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At the entrance of the restaurant, she hesitated a little. Out of cautious habit she looked with feigned disinterest first to the left and then, to the right—to appear lost, as if she did not mean to be right where she was—although both her parents were already dead and she was already of age. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the red, nostalgic clusters of the Ixora flower. When she was young she would hide in the nearby bush, snap a stem of Ixora—a fragile, juicy crunch—gingerly unsheathe the exposed filament from the bottom of the stem and would be careful not to disturb that revealed, delicate fork, whose tip held a tense liquid amber bulb. She did this to imitate the adults (or, sometimes, to imitate even her own parents) whom she could see through a window-like hole in the wall of the restaurant, holding their forks. She would open her mouth, lay the precarious drop of nectar on her tongue whereupon immediately it would lose shape on touch and burst and flatten on her small tongue, on her taste buds—she would writhe in pleasure although that tiny drop tasted like tongue, like the ceiling of mouths, like nothing at all.
She cleared her throat to ready herself before creaking open the sliding door, above which hung a signboard: Welcome to the Restaurant. Darcey entered the restaurant—a bell tinkled—and took in with a furtive, fast, sweeping glance that everyone was enjoying themselves. Red, warm light radiated from long lamps. The tantalising sounds and smells of food being cooked and savoured made the insides of her mouth wet; she even felt a little hot and blushed a little. It had indeed been a long while since she had visited an establishment of this sort. At first, no one turned to look: they had all expected customers to be like themselves: old; maybe having a handful of visits left to the restaurant; dying. It was only when a customer who was having a break from eating inadvertently glanced at Darcey and had gasped too audibly that the other customers’ curiosities were piqued. It was bad manners to look at others in such an establishment, but they looked anyway. When they saw Darcey, perky, upright, supple-thin, able-bodied, radiant, they all gasped, one after another. They covered their mouths and whispered to and among themselves, most of them now hanging their heads low, slightly abashed. Who was she? This young, young, person? From the darkness behind the counter a cough resounded out. Everyone, including Darcey, turned and looked towards the counter. Tap, tap! An irritated chef reminded everyone about basic decency, his wet fingers pointing at some signboard with some suggestive pictograms and red crosses. Silence returned. Then, the sounds of eating returned, too. Darcey swallowed her saliva. The chef wiped the water off his hands on a cloth and with the straight of his arm directed Darcey to her seat. She walked with small but fast steps and sat down while the chef retreated from the counter and went to the kitchen where he had an all-consuming view of everyone. There used to be cubicle walls for every customer (shame, shyness and all that) but they had been removed when the number of customers dwindled: the chef had to find a way to keep desperate passion alive, once a year, when the restaurant would open; now, everyone could see everyone, could enjoy peeking at another enjoying themself; but basic decency of course still needed to be upheld—no gawking!
Darcey ordered with affected confidence a drink to start.
The wan light of the awesome, noiseless Sun came through the windowless windows (space without glass) and condensation made the cup seem like it was encrusted with a density of flecks of white gems; now and then a few neighbouring gems burst and fused, running down and leaving behind a clear glassy streak. Darcey drank the drink with a methodically consistent pace through the metal straw, which was first bitingly cold to the her pursing lips then blissfully numbing, and was amused by how ice-cubes surface faster and faster as the level of the drink fell with more and more acceleration, all this although her sipping remained constant; the final but incomplete sip spurted in her mouth and at the bottom of the cup, and as she stopped sucking on the straw, some drink flowed out in a pool, filling out the base of the cup with a shallow orange. At once, she regretted not having self-control and being too taken with the drink’s sweetness: she now had less space in her stomach for the courses that were to come. Nevertheless, it was with some satisfaction and happiness that she saw the empty cup collected by the swift, professional motion of the chef (who was also the waiter); it was whisked away to some faraway darkness deeper into the restaurant, and she waited for the satisfying clink as the cup sank to and tapped the bottom of the soap-bubbling, metal sink.
Darcey was happy that the restaurant still existed, that the chef still stoked his motivation, kept it still alive. The restaurant was one of the last places left that provided a way to relieve carnal desire: with the advent, one or two centuries ago, of the Feeding Mould (as some called it) that neatly—too neatly—and conveniently—too conveniently—fed everyone, the essential biological need to eat was satisfied basically overnight; it had something to do with the Feeding Mould living in the human body, providing (rather than depriving,as a parasite does). All that is to say that, practically instantly, the term “breadwinner” became an anachronism; it was the end of one of the main Conflicts that drove the Story of the Human. There was a general, incipient listlessness that grew within the skull of every person, young and old; there was a sense of some sort of senselessness, and then, of deflation, of exhaustion; people would be seen walking around distrait or confused. The essential spark of life stopped sparking. The days seemed free, too free, and the sun waned, bleached by its own light which was, itself, already fading.
But, presently, Darcey could not wait to eat, to savour. She had ordered a whole many-coursed meal. In the restaurant, at least one thing was still following the order of natural law: the appetiser arrived first. Chilled Pineapple. She picked up a slice with her bare fingers—icy—and put it in her mouth. The wet juice was sweet! She rubbed the slice back and forth on her palate using her tongue, and when she finally swallowed it her tongue and palate felt like sandpaper and tasted like iron. Finally, the first proper dish came—a pot of Stir-fried Mushrooms. The insides of her mouth turned wet when she sniffed at the succulent steam billowing out of a small hole at the top of the pot. It scalded the insides of her nose a little, but she paid it no mind. She unveiled the dish, and a small burst of heat blasted her face—she took it all in. Unable to wait, she drank some of the watery gravy; it burned her tongue, and so its taste grew blander; in an effort to bring that first burst of flavour back, she drank more and more, and in turn one at a time each bud of her tongue was lost, was scalded away. It did not deter her. Then, eagerly, she brought a mushroom up to her mouth. Not yet accustomed to the chewing movements of her jaw, she clenched both the mushroom and the edge of her tongue in one bite—she flinched from the pinch. Folding her tongue on itself and rubbing the slightly bleeding part of her tongue on the walls and ceiling of her mouth and the columns of her teeth, she massaged the injury. While she nursed herself, a fat, decrepit man sat next to her. “How old are you?” he asked. When Darcey replied, the old man’s eyes grew wide, but soon a melancholy weighed his eyelids back down. “That’s horrible. That’s horrible,” he repeated. Darcey ate her mushrooms (no longer biting herself) while the man talked. She did not understand what was so horrible about her being young, having so many long years left, and only felt shy and conscious of her embarrassing eating, but she could not bear to stop. The conversation ended soon, and when the old man’s oily, soupy dish came, he ate mechanically with his toothless maw. But, to young Darcey, to whom such a delicious soup could only be utterly enjoyed, the old man seemed to be enjoying himself despite his mechanical motions. And now, Darcey was also enjoying herself, her mouth full of mushrooms. After every dish she would savour her saliva which would be flavoured by the lingering tastes in her mouth: mushrooms, spicy pork, and finally, pungent century egg, which tried to overshadow all the other tastes.
The course’s penultimate dish was one of those exquisitely steamed fishes where the head of the fish was still fresh—fresh and moving, with mouth and gills gasping in air—and because the steaming process retained the colours of the fish’s skin and the transparent, gel-like sauce moistened the scales, one could not tell where the living portion started nor where the cooked portion ended. Dancey was fascinated; she had never seen such a lively dish before. Cutting into the tail-end of the fish, she marvelled at the stoicism of the still rhythmically pulsing gills: red, silver, red, not a single spasm nor jerk. In her mouth, the fat beneath the skin of the fish melted all over the flesh; the flesh was so wonderfully delicious, even the flesh closer to the head from which a fishy aroma could be whiffed. When she was done with the fish, she could not even tell if she was full or not. Only when she stood up did she feel an unfamiliar but pleasurable protrusion where her stomach was located—a full satisfaction; at either side of her waist, her skin drew in tightly, trying to keep her belly from spilling out. She sat down, and her fullness receded to being some nebulous feeling. She could keep it up.
To prepare for the next dish, which would be her final dish, she reached for the raw egg which had been sitting at the corner of the table. She cracked and swallowed the egg, that which could have been a chicken and so, so many more eggs, felt it coldly dribble down the length of her throat as it took with it a variety of aromas and stenches down into her belly.
The final dish sat on the far end of the table, on which the chef was adding some last minute garnish. He started slowly sliding the dish to her and from afar she saw a little red hump rising above the brims of the opaque, clay bowl. She salivated and waited impatiently for the bowl to travel nearer. She was ready. By her other side, the man who had been having his soupy meal had stood up and was now pulling his pants down. Darcey could see out of the corner of her eye a scintillating golden stream hitting the floor with rapid tinkles and she could not tell if the fishy smell about her came from the remnants of her previous dish stuck between her teeth, or not. Her gaze could not decide between the man’s long sceptre or the equally mouth-watering dish to come, the masculine moans of relief coming from him not helping. But when the bowl was served right under her nose, a sour smell made her salivate and her attention no longer suffered from any dilemma. The bowl was filled with pungent cabbage pickled in red: kimchi. Curiously, and to her excitement, there was a plump house fly lightly touching and tasting with all six of its legs the delightfully smelly vegetables—“How lively!” she exclaimed, thinking quite reasonably that the half-alive fish was but the introduction to this extravagant dish, whose agile fly was now dancing from cabbage slice to cabbage slice. On cue, the fly got itself stuck onto a particularly sticky and red sauce as Dancey took her chopsticks. She then smothered that fly with sauce, spread that lively mixture onto a piece of kimchi, was careful not to also spread the fly into a smear of translucent wings and hair-like legs, contented herself with having the fly half-smudged—and importantly, still moving—and finally, balanced her precious first morsel of her final dish onto her tongue…
A muted thud from the other end of the restaurant could be heard. The chef was visibly irritated: there went one more customer in an ever-declining population that hardly had any replenishment. He looked at Darcey with an expression of muted hope. Suddenly, Darcey’s neighbour clutched at his chest instinctively, trying to reach in and beat his heart to life, but his body folded along the main crease of his fatty waist—thud!; he fell and in a contorted form lay dead and exposed. Although she was a little shocked by this, she continued her buzzing meal. It was the pièce de résistance of this whole meal, after all. The sun exerted itself, shone through the windowless windows brilliantly, and, reflecting off the clinking utensils and plates, the restaurant was now buzzing with golden activity. She swallowed the fly-condiment; her tongue worked and worked, becoming wetter and wetter. With young, masturbatory shame, she finished.
Everyone had gone back; the hungry chef untied his apron, removed it, folded it, then set it down. The many sauces left on the plates and tables had crusted over last year’s hollandaise and cream, which like the sauces from even more years ago had never been wiped away. The chef took in a noseful of the pungent aroma of who knows what. Then, with a tired gait, he went to the fridge and got out a plate of spaghetti. He put it into the microwave. As he closed the doors of the microwave, the sun outside set; this curious coincidence—the dimming of the room coinciding with the growing warming light inside the microwave—made it seem like he was putting away the exhausted sun. While he waited for his food to heat up, the thought of the eternal spaghetti of childhood came to him, that never-ending bolognese that even after thirty minutes of honest effort slurping and swallowing still looked like a whole heap in his bowl. As he reminisced about the warm past that back then seemed like it would never end, in a moment of inattention he put his finger under the table and scraped its underside. His fingernail was now green with dark mould, and he sucked on it like a baby. By the time he realised what he was doing, it was already too late.
The glow of the microwave died down and in the darkness the microwave dinged! but he had already left for home: he was already too full, and had no appetite.
By Ryan Kwek
An American Short Fiction prize finalist, Ryan’s works have appeared in The Collidescope, Quarterly Literary Review Singapore, The Eunoia Review, and most recently, Litro. He is currently based in Singapore.
https://ryankwek.carrd.co/
