The Catastrophe

by Ian Wedde

  And as usual, when he’d finished, he felt a teary kind of relief. He blew his crybaby nose on a paper towel from a roll by the stove. There was a blackened imbriki coffee-pot on one of the gas rings, and a paper bag of ground coffee on the bench next to the stove. He sniffed the coffee – a strong smell of cardamom. It reminded him of Christopher Hare and Mary Pepper’s fabulously successful 1,001 Nights book. So he dumped the old grounds from the pot into the sink and filled it with fresh water. Why not?

  If he was honest with himself, he could probably identify the moment when TG began to leave. It was that night in Wadi Rum. At the end of the mansaf they drank strong, pale, bitter coffee poured from a beaky pot with cardamom twigs stuffed in its spout. A little cup for yourself, another for the host, a third for Allah, was what he’d understood. Then you waggled the empty cup to indicate you’d had enough, and put it upside-down on the tray. He was watching Miss Pepper – she’d gone out of the tent and then come back in. When she came back in he saw that she’d retreated to the carefully polite shell from which she usually emerged in a rage. But not this time. Back at the hotel in Amman she simply showered and then got into bed with her back to him.

  ‘Goodnight, Christopher,’ she’d said. ‘That was interest-ing, wasn’t it.’

  He’d known better than to touch her. And then, later, there was the moment with the proof-sheets. TG’s photograph of the mansaf with all the hands reaching in.

  ‘Fuck you Christopher, you’re so wet. You decide. Why don’t you choose the whole lot all by your fucking self.’

  He didn’t know what she was on about. Or he did, but why couldn’t they go on making the most of what they had? He felt her pulling away.

  Cause if you liked it then you should have put a ring on it, sang Beyoncé, TG singing along, her music thing, and he wanted to say, but I did, Pepper, look! Her pale, slender finger with the turned-up tip, the shiny nail, the thin gold band. By then they were almost finished. And often she sang it, or the other songs, with her iPod on, so all he could hear was her half-pie listening-singing voice, that faraway look in her eyes.

  But we did. Put a ring on it. We did.

  When the imbriki boiled on the stove he took it off and spooned in some of the cardamom-scented coffee grounds. Then he left it to settle.

  He was getting a grip. Maybe he’d do some cooking again. Go back to London and tell Bob to stick his magazine up his arse. Mind you, that would be a waste of time. Bob had already told him to stick it up his own.

  He was beginning to cheer up.

  Still, he couldn’t let go of that feeling he’d been dumped. Which had something to do with the maître d’, whose look of panic he now remembered vividly. And who, as Hawwa Habash had said, being unreliable, was a great danger to them at this time. And therefore.

  Maybe he was going to find out soon.

  An absurd little surge of hope. He knew it was absurd – but maybe the maître d’ would be his link to the future that had sped off before dawn in the red-painted white taxi.

  The smell of the freshly brewed, cardamom-infused coffee was indescribably enticing. He washed out a glass and gave the coffee a cautious stir with the handle of a spoon. Then he remembered what he’d seen them do in street-front coffee shops in places like Damascus and Beirut, tapping the side of the pot with a spoon to make the grounds settle. He drummed out a little rhythm on the side of the imbriki – shave-and-a-haircut, Bay-Rum! – and then carefully poured himself a glass of the fragrant brew.

  Going back to cooking maybe wasn’t such a bad idea. A sudden memory made him snicker: they’d been relaunching the smash hit Ligurian book on TV, as a series, and he was demonstrating how to make a thin focaccia dough – thinner and thinner, a wonderful elastic sheet that he held up triumphantly, then tripped and accidentally draped it over his own face. So what was he meant to do? He bit a hole out for his mouth, tore two more for his eyes, and intoned, ‘Don’t try this at home.’ He thought the footage was hilarious. But TG wasn’t laughing and the producer just said, ‘Christopher, we’re not doing comedy.’

  Why not?

  On to the octopus tartlets. No, he shouldn’t have done the Aliens impersonation and then chucked the thing across the set. Or set fire to the tablecloth with the grilled figs fiammeggiati.

  Did he have any idea how much this studio time was costing? No, he didn’t, and he didn’t give a fuck either. Why couldn’t they lighten up?

  Why couldn’t he grow up, was TG’s response to that.

  ‘Jesus Christ, Chris-to-pher, why don’t you just run around the place with a great big sign with “Look at me, Mum!” written on it?’

  Oh yes, she knew how to hurt him. So they did the figs again, once the floor manager had been persuaded to come back, and closed with the bit where Mary Pepper and Christopher Hare clink glasses, turn to the camera, and say buon appetito!

  ‘I liked the other versions better. This one’s boring.’

  ‘You would, Christopher. But you were just showing off, really. Don’t you ever know when to stop?’

  Apparently it wasn’t funny anymore. But it used to be. And fun. And no, he didn’t know when to stop, or why he should.

  His hand was trembling a little as he lifted the hot glass of cardamom-scented coffee to his also trembling lips. It wasn’t sadness he was feeling, more a kind of anticipation, because here he was: he’d moved on from TG and now he’d also moved on from the Christopher Hare propped up in the window of Le Lapin Sauvage, and, even further back, from the stupid Rosenstein he’d hidden behind years ago. He was empty, a bit of a mess, but ready for the next thing, whatever it was. He should just get the hell out of there as fast as possible and think the future through somewhere else, like back in London. Absolutely what he should do. Abort the trip. Go.

  But the thin, astringent coffee bit his taste buds fiercely and filled his nose with its aromatic tang, so that he uttered a loud ‘Ah!’ of satisfaction and smacked his lips, and lingered. Yes, to be going forward, that was the thing. Perhaps, after all, there might be something Christopher Hare could do in the world that the tall, intense doctor with the exhausted, alert eyes and the strong hands had given him a glimpse of. A world he’d only ever seen inside a showcase Bedouin tent in Wadi Rum, or in Ducasse’s dreadful Tamaris joint in Beirut. Or in that garden place in Damascus where TG plucked a small grilled object from a tray, popped it in her mouth and then realised it was an entire tiny bird, a sparrow or something. Spat it across the table. No-shit Pepper.

  Maybe there was a way he could help with those kids the doctor worked with. She’d even seemed to hint that he might be useful, in some way.

  His hands were still trembling a little so he put the glass of coffee down on the dirty table and did half a dozen toe-touches (but not quite) and side-stretches. Rolled his head around on his neck. Those weird grinding sounds again.

  He topped up his glass of coffee and walked quickly, decisively, crunching the spilled chickpeas underfoot, to the garage and the little door to the yard outside. Decisiveness, that was the thing. As well as teaching him how to clean and fillet fish, Uncle Antonio had taught him how to chop the heads off Nana Gobbo’s young roosters, before they got too big. You had to be decisive. Hold them upside down by the feet until they went quiet, then grip their wings behind their backs, neck over the block, whack! If you hesitated, the thing would always be a disaster with flapping and hoarse shrieks. Moving decisively always helped him to make decisions. He stooped quickly through the door and out into the bright sunlight of the yard.

  The light was low and glaring from the concrete and from the white-painted wall at the back. Almost blinded, he hesitated and then stepped across to one of the plastic chairs by the table. He sat down, shading his eyes. He could smell the cigarettes that had been ground out on the concrete around the table. Finish the coffee first. Then he would decide what was next.

  He was awake to the day, at last, fully out in it. He remembered Dr Habash’s comment about what was wrong with thin
king. The box was off. The rooster box.

  ‘Cock-a-doodle-doo.’ He sipped the bitter coffee.

  I can go now?

  Inside the house, the front door slammed. He recognised the voice of the maître d’, calling out. The voice called out again, faintly, and then again, from the upper floors. A door slammed violently, up there, and the man shouted something angrily, in the angry language. And again.

  He sat there. He could feel the heat from the sun reflected on his back from the white plastered wall behind him. He knew his shirt was hanging out and he looked a complete mess. God, he was so hungry and thirsty. It was an old game of torment, but he couldn’t resist – he pictured a tall cold glass of beer, a sharp Czech pilsner, and a simple sauerkraut and bratwurst roll, the cheap sort you got on German railway station platforms. His mouth flooded with saliva, but the sigh he heaved only drew in the diesel tainted air of the courtyard.

  When the maître d’ came through the garage door in his swift, sliding way, as if negotiating the spaces between tables, and saw Christopher sitting there against the white, sunlit wall, the man’s expression went instantly from rage to the kind of insincere warmth the food writer had come to know so well. He looked at Christopher with the incurious courtesy of his profession. He might have been sizing up what kind of guest he was dealing with. Then his expression shifted ever so slightly; he ducked his head, and a faint smile denoting cautious respect lifted the corners of his moustache. He might have been thinking that this was a better-than-average window-table diner. We can seat him with a view of the street. He’s alone, and so he’s serious in some way. He hasn’t dressed for an occasion, and so he’s confident. He’s looking at the window table without making anything of it – well, then, he can have it. He’s definitely not trouble. Not even tonight.

  Christopher knew what was going to happen when he saw the gun in the maître d’s hand. But he couldn’t help himself.

  ‘No,’ he murmured, ‘you don’t have to. I’ve decided.’

  ‘Assalaam Alaikum,’ said the maître d’, with grave, professional charm. ‘Laila sa’eda wa ahlaam ladida. Good night and sweet dreams.’ He added the English as if to be courteous to his guest.

  The look of smiling incredulity on the food writer’s face stayed there while the black hole in his forehead welled with blood, which ran in a straight line past his nose and down into his open mouth. Then, for a moment he seemed to taste it, with a quick, spasmodic smacking of his lips, before falling slowly sideways, away from the mess he’d made on the white wall behind him.

  NOTES

  Much of the information in this novel – places, recipes, events such as those in Amman, Jordan in 1969–70 – derives from my experience and I am responsible for the accuracy (or not) with which I’ve incorporated it in this fiction. For other factual material, I am indebted to several accounts of which the following are the most important:

  Helena Cobban, The Making of Modern Lebanon. London: Hutchinson & Co. Ltd., 1985.

  Kamal Dib, Warlords and Merchants: The Lebanese Business and Political Establishment. Reading: Ithaca Press/Garnet Publishing Limited, 2004.

  Robert Fisk, Pity the Nation: The Abduction of Lebanon. New York: Thunder’s Mouth Press/ Nation Books, 2002.

  Sandra Mackey, Lebanon: A House Divided. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2006.

  Julie Peteet, Landscape of Hope and Despair: Palestinian Refugee Camps. Philadelphia: University of Pensylvania Press, 2005.

  I am indebted to the scrupulously maintained websites of the Palestinian Refugee ResearchNet (PRRN) and the on-line databases of UNRWA (The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East).

  I recommend Lucio Galletto and David Dale’s mouthwatering book, Lucio’s Ligurian Kitchen. Crows Nest, NSW: Allen & Unwin, 2008. Grateful thanks to my son Penn, a brilliant chef, for reading an early draft and trying out recipes with me.

  Grateful thanks also to my wife Donna Malane and old friend Russell Haley for their invaluable comments.

  This book was written with the generous assistance of the University of Auckland/Creative New Zealand Michael King Writer’s Residency in 2009.

  I acknowledge my old friend and colleague Fawwaz Tuqan, who introduced me to Palestinian poets back in 1969, in particular the late Mahmoud Darwish, whose last reading filled a football stadium with 25,000 people in Beirut the year before his death in 2008.