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘How can I explain?’

  ‘I can listen.’

  ‘I thought I was free. On my ownsome in the bush. My place of sanctuary. The wilderness didn’t judge me. Pointed no finger. It had no voices to accuse me. I thought Robert Benjamin Du Plessis could vanish … blown away like these dry grass seeds.’ He indicated the sweep of lazy, luminous and misty grasses, eulogised as such by Miss Camlyn.

  I was glad that he trusted me to hear his personal thoughts, whatever their soul-deep nature. This was surely the privilege of friendly relations.

  ‘But no, I couldn’t lose myself. There was that … voice in my head. All that spineless yellow-jelly stuff. It wouldn’t go away. I was like this akalat.’ He lifted the cage to see the bird. ‘Trapped. The bars were the voices, my own and Jemima’s.’ His eyes darkened. ‘Intrusive … relentless … ever-present thoughts. I had to free myself, bust out.’ He laughed short. ‘I had a lot of time to chew that over in that other cage, Romaji jail.’

  ‘And your wife?’ I said, to remind him of my question.

  ‘I’ve settled with her. She’s got her divorce and kept her money. I didn’t contest it — spineless you might say. But … liberation! It opened the cage door. I’m free.’

  ‘You’re a happy man,’ I said without necessity. I was not inclined anymore to criticise his marital failure. Was it not the case that Dorothea and I had been dancing on a smouldering fire of disharmony? Had we not rubbed flint against stone? Was it not true that Dorothea had not joyed at my ultimate posting?

  ‘What about you? Are you going back to Boston?’

  ‘In actuality, it’s London for me as a probationary chef.’

  ‘I was hoping you’d stay. I’d like to take guests again,’ said Mr Bin.

  ‘You’re offering?’ I laughed lightly, to thank his kindness, yes, but also to politely indicate that I had a better tomorrow.

  ‘Just suggesting.’

  ‘When do we release the bird?’

  ‘This is a lekker place.’

  He positioned the cage on a fallen trunk of timber, and I took one last look at my little bird. What was this strange experience that I had encountered? It had been loyalty through trouble, yes. I had not abandoned it for refusing to sing. I had done something to help it achieve its purpose. True, the bird had let me down, it had not sung, but I had not condemned it. I had not condemned it for behaving like a bird. I had not condemned it for behaving as its true self. Of course, this so-called friendship with the bird was one way. I did not know what it thought of me, if it thought at all, but nevertheless it had been a teacher to me.

  ‘You release it,’ said Mr Bin. ‘You’re the one that rescued it.’

  I opened the cage door. The bird stayed unbelieving although the sky was no longer barred. For a while it seemed trapped in thinking its way was still closed, that it could not be free. It turned its head, this way, that way. Still the sky remained open to it. Then it was out, out into the wide as if blown by an eager gust of wind. We saw it vanish into the weave of the trees. Gone from sight. It had become a living out there with its own kind. It could now feel air beneath its wings. It could go on to live before it died. It had purpose. I had released it to the homeland it had flown to in its dreams in my cramped room in Lockview.

  We rested quiet on the fallen timber.

  Then I heard it sing; even though I could not strictly hear it. It was more a speaking to my heart. I could not say what it said, but it opened a memory, previously caged.

  I recalled that night when my father died. I had allowed myself to be distracted from my duty to him. That evening I became like my mother had always been, in chaos and disorder. A friend had invited me out. I thought my friends had forgotten me, so I was flattered. I lost personal discipline and went out without a word to my father and without checking his needs were met for the evening. My friend and I visited bars, enjoyed music, enjoyed company, my old friends, flirted the girls. I had a drink and many more.

  ‘This is like the old days, Sava. Glad you’re back!’ said my friend. The bar music knocked away my cares. In truth, I had a good time.

  I returned home in no fit state in the pre-dawn hours. There I found my father on the floor. He had tried to move himself, perhaps to bed, but had fallen. Blood soaked the concrete from a broken head. He was soiled. He had died there. He had died without me. He had died because of me. I had been distracted from my duty by being friendly, by losing personal discipline. In truth, I had been unsuccessful in looking after my father.

  That was the time, surely, that I decided never to risk too friendly, to maintain only professional relations for fear of catastrophe and failure. And from that time, I had also dedicated myself to the code of self-restraint, to personal discipline, so that I would never fall again. But now I speculated this: was this heavy thinking my own cage? Had I come to wrong deductions? Had I devoted myself to flagellation for a goal whose fist-tight purpose was to keep me away from risk? Was I fearful of the consequences of such? That it would lead to disaster, to failure? But was not Mr Bin free from jail because I had, in truth, been a friendly help to him —just in time? Was not the bird free because I had followed a mutinous emotion that had esc
aped from the locked door of my heart?

  ‘It’s getting dark,’ said Mr Bin.

  ‘Let’s go. I don’t wish to hear any soul falling into a bottomless abyss.’

  Back at Mr Bin’s house, I push-started his vehicle and he drove me back home. As the road declared itself ahead in the dim light of the headlights I was set upon by a surprising confusion, struggling to know my own road.

  My father used to say, Keep walking, the destination is ahead. But what if I had been dreaming of the wrong destination. Why that far away, gloss-ribboned destination? I had never asked myself, although Dorothea had suggested that I do. Maybe another glorious journey’s end awaited me, but it was not the destination that I had been offered. In London, had I not looked back at my time with Mr Bin with some reluctant affection, even when I thought of the little ape Freddy, even though I hated the flies and ants? Had I not missed the VIP guests to make their safaris worthwhile for them, conversing with them delightedly on their picnics? Were not my bush picnics as fine as any high-end dinings?

  But surely not one in a million cooks looking for work would turn down the guaranteed place in a well-known restaurant in London. I thought again of wearing the finest, whitest, chef’s toque and apron and arranging walnuts and dried cherries on a frisée and apple salad in that stainless-steel kitchen in that progressive city. I thought of Mr Barstow, struggling to pen adequate eulogies. Yes, I truly had the oven-ready posting of that dream to salivate over at last.

  We pulled outside my abode. I could not avoid a thought, heavy enough to be considered a holy discernment. Since my father’s death, I had believed my life to have been driven by the dream of advancement, but now I thought that this was not true. No, in actuality my life had been driven by the motor of a memory. The to-be-avoided memory of the circumstance of my father’s death, my agency of it. But no, it was not a motor, it was a cage. Did I need to break the bars that that memory had donated me? How would I do that? I had no idea. What would the key on the inside of the cage door look like?

  Mr Bin bade me goodnight and totsiens.

  I said, ‘If, if, if …’ I stopped to vision the if.

  ‘Go on,’ said Mr Bin.

  ‘If I was to work with you again … in concordance and mutual advancement for the business and in order to high-purpose our lives here, there would be a request, if I might.’

  ‘It’ll be pauper’s wages for both of us Mozzy until we make some money.’

  ‘No, not that.’

  ‘I won’t bring animals into the kitchen.’

  ‘No, not that.’

  ‘I’m not giving away Caterpillar or Freddy.’

  ‘Not that.’

  ‘I’m not going to become organised and tidy.’

  ‘Not even that. This would be my request. You offer Miss Camlyn the position of Marketing Director.’

  Mr Bin shock-faced and then laughed. ‘I seriously need marketing, yes, but Miss Camlyn? I can’t imagine her wanting to have anything to do with me. She saw my true character —as you so rudely but rightly pointed out.’

  ‘Maybe you should try her and see.’

  He slow-played his fingers on the steering wheel and said, ‘Perhaps I should. Maybe she’ll find I’m not the character I was.’

  ‘That might put her off. She liked you as you were. She believed you had righteous convictions and concealed fortes.’

  He smiled. ‘I’ll invite her and her grandfather out to have another shot at recording the akalat. I found your email when I was released from jail.’

  ‘That would be a good start,’ I said.

  It was time to choose my destination. I had all opportunity, two noble destinations. I thought of Dorothea. She was waiting for something that I had not so far discovered. It seemed close, that if I thought freely, uncaged by painful memory, I might find it.

  Mr Bin waited.

  ‘I’d therefore like to apologise for my previous dismissal of your kind suggestion. I’ll join you again.’

  Mr Bin punched my shoulder and then moved to shake my hand. He beam-faced and almost teared. For myself, it felt like I had indeed unlocked the cage door. I had air under my wings. I was as free as my akalat, and just as purposed. I experienced a sensation of relief. I felt it deeply.

  ‘But only if I’m appointed as head chef.’ I gave Mr Bin a raised eyebrow to signal an indication of attempting funny.

  ‘You shall be,’ said Mr Bin. ‘Top, top chef and chief host for the guests. You were always the better half of Bird Observation Day-Walk Safaris.’

  Return to old watering holes for more than water; friends and dreams are there to meet you. Was it true?

  When he departed, I stood there seeing the red light from the single working bulb at the back of his vehicle glowing like a warm ember in the night, like a welcoming campfire in the dark where persons could be convivial to each other as they partook of dishes so sublime that words could not do them justice, not even as penned by the most eminent food critic.

  At home, Dorothea was sitting on the chair at the table, her head scarf off but still in her shapeless purple dress, tearing up the prosperity leaflets. ‘I’m making firelighters,’ she said. ‘It’s to start the fire for an oven that I’ll make from bricks. Bricks! That’s full circle, is it not? I’m going to bake bread for the safari businesses.’ She tore them with force.

  ‘Dorothea.’

  ‘The hotels are always complaining they can’t get good bread.’

  ‘Dorothea.’

  ‘I’ll make wholemeal. They say the tourists don’t like sliced white. I thought it was a luxury.’

  ‘Dorothea.’

  ‘Yes?’ She stopped tearing papers.

  ‘I have my dream posting.’

  ‘Yes, you told me.’ She carried on tearing.

  ‘No, it’s not in London. It’s not in a city. I’m staying here. My dream posting is here with Mr Bin.’

  She put down the leaflets.

  ‘And my dream place is here with you, my sweetest Dorothea.’

  She lifted from her chair. ‘Sava, is this true?’

  ‘I no doubt still have big faults, but I’m changed.’

  She clasped her heart to hold herself in check. ‘Why?’

  It was too long a story to recite by voice from start to finish, from my happy childhood kicking footballs in the dusty roads, to my father’s brain stroke, to the years learning my craft at Tom Mbolo’s, to my father’s death, to my mother’s abscondment, to Mr Bin’s employ, to the lonely days in London, to my recent illustrious appointment as chef to VIPs in a top kitchen; to recite about my little teacher the akalat, which had released me from my cage; to tell about my long road to success, notwithstanding every setback in the book.

  ‘I thought that if I leave you again then we cannot try for a child.’

  She came to me. ‘You wish?’ she said.

  ‘Yes, I wish as much as you … I should be here for the attempt, no?’

  She was smiling, had joying eyes again. ‘Wait there.’ She exited.

  I sat on the chair and completed the shredding of the fantasy and false belief. It made a tatty heap. Then my hands paralysed. A shock speculation came to me. We had at last received a Blessing. Major league. Was this the Blessing? Dorothea and I were now both in a prosperity of an unexpected kind. Maybe the brick had indeed acted. Perhaps that brick needed to be thrown away, had to be smashed, before it could let out its blessing. It needed release. I looked at the prophet’s leaflets, torn by our hands. A panicked confusion came on me and my hands fumbled to fit the pieces of the leaflets back together again. Did we have any tape to stick them? What about a stapler?

  I came to my senses, laughed at myself for flirting with superstitious thoughts of trickery. I continued tearing the paper.

  I heard Dorothea say, ‘Sava?’

  I turned to her. She was
standing near. She could have been the young lady on the lime-green Zapp Phones billboard: her face lively, romantic and smiling. Her eyes dancing again. She was gold bloused, pepper-red-skirted and sheer-tighted, just as she was when I first met her at Tom Mbolo’s. She had cast off the regimentals and bindings of the false prophet.

  I went to her and we tender kissed in each other’s hold. We retired to our bed because we had no pink sofa. But was not that pink sofa hideous?

  Chapter 23

  I cycled out to Mr Bin’s abode at four thirty hours on a bicycle bought for me by Mr Bin from Bicycle Repairs – Any Damage. Today, elephant delays permitting, I had chefing to do and we had VIP guests.

  No creature barred my way, but I was surprised by a bicycle that darted silent as a bat across my path at a junction. It had no light. Above the flurry of the pedals and twirling wheels was the black shape of a rider, a shape not unlike that of Mr Vupuma, and behind him the square of a box on the carrier. He did not stop, did not greet. Maybe he had not seen me. He vanished as quickly as he had appeared, but I had no doubt that I had witnessed bicycle logistics. What organic produce was in the box? A bird?

  I paralysed. The bird we had released was a brackish akalat, Mr Bin had confirmed it. But had the bird come by bicycle logistics, not via jet travel? Had Mr Makata cunningly delivered me an akalat from the National Park? Had my bird in London been sold on to some other lonely in London? The bird that Mr Makata had delivered had resemblance in configuration, true, to my London bird. But it was somehow more lively, wilder, stronger, less calm than my bird in London. I had put that down to it being excited, maybe also agitated to be jet-lagged. But was it truly my bird? Was it a lighter colour perhaps? Had my Lockview bird been some other type of insect scoffer that was still in London? The more I stared down the road at the disappeared logistics, the more I doubted that Mr Makata had delivered me my own bird, the more I thought that Mr Summerberg had been correct in doubting that I had an akalat in London.

  And if the akalat Mr Makata had delivered was not my London bird, would it matter? Sure, I would grieve for my bird friend, but did my altered frame of mind depend on which bird I released or on a complicated and weighty psychology? I put my feet to the peddles again but hardly noticed the rest of my journey, despite passing an elephant, and came to the conclusion as I approached Mr Bin’s property that these were questions to which there was no right or wrong answer; even that no wise saying could illuminate. Such would be the theme of the day.