The Birdwoman's Palate Read online

  I nod sympathetically. “And producing the wrong kind of vaccines, to boot.”

  I’d like to think that any self-respecting epidemiologist should know, unequivocally, that what the world needs is a vaccine that will be administered to poultry, not humans. Which is why it really gets my goat whenever I’m so much as reminded of those odious lowlifes who’ve been clamoring for the latter. They keep droning on about the threat posed by the deadly virus, putting the screws on those equally stupid and self-serving parliamentarians to pour megabucks into their projects. And all the while, they deny the real facts of the matter: that their urgency is misplaced and the process of contagion even more complex than hepatitis.

  “The thing is”—Irma’s voice suddenly turns grave—“these new cases need to be investigated thoroughly.”

  At this point, I’m only half listening. My mind is still full of high schoolish anxieties—why does Irma feel the sudden need to talk to little old me? I decide she doesn’t trust her colleagues, and therefore she must be feeling desperately alone. Someone like Irma doesn’t enjoy being alone, doesn’t know how to be alone. After all, she’s not me.

  “And I mean thoroughly,” Irma continues. With a pencil, she circles a few words on a document in front of her. “Look,” she says. “Eight cities: Banda Aceh, Medan, Palembang, Pontianak, Singkawang, Bangkalan, Surabaya, Mataram. What do you think is the common thread?”

  I see no common thread, or any thread for that matter. Like all the experts in the meeting room barely an hour ago, I don’t understand how, in a mere seven days, symptoms of acute pneumonia consistent with those of avian flu have been phoned in from eight separate cities. Eight cities spread out across the archipelago. Eight cities never before afflicted by avian flu.

  I tell her I’m as baffled as she is, especially since each of the eight cities has only one patient. One. Which doesn’t make it an outbreak. Not technically, anyway.

  Irma says, “You remember what that expert from Bali said, when hundreds of ducks died recently in several regencies in Java? ‘The government is ill equipped.’” Irma’s quoting from memory. “‘Ill equipped and clueless. They should have cleared out the infected farms and shut down all avian traffic in the area. But as usual they were too slow.’” Then, as a note to self, she adds, “One can only hope—”

  “But what we all feared has already happened,” I say curtly, for there’s really no other way to say it. “The virus has mutated. There’s a new variant.”

  Indeed, barely two weeks ago, the Ministry announced the discovery of a new strain of avian flu in the district of Brebes that is now afflicting cities and regencies all over the archipelago.

  An uneasy quiet intrudes. Irma seems reluctant to delve deeper into this other matter. I catch something flashing in her eyes, a new purpose. She plants her fork into the sculpturelike mound of blanched vegetables the waiter sets before her.

  I continue, emboldened. “Stopping the virus should really be a cooperative effort. It’s not just the Ministry’s job. Especially when it comes to raising public awareness on the importance of adopting preventive measures. Still. As long as efforts to contain animal-borne diseases aren’t made an integral part of the nationwide health system, our work, including the work of NGOs like OneWorld, will always be stalled. But you know this. You know this as well as I do. I mean, as if working with regional authorities who do whatever they goddamn feel isn’t enough of a headache.”

  “You always blame decentralization.”

  “For good reasons, too.”

  Irma seems deflated. But before I can speak any more of my mind, she regains her ground and steers us back to the mission at hand.

  “We need to start an investigation in these eight cities as soon as possible. Before the press catches a whiff of it, and we’re all toast.”

  I pause. “All right.”

  Irma’s fork is still staked upright, a proud cross, incongruous religion-wise, atop the scruffy pile of water spinach, bean sprouts, and cucumber. I watch the prawn crackers wilting slowly in the murky peanut river and feel a pang of grief for their sorry fate.

  And for Irma, too, because all of a sudden she looks like someone who’s trying to recall something crucial—something that could even save her life, but that she can’t remember.

  But instead of wallowing in whatever it is, I hear her say, “You think you can manage that? Eight cities in two weeks?”

  I smile and nod. Despite myself I’m moved; for in this, a rare vulnerable moment, Irma is still putting on a brave front, still trying to stick to the matter at hand.

  “I’ve talked to your supervisors. Diva told me your hundred and fifty days with OneWorld are almost up. You’re on your . . . hundred and forty-eighth day, if I’m not mistaken?”

  I nod again. One hundred and fifty days is the maximum an independent consultant in Indonesia is legally allowed to work for and be paid by a single firm.

  “DOCIR still has some funds left for this project. So why don’t you work directly for me? How does that sound? Two weeks at your usual per diem.”

  It seems to be an invitation for me to negotiate. It crosses my mind that I should increase my rate by 10 percent. But before I can reply, I hear someone’s shrill, vulturish screech: “There she is! Told you she’d be hiding out here.”

  The wind blows, bringing with it the roar of car engines and a blast of sweltering heat, along with the screecher and four other Ministry vultures. As if on cue, they take their positions around the table, wholly uninvited, feeling wholly entitled.

  I only see it for a nanosecond: the shock in Irma’s eyes. And then, as she does on TV, she morphs back into the public Irma: devastatingly immaculate, like her pearly white, all-too-even smile.

  And just like that, I’m sidelined once more. I, Aruna, nothing but a lowly consultant in their eyes—statusless, birdwoman, nerd. But I don’t care, have never cared, because now I’m free to enter the world of scents and spices.

  And so, slowly, I lick the finger I’ve just dipped in the snail gravy. I taste heat, a hint of piscine, cloying sweetness. The snails, born and bred in rice paddies, are minuscule, each no bigger than the upper segment of a pinkie. They’re long and lean, unlike the rotund green snails I once tasted in a restaurant in Bogor. I scoop one up with my spoon, pucker my lips, and suck, deep and strong. Then, as soon as its stubborn little body peeks out from its shell, I slurp it up whole, and lo! I’ve managed to savor kol nenek in all its glory. Without the aid of a toothpick!

  2

  BONO

  One night I dream about my friend Bono. It’s a scene from his childhood, and he’s like a character in a movie: someone outside himself, someone unreal, an actor playing a role. In the opening shot, he’s standing on a beach, savoring the salt breeze—or so I imagine.

  All of a sudden, he turns away and walks toward a voice calling him from the main road. Something in his gaze changes, reminding me of a frightened deer.

  He enters a restaurant—one of the many along the street. I don’t see who is calling him.

  A few minutes later I, too, go into the restaurant, and I see him sitting at a table with a middle-aged couple. The woman tries to stroke Bono’s hand, but, gently, he brushes her fingers away. He seems tense and keeps his gaze lowered.

  In front of him is a bowl of piping hot soto. I can’t see what kind, and it takes me a few seconds before I realize that Bono is being subjected to some sort of test administered by the man.

  “Come on, concentrate,” says the man, his expression fierceness itself.

  With great effort, Bono takes a spoonful of soto, then a second, and a third.

  “What do you taste?”

  “C-c-candlenut. And t-t-turmeric.”

  “And? What else?”

  “L-lemongrass? And kaffir lime leaf?”

  “Which one? Lemongrass or kaffir lime leaf? Don’t be wishy-washy.”

  “L-l-lemon . . . lemongrass . . . or . . . or both. Yes. Both.”

  “Are y
ou sure?”

  Bono doesn’t answer. He seems to be having difficulty breathing.

  “Are you positive?”

  “Yes, sir. Both.”

  “So, what kind of soto do you think this? What is its provenance?”

  Bono pauses again. I can see his heart beating wildly in his chest.

  “Ma-Ma-Madura?”

  “Which part of Madura?”

  Again Bono hesitates.

  The man ignores the woman’s attempts to intervene.

  “I—I don’t know, Father. Bangkalan? Sumenep, perhaps . . . yes, Sumenep.”

  “Think. What color is it?”

  “Ye-ye-yellow, Father.”

  “You’ve really forgotten? Isn’t soto from Sumenep white?”

  “In that case, this must be Bangkalan-style soto. Th-the broth . . . it’s ye-ye-yellow. And it hasn’t . . . hasn’t been made with t-t-tripe. A-a-also it hasn’t been served with any p-p-potato fritters.”

  For a moment, the man regards his child with a wild fury, as if he wants to beat him for not being smart enough, for stuttering like an imbecile—in short, for not being worthy of being his child. With an irritated flourish, he draws the bowl away from Bono and toward himself. Child and mother look on as the man slurps the soup demonstratively, down to the last dregs.

  Then, as if this last gesture isn’t brutal enough, the man asks the waiter to bring them an assortment of banana-leaf-wrapped bundles, all kinds of pepes and its close relative, botok. He unwraps a botok, exposing its moist, grated coconut flesh, and holds it out to Bono.

  “Go on. Try it.”

  Bono does as he’s told.

  “What kind of botok do you think this is?”

  “Vegetable, Father.”

  The man pounds the table with his fist. “Vegetable, meat, fish,” he hisses. “How dare you speak in such generalities. It shows you’re just like everyone else. That you can’t be bothered to use your brain. That you’re too lazy to think.”

  Bono nibbles a spoonful, then a second, and a third. “Fiddlehead?” he asks in a whisper.

  In an instant, something changes in the father’s expression. There’s a sort of cautious anticipation in the depths of his gaze, mingled, perhaps, with hope—joy, even. And I know that Bono sees it, and that for a few seconds he allows himself to hope as he’s never hoped before.

  “Do you like it?”

  “Ye-ye-yes, sir, I like it.”

  “Why? Explain.”

  But for some reason Bono doesn’t speak, as if there’s something balled in his throat he’s trying to keep down.

  At long last, he replies. “Be-be-cause it tastes good?”

  One second passes, then two. And then, with an expression of utter disgust, the man stands up, tosses a few bills at the cashier, and leaves.

  When Bono emerges from the restaurant, a cigarette between his fingers, I run up to him. His mother is nowhere to be seen.

  “Hey,” I say.

  “Hey,” he says.

  “So that’s fear, eh? Makes you lose your tongue?”

  Strangely, he seems relaxed.

  “Not necessarily,” he says calmly.

  He isn’t stuttering anymore. He isn’t the same Bono as the Bono in the restaurant.

  “Fiddlehead botok—botok pakis. I know the taste intimately,” Bono continues. “One nibble and my mind begins parsing out each distinct sensation: sweet, spicy, salty, sticky, the spices, the fibers. I assign them adjectives, I assign them colors, I weave each sensation into a swell of verbal music until each and every aspect of the dish has been translated into a magician’s litany that binds us all under its spell. Believe it or not, in that respect, I am him. I am my father.”

  “Why didn’t you point that out to him back there in the restaurant?” I ask. “I thought his affirmation meant the world to you.”

  “I didn’t want him to think we were alike, because that would mean that he was someone worthy of respect, of emulation. And that would mean I had lost. It would have meant Mother had lost. My father is dead to me.”

  He takes a long drag on his cigarette.

  “And furthermore, tasting food is an act of pleasure,” he says nonchalantly. “And writing about that pleasure is an artistic gesture. But at the end of it all, the highest art, the truest art, finds its expression in satiating the hunger of others. That’s why I became a chef.”

  I knew Bono long before he became famous. I knew him when he still went by his baptismal name, Johannes.

  I was working for an advocacy group at the time; he was employed at a PR firm. We met while working together on a project that gave us many opportunities to observe each other quietly, from afar. We were around the same age—me twenty-eight, him twenty-five—and neither of us was much of a talker. I’d just finished my master’s degree program in Thailand, and he’d just finished his in America.

  He wasn’t a looker, not by any stretch of the imagination. He wasn’t exactly fat, but he had a double chin and was in poor shape. He had a crew cut—and I hated crew cuts. His lips were fleshy and protruding and perpetually moist and pink as if he were wearing lip gloss or had just finished a heavy make-out session with someone. His complexion was unusually pasty for his age. His glasses were too thick.

  But something made me feel comfortable around him: he was like a person who wore the wrong clothes or the wrong color, who had the wrong hairstyle or the wrong name; it was like there was something about him that was always pleasingly out of place. I visited his office once and saw he had images of food plastered all over the walls: ads for oatmeal and Bear Brand milk, scenes of Dick and Jane messing around in the kitchen, and classical-style sketches of French cuisine—the kind artists sell along the length of the Seine in Paris. There were artsy black-and-white photos of all kinds, too: a pretty woman taking a bite of marbled steak, a child in a café trying to catch the waiter’s attention by spilling his milk all over the table, an old woman tottering down a country lane with a baguette tucked under her armpit, and a dog with a twinkle in its eye as it carried in its mouth an apple snatched from a market stall. Cartoonish posters were interspersed throughout, with headings and sentences like “Say Cheez,” “The Zen of Sataying,” and “What Alice Told Her Gardener.”

  One evening, at dinner in a restaurant with other co-workers, I was struck by how similar our senses of taste were. Or, more specifically, how we didn’t order food the same way other people did. Since then, whenever we went out to eat with co-workers and friends, I took note of how he would read the menu. At certain restaurants he didn’t so much as glance at one, but at other restaurants he would pore over descriptions with great fervor, as if each and every word were of great significance and had the power to transform his worldview.

  He also ordered dishes with the instinct of a seasoned food lover. In some places, his strategy was fairly orthodox: “What’s the point of trying the Wagyu steak? If they’re selling it for this cheap, the steak can’t be all that good.” Or, “Better to stick with the tried-and-true at this Thai restaurant. Safest to order the classics. Mango salad, pomelo salad, green beef curry, red duck curry, basil chicken stir-fry . . .”

  But in other places, he chose to assume a more passive role—a tourist from another planet: “An izakaya like this isn’t the place to order sushi or sashimi. Order a number of dishes from the specials pasted on the wall, even if you can’t read the Japanese. If you’re uneasy about what you may be ordering, just tell the waiter to bring a selection of chicken, tofu, eggplant, root vegetables, whatever’s most popular with the regulars. They’ll all be very different from each other, but chances are they’ll be tasty.”

  There were also times he’d order dishes that sounded positively mundane, but delicious when well executed: for example, a poulet rôti, say, in a French restaurant. “Only a really solid chef can make a good roast chicken,” he’d say.

  At other times he’d take the opportunity to order something exceptionally unusual: like a small, primo portion of angel
-hair pasta smothered in caviar at a super-pricey Italian restaurant I’d been dodging all week because I feared I couldn’t afford it. Turned out I was bowled over for life. And even though the portion was super-small and the price outrageously expensive, the dish was simply exquisite: so fragrant, so clean tasting, yet highlighting so distinctly the flavors of garlic and the little roe capsules bursting against the tongue. For the first time, I understood that certain kinds of beauty could only come in small packages.

  “How do you do it? How do you always order the right thing?” asked one of our co-workers who had an unfortunate knack for always ordering the wrong thing. “I mean, how do you know which roast chicken at which restaurant is good? How is it possible to have a sixth sense about such things? How do you know what to order?”

  Bono being Bono, he just smiled.

  But I knew what his answer would be: he never ordered the wrong thing because he was a tireless patron of dining out. After all, instinct doesn’t fall from the sky or seize you like a jin, directing your five senses to the right choice without fail. Instinct is born of experience.

  But that fateful day came: Bono and I completed the project we’d been working on together, and I knew that my twice-weekly visits to his office were at an end, unless I was willing to visit anyway and give him the impression that I was interested in him. And I was definitely not interested.

  That night, all of us gathered in a restaurant for an end-of-project celebration thrown by his PR firm. He sat opposite me. We ignored each other, as though tacitly acknowledging that our chapter was about to close, yet also agreeing that we were not going to get all sentimental about it.

  Suddenly, my neighbor—a woman in her forties—began complaining about how difficult it was to serve traditional Indonesian cuisine to the important guests she entertained in her home. She was an utter bore, a poseur. She was also the wife of the big boss—an Englishman.

  “The thing is, I want to serve Indonesian food. In fact, I long to serve Indonesian food,” the woman said. “But my husband always forces me to serve the food in our Royal Copenhagen Flora Danica. And even though I comply with his wishes, he’s never satisfied. ‘It’s not elegant enough,’ he says. So then I ask what isn’t elegant enough? ‘The food,’ my husband says. The food isn’t elegant enough.”