The Chef (2 page)

The world outside was looking pretty ugly. The day of reckoning had finally come for the financial markets, who had been dealing for years in fool’s gold. Unsinkable banks were now sending
out SOS calls as they listed heavily. Every day, more and more sectors of the economy were getting sucked into the vortex of the financial crisis. Car manufacturers were introducing short-time
working, suppliers filing for insolvency and financiers committing suicide. Unemployment rates were on the rise everywhere, countries on the edge of bankruptcy, deregulators throwing themselves
into the arms of the state, prophets of neo-liberalism went quiet and the globalized world experienced the beginnings of its first crisis.

And, as if it could survive this imminent hurricane by retreating under its diving bell, the small Alpine country started to shut itself off again. It had barely opened up.

Andrea had to wait until Bandini, the
announceur
, had scrutinized the dishes for table five and checked them against the order. She was watching Maravan, the nicest guy on her team.

By Tamil standards he was a tall man, certainly more than one metre eighty. Sharply defined nose, trimmed moustache and a bluish-black five o’clock shadow, even though he had arrived for
the afternoon shift freshly shaven as ever. He wore a kitchen help’s white overalls with a long apron like a traditional Hindu dress. The white crepe chef’s hat looked like a Gandhi cap
on his black hair, which was parted with precision.

Maravan was standing by the sink, rinsing plates with a hand spray to shift the remains of sauces, before stacking them in the dishwasher, moving with the grace of a temple dancer. As if he
could sense she was watching him, he looked up briefly and revealed his snow-white teeth. Andrea smiled back.

During her short career in the catering industry she had come across a lot of Tamils. Many of them were asylum seekers with ‘N-authorizations’, which gave them the right to work in
specific catering jobs for a low wage. Moreover, this was only permitted at the specific request of the employer, on whom they were more dependent than someone with a residence permit. She got on
with most of them; they were friendly, unassuming, and they reminded her of the trip she had taken as a backpacker through southern India.

Since she had started at the Huwyler she had already seen Maravan working at every station. He was a virtuoso in his preparation of vegetables; when he shucked oysters it looked as if they were
opening for him of their own accord; he could fillet a sole with a few practised movements of the hand, and was able to hollow out rabbit legs so carefully it looked as if the bone was still
there.

Andrea had seen the love, precision and speed with which he composed artworks on the plate, or how skilfully he was able to alternate marinated wild berries with crunchy puff pastry arlettes to
create three-layered millefeuilles.

The chefs at the Huwyler often used Maravan to carry out tasks that were their own responsibility. But Andrea had never seen one of them pay him a compliment for doing so. On the contrary, no
sooner had he delivered one of his works of art than he would be redeployed as dishwasher and dogsbody.

Bandini approved the order; the two waiters placed cloches over the plates and brought them to the table. Andrea could now call up the next course for table one.

It was long past midnight, but the trams were still running. The passengers on the Number 12 were tired night workers on their way home and high-spirited revellers in a party
mood. The area where Maravan lived was home not only to most of the asylum seekers, but also the hippest clubs, discos and lounge bars in the city.

Maravan was sitting on a single seat behind a man with a greasy neck whose head kept tipping to one side – a fellow restaurant worker, judging by the kitchen odours emanating from him.
Maravan had a sensitive nose; it was very important to him that he did not smell of anything, even when he came home from work. His colleagues used eau de toilette or aftershave to cover up the
kitchen smells. He kept his clothes in a zip-up, moth-proof carrier inside a locker, and whenever possible he would take a shower in the staff changing room.

Some kitchen odours he accepted, but these did not exist in the kitchens here. They could only be found in Nangay’s kitchen.

Whenever Nangay dropped nine curry leaves – freshly picked by Maravan from the small tree outside – into hot coconut oil, the tiny kitchen would be filled with an aroma that he
wanted to hold on to for as long as possible.

The same with the aroma of cinnamon. ‘Always use more cinnamon than necessary,’ Nangay would say. ‘It has a lovely smell and taste, it’s a disinfectant, helps the
digestion, and you can buy it cheaply everywhere.’

Maravan had thought of Nangay as an ancient woman, but at the time she was only in her mid-fifties. She was his grandmother’s sister. He and his siblings had fled with the two women to
Jaffna after his parents had burned to death in their car near Colombo during the 1983 pogroms. Maravan, the youngest of the four children, would spend his days in Nangay’s kitchen, helping
her to prepare meals which his siblings sold at the market in Jaffna. Nangay gave him all the school education he needed in her kitchen.

She had worked as the head cook in a large house in Colombo. Now she ran a food stall at the market, whose excellent reputation spread quickly and gave her a modest but regular income.

Besides the simple dishes she made for the market, however, Nangay also secretly prepared special meals for a growing clientele for whom discretion was paramount. These were usually married
couples where there was a large age gap.

Even today, whenever Maravan fried fresh curry leaves or simmered a curry on a low heat on his stove, he could picture a small, thin woman, whose hair and saris always gave off an aroma of curry
leaves and cinnamon.

The tram stopped, a few passengers got on, nobody got off. When the doors closed again the man in front of him was jolted out of his sleep and rushed to the door. But they were
already on the move. The fat man angrily pressed the button to open the door, cursed loudly and gave Maravan a reproachful stare.

Maravan looked away and gazed out of the window. It was still raining. The lights of the night-time city shone in the drops which traced slanting paths across the window. A man outside a
nightclub was holding his head in the rain, his elbows jutting out. A few young people were sheltering under some overhanging masonry and laughing at his antics.

The party crowd got out at the next stop, followed by the fat man reeking of kitchen smells. Maravan watched him appear on the other side of the carriage and sullenly take a seat in the shelter
for trams going in the opposite direction.

There were only a few passengers left in the tram, and it was obvious that most of them came from other countries. They were either dozing or lost in their thoughts, apart from one young
Senegalese woman who was having a lively chat on her mobile, safe in the certainty that nobody could understand a word. Then she got off. Maravan watched her turn into a side street, still laughing
and chatting.

It was silent on the tram now, save for the recording which announced the stops. Maravan got off at the penultimate one, put up his umbrella and continued walking along the same road. The Number
12 drove past him, the illuminated windows heading off into the distance, until they were no more than just another patch of light on the rain-drenched road.

It was cold. Maravan wrapped his scarf more tightly around him and turned into Theodorstrasse. Rows of grey houses on either side, parked cars, wet and glinting in the white light of the street
lamps, the occasional shop – Asian specialities, travel agent, second-hand, cash transfer.

When he came to a brown 1950s block of flats Maravan fished his keys out of his pocket and went through a graffiti-filled passageway, past two overflowing dustbins, to an entry door.

He stopped in the hallway by the wall lined with pigeonholes and letterboxes. He opened the one marked
Maravan Vilasam
.

His post consisted of a letter from Sri Lanka addressed in his eldest sister’s handwriting, a flyer from a firm hiring out cleaning ladies, election propaganda for a xenophobic party and a
catalogue from a wholesaler dealing in specialist kitchen appliances. He opened the last of these while still beside the post box, and leafed through it as he climbed the stairs to his fourth-floor
flat – two small rooms, a tiny bathroom and a surprisingly spacious kitchen with a balcony, all connected by a hallway covered with well-worn lino.

Maravan turned on the light. Before entering the sitting room he popped into the bathroom to wash his face and hands. Then he removed his shoes, put the post on the table, and struck a match to
light the wick of the deepam, the clay lamp which stood on the domestic shrine. He went down on his knees, put his hands together in front of his face and bowed before Lakshmi, the goddess of
prosperity and beauty.

It was chilly in the flat. Maravan squatted in front of the oil burner, pulled the ignition and let it spring back. The resonant sound of metallic hammering echoed through the flat five times
before the burner ignited. Maravan took off his leather jacket, hung it on one of two coat hooks in the hallway, and went into his bedroom.

When he came out again he was wearing a batik shirt, a blue-and-red striped sarong and sandals. He sat beside the burner and read his sister’s letter. The news was not good. Deliveries
were being stopped at checkpoints on the border of Tamil-held areas. Very few of the food deliveries from February and March had reached Kilinochchi District. Prices of basic foodstuffs, medicines
and fuel had risen exponentially.

He put the letter back on the table and tried to soothe his bad conscience. It had been almost three months since his last visit to the Batticaloa Bazaar, the nearby Tamil shop, to give money
and his sister’s ID number to the owner. It had been 400 francs, 37,800 rupees after commission.

Although he earned 3,000 francs per month, lived alone and paid a reasonable rent of 700, after the Huwyler deducted health insurance and tax at source, Maravan had just enough money left to
eat. Or, more accurately, to cook.

Cooking was not just Maravan’s profession, it was his great passion. Even when the family still lived in Colombo he had spent most of his time in the kitchen with Nangay. His parents had
worked in one of the city’s large hotels, his father at reception, his mother as a housekeeper. When not at school, the children were in their grandmother’s care. But because Maravan
did not yet go to school, his great aunt Nangay would often take him with her to work, so that her sister could do the housework and shopping. Nangay had six helpers in the large kitchen. One of
them always had time to look after the little boy.

Thus he grew up among pots and pans, herbs and spices, fruit and vegetables. He helped to wash rice, pick over lentils, grate coconut, harvest coriander, and when he was as young as three he was
allowed, under supervision, to chop tomatoes and slice onions with a sharp knife.

From an early age Maravan was fascinated by the process of transforming a few raw ingredients into something quite different. Something not merely edible, not merely filling and nourishing, but
– something which could even make you happy.

Maravan would watch carefully, taking note of ingredients, quantities, preparation techniques and sequences. At the age of five he could already cook entire menus, and at six, before he was
meant to start school, he learnt how to read and write because he could no longer keep all the recipes in his head.

For Maravan the first day at school was almost an even greater tragedy than the death of his parents shortly afterwards, the details of which he did not discover until he was almost an adult. As
far as he was concerned, all that had happened was that they had not come to Jaffna with the rest of the family; most of the time they had not been around anyway. He found the journey to Jaffna
chaotic and his relatives’ house, where they stayed initially, small and cramped. But he did not have to go to school and could spend his days in the kitchen with Nangay.

The oil burner had brought some warmth into the small sitting room. Maravan got up and went into the kitchen.

Four fluorescent bulbs bathed the room in white light. It contained a large fridge and a freezer of the same size, a gas stove with four burners, a double sink, a work table and a wall unit
covered with stainless steel, on top of which were various appliances and food processors. The room was spanking clean and resembled a laboratory more than a kitchen. Only by taking a closer look
could you see that the various units were not all exactly the same height and that they had slightly different fronts. Maravan had bought each one individually, either second-hand from markets or
from specialist exchanges, and installed them with the help of one of his compatriots, who had been a plumber back in Sri Lanka and who worked here as a warehouse assistant.

He put a small frying pan on the lowest flame, poured in some coconut oil and opened the door to the balcony. Almost all the windows opposite were dark; the back courtyard far below him lay
silent and abandoned. It was still raining – heavy, cold drops. He left the balcony door slightly ajar.

Pots with mini curry trees were lined up in his bedroom, each with its bamboo cane and each a different age. The largest reached up to his armpits. He had got it as a sapling some years back
from another Sri Lankan. Taking cuttings from this plant he had raised one tree after another, until he had so many that he could sell the odd one. He did not like doing this, but when winter came
he did not have enough space. The mini trees were not hardy: it was only during the warm months that they could sit on his kitchen balcony; in winter he had to put them in the bedroom under a grow
light.

He broke off two of the nine-leaved twigs, went back into the kitchen, threw them into the hot oil and added a ten-centimetre piece of cinnamon. Slowly the aroma of his
childhood rose from the pan.