His friend is surprised: What’s your problem? There’s serious dough to be made here, and the job’s a lot cooler than it was in France, right? Mauro remains silent. He looks around: the pace is unflagging, but not frantic, thanks to the cheap, abundant labor force, who dilute the workload—Imagine: ten guys to peel three carrots!—and there is no management through pressure; in fact, a quiet calm reigns in the kitchen, the kind of calm that, if it cracks like a dry shell, if it breaks, gives rise to scenes of extraordinary violence: the meticulous commis chef slowly stuffing ravioli with ginger-glazed pork suddenly pulling a sharp knife in the middle of the kitchen and stabbing another man in the carotid artery while everyone else stands paralyzed in the steam rising from pans of broth. It’s true that Mauro has an enviable position here: the restaurant needs him, a young French chef, for its corporate image. But he instinctively wishes to distance himself from something in these kitchens: something fastidious, something artificially enhanced, phony. You can see it in the gym-sculpted bodies of the cooks around him. A distorted view of beauty. So he leaves. He quits once again and continues his journey. Next stop: Burma.

He travels as a backpacker, adjusting his itinerary day by day, no longer looking for work, sleeping in people’s homes. He discovers a secret, fiery, slow-moving country. Mauro strays as far from the beaten path as possible, staying in remote villages. The countryside is pleasant, a range of intense greens, his every step accompanied by a continual murmur. He takes the time to observe the movements of people preparing meals, in houses, in taverns. Here he will find what he came for: this street cuisine, this simple, popular cuisine distributed in bowls and tasted while one is sitting on little benches, those cooking pots bubbling with turmeric broths, all those fried dishes, those pickled vegetables, that cilantro-scented rice, those salads of tamarind leaves, of tea leaves, those dazzling fruits. He is amazed to discover these strange flavors that mix together deep in his memory, these aromas that he can’t identify, these tastes that give him back his capacity for surprise.

I receive a postcard from him just before Christmas. A few words come back to me now: ngapi, balachaung, ginger.

11

Fooding

PORK RINDS, GREEN FAVA BEANS, PIGEONS

Mauro wanders. He’s looking for something. Waiting patiently. I lose track of him for a few weeks, then he resurfaces, and each time we see each other he is in a different job, a different position at a different restaurant, as if he plans to learn everything, to experience every position there is.