The Birdwoman's Palate Read online

  “Enough,” says Bono, snatching my plate away. “You shouldn’t finish them all if you don’t actually like them.”

  Less than fifteen minutes later, the car is pulling over to the side of a small road in front of a warung operating out of someone’s house. But the place is quiet—more house than warung.

  “This is my little brother’s house,” says our driver, eyes shining once again. “His wife, my sister-in-law, is a whiz at making both Kaldu Kokot and Lontong Kikil.”

  Bono and I glance sideways at each other like two detectives who’ve just entered the scene of a grisly murder. We’re both thinking about the two dishes just offered to us: mung-bean and cow-hoof broth and rice cakes drenched in cow-hoof soup. I’m on the verge of yelling, “Nah! Never mind! Let’s just go back to Surabaya!” Especially since we never said yes to coming here. But I don’t want to hurt the driver’s feelings. Besides, I’m actually curious to try beef bone marrow in a mung-bean broth.

  The driver’s sister-in-law doesn’t talk much. Her expression is a little sour. It’s almost as if she’s a bit scared, or suspicious, because she’s suddenly been inundated with so many guests—all of whom look so out of place.

  Fifteen minutes pass, and we begin supping on our respective bowls of kikil kokot. I go numb. The dish has been served practically cold, and the marrow, which is meant to be scraped from the inside of the bone or sucked up through a straw, looks like a chunk of splattered brain. When I take a mouthful, it tastes like filthy grease congealing in and around my mouth. Lips, tongue, palate—it’s as if all of them are suspended in fat.

  I give up. Before long a troop of flies swarms what remains in my bowl. Let them have my kikil kokot. I don’t like losing, but my mother taught me to let those who are smaller win.

  I don’t dare ask the others what’s going on inside their heads.

  On the drive back to Surabaya, almost nobody speaks. Farish is sprawling unconscious in the front seat, mouth half open. Inda is busy on her phone, probably listening to colleagues make their reports. I’m WhatsApping with Nadezhda. As usual, she’s complaining.

  You know, being a restaurant critic isn’t easy.

  No one said it was.

  Just look at the restaurant columns in all the famous newspapers. They’re all short. And even though they have to deal with a restaurant’s history, ownership, and concept, its ambiance, service, and menu, in the end what sets one column apart from the others is the quality of the analysis of the food. So tell me, how is one supposed to review a degustation menu comprising nine to fifteen different courses, each one a work of art? And what if the restaurant also has a rich history? Or if it’s rich in, I don’t know, production detail?

  Yep. Sounds tough.

  It is. I should become an art critic instead. Or write about architecture.

  I turn my thoughts to fly satay, to fly hooves, and to flies in general.

  Hey, I’m dying to get my hands on some Pecel Semanggi. The dish is virtually extinct because of all the road construction. Just try searching for semanggi clover around here. You won’t find it.

  But semanggi tastes like shit. It’s just a weed that grows by the side of the road.

  Yes, but I’m curious.

  You’re not curious because it’s supposed to taste good. You’re curious because it’s rare.

  I don’t respond. The minute Nadezhda gets argumentative, I shut down. Anyway, my head is suddenly flooded with images of fresh oysters, prawns in spicy sauce, fried squid in butter sauce, stir-fried genjer leaves, bean-sprout-and-salted-fish stir-fry, belado-style eggplant swimming in chili and oil, crab and corn egg-drop soup, clams in salted bean sauce, and mango sambal—all to be found at my favorite Chinese seafood restaurant in Surabaya.

  “Bon,” I say.

  “Yeah?”

  “You still hungry?”

  “Of course.”

  “Wanna go out for seafood a little later tonight?”

  Bono turns to me and grins. “Of course.”

  In the morning, while I’m checking out, Bono appears behind me. He was staying at a nearby hotel, and it looks like he’s checked out, too. His belongings are parked near the sofa in the lobby. He’s fresh-faced, and his rose-apple lips are even rosier than usual. He bears no trace of last night’s wild seafood rumpus, when the two of us ordered enough food for ten people.

  “We still have time for breakfast, right?” His tone is that of a child who’s found buried treasure in his backyard.

  I nod. There’s still time. Enough for Farish, him, and me to hit two or three places, even. The plane doesn’t take off until four.

  “I found a place that serves pecel semanggi,” he tells me. “It serves all kinds of East Javanese specialties. If we hurry, it looks like we’ll have time to try other places, too. Where else do you want to go?”

  I rattle off the foods on my list: the locally famous Sate Klopo, aka satay mixed with grated coconut and special seasoning; the soto madura at the place next door to the place known for its sate klopo; and the famous fried-duck restaurant here in Surabaya that attempts to compete with the king of duck in Bangkalan (but apparently, to no avail).

  It turns out Nadezhda is right—of course she’s right. Pecel semanggi is nothing great. It’s survival food—the kind of food that springs up and becomes popular because its ingredients are cheap and can be found anywhere. But I’m happy because I’ve finally tried it for myself.

  I’m even enjoying sitting with Farish on the corner of Jalan Wolter Monginsidi, at an establishment that an industrious woman and her family have kept going for forty years by the sweat of their brow. I take it all in: the large number of customers; the thick smoke from the grill by the veranda; the hundreds of satay skewers waiting to be grilled, which have been placed on top of broad banana leaves beside trays of tempting peanut sauce and big buckets filled with charcoal; the newspaper clippings displayed on the walls, all of them praising the delicious satay.

  Quietly, I also observe a change in Farish’s body language and demeanor. He seems more sincere, more open. It pleases me to see him eating with such gusto and having a laugh with Bono, as if he belongs with Bono and me. It also pleases me that Inda’s departure doesn’t seem to have affected his mood. Quite the reverse, in fact: he almost seems glad.

  Though I’m stuffed and can hardly walk, I’m glad, too. And from the looks of things, so is Bono. So we offer no resistance when our driver brings us to the house of another little brother, who has mastered the art of fried duck.

  “How many little brothers do you have, Dar?” asks Farish. “Pretty amazing, if you ask me. That all of them can cook, I mean.”

  With a sheepish grin, the driver says, “He runs a tent warung in the evenings. When we spoke on the phone just now, he said he wanted to cook a meal for us. Good thing we have time.”

  I look down at my watch. It’s true.

  “Actually,” continues our driver as he lights a cigarette, “his duck is just as good as that overrated duck in Bangkalan everybody raves about. But we live in Surabaya, and we’re Madurese, so that’s that. They’ll never acknowledge he’s the true king of duck.”

  In contrast to the other younger brother with the mean wife, this brother is super-friendly. He’s in his midthirties. He eagerly invites us to sit on the veranda, which from five o’clock onward transforms into a space open to the public. “Sorry,” he says. “My house is small and cramped. It’s more comfortable here.”

  A few moments later, atop slightly wobbly wooden chairs, at a slightly dusty table, amidst car smog and carbon monoxide, we’re gorging on some pretty decent crisp-skinned fried duck. But all of that seems to pale in significance with the good faith and hard work implicit in the words “I Love My Son” painted on the front of the house.

  “My little brother is recently divorced,” our driver whispers. “After it happened, he n’didn’t have anyone to help him in the kitchen. N’didn’t have anyone who knew how to cook duck like he did, except for his ex-wife,
who got remarried right away. The warung almost folded. He was so stressed. He tried to commit suicide. But I always reminded him that Dirin, his son, n’didn’t have anyone else to rely on. Just him—his father. After a while my little brother began to get back on his feet. Now he has two assistants. And his business has grown. Folks like eating here.”

  And so the economy may go to pot and the market may crash, the gap between rich and poor may widen, and politicians may continue to be corrupt and inept. Yet people are still starting new businesses, still cooking, still giving each other food.

  I’m touched.

  13

  THE PRINCESS HAS LANDED

  This is not a dream. This actually happened.

  I’m five years old. One day I come home from school and start bawling my eyes out when I realize my mother has secretly thrown away my beloved pacifier. That’s not all—my mother’s a coward, for she’s callously laid the blame on our Javanese housekeeper, saying Mbok Sawal threw it away by accident. Mbok Sawal is just as cowardly, for she just accepts the blame, even though it’s obvious she was acting on orders from my mother, who secretly thinks I’m too old to be sucking on a binky.

  For three long months, without my mother’s knowledge, Mbok Sawal has been trying to regain my affection. She offers me pacifier after pacifier, pink ones, cute ones, costly ones, but I refuse them all. In response, I begin sucking on lollipops every day.

  One day she gives in and asks, “Miss Aruna, why are you giving me the cold shoulder?”

  I don’t reply.

  Ten years later, when I’m out of town, Mbok Sawal has a heart attack and dies. I bawl my eyes out because I never had the chance to explain why I so mulishly refused her offerings. Many times I wanted to tell her, “I don’t want another pacifier. It’s the taste of my old one that I was utterly addicted to.” But I thought, She knows. It’s impossible for her not to. So I never said anything.

  One day, when my mother is going through Mbok Sawal’s possessions, she discovers a plastic bag with “Aruna” written on it. Inside are fourteen brand-new pacifiers and a bunch of Chuppa Chup lollipops.

  Above and around me: Feet brought to a halt and so many different kinds of shoes. Voices. Then bodies crouching over me, startled, worried. Are you okay?

  I’m sprawled on the floor, not comprehending what just happened.

  A pause.

  Shoes. The sound of shoes. And not just any shoes.

  Then that face: a woman’s face. Not just any woman. “My goodness, Run, what’s wrong? Are you okay? Why did you keel over like that?”

  Purse. Phone. Another phone. Wallet.

  “Yes, yes,” the woman’s voice says. “They’re all here. I’ve got them.”

  Yet another voice: a man’s voice. And, like the woman’s, not just any man’s. “Nadz, she keeled over ’cause she saw you. Only you could make a robust woman like Aruna fall flat on her face in the middle of the Palembang airport.”

  It’s all coming back to me now. Bono, Farish, and I had just arrived at the airport in Palembang, Sumatra. The two guys went down to the baggage claim area, while I went to the ladies’ room. Then, as I was coming down the escalator, I saw Nadezhda’s stately figure near the entrance. Out of nowhere. Like a ghost.

  I knew she was going to join us in Palembang, but I’d never imagined what it would be like for Bono and me to meet her—Nadezhda, so utterly private, who has another life that I don’t know about and that she doesn’t want me to enter—in a place so removed from what I’d imagined about that foreign life she leads. My steps faltered. Then I fell. Of course, I fell.

  Another surprise: Nadezhda wants to share my hotel room.

  “It’s okay, right?” she asks. “Rather than me having to search for another hotel.”

  “I don’t have a problem with it.” I choose my words carefully. “But this is a work trip. I’m worried Farish will tell other people at work. I don’t trust him.”

  “Oh, I’m sure he won’t tell,” says Nadezhda with her usual coolness. “Relax.”

  How am I supposed to relax? There’s been a change in temperature since she made her spectacular appearance at the airport. Farish seems dumbstruck, as does the man from the Ministry’s Palembang office who picks us up at the airport—a guy in his thirties, baby-faced, most likely still a virgin.

  “Okay,” I say weakly. “You can stay with me. But you have to promise: don’t bug me while I’m working.”

  Nine at night. The road feels open and empty. From the car, Palembang looks like a stretch of commercial space, as long as Mangga Besar or Pluit in Jakarta but far more neat and orderly. I see rows of stores selling electronics, textiles, furniture, and housewares. Department stores, hair salons, and auto mechanics. Law offices and eateries, billboards and campaign posters for the gubernatorial and vice gubernatorial elections, all seemingly without end. Strange how there’s no traffic or bustle or swarms of people by the side of the road. No litter or anything filthy or miserable. The government buildings stand tall and removed from the street—structures that seem to harbor no history, to have no knowledge of dust or rust or anything unplanned. The city seems to exist outside of time.

  It’s difficult for me to imagine the Palembang that once upon a time established dynasties, gave birth to kings, set up monuments, spread its faith far and wide, and disclosed its history onto stones and dried palm leaves of ancient lontar. How for almost six centuries it served as the center of civilization for the Srivijaya kingdom before bowing at last, in the thirteenth century, to the power of the Majapahit Empire, and afterward, to other powers whose influences still persist into the present—Chinese traders, Islamic sultanates, colonial powers from the Netherlands and Japan.

  I’m reminded of a book I’ve just recently reread that contains several quotations from the travel records of a seventh-century Buddhist monk from China named I-tsing. He spent twenty-four years sojourning through China and India, collecting and translating sacred Buddhist texts.

  In the course of his travels, he stopped—as all Buddhist monks from China did at the time—in Palembang to observe its temples and learn Sanskrit. From India, he even returned to Palembang and stayed there for four years, copying and translating into Chinese the texts that he had collected. From his brush flowed one of the first written descriptions of Palembang:

  In the fortified city of Fo-che, there are more than one thousand Buddhist monks whose spirit is only turned to study and good actions. They study all possible subjects, like in India. Rules and ceremonials are identical. If a Chinese monk wants to travel to India to listen and read Buddhist laws, he must stay in Fo-che during one or two years to learn how to behave properly. He could then pursue his travel to India.

  The importance of Palembang as a spiritual center for Buddhism in Southeast Asia began to wane after the Chola invasion in 1025. During the invasion, dozens of temples, libraries, and treasuries were looted, and Buddhism in the region eventually collapsed.

  Almost a thousand years have passed since then. The driver tells us that in five more minutes we’ll be at the hotel. It’s in the vicinity of a housing development where little girls, not unlike Nadezhda and me, live. With their fathers, who are lawyers, company directors, factory managers, or owners of stores and small businesses. And with their mothers, who help in the store or with the business and who are also skilled in making Pempek and Tekwan, the fishcakes Palembang is so famous for. Their childhood memories consist of piano lessons and birthday parties, MTV and American Idol, Top Chef, and pirated DVDs, not to mention weekends with their families at hotels, afternoons in swimming pools, and the smell of my father’s brand-new car. There’ll be memories of the latest model of smartphone and tablet and family functions overflowing with food.

  “So, about this hotel . . .” Out of the corner of my consciousness, I hear Nadezhda’s voice. “Are you sure it has Wi-Fi?”

  One o’clock in the morning.

  “Thirsty?” asks Nadezhda.

  “Huh? Um, no.�
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  “Really?” She sounds disappointed. She doesn’t care in the least that I’m already half in dreamland. “Sure you don’t want to join me in a glass of wine?”

  The first morning in Palembang isn’t as trying as I feared. Nadezhda doesn’t show up at breakfast. Good. So what if stupid Farish and the baby-faced Palembang kid are all gloomy. But it won’t last. How long can they fret about something that isn’t there?

  There’s no trace of Bono either. Again, good. He and Nadezhda are probably eating together without telling us.

  I’m enjoying my solitude at the breakfast table, where, as is probably the case at all breakfast tables in Palembang, pempek is available. Is always available. As readily on hand as, say, sweet soy sauce, or sambal, or prawn crackers. But I restrain myself. I want to eat only fresh pempek. I want it hot, straight from the fryer. And, what’s more, my first pempek-eating experience in Palembang has to take place at a pempek restaurant of local repute. I’ve even made a list.

  There is a pempek restaurant that’s popular among the celebrity set. Even S. B. Y., our illustrious ex-president, has been there. But that’s precisely why I don’t want to go. Too mainstream.

  Farish and the baby face—his name is Ewan—are at the breakfast table. They’re busily munching on pempek and poring over a bunch of documents. Farish keeps smacking his lips in approval.

  “The pempek is really good, Run. You should try some.”

  “Nah,” I say, picking up a menu. “Just coffee for me.”

  “Know why this particular kind of pempek is called Pempek Adaan?”

  “Enlighten me.”

  “It’s the adaan from the Islamic injunction to pray—‘adaan lillahi taala’—because Allah is supreme.”

  “So?”

  A look of disdain crosses his face. But it isn’t because I’m being snarky. Rather he seems to sincerely believe that the past three days have transformed him into an expert on culinary matters.