The Chef, the Bird and the Blessing

by Andrew Sharp

  I sparked the generator awake and then woke Mr Bin —disdaining but forgiving of the shanty in his room. I polished, ironed, cooked, plated. I had air beneath my wings. Mr Bin left for the hotel and arrived back with our VIP guests in his beaten bakkie just prior to sunup. The birds had started up in an unusually excitable fashion that morning as if they had a premonition of the felicitous occasion —although I did not believe in divination.

  I stood behind the beverages on the veranda with repressed but undeniable excitement, attired in my double-breasted white jacket and my high head-chef’s toque; chin up and chest puffed out. A fine sight, no doubt. A luxurious display of scarlet and white flowers from Mr Bin’s unruly but convenient garden were hard to experience in the low light but they pleasured the still air with their scent of African wild honey and Seville marmalade. My perfectly-crumbling golden pinwheel shortbread creations awaited Mr Summerberg’s discerning palate.

  The doors of the vehicle opened and Mr Bin and Miss Camlyn stepped out but she did not ‘wow’ as previous. There was no blabbering or laughing. She only lifted a small polite hand to greet me. Where were her bird-of-paradise colours? She was in nettle-green safaris and a tan belt and her hair was tied back. Where were her oversized lemon-yellow sunglasses? Her eyes were hidden behind pragmatic blacks, even though the sun was not yet over the east horizon. I was ready to step forward to free Mr Summerberg from his seat, but Mr Bin signalled me to stay. Mr Bin and Miss Camlyn came cheerless to the table. I concluded that Mr Summerberg was absent.

  ‘Mozzy … I have incredibly sad news,’ said Miss Camlyn.

  What could possibly be?

  ‘Grandad died … five days ago.’

  I crossed my hand to my heart and could not express.

  ‘In his sleep, he never knew.’

  Too early, I thought, but it was true: Death keeps no calendar. I was stuck in shock. It was hard to comprehend that Mr Summerberg had truly passed away, even though it was most inevitable, was indeed in keeping with the strict and unsentimental order of things.

  ‘He wouldn’t have wanted me to cancel. I hope you understand, yeah?’ Miss Camlyn teared and I felt her pain deeply. ‘He wanted me to record the bird. I’m going to play it at his funeral.’

  ‘We’re going to try our damndest,’ said Mr Bin.

  ‘The future shall rise from the past,’ I mumbled.

  ‘Obviously,’ said Mr Bin and then twist-lipped as if he regretted speaking.

  Miss Camlyn said quietly, ‘Did your father say that?’

  ‘I think not, I seem to have found my own way of saying.’

  Freddy, the bushbaby, came to Miss Camlyn, jumping onto her shoulder, unaware of the tragic circumstance in which we were positioned.

  ‘Oh Freddy! How I’ve missed you.’ She nuzzled him so that they were one nest of hair.

  Her hand held him there and it seemed that she needed a living to hug. Freddy was compliant. Perhaps he was not unaware.

  ‘Would you like to partake of coffee? Ground Arabica of course.’

  She nodded, still in a hair and fur mingle with Freddy.

  ‘A quick one please. We mustn’t miss the singing hour,’ said Mr Bin.

  ‘Mozzy is coming with us, isn’t he?’ said Miss Camlyn.

  ‘If he can spare us from his pressing duties here,’ said Mr Bin in unnecessary and ill-timed jest.

  ‘I’ll be serving a most agreeable brunch,’ I said.

  We drove to the big tree, finding ourselves in and out of respectful silence for Miss Camlyn’s loss, held from exuberating by the conventions of a dignified mourning. I indeed was sober-minded to think on Mr Summerberg, a VIP guest to be sure, a man who purposed himself to the very end, a need of all livings, whether birds or persons.

  Miss Camlyn and Mr Bin footed into the wilderness together, leaving me to lay a beautiful table. They were gone a long time, but I was not concerned for their safety. Mr Bin would not let any harm come to his guest.

  When they returned, Miss Camlyn was in a laughing mood, saying to Mr Bin, ‘Do you remember? I asked why hippos don’t break their eggs when they sit on them? I asked who puts the straw in the trees for the giraffes?’ She put her hands to cover her face.

  ‘And I was a right uptight reclusive—’

  ‘Dipstick.’

  ‘Ja.’ Mr Bin was smiling.

  ‘But I’d say definitely not a —what did she say?— yellow jelly. If that’s any consolation.’

  ‘It is. A huge relief.’

  I thought it unnecessary to helpfully remind Mr Bin of timid, spineless, useless and all, as it was no longer true. Mr Bin had reformed, had mended and upturned, just as Mrs Camlyn had enacted the opposite.

  They settled down in the Winchester Safari Recliners, even Mr Bin, and the sunlight lapped and splashed prettily on Miss Camlyn’s face through the leaves of the great tree. Mr Bin did not restlessly seek out the far horizon or the high sky with his binoculars but stretched himself in the chair, long legs browning after their whitening in the gloomy prison container.

  I was minded to excuse myself, to leave the two in cahoots, but there was no gain in adding another RIP by walking away from the safety of Mr Bin’s rifle. In any case, I needed to excel myself in service to Miss Camlyn.

  I said, ‘Did you record my bird?’

  ‘Ding dong merrily on high, we did! It’s a proper little song, a genuine carol. It’s exactly right for Grandad’s funeral.’

  ‘He achieved his dream through his granddaughter.’

  ‘Thanks, Mozzy! Mind you I’m never going to tweet the song, or stream it, or give it to the National History Museum, or out it anywhere. If anyone wants to hear the akalat’s song, they absolutely have to come here. They have to book with Akalat Adventures.’

  ‘Akalat Adventures?’

  ‘The new name for Bird Obser … I can never bring myself to say it. It was so naff, so wordy, so unmemorable.’

  ‘She’s joining us as marketing director,’ said Mr Bin to myself. I was exceeding glad of the information. Mr Bin was taking instruction from me at last. ‘We’re going to be busy.’

  ‘And we’re going to be the best,’ said Miss Camlyn. ‘It’s going to be an awesome, massive, success! If I can double the sale of ball bearings, think what I’ll do with thrilling bird hunts … big red gorgeous sunsets … irresistible food.’

  ‘I’m most sincerely satisfied. We’re all in concordance.’

  ‘I’ll start with the website.’

  ‘Huh? That took me — ages,’ said Mr Bin.

  ‘It doesn’t show,’ said Miss Camlyn.

  ‘It brought you out.’

  ‘Yeah, in a loud scream.’

  They were insulting each other already, but were still smiling. Such, surely, were the bantering ways of promising pair-ups.

  The brunch was appreciated much; even Mr Bin complimented. Maybe just to be polite but it showed that he was trying.

  ‘What’s this, Mozzy?’ said Miss Camlyn, picking a snack from the table.

  ‘Sometimes called African polony. Tubers, peppers, peanuts. Ground up and made into a loaf.’

  ‘Mmm, nice. You should serve this sort of thing to our customers. They can get rum and banana ice cream in any Asda back home. We want to blow them away. We want them to experience local tastes.’

  Yes, Miss Camlyn was going to shake us up and bring us many VIP diners, for sure.

  After, they asked me to sit down, to relax, to be content. ‘To hang loose,’ said Miss Camlyn. I was uncomfortable to hang loose whilst at work but Mr Bin said that Miss Camlyn was no longer a guest and that this was a meeting of the Akalat Adventures company founders and so I should join the meeting. The explanation was to my liking. I sat, even leant back and contemplated the tree like the others. I could indeed find myself appreciating the scarlet and lemon leaves flaring happy in the m
orning sun, the hum of insects going about their business, achieving important ends like all the livings and personages I respected. This purposing of so-called feral nature I now understood. I no longer wished to muzzle the wild place with fences or wound it with long black scabs of tar. There should be no snaring streetlights. It should be left to be, to please and sustain all livings, whether green whirring bugs, or people.

  Miss Camlyn was not silent for long. ‘Ben, why can only certain people hear the akalat? I’ve been dying to know for ages.’

  ‘There’s this folklore. I guess it’s nonsense really.’

  ‘Yes, it’ll be nonsense,’ I said. I remembered the scientific document on the akalat that I had found in the Google on the library computer in London. ‘Nonsense, spread by a man named Carter.’

  ‘Tell me nonsense then,’ said Miss Camlyn.

  ‘It’s charming, whether it’s nonsense or not,’ said Mr Bin.

  ‘Charm me then!’

  ‘The story’s very simple … perhaps there was once a longer version but … it’s this. Those who hear its song together become friends for life.’ His face coloured and it started an epidemic because Miss Camlyn rosy faced as well. I had not guessed that she had a bashful heart beneath her upfrontal jawing.

  She smiled and said, ‘Wow! What do you think of that, Mozzy?’

  I shifted myself forward in the Winchester. ‘For myself … I’m not a superstitious man. I’ll offer my objective opinion should you find yourself to be friendly with a personage you heard the bird with. If this happens, of course it’s to be accepted, even welcomed … but I think it not magic or sorcery. If you’ve made the wearisome effort together to hunt the bird and listen for it —through many disturbing circumstances— then that would surely encourage concordance between you. That’s the inevitable. The logic.’

  ‘Logic? Yawn!’ said Miss Camlyn, ‘Let’s believe in the magic, yeah?’

  ‘The folklore gives the bird a meaning above its utility and its bird book entry,’ said Mr Bin, in scholastic brow. ‘It helps us care about defending the natural world.’

  ‘That birdy’s so cute,’ said Miss Camlyn.

  We reposed further, there being no need for haste, Mr Summerberg not pressing us to refrain from sitting about like beach bums and the bird song already in the bag in Mr Summerberg’s apparatus.

  Miss Camlyn opened her mouth as if hit by a surprise. She gripped the arms of the Winchester. She sat up. ‘That’s why Grandad so desperately wanted to record the bird … and wanted it played at his funeral!’

  ‘Because it’s … cute?’ I asked.

  ‘He must have read the folklore. He must have known the story.’

  She held her hands up to restrain any interruption, to give herself time to think.

  ‘My rellies are all at each other’s throats. They’ve all unfriended each other. My mother won’t speak to her sister. My uncle’s feuding with my aunt. My cousins are suing each other. But they’ll all be together at Grandad’s funeral.’

  Mr Bin and I held ourselves still.

  ‘Grandad must’ve been hoping they’d all make it up … if they all heard the song together.’ She lowered her gaze. ‘My mother and I are hardly buddies.’ She teared. ‘I think it upset Grandad.’

  Mr Bin and I nodded in slow, thoughtful concurrence.

  ‘I’m going to tell them all at the funeral. I’m going to play the song. Then I’m going to tell them what Grandad wanted.’

  Maybe I had been too hasty in my dismissal of the primitive folklore recorded by Carter. Maybe it had power to move hearts and, in that way, to fulfil its prophesy. I so hoped so, despite my inclination to dismiss superstitions and fabricated yarns.

  Miss Camlyn sat silent with a dazed and faraway look. I noted that, unlike her mother, there were no flecks of sulphur, or of black granite, in her eyes. Yes, she had a tender-hearted vision.

  After a while, Mr Bin said to me. ‘About names … what would you like me to call you? Then spell it for me.’

  What would be my name in Akalat Adventures? My birth name was Savalamuratichimimozi, certainly too time consuming to say in a casual discourse even if Mr Bin took time out to study and practice it. Dorothea called me Sava, but it was hers alone for me. In London I had been named Mr Toothy, Mr Tooshy, Jeffman, Man and Tan. All not ideal, indeed all were careless, even unthinking. I saw that for the giver and speaker of a name, the name is the person, as bound to them as their face; and so it is not easy to turn from calling a man Bernard, to calling him Joseph: or Freddy to Caterpillar. Mr Bin had always called me Mozzy. That was the name that he had given me, and it was a name, I believed, which indicated a certain benign, even affectionate, designation.

  ‘I’m happy for Mozzy.’

  ‘Thank God … I can’t imagine you as anyone else. I’m called Ben. B E N.’

  ‘I’ll practice,’ I said. ‘Bin.’

  ‘Almost.’

  My accent could be misheard. ‘But whilst with guests,’ I said, ‘I insist on professionalism. I’ll refer to you as Mr Bin and you’ll refer to me as Chef Mlantushi.’

  ‘The guests will love that,’ said Miss Camlyn, dropping back in the Winchester again. ‘I should know, I was one.’

  ‘I acknowledge the need for deportment at work,’ said Ben.

  ‘My friends call me Ella,’ said Miss Camlyn. ‘I hate Chantella, and only Grandad was allowed to call me El.’

  ‘Ella,’ said Ben, practicing to himself.

  So Ben, Ella and I raised our glasses brimming with home-made granadilla and mint cordial (a big deal with guests) to Akalat Adventures, to walking with guests on unadulterated ground, to the livings purposing in the wilds, to birds that sing, to superlative culinary creations, to good etiquette and to friendly relations. Yes, I had discerned that it was possible to arrive at my destiny in hand with others.

  Why do we dream our dreams, I asked myself. A want for a better life? A changed life? Something more? But for Dorothea and me, our dreams were fantastical thinking. Mr Makata had been correct. We did not know what our dream would be, until it arrived. And Ella? She was the only one whose dream had not been a fantasy. Not all who ask for the impossible are refused. Ben? He had been dreamless during that year of my first employment. Even Ella could not find one in him. But now he was free to dream again.

  I had been slow to understand my path and I had taken many false turns. I found myself constituting my own saying, which I did not verbalise out loud, to spare Ben’s ears.

  To become lost is to learn the way.

  My phone rang.

  Reception was crackling but I heard, ‘It’s Mr Fairbrother again here Mr Mlantushi. I don’t want to press, but have you decided?’

  I apologised for not yet ringing him back and drew breath to inform him of my decision to chef for Akalat Adventures, but then my breath stuck, seeing —a startling disclosure— Ben and Ella sitting pretty. We all sat pretty. But what if Ben and Ella quit due to unforeseen circumstances? What if Ella decided after a week of sweaty hottings in the sun and itchy nights from mosquitos, which made red hillocks on her smooth-as-butternut skin, that she did not love the bush enough? That the long and lazy grasses homed too many ticks. That the thorns in the tracks could pierce sandals. That she was at risk of fulminating septicaemia, gas gangrene, tetanic paralysis and pustular putrefaction, warned of by Ben when they first met. What if the poetry of nature became hard prose, as difficult as her heavy book Purple Hornbill? She had not shown an inclination to persistence. What if Ben decided he would upgrade to become a Doctor of Philosophy, a campus professor? They could both up those backwaters and pull out. They could hook-up and happy-couple anywhere. They had privileged passports. They could citizen in a place with safety-blanket welfare, high-tech healthcare, roads with white lines for lane keeping assistance. Would that not leave me abandoned in the over-the-horizon village, which the new Pre
sident had no interest in? I might never escape. I might have to end my days in bicycle logistics for Mr Makata, financed by Pastor Cain, my wife’s rapist, until I was apprehended by Mr Bambatiwe —eager to be associated with a successful prosecution— and jailed by the Justice.

  True, I had changed. No? Yes, I had learnt. I had been chastised. I had made a good peace and loving relations with Dorothea. I had aided my employer, even been a friend-in-need to him. Had I not even befriended a little bird? But this one thing had not changed: still I was a small-time kitchen cook in the scrub of an African country. I was no further up the path of success than I had been when I left for London. I was square-oned.

  And yet. And yet, was I not now content? Even merry and convivial? My ambition altered for the better, my thinking converted? Was I not re-purposed?

  ‘Mr Mlantushi?’

  What to say?

  ‘Mr Mlantushi?’

  This was surely the last of the three most singular days of my life. Number one: the Knightsbridge kitchen. Number two: the release of my bird. Three: today, this very day.

  ‘Are you coming to help us, Mr Mlantushi? Hello?’

  Mr Bin —I found it was brain-hurting me to rethink him as Ben, all sudden like that— had stood up and was trying to move the picnic table out of the sun. I needed to help. Sayings swirled in my mind, from where and from whom I could not tell.

  A bird that flies off the earth and lands on an anthill is still on the ground.

  What ground? Which anthill?

  Birds sing not because they have answers, but because they have songs.

  What possible assistance was that?

  He who sprints after good fortune and success runs away from peace and love.