Maybe he should go back. He could not have less of a future than he did here.
July 2008
11
A summer’s day at the end of July; the temperature had risen above twenty-five degrees, although there was still a light northerly wind.
Barack Obama, the Democratic presidential candidate, spoke to 200,000 people in Berlin and promised them a change for the whole world. It needed a change: two days previously the second largest mortgage bank in the United States had collapsed, and several others were getting into ever greater difficulties.
The Sri Lankan army reported that the LTTE had suffered a heavy defeat in Mullaitivu District. And the LTTE reported on the third offer of an amnesty to deserters from the Sri Lankan army that year.
With a teaspoon, Maravan scooped one of the green split roasted mung beans out of the boiling water and tested it. It was done, but still firm. He poured away the water, spread the beans out on a silicon mat and left them to cool.
He added shredded coconut, jiggery and finely ground cardamom seeds, mixing everything thoroughly in a bowl. Then he worked roasted rice flour and boiling water into a stiff dough. The amount of water had to be just right: too much water and the dough would come together badly; too little and it would go hard after steaming.
Maravan washed his hands and rubbed them with some coconut oil. He rolled out little balls from the rice flour dough and made them into small vessels, which he filled with the spicy gram mixture, and then sealed them, making pointy balls. He steamed these, placed them in the thermobox, then set about making the next thirty.
Maravan had become the supplier of modhakam, the favourite sweet of Ganesh, the elephant-headed Lord of Hosts.
Every morning and evening he produced around a hundred modhakam, which the faithful could buy outside the temple and offer up to Ganesh. Temple-goers who had cars would take turns to pick up the full thermobox shortly before eight in the morning and just before six in the evening, and return the empty one.
The idea had been his own. To put it into practice he needed to increase his loan with Ori. He had to buy the boxes and make a donation of 1,000 francs to the LTTE. But now this also allowed him to supply Tamil food shops and two Ceylonese restaurants with biscuits and other sweet things. Business was not exactly thriving, but it was starting to trickle in. Maybe this was the first step towards Maravan Catering.
The doorbell rang. Maravan looked at his watch. It was only just past five o’clock; the temple courier was early today.
‘Hold on!’ he called out in Tamil. He washed his hands and opened the door.
Andrea.
She was carrying a bunch of flowers and a bottle of wine. She presented him with both of these. ‘I know you don’t drink. But I do.’
As with her previous unannounced visit, she had to ask, ‘May I come in?’ before Maravan snapped out of his shock.
He invited her into the flat. She saw the open kitchen door and his apron and asked, ‘Are you expecting guests?’
‘No, I’m making modhakam.’ He went into the kitchen, took two from the thermobox, put them on a plate and offered it to her. ‘Here you go. You can eat it or give it as an offering.’
‘I’d rather give it as an offering,’ she decided with a smile.
‘I see. No, no, don’t worry, it’s harmless.’
Andrea did not take one all the same. ‘Have you got any time at the moment?’
‘Twenty more, then I’ll have time. Do you want to wait in the sitting room?’
‘I’ll watch.’
When the doorbell rang Maravan was ready. This time the person taking the sweets to the temple was a plump, middle-aged woman he recognized. But he could not recall where he had seen her before. Maybe she would have told him, but the moment she saw Andrea in the kitchen her smile dissolved. She took the thermobox and left almost without saying goodbye.
‘Can people order meals from you?’
They were sitting on the cushions at the low table. Andrea had a glass of wine in front of her, Maravan a cup of tea. Before he sat down he had ceremoniously lit the deepam by his domestic shrine, murmuring something while doing so.
‘They can. One day I’d even like to make a living from it.’
‘I mean a special meal.’
‘I try to make each one special.’
She took a sip of wine and put the glass down slowly. ‘I mean special in the same way that you made that dinner for me. Can people order that from you?’
Maravan thought for a moment. ‘Something similar, yes.’
‘It would have to be exactly the same.’
‘But I’d need a rotary evaporator.’
‘What would that cost?’
‘Around six thousand.’
‘Ouch!’
Andrea swirled around the red wine in her glass and pondered. She had a lot of connections in the catering industry. Surely it would be possible to get hold of one of those things.
‘What if I were to hire one?’
‘Then it would be exactly the same.’ Maravan poured her some more wine.
‘Exactly the same effect, too?’
He raised his shoulders and smiled. ‘We could try it out.’
‘Not “we”, Maravan,’ she said circumspectly.
12
Andrea lived in roughly the area where, in his dreams, Maravan had pictured the turmeric-coloured delivery van splashed with the words ‘Maravan Catering’. Her flat was on the third floor of a middle-class 1920s house. Three high-ceilinged rooms, a conservatory, an old-fashioned bathroom, a loo with a cistern mounted almost at ceiling height, and a large kitchen with a new, free-standing dishwasher, whose outflow went into the sink.
It was the sort of flat you could only get with a large slice of luck and good contacts, and you always had the worry that the house might be sold and renovated, and the rent become unaffordable.
Until the break-up of her last relationship, Andrea had shared the flat with her partner, and now she felt a little lost in it. She lived in the bedroom and the kitchen. Sometimes in the conservatory, too. But she hardly ever used the sitting-cum-dining room, and she never went into Dagmar’s bedroom, which had been emptied of everything.
Today, however, the sitting-cum-dining room was illuminated by a sea of candles. In the centre was Maravan’s low table and his cushions. The tablecloth was his, too, and she had even wheedled out of him the domestic shrine with the goddess Lakshmi and the clay lamp. Maravan had succeeded in talking her out of the incense sticks and meditative Indian flute music.
They had brought over in Andrea’s Golf all the kitchen equipment, cushions, table, ingredients and the dishes that he had had to pre-prepare at home.
He had visited her flat the day before to make and freeze the liquorice lollies. Likewise, he had brought along to put in the refrigerator the crunchy and chewy urad-strip construction, which he had spontaneously named ‘man and woman’.
Everything else – the saffron and almond spheres, half-frozen in liquid nitrogen, the ghee cylinders threaded with saffron, the very glossy balls of ghee, long pepper, cardamom, cinnamon and palm sugar – he made in Andrea’s kitchen. Even the sweetmeats to accompany the tea – the little red glazed hearts and the jellied asparagus – were served fresh. He also had to make his modhakam. Today Andrea had taken care of the delivery to the temple; he did not want the courier to come to her flat.