The Birdwoman's Palate Page 7

  I nod, nodding being the thing I do, unsure whether to contribute my two cents or whether I have any cents at all.

  “Anyway, I’m experiencing a crisis of faith.”

  “Regarding?”

  “Regarding food.”

  “How so?”

  “I mean, not food in general. But the way food dominates life.”

  “In what sense?”

  “Just look around. At the culinary programs and articles saturating television and print media nowadays. At the number of amateur blogs devoted to food and restaurants. At the online food porn we live with as evidence that their eaters lead interesting lives!”

  “Not exactly bad news for you, is it?”

  “But just think about it. These days, visual and written rhetoric about food has lost its connection with any concern about nature or nutrition. Food has become this . . . this . . . ersatz spiritualism. The gods this world worships aren’t politicians or spiritual leaders anymore, but the kings of the kitchen. Just think of all the TV shows about cooking and food. We watch them in search of enlightenment on all lifestyle matters, and metaphysical ones, too. Gordon Ramsay and Anthony Bourdain are far more famous than the president of the EU or even the winners of the Nobel Prize. I have to agree with whoever said that food is more than a mania these days. It’s, like, a psychosis.”

  “But isn’t that more of a problem in the West? I mean, not that I know anything. But does what you’re talking about even apply to us? Since when have local chefs in Indonesia been elevated to the status of gods? Who in Jakarta cares if Chef X from Restaurant Y creates the most amazing version of sweet-and-sour soup in the whole archipelago? For your average Indonesian, food is still just a basic need. I mean, just try striking up a conversation here with someone who isn’t a foodie—sorry, foodist—and mention Ramsay or Bourdain. Or try telling them stories about how you can afford to eat at expensive restaurants like Siria three times a week. They’d probably sock you in the face.”

  Hmm. This seems to give her pause. But I bet it’s coming. I bet if I upped the winds on my own argumentative will, I could get her to let it out, whatever it is she needs to get off her chest. So I wait.

  “Run,” she says, anticipating me, “I’m really stressed out.”

  This is new. Nadezhda is never “stressed out,” even when she’s being brilliant or productive. “Stressed out” is for mere mortals like you and me, whereas she finds herself in “a conundrum,” or is “wholly unconvinced,” or is “fundamentally vexed,” or, more recently, is “epistemologically tickled.” Probably all the time.

  “Didn’t you just come back from Paris?” I ask, sensing myself softening. “Paris . . . as in your heaven on earth?”

  “Yes, yes,” she says impatiently. “But, the thing is—well, I’m scared. You see, I’ve become aware of the possibility that, maybe, all this time everyone has been thinking that I’m . . . well, frivolous.”

  And before I can reply, she continues, as if not trusting my ability to realize the word’s scope and magnitude. “Frivolous, obsessed with trivial matters, and—this is the worst of it—not just frivolous and obsessive, but active in promoting my brand of frivolity and petty obsessiveness! I mean, how do you think people rate me as a writer? Think about it. People hear my name and they go, ‘Oh, her! That’s Nadezhda—that food and lifestyle writer, that self-styled writer, that second-rate writer.’”

  “That’s what you’re afraid of?”

  She shrugs.

  “You’re really afraid that’s what people think?”

  “But think about it, though. What kind of serious writer would have food on the brain twenty-four hours a day? Obsess about this restaurant and that restaurant or this and that food trend? Worry about being seen as behind the times or uncool if she doesn’t try this or that dish and this or that restaurant, just like the millions of other foodists in the world who consider their tastes, their selves, worthy of more respect than your average person, when in reality, they’re just a bunch of idiots?”

  “Well, excuse me. I like my food, but I don’t think I’m an idiot.”

  “Yes, yes. But can’t you see that food is a safe passion? It’s safer than politics, religion, literature. People assume that everyone can spend hours chitchatting about food. It’s safe and it’s also no big deal. And food by its very nature is, oh, I don’t know, subjective. Yes, that’s the word I’m looking for. Subjective. The way it tastes varies from palate to palate: it’s not like the world really needs experts on it, you know.”

  “Okay, but there are also a lot of people in the world who don’t give a shit about food. Or who only eat at KFC and McDonald’s when they go out. Or order chicken all the time, or expect their veal parmigiana to be presented atop a bed of spaghetti. Or who have no taste at all.” I’m not sure what I’m trying to do, lighten her mood or rile her up even more.

  “But that’s also the problem. I’m worried that foodism is a class thing. I may worship Brillat-Savarin, but I’m not entirely convinced when it comes to his oft-quoted pearl of wisdom: ‘You are what you eat.’ Imagine if I could understand the complexities of Bono’s mind just by analyzing what he ate for breakfast. Heaven forbid! When people see the menus of the restaurants I’ve visited in this goddamn world, all they know is I have money. And that I’m a snob because I refuse to eat curly fries at a fast-food joint, even though I’ll eat truffle fries at a high-end restaurant.”

  “Now that you mention it,” I say, “why won’t you eat curly fries at a fast-food joint?”

  Nadezhda gives me a withering look. Everyone knows how much she hates fast food. But, quickly, she returns to the matter at hand, this time in an even more roundabout, philosophical way.

  “What if we really were moved body and soul by food and by everything that revolved around food? Who could confirm whether we were idiots or only parroting global trends? Just yesterday I was revisiting the works of the materialist philosopher Theodor Adorno.”

  Unintentionally, I yawn. Here we go again. But she won’t let it go.

  “It got me thinking. Adorno says it’s not the mind that establishes the body but the body that establishes the mind. To him, when someone speaks of fried potatoes transforming civilization, or a perfect cut of meat stirring the soul, it’s all hot air. To him, foodism is nothing but an attempt to intellectualize and aestheticize food, even though in the end food is just that: food.”

  I have to admit that following Nadezhda’s train of thought isn’t always easy for me. Her brain never stops dissecting, quoting, pondering. She regards anything and everything from every angle, every possible perspective, to the point that what issues forth from her mouth, more often than not, is a combination of question, answer, interpretation, enigma, and something someone else has said.

  “If you’re going to start quoting Adorno, you’re really going to get on my nerves,” I say. “What is it that you’re really afraid of?”

  She looks crestfallen.

  “Look. Let me tell you this,” I say. “First, you don’t just ‘write about food.’ Your articles on travel have been published in magazines of international repute. Second, you have your own opinions about food, and people have a lot to learn from you. The thing is, you don’t just report what you’ve eaten here or there. You always try to delve deeper, connect whatever you’re eating with other things. Third, you’re thoughtful. You’re always willing to seek out new ways of thinking about food for those who may not have time to read about it themselves. So you’re doing a good thing. And this whole thing about being too hard on yourself—really, it doesn’t become you.”

  Okay, so that last part was probably unnecessary—and a bit mean. But how else should I convince her? Again, she’s quiet. And this unsettles me. As if she wants to believe me but can’t.

  The drink she ordered for me arrives.

  “Riesling,” says Nadezhda, forgetting for a brief moment that she’s suffering an existential crisis over her profession. “From the Pfalz region. One o
f the top five Riesling-growing areas in Germany.”

  That’s better. I raise my glass.

  “Prost,” she says, which I know is German because she’s talking about Germany, and because she’s always the one to say cheers first.

  I echo her brightly and think about lightly swirling the wine in my hand, as would anyone who considers herself a true wine connoisseur, or so I think, to let it breathe, to intensify its bouquet, its aroma. But I don’t. This afternoon I don’t want to be a connoisseur. I want to enjoy my wine with the charming naïveté of a dilettante, though I do feel a bit guilty about swigging wine in broad daylight just because I don’t feel right with the world. I mean, I’m not Nadezhda (and I mean this in the nicest way).

  The feeling doesn’t last. Soon, my head feels lighter, my tongue looser, the world more fluid.

  And it isn’t long before Nadezhda begins to talk about Paris.

  For the first fifteen minutes, she tells me nothing new. But listening to her makes me happy nonetheless, like the strange and soothing distance across which different worlds may, like opposites, attract: how Paris is the most lyrical city in the world, a veritable paradise for the flaneur (for it is only on foot, free of plans, of supervision, of maps, that one can truly experience a city); how on the surface, the city can reshape itself dozens of times, from moment to moment, but how tiny details—ones that establish the character of a place but that aren’t necessarily concrete—render it eternal; how easy it is for someone to be alone there and yet never feel lonely.

  I enjoy her descriptions of the morning sun conjuring marble into whiteness, of the shimmering waters of the Seine—“an expanse of dew-covered glass.” Or of the sounds of the street, like water trickling, flowing around the intersection where she sits, sipping her first coffee of the morning, and how from her table in front of the Café Les Editeurs, a stone’s throw away from the Odeon metro station, she watches the citizens of Paris step out into the morning light—waiters, butchers, shop assistants, writers, antique store owners—and melt into the greater swarm.

  Gradually, the gentle swell of Nadezhda’s voice in my ear returns me to the here and now. “Bistronomy . . . a portmanteau of ‘bistro’ and ‘gastronomy’ . . . it’s on the up and up . . . gastronomy—fine dining, but served in a relaxed way, in an informal ambiance, with an affordable price tag . . . I visited six of them . . . it’s not just hype . . . it’s a renaissance in the truest sense of the word . . .”

  6

  CHAMPAGNE AND POPCORN

  Nadezhda Azhari and I are like champagne and popcorn.

  Each of us is eminently capable of standing on our own, and we make a fantastic pair. But metaphysical facts are metaphysical facts: she’s champagne; I’m popcorn.

  A poet once claimed, astutely, that women often can be summed up using adverbs—that their every action is performed purely for melodramatic effect. Or to be more exact, out of the overflow of ephemeral emotions, they act “gently,” “coyly,” “with blushes,” “with sighs,” “like a bird taking flight,” “like a leaf on the wind.” Men on the other hand never waver or wilt. They don’t fade away like footprints in sand. And this is because adjectives are their domain, and there they reign with their “faithful arms” and “manly voices” and “knightly deeds.”

  But Nadezhda transcends all of that.

  She is a thing unto herself.

  She is champagne.

  And that’s Nadezhda in a nutshell. Jakarta’s arbiters of beauty—editors of women’s magazines, designers, directors, actors, artists, writers, restaurateurs—have even named her one of the ten most glamorous women in the capital.

  Glamour, as we all know, is different from beauty. Being glamorous isn’t just about wearing the right clothes or knowing how to put on makeup. It’s also about rhythm and being smart. Nadezhda knows how to move—her body, her hair, her eyes—in front of a camera or onstage, in lighting ranging from bright to dim, in any city in the world, in front of friends and family, and even in front of complete strangers.

  She also knows how to speak—presenting herself with the melodies, modulations, and charms of a prizewinning songbird. And she’s been blessed with a brain—gifted not only in speech but in writing as well. Versatile, like champagne, she transcends boundaries with ease.

  But as with champagne, every Nadezhda has its moment. When the sun is still shining, she is light, crisp, youthful. In the words of a wine critic whom Nadezhda quotes constantly, when she sits down to lunch, she’s rosé: ripe, bursting with flavor, gushing red. As evening approaches, she’s a blanc de blancs: white on white—like the flash of the final dancer’s petticoat before she vanishes from the stage, akin to the last ray of daylight slicing across the evening sky. And when the men begin to circle around, her features grow all the more striking: ripe, round, floral—in short, she’s a Pinot Meunier. A man—sophisticated, worldly—asks her to dance, and she transforms into a swan, as graceful, subtle, and mysterious as the fabled Cuvée Sir Winston Churchill. But when the night deepens and she feels herself getting full, that is when she becomes her true self: Krug Champagne. Victorious, she commands the room, conqueror of all.

  In contrast, popcorn is never more than popcorn. No one weighs its heft and pitch in their hands or stores it under special conditions. No one analyzes it, or writes songs about it, or includes it in story titles, except when they’re talking about watching a movie. Popcorn, unlike champagne, will never know what it’s like to be poured between a woman’s legs and sipped before it circulates through someone’s bloodstream and shoots out the other end as foamy piss into a pot. Its uses are singular: chewed, swallowed, gone. (Note that nobody touches the stuff when it’s old and stale.)

  If you ask me, passion isn’t an emotion—it’s fate.

  I must confess that many things about Nadezhda make me jealous. I’ll tell you five of them—one for each principle comprising the Pancasila, our official national ideology.

  1: her family background, its established history, its distinguished ancestry.

  2: a set of parents, still alive and still circulating in what we call “society” (as if the term doesn’t apply to the rest of us). And “circulating” is an understatement. People go out of their way to greet them at every function and party they attend. Their names consistently make it into newspapers and magazines. And all of Nadezhda’s friends love them. (“Uncle and Auntie Azhari? Who doesn’t love them? They’re like our own parents!”)

  3: her house, never changing, familiar to all, on a street so famous its real name has long been forgotten. (“What’s the name of that street again? Well, you know the one—where Nadezhda’s parents live.”)

  4: her cook, who’s been with the family for more than forty years, who brings with her certain signature dishes remembered fondly by everyone who’s dined there, plus the garden and the pool we and our friends used to spend so much time in as children.

  5: tales of her family’s exploits, which almost border on myth, not to mention little scandals that are now talked about casually, with knowing smiles, because people have since forgiven them.

  Still, I’m not sure I want to be Nadezhda.

  Or rather, I don’t know how.

  My friendship with Nadezhda just happened—like two magnetic particles lying side by side, we happened to meet and we stuck. Sometimes I feel our friendship has lasted because of the particular nature of our differences. Oh yes, make no mistake, difference comes in types.

  As Nadezhda often says: “I could never commit myself completely, body and soul, to any of the men from my milieu.” (In the circles Nadezhda’s parents move in, the word “milieu” is always being bandied about, as if created exclusively for their use.) “When I date someone from my milieu—let’s call him X—he and I are both capable of understanding what our parents want for us, and when something happens, or someone says something, we both react in similar ways. And if I get frustrated by the guy I’m dating who isn’t from my milieu—let’s call him Y—when he does
n’t act the way I think he should, I’m able to think, ‘Ah, X would understand. He and I were raised with the same values.’

  “But as we know, X would never get that other side of our self—our wild self, our untamed self, or even the self that strays just for the fun of it. He would take us aside, scold us, lecture us. ‘What’s going on with you?’ he’d ask. ‘I almost don’t recognize you anymore.’

  “In short, we could never love X like we love Y because at the end of the day, we want to be loved for the unexpected qualities we harbor inside us, the qualities that make us unique.

  “And yet, we could never love Y either—Y who is too different from us, who doesn’t get why we still respect Mother, though she always thinks we’re being stupid. Or why we still love Father despite his philandering ways. Or why we forgive our parents’ friends, despite the fact that they’re some of the most corrupt people in business and government.”

  And I think: You know something? If you were Y, I wouldn’t like you much either.

  And that is how champagne loves—with calculations, with theories, with a different logic for each of the four seasons. But because I’m popcorn, my love lacks drama. And is, perhaps, a bit too naïve.

  When I say I don’t know how to be Nadezhda, what I’m really saying is I don’t know how to live like a character in a novel.

  Let me give you an example. One day, when I was staying over at Nadezhda’s house, on Jalan Saraswati in the Cipete district of Jakarta, I stumbled upon her diary. Who knows why, but I had no qualms about reading it. I’ve always known there’s a part of Nadezhda that yearns to be read, especially by those whom she knows won’t judge her—those whom she “loves.”

  The diary didn’t contain much about food. Or her travels. There were no cities named, or even any dates. But there was a love story about Nadezhda and a man named Chrysander. In this section of the diary, Nadezhda’s handwriting was small, neat, in print, as if she’d envisioned it as a book.