Food Fiction by Nicolas Pichay

Che Un Learns Pinakbet

(From the last chapter: It has been a month since Beth found a job as an “all around” in the dirty kitchen of a Chinese restaurant in Binondo. Since then, she’s been taught how to prepare food by the young Sidhharta-looking Che Un, who is now—yet again—unobstrusive in her admiration for Beth, like a monk meditating on the rising radiance of dawn. We hear Che Un,  in his mind, speak English.)

I, Che Un offer , and Beth (her hair still rumpled by sleep,  her skin tight in the cold of 5 a.m.) accepts a bowl of fresh hot congee under the four flourescent lights of the dirty kitchen. 

Groggily, she walks in her over-used flip-flops, she rests the bowl on the small table across where I stand and begins to scoop the rice soup. She blows across the chinese spoon, slightly opens her mouth, and sips the broth. Her eyes are half closed as the heat from the congee rises to her palate. Then the warmth of ginger registers in her tongue and finally, the smoldering heat of the sprinkled chilli and fried garlic bits spread in her mouth like running fire. Sweat forms into a tiny drop at her temples, near her left ear.

In this cold morning, the heat of my congee has run through Beth’s body. I could wipe that sweat dew on her cheek. I could touch her but I would burn; be engulfed in flames; be consumed by a conflagration more instant than chinese noodles dropped into boiling water. Nothing would be left but the ash of my body forever suspended in air, and the tar of my bones indelibly marked on the floor .  And I will accept this destruction as my fate. The price I will willingly pay for a chance to stand near her face, close enough to catch a whiff of her ungargled morning breath.

I, Che Un, look again at her face and there is a grain of rice stuck between her upper lip and her nose.  I half jump back thinking it a witch. I drop a saucepan cover.  The witch bends down and picks it up for me. And she look s up from where she has crouched, the metal cover momentarily blocks her face from view. She rises, and the face is revealed. A moment of recognition. The wart of rice on her face has transformed into a delicate yellow pearl suspended upon a landscape of serenity.

I sigh looking at the floor. In the corner of my eye, I see her smile. There are bits of brown garlic on her teeth. I look away at the kitchen clock. It is 5:30 a.m. When I look at her again, I see that there are black bits also on her gums. Could they be rare black orchids adorning her beauty? Another quick look. The garlic had turned soggy by now and look like polka dot cavities on her teeth. 

She looked exotic.

I, Che Un, speak these thoughts in my mind wanting to share them with Beth. But what good will that do? Despite all my expressiveness, I may well be deaf and mute before Beth’s eyes. I speak no Filipino. She knows nothing of Cantonese. And the English that we both now is just enough to cover our naked bashfulness.

And so it comes to pass that I keep my thoughts in my mind—a strange place where anything can happen—and imagine myself talking in English in the vain hope that one day, Beth may open my heart. On that day, these thoughts would pour out like mongo grains escaping from a hole in a sack, unto the ground, where it will turn to letters and assemble into words for her to read.

Yesterday we prepared a 12-course lunch for a party of 100 people. Even with the two-day preparations and the hiring of additional kitchen hands, it was hellish as hell goes.

My Dear Beth,

I am so grateful that you had taught me how to prepare your most favorite dish the hellish afternoon we prepared lunch for a party of .

It has been a month since we’ve first met in the dirty kitchen of the Chinese restaurant And so I am speaking in my mind. And in my mind, I still cannot imagine speaking in Tagalog. But in it, I am more comfortable to use English.