Three Sinners in the Green Jade Moon

The Chef

Dear God,

The incident that I want to speak to You about took place some years ago, when I opened the best Indonesian restaurant in the Balearic Islands. I opened my restaurant in Santa Eulalia del Río, which is a village on the island of Iviza. At that time, there already was an Indonesian restaurant in the port of Iviza and another in Palma de Mallorca. People have assured me that mine was easily the best.

Despite this, business was not good. Santa Eulalia was very small, but there were numerous writers and artists living in the village and in the surrounding countryside. These people were all very poor, but not too poor to be unable to afford my rijsttafel. So why didn't they eat more often at my place? Surely it was not the competition from Juanito's Restaurant nor Sa Punta. Even granting those places full credit for their lobster mayonnaise and their paella, respectively, they could not approach my sambal telur, my sate kambing, above all my babi ketjap.

I used to think the explanation lay in the fact that artists are nervous, temperamental people who need time to accustom themselves to new things, and especially to new restaurants. I am that way myself and I have been trying to become a painter for many years. That, in fact, is how I came to open my restaurant in a place like Santa Eulalia. I wanted to live near other artists and to earn a living also.

Business was not good, but I was able to get by. My rent was low, I did my own cooking and I had a local boy who served customers and changed records on the player and washed up the dishes afterward. I didn't pay him much for all that labor, but only because I couldn't afford much. The boy was a marvel of a worker, always cheerful and clean, and with any luck he should someday become governor of the Balearics.

So I had my restaurant, which I called the Green Jade Moon, and I had my waiter, and within a week I had a steady customer. I never did learn his name. He was a tall, thin, taciturn American with black hair. He might have been 30 or 40. He came in at nine o'clock every night and ordered the rijsttafel, ate it, paid, left a ten-percent tip and left.

I exaggerate only slightly, for on Sundays he ate paella at Sa Punta and on Tuesdays he ate the lobster mayonnaise at Juanito's. But why not? I ate in those places myself. The five other nights of the week he ate my rijsttafel, usually alone, once or twice with a woman, sometimes with a friend. He ate quietly, while Pablo, my waiter, bustled around, serving dishes and changing records.

Frankly, I was able to live in Santa Eulalia off this customer alone. Not well, but I could live. Prices were very low in those days. Now, of course, when you find yourself in a situation like that, when you more or less live from the spending of one customer, you tend to study that customer with some care. That was the beginning of my sin. Like many sins, it seemed innocuous at first. I wanted to encourage this man. I began to study what he liked and what he didn't like.

I served a 13-plate rijsttafel, charging 400 pesetas, which was then a little over five dollars. Rijsttafel means rice table. It is a Dutch adaption of Indonesian cuisine. You put the rice in the center of the plate and soak it with sajur, a sort of vegetable soup. Then you surround the rice with various dishes--kerie daging, which is beef in curry sauce, and sate babi, roast pork on skewers in peanut sauce, and sambal udang, shrimps in red-pepper sauce. These are the expensive dishes, since they contain meat. Then there are sambal telur and perkedel, eggs in chili sauce and meatballs, and various vegetable and fruit dishes. Finally, there are the garnishes, such as peanuts, shrimp puffs, grated coconut, spiced potato chips and the like. Everything is served in little oval plates and it looks as if you are getting a great deal of food for your 400 pesetas. You are, of course, but not as much as it looks.

My customer ate with a good appetite and he usually finished eight or ten of the dishes, plus a little over half the rice. That is good going for anyone who is not a Dutchman.

But I was not content with this. I noticed that he never ate liver. So I took it upon myself to substitute udang pindang ketjap, shrimps in soy sauce. He seemed especially to like my sates, so I increased the amount and gave him plenty of peanut sauce.

Within a week, I could see that he was definitely gaining weight. That encouraged me. I doubled his portion of rempejek--peanut wafers--also the meatballs. The American began to eat like a Dutchman. He was filling out rapidly and I was helping him along.

In two months, he was some ten or twenty pounds overweight. I didn't care, I was trying to make him a prisoner of my food. I bought a set of larger plates and served him larger portions. I began to slip in another meat dish, babi ketjap, pork in soy sauce, in place of the peanuts he never touched.

By the third month, he was trembling on the frontier of obesity. It was mainly the rice and the peanut sauce that did it to him. And I sat back in my kitchen and played on his taste buds as an organist plays on an organ, and he dug in, his face round now and shining with sweat, while Pablo gyrated around with the dishes and changed records like a dervish.

It was evident now, the man was susceptible to my rijsttafel. His Achilles' heel was in his stomach, so to speak. But it was not even as simple as that. I had to assume that this American had lived his 30 or 40 years prior to meeting me as a thin man. But what permits a man to remain thin? An omission, I think, a lack of some food that really engages the specific desires of his taste buds.

It is my own theory that many thin people are potentially fat people who simply have not found their appropriate and specific food. I once knew an emaciated German who put on weight only when he went to Madras for a construction firm and encountered the astounding spectrum of southern Indian curries. I knew a cadaverous Mexican working as a guitarist in various London night clubs who assured me that he always gained weight in the city of his birth, Morelia. He told me that he could eat decently (though not voluptuously) anywhere in central Mexico, but that the cuisine from Oaxaca south to Yucatán, excellent though it was, was a total loss as far as he was concerned. And there was another man, an Englishman who had lived most of his life in China until the Communists expelled all foreigners, who assured me that he was wasting away for lack of Szechwanese food and that Cantonese or Shanghai or Mandarin cooking did not suit him at all; he told me that the regional differences of cuisine in China are (or were) greater than those in Europe and that his case was similar to that of a Neapolitan stranded in Stockholm. He told me that Szechwanese food was quite spicy, but delicate. He lived in Nice, on Provencal food, to which he added imported red-bean curd and soy sauce and God knows what else. He told me it was a dog's life; but perhaps his wife was partly to blame for that.

There are precedents, you see, for the behavior of my American. He was evidently one of those men who have never encountered a cuisine that really suits them. He had found it now in my rijsttafel and he was eating to make up for 30 or 40 years of sensation starvation.

Given a situation like this, the ethical chef must try to assume responsibility for (continued on page 161)Three Sinners(continued from page 88) his gluttonous customer. The chef, after all, is in the position of puppetmaster; and it is he who manipulates the culinary desires of his customer. I knew a French chef in Paris, imbued with the spirit of Escoffier, who simply would not serve certain of his customers another portion of his quiche lorraine or his tarte d'oignon, two of his specialties, saying, "Seconds of anything are a distortion of a balanced meal, and I, for one, will not lend myself to the perpetration of perversities for a few lousy francs."

I applaud that master chef, but I was unable to emulate him. I was not really a chef at all, simply a poor Italian with an unaccountable flair for preparing rijsttafel. My true desire was to be a painter. My character, much to my regret, was and still is opportunistic.

I continued to stuff my customer and my anxieties tended to increase. It seemed to me that I owned the man now, although I had no legal bond. Late at night I would wake up trembling; I had dreamed that my customer had looked at me out of his enormous moon-face and said, "Your sambals are lacking in savor. I was a fool ever to have allowed you to feed me. Our relationship is now at an end."

Recklessly, I doubled his portions of sate kambing surabaja, served his rice fried in oil and saffron rather than boiled, added a generous portion of sate ajam, chicken in chili sauce with ground nuts: all very fattening, all designed to maintain and increase his dependency on me.

It seems to me that I cooked, and he ate, in a state of delirium. Surely, by this time, neither of us was quite sane. He had become gross, a distended sausage of a man. Each pound that he put on seemed to me a proof of my hold over him. But it was also a source of increased anxiety for me, for he could not keep on gaining weight forever.

And then, one night, it all changed. I had planned a little additional delicacy for him, sambal goreng udang, shrimps in coconut sauce, a pure extravagance on my part when you consider the cost of shrimps. Still, I thought he would enjoy it.

He did not come to the restaurant, even though it was one of his regular nights. I stayed open two hours later than usual, but he did not come. The next night he did not come either. On the third night he did not come.

But on the fourth night he waddled in and took his accustomed table. I had never spoken to the man in all the time he had eaten in my restaurant. But now I took the liberty of walking over to his table, bowing slightly and saying, "We have missed you these past nights, mijnheer."

He said, "I was sorry that I was unable to come. But I was indisposed."

"Nothing serious, I trust?" I said.

"Certainly not. Merely a mild heart attack. But the doctor thought I should lie in bed a few days."

I bowed. He nodded. I returned to my kitchen. I poked at my serving pots. Pablo waited for me to ladle out the order. The American tucked the enormous red napkin I had bought specially for him into his collar and waited.

I became fully aware then of what I must have known all along: that I was killing this man.

I looked at my pots filled with sambals and sates, my caldrons of rice, my vats of sajur, and I recognized them as instruments of slow death, as efficacious as a noose or a club.

Every man has his cuisine. But any man can be killed by the skillful manipulation of his appetites.

Suddenly, I shouted to my customer, "The restaurant is closed!"

"But why?" he demanded.

"The meat has turned!" I replied.

"Then serve me a rijsttafel without meat," he replied.

"Impossible," I said. "There is no rijsttafel without meat."

He stared across the room at me, his eyes wide with alarm. "Then serve me an omelet made with plenty of butter."

"I do not make omelets."

"A pork chop, then, with plenty of fat. Or just a bowl of fried rice."

"Mijnheer does not seem to understand," I told him. "I make only rijsttafel, properly and in the correct forms. When this becomes impossible, I make nothing at all."

"But I am hungry!" he cried like a plaintive child.

"Go eat lobster mayonnaise at Juanito's or paella at Sa Punta. It wouldn't be the first time," I added, being only human.

"That's not what I want," he said, almost in tears. "I want rijsttafel!"

"Then go to Amsterdam!" I shouted at him and kicked my pots of sates and sambals onto the floor and rushed out of the restaurant.

I packed a few belongings and caught a taxi to the city of Iviza. I was in time to catch the night boat to Barcelona. From there, I caught an airplane to Rome.

I had been cruel to my customer, I will grant that. But I thought it necessary. He had to be stopped at once from eating. And I had to be stopped from feeding him.

My further travels are not pertinent to this confession. I will only add that I now own and operate the finest rijsttafel restaurant on the Greek island of Kos. I get by. I serve mathematically exact portions, not a gram more even to my regulars. There is not enough money in the world to induce me to give or sell second helpings.

Thus I have learned a little virtue, but at the price of a great crime.

I have often wondered what happened to the American and to Pablo, whose back wages I sent from Rome.

I am still trying to become a painter.

The Waiter

Dear God,

My sin took place some years ago, when I worked as a waiter in an Indonesian restaurant in Santa Eulalia del Río, which is a village on Iviza, one of Spain's Balearic Islands. I was young at the time, no more than 18. I had gone to Iviza as one of the crew of a French yacht. The owner had been caught smuggling American cigarettes and his boat was impounded. The rest of the crew scattered. But I remained on Iviza, going at last to Santa Eulalia. I am Maltese, so I have a natural gift for languages. The villagers thought I was an Andalusian and the foreign community thought I was an Ivicenco.

When the Dutchman opened his rijsttafel restaurant, I was uninterested at first. I helped him out for a day because I had nothing better to do and because no one would work for the miserable wages he paid.

But in that first day, I discovered his record collection. This Dutchman had an extensive collection of 78s, some of them jazz classics. He had a good player, an adequate amplifier, and speakers that, in those days, were considered first-rate. The man knew nothing about music and cared less. He considered music a mere accompaniment to dining, an amenity, like candles in straw-covered bottles and strings of peppers and garlic on the wall. One played music while people ate: That was all he knew about it.

But I, Antonio Vargas, whom he called Pablo, I had a passion for music. Even at that young age, I had already taught myself how to play the trumpet, guitar and piano. What I lacked was an intimate knowledge of American jazz forms, which were my particular field of interest. I saw at once that I could work for this Dutchman, perhaps earning enough to keep myself, and, in the meantime, play and replay his collection, learning the American musical idiom and preparing myself for the life of a musician.

The Dutchman was amenable to my playing the records. He had little choice, for who else would work for his wages? Certainly not the foreigners. Not even the native Ivicencos, who dress poorly but tend to be prosperous. There was only me, and I considered myself well paid by the Louis Armstrong alone. I sorted and classified and dusted his records, forced him to order a needle with a diamond point from Barcelona, rearranged the locations of his speakers to avoid distortion and worked out harmonious programs of jazz. Frequently, I would open with Duke Ellington's band playing Mood Indigo, reach Stan Kenton by the mid-point and close by way of decompression with Ella Fitzgerald singing Bye-Bye Blues. But that was only one of my programs.

I soon noticed that I was playing to an audience of one, not counting myself and not counting the Dutchman, who couldn't tell Ravel from Ravi Shankar. You see, I had acquired a listener. He was a tall, thin taciturn Britisher and demonstrably an aficionado of jazz. I saw that he ate in tempo with the music I played, slowly and lingeringly if I had on Mood Indigo, quickly and abruptly if I played Caravan.

But more than that, his moods altered visibly as I changed records. Ellington and Kenton tended to elevate him; he would eat furiously, beating time with his left hand as he shoveled in the rijsttafel with his right. Charlie Barnet and Byrd acted as depressants, no matter what their tempos, and his eating would slow down and he would purse his lips and knot his brows.

When you are a musician as myself, you wish to please your audience--always staying within your métier, of course. And I set out to capture my only listener. I leaned heavily on Ellington and Kenton at first, because I was still unsure of myself. I could never accustom him to Charlie Parker's monumental fantasies and Barnet seemed to grate on his nerves. But I educated him to Louis Armstrong, Ella Fitzgerald, Earl Hines and the Modern Jazz Quartet. I was even able to pinpoint the individual sides he liked best and to orchestrate an evening for him alone.

The Britisher was a stupendous listener. But he paid a price, of course: Night after night, he had to eat the Dutchman's rijsttafel, which was a collection of little stews with various names, most of them possessing the same overspiced taste of chili sauce. There was no getting around this; the Dutchman did not encourage people to hang around without eating. When you walked in, he stuck a menu in your hand. As you finished the last dish, he put the bill on your table. This may be acceptable practice in Amsterdam, but it is simply not done in Spain. Particularly the foreign community, which acted more Spanish than the Spaniards, disapproved and stayed away. As a result of his crudeness and greed, the Dutchman could rely on only a single customer, the Englishman, who really came to hear the records.

After a while, I noticed that my listener was gaining weight. I accepted that as an accolade for my beloved jazz and for me, the selector and orchestrator of that jazz. Anyone who could continue to plow through that monolithic and unspeakable rijsttafel was an aficionado, indeed.

I was young, careless, irresponsible. I took no heed to my duties as a musician; viz., to provide balance and catharsis as well as fascination. No, I was out to capture this man, win him with my records, enslave him to Armstrong, Ellington and myself.

The Englishman grew fat. I ought to have played something austere and classical, like Bix Beiderbecke or some of the other Dixieland formalists. They were not to his tastes, but they might have had a restraining effect upon him. But I did not. Shamelessly, I gave him what he wanted.

What is worse, I perverted my own taste to please him. One evening, I spun Glenn Miller's Siring of Pearls, an amiable piece with no great pretensions. I did it as a sort of musical joke. But I saw at once that the Englishman had a taste for big-band swing.

I should have simply ignored it, of course. The man had talent as a listener, but he was musically uneducated. Had I been willing to take the gamble, I might have taught him something important, might have demonstrated to him what music is really about.

But I did no such thing. Instead, I catered shamelessly to his sentimental passion. I played Glenn Miller, Tommy Dorsey, Harry James. I covered myself aesthetically by spinning Benny Goodman; but I sank to the depths by brazenly spinning Vaughn Monroe.

It is a terrible thing to have such power over another person. Within months, I could program my listener as well as my records. When he came in, I might toy with him slightly, playing Muskrat Ramble, a composition beyond his comprehension. Then abruptly I would turn to Vaughn Monroe's Racing with the Moon and the Englishman's frown would depart, a slight smile would touch his gross lips and he would shovel away at the unpalatable rijsttafel.

The chef, in his vanity, loaded up the man's plates. But it was I who made him eat. Sometimes, when I was playing A-Train, for example, or Armstrong's Beale Street Blues, the Englishman would sigh petulantly, put down his fork, seem incapable of eating any more. Then I would quickly put on Glenn Miller's String of Pearls or his In the Mood or Moonlight Serenade. Or I would hit him with Harry James's You Made Me Love You or Jimmy Dorsey's Amapola.

These frivolities acted upon him like a drug. His bullet head nodding in time, tears forming in his eyes, he would dig in with his soupspoon. He grew monstrous and I continued to manipulate him like a trained rat. I don't know where it might have ended.

Then one night he didn't show up. He didn't come the next night, either, nor the one after that.

On the fourth night, he came to the restaurant and the chef (understandably worried about his only source of income) inquired about his health. The man replied that he had had an ulcer attack, had been ordered to stay on bland foods for a few days but was now feeling fit again. The chef nodded and went back to dish up his fiery stews.

The Englishman looked at me and addressed me for the first time. I remember that I was playing Stan Kenton's Across the Alley from the Alamo at the time. The Englishman said, "Forgive my asking this, but might you be so good as to play Vaughn Monroe's Racing with the Moon?"

"Of course, my pleasure," I replied and walked back to the player. I took off the Kenton side. I picked up the Monroe. And I realized then that I was killing this man, literally killing him.

He had become addicted to my records. The only way he could hear them was by eating rijsttafel, which was making holes in his stomach.

At that moment. I grew up.

"No more Vaughn Monroe!" I shouted suddenly.

He blinked his great saucer eyes in bewilderment. The chef came out of his kitchen, amazed that I had raised my voice.

The Englishman said, in a pleading voice, "Perhaps a little Glenn Miller...."

"No more of that," I told him.

"Tommy Dorsey?"

"Out of the question."

The unfortunate man was trembling and his great jowls were beginning to quiver. He said, "Duke Ellington, then."

"No!"

The chef said, "But, Pablo, you like Duke Ellington!"

The customer said, "Or play Beiderbecke or even the Modern Jazz Quartet! Play what you like, but play!"

"You've had too much," I told him. "As far as I'm concerned, the music is finished."

I brought my fist down on the amplifier, shattering various tubes. The chef and the customer were speechless. I walked out, not bothering to ask for my two weeks' back wages. I hitchhiked into the port of Iviza and took deck passage on a ship to Marseilles.

Today I am a saxophone player of some renown and can be heard every night except Sunday at Le Cat's Pajamas Club on the Rue de Huchette in Paris. I am admired for my classical purity and form and I am respected as a purist of Dixieland jazz.

But I still have this sin upon my head, of hypnotizing and stuffing that poor Englishman by giving him the music he desired.

I regret it most sincerely.

I have often wondered since then what happened to the chef and to the customer.

The Customer

Dear God,

My sin took place many years ago, in a little Spanish town called Santa Eulalia del Río. I have never before acknowledged this sin, but now I feel impelled to do so. I had gone to Santa Eulalia to write a book. My wife had gone with me. We had no children.

While I was there, a man opened up a rijsttafel restaurant. I think that the man was a Finn or possibly a Hungarian. His restaurant was welcomed by all the expatriate colony. Before this man came, we had our choice of eating paella at Sa Punta or lobster mayonnaise at Juanito's. The food was fine in both places, but after a while, even the best of dishes become monotonous.

Many of us began to eat at the Yin-Tang, as he called it. Things were always lively there. Add to that the fact that the Hungarian had a fine collection of records and a more-than-adequate sound system. A place like that could not fail.

I began to eat there about five nights a week. My wife was a lovely woman but not much of a cook. I was one of the Hungarian's regular customers.

After about a week, I took notice of the waiter.

He was young, no more than 16 or 17, and I think he was an Indonesian. He had coloring of the purest shade of olive oil and his hair and eyebrows were sooty black. He was slender, graceful, quick. It was a pleasure to watch him darting around, serving dishes and changing records.

Harmless-sounding, isn't it? But what ensued was a darker, less innocent complication.

As I said, I admired his grace and beauty, as one man may admire the attributes of another man. But by the second week, I found myself taking special notice of the tender lines of his cheek, the proud lift of his head, the set of his shoulders and back and the exquisite curve of his buttocks.

I entered into a state of self-deception. I told myself that I was admiring the boy much as one would admire Greek statuary or the heroic figures of Michelangelo. I told myself that my interest was aesthetic and nothing more. And I continued to go to the restaurant almost every night and to eat rijsttafel, which is one of the most fattening cuisines on earth.

By the end of the month. I realized, with terrible dismay, that I was infatuated with the boy. I became aware that I wished to touch him, stroke his hair, trace the lines of his body and do other, even more awful things.

I have never been a homosexual. I have never had any reason to consider myself a potential homosexual. I have always enjoyed sexual relations with women and have never been able to understand how any man could enjoy the body of any other man.

Now I knew, to my regret.

I was spared the shame of my realization only because of the immensity of my obsession. Every night, I went to the restaurant and stayed for as long as I decently could. The chef took to giving me extra portions and I ate them, grateful for an excuse to remain longer.

And the boy? I cannot think that he was unconscious of my thoughts. I cannot think that he did not reciprocate. For, as the days and months passed, he hurled himself around the restaurant in a veritable frenzy, changing records, emptying already clean ashtrays, displaying himself in a rather shameless manner.

Often we exchanged meaningful looks, the boy and I. At this point, my wife had gone back to the United States. The chef was oblivious to anything but the consumption of rijsttafel. And the boy and I eyed each other, made our intentions clear but never exchanged a word or a touch.

I gained weight, of course. Who could pack away two or three pounds of rijsttafel a night and not gain weight? I gained weight insensibly, caught up in my obsession and in my self-loathing. I neglected my friends, paid no attention to my appearance. I would leave the restaurant each night, my stomach groaning at the mass of overspiced food within it. I would go to bed and dream of the boy and wait impatiently for the next night, when I could see him again.

Our looks became bolder, more brazen. Sometimes, when he served the dishes, he would rest his hand upon the table, as if daring me to touch it. And I would clear my throat, my eyes reproaching him for being a shameless flirt.

Swept up in this madness, I do not know how long things might have gone on nor where they might have gone to. I was losing my shyness, losing my pride; I was coming close to speaking to the boy outright. Then, quite unexpectedly, I noticed something.

I noticed that I was the only customer that the restaurant had left.

I thought about this. I pondered it deeply. I had dropped my friends over the past months or they had dropped me. Still, why had they stopped eating at the rijsttafel restaurant?

Once, I tried to break my habit, avoiding the place for three whole evenings. But it was impossible. My fascination drew me back again and thereafter I went night after night and it was the same; I was the only customer. Yet I could detect no loss of quality in the food nor in the music. Everything was the same, except for me.

I saw something then. It came to me on a night much like all other nights, when I was plowing through the usual tremendous servings. I saw that I had grown monstrously fat over the course of several months. And, for a moment, I viewed myself from the outside:

I saw a disgustingly gross man sealed in a small restaurant. A man fat enough to turn your stomach. A man in whose company you would not want to eat.

It came to me then: I was the reason the Hungarian had lost all of his customers. For what man in his right mind would want to eat with me there? And I was there all the time.

An insight like that must be acted upon immediately or lost forever. I pushed the table away and got to my feet, not without some difficulty. The chef and the waiter stared at me. I began to waddle toward the door.

The chef cried. "Is something the matter with the food?"

"Not with the food," I replied, "with me."

The boy said, with downcast eyes, "Perhaps I have offended you...."

"Quite the contrary," I replied. "You have pleased me immensely, but I have offended myself beyond measure."

They didn't understand. The chef cried out, "Won't you at least eat a plate of pork sate, just made, fresh and delicious?"

And the boy said. "There's a new Armstrong record that you have not heard yet."

I stopped at the door. I said. "Thank you both very much. You are kind people. But I happen to be destroying myself here under your very eyes. I shall go away now and complete that task by myself."

They stared at me, wild-eyed and uncomprehending. I waddled out of the restaurant, to my apartment, packed a light suitcase and found a taxi to take me into Iviza city. I was just in time for the night flight to Barcelona.

Years have passed since that time. Time and distance stripped away my obsession. I have been in love since then, but never again with a boy.

I live now in San Miguel de Allende, in Mexico, with my wife (not the same one I went to Santa Eulalia with) and our two children.

I have often wondered what happened to the chef and the waiter. Presumably, they continued their business and prospered. They may still be in Santa Eulalia, for all I know. Unless, of course, my lustful sin destroyed them in some way.

I regret my sin sincerely.

I am still trying to become a writer.