The Chef (21 page)

They would use this scant hour to tell each other about their respective lives.

Once she asked, ‘If we were in Sri Lanka now, what do you think we’d be doing?’

‘You mean now? Right now?’

Sandana nodded. ‘At half past twelve.’

‘Local time?’

‘Local time.’

‘It would be hot, but it wouldn’t be raining.’

‘So, what are we doing?’

‘We’re on the beach. It’s a little cooler in the sea breeze under the palm trees. The sea is calm. It’s generally calm in February.’

‘Are we alone?’

‘Nobody to be seen for miles.’

‘Why are we in the shade and not in the water?’

‘We don’t have our swimming costumes. Only our sarongs.’

‘You can go in the water with those on.’

‘But they’d become see-through.’

‘Would that bother you?’

‘Looking at you? No.’

‘Let’s go in then.’

On another occasion Maravan told her about his fears for Ugalu. And about Nangay. What she had meant to him. And that he felt partly to blame for her death.

‘Didn’t you say she would have dehydrated without the medicine?’

Maravan nodded.

‘And didn’t your sister say, “One moment she was alive and the next she was dead”?’

They became closer. They rarely touched physically, although they gave each other the hello and goodbye kisses that were normal in this city, although improper in their
culture.

She was still sharing a flat with her workmate, a jolly woman from the Berner Oberland, who he had once met when the two of them were leaving the travel centre at the same time. Sandana had no
contact with her parents.

One evening in February, Maravan, who had been cooking in Falkengässchen and was able to clock off early, was sitting at his computer surfing the internet. The news from
his country was getting more and more depressing.

The army had established a safety zone for refugees, which, according to matching reports from the LTTE and various aid organizations, they were now bombarding. There were many civilian deaths.
Whoever was able to flee the conflict zone was doing so, and being immediately interned in refugee camps. Many people were saying that the government forces were on the brink of victory. Maravan
and most of his compatriots knew that a victory was not the way forward to peace.

Shortly after eleven o’clock that night there was an insistent ringing at his door.

Through the spyhole he could see a middle-aged Tamil man.

‘What do you want?’ Maravan asked when the man took his finger off the bell for a moment.

‘Open the door!’ the man ordered.

‘Who are you?’

‘Her father. Now open the door or I’ll kick it in!’

Maravan opened the door. He now recognized Sandana’s father, who stormed into the flat.

‘Where is she?’

‘If you’re talking about Sandana, she’s not here.’

‘Of course she’s here.’

With a gesture of his hand Maravan invited him to take a look around. Mahit inspected every room, went into the bathroom and even looked on the balcony.

‘Where is she?’

‘At home, I expect.’

‘She hasn’t been at home for a long time now!’

‘I think she’s staying with a friend.’

‘Ha! Friend! She’s living here!’

‘Is that what she told you?’

‘We don’t talk any more!’ He was practically shouting. Then he suddenly calmed down and repeated at normal volume, ‘We don’t talk any more.’ He sounded
astonished, as if he had only become aware of this fact just now.

Maravan could see tears welling up in the man’s eyes. He put a hand on his shoulder. The man angrily shook it off.

‘Sit down. I’ll make you some tea.’ He pointed to the chair by his monitor. Mahit sat obediently and put his head in his hands, sobbing gently.

When Maravan brought the tea, Sandana’s father had composed himself. He thanked Maravan and took small sips.

‘Why does she want us to think she’s living here when she’s staying with a friend?’

‘She doesn’t want to marry the man you’ve chosen for her.’

Mahit shook his head in puzzlement. ‘But he’s a good man. My wife and I spent a long time finding him. It wasn’t easy.’

‘Women here want to be able to find their own husbands.’

Mahit flared up again. ‘She’s not from here!’

‘But not from there, either.’

The father nodded and started crying again. This time he made no attempt to wipe away his tears. ‘This bloody war. This shitty, bloody war,’ he sobbed.

When he had calmed down, he finished his tea, apologized and left.

Maravan was no longer quite so focused as before. Now, almost every lunchtime he went out for an hour, whereas in the past he would have been busy concentrating on preparing
dinner.

‘Just popping out for a bite,’ he would say.

When he returned he was usually quite cheerful, which he had not been for a long time, ever since that evening when he cooked the alternative menu.

Not long afterwards the client had ordered the same menu again and a different woman, but Maravan had refused outright.

‘It’s not meant for that,’ he told Andrea.

‘But the client says it worked brilliantly.’ ‘That wasn’t the intention,’ was Maravan’s answer. And with that he considered the matter closed.

He would not explain what the issue was, and she did not probe him. It was a delicate topic. She did not want to upset him. She was happy that he seemed so jolly lately.

It was only by chance that she discovered the reason for the change in his behaviour. Makeda had a booking with someone attending a UN conference in Geneva, and so Andrea had taken her to the
station. After the train left she went into a sandwich bar on the station concourse. And it was there that she saw him.

Maravan was sitting at a small table with a pretty Tamil woman. They had eyes and ears only for each other.

Andrea hesitated for a moment, but then decided she would disturb their idyll after all. She went up to the table and said, ‘I hate to interrupt.’

The girl looked enquiringly, first at her then at Maravan. He had lost his tongue.

‘I’m Andrea, Maravan’s business partner.’ She offered her hand and the young woman took it with a relieved smile.

‘And I’m Sandana.’ She spoke Swiss dialect without a hint of an accent.

As Maravan did not invite her to sit down with them, Andrea left soon afterwards, saying ‘See you later’ to Maravan, and ‘Pleased to have met you’ to Sandana.

Later, in Falkengässchen, she said, ‘Why don’t you take the poor girl to a nicer restaurant?’

‘She works in the travel centre and only has a short lunch break.’

Andrea smiled. ‘Now it’s all making sense: you’re in love.’

Maravan did not look up from his work. He just shook his head and muttered, ‘I’m not.’

‘Well, she is,’ was Andrea’s reply.

The following morning another piece of Kugag-related business news caught the media’s attention. Hans Staffel, one of the Managers of the Year, had been relieved of all
duties with immediate effect. ‘Due to differences of opinion regarding the firm’s strategic orientation.’ The commentators thought it was obvious: the CEO’s dismissal was
connected to his opaque decision to enter a joint venture with one of the company’s largest competitors.

‘Look! We know him,’ Makeda said, showing Andrea the official portrait which Staffel had got an expensive photographer to produce for the annual report during happier times. Andrea
was leafing through the newspapers she had bought while fetching the breakfast croissants. Makeda was watching her; she could not read German.

‘What’s happened to him?’

Andrea read the article. ‘Booted out.’

‘But I thought he was so brilliant.’

‘He screwed things up by getting involved with a Dutch firm.’

‘Wasn’t the guy he came to Falkengässchen with one of those?’

‘What?’

‘A Dutchman.’

Maravan was reading the paper for another reason. More than 10,000 of his compatriots had held a demonstration outside the UN building in Geneva. They were demanding an
immediate end to the military offensive.

Over the last few days the news from Sri Lanka was getting ever more catastrophic. The area occupied by the LTTE had shrunk to an enclave of no more than 150 square kilometres, in the middle of
which stood the town of Puthukkudiyiruppu. Kilinochchi, the Elephant Pass, and the ports of Mullaitivu and Chalai were in government hands. The Red Cross estimated that besides the roughly 10,000
LTTE soldiers, a further 250,000 people were surrounded and coming repeatedly under fire.

While demonstrations were taking place in Geneva, the government in Colombo was celebrating the sixty-first anniversary of Sri Lankan independence with a military parade. ‘I am confident
the Tigers will be completely defeated within a few days,’ President Mahinda Rajapaksa declared. He called on all Sri Lankans who had left the country because of the war to return.

The Government had published not very convincing photographs of a two-storeyed, comfortable-looking bunker that had housed the Tamil commandant Prabhakaran, but from where he had made a hasty
departure. A rumour was circulating that he had left the country.

It was not until he put down the paper that Maravan noticed the picture of a man he had let into the apartment in Falkengässchen the previous month, because Andrea had been out buying
matches. All he read was the caption:
Fired: Manager of the Year Hans Staffel
.

Later that morning, when they were still in bed, Makeda said out of the blue, ‘He took photos of him.’

‘Who did?’

‘The Dutch guy. When the bloke who’s got the sack went into the next-door room with Cécile. After a while the Dutch guy stood up, took something from his jacket, opened the
door quietly and stayed there until Cécile sent him out.’

‘How do you know he took pictures?’

‘Cécile shouted out, “
Ça suffit!
Photos cost extra!”’

Just for a change, Love Food cooked for a married couple again. The clients were regulars with Esther Dubois, the sex therapist – a sort of arty-crafty couple in their
mid-forties who were working very seriously at their relationship. Andrea had no idea where they had got her details from. She suspected they were being passed around by word of mouth among Esther
Dubois’s patients, because more and more clients were coming from this source.

They lived in a house with a vegetable garden and the wife wanted Maravan to swear that he would use only organic ingredients. Maravan agreed, although he could not provide a cast-iron guarantee
for all the molecular texturizers.

While they were making their preparations, Andrea said, ‘Did you hear Staffel got the sack?’

‘The crisis is sparing nobody.’

‘Makeda said the Dutchman took photos of him while he was shagging.’

‘I don’t want to know what they do behind those doors.’

‘Don’t you see? He photographed him shagging and blackmailed him with the pictures. He’s supposed to have made some pretty strange business decisions all of a sudden, and then
started working on something together with a competitor.’

Maravan reacted with a shrug.

‘And guess what nationality these competitors are?’

‘Dutch?’ Maravan guessed.

Maravan was not the only one in love. For the first time in years – how many he could not remember – Dalmann had lost his sick heart, too. It was now in the
possession of someone who had little use for it: Makeda, a call girl from Ethiopia and constant companion of Andrea, CEO of Love Food.

He booked her several evenings a week. Not because his sexual appetite was insatiable or his performance in bed impressive; on this matter Dalmann was well aware of his age, his heart and the
daily cocktail of medicines. No, he simply felt fantastic in her company. He loved her sense of humour and her sometimes obscure irony. But most of all, he could not get enough of her.

For a large sum of money, therefore, he led an almost conventional relationship with Makeda in his house, watching television and spending hours losing to her at backgammon.

Unlike other girlfriends in the past, she never demanded to be seen in public with him. She was in no doubt that theirs was a purely business relationship.

To begin with he had liked that, but as time went on it bothered him. He would ask whether she liked him just a little bit, and each time she would give him the same answer: ‘Like you a
little bit? I absolutely worship you.’

Because she was non-committal he would give her presents. A pearl necklace, a matching pearl bracelet and a midnight-black mink stole.

He even took her to the Huwyler one evening.

Makeda ate her way through the
Menu Surprise
as if she dined like that every day. And she stuck to champagne all evening, which pained the chef in Huwyler, but pleased the businessman
in him. Dalmann still drank wine after the aperitif, leaving the choice to the sommelier.

Word got around the kitchen that evening that Dalmann had a sensational companion. The entire team, one by one, peeked at his table from the serving counter and gave their opinion: dancer, model
or tart.

Makeda was a luxury that, strictly speaking, Dalmann could not afford. Shares in the largest bank, where his supposedly safe investments had been made, had not recovered at all. Quite the
opposite, in fact. The bank, which was being propped up by the state, had just announced a loss of 20 billion francs – a loss never seen before in the country’s economic history.
Customers had withdrawn 226 billion francs, and shares had lost almost two thirds of their value over this period. In addition, the American tax authorities were threatening to revoke the
bank’s licence if it did not hand over the data relating to a few hundred US citizens suspected of tax evasion. Without a licence in the United States, the largest Swiss bank might as well
shut up shop.

On the other hand, the business with Staffel and van Genderen had taken a positive turn. Although the new management, under pressure from shareholders, was desperately trying to rescind the deal
between Kugag and hoogteco, he no longer cared as his commission had been paid, and to the right bank.