The Book of Heaven: A Novel (14 page)

What he saw first was a variant of the instinctive admiration on the faces of all who looked at him: a rapt involuntary willingness to gaze at him indefinitely, as if at a breathtaking view.

Every beauty—whether of sight, sound, or taste—has a dimension of the metaphysical. Strawberries, those fruits that ripen into the forms of kisses, or the somber dignity of meat, vineyards of scrolling curls, emerald eyes, evoke thoughts as well as desires. The architecture of a face, of how a dish is realized, forms dreams of particular ways of living, of being present in the world one would wish for. Beauty is, however momentarily, a world. It moves us so powerfully by making us present at the creation of a world, bringing us into existence.

The exquisite bones of Xe's face suggested the repose, fearless candor, and indestructibility of a noble house. It was a face that looked as if it would never end as a skull, but rather pass from life directly onto a coin like the ones he wore on his belt.

The direction of his smile was upward and outward, with rippling charm, never sour and downward with self-deprecation. His features and expressions incarnated the essence of trust; the certainty of the presence and protection of divinity that the play and qualities of radiant light produce. His speech emerged from his beauty as an unexpected wonder; a conversation with the rising sun. This had the useful political effect of making each of his statements, momentarily, seem an absolute reality, as of a breaking day.

What he did not guess at, radiant with her admiration, was Savour's assessment of the duration of his beauty; she had a cook's sense of the urgency of beauty, of how it must be transformed, or lost. She was used to judging the anatomy of fruits and greens, the silver of fresh fish, and of estimating how long they could hold the summit before they began to rot.

She looked at the cadences of his eyelids, and the barely perceptible brushstrokes at the wings of his nose, unconsciously calculating. He was not far from his meridian, when the end begins. Still, it made her feel faint to look at him.

He asked her name, and smiled at its coincidence with her craft. “And your parentage?” he asked. It was a question to discover a temperament, not an answer. He knew the Invisibles knew of such matters only through rumors or imagination.

She was surprised by the question, frowned; having never thought it through, she told the truth as she discovered it.

Savour was a silent girl, but when she did have a thought to pursue, her words bubbled rapidly, boiled, and overflowed. They cooked inside her. A number of her contemporary Invisibles avoided her, made apprehensive by this occasional unpredictable overflow of her speech. “I was born to Our Lady Rice. Cousin Butter. Queen Wheat. King Wine. Our Saviour Tree, the Olive, who lights, who heals, who houses, who nourishes. Who outlives destruction, even when its trunk has been destroyed. I have seen the shoots of the dead tree live, and I pray to them.

“These are my parents. The Ones who don't die. The Ones who return. Every day I am born to the Holy Green Leaf, the Golden Honey, the Bleeding Butchered Rib, the Lamb's Severed Head. My sign is the Knife, the sign of Souraya, the Lady Sacrificed.”

“Do you know of God?”

Again, she saw only the world she spoke of, and spoke, as inspired people do, as if there were no listener.

“Of gods, yes. But I don't know my own patron yet. The Holy Ones are always changing, when day opens or night falls or summer comes. They vary like rice, with a thousand shapes and flavors: saffron, with meat, with cheese, with sugar. In a dome, or a pancake, or a turret of rice or any form you can think of. It is always what it is, but never tastes the same. It is infinite in ways of being, like the goddesses and gods.”

The High Priest shifted in his chair, and leaned intently toward her, as if he were trying to hear every word accurately.

She blushed, but could not stop herself. Savour spoke to so few people that she had often had no knowledge of her own thoughts, and found herself deeply surprised when she heard them said aloud.

“The gods and goddesses are like bread and flesh,” she said. “They also resemble salt, seed, grain, water, flour, weather. A loaf is like them, the assembly of the universe. And they are flesh, shaped by our hands, and shaping them. They can live in any dimension, like food. Outside us, hidden in us. In our bellies, or in our dreams. That is the difference between us and the gods. They can always be reborn.

“We are only a little like them—we can live in only one place at a time. And it takes us one entire lifetime to taste of anything. And even then, we are more like seasonings and accompaniments, a little salt, or sugar, pickles, or crushed roses.”

The Priest smiled patiently. As those confident in their knowledge smile, while the face of unknowing is the face blinded by tears and sobs.

“You are both a heretic,” he said, “and an innocent, with your kitchen thoughts of God. There is a charm in this combination. But God is not to be found in storage jars or on dinner plates.

“God can be found in the outcomes of wars, in hurricanes or tsunamis. He is present at coronations, or even, if this makes Him clearer to you, at weddings and childbeds, at any event where fates are decided. For the Divine is the force of all that is unpredictable.

“He does not live where you live, in the world of beds made each morning with clean linen—but in the roof that shivers in an earthquake and crushes that bed. God lives in the message delivered to that man's wife, telling her whether he was sleeping in that room, or was resting elsewhere, someone else's guest. God lives in the moment a woman nearly free is captured.

“The purpose of your life is to shape materials to yield predictable results—to roast, to bake, to melt. What can you learn of God from this? But if I decide that you belong to us, you will learn something of the nature of God.

“You will learn at least that there is one God alone. And that you do not understand your relation to Him.” He looked at her as if from a tower whose height gave him a perspective over a landscape for miles around. “Do you pray?” he asked.

“I find what is good to cook. I make it what it should be. Then I see the food I offer become flesh.” She paused. “I slice justly. I kill with mercy.” She told him one other thing. “I nourish everyone who eats from me, even the ones I hate. The work I do is the prayer.”

The Priest said, “If you come with us, you must pray in words. Do you speak to God?”

“When I am about to cook, I say something.”

“And what is that?”

Savour looked toward the governess. The words were her one secret in life, her secret charm. They made the dinner come to life when she spoke them before she set the pot on the fire or the lamb on the spit. They ensured that the portion of each guest would suffice. They evoked the angel of flavor intrinsic to each dish, which emerged in a fragrant cloud when summoned.

The governess nodded. All questions must be answered, all thoughts naked and available for inspection. Savour feared that the power of abundance locked in the words would evaporate if she said them aloud, like lifting a lid too soon. She was too inexperienced to lie, however, and too inarticulate to make up alternative words on the spot. She swallowed, and spoke hesitantly,

“Grain—have children for my sake.

Oil—pour gold on all I make.

Flesh—forgive me for the life I take.”

The Priest's eyes glowed momentarily with amused tenderness; he had never, he thought, encountered a living being whose soul so strikingly possessed the characteristics of a vessel, a spoon. This girl was hollowed out in some way, like a priestess, or an oracle, not quite recognizable as a self. She would carry without comment whatever she was filled with. “Who have you cooked for here?” he asked.

“I have cooked household dinners for up to fifty people. And I have won kitchen competitions to cook over half of the Governor's banquets, this year and last.”

“Have you ever cooked for royalty?”

“So they say. They tell me some things about why I am cooking, or the guests. Then I solve the dinner like a riddle. My eyes are on the platters, not on the guests. I have cooked for the Governor in each season; I know how to follow the changes of the season, in the expression of flavors, and in the molding of the guests' appetites. Gate—my sponsor—he is the second master cook—says I have the making of a fine formal cook.”

“And where do you fail, according to your superior?”

“In my attention to the assistants. I lose the thought of them, and of what they can do and are doing. When this happens, Gate says, I might be cheated. Or they can flaw my work. They can be careless, or vengeful or lazy. It will all be tasted. Gate says I do not know yet how to work with any instrument but my own will.”

“The cook I am seeking will work in a household that is not yet formed. I am commissioned to choose the staff for the household of a Princess of the Angels who has now reached the age to move to her own pavilion. In addition, her father, who was a great victor for the Angels, is now our King. She will be his hostess. As for you, perhaps you could manage your staff more efficiently, if you yourself train them at the time of your own training. Do you think you could do this?”

“I don't know,” she answered. “Perhaps if I could choose them. As I choose meat, or garlic or flour.”

“A sound thought. Then you can knead them, or shape them. Or cut them into bits, little Invisible, born under the sign of the Knife.”

He smiled with complicity, probing her for a sign of a taste for him. “In any case, I can judge your capacities only if you cook for me. I will taste your work the day after tomorrow; because the number of the Princess's guests will always vary, lay the covers for twenty, but be prepared for more. I will be exacting in my judgment. You will need to do your utmost to succeed. But even a slave's life among the Angels is to be prized. Serving us, you will come to know the language of God. You will learn to read. You will learn to pray as we do. For the first time, God will hear your prayers.” He decided to waive the customary physical examination. Her body would reveal nothing about her talent, or taste.

“Sir,” she said, “I would like my prayers to be heard. I would like to serve in a country of peace whose rulers, like you, carry no weapons.”

“Little cook, there is no weapon more powerful than the one I am carrying now.”

She searched his body with her eyes, familiar as she was with the tools of butchery. She could not see any blade, hammer, sharpened stake, no mechanism to propel deadly metals, no vial of poison. Then she saw his earring; this must be designed to kill in some way. Her eyes fixed on it, and she was satisfied. He understood her conclusion, but could not resist instructing her, so great was the pleasure of taking possession of her untilled mind, as a gardener plants a tree in an empty clearing.

He struck his belt with his right hand, and made the coins jangle. They sounded to her like platters clattering to the kitchen floor. “With these, I can cut down the strongest opponent. These are sharper than any blade. With these, I can buy the hands that hold the blade. With these, I can incite an attack from one side, or a retreat from the other. I can fill ships with men and women, and set them sailing. I can buy a world, or make what seems like one. My belt lacks only one power. It cannot make time a slave, to run back home, and fetch what I forgot there. Or to run forward, and bring me what I need from where I am going. Still, I can buy you. And I doubt you need to grasp any power larger than that.

“Good luck,” the Priest said, with his brilliant, frank smile. This summoned one more question from Savour. “What is luck?” she asked.

He slid his belt a quarter turn around his waist, unfastened it, and lifted one of the coins to show her. He traced the lettering beneath the image. “It is a name for our God,” he answered.

“Here.” He handed it to her. “Keep it for luck.” She accepted it expressionlessly, as she had been trained, but she was enchanted. It was the first gift she had ever received, besides her own.

When she returned from the interview, Gate was supervising thirty child apprentices. The apprentices were taught to cook with each element: earth, air, water, and fire. These were in their phase of earth. Some were molding and firing clay pots in every imaginable variation, like most clay cooking dishes, of the shape of the pregnant womb. In each phase of their training, the apprentices learned also to fabricate their own cooking equipment.

Now a group of students sealed and painted designs on the clay vessels containing game birds, to be cooked slowly, buried in pits dug by thirty other apprentices. The birds were seasoned and wrapped in savour-buttered vine leaves, then covered in clay whose surface was painted in brilliant colors. When the clay was removed at table, the vine leaves adhered to it, revealing a glowing succulent flesh of ineffable tenderness, which had absorbed the jeweled iridescent color of the spice. He kept his eyes on his students, but whispered to her privately between his public corrections of their technique. Savour, who was reputed a fine artist, like so many of the great banquet cooks, who sketch beforehand the dishes and dinners they present as spectacles, added her criticisms of the students' designs.

“Do they want you?” Gate asked.

“I don't know. He asked for an exhibition dinner.”

“For how many?”

“I may not know. Between twenty and forty, I must adapt to the circumstance.”

“And this Angel will be your master?”

“Not him. He himself serves in the new household of a Princess, the daughter of an Angel general who has made himself their new King.”

“So he serves as her agent. Therefore you are not really cooking for him. But there is a further problem; this dinner must be to his taste. Describe this person to me. What does he look like? How old is he? Is he married? Then tell me, which of your Twelve should you present?”