The room was filled with the comforting murmur of quiet voices, the delicate clinking and clanking of cutlery and the unobtrusive aromas of carefully composed dishes. The lighting was warm and flattering, and the torrents of rain which towards evening had started turning the fresh fall of late snow into grey slush could be heard only by diners with window seats. Even for them it was no more than a distant rustling through the curtains. It was as if that evening the Huwyler had cocooned itself against the world outside.
The world outside was looking pretty ugly. The day of reckoning had finally come for the financial markets, who had been dealing for years in fool’s gold. Unsinkable banks were now sending out SOS calls as they listed heavily. Every day, more and more sectors of the economy were getting sucked into the vortex of the financial crisis. Car manufacturers were introducing short-time working, suppliers filing for insolvency and financiers committing suicide. Unemployment rates were on the rise everywhere, countries on the edge of bankruptcy, deregulators throwing themselves into the arms of the state, prophets of neo-liberalism went quiet and the globalized world experienced the beginnings of its first crisis.
And, as if it could survive this imminent hurricane by retreating under its diving bell, the small Alpine country started to shut itself off again. It had barely opened up.
Andrea had to wait until Bandini, the announceur, had scrutinized the dishes for table five and checked them against the order. She was watching Maravan, the nicest guy on her team.
By Tamil standards he was a tall man, certainly more than one metre eighty. Sharply defined nose, trimmed moustache and a bluish-black five o’clock shadow, even though he had arrived for the afternoon shift freshly shaven as ever. He wore a kitchen help’s white overalls with a long apron like a traditional Hindu dress. The white crepe chef’s hat looked like a Gandhi cap on his black hair, which was parted with precision.
Maravan was standing by the sink, rinsing plates with a hand spray to shift the remains of sauces, before stacking them in the dishwasher, moving with the grace of a temple dancer. As if he could sense she was watching him, he looked up briefly and revealed his snow-white teeth. Andrea smiled back.
During her short career in the catering industry she had come across a lot of Tamils. Many of them were asylum seekers with ‘N-authorizations’, which gave them the right to work in specific catering jobs for a low wage. Moreover, this was only permitted at the specific request of the employer, on whom they were more dependent than someone with a residence permit. She got on with most of them; they were friendly, unassuming, and they reminded her of the trip she had taken as a backpacker through southern India.
Since she had started at the Huwyler she had already seen Maravan working at every station. He was a virtuoso in his preparation of vegetables; when he shucked oysters it looked as if they were opening for him of their own accord; he could fillet a sole with a few practised movements of the hand, and was able to hollow out rabbit legs so carefully it looked as if the bone was still there.
Andrea had seen the love, precision and speed with which he composed artworks on the plate, or how skilfully he was able to alternate marinated wild berries with crunchy puff pastry arlettes to create three-layered millefeuilles.
The chefs at the Huwyler often used Maravan to carry out tasks that were their own responsibility. But Andrea had never seen one of them pay him a compliment for doing so. On the contrary, no sooner had he delivered one of his works of art than he would be redeployed as dishwasher and dogsbody.
Bandini approved the order; the two waiters placed cloches over the plates and brought them to the table. Andrea could now call up the next course for table one.
2
It was long past midnight, but the trams were still running. The passengers on the Number 12 were tired night workers on their way home and high-spirited revellers in a party mood. The area where Maravan lived was home not only to most of the asylum seekers, but also the hippest clubs, discos and lounge bars in the city.
Maravan was sitting on a single seat behind a man with a greasy neck whose head kept tipping to one side – a fellow restaurant worker, judging by the kitchen odours emanating from him. Maravan had a sensitive nose; it was very important to him that he did not smell of anything, even when he came home from work. His colleagues used eau de toilette or aftershave to cover up the kitchen smells. He kept his clothes in a zip-up, moth-proof carrier inside a locker, and whenever possible he would take a shower in the staff changing room.
Some kitchen odours he accepted, but these did not exist in the kitchens here. They could only be found in Nangay’s kitchen.
Whenever Nangay dropped nine curry leaves – freshly picked by Maravan from the small tree outside – into hot coconut oil, the tiny kitchen would be filled with an aroma that he wanted to hold on to for as long as possible.
The same with the aroma of cinnamon. ‘Always use more cinnamon than necessary,’ Nangay would say. ‘It has a lovely smell and taste, it’s a disinfectant, helps the digestion, and you can buy it cheaply everywhere.’
Maravan had thought of Nangay as an ancient woman, but at the time she was only in her mid-fifties. She was his grandmother’s sister. He and his siblings had fled with the two women to Jaffna after his parents had burned to death in their car near Colombo during the 1983 pogroms. Maravan, the youngest of the four children, would spend his days in Nangay’s kitchen, helping her to prepare meals which his siblings sold at the market in Jaffna. Nangay gave him all the school education he needed in her kitchen.
She had worked as the head cook in a large house in Colombo. Now she ran a food stall at the market, whose excellent reputation spread quickly and gave her a modest but regular income.
Besides the simple dishes she made for the market, however, Nangay also secretly prepared special meals for a growing clientele for whom discretion was paramount. These were usually married couples where there was a large age gap.
Even today, whenever Maravan fried fresh curry leaves or simmered a curry on a low heat on his stove, he could picture a small, thin woman, whose hair and saris always gave off an aroma of curry leaves and cinnamon.
The tram stopped, a few passengers got on, nobody got off. When the doors closed again the man in front of him was jolted out of his sleep and rushed to the door. But they were already on the move. The fat man angrily pressed the button to open the door, cursed loudly and gave Maravan a reproachful stare.
Maravan looked away and gazed out of the window. It was still raining. The lights of the night-time city shone in the drops which traced slanting paths across the window. A man outside a nightclub was holding his head in the rain, his elbows jutting out. A few young people were sheltering under some overhanging masonry and laughing at his antics.
The party crowd got out at the next stop, followed by the fat man reeking of kitchen smells. Maravan watched him appear on the other side of the carriage and sullenly take a seat in the shelter for trams going in the opposite direction.
There were only a few passengers left in the tram, and it was obvious that most of them came from other countries. They were either dozing or lost in their thoughts, apart from one young Senegalese woman who was having a lively chat on her mobile, safe in the certainty that nobody could understand a word. Then she got off. Maravan watched her turn into a side street, still laughing and chatting.