Chapter 3

The surface of the chute was extremely slippery which made her accumulate speed almost immediately despite her futile attempts to grab on to any protruding parts for dear life. There was unfortunately nothing to hold on to. She swiveled down the glass surface, screaming and hyperventilating on equally spaced intervals. Had her violent fall into the dark tube not been so sudden would have allowed her the time to consider her claustrophobia and probably scream even louder. Just about the time she was beginning to hyperventilate herself out of consciousness though, the screeching and swiveling abruptly came to an end with Nina finding herself suddenly and gratefully into the light, having landed onto a jagged, moist surface, surrounded by some of the most exquisite smells she had ever encountered. The place emanated the aroma of what she imagined the laboratory of a hungry alchemist with gourmet affiliations would.

 Still she was too dizzy to properly classify the space she was in at first. For a minute she even felt inclined to lay onto whatever it was that had cushioned her fall squeezing her eyes as shut as possible in order to convince herself that all this was only being a very realistic, bad dream. Nina was never one to wallow in self-deception though. With a forceful exhale she pushed herself up slightly and opened her eyes to find herself eagle-spread onto a huge bowl of chopped potatoes.

     Her vision remained blurry. Panting and trying hard not to redecorate the sprawl underneath her with whatever was left in her stomach from this morning’s French toast she tried to make sense of her new surroundings. Several long, white hats were bobbing up and down around her and several sets of eyes were blinking quizzically towards her general direction. Nina fought back an outgoing gulp of half-digested toast, inhaled through her nose and tried to steady her vision. All the chef’s hats around her had stopped moving and were turned towards her. “Another kitchen”, she said in a low voice.                                                                           

Nina’s head had finished spinning and now she could clearly make out all the chefs in their whipped-cream-white hats, lost in fits of laughter. Some had stopped what they were doing and were holding their bellies while others were still stirring broths, chopping shallots or sizzling butter but one thing they all had in common was that they were all laughing at her.

A middle-aged woman whom Nina immediately concluded must have been the head chef on accounts of her authoritative demeanor and lack of silly hat came and stood in front of the chopped-potato bowl and proceeded to look at her in contemplation, with arms folded and an altogether mocking manner about her. The woman was lanky and very beautiful with short, red hair that was crowning a delicate face and big, intelligent, green eyes.                                                                                                                                           

“I presume one of my many competitors ‘ave zent you to spy on my recipes or poison my guests…but no matter”, she said in a thick French accent as she waved her hand and gracefully pirouetted to face the other way. “Come, come”, she motioned to Nina who had peeled herself out of the large bowl that was wobbling dangerously out of balance with the help of two chefs and was trying to clean her jeans of any stray potato bits.

Nina thanked the two chefs for their help with an awkward, apologetic smile and raced behind her. She carefully passed by a chubby cook throwing white wine into a blistering frying pan producing impressive orange flames, the warmth of which colored his face and her cheek as she rushed by. On the other side of her she had barely enough time to notice a different chef slicing a green pepper into thin strips on top of a wooden board loaded with other segmented peppers of red, orange and green. The chef pushed down the vegetable with the tips of his fingers and at the blink of an eye he moved the blade noisily back and forth, thinning it further and further, at such close contact with his digits to cause Nina to hold her breath in expectation of an accident. She imagined the tip of a finger served with some poor bloke’s ratatouille.  

When she finally reached the head chef, she found her standing in front of a gas stove peeling what seemed to be a very large, bumpy lemon. The peel quivered around the pallid flesh of the fruit in one symmetrical spiral and then was thrown theatrically into a small copper pan filled with boiling water that had been sitting on the stove, right underneath the whole operation. Nina started to phrase a haste explanation for the chef who stopped her with an abrupt gesture of her hand. She then tacitly pointed towards the peel in the pan and leaned above it while gently sniffing at the rising vapors. Nina noticed that each one of her fingernails was painted in a different color of nail polish. Cautiously, she bent over the pan as well. The yellow peel was dancing around the bubbles of the water releasing an unctuous liquid in the process, in small drops that remained on the surface for a few seconds and then lost their substance to the heat while producing an odor that was a heady mix between a pear and a lemon.          

 “Beautiful, non?” the chef said in a soothing tone, batting her eyelashes in exact imitation of a workaholic butterfly rushing to meet her appointment with a newly-blossomed carnation in mid-spring. If chaos theory was to be taken seriously, somewhere on the other side of the world a hurricane was coming to life.

“Well, yes. What kind of fruit is this?” Nina agreed with her, inquiring further on the unfamiliar fruit.

The head chef smiled at her kindly. “’Ave you never seen a quince before?” she asked. Nina moved her head to give a negative response. “’Ow very strange you are” she exclaimed. “But zat is not why you are ‘ere.  And since you ‘ave gone through the trouble of dropping by…” said the chef to loud snorts in the background, “I will try to give as best an explanation as I possibly can.”                                                                      

“An explanation to what?” Nina asked in a slightly annoyed yet fearful tone. Thoughts of immediate events kept buzzing inside her head from their sheer craziness to the fact that she was, so far, being misunderstood and somewhat abused by everyone she had met since the elevator malfunction. What was more; all these new acquaintances seemed to be two sandwiches short of a picnic. She was vacillating between making a hasty escape out of the kitchen and feigning interest in whatever explanation the head chef had to offer. Nina, being raised on good manners, decided on the latter.     

“An explanation to ze secret of my success of course!” said the chef, nonchalantly. “Alors, pay attention” she continued, while at the same time grabbing a radish and starting to carve a shape out of it. “We ‘ave been conditioned since childhood to think of life as a series of steps zat lead to a supposed final grade which we call success” she said in an onerous tone. Nina blinked at her twice and gave a faint smile.  She was guessing that her participation was not required. “Success, of course, translating to money, a lot of money, non? Enjoyment is thought of as bad because it is not productive you see. Zey allow you to enjoy only what you buy because it comes from strife of earning money which is what must be your goal in life. Therefore, enjoyment becomes something artificial you must be given permission for and work ‘ard towards. Hence, people ‘ave very little energy and even less taste for pleasure” she continued handing the radish that had now turned into the shape of a rose to Nina. She mechanically looked at the transformed radish and then at the chef again. She was genuinely interested now.                                                                                        

The head chef started gutting a trout that was lying open-mouthed in the sink next  to the two of them and continued with her ratiocination more warmly now.                                                                                                                                                        “I love what I do. It is anything but a chore and I couldn’t care less about success or ‘ow much money I make. Frankly, I don’t even care about whether my creations will be edible. I ‘ave little interest in the result you see, I simply enjoy the process.” The chef now turned to face Nina, hands dripping with trout-gut. “I love ze smell of fish. I adore ze curdling of ze cream, ze zing of ze lemon and ze snap of ze pea. Zere are no secrets recipes and no magic ingredients” she exclaimed loudly, creating imaginary circles and exclamation points with her open palms in the air, with bits of trout-intestine acquainting themselves with the kitchen environment and the chefs working behind her . “And zat is zat” she concluded as she stomped her foot and washed her hands noisily at the aluminum sink, swiftly strolling to yet another part of the kitchen.                                                                                                                         

Nina stood frozen next to the violated fish and took in her surroundings once more; the dancing chefs in their white uniforms, the rows of jars that covered the shelves, the mountains of fruits and vegetables and the symphony of shiny, metal instruments hanging around her. All over her the walls and ceilings were painted in black. Recipes were scribbled in white chalk all over them and on every other available surface around her as well.

Nina felt strangely exhilarated by it all, but mostly by what the lady had said and she wanted to hear more. She moved over to where the head chef was leaning next to a tall, blond pastry-cook with a red nose that was arranging multicolored macaroons on an oval, sky-blue tray and beamed a large, friendly smile at her to encourage any more mental ponderings she might have to offer.

The head chef seemingly oblivious to Nina’s intentions turned and offered her a fluffy, brown macaroon with green swirls all around it. Nina accepted the offering swiftly to avoid any kind of belligerency and munched on it carefully. The warm, nutty flavor of sweetened cocoa and butter disintegrated in her mouth with a following of something verdant and lush that exploded forcefully on top of her taste buds and tickled her nose. “Chocolate?” Nina said squinting “and, um… wasabi?”                                    

“Very good!” replied the head chef, grabbing an orange one so fast as to make Nina wonder whether the thing was actually alive and she had to stop it from getting away. The chef began taking small bites out of it with obvious pleasure. “Saffron, my favorite” she said matter-of-factly.                            

“I need to say though” Nina offered sweetly while swallowing the last bit of her macaroon, “you are very fortunate. What you are describing, professionally, is the ideal not to mention very beautiful but not exactly realistic for the vast majority of people.”

To that remark the head chef banged both her hands on the counter in front of her causing Nina to jump back in surprise and began laughing a big, hearty laugh that forced her small chest to heave rhythmically up and down. She was so enthralled in laughter she was almost choking on her saffron macaroon though there was nothing contemptuous about her manner. She simply appeared to be highly amused by what Nina had said. When she finally settled down again though, her expression turned a little severe as she turned to face her once more.                                                                                         

“What complete nonsense” she exclaimed. “I know you seldom realize and are never allowed to zink of ze fact that ze things you have to force yourself to do are zings you should not be doing. It is not natural! Everyzing in nature simply follows its course, it flows…” the chef continued grabbing some boiled spaghetti out of a pan and waving it around. “Even ze parts of nature people regard as abhorrent simply because zey scare zem happen naturally and without force. What I am suggesting is very realistic. What you are suggesting is unnatural, unrealistic and in some circles, sheer madness” she said, throwing the wobbly spaghetti behind her. “For example, what did you want to be, as zey say, when you were growing up? Surely not a culinary spy?” the chef asked, knitting her eyebrows together.

Nina, ignoring the last remark, answered as truthfully as she could. “I wanted to be a pirate. But that would be impossible. Real pirates do not exist anymore.”                                                        

“Whatever you can imagine in some plane of reality actually exists” said the head chef. Nina gave her a mocking grimace.                                                                                            

“I will prove it to you” she continued. “Can you zink of a new color?” she asked fixing her gaze at her. Nina did not know whether she was supposed to answer her or not so she remained silent. “But of course not! It does not exist. And zat is why you cannot imagine it.”                                                                                                                                 

“Fine”, replied Nina, dissimilating defeat. “But I don’t think I want to be a pirate, nevertheless.”                                                                                                                              

 “I see”, the chef said rubbing her chin. “So, what is it zat you enjoy doing?” she purred with the word enjoy melting in her mouth like the molten core of a hot, chocolate soufflé.                                                                                                                                                

Nina looked at her dejectedly. In the span of her 25 year life she had performed various functions, collectively called ‘jobs’, in which she had been clad in black uniforms and comfortable shoes in order to serve people with food and drink of minimum nutritional value, assisted customers in buying products they did not actually need or sat in front of computer screens performing tasks which required very little imagination and absolutely no decision making on her part. All of these jobs were at worse frustrating and at best abysmally boring. Nina concentrated hard to identify the moments that she had felt any kind of lasting enjoyment during her time as an official adult and in identifying them it became abundantly clear how very few and far in between these moments actually were.

And how about her desires? Had she been true to them? Slightly, almost, maybe. Even her love life followed the same pattern. Usually in relationships one hears of how magically they start and how difficult it is for those involved in them to make compromises as they unfold in time. Nina would always start off with the compromise and then patiently wait for the magic to drop by unannounced. Needless to say she always got stood up my magic and what she was left with was someone expecting her to make more compromises on top of the ones she had made at the start of the relationship which after all he was not at all aware had been made to begin with. She suddenly felt cheated. She had been sabotaging herself with momentous precision. She even had momentary images of her inner self performing acts of sabotage inside her brain. A little Nina bouncing around amongst folds of grey matter planting booby-traps. The way she pictured it her inner Nina was running around wild wearing a pirate outfit. At least someone is having fun, she thought.

She had been sitting transfixed by these realizations for a few minutes before the head chef started to gently shove her towards the back exit.

“Well, you should go off and discover what it is you enjoy zen, instead of crashing into peoples’ kitchens trying to steal zeir recipes” she said opening the large metal door.

“You don’t understand!” Nina protested snapping out of her reverie. “I never intended on sliding down the glass chute or stealing any of your recipes. I was pushed down beyond my will!”                                                                                                                                               

“Zat, mon cherie, is your problem, not mine” the chef said pushing her through the exit door and snapping it closed behind her.

Click.