The Chef (4 page)

They had ordered two
Menus Surprises
, Béatrice’s without any of the offal or frogs’ legs that might appear in the various dishes. Out of consideration he had advised
the kitchen of these requirements in advance.

The tall, pale waitress with the long, black hair all combed to the right had just brought the fish course: two giant glazed prawns on a rather nasty-tasting jelly. The sommelier poured out some
champagne – they had decided to pass on the white wine and stay with champagne until they finished the fish course. It was as if this moment had been created for them specially.

Staffel raised his glass, smiled at his wife, and waited for her to lift her glass too. As she did it she knew she was about to discover what it was she had to thank this evening for.

At that moment somebody arrived at the table and said, ‘I don’t wish to disturb your celebrations, but I’d just like to offer my warm congratulations. Nobody deserves it more
than you.’

He gave the startled Staffel, who had made to stand up, a friendly handshake and then introduced himself to his wife. ‘Eric Dalmann. You can be rightly proud of your husband. If there were
more like him we wouldn’t have to worry about any crisis.’

‘Who was that?’ Béatrice wanted to know when they were by themselves again.

‘I don’t know. Dalmann, Dalmann? Some sort of consultant, I don’t really know.’

‘Why was he congratulating you?’

‘I was just about to tell you: I’m Manager of the Month.’

‘And of course I’m the last to know as usual.’

Maravan was busy putting away crockery when Andrea brought the plates back from table three. Fink rushed over to her, because he wanted to know what the customers had thought
of his ‘Glazed langoustines with rice croquant on curried gelée’. It was the first surprise of the evening.

The plates were empty apart from the heads of the langoustines and most of the curried gelée.

Maravan pretended he had not noticed. But Andrea looked at the plates with a disbelieving shake of her head, offered Fink a pitying smile, turned to Maravan and said, ‘Is seven
o’clock OK on Monday? Oh, and write your address down for me.’

The following morning Maravan was the first customer in the Batticaloa Bazaar. It was his second visit in a few days. The first time he had given the owner 800 francs for
Nangay’s medicine.

The shop was not well stocked, only tinned foods and rice, no fruit, hardly any vegetables. There were, however, posters and flyers for organizations and events in the Tamil community and a few
LTTE stickers: the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam. The Batticaloa Bazaar was less a grocer’s than a liaison office and contact point for the Tamils in exile, and the first port of call for
unofficial money transfers to the north of Sri Lanka.

Maravan went to work in a cheerful mood and kept up his good spirits in spite of all his team’s efforts to ruin them. His rendezvous with Andrea had of course become common knowledge
– Monday evening, seven o’clock, at his place! – and it was as if they had all sworn to make his life as difficult as possible before then: Maravan, fetch this. Maravan, fetch
that. Maravan, do this. Maravan!

Kandan, the other Tamil kitchen help, was on duty. He was powerfully built, all brawn, slow on the uptake and without the slightest talent for cooking. And like many Tamil men in exile, he had
an alcohol problem which he was able to disguise skilfully, although not from Maravan’s sensitive nose. Today he was assigned all the more demanding tasks, while Maravan rinsed, scoured,
cleaned, scrubbed and lugged stuff around.

An edgy atmosphere prevailed in the kitchen. There were few customers in the restaurant and a birthday party of twelve had cancelled their booking for the following evening. Huwyler was getting
in the way, venting his bad mood on his chefs. And they passed it on to the
demis chefs
, who gave hell to the
commis
, who in turn laid into the kitchen helps.

But Maravan was on top form. The moment Andrea started her shift he had discreetly slipped her his address. She had smiled and said – loudly enough so that Bertrand, who happened to be
standing nearby, could hear – ‘I’m looking forward to it.’

Maravan knew what he was going to cook, apart from the odd detail which he would attend to the following day. And he also had a cunning plan for his technique of preparing the dinner.

Maravan was sitting in front of the computer with headphones on. Nangay’s voice sounded weak, even though the connection was surprisingly good. He ought to have kept his
money and let her die, she said reproachfully. She was tired.

Nangay was over eighty, and ever since Maravan could remember she had wanted to die in peace.

To begin with she was mistrustful and did not want to answer his questions. But when he said that it would allow him to earn more money, she listed ingredients and recipes, and freely explained
everything to him in detail.

It was a long conversation. And by the time it had finished Maravan’s notebook was almost full.

Happily, there had been a good number of covers at the Huwyler the following Sunday afternoon. The evening was quiet, the last diners left early, as ever on a Sunday.

Maravan was the last member of staff left in the kitchen. He was at the pan-cleaning sink, busy with the more intricate kitchen appliances: thermostats, jet smokers and rotary evaporators.

He waited until the cleaners had come into the kitchen, took the gadgets to the equipment store, then went into the changing room.

He deftly removed the glass elements of the rotary evaporator, rolled them up in two T-shirts, tucked them into a gym bag, making sure that they were well padded against the heavy main unit with
its heat-bath holder and electronics.

Maravan undressed, wrapped a Turkish towel around his waist, shoved his underwear into the gym bag, took shampoo and soap out of the side pocket, and went into the shower. Five minutes later he
came out again, took the clothes bag out of his locker, and got dressed.

On his way out he glanced again past the wine store. When he left the kitchen via the delivery entrance carrying a heavy gym bag, he was wearing black trousers, a dark-blue roll-neck sweater and
his leather jacket. He did not smell of anything.

He got going that same evening. He broke up the panicles of long pepper into their tiny corns, deseeded some dried Kashmir chillies, measured out black peppercorns, cardamom,
caraway, fennel, fenugreek, coriander and mustard seeds, peeled turmeric root, broke up cinnamon sticks and roasted all of these in the iron pan to the point at which the full aroma of the
ingredients unfurled. He mixed the spices in various, carefully weighed combinations, and ground them into fine powders which he either used that night or kept for the following day, sealed in
airtight and labelled containers.

The evaporator rotated well into the early hours with diverse ingredients: white curry paste, sali rice whisked with milk and chickpea flour, and – of course – the inimitable coconut
oil with curry leaves and cinnamon.

Some fresh butter was clarifying in a pan to make ghee, while in clay plots warm water and grated coconut were being mixed into a milk.

Dawn was already breaking when Maravan lay down on his mattress on the bedroom floor for a short sleep full of strange erotic dreams. These were always interrupted when they got to the best
bits.

Andrea had been on the verge of calling Maravan and finding an excuse to cancel. She cursed herself for her Good Samaritan syndrome. Maravan would have managed without her.
Maybe even better. Perhaps her stupid intervention had only made things more difficult for him. No, not perhaps. Definitely.

Maravan was fortunate that these were the thoughts churning around Andrea’s mind. Otherwise she would not now have been sitting on the tram, with her handbag and a plastic bag containing a
bottle of wine on her lap.

She had decided to bring him a bottle of wine because she did not know whether Tamils drank. If they did not – and so did not offer any to their guests either – then she would be
able to fall back on this bottle of Pinot Noir. Not a great wine, but decent enough. Probably better than anything a kitchen help could afford. If he had any wine in the house at all.

The reason why she had stood up for Maravan was because she could not bear those chefs, especially Fink. Not because she had the hots for Maravan. She would have to let him know this straight
away, a diplomatic mission she was well practised in.

Her dislike of chefs grew with each change of job. Maybe it was because of the strict hierarchy that prevailed in kitchens. Because chefs behaved as if they had some sort of entitlement to the
female waiting staff. That is how it seemed to her, anyway. In kitchens, even the humblest ones, a star cult prevailed which encouraged chefs to think they were irresistible.

Every day Andrea asked herself why she did not simply change profession. And every day the same answer came back: because she had not learnt how to do anything else. She was a waitress and that
was that.

To begin with, she had wanted to manage a hotel or run a pub. She had started a course in hotel management, but got stuck in a traineeship as a waitress. She was soon fed up with college, and
the possibility of working in a variety of hotels after a short apprenticeship – in summer by Lake Como or in Ischia, and in winter in the Engadin Valley or the Berner Oberland – seemed
to suit her restless personality. If you looked as she did and knew how to get tips, the work was not badly paid. She had good references and experience, and had made it to the rank of
demi
chef de rang
.

She had also tried out other jobs. One of these had been as a tour rep abroad. The job had mainly consisted of holding up a sign at Kos Airport bearing the name of her tour operator, allocating
the arriving guests to the various hotel buses and receiving their complaints. Andrea soon found that she would rather deal with underdone or overdone steaks than missing luggage or rooms that had
a view of the street instead of the sea.

Once she had even entered a beauty contest. She got past the first rounds and was thought to have a good chance of winning. Until she – the silly cow – had a moment of madness during
a bathing costume photoshoot: when the photographer asked her whether she had ever modelled professionally before, she replied, ‘Not with so many clothes on.’

Chez Huwyler was a well-respected establishment and would make a good impression on her CV. But only if she stuck it out longer than the usual few months. Half a year; a whole one would be even
better.

On the other side of the tram, opposite her, sat a man between thirty and forty. She could see him staring at her in the reflection of the window. Each time she turned her head he smiled at her.
She took a well-thumbed free newspaper from the seat next to her and barricaded herself behind it.

Maybe she should try to start from scratch again. She was only twenty-eight; she could still start a course. She had her secondary school certificate, which meant she could go to art school. Or
at least sit the entrance exam. Photography, or even better, film. With a bit of luck you could get a grant. Or some other government assistance.

Her stop was announced. Andrea stood up and went to the farther door to avoid having to pass the staring man.

Okra was cooking in a pan with green chillies, onions, fenugreek seeds, red chilli powder, salt and curry leaves. The thick coconut milk was still in a bowl by the stove.
Maravan had decided on okra as a vegetable because of its English name: ladies’ fingers.

The
pathiya kari
was a female dish, too: it was prepared specially for breastfeeding mothers. He had simmered some poussin meat in a little water with onions, fenugreek, turmeric,
garlic and salt, added to this broth one of the spice mixes from the previous night – coriander, cumin, pepper, chilli, tamarind paste – brought the whole thing to the boil, then taken
it off the heat, and covered it. He would heat it up again shortly before serving.

The male element of his menu was a dish of shark meat:
churaa varai
. He had mashed a cooked shark steak with grated coconut, turmeric, caraway and salt, and put this to one side. In an
iron pan he had fried some onions in coconut oil until they were translucent, added dried chillies, onion seeds and curry leaves, stirring until the seeds started jumping, and taken the pan off the
heat. Shortly before serving he would reheat it, add the shark-and-spice mixture, combining everything thoroughly.

These three traditional dishes were Maravan’s proof that he knew how to cook curry, and an excuse for the other things he was creating on the side. He would make small, manageable portions
and, as his one homage to experimental cooking, serve them with three different airs – coriander, mint and garlic foams – and curry leaf twigs glazed in nitrogen.

Maravan owned an isolation tank in which he could store liquid nitrogen for a short period. It had cost him a fifth of his monthly wage, but it was an indispensable aid for his culinary
experiments and his efforts to outshine the chefs at the Huwyler.

What this dinner was really about, however, was the courses in between. Each one contained Ayurvedic aphrodisiacs, but in new, bold preparations. Instead of dividing all the purée of urad
lentils marinated in sweetened milk into portions and drying these in the oven, he mixed half of it with agar. Both halves of the purée were spread on to silicon mats and cut into strips.
The half without the agar was dried in the oven and twisted into spirals while still warm. He let the other half cool down and then wound the elastic ribbons around the spirals, which were now
crunchy.

Rather than serve the traditional mixture of saffron, milk and almonds in its usual liquid form, he used cream instead of milk, whisking it into an airy mixture with saffron, palm sugar, almonds
and a little sesame oil, and then put three heaped plastic spoons of the saffron and almond foam into liquid nitrogen, for just long enough to form spheres, which were frozen on the outside and
soft inside.