The Clarkl Soup Kitchens

by Mary Carmen

  Now our menus have to account for the dishes to be sent to the Batwigs. Are these really for the Monarchs?

  All we can base our selections on is what our friends the Drones are fond of. Sugar products are at the top of their list, starting with cake and pie. They are very fond of broccoli but not cabbage.

  January 17, 2142 – A nice holiday this year, with a few gifts from the Drones and a piece of local artwork from the Batwigs.

  We put up our usual treelike structure in the window, with handmade decorations and glass ornaments people had brought from home in America. The dining room manager unpacked the strings of lights used in past years and put those all around the front and the sides of the building. On Christmas day, the Drones brought tiny icicles made from silver and placed them on the tree. Later that day, the Slinkers brought the painting when they came for the afternoon pickup.

  This painting is a curious mixture of gold, platinum, and oil-based colors. It is not really very literal, so we had a good time guessing what was being portrayed. The dining room manager put it over the welcoming table, a stand where the hostess greets the guests and updates the daily “meals served” statistics. The Drones have been very appreciative of the painting, even though we don’t know what it represents. We smile and nod while they excitedly point to it.

  March 23, 2142 – This was the day of my trip to Udan’s Palace, the home of the rulers.

  Yesterday, during the afternoon pickup of the to-go order, the senior Slinker, the one who warms his hands over my stove every time he comes into the kitchen, gave me a note written in formal English.

  “You are invited to come to the home of the rulers tomorrow. You will be escorted with the early food.”

  I figured I was to be ready for the trip at 8:00 a.m., so I packed a little bag with my knives, a few whisks, and two one-quart saucepans. The churchwoman in charge of the laundry gave me two clean and nearly new toques.

  I found the time inconvenient, but I realized it was not my option to fuss. That time of the day is the busiest time of the breakfast service, and I usually have no time for even a small break.

  The senior Slinker was ready. He allowed me to put on my best coat and grab my bag before he escorted me to a seat in an open-air bus. Where are the Rolls Royces when they are needed?

  We drove for about twenty minutes, over roads I had never traveled and through an elaborate gate with a stern guard. Then, we traveled up a winding road to a large stone dwelling at the top of a hill.

  I was escorted to a large lobby, a place that was colder, if that could be possible, than the bus. This was a square room of about forty feet on each side. It contained no decoration and, of course, no fireplace. It was just four walls of rocks, some smooth and some quite rough.

  A group of seven Batwigs came to meet me. One asked for my coat, but I was reluctant to give it up. Another stepped forward with a cloak of a heavy, silky material, and he covered my shoulders with that garment.

  Our group immediately walked to a room that was similar in decoration but much, much larger. At the far end of that room sat four Monarchs on large wooden chairs. We approached the Monarchs and the Batwigs bowed. I just stood in place, waiting for instructions. As an American, I did not feel inclined to bow to anybody.

  How funny I must have looked to them! A stout American male in gray striped trousers and a white smock, with a curious white hat and a Clarklian cloak! I wish more than anything I could have had a picture of that moment, with the Batwigs bowing and the Monarchs slouching on those uncomfortable seats and the American wearing a funny hat.

  A minute later a line of Slinkers entered from a side door carrying a large table of food. Our food!

  The Monarchs lost all interest in the Batwigs and me. They pitched into the breakfast and wolfed up everything on the plates in ten minutes.

  The Batwigs stood very still during this time, as if they would cause indigestion for their rulers if they interrupted with casual breakfast conversation.

  As soon as the meal was consumed, the Monarchs got up and left through a gold-curtained exit behind the large seats. I saw the chairs for what they were, and I knew our Drones had much more comfortable seating for their breakfasts. No Drone eats breakfast on an uncushioned chair. No Drone eats breakfast on a chair without arms. The Drones eat the same food, but on better chairs.

  Then, I looked at the plates. We had packed the food on paper plates, and these plates were the same ones the Monarchs used when they ate! We had assumed the food would be reheated on the paper plates and then transferred to some wonderful dishes made of gold or platinum. I realized our Drones ate from better china and with better utensils than the Monarchs!

  I did not have much time to analyze all of this because I was soon shuffled off to the kitchen. This was a square room of about fourteen feet on each side. Again, the room’s walls were made from rough and smooth stone, and a door with a glass window allowed light to enter directly from the star.

  The kitchen was nearly an exact duplicate of the kitchen where I worked every day! The electric ranges were against one wall, a preparation table was in the center, and several sinks were on each other wall. My friend the lettuce robot, or his twin, was here, too. Above the sinks on two walls were the same refrigerators we used, and over the prep table were six microwave ovens.

  The only food I could see here was what was left in the boxes from our to-go package. I looked into the ovens, and nothing was cooking. I looked into the refrigerators, and nothing was cooling. Finally, I raised the lid of the only pot on the twelve-burner ranges and saw yesterday’s porridge, cold and stiff and starting to pull away from the pot’s sides.

  My host, a Batwig, pointed in the direction of the door leading to the outside, and I followed him to an overgrown garden. Here someone had tried to grow several vegetables, but weeds had overtaken the plants and the food had never been harvested. I saw corn still on the ears and peas still in the pods. I nodded and smiled, not really knowing what else to do.

  The Batwig led me to another door, one not as grand as the entrance into the lobby, and we entered. Here was a long hallway, with dozens of doors opening onto it. About halfway down the hallway, the Batwig paused and opened a door to our left.

  I stepped into a brightly lighted room full of overstuffed furniture and tapestries on the walls. It looked like something from a castle where the occupants were going through hard times. Everything was patched, and even the patches were faded. Again, I nodded and smiled.

  The Batwig then led me into an adjoining room, obviously a bedroom, with a thin mattress and a set of rusted, exposed springs. A decrepit dresser stood near the bed, waiting for its cue to fall over. Next to the dresser was the door to a private bathroom, a place with a rusty toilet and a miniscule shower. More nodding and smiling.

  Finally, the Batwig led me back to the lobby. The Monarchs had not returned to the room with the big chairs, and the table had been taken away. I looked for some sign of gracious living, some sign I was in the home of the ruler of a nation that could send spacecrafts and precious minerals to a small planet far away. Nothing appeared. There were no decorations, there were no comfortable chairs, and there was no food in the kitchen.

  The Slinkers were waiting. They exchanged my visitor’s cloak for my own best cloth coat and escorted me, toque on my head and knives in my bag, back to the open-air bus.

  We retraced the route to our complex, and I went in the dining room’s front door, back to my own world.

  August 18, 2142 – Life here has been very normal since my trip to the castle. I described the tour in as much detail as I could remember to everyone in my complex, and no two people had the same conclusion.

  One person believed I was about to be kidnapped and they changed their minds when they saw my hat. Another was sure I was expected to make suggestions about the layout of the kitchen. Other ideas were even more mundane or more outrageous.

  The to-go orders continue. The Slinkers pick them up twice a day, right
on schedule. We fill those orders with exactly what we are serving our Drone friends, and we have never received any special requests.

  October 30, 2142 – The offer came today. The Batwigs have asked me to transfer to the castle. They assured me I would have the kitchen I saw all to myself and would occupy the suite of rooms.

  I need the help of the State Department to formulate my answer. Of course, I am not going over to that pile of rocks! The idea of a chef having a kitchen all to himself reflects an absolute lack of knowledge about how a kitchen staff works. And that uncomfortable, ugly, and dirty suite is worse than anything I saw while I was in the Army.

  I have sent an urgent request for help to New Washington, with copies to the ambassador here and the bishop who manages the New Christian Congregation’s relationship with the government. I want to send a refusal but I don’t want a response of “Off with his head!”

  And how could I run my very active love life from that fortress? Who would visit? Why?

  I feel I am being squeezed, and the sides of the box are getting smaller and smaller.

  November 5, 2142 – The ambassador has sent a draft of a reply, and it is the most weasel-worded piece of correspondence I have ever seen. The first three paragraphs are dedicated to telling these Batwigs how honorable and gracious they are, the next two paragraphs describe the offer in the most glowing terms, and the final paragraph says I would be too unhappy away from beings of my own species to live more than a few days.

  I can’t possibly sign anything like that! What kind of a fool would believe it, for one thing? For another, it just leads to the conclusion that the Batwigs should just kidnap the entire compound.

  I’ll spend the next couple of days working on the letter and send an alternate draft to the ambassador.

  November 15, 2142 – My letter is in the fifth draft, with suggested text going back and forth between the various parties, some in America and some here on Clarkl.

  One suggestion is that I go over to the castle for a couple of days a week. I may have to accept that, for the sake of the entire American community here.

  December 8, 2142 – I started my new routine two days ago, and now I am back home in my little cabin.

  I have been assigned three helpers in the kitchen, all Slinkers, and my main job has been to cook food for freezing and to train my helpers to pull food from the freezer and get it ready for the table.

  The dining room manager gave me twenty place settings of the best of our china, and I have that at the castle now. I also have some sterling silver and some very nice crystal, contributed by the dozen or so dining units here. I don’t think the Monarchs have the best of everything, but their service is as nice as anybody else’s.

  Our churchwoman who runs the laundry gave me about a week’s worth of linens, including twenty tablecloths and one hundred luncheon napkins. These are the wash and fold types, with a little synthetic fabric to allow them to go from the dryer to the table without much ironing. In our dining room, we always use pure linen for the evening meal, but I can’t depend on the folks at the castle to handle linen correctly. I will need to carry linens back and forth each week.

  Of course, my lady friends did not visit. Two days without the comforts and pleasures of friends!

  I found no amusement in that castle at all. I worked even longer each day, what with having to do everything in the kitchen and train these greenhorns, too.

  December 15, 2142 – Another frustrating tour of duty at the castle. The helpers did not clean anything while I was gone, even though they served meals on china. I was delivered to the castle exactly on time, loaded down with various ingredients and produce from the farm, only to find the kitchen piled high with used freezer containers and dirty dishes.

  I knew I would have to clean before I could cook, but Headquarters wanted breakfast on the table. I showed the helpers, again, how to put the used dishes into the robot that washes, dries, and puts the clean items into the cupboards. It could not be simpler! The robot even turns itself on if it has work to do and nobody is in the kitchen.

  Breakfast was two hours late, and I wrote a note, in English, to the Batwigs to say the china had not been cleaned in my absence.

  In another unexpected moment, the royal party ordered more of a dish, one that had already exhausted my supply of fresh artichokes. I created a very similar dish with radishes, which grow like weeds on the farm, and flavored it heavily with the anise our Drones are so fond of. There were complaints about this substitute, but the serving plate was clean when it came back to the kitchen.

  In fact, these Monarchs seem to be much better eaters than the folks who frequent our dining room. They will eat nearly anything, like the Wolpters, but they eat more per person than any of the other Clarklians.

  The two days passed quickly, though. I had so much to do to keep the kitchen clean and the Monarchs fed that I forgot I was lonely and in a pout about the new assignment.

  December 29, 2142 – The Castle work is becoming more routine, now. The helpers are still very slow and very unwilling to learn, but the kitchen is cleaner each time I show up.

  Our dining room manager suggested I take two or three people from our own kitchen to assist, but that would leave our staff shorthanded, with no decrease in the numbers of diners. Furthermore, I am reluctant to allow the Monarchs to get used to commandeering our resources. We have our directions about preparing meals for the hungry Clarklians, and the payments to the New Christian Congregation are based on the numbers of diners and not on the social status of these diners.

  We are in the midst of the pumpkin harvest, and the churchwomen are working nearly around the clock to can and freeze pumpkin pulp. We prepared a pumpkin stew with peas and dumplings, and the regulars liked it very much. I understand that pumpkins will be plentiful for some years to come here and that they seem to love our cool and moist climate.

  My lady friends are even more anxious to come to see me in the evenings now that I am the chef at the Castle. I keep telling the ladies the Monarchs live like pigs, but there still is a mystique about the ruling family.

  I have not seen any children at the Castle. I can’t imagine where they are hiding, but I suppose there is a secret kindergarten somewhere to keep the young from mixing and mating with the undesirables.

  March 22, 2143 – just over a year to go now. My bank balance looks better every month, especially since I received a bonus for going over to the Castle every week.

  I have been making sure my suite at the Castle is very clean. I put on thick kitchen gloves and scour the bathroom every evening. Now, I am convinced the Castle’s inhabitants are snooping around while I am gone. There were clear footprints on the bathroom’s floor, although I had left it nearly spotless.

  What can they be interested in? Clean dishes and clean bathrooms are part of our way of life. We live long enough to be very concerned about disease, and cleanliness is our best defense. The Clarklians are so used to their terrible mortality rate that they don’t take elementary precautions.

  I’m still attracting more and more American woman. The word that I am working at the Castle is getting around, and two ladies from the single dining room run by the Fundamentalists of Christ called to ask for a meeting. I thought all those people were too godly for romantic assignations. Certainly they were holier than thou during the flight to Clarkl. We’ll see what they want. Maybe I’ll ply them with sherry.

  The royals are becoming fussy eaters, though. They can’t compete with the Wolpters for bad humor, but they know what they want. The fact that pumpkin is now out of season means nothing to them, and I’m glad we have a good supply in the freezer. I’ll have to ration it carefully so it lasts for a few more months. That means our friends the Drones will have to settle for more beans and broccoli.

  Actually, as long as the vegetables have a sweet sauce, the Drones are very satisfied. We served some corn fritters with a honey glaze yesterday, and the Drones would not leave the dining room. When we made the Uni
versal signal of “that’s all we have,” they grabbed the rest of the cake and went home.

  We have lots of pasta now, from an order from my former company. It arrived three days ago, and already we have prepared whole-wheat fettuccini with slices mushrooms and pesto sauce, to very good reviews. We have trouble keeping that pasta dry in this climate, but the churchwomen have set aside a part of the pantry where they run a dehumidifier. We know we have to use it fairly quickly, though.

  Not so with the wild rice flour, which appears to be in ample supply in America now. A little moisture does not seem to hurt it, but it is also so popular that we run out of it about a month before the next ship comes in.

  I have taken that wild rice flour to the Castle, too. The Monarchs like the wild rice pancakes with maple syrup, and they don’t care if they are on the table at every meal. The helpers can’t seem to learn how to make pancakes, though, so those are reserved for the days I am on site.

  The head Batwig has suggested I stay three days a week there, but I have been dancing around a decision. I have to run this kitchen here, of course, but the Batwigs don’t seem to realize our hundreds of regulars come before the twelve or fifteen Monarchs who eat at the Castle.

  June 6, 2143 – another bonus from the American government, making my bank balance nearly a million dollars, with the insurance money and the accumulated interest. I will have a nice house in Colorado or Utah in a year and a half.

  The Fundamentalist women keep coming, but who knows why. They don’t take the sherry, of course, but they like to smile and sit in my cabin. I’ll get one of them into bed before too long.

  I celebrated my hundredth conquest just last month! One hundred different women since I have been on Clarkl. Of course, many of these women have been back for seconds and thirds, but my success amazes me.

  The Drones are known for their many sexual partners, too. Maybe it’s something in the water. May I have no more luck than they with producing offspring.