The Demon of Dakar (5 page)

The party at the far
end of the restaurant was singing so loudly they could hear it all the way in the kitchen. Johnny smiled to himself, leaning with the torch over a crème brûlée so that Pirjo would have time to pee.

“It is the medicine,” she said apologetically.

Johnny wondered what kind of medication an eighteen-year-old girl needed, but had not asked, only waved encouragingly.

It had been a full-speed start. The day after Johnny had met Slobodan for the first time, and the other chefs Feo and Donald, he found himself in the kitchen at Dakar, with his knives wrapped in a kitchen towel, full of anticipation but also a little tense about a new workplace and new routines.

He would help out, above all with the cold food and desserts, the presentation and general kitchen organization.

Feo was the one who seemed the most open and talkative. Almost as soon as they met, he had started talking about the woman he had met in Algarve, how he had served her, fallen in love, saved up money, and
traveled to Sweden for better or for worse, stepped off at Arlanda with a note in his wallet with her name on it and the city where she had said she lived.

With the help of a friendly man outside the railway station in Uppsala he had located the woman’s name in the telephone directory.

“Now I am very happy,” he said and Johnny saw that he really meant it.

“It will be a boy!” Feo laughed as he chopped celery. “I promise you!”

He radiated joy, and not only because he was going to be a father. He performed his work in the kitchen with a degree of accuracy that testified to a deep-seated sense of personal satisfaction. Many times that day Johnny found himself staring at his colleague.

Feo’s joie de vivre also found expression in his body movements, which could have been a disaster in such a narrow space, where his long legs and windmill arms always appeared to be in motion. But like a professional dancer, he was coordinated and in complete control.

He had brought his love of fish and shellfish from Portugal. The most wonderful sauces were magically transfigured by his fish broth.

Donald, who was the head chef, was much more restrained. He had wished Johnny welcome but not said much else. He always worked at the meat stove and disliked, not to say hated, Slobodan Andersson.

“The lying poodle is a miscreant, a spectacularly failed combination of Skåne and Belgrade,” he said when Johnny asked how Dakar’s management worked.

“Slobodan is a pig, but a good pig,” Feo objected. “He is perhaps not … what do you say about dogs that do their business inside?”

“House-broken,” Johnny suggested.

“Exactly. Slobban is perhaps not house-broken, but he makes things happen.”

As he talked he put a couple of pieces of halibut into the frying pan. Donald stood frozen at the stove. A fillet was sizzling in the pan. Tessie requested another order of halibut. Donald nodded, and Feo laughed.

“Yes, please, another halibut. Hello there, Tessie!” he yelled out after Tessie, who left as quickly as she came in. Donald shot him a sharp look.

Johnny smiled to himself. He thought that he would enjoy working
in Dakar’s kitchen. He had not thought about Sofia in Jönköping for several hours.

“How long has Tessie been working here?” he asked Feo.

“She started at about the same time as me. She is from New York.”

“Long Island,” Donald added.

Feo grinned.

“She is never in love, that is her biggest problem,” he continued. “She needs a man.”

Pirjo returned from the bathroom. Tessie came in with two new orders.

“Two anglerfish,” Donald said.

“Loud and clear,” Feo replied.

Johnny helped Pirjo. Gonzo came in from the dining room, went without a word to the dirty dishes, and started loading up the dishwasher.

It was his last week. Everyone had heard how he and Armas, in connection with opening up after the summer break, had screamed at each other in the changing room. Armas had emerged with a satisfied expression, as if he had killed a rat.

Gonzo came out after five minutes but did not go out into the dining room. It was only after Armas came in and told him that Gonzo went out to do his job. Everyone was amazed that he had not left immediately. He also didn’t try to engage his coworkers’ support in the conflict, only muttering to himself.

No one asked him what it was all about, but Tessie had mentioned something about Gonzo trying to pressure Armas, that he had information that could hurt Armas. It was gossip of the kind that Feo and Donald thought laughable—what could little Gonzo know that could possibly harm the powerful Armas?

A woman came into the
kitchen a little after nine. Donald glared at her but said nothing.

“The bathroom is to the right in the corridor,” Feo said.

Sometimes customers went through the wrong door.

“I’m supposed to start working here,” the woman said.

“You are the new one! Wonderful! We need many beautiful women here, isn’t that right, Johnny?”

Feo closed the door of the warming cabinet and wiped his hands on the cloth he had tied at his waist.

“Welcome. I am Feo.”

“Thank you. I’m starting tomorrow and I’m more than a little nervous. I’ve never waitressed before.”

“Typical Slobodan,” Donald muttered.

“That is Donald. He is nice, I promise. Johnny talks funny and he is also new. You will have to start a club, don’t you think? What is your name?”

“Eva Willman.”

“Of course I will,” Feo exclaimed in an attempt at a pun, and Donald stared at him.

“Your anglerfish,” he said and Feo threw himself over the stove.

Johnny introduced himself and shook hands.

“You are the brother of Simon’s mother, aren’t you?”

Johnny nodded.

“It was through her …”

He returned to the dessert but snuck glances at the new waitress while Feo enthusiastically talked about Dakar. She was around Johnny’s own age. His sister Bitte had told him that Eva was divorced with two teenage boys. Johnny studied her from behind. He had noticed that he had started staring at women, not to check them out but to find faults and defects, as if his time with Sofia had perverted his sight.

She had rejected him too many times, and when she later approached him, he was unable to make love. Their cooling relationship had made him limp. It was not only the physical change, more fundamental was that his view of women had changed. He was as interested in women as before, but now he felt disdain, or even sometimes hatred had stolen in, like a malignant virus.

A woman’s laughter in the street, the hint of a beautiful curve in a woman’s body, or a woman’s voice now left Johnny largely indifferent. If any feelings made themselves known then it was simply disdain, a cold
dismissiveness. Where he had earlier thought he saw genuine joy, desirable beauty, and promising optimism, he now increasingly saw hypocrisy and falseness.

Women had become a foreign and antagonistic group.

The feeling of being rejected was not pleasant, and he was not happy with the change, it was nothing he had wished for. In moments of clarity he questioned his perception, tried to get some insight into what it was that had perverted him. Was it simply the disastrous relationship with Sofia? Was there something in himself that had nurtured these feelings?

Sofia had rejected him, and not only in bed. He felt that she had also shut him out of the different parts of her life, as if he was not worthy of accompanying her.

“You are so immature,” she would say, and he would feel as if he were a child caught doing something wrong.

He became more and more disgusted with himself, as if he had allowed himself to become a victim, and one day he did what Sofia had perhaps wanted for a long time. He packed up his few possessions and left.

Now he stared at the
waitress who was laughing together with Feo. Johnny heard the Portuguese tell her about the expected baby, how happy he was and what a fantastic woman he lived with, and he saw how Eva lit up.

Donald sighed, making a little extra noise when he carelessly tossed the pan into the sink.

“Fix the pan,” he told Pirjo, who obeyed him immediately and started scrubbing it under the faucet.

Her face was flushed from the heat in the kitchen. She cast a brief glance at Johnny, pushed some stray hairs off her forehead, and turned her body as if she wanted to hide from the world.

You think I’m nothing but an old man, Johnny thought, and wished he could show his disdain for all little girls who thought they were hotshots in the kitchen.

Tessie appeared in the window again. After a period of calm, the pressure was once again mounting in the dining room. It was as if waves of customers were washing in over Dakar.

Johnny sensed that Gonzo was not being much help. He was not going to put in much effort this last week.

“One veal,” Tessie said, but Donald did not answer.

“Did you get it or do you want it in writing?” Tessie said with such aggression in her tone that even Donald looked up.

Then he turned his back to her, nabbed a piece of meat, and threw it in the pan.

“Deep down she’s nice,” Feo said. “All Americans think everyone hates them.”

“Why do you say that?” Eva asked. She had placed herself in the doorway.

“They’re bombing the hell out of everyone,” Feo said.

“They should bomb this place,” Donald said.

“Then you would die,” Feo said.

“I
am
dead.”

Donald smiled unexpectedly at Johnny and leaned nearsightedly over a plate. He painstakingly arranged a few leaves in a salad, then straightened his back and regarded the arrangement before bending down again for a final adjustment.

Tessie turned up again.

“Sweet love,” Donald said in English, and pushed over a plate.

The waitress stared at him, but the hint of a smile swept across her for the moment rather tense features before she left.

“Just think what a little diplomacy can achieve,” Donald said, and Johnny was forced to revise his opinion of him. There would be many times that he would get to experience how Donald awakened from a basically catatonic state and started to engage in wry and lightly ironic banter.

The new waitress hung around and watched them attentively in their work. It was as if Feo’s introduction and jocular patter had done her good, because she looked relaxed. Johnny could see that she, like most visitors in a restaurant kitchen, was careful not to get in the way. The
kitchen in Dakar was narrow. Three chefs and an apprentice were crowded into the space of several square meters.

At his last restaurant in Jönköping, where Johnny had worked for about a year, the dining room had swelled out into a veritable sea while the chefs worked with the claustrophobic feeling of being in the cabin of a submarine.

The work required a choreography of quick but well-thought out movements and an intuitive ability to sense where one’s coworkers were and where they were likely to move in the next moment.

“Behind you,” came from Feo, who was between the fish stove and the window, and with a smile he slipped past Donald, who in turn was making a sudden excursion with the meat thermometer.

Pirjo was sent out to fetch more filets. Donald watched her brushing the meat, while he prepared two Cornish game hens.

The temperature rose. Feo, who was preparing a sauce for the salmon, was bright red in the face. Pirjo returned to the desserts. Donald poked the poultry breasts with his index finger and then lifted them onto the plates that had been prepared for them. He drizzled the morel sauce over them, corrected the potato-and-duck liver terrine, and rang the bell. Tessie appeared and took the plates away.

Dozens of pots and pans were cooking at once. Steam rose lazily from the fish broth, pans sizzled, an open flame suddenly appeared on the stove and the plates that Pirjo supplied clattered.

Feo looked up and gave Johnny a quick glance as if to say: now you understand why we are grateful that you came.

Johnny, as yet untrained in the particular routines and the others’ patterns of movement, tried to keep the pace and see to the priorities.

A sudden break in the flow of orders created a few minutes of breathing room. Everyone straightened their backs. Feo drank a little water and Donald slipped off to the hand sink.

“You smoke too much,” Feo called out.

Donald did not reply, but the cloud of smoke from the sink area showed the lack of impact of his coworker’s views. Johnny was surprised that a kitchen chef would take a smoke break. He had never experienced this before, but he did not comment on it.

It was completely quiet in the kitchen. Pirjo was resting against the counter, examining her cuticles with a dreamy expression. Feo was standing at the sink provided for their personal use, looking at his face in the mirror while he thoroughly dried his hands with a paper towel.

Eva lingered in the doorway. She had not said anything in a while. She knows us, Johnny thought, and it struck him that she reminded him a little of his sister. A somewhat reserved manner, often with a cool smile on her lips, a smile that could come across as superior but that in his sister’s case expressed a desire for mutual understanding. Johnny was often irritated by Bitte’s tentative personality, her somewhat lazy appearance and her tendency to submit to others.

If Eva was the same, it would be hard for her. You had to be able to take what you needed in this business. If you didn’t stand up for your rights, you would be taken advantage of.

“How much are they paying you?” Johnny asked.

Eva looked around the kitchen. Feo was studying her in the mirror. Donald, who had returned from his smoke break, let out a snort.

“Not very much, but it’s supposed to increase later,” Eva said.

“That’s what they always say,” Donald muttered.

“It’s a job,” Eva said and tried to catch his gaze.

“A job,” Feo repeated.

Johnny knew that his question had broken a silent agreement not to publicly discuss their remuneration, especially not with someone who was newly hired. At that point one was expected to hold one’s tongue and only slowly develop a clearer picture of all the constructions and agreements in the business. One had to make the mark before one gained the right to ask such questions, and that could take half a year, perhaps longer.