“Two anglerfish,” Donald said.
“Loud and clear,” Feo replied.
Johnny helped Pirjo. Gonzo came in from the dining room, went without a word to the dirty dishes, and started loading up the dishwasher.
It was his last week. Everyone had heard how he and Armas, in connection with opening up after the summer break, had screamed at each other in the changing room. Armas had emerged with a satisfied expression, as if he had killed a rat.
Gonzo came out after five minutes but did not go out into the dining room. It was only after Armas came in and told him that Gonzo went out to do his job. Everyone was amazed that he had not left immediately. He also didn’t try to engage his coworkers’ support in the conflict, only muttering to himself.
No one asked him what it was all about, but Tessie had mentioned something about Gonzo trying to pressure Armas, that he had information that could hurt Armas. It was gossip of the kind that Feo and Donald thought laughable-what could little Gonzo know that could possibly harm the powerful Armas?
A woman came into the kitchen a little after nine. Donald glared at her but said nothing.
“The bathroom is to the right in the corridor,” Feo said.
Sometimes customers went through the wrong door.
“I’m supposed to start working here,” the woman said.
“You are the new one! Wonderful! We need many beautiful women here, isn’t that right, Johnny?”
Feo closed the door of the warming cabinet and wiped his hands on the cloth he had tied at his waist.
“Welcome. I am Feo.”
“Thank you. I’m starting tomorrow and I’m more than a little nervous. I’ve never waitressed before.”
“Typical Slobodan,” Donald muttered.
“That is Donald. He is nice, I promise. Johnny talks funny and he is also new. You will have to start a club, don’t you think? What is your name?”
“Eva Willman.”
“Of course I will,” Feo exclaimed in an attempt at a pun, and Donald stared at him.
“Your anglerfish,” he said and Feo threw himself over the stove.
Johnny introduced himself and shook hands.
“You are the brother of Simon’s mother, aren’t you?”
Johnny nodded.
“It was through her…”
He returned to the dessert but snuck glances at the new waitress while Feo enthusiastically talked about Dakar. She was around Johnny’s own age. His sister Bitte had told him that Eva was divorced with two teenage boys. Johnny studied her from behind. He had noticed that he had started staring at women, not to check them out but to find faults and defects, as if his time with Sofia had perverted his sight.
She had rejected him too many times, and when she later approached him, he was unable to make love. Their cooling relationship had made him limp. It was not only the physical change, more fundamental was that his view of women had changed. He was as interested in women as before, but now he felt disdain, or even sometimes hatred had stolen in, like a malignant virus.
A woman’s laughter in the street, the hint of a beautiful curve in a woman’s body, or a woman’s voice now left Johnny largely indifferent. If any feelings made themselves known then it was simply disdain, a cold dismissiveness. Where he had earlier thought he saw genuine joy, desirable beauty, and promising optimism, he now increasingly saw hypocrisy and falseness.
Women had become a foreign and antagonistic group.
The feeling of being rejected was not pleasant, and he was not happy with the change, it was nothing he had wished for. In moments of clarity he questioned his perception, tried to get some insight into what it was that had perverted him. Was it simply the disastrous relationship with Sofia? Was there something in himself that had nurtured these feelings?
Sofia had rejected him, and not only in bed. He felt that she had also shut him out of the different parts of her life, as if he was not worthy of accompanying her.
“You are so immature,” she would say, and he would feel as if he were a child caught doing something wrong.
He became more and more disgusted with himself, as if he had allowed himself to become a victim, and one day he did what Sofia had perhaps wanted for a long time. He packed up his few possessions and left.
Now he stared at the waitress who was laughing together with Feo. Johnny heard the Portuguese tell her about the expected baby, how happy he was and what a fantastic woman he lived with, and he saw how Eva lit up.
Donald sighed, making a little extra noise when he carelessly tossed the pan into the sink.
“Fix the pan,” he told Pirjo, who obeyed him immediately and started scrubbing it under the faucet.
Her face was flushed from the heat in the kitchen. She cast a brief glance at Johnny, pushed some stray hairs off her forehead, and turned her body as if she wanted to hide from the world.
You think I’m nothing but an old man, Johnny thought, and wished he could show his disdain for all little girls who thought they were hotshots in the kitchen.
Tessie appeared in the window again. After a period of calm, the pressure was once again mounting in the dining room. It was as if waves of customers were washing in over Dakar.
Johnny sensed that Gonzo was not being much help. He was not going to put in much effort this last week.
“One veal,” Tessie said, but Donald did not answer.
“Did you get it or do you want it in writing?” Tessie said with such aggression in her tone that even Donald looked up.
Then he turned his back to her, nabbed a piece of meat, and threw it in the pan.
“Deep down she’s nice,” Feo said. “All Americans think everyone hates them.”
“Why do you say that?” Eva asked. She had placed herself in the doorway.
“They’re bombing the hell out of everyone,” Feo said.
“They should bomb this place,” Donald said.
“Then you would die,” Feo said.
“I am dead.”
Donald smiled unexpectedly at Johnny and leaned nearsightedly over a plate. He painstakingly arranged a few leaves in a salad, then straightened his back and regarded the arrangement before bending down again for a final adjustment.
Tessie turned up again.
“Sweet love,” Donald said in English, and pushed over a plate.
The waitress stared at him, but the hint of a smile swept across her for the moment rather tense features before she left.
“Just think what a little diplomacy can achieve,” Donald said, and Johnny was forced to revise his opinion of him. There would be many times that he would get to experience how Donald awakened from a basically catatonic state and started to engage in wry and lightly ironic banter.
The new waitress hung around and watched them attentively in their work. It was as if Feo’s introduction and jocular patter had done her good, because she looked relaxed. Johnny could see that she, like most visitors in a restaurant kitchen, was careful not to get in the way. The kitchen in Dakar was narrow. Three chefs and an apprentice were crowded into the space of several square meters.
At his last restaurant in Jönköping, where Johnny had worked for about a year, the dining room had swelled out into a veritable sea while the chefs worked with the claustrophobic feeling of being in the cabin of a submarine.
The work required a choreography of quick but well-thought out movements and an intuitive ability to sense where one’s coworkers were and where they were likely to move in the next moment.
“Behind you,” came from Feo, who was between the fish stove and the window, and with a smile he slipped past Donald, who in turn was making a sudden excursion with the meat thermometer.
Pirjo was sent out to fetch more filets. Donald watched her brushing the meat, while he prepared two Cornish game hens.
The temperature rose. Feo, who was preparing a sauce for the salmon, was bright red in the face. Pirjo returned to the desserts. Donald poked the poultry breasts with his index finger and then lifted them onto the plates that had been prepared for them. He drizzled the morel sauce over them, corrected the potato-and-duck liver terrine, and rang the bell. Tessie appeared and took the plates away.