Hunters & Collectors

by M. Suddain

  For now I’ll choose to be dissatisfied. I hope this satisfies you.

  … to the High Orients …

  … to the Celestial, the North Star, the Golden Palace …

  … Things are better. The cities seem less terrifying.

  … to Duck Soup, the Jade Dragon, the Snake King, the Midnight Pagoda …

  … the restaurants of the High Orient are a revelation. Chef PENG (all caps), visionary proprietor of the Snake King, made me a strange little soup called Wincing Thrush in Tears and Fresh Brambles.

  … to the New World, the Drunken Scorpion, the Happy Crab, the Imperial Gardens …

  … fried wasps in winter garlic, freshwater alligator with fermented bamboo, Cold Harbour duck served with things from below the sea …

  … Food is memory, Nina. The milk records the taste of the grass the cow was eating. The wine records the weather in the weeks before the grapes were crushed. A simple molecule exiting a wad of baked flour and water and entering the nose can release a lost memory, or even a complete manifestation of an earlier self. Tribal memories of famine or abundance are stored in tales of hungry children who stumble across an edible cottage whose landlord is a cannibal witch; or the Emperor who eats so much he becomes an island; or the princess cursed to turn into a peach tree after sunset; or the Queen who orders her huntsman to take a child into the forest and bring back her heart and lungs for a pie. The Snow Queen wants this girl’s umbles because she craves their essence. Food and magic are intimately connected. On Solidad, during heavy snowstorms, the old women would throw flour from their windows to calm the forces of the world.

  Calm, wind, feed this to your hungry child.

  I’m paraphrasing. But it was something along those lines. We might dress the ritual of cuisine in extravagant ways, but it remains a primitive and holy act.

  … The greatest meal I’ve had – so far – was a sequence of humble street dishes from a market stall called Delight of Noodledom.

  … The soup was served in an imperfectly formed bowl; cooling and thickening as I ate. Nothing lasts. Nothing finishes. Nothing is perfect.

  … Food can die twice: first in the slaughterhouse, then again in the hands of the cook. The food at the Hunter’s Lodge never had a chance. The sausages are presented as a map of the human gullet. They bring a roast bird, and only when you take a bite do you find it’s made from a completely different animal. Your fish is killed at the table when the waiter pours scalding sauce on it. A pastry egg with a live bird inside is served to every customer. You eat it in one gulp, bones and all, and then you smile, because Chef has an explosive temper, and a sonar for displeasure. I haven’t eaten in such an atmosphere of casual menace since my days at a private academy.

  So I have no idea why this place has two Grand Orchids, or is listed in the IGG’s ‘10,000 Places to Eat Before You Die’, except that the cuisine here would be a fitting final insult to a child murderer before a dose of sodium thiopental.

  But the liquor was good and non-lethal.

  … and then to the Ambassador, the Grand Plaza, Plaza South Complex, Seaview Plaza …

  … And though Saturnalia’s decor evokes the setting for a Black Mass, I’m certain it’s the service which is making me want to murder a priest.

  … then Peninsula Bay Plaza, Radion Towers, the Axe and Rooster …

  … and a bird which had been so crudely butchered I was surprised to hear the chef had cooked it and not been led to its corpse by a psychic.

  … and the West Winds, Ridgeway, Madam Wan’s, Manson’s Rooms, Goodbye Horses …

  … Thank you, Garret, I’m twenty-three, this is my second Grand Tour, and what you’re saying is potently moronic. I can’t possibly be ‘over-intellectualising’ gastronomy, since to me gastronomy is not an intellectual exercise at all. It is a ritualistic discipline whose meaning is contained within its performance. A great meal should aspire to move beyond its trappings, and beyond words, and reveal in a harmonious way true ideas about nature. To enjoy a meal is a private and sacred act. We are searching for a transformative truth, yes, but there is no separation between the act of searching, and the truth itself. They are one. And this truth is never revealed through words. If this seems ‘pretentious’, I’m sorry. But anything which reveals itself in words is just a truth committing suicide. The final course is emptiness.

  Though I can’t begin to fathom why you’ve sent me those photographs of your mother, I appreciate the thought. She is a handsome woman.

  … and the Royal Bundy, Nightway Cabins (formerly Interlodge) …

  … Then she smiled and said, ‘You don’t even carry a gun?’

  ‘No gun, no sap. Why would I? I’m a critic, not a detective.’

  ‘Come on. A big boy like you? You must be packing something hot.’

  An ‘audio pat-down’. That’s what the police said. Most likely she worked for the establishment. Most likely her people staked me out at the Regent. But I can’t prove it. The critical atmosphere has become more hostile since I closed the Hunter’s Lodge. Maybe I won’t mention my vocation from now on. And maybe I will carry a gun. And not be such a sap.

  … then Bette’s Noir Palace, Lilac, Pond Life, I am Sam’s …

  … the Orphans, Europa, the Sunset Strip …

  … A plate of disappointment arrives in front of me, only to be whisked away and shoved before the woman at the next table by our waiter while he deftly lifts a dish of bitter regret from beneath the nose of another man, and gives it to his bewildered neighbour. The laws of entropy are in play. Heat death is inevitable. So says this article I’m reading while I wait for my bowl of bad dreams. Entropy will cause the universe to fall into a uniformly disordered state – somewhat like this restaurant. With every breath we take, with every lift of the spoon, with every star that dies in private agony, we move towards this final resting place. The gods are indifferent. Artificial intelligence might save us, apparently. For a while. But some day it all will end.

  The waiter has finally brought me my bowl of bad dreams. I want my disappointment back.

  … then Rollo’s Epicurian, the Bunker, the Helion …

  … I don’t think I’ll ever adjust to these cities, Nanše. The chef at Madam Wan’s threatened to separate me from by balls with a boning knife. Wrong tool for the job, surely. A young man sent me naked pictures of his mother. There is a breed of flying cockroach out here. Huge, black and dressed in armour-plating like a military ship. And indestructible. The staff at these places don’t seem to care when they show up. They stop just short of giving them a menu and some complimentary breads. And there are tourists wherever I go. Worse than the roaches. I’ll never shake them. Extermination is futile. They are legion. I’m sure if I sailed out of our Cloud and into empty, silent, sunless space, I’d somehow find a pack of them twitching on cheap loungers, or pawing slave-made talismans with their fat, featureless fingers, or cautiously teasing the surface of a bowl of unfamiliar soup with their Blattodean antennae, or gazing at a sign: ‘Come peer into the Abyss of your Soul. Tours daily.’ I need a natural repellent. There’s Masemola cheese, I suppose, but it’s not selective enough. I don’t want to be a hermit. Or maybe I do.

  … But life is good. I’m about to break a million subscribers. It happened so fast. My book is out soon. I have private work, too. A wealthy admirer wants to pay me to track down a case of expensive wine stolen by her former lover. She said she’d introduce me to Lebaubátain’s great-great-great-granddaughter, Edith. So my situation has improved. When you come out I can get us adjoining suites at the Nebula. No one has to sleep on the balcony. I’m that kind of man. This isn’t what I expected, but we learn to accept the choices life makes for us. Eliö Lebaubátain seemed destined to become a great swimming champion, until he lost both his legs to a shark. He became a gastronomer. The world became a better place.

  I’ll be home for Harvest, I hope, and my first stop will be Monsterat’s.

  Sontina, thanks for your ardent letter. I’
m happy you enjoyed my book, though you could have consolidated your description of that enjoyment to a single page. To answer your questions briefly: I will be twenty-four in a month. I am five-foot-nine and I was born in the cities. I’ve never visited the Terrestrials. This is my third Grand Tour. This one is sponsored by Transhemispheric Air and Watermargin™ notebooks and a new alcoholic cider called Misty Mountain Hop. I can’t tell you which route I’ll be taking since secrecy is vital to my safety. I didn’t think of the pen-name, the Tomahawk, it was my editor at Five Stars or Less Fewer. A tomahawk is a kind of ancient axe. It’s also the name of a high-speed train, a missile and – judging from a recent lawsuit I’ve been hit with – a particularly disgusting brand of sports cologne. I’m single, yes. But my schedule allows no time for relationships. The dedication ‘For Nanše’ in The Tourist’s Handbook is for a childhood friend. And no, in fact I think a good meal is superior to ‘heavy fucking’ – first because you can have it without undressing, and second because it never leaves you feeling empty.

  … What is this? Some kind of stew? I lack the word. Nope, feculent. There it is.

  … Proprietors are on the lookout for the Tomahawk. I often go in disguise. I sometimes take a young prostitute who I pay to be my adolescent child. Since they’re generally rude, and have bad manners, no rehearsal is needed. If I sense that the establishment has been tipped off, if the staff are comparing every man who comes in to a facial composite taped behind the registration desk, if the couple at the next table have a steak each and no necks, I leave quickly, and tell my prostitute son to save himself. At my last appointment, Destiny’s Grill, Chef brought the soup herself.

  ‘Are you the Tomahawk?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You have to tell me if you are. It’s the law.’

  ‘I’m pretty sure that’s not a law.’

  ‘If you say anything bad about my food I will cut off all your fingers and serve them to you.’

  ‘I see. And how would you prepare them?’

  Her soup was an ectoplasmic goo which looked like something scraped off the walls of a satanic chapel.

  ‘You’re not eating your soup.’

  ‘I can’t eat it while you’re here.’

  ‘Just take a spoonful so I can watch.’

  ‘I don’t want to.’

  ‘Just one spoonful. So I can see you like it.’

  Nightmare.

  … Trouble with an ingress. Establishment had been tipped off. Narrowly escaped with my skin. Forced to spend the night in the ‘Primordial Nights’ room of a local love-hotel. My first coin-driven bed.

  … then the Amygdala, the All Seasons, the Fantasia, the Royal Centaur …

  … Of course, I’m extremely flattered that you’d bring the old Watermargin™ F Series out of retirement in my honour. But these things you’ve sent me aren’t Watermargins™. The paper is wrong, the binding is weak. These are, as we say on Solidad, aua mapail u hochbilanilla: a copy of the map.

  … then the Great Bear, the Golden Tulip, Hotel Trans-Europa …

  … Nanše, your message found me as I was leaving the Europa. I’m so sorry to hear about Pop. He was a good man. Remember when I’d put you on my shoulders so you were high enough to pull his beard? I’m too far away to make it home in time for the funeral. You’re a good friend and I’m sad to not be there. Things have gone mad. I’m at one hundred million and rising. Although it’s roughly half that if I post a nice review. Every chef wants me at their place. Until I write something bad about them. Then they want me dead. It’s a game. I sometimes wish they would kill me so I don’t have to eat another terrible meal, or see another tourist, or listen to their unsolicited restaurant recommendations.

  … They’re everywhere now, Nanše. With their open-toed shoes and their ergonomic walking poles and their cheap canvas anoraks. There’s no escape. They’ll come for your place soon, I know it.

  ‘Have you been to the Fighting Pig?’ ‘Have you been to Monsterat’s?’ ‘Oh, you must. They have this dish …’

  Do they? Do they have ‘this dish’? What are you trying to tell me, that they have ‘this dish’?

  I’m trying to relax more. To be more positive. To remember why I started this adventure. They make it hard. I bought a machine which plays recordings on magnetic tape(!), and I’m listening to the works of an enlightened mystic. Doctor Mirshabak says I should try to see the world through the eyes of my brother, and to imagine his suffering. So instead of telling this dangerously engorged tool where to go, or who I am – always a mistake – or that I was born above the place he’s talking about, and ate there every day for most of my childhood before pricks like him showed up to ruin it, I say, ‘Ah, Monsterat’s, yes, I think I went there once. But tell me, have you been to the Black Emperor, on Zoraster? Gods, you must! It would be a tragedy to die without having their blackened bird. But listen, they’re unlisted. They don’t even keep a sign out. People will say it doesn’t exist. Look for a stuffed rooster with its eyes painted yellow. Ask around for a wall-eyed whore named Serendipity. Say, “I need my bird blackened,” and wink twice. She’ll take care of the rest.’

  And then I get to imagine my brother’s suffering as he wastes months in a vain search for a non-existent blackened bird, in an entirely fictional Zorastern restaurant. It passes the time.

  A strange encounter this week – even by the standards of the past few dozen weeks. A clerk at the Nebula called up to tell me that a note had been left at reception for me by an unlicensed messenger. No one knows I’m staying here. The message said, ‘We have discovered something you might be interested in,’ and instructed me to take the private booth booked under the name Suriman at the Golden Pagoda at 4 p.m. that day. I waited for almost an hour, drinking tea and watching waiters bring out platters of steaming dumplings. Eventually a woman sat down opposite, and when I saw her I couldn’t stay angry. Her name is Gloria. She said she worked for a private investigation firm who’d been retained by a wealthy client to validate the existence of something called Station One. Then she looked at me, clearly expecting a reaction, but getting none she smiled to herself in a way that suggested she thought I was playing it cool. She told me they knew I was also helping a client look for Station One so they could get a place on the List of One Thousand. Again she searched me for a reaction. Their client recently passed away, just as her firm stumbled upon a number of interesting pieces of evidence. This evidence seems to indicate that Station One is indeed fully operational, and is actively recruiting members.

  A waiter with a silver eyepatch brought a cup and I poured tea.

  Her firm are interested in striking a deal with my client, she continued – still clearly under the illusion that I was the person she thought I was – and for a fee of one million international francs, payable by secure transfer before the close of tomorrow’s trading, they would hand over their dossier. She took another few moments to look at me, found me still inscrutable – mainly because I still had no idea what she was talking about – and took a sip of her tea.

  ‘I thought you’d be more excited, Joseph. People are killing each other for a chance to get on the List. Literally killing each other. And we know your client is willing to do whatever it takes.’

  ‘Is that why your client was killed?’

  ‘Our client was killed in a routine household explosion. Officially, it’s registered as an accidental death. But we aren’t so sure. You’ll need to be very careful.’

  Then she took a key from her pocket and placed it on the wheel-waiter and spun it around to me with one indigo-tipped finger. I eased my sunglasses down the bridge of my nose with my fingers to look at the key. ‘This key opens a deposit box at Pacific Royal Emblat.’ She told me that they had, as a gesture of goodwill, and as proof of their legitimacy, left one item of evidence in the deposit box. She placed her card on the waiter, along with an envelope with the details I needed to transfer the money. She said, ‘Be cautious, Joseph. This is hot material.’ Then she walked out
of my life.

  … Just for fun, just for the pure fuck of it, I went to the offices of the private bank, Pacific Royal Emblat. They did not ask for any identification, the key was enough.

  … The key opened the box containing a plain envelope. The envelope contained a single photo. It was of a man and a woman in a cocktail lounge constructed almost entirely of mirrors. From their dress and hair the photo couldn’t have been taken more than five years ago. And yet the establishment looked ancient. I’d never been there, I was sure. You could see reflected in the mirrors the backs of the couple’s heads, and an old bartender whose hands were blurred like a ghost’s because he was shaking out a cocktail, but whose face was perfectly still and calm. There was a very old lamp on the bar. The photo, I could tell, was taken covertly with a compact camera with a fixed wide-angle lens. The image was fish-eyed, grainy and partially obscured by the fabric of whatever garment the camera had been hidden in. It was taken from a low angle, the frame tilted fifteen degrees clockward, but whoever took the photo had been careful to stand in a position where their reflection wouldn’t be captured in the mirrors. The couple in the photo didn’t seem to be aware that their image was being taken. But the bartender was looking away from the camera towards the mirrors nearest him on an angle which reflected his dark eyes directly down the camera lens. And this was incredibly unsettling.

  On the back of the photo, in faded ink, the words: ‘Grand Skies.’

  … There are no bars called Grand Skies, but there are fourteen hotels with the name, and one with a famous mirrored cocktail lounge. Hotel Grand Skies: the Empyrean. I know you remember this place, Nanše, because when you were small you got obsessed with it after finding a story about it in an old picture book, Haunts of the Rich and Famous. You used to make Esmeralda tell you stories about all the artists and poets and stars and models who used to go there. It was legendarily private. It was out in the Near Eastern Orients, so guests could do just about anything their dark heart could dream of. It was where Heraldjo met Gloriona, and where the famous opening of The Sea of Others was filmed, and where Dojo Kazmakatzi shot and killed her lover, the multidimensional-photo-impressionist Georgio Fantimas. Its restaurant was the place where the fortune cookie was invented – though thousands of venues falsely claim the honour. Chef Rojiibo’s cookies were notoriously prescient. It was one such cookie, apparently, which tipped Kazmakatzi off to the fact that her lover was planning to run off with the dancer Robina Romentina III.