Kitchen
The swinging doors between kitchen and dining room are inlaid knee-high with brass. Waitors and waitresses in their blue-white dresses bang them with their feet while carrying the meal to the tables. The scullion from India sweeps constantly hotplates, pipes and linkages. The cleaning-cloth at his left is like a blood-drenched bandage.
Later at night he will listen to the news from Kashmir. The clean, aseptic, secure places, marked by the pristine white of tabe-clothes and – napkins, polished tables and chairs and a Chef de Rang silently observing his subordinates, glancing quietly around or cocking an inquisitive eyebrow at someone are just details, tiny details, grosso modo not existing. Everywhere else the rule of steam, knives, spices and death, rats, mould and verdigris is undisputed. The scullion shaves Parmesan, ads an aura of persil or lovage on the plates. Goddess Kali, patient, soft in her forbearance, leaves the fine nobilities to their fine lusts, not even smiling in the security to finally get her prey.
Around midnight the boy retires to his room in the basement storey. Every day he watches BBC then, where they give „Ready, Steady, Cook“. And even half asleep on his worn out matress he imagines fried kipper, saumon ȧ la printanière, chicken on ratatouille and, far away something else, he only knows that it isn’t a kitchen article but something undefinite and he closes his eyes, the TV blares on and he still sees it.
remainsoftheday 