In spite of these chaotic circumstances the Batticaloa Bazaar had begun functioning again as a point of contact. Even before he sat down in front of the screen, Maravan got a call from the Bazaar. He was told he should ring the usual number at eleven the following morning. His sister wanted to speak to him.
Maravan braced himself for bad news.
After breakfast he called Sandana. Her phone rang many times before she answered.
‘I can’t talk at the moment, I’ve got customers,’ she said. ‘I’ll call you in my break.’
‘When is your break?’ he asked. But she had already hung up.
So he waited. Waited and thought of the travel bag on the floor beside his mattress, as if it now belonged there.
What was Sandana planning to do? Did she want to risk a scandal and move in with him? And did he want that? He knew of such cases. Of girls who had been born and grew up here, and who refused to conform to the traditions and customs of a country that was alien to them. They accepted the inevitable break with their families and moved in with the men they loved.
Mainly these were men from here. But even in cases where a Tamil woman lived with a Tamil man – especially one from the wrong caste – without the blessing of her parents, the couple would be banished from their families and the community.
Would he want that? Would he want to live with a woman who was excluded from the community? They would have to stay away from all those religious and social occasions or accept the fact that they would be personae non gratae. Could he do that?
If he loved the woman, yes he could.
He pictured Sandana in his mind. Rebellious and resigned, as she had been at the Pongal. Determined and unsure, as she had been yesterday. With her slight Swiss accent when she spoke Tamil. In the jeans and sweater that looked so wrong on her.
Yes, he could.
She finally returned his call.
‘You should have woken me. I’d have made you egg hoppers.’
‘I looked in on you, but you were in a deep sleep.’
They chatted like lovers after their first night of passion together.
Suddenly she said, ‘I’ve got to go, my break’s over. Are you home at lunchtime? I’d like to pick up my bag. I can move in with a colleague of mine.’
34
The time that the owner of the Batticaloa Bazaar had given Maravan was not very handy for Love Food’s schedule: eleven in the morning.
They had a job in Falkengässchen, and at that hour Maravan really ought to have been in the kitchen in the middle of his preparations. It had required some organization on his part, and some flexibility from Andrea, to enable him now to be sitting punctually at his computer with headphones and notepad, his heart pounding and hands trembling.
He dialled the number and the connection was instant. The shopkeeper’s voice answered. Maravan gave his name and a few seconds later the tear-choked voice of his older sister said, ‘Maravan?’
‘Has something happened to Ulagu?’ he asked.
Hearing sobbing, he waited.
‘Nangay,’ she uttered.
No, he thought, no, not Nangay. ‘What’s wrong with her?’
‘She’s dead,’ she stammered. Then only sobs again.
Maravan put his head in his hands and said nothing. Said nothing until he heard his sister’s voice, now clearer and more composed. ‘Brother, are you there?’
‘How?’ he asked.
‘Her heart. One moment she was alive and the next she was dead.’
‘But her heart was so strong.’
After a pause, Maravan’s sister said, ‘Her heart was weak. She had a heart attack two years ago.’
‘Why didn’t you tell me?’
‘She didn’t want you to know.’
‘Why not?’
‘She was afraid you might come back.’
When Maravan had finished talking to his sister he went into the bedroom, took Nangay’s photo from the wall and placed it by the domestic shrine. Then he kneeled and said a prayer for her. Was Nangay right? Would he have gone back if he had known about her heart attack?
Probably not.
That evening Maravan varied the Love Menu. He cooked all the dishes exactly in the way Nangay had shown him.
He did not prepare the urad lentil purée marinated in sugared milk as ‘man and woman’, but dried it in portions in the oven.
The mixture of saffron, milk and almonds he simply served as a warm drink. And he made a paste out of the saffron ghee, which was eaten with warm milk.
He used neither the rotary evaporator nor jellification, and made no attempt to defamiliarize textures or aromas.
The meal that evening was a homage to the woman to whom he owed everything. Just for tonight, he did not want to abuse her art for something she would never have approved of.
All the while, curry leaves and cinnamon bark sat in hot coconut oil, filling the whole apartment with the aroma of his childhood. In memory of Nangay.
Andrea had noticed instantly that something was wrong. Maravan did not turn up until late into their preparation time. When he finally arrived, the whole apartment was soon smelling more strongly of curry than his obsessively aired kitchens ever had in the past. And what she served up had nothing to do with the Love Menu she knew.
Right at the start she had made a comment about the changes and received an angry glare in return. ‘Like this or not at all,’ was all he had uttered, and throughout the remainder of the afternoon and evening he only spoke when necessary, to discuss timings.
The client – a regular – was visibly disappointed when she brought the ‘greeting from the kitchen’. It was a small spoon with a dark paste next to a shot glass of hot milk, which she had to announce as ‘urad lentils in hot milk’. But the woman he had booked for the evening was new and so excited that he did not let it show.
Shortly before Andrea left the apartment – Maravan had gone long before, almost without saying goodbye – the client, wrapped in a Turkish towel, came out of the room, handed her three 200 franc notes and grinned: ‘At first I thought it was the alternative version of the menu. But I must say, it got me going even more. Compliments to the chef.’
35
Once again Maravan had spent more than two hours in Dr Kerner’s waiting room. The well-thumbed newspapers lying around all carried the same lead story: the forthcoming swearing-in of the first black president of the United States, Barack Hussein Obama.
This event was also the main topic of conversation among those waiting. The Tamils were hoping for a Sri Lanka policy that was less government-friendly, the Iraqis for a rapid withdrawal of American troops from their country, and the Africans for greater engagement in Zimbabwe and Darfur.
When Maravan was finally called into the surgery, Dr Kerner looked up from his patient file and asked, ‘How’s your great-aunt?’
‘She’s dead.’
‘I’m very sorry to hear that. You did all you could. Why have you come to see me?’
‘It’s not me. It’s about my great-aunt. You asked me last time whether her heart was OK. Why?’
‘If she’d been suffering from certain circulation problems she should not have taken the Minirin. It works as a blood-thinner. It cancels out the effects of anticoagulants and so could bring about a stroke or a heart attack. How did she die?’
‘From a heart attack.’
‘And now you’re worried the medicine may have been to blame. Not very likely. She would have had to have had a prehistory of circulation problems.’
‘She had a heart attack. Two years ago.’
Now Dr Kerner cast him a look of mild horror. ‘You should have told me.’