by Martin Suter
Schaeffer had arranged a meeting for the following afternoon between Carlisle, Dalmann and the official responsible for writing off the howitzers. With a lunch to follow.
Waen would join them when the official had left.
The barman brought two long-legged women in cocktail dresses to the table. The taller of them was black. Her short-cropped hair looked like the tight-fitting cap of an Olympic swimmer. The four men stood to welcome them. Two of them gave the women their chairs and bade the others farewell until the following day.
24
It was only a telephone call, but it had grave consequences. Andrea was shopping in the household section of a department store. She was choosing cloths, cushions, candlesticks and a few other decorative items. Not because Love Food urgently needed them, but simply because it was Indian Week at the shop and business was good.
Her mobile rang and the display said it was Esther, the therapist.
‘Hi Esther!’ Andrea said, exaggerating her delight. ‘So nice to hear from you!’
Esther was abrupt and came straight to the point. ‘It’s my job to solve couple’s problems, not create them. And so I’m ending our business relationship forthwith.’
‘I don’t understand.’ Andrea’s voice had become serious and soft.
‘Mellinger’s wife found out about his affair. He mentioned you. How could you?’
‘He wouldn’t take no for an answer. I’m really sorry.’
‘Me too.’
That is when Esther terminated the conversation. Andrea put back the things she had chosen. Although Love Food had a good number of bookings for the next fortnight, there were no other reservations after that.
Esther had meant it seriously. Andrea tried to get her to change her mind, but to no avail. ‘You know what?’ Esther had said. ‘I’ve got my reputation to think of. If Love Food is going to be that underhand, I might as well send my patients straight to a brothel.’
Andrea had suspected that Esther was happy to have an excuse to end their relationship, and she made the mistake of telling her so. ‘Sure,’ she remarked, ‘if your patients come directly to us rather than to you, you’ll be left with nothing.’
Had there been the slightest chance of making Esther change her mind, Andrea had blown it with this comment.
She did not inform Maravan of this development immediately. It was he who finally asked, ‘Have we had fewer enquiries or are you not accepting them all any more?’
Only then did she make her confession.
He listened calmly, then said, ‘So I can finally cook something else again.’
‘And where am I going to get the customers for normal dinners?’
‘My dinners are never normal,’ Maravan answered.
Andrea was right. Without the erotic element, Love Food was merely another small catering firm, with the handicap that it was operating illegally and dependent on word of mouth for business. But who would put the word around for a firm that nobody knew about? They needed a way in.
Andrea tried in vain to get their first commission. It was Maravan who had the obvious idea: ‘Why don’t you just invite people over? And if they like it you can tell them that we can also do it at their homes.’
She put together a list of those people she knew who were most active socially, most comfortable financially, most willing to experiment and most communicative, and came up with twelve names. Not a single man among them.
They set a date for 15 November. In Washington, the twenty leading industrial and emerging nations met at a global finance summit and decided on a reorganization of the world’s financial markets. The Sri Lankan army continued to shell the city of Kilinochchi. And the Swiss Defence Minister was bullied out of his post by his own party.
Andrea was decorating the dining room and setting the table. They had decided to use cutlery and not eat on the floor. Maravan had even allowed her to play some Indian background music. He had only vetoed the incense sticks.
He was standing in Andrea’s kitchen, finally able to cook to his heart’s content. He did not have to pay any attention to the aphrodisiac effect of the dishes, his arsenal of kitchen gadgets had grown and now his eagerness to experiment was almost limitless. He had been busy preparing this dinner for two days.
The menu consisted of his experimental versions of classic Indian dishes:
Cinnamon curry caviar chapattis
Baby snapper marinated in turmeric with molee curry sabayon
Frozen mango curry foam
Milk-fed lamb cutlets in jardaloo essence with dried apricot purée
Beech-smoked tandoori poussin on tomato, butter and pepper jelly
Kulfi with mango air
This may have been slightly shorter than the classic Love Food menu, but it was more work because each course had to be given the finishing touches just before serving. Six times over for twelve people.
Maravan was as nervous as a sprinter before the start of a race. And the fact that Andrea kept on coming in every few minutes did not make it any easier.
The milk-fed lamb cutlets were cooking in the digital water bath (one of Love Food’s new acquisitions) at exactly 65 degrees, along with the tandoori poussins, another of Maravan’s new creations. He was working on the curry sauce that would form the basis for the molee sabayon; the onions, which he was lightly sautéing in his tawa in coconut oil with chillies, garlic and ginger, had just turned a honey-yellow when Andrea came in.
‘I’m amazed you don’t freeze with that window open.’
He did not reply. He had told her often enough that he could not work in a jumble of smells. He always had to air his kitchen in order to separate the aromas and work with precision. He did not cook his curries by measuring amounts; he cooked them by using his nose.
And this nose was now telling him that it was exactly the time to add tomatoes, peppercorns, cloves, cardamom and curry leaves.
‘When you’ve got a moment I’d be grateful if you could come into the sitting room.’
He must have looked irritated because she said, ‘Please, I’ll be quick, really quick.’
She waited for him to follow her.
They had carried the suite which made the room into a dining-cum-sitting room into the office; otherwise there would have been no room for the table for twelve. Together with the chairs, they had borrowed this from a former employer who ran a trendy pub with a garden on the edge of town. Now it was covered with a variety of Indian tablecloths which she had bought in the end from the department store that had the Indian Week. Along the entire length was a centrepiece of two white tablecloths folded lengthways. On top of this was a garland of orchids, of the sort that could be bought cheaply in Thai shops, interrupted by candles. They had stuck with the idea of candlelight.
‘Well?’ Andrea asked.
‘Lovely,’ he replied.
‘Not kitschy?’
‘Kitschy?’ Maravan did not know this word. ‘Very lovely,’ he said again, and went back into the kitchen.
He retained the mini chapattis as the amuse-bouche. But instead of drizzling the curry leaf, cinnamon and coconut oil essence with a pipette, he took off the fat and poured the essence into calcium chloride water until it formed caviar pearls. These were then rubbed in coconut oil and used to decorate the warm mini chapattis.
He had to leave making the fake caviar to the last minute, so that the tiny balls did not set. They should be liquid inside and burst between tongue and palate. Andrea came back in again. She had her telephone in her hand and a smile of incredulity on her face. ‘You’re not going to believe this.’
Maravan continued working without looking up.
‘Someone’s just called and said, “Are you the ones who do the sex dinners?”’
‘What did you tell him?’
‘That he’d got the wrong number.’
‘Good.’
‘“This is Love Food, isn’t it?” was his reply.’
‘Where did he get the number from?’
‘Who?’
‘He said that was irrelevant. “So do you do sex dinners or not?”’ Andrea said it with a deep voice and in a broad, rather common accent.
‘What then?’
‘I said no.’
‘Could you see his number on your phone?’
‘Yes.’
‘So find out who it was on the internet.’
‘Won’t work. It’s a mobile number.’
It took half an hour for all the guests to arrive. Through the kitchen door Maravan could hear the piercing shrieks of people catching up with each other and the over-excited laughter of those arriving. Now and then Andrea brought an empty bottle of champagne into the kitchen and left again with a full one.
Finally she popped her head in and said, ‘Go!’
This was Maravan’s cue.
Almost three hours later he was sitting on a kitchen chair, satisfied with his work and the seamless progression of the courses. Then Andrea came in, beaming and slightly tipsy, took his hand, and brought him out into the dining room.
There, twelve women sitting in the flattering candlelight turned their heads to the door.
‘Ladies, let me introduce to you Maestro Maravan!’ Andrea proclaimed.
The cheering and applause made Maravan so embarrassed that he became stiff and serious.
Andrea received phone calls the following day, and the day after that letters from her delighted guests. Most of them said that they would be making use of Love Food’s services very soon, two of them even said very, very soon. One of them had already made a firm booking: in ten days’ time, on 27 November, 7.30, four people.
The success was absolutely crucial. Including the champagne and wine, Love Food had invested more than 2,000 francs in the dinner. Neither Andrea nor Maravan had any cash put by. In view of how well the business had been going they had both spent a fair amount of money. And Love Food had invested in a number of high-tech kitchen appliances, which the company would not have been able to afford in its current circumstances.
They were also forced to change their pricing. Charges for non-therapy dinners had to be lower, naturally. Andrea had calculated that they would make up for these losses with the higher numbers of guests. She had reckoned on an average of six per dinner. So the first booking for four was not a great start.
A week after the promotional dinner there had still been no further bookings. Andrea started getting nervous. She called a friend who had promised to make a reservation ‘very, very soon’ and said, ‘I’ve been keeping a few evenings free for you in the next ten days and just wanted to make sure you didn’t have one in mind before I give them to other people.’
‘Oh,’ the voice at the other end said, ‘so good of you to call. We’ve got a few diary difficulties at the moment. I don’t want you to have to turn down other people because of me. Tell you what. Let the other people have those evenings, and as soon as we’ve sorted out our social calendar I’ll get back to you. And if you don’t have any free slots, which wouldn’t surprise me, then it’s my own fault.’
The other potential clients, who had said they would book ‘very soon’ made similar excuses when Andrea called.
25
Maravan was kneeling before his domestic shrine. His forehead touched the floor. He was praying to Lakshmi for Ulagu.
Today he had received the news that Ulagu had disappeared. In the morning he had been with his brothers and sisters; in the evening he was nowhere to be seen.
Whenever a fourteen-year-old boy disappeared in the north of Sri Lanka, the first worry was that he had died, the second that he had become a soldier, voluntarily or involuntarily joining the Tamil Tigers or the Karuna rebels fighting with the Sri Lankan army.
Maravan prayed this was not the case – that at this very moment, while he was praying for Ulagu, the boy was already back safe and sound with his family.
He could hear the ringtone of his mobile in the kitchen. He ignored it, finished his prayer, and started to sing his mantra in a restrained voice.
Afterwards, he straightened up, folded his hands across his chest, bowed and touched his forehead. He stood and went into the kitchen, back to preparing the dinner in two days’ time that he had interrupted to pray.
Four iron pots were sitting on the cold stove, each with a different-coloured curry: a lamb curry with yoghurt, light brown; a fish curry with coconut milk, yellow; a vegetable curry, green; and a Goan lobster curry, orange.
He wanted to make four jellies from these and pair each one with its main ingredient: a slice of lamb fillet cooked pink on the light brown one; a steamed halibut cheek on the yellow one; okra stuffed with lentils for the green one; and a lobster rosette for the orange one.
He relit the flames under the pans and waited, absentmindedly, until the bubbles started rising again.
He noticed the mobile phone on the work unit. One missed call, it said, and a text message.
Stop. Dinner cancelled. A
Maravan went to the stove and turned off the gas. He did not care.
There was still no trace of Ulagu three days after his disappearance.
On the fourth day the Tigers arrived.
Maravan was experimenting in his kitchen with different jellification dosages when the bell rang. Two of his compatriots were standing at the door. He knew one of them: Thevaram, the LTTE man who had arranged Maravan’s modhakam job at the temple and pocketed 1,000 francs for the favour.
The other man was holding a briefcase. Thevaram introduced him as Rathinam.
‘May we come in?’
Maravan reluctantly let them in.
Thevaram glanced into the kitchen.
‘Well equipped. Business seems to be doing all right.’
‘What can I do for you?’ Maravan asked.
‘They say you’ve set up a catering service.’
Rathinam remained silent, just staring at Maravan.
‘I cook for people sometimes,’ said Maravan. ‘Cooking’s my profession.’
‘And successfully, too. You sent more than 6,000 francs back home in the last few weeks. Congratulations!’
It came as no surprise to Maravan that the Batticaloa Bazaar had passed the details on to these people.
‘My grandmother is very ill,’ was all he said in reply.
‘And you paid back all your loan to Ori. Congratulations again!’
Ori, too, thought Maravan. He waited.
‘Yesterday was Maaveerar,’ Thevaram continued, ‘Heroes’ Day.’
Maravan nodded.
‘We wanted to bring you Velupillai Pirapaharan’s speech.’
Thevaram looked at his companion. The latter opened his briefcase and took out a computer printout. At the top of the page was a portrait of the stocky LTTE leader in camouflage gear, and a long text underneath.
Maravan took the sheet of paper. The two men offered him their hands.
‘Congratulations again on your success. We’ll keep our fingers crossed that the authorities don’t hear of your lucrative activities. Especially as you’re still signing on.’
At the door Rathinam spoke for the first time: ‘Read the speech. Particularly the end.’ Maravan could hear their footsteps in the stairwell and then the muffled ding-dong of a doorbell one floor below.
The end of the speech went like this:
At this historic juncture, I would request Tamils, in whatever part of the world that they may live, to raise their voices, firmly and with determination, in support of the freedom struggle of their brothers and sisters in Tamil Eelam. I would request them from my heart to strengthen the hands of our freedom movement and continue to extend their contributions and help. I would also take this opportunity to express my affection and my praise to our Tamil youth living outside our homeland for the prominent and committed role they play in actively contributing towards the liberation of our nation.
Let us all make a firm and determined resolution to follow fully the pat
h of our heroes, who, in pursuit of our aspiration for justice and freedom, sacrificed themselves and have become a part of the history of our land and our people.
Maravan went into the kitchen, threw the paper in the bin, and washed his face and hands very thoroughly. Before he entered the sitting room he took off his shoes, then he kneeled in front of the domestic shrine, lit the wick of the deepam, and prayed fervently that Ulagu would not follow the path of the heroes.
26
Andrea was freezing as she sat in the rattan chair in her conservatory. She wore thick woollen socks and had pulled up her legs, so the Kashmir shawl covered her toes. The shawl had been a present from Liliane, Dagmar’s predecessor. Andrea had met her in Sulawesi, a happening restaurant which, with its international fusion cooking, had enjoyed a brief heyday and then vanished. Liliane, an analyst at a large bank, was a regular at Sulawesi. Andrea had served her table on her first night working there and flirted a little. When she left the restaurant long after midnight Liliane was waiting for her in her red Porsche Boxster and asked whether she could give her a lift home.
‘Whose home?’ Andrea had asked.
That was a long time ago now, and the Kashmir shawl had a few moth holes, which annoyed Andrea every time she took it out of the cupboard.
The November Föhn wind was shaking the rickety windows, the draught stirring the indoor palms. She had put an electric heater in the middle of the room, because the only radiator was lukewarm. It needed bleeding, but Andrea did not know how. Dagmar had always done that.
The electric heater would send her bills sky-high, but she did not care. She refused to accept that the conservatory – otherwise known as a winter garden – could not be used in winter.
She put the newspaper she had finished reading to one side and did something she had not done for weeks: she picked up the job section, which she usually threw away unread, along with the rest of the classified pages.