The Demon of Dakar - Kjell Eriksson [24]
There had been a time when he had loved his work, but his goal of becoming a great chef had started to fade. Now he saw it as his only possibility to survive, nothing more. It gave him a salary and the illusion that he had a task. The passion was gone, and deep inside he was terrified. At least thirty more years in the business and the disdain for food magazines, enthusiastic guests, and curious aquaintances, their constant chatter about newly discovered dishes, exhausted him, made him increasingly embittered. His former friends had no idea what it was like: the constant pressure to turn out beautiful presentations of delicious food, while life itself was distasteful and anything but beautiful.
When did the whole thing start, this process of decomposition as life crumbled away? Or rather, rotted, as there was nothing life-affirming about the process, no healthy microorganisms that diligently and naturally went about their business. This was oxygen-poor putrefaction, the stinking decay of unblemished blood and flesh, that was wreaking havoc inside Johnny.
He observed this change with fear but also fascination, because it was with the misanthropy of a masochist that he presided over his own deterioration as a human being. He wanted, and did not want, to sink to the bottom and from thence spread his inhuman venom, spiked with self-disgust and an increasing animosity, to the people around him who still appeared to nurture hope.
When he arrived at the apartment, a one-bedroom flat by Klockarängen, he lit a candle. Candles belonged to winter, the dark season, but as he was unpacking his things he had found a candle, which he placed on the old teak coffee table.
The candle gave off the slightly sweet scent of vanilla. He sat for a while in the sofa, made of a plasticky artificial leather, and stared at the fluttering flame before he got up with a sigh, blew it out, and went to bed.
He fell asleep and slept heavily and without dreaming for ten hours, but was awakened by a nightmare when it was already late morning. He sat up with a start. The morning sun shone in through the provisionally erected curtains.
Nine
Eva Willman took out two apples and put them on either side of the kitchen table. It created an appealing picture, full of promise, as if Patrik and Hugo’s future rested on the fact that each morning there were two gleaming red apples at their places.
Even though it was only six-thirty she wanted to wake them up, get in those extra few minutes and tell them about Dakar. When they were young, they always woke up early, and they had some time together before Eva had to leave for work and the children to their school or child care programs, but now breakfast usually consisted of some sleepy comments, a few whining complaints, and a couple of sandwiches consumed in haste.
She looked at the apples, red, thick-skinned, with stickers declaring their land of origin: New Zealand. Someone sends fruit from the other side of the globe, she thought, and pictured an orchard in a foreign land. There were people there, dressed in khaki shorts and T-shirts with logos on the front. They drove small vehicles with carts on the back. From time to time they stopped, reached for an apple, and applied a tiny sticker. Eva imagined that they had a Patrik and a Hugo in their thoughts as they carefully laid the apples in a basket.
She made coffee and waited for the children to wake up. Today things would start in earnest. She couldn’t help feeling it in her stomach. She was going to shadow Tessie, who was teaching her.
One thing that worried her was pronouncing the names of the dishes correctly. Anglerfish and duck breast were no problem, but the menu consisted of so much more. Then there were the wines with all those foreign names. Eva had brought home both the menu and the wine list and practiced the pronunciation, had even asked Patrik