The Chef by Martin Suter Read Free Book Online

fixed his gaze on his guest and when
the mouth spoke, the hand with its morsels waited respectfully and at a discreet distance.
    ‘All three? Peaceful, just and united? That would be nice.’
    ‘But you don’t believe it’s going to happen.’
    Maravan shrugged. As if this were the sign it had been waiting for, the hand set itself in motion, placed a ball of rice in the mouth, and began to make another.
    ‘For a long time I did believe in it. I even gave up my job as a chef in Kerala and went back to Sri Lanka.’
    Maravan told her of his training in Kerala and his career in a number of Ayurvedic wellness resorts. ‘One more year and I would have been the head chef,’ he sighed.
    ‘Why did you go back then?’ Andrea was holding a morsel of chapatti with coriander foam and could not wait to put it in her mouth. She had never realized how much more sensual it was
to eat with your hands.
    ‘In 2001 the United National Party won the elections. Everybody thought there would be peace, the LTTE called a ceasefire and peace negotiations began in Oslo. It looked as if finally we
would see the Sri Lanka I wanted to return to. And I had to be there at the start of that.’
    He dipped his finger into the finger bowl, dried it with the napkin, piled the plates, and stood up, all in a single flowing movement, or so it appeared to Andrea.
    She watched him disappear into the kitchen. When he came out again a few moments later he was carefully carrying a long, very narrow platter, in the centre of which there was nothing apart from
a row of precisely positioned, shiny balls. Looking like mini versions of old ivory billiard balls, they had the consistency of candied fruits, were warm, sweet and spicy, and tasted of butter,
cardamom and cinnamon.
    ‘And then?’
    ‘I got a job as a
commis
in a hotel on the west coast.’
    ‘As a
commis
?’ she interrupted him. ‘I thought you were almost a head chef.’
    ‘But I was a Tamil, too. That wasn’t a big deal in Kerala. But it was in the Singhalese part of Sri Lanka. I spent almost three years working as a
commis
.’
    Andrea was already onto her second polished ball. ‘You’re an artist.’
    ‘My chance came in 2004. The hotel chain I was with had turned a tea factory in the Highlands into a boutique hotel and they made me
chef de partie
.’
    ‘So why didn’t you stay?’
    ‘Because of the tsunami.’
    ‘In the Highlands?’
    ‘It destroyed the hotel on the coast, and one of the Singhalese chefs who survived got my job. I had to go back to the north. And from there I watched how both the LTTE and government used
all the world’s relief supplies to advance their own political aims. It was then that I knew this wasn’t the Sri Lanka I’d wanted to return to.’ He was nibbling one of the
balls now too, and put it back on his plate. ‘And won’t be for a long time.’
    ‘But the tsunami was not that long ago.’
    ‘A little more than three years.’
    ‘So how come you speak such good German?’
    Maravan shrugged. ‘We’ve learnt to adapt. This includes learning languages.’ After a brief pause he uttered the classic example of Swiss dialect:
‘
Chuchichäschtli
.’
    Andrea laughed. ‘So why Switzerland?’
    ‘There were many Swiss people in the Ayurveda resorts in Kerala and in the hotels in Sri Lanka. I always found them friendly.’
    ‘Here too?’
    Maravan thought about it. ‘Here Tamils are treated better than back home. There’s almost 45,000 of us over here. Tea?’
    ‘Why not?’
    He removed the dirty crockery.
    ‘Do you mind me just sitting here and being waited on?’
    ‘It’s your day off,’ he replied, dashing into the kitchen.
    A short while later he returned with a tray carrying a tea service. ‘White tea. Made with the silver tips of tea leaves from the Highlands near Dimbula,’ he explained, going back
into the kitchen and bringing out a plate of sweetmeats for each of them. An ice lolly with sprinkles of green, surrounded by