I remember making a tomato dressing to go with a seafood salad at one of my cooking classes. I told my students that it’s best to find a just-picked, fresh, juicy tomato, although it’s hard to find one in the city. One student joked, Isn’t that what men want in a woman? Now my face turns red for no reason, like it did then.
“Who said that?” asks Mun-ju.
“I don’t remember.”
“Se-yeon?”
I don’t say anything.
“God, that’s so her.”
“Yeah, Se-yeon is red and pretty like a tomato.”
“You’re ridiculous. Just watch, you’re going to dream about a tomato tonight.” Mun-ju throws a mushroom at me.
“Can you look after Paulie for three days?”
“Are you going somewhere?”
“Yeah, Singapore.”
“Oh, it’s already April.”
“I don’t think I can put him in a kennel this time. He’s really on edge.”
“Ask Seok-ju. Then Paulie will get better quickly, too.”
“You know she doesn’t like him.”
“It’s three days! She can’t watch him for three days, the dog of the man she can’t live without?”
“You’ll do it, right?”
Mun-ju is quiet.
The most potent of canine abilities is detecting and isolating a preferred scent from a whole tangle of smells. In the beginning of spring, Paulie stopped smelling like Seok-ju. Even when Paulie’s next to me, his ears are pressed back against his head and his tail lists limply to the side. It’s the position he assumes when he’s about to defend himself. It must be hard for Paulie that the person he needs is no longer around. It’s gotten harder and harder to leave Paulie at home by himself. And now I’ll be gone for three whole days. After Seok-ju, I cherish Uncle and Mun-ju the most, and so does Paulie.
“It’s hard. It feels like it’s getting harder and harder,” sighs Mun-ju.
“What is?”
“Just… everything. Life.”
I’m sure it’s not everything. There were moments when it wasn’t hard. I had many moments when I was happy.
“It’s okay, Mun-ju.”
“What is?”
“Just… everything.”
“That’s lame.”
I want to tell her that onions aren’t always bad. That it’s better to dream about onions than not to dream at all. Because dreaming must be proof that you’re thinking nonstop about the thing you desire. But why does desire come hand in hand with repression?
At one side of the table I put a salad of lettuce, three kinds of herbs, thinly sliced onions and cucumber, and lightly fried tofu with an Asian-inspired dressing. In April, and when you feel tired and lethargic, salad is the perfect choice. Not too stimulating, yet it will put a bounce in your step.
Mun-ju falls asleep. I close the front door and windows, which I’d left open a crack, and turn off the lights. There might be a sign that Grandmother came for a visit. I take a blanket and cover Mun-ju with it. I gently take Mun-ju’s hand, poking out from under the blanket, for a little bit. When you’re falling asleep, your senses slowly drift to sleep, too. The first one to go is taste, then sight, then smell, then your sense of hearing gradually falls asleep, too. Touch is the last sense to be lulled to sleep. Always alert until the very end, to warn us of any impending danger. In sleep, Mun-ju’s cheeks glow like rubies in the dark. Everyone shines like that, sensually, as they fall asleep. The sex you have before sleeping is the most profound and intimate. But when you’re finally asleep, all senses become isolated. What would be in my trunk other than onions or tomatoes or water?
CHAPTER 17
IN APRIL SINGAPORE, also known as “The Earth’s Kitchen” or “The World Capital of Food,” hosts the World Gourmet Summit. This year seventy events will be held for three weeks at fourteen restaurants and seven first-class hotels downtown, including the Conrad Hotel near City Hall. The summit is famous for its renowned chefs, who come from all over the world to cook and satisfy appetites and teach master classes. You can taste the works of Michelin-starred chefs and converse with them without flying all the way to Europe. Anyone who works at Nove for at least six months can attend for educational purposes.
This year Chef is leaving Manager Park in charge of the restaurant and going to the summit with the most junior cooks, Choi and Kim. It’s rare for Chef to accompany them, and it’s even more surprising that he suggests that I attend a wine workshop. There is always more to learn, Chef says. I know this, but hearing it pains my heart. His voice reveals that he knows I’m wavering in the kitchen between chicken and duck, eggplant and onion. Or you can just take some time to rest, Chef says. I don’t recognize this version of Chef—I’m looking at someone who’s usually curt but who has suddenly turned very sweet. A man who is stern and standoffish should continue to be like that until the day he dies. It wouldn’t be as sad. I’m not saying you should go to the summit and just rest. You have to eat something different for every meal. I nod. Chef might be more worried about my eroding sense of taste than about my well-being. When a cook starts to lose his sense of taste, the best way to cure it is to leave the kitchen and eat food prepared by other cooks. Just as the best way to treat someone with an eating disorder is to bring him into the kitchen and have him make something. Three days. It’s also a chance to test myself, to see if I can go without thinking about Seok-ju. As we board the plane I mumble, At least it’s not an entire week.
We’re staying at the Metropol, which is a seven-minute walk across the bridge from City Hall, where the five-star hotels are clustered and where most of the events will be taking place. Chef and Kim are sharing one room and Choi and I will share the other. As soon as we get to the hotel we disperse according to each person’s schedule of events. Singapore in April is busy and humid and congested. I change into a cotton skirt, a white T-shirt with sleeves I can roll up, and light sneakers. If Seok-ju were here he would tease, All white again? Even when I wear sky blue it has white polka dots on it; if I wear a striped T-shirt, the stripes are white. You always have to wear white, like a birthmark! he’d say, smiling as if he’d discovered something amazing. I wear white in the kitchen, to feel at home. I smooth the front of my clothes and decide to go eat laksa.
Singapore bursts at the seams with gourmets from all around the world. To determine who is a gourmet and who is not is as uncertain a dilemma as figuring out where a duck’s head starts and its body ends. It’s not important whether someone is a gourmet. Everyone wants to eat and knows that food is crucial to live. But everyone has his own special reaction toward food. One person can become so excited about a certain dish that his eyes sparkle and his muscles harden, while someone else shovels in the same dish without paying any thought to what he’s eating. A gourmet appreciates beauty. Gourmets eat slowly and thoughtfully experience taste—they don’t rush through a meal and leave the table as soon as they’re done. People who are not gourmets don’t see cooking as art. Gourmandism is an interest in everything that can be eaten, and this deep affection for food birthed the art of cooking. Other animals have limited tastes, some eating only plants and others subsisting solely on meat, but humans are omnivores. They can eat everything. Love for delicious food is the first emotion gourmets feel. Sometimes that love can’t be thwarted, not by anything.