And on a merciless morning, the end of the labyrinth where I always lose my way and begin anew, remnants of you swirl among snowflakes then vanish and are gone.
Proceed to the next page.
You can feel that your apartment is brilliant with light. Are those the rays of the sun, or something else? Morning offers forgiveness for all, to killers and victims, to Maya and Lila. And who are you: Lila, or Maya? The question is no longer important. All you want is to close your eyes.
‘Sleep, darling. Sleep.’
Before it gets dark, you feel light entering from the window to embrace you, whispering sweet words in your ears. The light is your angel. No, a devil. A lover who strokes your hair sings you a lullaby for the last time.
Hush, little baby, don’t say a word,
Papa’s gonna buy you a mockingbird.
If that mockingbird don’t sing,
Papa’s gonna buy you a diamond ring.
If that diamond ring turns brass,
Papa’s gonna buy you a looking glass.
Who is gazing in the mirror now?
FINIS
At Meena’s table, spices take you on adventures. Meena speaks not only of the aromatic masala that conjures up home but of travel as well. Of the world. She has followed in the tracks of spices, rejected national borders. She delights in using basil leaves in Thai and Italian cooking, and in discovering how sesame oil enhances Chinese, Korean and Japanese dishes differently. She reminds you that nutmeg marks your place in the world as well: the Dutch bartered with the Brits – Manhattan for Run, an island in the Moluccas, and that gives your footprints the foundation to run far and wide.
The lunch invitation is just the beginning. You express gratitude for Meena’s kindness by bringing over a plate of batagor from Mie Jakarta. She falls in love with the fish dumplings and asks how you make them. You confess that you always buy them in restaurants because you don’t know how. Meena puts her hands on her hips with a teasing smile.
‘There’s no dish in this world we can’t make,’ she says.
She challenges you to cook with her, so you search for batagor recipes online. Together, the two of you go and buy ingredients at Top Line Supermarket, which sells goods from South East Asia. The market is hardly ‘super’, more along the lines of ‘dinky’, but at least it’s well stocked. There you buy soy sauce, shrimp crackers and ABC chilli sauce. At first it thrills you to hear people you’ve assumed are from China speaking in Indonesian with East Java accents. They put Blue Band margarine, Ritz sprinkles and bottled teas by the dozen into their shopping carts. The next time, you hear women in headscarves complain that the price of Munik’s instant spices keeps going up. Amid these strangers, you feel like you’ve returned home. But before long their presence at Top Line ceases to startle you. You don’t care if someone next to you is speaking Indonesian or Tagalog.
Meena browses the aisles eagerly. She buys cans of Thai curry and a block of shrimp paste. The adventurer-cook is eager to try her hand at nasi lemak. Crazy. She’s never even been to Malaysia. Meena marvels at how the world comes together as one in the supermarket, or, more precisely, how the supermarket arranges the world in rows. You marvel more at her spice obsession.
You line up minced fish stuffing, tapioca flour, dumpling skins, spring onions, eggs, sesame oil, salt and pepper on Meena’s dining table. She’s reluctant to use packaged satay seasonings for the batagor sauce because she wants to make her own. This caused a small debate at the supermarket.
‘It doesn’t make a difference. You can use satay or gado-gado spice,’ you said, handing her a prepared mix.
‘But surely it tastes better when you make it from scratch, right?’
Spurning your instant spices, Meena went off to another aisle on a quest for peanuts.
Making batagor turns out to be a lot like knitting, as it creates a relaxed atmosphere with space for chat. You wrap the filling in dumpling skins and listen as Meena tells her story.
You call it a neighbour’s love story.
Meena and Vijay met four months ago at a party in a Manhattan apartment. They had each gone with friends, and neither knew the host particularly well. The party was noisy, and the food was hardly special (and for people like Meena, nothing spoils the appetite like indifferent food).
‘What kind of party was it?’
‘What kind of party?’
‘Yes, what kind? A birthday party?’
You want to know how Meena and Vijay are connected. Who is friends with who?
Meena hesitates. ‘I don’t remember. Probably a get-together for Indian students in New York. Yes, that sort of thing.’
The party was so boring that Meena and Vijay quickly made an escape pact. Meena invited Vijay to an Indian restaurant in Queens and Vijay saw Meena home.
‘Where was your second date?’
‘At Serendipity.’
‘Like in a movie?’
‘Yes, like in a movie,’ Meena says with a laugh.
You’ve been wanting to visit the Serendipity III cafe located between 2nd and 3rd Avenue for a while. You’re curious because the restaurant appears in so many films, like the romcom Serendipity. Plus, it has a celebrity clientele. You even know what you’ll order: frozen hot chocolate.
‘Very romantic,’ you say.
‘Hmm …’ She smiles, seeming to weigh her answer. ‘To be honest, their frozen hot chocolate might be famous, but it was pretty ordinary, if you ask me.’
‘Ordinary?’
‘OK. Overrated.’
You both laugh.
‘And then?’
‘After that we took the gondola to Roosevelt Island.’
‘That’s really romantic!’
Meena, reddening slightly, brushes off the remark. ‘That’s overrated too.’
The date at Serendipity and the gondola ride were Vijay’s idea. He tried hard to make the night memorable for Meena but soon learned that, for her, ‘romance’ has a different meaning. They found passion in the kitchen, amid steaming cauldrons of food and the mayhem of spice bottles. At the dinner table, silence would reign as they savoured their food reverently, and only after fifteen minutes would they begin to talk.
Meena’s love story makes you jealous. But it’s not because Vijay chose an ordinary woman. On the contrary, the more you learn about Meena, the more remarkable she seems. Maybe you’re also envious because you’ve never fallen in love with anyone the way Meena and Vijay have fallen in love with each other.
‘Do you like the same foods?’
‘We love everything that’s spicy.’
Her eyes sparkle.
Savoury, she adds.
Creamy.
Sinful.
You grin. Swallowing your jealousy, you try to show how happy you are for their intimate bond. Vijay and Meena, sinners in the kitchen, sinners in bed.
You lost interest in pursuing Vijay once you set foot in Meena’s apartment. After taking the time to eat with her and cook with her, you conclude two things. Firstly, Meena and Vijay are truly in love. Though you haven’t seen Vijay again since the embarrassment of that night, you understand why he is a devotee of this spicy masala goddess. You can’t explain it further, but you understand. Masala. That’s the key word.
You draw the second conclusion for your own mental health. You have to stop obsessing over a couple united by a quasi-divine passion for food and sex. Perhaps they have a blessing from God, and, as is written on wedding invitations and in the Bible, what God hath joined together, let no man put asunder. So, let them be happy; it’s time for you to go and find your own fun, and think through your future in America.
Oh, America, America. America, it turns out, is pretty ho-hum. Did you make the wrong choice? Who knows? Everyone wants to go to America. You begin to imagine that there’s another version of you out there, wandering around in red shoes, having more exciting adventures in Europe.
You think of Demon Lover. He should come. You don’t know what you’ll do once your
visa runs out. Spring is just around the corner, and he’s abandoned you without a word. Shit. You ought to have known why humans shouldn’t make a deal with a devil. He warned you himself.
Where is he now? Will he only come to you after you’ve grown sick and tired of chaos? Will he get angry if you look for a boyfriend? You never promised to wait faithfully. You’re not devoted to Allah, much less to Devil.
You mull over looking for a boyfriend on dating sites, but feel you should weigh up the men around you first. Don’t let a bird in the hand go fluttering away. You see two recent messages on your phone – one from Fernando, the other from Bob. Both have invited you to dinner. Do you have to choose between them? You decide to have dinner with both: this week, Fernando; next week, Bob. Nice and fair.
You and Fernando dine at an Argentinian restaurant not far from your apartment. From that evening’s conversation you learn that Fernando has a complicated life, but he obviously adores his daughter. In 1999, Fernando and his pregnant girlfriend boarded a plane from Lima to New York as tourists. They never returned, and Tiffany was born in Elmhurst Hospital, Queens. At age twenty, Fernando’s only consideration was to ensure that his baby’s life wasn’t as pathetic as her parents’. Maybe birth in the United States and citizenship would rescue her.
‘Sometimes I wonder if my life would have turned out all right if I hadn’t come to America,’ Fernando says. ‘Maybe I’d have gone to university. But I made some big decisions when I was too young. Who trusts a twenty-year-old’s judgement?’
‘Are you sorry?’
He pauses, then shakes his head.
‘But if you’re having an adventure you always want to know what would have happened if you chose a different road. Right?’
His remark scares you a little. He almost seems to be talking about your life.
Tiffany was born, followed by Fernando’s marriage, and the arrival of his bride’s mother, who joined them to be close to her grandchild. She was an attractive fifty-year-old single woman, and she soon drew the attention of a restaurant owner, who proposed not long after and asked her to move in with him. Before leaving for work, Fernando and his wife would deposit Tiffany in the grandmother’s new home. Life felt slightly odd and had its hassles, but it was promising enough. Then shortly afterwards, Fernando’s marriage broke up.
Now aged nine, Tiffany has a busy schedule. She is with her father on Friday, Saturday and Sunday, and on the other weekdays she stays with her grandmother because she lives in a better school zone. Tiffany’s mom has moved in with a new boyfriend near Fernando. Schools in their neighbourhood, Fernando says, aren’t any good. Every Friday Fernando picks Tiffany up after school and drops her off at tae kwon do. Tiffany had long wanted to learn, so Fernando granted her wish. To be precise, he grants all Tiffany’s wishes.
‘I’m trying to make her happy. She’s all the family I have here.’
You listen carefully. The details confuse you a little, most likely because you don’t have a child yourself.
After dinner, Fernando invites you to his place. You hesitate. He asks you to stop in for only a moment, and maybe nothing will happen, but you sense that your decision will determine your path from here.
If you decide to stop at Fernando’s, turn to page 215.
If you decline, turn to page 219.
Amsterdam Centraal Station. You step out of the train and follow the other passengers as they cram onto the platform’s escalator and then scatter like ants upon reaching the concourse. You scan the stores to your right and left in search of an information desk. Equipped with directions, you take the tram from Centraal towards Niewmaarkt, the neighbourhood where you intend to stay for the next month. An ad on the Internet has led you to a two-room apartment, one of which is leased short-term. Definitely cheaper than staying in a hotel.
You ring the doorbell of an old town house and wait. A woman in a rumpled shirt opens the door, her blonde hair dishevelled. She’s Maria, who advertised the room, and she has obviously just woken up even though it is now noon. There’s no lift in the building. You follow Maria up to the second floor, struggling to haul your suitcase. Maria offers help, but out of politeness you decline.
‘Pretty easy to get here from Centraal, isn’t it?’
Gasping your way up the stairs, you nod. You pause, catch your breath, and continue hoisting up your suitcase. You feel a pang of regret at turning down Maria’s offer.
‘You’ll be in my friend’s room. Her stuff is in there, but it’s all stored in the closet.’
Maria’s apartment has hardwood floors. She opens the door to her friend’s room; her name, you learn, is Anna. You see a bed with a light blue blanket and sheets, a small desk, and a rolling chair. Maria shows you a large closet in the corner. Stashed there are Anna’s belongings in a pile of tightly sealed cardboard boxes.
Maria gives you a tour of the apartment. This is the kitchen, that’s the bathroom. Feel free to use the dishes and the spices in the kitchen cupboards. There’s a compost bin under the sink, and one for recycling next to the dining table. She passes quickly from one piece of information to another, and the tone of her voice, not cold but not overly friendly, reminds you of an adept hospital nurse. After she feels she has told you what you need to know, she returns to her room.
You sit on the edge of the bed, stretching your legs. You’re hungry. Maybe you should shower and head out for a meal. You take a towel and some clothes from your suitcase. From behind the bathroom door comes the sound of a tap running, so you go back to your room and wait. You feel like you’ve drifted off to sleep, even if only for ten or fifteen minutes.
Footsteps move back and forth in the living room. You open your door, a towel draped over your shoulders. Maria has donned a knee-length jacket and high-heeled black boots, ready to leave the house. You think you’re looking at someone else. Her dishevelled straight hair now curls nicely at the tips. Her eyes seem wide open, highlighted by silvery-blue blush and false lashes. She isn’t wearing – or has not yet put on – lipstick.
‘I have to leave,’ she says hurriedly. ‘If you want to go out, just close the door. It locks automatically.’
You listen to her instructions attentively and continue watching her rush about until she departs. You wonder if she’ll apply lipstick on the train.
You buy a cheese sandwich in a small shop and devour it while strolling the narrow streets around you. Cyclists pass. People here must prefer bikes to trams and buses, you conclude. You stop at the edge of a canal to admire rows of old buildings with their gradations of colour – reds, oranges, browns – and the angular window lines reflected in the water. This city is as beautiful as in storybooks, though maybe, it occurs to you, it’s the storybook cities that are trying to mimic what is real.
You wander aimlessly until sunset. Inside your bag is a map, but you’ll only check it later, to find your way home. On your first day in Amsterdam, you don’t want to be a tourist dutifully following a map, certain of your route. You want to turn yourself around and lose your way on these storybook streets.
You wake up early and make plans to visit the Rijksmuseum. Your tourist instinct has returned. You’ll feel like a fraud if you go to the Netherlands and miss out on Vermeer paintings. At nine you’re in the kitchen, ready to make coffee. You open the cupboards wide and study the jars of coffee, tea and sugar, and the row of spice containers. A bottle labelled saté saus catches your attention. The details are in Dutch. What does Maria (or maybe her friend, Anna) do with satay sauce?
You hear a door open and gather that Maria is now awake. Soon comes the sound of the toilet flushing. Maria appears in the kitchen, her face like yesterday’s: blah, blotchy, blank. She says good morning and you offer her coffee. Maria looks hesitant, apparently wanting to return to bed, but then she pours herself a cup.
‘Your apartment is nice,’ you say, trying to make small talk.
‘It’s not mine. I have to move out next summer.’
Flats in the area tend
to be very expensive. Maria considers herself lucky, at least for the time being. This apartment belongs to a friend of Anna’s who had to go to Abu Dhabi for a year and has sublet it cheaply. Actually, the man doesn’t need the cash, says Maria. He mainly wants people who’ll be willing to take care of the place while he’s away. Next year Maria and Anna will look for a flat in a cheaper neighbourhood.
‘There’s satay sauce in the cupboard,’ you say.
‘Satay sauce is everywhere.’
Maria doesn’t know the origin of satay sauce, but she knows that the Dutch like to mix it into food. Only then do you discover that Maria isn’t Dutch. She and Anna, who has left for several months to be with her mother as she undergoes chemotherapy, are from Bulgaria.
Maria bought the satay sauce after experimenting with patat met mayonaise, French fries with mayonnaise, which are sold as street food. You still haven’t made peace with the idea of eating French fries with something other than ketchup. The thought of satay sauce mixed with mayonnaise makes you grimace. The combination sounds disgusting, and the term satay ‘sauce’ rather than satay ‘seasoning’ sets your teeth on edge. You feel obliged to explain that satay sauce is more like a peanut-based topping to accompany grilled chicken, beef or goat meat. To imagine French fries with satay sauce offends you. Maybe you need to try your hand at some Indonesian dishes, even with your meagre kitchen skills.
‘Is there an Asian supermarket around here?’
‘Yes, there’s one right near us. I’ll take you sometime.’
After that morning’s conversation in the kitchen, you don’t see Maria for an entire week.
You leave every morning at 9.30, and return at five o’clock. Maria is still sleeping as you brew coffee and make toast in the kitchen, and she’s already gone by the time you come back in the early evening. She seems to work late into the night. Sometimes you sense that she’s not even home. Maybe she stays at a friend’s house.
The Wandering Page 18