The Birdwoman's Palate Page 6

  Sure, we’d be ecstatic if all of that really did happen. But why hasn’t the AFACC answered the questions we’re all asking in our heads? What have they done so far and why hasn’t it worked? And what are they going to do this time round that will work?

  Buntaran A. S., a high-ranking official at SoWeFit, offers his response:

  Dear wise sirs: First of all, thank you for your input. In fact, the very points you gentlemen raise have already been addressed by recommendations made at a recent ministerial-level coordination meeting. Now I know none of it has been implemented yet (it’s still early in the process). But I beg you to be patient. There’s no point in making something so difficult to implement even more complicated than it already is.

  Rest assured, the Ministry of Home Affairs has already consented to circulate an official statement concerning the avian flu to the regents and mayors throughout the country. We have also engaged a team of avian flu experts to keep us updated on new developments to ensure maintenance of the status quo (i.e., that this strain does not spread to the human population).

  However, good sirs, as you yourselves know, there are a number of ever-present obstacles that make implementation difficult. The avian flu outbreak has been officially classified as an epidemic, and thus the funds to deal with it must come out of a budget specifically allocated for non-natural disasters. But no such budget exists. If the current system doesn’t change, the federal government’s ability to provide assistance to regional authorities—in the form of operational funding and in matters concerning health and the environment, among others—will always encounter impediments.

  Ah, so now the question is this: What can be done to make the proper authorities aware of this problem? Heaven knows.

  To which someone named Eko Sayidiman replies:

  To the Honorable Mr. Buntaran: Will the vaccine be given to farmers free of charge? According to one media source, the losses sustained by the poultry farming sector account for 30 percent of those sustained by the entire poultry farming industry. Which comes to about 5 billion rupiah. Is there any truth in this? What measures will the government take with regard to compensation?

  Buntaran A. S. answers:

  Dear Eko: The poultry farmers will still receive compensation, not to mention a certain amount of special consideration—for example, assistance in acquiring replacement eggs, extensions on bank loans, etc. Do believe me when I say we are serious about developing a vaccine for this new strain of virus.

  Eko Sayidiman:

  Mr. Buntaran, keep your empty promises. You’re a filthy liar.

  I shake my head at how invested everyone is, how excruciatingly serious they all are. Though at the end of the day, it all comes down to money. I think about a recent meeting that turned into a fight after a co-worker of mine—Farish Chaniago—informed us that the “master seed” for the development of the new vaccine had already been established and that it was already undergoing tests at the Animal Biology Resource Center in Surabaya.

  “My friend happens to be involved in the project,” said Farish. “He told me they’re using a virus isolate to develop the vaccine. The isolate came from a blood sample from one of the birds that died in Sukoharjo. For some reason, they’ve classified it as a vaccine for ‘infectious bronchitis.’ Go figure. The thing is, even though they’ll be able to release the vaccine relatively soon, they won’t be able to produce five million vaccine capsules in one month. And that’s how many capsules they say are needed, which I doubt very much.”

  When asked how many he thought would be needed, Farish said breezily, “A million at most. And even that figure will depend on how effective it proves. But we’ll see. The news is they plan to finish it by the third week of March.”

  Farish is a vet. He worked at the Ministry of Livestock for five years before he moved on. Though wildlife conservation is his real passion, everyone keeps their mouth shut whenever he speaks up on any animal-related issues. OneWorld always asks him to attend meetings with the Avian Flu Action Coordination Committee. He should have been at the meeting on Thursday. There was no sign of him on Friday either.

  But now his voice drifts in from the doorway to my office. Great. Just great.

  “Hey! And I thought I’d be the only one in here today.”

  What’s with the smirk on his face?

  He keeps talking. “Did you see the e-itinerary Scoop! sent us?”

  Scoop! is OneWorld’s contracted travel agency.

  I nod vaguely, a little annoyed because he seems oblivious that he’s done anything wrong. I realize that we’ll both be flying out tomorrow. And that means I’ll be spending the next few days in his company, seeing his face, listening to him flapping his gums. I don’t know how I feel right now. I don’t know how I feel about him. He’s a special breed of human being—the kind who seems to know how to succeed without really trying. He’ll show up at a meeting and nod his head without uttering a single meaningful opinion, unless we’re speaking about animal health. Or he won’t show up at all and contribute absolutely nothing. And always with the same end result: I’m the one who has to work my ass off, while he’s the one who gets to regale everyone with stories about our work trips once we’re back in Jakarta, as if he did all the work.

  Irma says there are lots of people like Farish in Jakarta. They don’t need to go to a good university. They don’t need to distinguish themselves at their workplace. They don’t need to have any special skills. They don’t even need to speak fluent English. The important thing is that they go to a prestigious high school—become buddy-buddy with the kid of this big shot or that, who’ll grow up to be a big shot himself at this firm or that, winning contract bids for this project or that, and thus be guaranteed a lifetime of wealth and success. A good fucking network is all you need.

  People like Farish will always find work, will always have a decent job, and though they won’t necessarily rise to the top, they’ll never sink too close to the bottom.

  In short, I can’t be bothered to waste time talking with him. Though I have to admit, he has an okay face. Not as handsome as Leon’s, but then again, no one is as handsome as Leon. Unfortunately, he doesn’t seem to have any intention of leaving me alone in my office. In fact, he steps inside.

  “You’re coming on the trip, too?” I say.

  “Yep,” he says, sniffing around the piles of paper on my desk, like a pig hunting for truffles.

  Quickly, to hide my nervousness, I open my web browser and Google “Avian influenza.” A long list of avian-flu-related articles from the past ten days appears on the screen. One article description stands out in particular: “Controversial research on making avian flu easier to spread among humans will resume after a yearlong hiatus.”

  I want to skim it, but not while he’s here. Yet another annoying thing about Farish: he’s always claiming that he’s read about something, or heard about it, or knows about it before you have. He hates to lose. I wonder if he’s read this article already.

  A new e-mail appears in my inbox.

  Sender: Talisa Sumampouw

  Recipient: Aruna Rai

  Date: 24 Nov 2012 10:05:12

  Subject: (no subject)

  Ugh. Kill me now.

  I glance behind, through the doorway where Talisa’s desk is located. I see her head poke out from behind her cubicle. I didn’t realize she was here as well. I grin.

  Sender: Aruna Rai

  Recipient: Talisa Sumampouw

  Date: 24 Nov 2012 10:07:14

  Subject: (no subject)

  FC?

  I glance at her again. FC grins, but appears to be oblivious that he’s the topic of discussion. I grin back. Yup, answers Talisa, and at that moment I feel strong, empowered. I watch as Farish pauses in front of the photo of Gulali and tries to suppress a smile, as if having a photo of a cat on one’s desk is a sign that the cat’s owner has no life. I let him continue s
nuffling around until he gets bored.

  “How come I’ve never seen a photo of your family, Run?” he asks.

  Fuck you, too, I think. “I guess I just don’t have any good photos,” I say.

  He spends a few silent moments perusing my desk. “Good thing we’re leaving tomorrow.”

  “I guess. There won’t be any traffic.”

  “No, I mean it’s good because we won’t have to spend Saturday night on a work trip. I mean, what if one of us had a hot date?”

  Is this some kind of trick? Is he trying to find out if I have a boyfriend? I say nothing. But he still doesn’t show any sign of leaving.

  “Good thing Leon won’t be coming along this time either,” he continues. Extending a finger, he bats at the tufts of a cassowary feather I’ve tucked between the pages of a book. “We can enjoy a little more freedom.”

  “We” my ass, I think angrily. What the hell is he talking about? Freedom to do what, exactly? But still I say nothing.

  “Did you catch the press conference with the head of AFACC the other day?”

  I nod, keeping my eyes on the screen.

  “People are going crazy on the forum. They’re saying AFACC is surrounded by idiot consultants who’ve been giving them bad advice.”

  “I’m not one of AFACC’s consultants,” I snap.

  He looks stunned for a moment. It looks like he’s beginning to get the message, but not quite enough to get him to leave.

  I turn back to my computer and quickly skim the article that caught my attention.

  The project was discontinued due to heated debate about the virus potentially escaping the lab or being used for bioterrorism. But now, after a one-year moratorium, forty virus experts from all over the world have signed a letter published in the journal Nature vs. Nurture declaring that research must resume immediately . . . A Nobel Prize winner from X——University has stated, “The world simply cannot wait another year or two . . .”

  And yet, not all research groups agree . . . The US government, for one, has yet to set the conditions under which the experiments will be allowed to continue, and this will also affect research projects funded by the US government in other parts of the world . . . A research scientist from Y—— University reminds us that, historically speaking, thousands of people have contracted diseases in world-class laboratories with impeccable safety records. In his opinion, the world will be much safer as long as the moratorium remains in effect . . .

  Suddenly the left side of my head begins to throb. I’m aware I haven’t eaten, but I’m not hungry. And, strangely, my brain isn’t overwhelmed with ten different options of where to go for lunch, as it usually is.

  I feel very small right now. For the umpteen-thousandth time in my life since I decided to become an epidemiologist, I find myself struggling with the same phrases, the same numbers, the same dilemmas. And still, I don’t feel any smarter, any more able to effect change.

  And even though I have other fears—my overconsumption of beef, for instance (beef is known to cause cancer)—the same questions about avian flu continue to gnaw away at me: Is the virus destined to continue killing only a tiny handful of people in territories uncharted on the world map? Will it, or when will it, undergo a mutation somewhere in this wide world that will enable it to join forces with a human flu virus, thereby creating a new virus that will start infecting people?

  Every time a virologist says such mutations take time, that the genetic code of the avian flu virus will need to undergo at least five to nine mutations to produce a potential pandemic, other statistics terrify me anew. On average, pandemics occur every twenty-seven and a half years, and it’s been forty-four years since the last one.

  A commentator on our latest foodborne disease has noted that the Pandemic of 1918, otherwise known as the Spanish flu, was responsible for a greater number of deaths in a shorter period of time than any other outbreak in history. While AIDS took about twenty-four years to kill twenty-four million people, the Spanish flu killed twenty-four million people in twenty-four weeks. And the darnedest thing is that every virus that has caused a human pandemic shares genes with the avian flu virus. Not only that, but according to a research paper by a historical archaeologist, the Pandemic of 1918 felled many throughout Java and Kalimantan. Which means pandemics aren’t just a problem for countries with four seasons—they also happen in the tropics, and they happen right here.

  And so: When will the avian flu start spreading from human to human?

  No clue. As I often say when I get into these discussions with Irma and my other colleagues at OneWorld, what do we know, really, about a risk that we can never really know? How do you measure its probability?

  I turn to look at Farish, who’s still poking around the few personal possessions I keep in the office. “So tell me,” I say. “In your opinion, what is the probability of an avian flu pandemic?”

  “I’m not an economist,” he says calmly, “but my economist friend always says that probability is derived from the mathematical analysis of past events. And yet we know that events are never exactly the same as what has occurred in the past. Nor are they exactly the same as events that will occur in the future. We also don’t know what will change with time, or how things will change, or how quickly they’ll change. We can turn to gods, to prayer, to witch doctors, but we will still live in fear—that is, if we insist on living in fear.”

  Something in this speech impresses me. Still. It does nothing to reassure me or make me feel more hopeful. I try not to think about tomorrow’s trip—the discoveries we’ll make, the conclusions we’ll draw, the new hope we’ll have. Is that what awaits us?

  And then, at that very moment, Farish decides to saunter out, leaving me with my head swimming.

  A few minutes later, Talisa pokes her head into my office.

  “Hey, Run. Lunch?”

  As usual, her expression is cheerful. Though she isn’t completely free of obligations—her mother is terribly sick and her father senile—she’s the happiest person I know. But wait. There’s something different about her hair. It’s so black, so straight, so glossy. Has she just come from the salon? Is she going out tonight? Suddenly, I feel like my body is being drained of something. Energy? Hope? But this is not the time to get carried away—and not, of all people, by His Royal Smugness.

  But here it is again.

  I shake my head. No, I don’t want lunch. What I want is my freedom. And what is freedom if not departure—going far, far away, removing myself from other people’s concerns? There’s only one place for me to turn: Nadezhda.

  5

  NADEZHDA

  When I arrive at Siria, I find Nadezhda sitting in her usual spot—on a curved-back leather chair, typing away on her MacBook.

  Her brow is furrowed and her lips are moving, as if she’s a musician trying to play in her head the melody she’s just finished composing. None of which detracts from her stunningness. Both her parents are Indo, or mixed—her father is half Acehnese, half French, and her mother is half French, a quarter Sundanese, and a quarter something else. Not that such a combination guarantees stunningness, but you get what I mean.

  On the table in front of her, there’s a tumbler of something—wine. After all, it’s only lunchtime, and she has certain principles when it comes to matters of drink, based on not only international standards regarding what constitutes good taste but also the practicalities of prudent calorie consumption. This means, as I’ve been repeatedly taught: wine only with meals; gin and tonics, martinis, sherry, Negronis, white wine/champagne/“bubbly” in any form (depending on social context) as aperitifs; red or white wine with food (again, depending on what type of food, and only the right red, the right white); port and sweet wines with dessert. Thereafter—and Nadezhda’s nights can be long indeed, nights that flow into mornings, melt into afternoons, and burst into nights again—she always returns to wine.

  Catching sight of me, she hails a waiter and points at her glass. “One of these for Ms
. Aruna!”

  As usual, there’s no point in protesting.

  I sit down beside her. It is three o’clock on a Saturday afternoon—the perfect time for an afternoon nap—but the restaurant is still packed to the rafters with beautiful people determined to drink life to the lees, to lavish all their time and money on a taste of the high life. Also present are the members of the freelancing brigade—those like Nadezhda who work to live and who live to work.

  But there is only one Nadezhda in this world. Nadezhda, who, at four months old, moved to Paris with her parents. Who, at twelve years old, returned again to Jakarta and who, at seventeen, left for New York to study at Barnard. Who four years later obtained a scholarship to do a master’s program at Cambridge in the UK. Who doesn’t just speak several languages beautifully, but can also dance and sing in a way that undermines and enfeebles those around her. Who can turn rant into song, silence into sound. Who loves to reach and reaches. There is only one Nadezhda in this world. And as it turns out, she has reached for and claimed the gravest part of me, too.

  The look in her eyes tells me she’s been here for more than an hour, which means that she’s had at least two or three drinks and has probably composed anywhere from half a page to a full page of text.

  “What’re you writing about?”

  Nadezhda has her own column in a respected culinary magazine.

  “The term ‘foodie,’” she says. “I prefer ‘foodist.’”

  I raise an eyebrow. “Oh really? And what’s the difference?”

  “I just like it better, that’s all,” she replies. “A foodist is, oh, I don’t know, on par with an environmentalist, a terrorist, a nudist. It’s more political, gives off the impression of a serious ‘ism.’ And why shouldn’t it? For me, food is an ideology, a worldview.”

  “Hmm.”

  “Actually, the term has been around since the late nineteenth century, when it referred to advocates of various trendy dietary philosophies. Gael Greene. I told you about her once. The New York Times food critic. Well, she was the one who started using the term again and gave us another word for ‘gastronaut.’”