East of Suez (21 page)

In forty minutes—yes, that short a time—I left the shop
wearing
my new, immaculate white
smoking
and dark trousers with a satin stripe up the leg. While the tailor had worked at his machine, his attractive assistant had rounded up a dress shirt, vest, collar buttons, and bow tie to complete the job. She even buffed my shoes to make them pass muster. Would you believe cufflinks? They let me go only when I promised to return the suit, which was merely basted together, for a proper job the following morning. I crossed my heart and walked out into the night clutching the tailor’s card and instructions about the whereabouts of the Hôtel de Nancy.

It was the same maître d’ who had stopped me less than an hour and a half ago. As I walked by him, I detected no sign on his face that this was our second encounter. In fact, he smiled as he waved me in the direction of a table near the big window.

Several people were sitting with Father O’Mahannay when I got there. The priest himself was dressed in a very formal soutane, cassock, or whatever you call clerical garb with skirts, and the rest of the company were no less well turned out. Next to the priest, wearing a spectacular midnight blue evening dress, sat Fiona Calaghan, who gave me a warm smile of recognition. I’d been expecting to run into her again. Next to her sat my friend Billy Savitt, looking uncomfortable in his dark, unpressed dinner jacket.

Fiona wasn’t the only surprise at the feast: the policeman who had pulled me out of the gutter smiled up at me.

“Hello, Mr Cooperman. Good to see you.”

“Good evening, Colonel. We meet in the strangest places. Didn’t I see you going into Le Select a few hours ago?”

“I’m delighted to hear that you know the restaurant.”

I’d lost his name again as soon as I heard it. I wondered whether my inability to retain names might not be tinged with a trace of racism. Certainly I had my peculiar problems with all names, but his was the name I stumbled over most. In penance, I gave him a specially friendly smile. He flashed a warm grin.

The only complete stranger in the group was tall, blond, and handsome, and introduced to me as Chester Ranken, an American businessman. Instead of shaking hands, Ranken raised his right hand in a gesture that showed me his open palm, the way Indians did in the movies of my youth. He was a goodlooking man with a long face, well barbered, with a hint of aftershave. He struck me as a man comfortable with women.

The introductions having been made, and a chair pulled out for me next to Ranken, the stranger began quizzing me about my origins. It turned out that he came from Syracuse, about halfway between Grantham and New York City. His manner was informal and youthful, in spite of tufts of gray hair at his temples. It wasn’t long into the conversation before the formal

“Mister” was dropped in favor of “Ben” and “Chet,” which was “what everybody calls me.”

Father O’Mahannay commandeered the privilege of ordering for everybody. (It was then that I noticed that up to now they had been nibbling on what looked like shredded carrots.) The policeman, whose name was secure in my Memory Book back at the tailor’s, as a local might have claimed the privilege of ordering, but he smiled on. The priest’s ordering was like a theatrical performance. The waiter made detailed notes. His few suggestions were made with knowledge of the kitchen’s current resources. O’Mahannay pondered each of his choices, while pulling at his earlobe. When he ran into an impasse with the waiter, he called for the chef. Now the ordering began in earnest. This he did in a long conversation with the apparently rapt chef. They seemed to know one another. English and French competed with hand gestures. I didn’t know, from what I’d overheard, whether to expect frogs’ legs or chop suey.

When the ordering had finished, the general conversation started again. Chet Ranken asked me about the Niagara frontier. (I’d said that I lived “outside Toronto.”) He seemed to know a lot about the Upper Niagara and also about the river below the falls. “Even at Queenston, the current will give a small boat a rough time.” I told my story about Lij Swift, the bootlegger, who now ran an after-hours restaurant not far from there. Ranken added: “The Feds never nailed Lij. By the time they got interested, he was part of the folklore. But his old car, a big Buick, had bullet holes in it.” Hearing about Lij—short for Elijah—here in Takot, shrank the world to pocket-size. My police friends from Grantham were among Lij’s regular customers.

“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.”