He cleared his throat: ‘Judging by your tone I imagine it must have been late.’
‘Half past two – this afternoon! Two-thirty.’ She shot him a look of triumph.
‘And why do you think the food was responsible? It could have been down to you as well.’
Andrea shook her head emphatically. ‘Franziska doesn’t sleep with women, Maravan. Never!’
She helped him load the equipment into her Golf and drove him home. For a brief half-hour he was able to imagine that part of his dream had come true: he and his partner Andrea ferrying the catering equipment back to the firm’s headquarters after a successful job. He was pleased that she was lost in her thoughts, too, and did not break the spell of his reverie with conversation.
After everything had been put away in his flat, she made no move to leave. They stood on the tiny kitchen balcony, Andrea leaning against the railings with a cigarette. She did not inhale the smoke, and hastily stubbed it out soon afterwards, as if she were trying to nullify the drags she had taken. It had become noticeably cooler, but the rain had stopped a few hours earlier. From open windows came the music, chit-chat and laughter of Maravan’s Tamil neighbours.
Down in the inner courtyard a dealer was concluding a rapid, silent transaction. Then both parties vanished.
‘What’s your greatest dream?’ Andrea asked.
‘Going back home, and peace.’
‘No restaurant?’
‘Sure. But in Colombo.’
‘Until then?’
Maravan straightened himself, thrusting his hands into his trouser pockets. ‘A restaurant here.’
‘And how are you going to finance that?’
He shrugged. ‘Catering?’
Andrea looked up at him. ‘Exactly.’
He looked amazed. ‘Do you think it might work?’
‘If you cook as you did for me.’
Maravan laughed weakly. ‘I see. What about the customers?’
‘I’ll worry about them.’
‘And what do you get out of it?’
‘Half.’
Andrea had a business plan and a little money. Eighteen months previously one of her mother’s sisters had died childless, and had passed her inheritance to her four nieces and nephews. Apart from some savings, the legacy was a chalet with a few holiday apartments in a winter spa town in the Alpine foothills, where snow was not guaranteed and where the woman had spent half her life. The beneficiaries did not hesitate to sell the chalet. After deductions, each of them had received about 80,000 francs, of which Andrea only had about half left, because of her frequent changes of jobs. She wanted to invest some of it in Love Food, as she was now calling the company.
She would obtain the equipment Maravan needed – in particular the rotary evaporator. She would buy a stock of cutlery and crockery. She would take care of drumming up custom. She would swap her Golf for an estate. She would be responsible for the administration and service side and put up the initial business capital.
Maravan would provide the know-how.
Seen like that, Maravan had to admit that fifty-fifty was more than fair.
A Love Dinner for two would cost 1,000 francs, plus drinks, primarily champagne on the advice of the maestro, which they would be able to purchase wholesale and sell at restaurant prices.
Maravan was in agreement with everything. It may not have been the sort of catering he had envisaged, but in his culture there was nothing objectionable about the idea of dinners to enhance the love lives of married couples – Andrea’s imagined clientele. And the prospect of spending a lot of time with Andrea made him happy.
‘Why are you so keen on this?’ he asked. ‘You’d find another job easily.’
‘It’s something new,’ she replied.
A rocket soared above the roofs, slowing down by the second, stopped for a moment, then plummeted back to earth in red strands that burnt themselves out. People were celebrating the first of August. And the founding of Love Food.
15
This was the second time that Maravan had cooked in Andrea’s flat, but they had already developed a sort of routine. He knew where to find everything, and she no longer had to ask any questions when laying the table and decorating the room. They went about their work like a real team.
The guest that evening was Esther Dubois, a psychologist Andrea had met in a club some time back. She had been there with her husband, although this had not prevented her from making blatant advances towards Andrea.
Esther Dubois was a renowned sex therapist, who for a number of years wrote a well-regarded advice column in a magazine for women over forty. She was over forty too, had dyed her prematurely greying hair flaming red, and was a regular in the society pages.
Andrea had contacted her at her practice and had little trouble in persuading her to come. ‘To an exciting culinary-sexual therapeutic experiment,’ as she had put it.
She arrived half an hour late with a fat bunch of white arum lilies, because they suited the theme of the evening so well, she said. Andrea introduced Maravan with the following words, ‘This is Sri Maravan, a great guru of erotic cuisine.’
She had not cleared the ‘Sri’ or the ‘guru’ with Maravan beforehand, and from his reaction she concluded that maybe she should have done. He held out his hand to the guest with a shy smile, then returned to his work.
‘How exciting!’ Esther Dubois said as Andrea showed her into the darkened room bathed in candlelight. She immediately made herself comfortable on the cushions and asked, ‘No incense? No music?’
‘Sri Maravan believes that both of these are distractions. One from the aroma of the food, the other from the pounding of the heart.’ This line had not been cleared with him either. She took the temple bell and rang it. ‘This is all he allows me.’
The door opened: Maravan brought in a tray with two champagne glasses and two small plates of mini chapattis. While the two women clinked glasses, he drizzled the curry leaf, cinnamon and coconut oil essence on to the small chapattis.
‘No chemistry, I hope,’ Esther Dubois remarked.
‘Cooking is both chemistry and physics,’ Maravan replied politely.
She took the chapatti, sniffed it, closed her eyes, bit off a piece, chewed solemnly, and popped her eyes open again. ‘An incomparable piece of chemistry and physics.’
The therapist, normally a chatty woman, hardly said a word during the entire dinner. She restricted herself to making all sorts of sighing and moaning sounds, rolling her eyes and fanning herself theatrically. At one point she said, ‘Do you know what the sexiest thing about this is? Eating with your hands.’
And when she had polished off the last of the glazed hearts with a contented sigh, she asked, ‘What now? Your handsome guru?’
But the handsome guru had already gone.
This third dinner had the same effect on Andrea. It was a wonderful evening and wonderful night, even though Esther Dubois as a person left her cold. She found her too intellectual and somewhat too broad-minded. Andrea did not like these bi women in open relationships with their husbands, who could ring up around midnight and say, ‘I’m not coming back tonight, hon. I’ll tell you everything tomorrow.’
Anyway, the following morning she was happy that Esther had got up so early and had made a dash for it before breakfast, like an unfaithful husband.
‘You’ll be hearing from me,’ Esther said when she came back into the bedroom and kissed her on the forehead. The promise was in reference to a short business chat during their night of passion. Andrea was pretty sure that she would keep to it.
‘Does it always work?’ Esther had asked with a sleepy voice.
‘It does with me. Even with a man once!’
‘I didn’t know you slept with men too.’
‘Me neither.’
‘Extraordinary. What does he put in it?’
‘They’re ancient Ayurvedic aphrodisiac recipes. But he cooks them in his own very particular way.’