by Howard Engel
“Have you been here before, Ben?” Fiona asked. The question was a non sequitur as well as ambiguous: did she mean Takot or the restaurant? But my answer was the same for both, so I shook my head.
“Oh, they maintain a high standard; you are in for a slap-up dinner.” This from the policeman. “This is the best restaurant between Bangkok and Singapore.” He obviously didn’t know how hard it was to find a chopped-egg sandwich in this town. I leaned over to my neighbor and asked for his name in a whisper. I think I had his card someplace in my trousers, but my trousers were lying on my bed back at the hotel. No! They were with my tailor. The cop’s name was Colonel Prasit Ngamdee. I tried to insert it into my memory, but the item was rejected. The next time it came up in conversation, I wrote it down on a scrap of paper.
While all this talk was going on the hors d’oeuvres were circulating.
“The Guide Michelin said they gave it three stars when they inspected Takot two years ago, but it appeared without any. No stars were given to any restaurants in Miranam. I ask you, why such a snub?”
“They don’t think it’s fair, dear boy. Too far away from the River Seine. Too many strange dishes that they don’t understand.”
“But standard French cooking appears on the menu, yes?”
“Yes, but half the dishes are of local origin. Hard to compare what I just ordered with a tarte à l’oignon, I think.” From then on, the talk was about food. When mouths were empty, that is. The good father described every dish and went into detail about its preparation, information that would have been invaluable to a chef or a gourmet. As for me, my appetite was far keener than my memory. I tried to find out what sort of business Chet Ranken was in, but the only answer I got was “import-export,” before the culinary tide returned. The very term “import-export” was enough to alert the former voracious whodunit reader in me.
“This part of the world,” Chet told me, with a grip on my elbow, “has never realized its potential in business. After the exploitation of the last three centuries, you’d think they’d have got the hang of it, but they’re still just catching random profits. There’s so much going to waste. Look, I export fish and seafood from here. Big time. So I hear things in the big offices and down on the docks.”
“The people here, Mr Ranken, will wait,” the colonel said. “They will always win in the long run. I have been dealing with the locals for many years. When I imagine that at last I understand them, they spring on me a … what do you say? A catch-22. Yes?” The policeman grinned at me and then at the priest.
“I’ve never had problems with the locals,” Savitt said. “They know I’m for trade, and they respect me for it.”
I watched to see whether Fiona and Chet exchanged glances. I was sorry to see that they did.
And so it went until waiters arrived with heaped tureens. Another course. Another batch of lobster claws and oysters in seaweed, bami goring and nasi goring. I’d lost count of the platters. For the sake of brevity, I’ve omitted the talk about wines. Of course the sommelier had to be sent for and consulted. Heads were put together, selections were made, and I understood little of what was said, except that it was difficult to choose wines for oriental food. Then silence fell, to be replaced by the tribal noises all of us have learned to make in polite society. Given our mixture of origins, it ended up sounding like a barnyard.
The wines were passed and we drank from the variously shaped glasses. Fiona smiled at me over her wine. It was insincere, but I accepted it in the name of friendship. Why do I always imagine scenarios of romantic attachments? I’m getting too old for that. Maybe it’s my way of missing Anna. I’m not used to being away from home for so long.
When Fiona excused herself from the table some time later, I went along too, just to have a private word with her.
“I waited for you at Tam’s the other afternoon.”
She tried to smile, but it didn’t work. She took my hand.
“Sorry, Mr Cooperman. I ran into something I couldn’t get out of. At the lab. I hope you didn’t wait too long?” Her grip tightened slightly to express the italics.
“There were other people. We drank rather a lot.” I sounded very English to myself; it helped the effect.
“That’s happened before in these latitudes. Are you feeling all right now?”
“Me? Now?”
“Your face is a bit red. Flushed. Are you comfortable with the wine?”
“It might be the shellfish. Or the sun. I’m not used to either.”
“You’ll have to learn to obey the rules of your environment or you’ll be sorry, Mr Cooperman. Remember that poor squid? You wouldn’t like to end up like her, would you?” She was looking very attractive just then under the light, framed in that doorway. But I had other things on my mind I was almost sorry to remember.
“The dead squid?” Fiona looked confused for a moment, then smiled. “Is that an oblique warning?” I asked.
She put an innocent look on her face, but it didn’t stick. It was then that she handed me a piece of paper. I glanced at it, but, of course, I couldn’t make it out in such a short time. While I was still working away at the letters, she added: “It’s my address and phone number. Just in case you get in trouble.” She was standing framed by the doorway of the unisex bathroom. I urged her to go ahead of me. Was that a piece of good advice she’d just given me, or was it a warning? “Don’t let me hold you up,” she said, but I shook my head. Now everything she said seemed to have some deep, hidden double meaning. This game was too tough for a kid from Grantham.
SEVENTEEN
JUDGING FROM WHAT had been put on my plate while I was away from the table and the amounts that had disappeared from other plates, the food lived up to all the care the priest had taken in ordering it. It was a brilliant blending of East and West, without either legs or chop suey. I saw empty plates when the meal was over. The food seemed a mixture of all five continents. I won’t guess about origins; all I know is that it suited me.
Abruptly, Billy Savitt excused himself from the table, and was gone for five minutes. When he returned to his place, his face was newly washed but with no color in it. Whenever I peered in his direction, he was moving things around in his plate or bowl, but not eating much of anything except for some slices of hard-boiled egg. I thought of going to his rescue, but he seemed happy enough, so I left him alone.
“I’m overjoyed to see that you didn’t wait for me!” said a new voice. It was Thomas Lanier, dressed for the occasion in an impeccable tuxedo. He was wearing socks as well. Accompanying him, and turned out in a solid-gold evening dress, but hanging a few feet to the rear of Lanier, was Bev Taylor. She had that “Am-I-at-the-right-party?” look in her eyes as she tried to include everybody in her smile. Lanier was carrying a small parcel which, with a crisp theatrical bow, he handed over to our host.
“Thomas, my boy! I had given you up,” said the priest.
I jumped up and found a free chair and began moving it next to Billy, where there was a space. Fiona got up and hugged Bev, like she’d been turned up unexpectedly by the tide. A waiter found another chair, into which Bev insinuated herself skillfully.
The priest was obviously delighted. He spoke to the waiter in French, and since it had nothing to do with pens, aunts, or tables, I didn’t get it. We had all shifted our places slightly. Now our host turned to his gift. The priest looked as happy as a ten-year-old. There seemed to be more paper than gift. “What’s this? What’s this?” Father O’Mahannay shook the parcel gently, then began to attack the raffia binding. Inside lay a small stone cylinder, anticlimactic in its wrappings. “Oh! ‘Exultate, jubilate!’ Bless my soul and lights! It’s a Syrian seal! Where ever did you find it in these parts?”
“I didn’t look in these parts, of course, you old fraud. I got it off a Cypriot mountebank in Cairo, a blind chap cursed with seven daughters to marry off.”
“It’s wonderful! Exquisite!”
“It’s not Syrian, actually, but Assyrian. It’s
the seal of Gudea, who ruled four thousand years before the invention of Big Macs and napalm.”
“Look at the detail in the archers! How can I thank you?”
“Forgive me for sleeping past my alarm.”
“That’s easily done now you’ve joined us, dear boy.”
“Who was the seal made for?” I asked.
Lanier turned to me. “Gudea was a king before Ur of the Chaldees emerged as a great power. Abraham came from Ur. There’s a statue of Gudea in the British Museum. He looks cold in his little wool cap and clenched fingers.”
“Thomas, is there anything you don’t know?” This from Fiona. “I mean, I know you surprise all of us most of the time. I remember when … when you didn’t … Never mind. I suppose you know everything?” Fiona asked. I could see that Lanier had to struggle for a suitably modest answer, which I missed because the food was once more moving around the table. O’Mahannay patted Thomas on the arm as a final gesture of thanks, then went back to his dinner. It took a minute or two before the conversation got going again.
“The French changed the whole concept of local cooking,” Father O’Mahannay said. “The other chief influences are from the Buddhist north and the Muslim south. They have left the Bengali influence out completely, I think. Some of the dishes are Persian. I think we are dining well tonight.”
“I can’t fathom what this is,” whispered Fiona to her neighbor.
“Something very special for you,” Chester Ranken said, looking like a womanizer on television.
“I won’t tell you it’s an eyeball,” said Thomas loudly, grinning back at Ranken.
“But I like it!” insisted Beverley, as though she might get an argument. Fiona reached across the table and gave Bev the rest of hers.
“Sorry I don’t have more,” she said, and got a simulated sour look from her friend.
“Don’t forget, Father, that you now can get McDonald’s hamburgers and Kentucky Fried Chicken in several places along Ex-Charpentier Avenue.” A jab at his own people from the policeman. Was he trying to turn the gathering in a political direction, or was he making a joke? I looked at his name again where I had scribbled it.
Beverley was reorganizing herself: adjusting the placement of her plate and wineglass. When she had finished doing her own, she began working on the place settings of her neighbors. She did it slowly and without interfering with the conversation which went on around her. Of the whole company, apart from myself and Billy, Beverley was the most ill at ease. She kept looking at Billy when she thought he wasn’t watching. Was Billy her shy novelist? The one she was looking for? I watched him myself to see if he measured up to what I imagined a successful novelist looked like. I couldn’t imagine choosing Billy’s cover. But what did I know? When Beverley sent a smile across the table at me, the policeman noted it and mopped his chin with his napkin. In spite of the air conditioning, the room was hot and not without tension.
Billy Savitt said, “Yes, I know you can find fast food all over the world today. But the food here—I mean in this restaurant, not just in town—can compare with the best food served anywhere.” He coughed into his napkin.
I seem to be fated to run into food snobs wherever I go. I enjoy my food; I’ve even, back in Canada, thanks to Anna Abraham, got to know more about a wider variety of dishes than the ones I was brought up on. So far, I have failed to make a cult of it. And I think that chefs are more often floored by praise from vocal customers than they are by complaints that the wine has gone off. I had just vowed to say nothing of this to the company, when Chet said it for me. At this, Father O’Mahannay’s eyes blazed. He sucked in a big breath.
“You’re always saying that, Chet. It only proves that you have eaten too many hamburgers in your time. McDonald’s has killed your palate. Too many steak-frites. Not everyone has the capacity—”
“He won’t be put off by that, you tedious, lovable old fraud,” Lanier put in.
“You must know that there’s not a long way between the worst roast beef sandwich and the best,” Chester said. “It’s not the same distance as, say, between a good book and a rotten one. A county cricket club and what you might see at Lord’s. How far wrong can you go in boiling water to cook noodles in?”
“You can cook them in broth, for a start!” The priest was still smiling when he turned to the rest of us. “Chet gets carried away by his passion! You see how deeply he is committed to good cuisine.” He had caught Chet with his mouth open and his chopsticks inserting a fat morsel. “Look at him! He makes my argument better than I could have made it myself.”
I tried to move the discussion out of the kitchen and into the realm of politics. When fresh platters of food arrived, they came with a flourish of waiters in black and white with lots of silverplate on view and much steam and fuss. I thought it must be time for dessert. I got something very like sweet meatballs with gravy. The people around me looked happy with their choices, and the conversation went underground as the eating began. I tried to rekindle the talk with a question.
“Tell me, who actually runs this place?”
“But he came out with the Gâteau St Honoré.”
“No, no, no. Not the restaurant. I mean this country. Miranam.”
“Oh! Well, the top man is Gau Deemark,” the priest said. “General Gau Deemark. He conferred that title on himself a few years ago. That’s not telling tales out of school, is it, Colonel?”
The policeman, whose mouth was full at that moment, mimed his approbation with head and hands. After he had swallowed, he said: “Tonight I am not a colonel, not even a policeman. Think of me as simply another of this happy table.” His speech was just a touch formal. I thought it might be interesting to see who opened up and who buttoned up. In the end, he opened the door himself: “You know, Mr Cooperman, there is but one general in all Miranam. When our leader took the title, he demoted all other generals. The word is used now only with reference to Gau Deemark. You will find here no general contractors, general hospitals, or general practitioners. Large American corporations work here under names that they use only here: Universal Electric, Major Mills, International Motors. You need to wear specially tinted sunglasses in Miranam, Mr Cooperman.”
Then Father O’Mahannay went on: “He was bounced out of Sandhurst not for smuggling dope, booze, or women into his rooms, but for showing very little aptitude for field gunnery. He makes the laws and he is top of the list of the people who break them. He’s not a thug or gangster, not in the usual way. He’s the sort of fellow who might enjoy your piano-playing. Next day he’ll send a truck to pick up your piano. The day after that, he hauls you off to jail because the piano won’t play as well at the palace. He’s not mean-spirited. A practical man.”
The policeman’s face was redder than it had been. It wasn’t because something had gone down the wrong way. I reached for my wine and emptied the glass. The faces around me had lost the look of polite interest in what was being said. I let the waiter fill the glass again.
“He’s spoiled,” Fiona suggested, breaking the brief silence. “The French spoiled him, gave him too much for a boy that age. Now the multinationals spoil him.”
“So he rules by whim?”
“Oh, le roi s’amuse, but he has counselors: the Council of State. They keep him within bounds. His appetites are venal, not political.”
“So if you go into business here, and you make a go of it, he could move in and take it away from you?” I asked, hoping that the answer would simplify my job.
“Happens all the time. Twice in three years.”
“Is that what happened to that outfit I went diving with?”
“Poseidon Outfitters,” Beverley added to be helpful.
“I heard something about that lot. American, weren’t they?”
“That wasn’t Gau Deemark,” O’Mahannay said. “That’s not one of Gau Deemark’s interests. But his habits and practices have rubbed off on the people below him. The usual pattern is this: Gau Deemark picks out a young offic
er in the National Guard and brings him up the hill to Government House. In six months’ time he is running everything with the blessing of the Council of State. A year later, they are looking for ways to unload him. They intrigue, they scheme. But Gau Deemark stands behind his man. He swears that he will defend him to the death. But in the end, the man is sacrificed to prevent a rising, a coup, or the resignation of the council en masse. That’s the way the world goes round south of Bangkok.”
“So, it was one of these jumped-up young officers?”
The policeman was studying my face. He gave me a beingwatched feeling, and I didn’t like it.
“Why the interest, dear boy?”
“Are you planning to write a detective story, Mr Cooperman?” the policeman asked innocently. The look that followed his question should have put me on my guard. Instead, I looked at my wineglass.
“I went diving with that outfit yesterday. I heard about it on the boat going out to the reef. What’s the name of the present golden boy? And how far along the road has he come?”
“Fred Rungchiva has been the golden boy for over a year,” Beverley said. “He’s played his cards well, much better than most of the others. But I wouldn’t be surprised to see him disappear before this time next year. He’s pissed off quite a few people.”
“And when he goes? Will there be a public trial? What will happen to him?”
“Ben,” the priest replied, “many things here in Takot, in all of Miranam, are similar to things you know from home. But the police are another matter. Officially, the country abolished capital punishment after the Second World War. May I speak my mind freely, Colonel? There was cheering in the streets as the last rusty old guillotine was put on a boat and sent back to Mother France. There are no public executions. There aren’t even private ones. Officially, a murderer, for instance, is sent to prison for life. But not a long one. Officially, he dies trying to escape, of a ruptured spleen, or various and sundry questionable causes.”
