The Chef (8 page)

‘May I come in?’

He showed her into his flat. It was just as she had remembered it: tidy and well ventilated. In the sitting room the clay lamp was burning before the domestic shrine. As on the last occasion
there was no music. Noises drifted through the window from the street.

A teapot and cup stood on the low table. She could see from the cushion at one end that Maravan had been sitting there. He invited her to sit opposite.

‘Would you mind if I sat here instead?’

She pointed to the chair in front of his computer.

‘Be my guest,’ he said, shrugging his shoulders. ‘Like some tea?’

‘No, thank you. I’m not staying long. I just wanted to ask you something.’

She sat on the chair. Maravan stood in front of her. He looked nice. Neat, slim, well proportioned. But he elicited no feelings in her except sympathy and kindness. It was ludicrous that she had
leapt into bed with him.

‘Don’t you have another chair?’

‘In the kitchen.’

‘Aren’t you going to fetch it?’

‘In my culture it is impolite to sit at the same height as one’s superiors.’

‘I’m not your superior.’

‘As far as I’m concerned, you are.’

‘Nonsense. Get a chair and sit down.’

Maravan sat on the floor.

Andrea shook her head and asked her question: ‘What was in the food?’

‘You mean the ingredients?’

‘Only the ones that produced that effect.’

‘I don’t understand.’

He was a bad liar. Until then Andrea had harboured doubts about her theory. But now he was acting as if he had been caught red-handed, so she was quite sure. ‘You understand perfectly
well.’

‘I made the meal with traditional ingredients. There was nothing in there that didn’t belong.’

‘Maravan, I know that’s not true. I’m absolutely certain. I know myself and my body. Something about that meal wasn’t right.’

He was silent for a moment. Then he shook his head stubbornly.

‘These are ancient recipes. All I did was to modernize the preparation a little. I swear to you there was nothing in there.’

Andrea got up and paced back and forth between the shrine and the window. It was getting dark, the sky above the tiled roofs had turned orange; there were no voices to be heard from the street
any more.

She turned from the window and thrust herself in front of him. ‘Get up, Maravan.’

He stood and lowered his eyes.

‘Look at me.’

‘In my culture it is impolite to look someone in the eyes.’

‘In my culture it is impolite to put something in a woman’s food to make her sleep with you.’

He looked at her. ‘I didn’t put anything in your food.’

‘Let me tell you a secret, Maravan: I don’t sleep with men. They don’t turn me on. They’ve never turned me on. When I was a teenager I slept with a boy twice because I
thought that was what you did. But after that second time I already knew I’d never do it again.’

She paused for a moment. ‘I don’t sleep with men, Maravan. I sleep with women.’

He cast her a horrified look.

‘Do you understand now?’

He nodded.

‘So, what was in the food?’

Maravan took his time. Then he said, ‘Ayurveda is a type of medicine which is many thousands of years old. It has eight disciplines. The eighth is called Vajikarana. It’s all about
aphrodisiacs. This includes certain food dishes. My great-aunt Nangay is a wise woman; she knows how to prepare such dishes. I got my recipes from her. But the way in which they were prepared was
all my own invention.’

By the time Andrea left that evening, she had been initiated into the aphrodisiac secrets of milk and urad lentils, saffron and palm sugar, almonds and sesame oil, saffron ghee
and long pepper, cardamom and cinnamon, asparagus and liquorice ghee.

She had given him a moderate ticking-off, even going so far as to describe his behaviour as ‘Ayurvedic date rape’, and she left his flat without saying goodbye. But now she felt more
relieved than troubled. A couple of tram stops before she got off, when Andrea was able to look back at the whole affair with a little distance, she could not help laughing out loud.

A young man opposite her smiled back.

Their meeting had also brought Maravan some consolation. Now he could deal with the reasons for her rejection. He even felt a little pride at having been the only man for whom,
for a night, she had betrayed her natural inclinations. And – if he were being honest – a little hope, too.

The following day he sent his sister 10,000 rupees to give him an excuse for calling her, and then he asked her to arrange a time for him to speak with Nangay. He would have to wait two more
days.

When he finally got through to Nangay, she sounded weak and exhausted.

‘Are you taking your medicine,
mami
?’ he asked. He used the traditional polite form of the second person and called her
mami
: aunt.

‘Yes, yes. Is that why you’re calling?’

‘Partly.’

‘Why else?’

Maravan did not really know where to begin. She pre-empted him.

‘If it doesn’t work the first time, that’s perfectly normal. Sometimes it takes weeks, months. Tell them they have to be patient.’

‘It did work the first time.’

For a while she said nothing. Then, ‘That happens if both people believe strongly enough.’

‘But the woman didn’t believe. She didn’t even know.’

‘Then she loves the man.’

Maravan did not answer.

‘Are you still there, Maravan?’

‘Yes.’

Nangay asked quietly, ‘Is she a Shudra, at least?’

‘Yes,
mami
.’ The lie was excusable, he thought. Shudra was the servant caste. And Andrea was an employee in the service industry, after all.

When his sister came on again, he asked, ‘Is she really taking her medicine?’

‘How can she?’ She sounded annoyed. ‘We haven’t even got enough money for rice and sugar.’

After the conversation Maravan sat in front of the screen for a good while. He was now convinced that the rapid effect of the food must be down to his molecular cooking.

It had been so sunny on Sunday morning that Dalmann had taken breakfast on the terrace. But no sooner had Lourdes brought out the scrambled eggs and bacon than the wind blew a
large cloud across the sun.

Dalmann got stuck into his breakfast nonetheless, and reached for the top newspaper on the pile of four laid out by the housekeeper. Now he began to feel gloomier. The hysteria surrounding the
destruction of the documents by the Bundesrat had thrown up a lot of dirt, unnecessarily. A section of the Federal News Service’s report about the nuclear smuggling affair had fallen into the
hands of a journalist, and now they were talking about the Iranian connection as well as the Pakistani one. It would not be long before the name Palucron appeared in the newspaper.

Palucron was a company – now no longer trading – with its headquarters in a lawyer’s office in the city centre. At the time it had channelled payments from Iran to various
firms, all of them rock-solid enterprises with impeccable reputations, who certainly had no idea that they were implicated in the development of a nuclear programme.

Of course this was also true of Palucron, officially. At least it was for its director, Eric Dalmann, who had only taken up the position at the request of a business acquaintance to whom he owed
a favour.

At all events, it would be extremely inconvenient for him to be mentioned in the same breath as this story, especially at a time when business was taking a knock due to the financial crisis.

Dalmann looked up at the sky. A whole bank of cloud was obscuring the sun. He was wearing casual summer clothes – a green polo shirt and light, tartan golf slacks – and an
unpleasantly cold wind chilled him to the bone.

‘Lourdes!’ he called. ‘We’re going inside.’ He stood, picked up his coffee cup, and went through the veranda door into the living room. He sat in an armchair,
staring morosely, until the housekeeper had cleared the breakfast from the terrace and laid the table in the dining room.

He had scarcely sat down and started on a new plate of scrambled eggs and bacon – the first, only half eaten, had gone cold during the change of tables – before the doorbell rang.
Schaeffer, as ever, was a little too punctual.

Schaeffer was Dalmann’s colleague. Dalmann could not think of another word for him. He was not exactly a secretary or an assistant, and right-hand man did not describe him accurately
either. So Dalmann had stuck with ‘colleague’. They had been colleagues for nearly ten years now and had dispensed with formalities early on. Schaeffer called Dalmann Eric, Dalmann
called Schaeffer Schaeffer.

Lourdes showed him in. He was a tall, gangly man in his early forties, with a narrow head, thinning blond hair and bright blue eyes. A few years back he had swapped his rimless glasses for
contact lenses, which did nothing for his sensitive eyes; he was forever throwing his head back and squeezing drops under his eyelids.

Like Dalmann, Schaeffer was in casual clothes. A light-blue shirt with a button-down collar, dark-blue linen trousers and a red cashmere pullover slung carefully over his shoulders. In one hand
he carried a heavy briefcase.

‘I wanted to eat outside, but . . .’ Dalmann pointed vaguely upwards.

‘The outlook for the weather is not promising,’ Schaeffer answered.

Dalmann took a mouthful and pointed to a chair where a second place had been set. Schaeffer sat and put the briefcase on the floor beside him. ‘I hope it’s not going to piss it down
for the opening game.’

Euro 2008 was scheduled to start in a week’s time. The ideal PR opportunity for Dalmann. Thanks to his UEFA contacts he had stockpiled tickets for the most important games and had
organized events, either himself or through others – dinners in exclusive restaurants, visits to nightclubs, etc. – around the tournament. This was one of Schaeffer’s most
important jobs at present, and also the real reason for his Sunday visit.

But for the moment Palucron was top priority.

Schaeffer had already had breakfast. He drank a cup of tea and peeled an apple so carefully that it got on Dalmann’s nerves. He pushed one of the Sunday newspapers across the table.
‘Have you seen this?’

Schaeffer nodded and bit into a slice of apple. The care he took in chewing it got on Dalmann’s nerves, too. Everything about Schaeffer got on his nerves. But he was good, he had to give
him that – which is why Dalmann had put up with him for so long. ‘Do you know this Huber fellow?’ Huber was the journalist who had written the article.

Schaeffer shook his head until he had swallowed his mouthful. ‘But I do know his boss.’

‘I know him too. We can always use our clout with him later. All we need to know right now is whether Palucron is mentioned in this report.’

‘We have to make that assumption.’

I wish he wouldn’t talk so pompously all the time, Dalmann thought. ‘The paper’s got an “extract” from the report. If Palucron were mentioned in this extract then
surely it would be in the newspaper.’

In his hand Schaeffer held the slice of apple that was destined for his mouth. ‘Or they’re saving this detail for next Sunday.’

‘Look, Schaeffer, that’s why I want you to find out how much they’ve got.’

Schaeffer placed the slice of apple in his mouth and chewed thoughtfully. Finally he swallowed, nodded and said, ‘I think that’s within the realm of the doable.’

‘Good,’ Dalmann muttered. ‘Then do it.’

They started talking about Euro 2008.

The following Sunday the same newspaper revealed further details about the nuclear affair. There was no mention of Palucron.

The European Championships had given Maravan a breathing space. The catering industry needed so many staff that even Huwyler’s excommunication was no obstacle to finding
a job. At least not for the owner of a food stall along the tourist strip.

Maravan was hired to do the washing up. He worked in the stiflingly hot corner of a tent, separated from the kitchen and serving counter. He had to scrub the pans and chafing dishes by hand; a
dishwasher was at his disposal for cutlery and crockery. But it was so defective it kept on breaking down, and meant that Maravan was forced to clean these by hand as well.

It was monotonous work. Sometimes he had nothing to do for hours, and then, when an onslaught of hungry fans arrived, he could not keep up with the work. The boss held both of these things
– doing nothing and not keeping up – against him. But only in the way that he held everything against everybody. He ensured that the work atmosphere was lousy; he had paid good money
for a licence, expected to do fantastic business and now he had to sit through long slack periods in the tourist strip. Switzerland had been knocked out, and the weather was cold and rainy. Maravan
was counting down the days till the end of the European Championships.

Not just because of the job. The hype was getting on his nerves. He was not interested in football. Swimming had been his sport. And when he was much younger he had also liked cricket –
before he had devoted himself entirely to cooking.

The one good thing about this job was that the social security office knew nothing about it. A slightly dodgy temp firm, who worked mainly with people in his situation, had organized the job for
Maravan. Although he was poorly paid, twenty francs per hour, this was in addition to his dole money.

He had taken out a loan – 3,000 francs – to send his sister money for Nangay’s treatment. Not from a bank, of course – what bank in the world would have given credit to
an unemployed asylum seeker? – but from Ori, a Tamil businessman who lent money privately. Fifteen per cent interest. On the whole sum until the loan was paid back.

To begin with he had tried to do it without a loan. As soon as he had heard that Nangay could not continue with her treatment, he had worked illegally at a used tyre warehouse. He had to spend
the whole day sorting through heavy tyres.

But he did not last. Not because he found the work too strenuous, but because it was too dirty. There was no shower there and he could not get rid of the stink of rubber and the black filth at
the wash basin. He could just about put up with the fact that he was slaving away at the very bottom of the social ladder. But his pride did not allow him to look or smell like it.