The Chef (14 page)

It was a deal which Dalmann would have left well alone if times had been better. But given the financial crisis – his personal one, too – and the fact that the deal was
almost
legal, Dalmann had agreed to take on the role of intermediary.

The goods were non-upgraded armoured howitzers from the 1950s that had been rejected by the Swiss army and were destined for scrap. Waen could find buyers for the equipment; the only problem was
Swiss legislation. It did permit the export of these goods to Thailand, but only if a declaration was signed that they would not be exported again to a third country, something the Swiss would be
able to monitor.

The risk that the controls would actually be carried out was not high, but it was an ever-present one, given domestic political sensitivities. Arms exports to countries at war was currently a
hot topic, and a referendum to ban such exports was in the offing.

Several years ago, however, the Government had made a decision on the export of munitions which solved this problem. Disused munitions could be returned to their country of manufacture without
the need for a declaration that they would not be re-exported. In the case of the M109 armoured howitzers, this country was the United States of America.

This is where Steve came in. He would buy the goods for the manufacturer at a notional price and supply them to Waen as products of the country where they were made. This would not be a problem
as the United States was the largest arms supplier to Thailand.

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.

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:

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?’

‘A friend of a friend.’

‘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.

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.