That was many years ago.

One of my last meals on the island of Java was on a side-street of Yogyakarta. It was near the warung where stayed the first two months of our journey, before being sponsored by the owner of the research center and his wife; before borrowing their bicycle for trips into the surrounding desa; before climbing the volcano in the night; before the relationship had ended.

Across the table from me was an aging but not elderly man. A westerner, he was clearly enjoying the meal, enjoying it from memory; he appeared to be sick, probably dying. A younger woman, his nurse or his daughter or his wife, helped serve him from the plates and bowls between us: yellow rice and chicken; salty dried anchovies in a prickly brown pile; papaya and snake-skinned salak and hairy rambutan and other fruits; green mango salad; hot sugary tea. There was a vacancy in his eyes, but it seemed to be filled, for the moment, with the delight of the senses, and stories I couldn’t begin to guess.

He finished and tried to rise, but instead sat again heavily, with little muscle to cushion his body from gravity. The woman threaded an arm under one of his, and the other caught his shoulder. Together, they stood — he shaking, she quiet with a sobriety that comes from care. Under that zero-latitude sun, they walked slowly up the street, surrounded by the perfume of melati blossoms, leaving no shadow.

~

I thought, at the time: maybe one day he will be me, making a last visit to the places I have loved. The list of geographies that claim me has grown since then. I will have to plan carefully, and have both money and forewarning enough to make such a pilgrimage. Or maybe it will be unnecessary: if you travel far enough, and well enough, there is no need for a backward glance. It all sets up residence in you, all of those ten thousand things, with their hundred thousand names, a new sound for each culture, new sounds for the same things.

Tonight I built a time machine, though, and it was a cheap one. A few special ingredients, spices I would not find on local market shelves, and a little twist of the wrist learned in passing, and a small Indonesian rijsttafel appeared on my table. Here is what it looked like (now consumed):

From right and counter-clockwise (as back in time we go):

Acar campur (mixed vegetable), an equatorial version of pickle that includes hot chillies, pearl onion, carrot and cauliflower and string beans, flash-cooked with kemiri nut (macadamia-like) garlic and turmeric and galanga root and shallots. Exquisite in color and fragrance, with a splash of vinegar and palm sugar to freshen it up.

Sambal kelapa (coconut sambal relish), grilled shrimp paste ground together with garlic, hot pepper, brown sugar and tamarind water, then blended into freshly ground coconut. A cooling and exotic delight, this and other, similar sambal are added as garnish and accent to main dish. Terasi, or shrimp paste, adds protein and a pungent, heady scent to recipes. Like Indian asafoetida, it is rather overpowering to an unfamiliar palate; but once blended into a traditional meal, any future experience without it would seem to be lacking an essential.

Nasi kuning (yellow rice), is spiced with turmeric, cinnamon, bay, coriander, cumin and clove. Delicate and colorful, it makes a wonderful bed for other dishes in the spread of a Dutch “rice table”.

Rendang, last and most central, is this hot nations answer to preserving meat in style. Tough stewing beef (often water buffalo, which is tougher still, and probably sacrificed only after long service in the rice padis or on the roads) is cooked in coconut milk and spices until all the liquid has been absorbed, the fragile coconut milk has been rendered into oils that will keep for months in the freezer… except that this dish tastes too good to last days, much less months. In traditional Javanese preparation, shallots and garlic and ginger are ground together in a large wooden mortar, to a paste, laced chili and turmeric and galingale root powders, dosed with salam and kunyit leaves, and cooked and cooked and cooked. By the time the sauce has become a thick, fragrant mud pit, the meat has come apart into strands; when the the mud dries to a delicious desert, the strands begin to turn a golden brown; when the first threads are a darkish brown, the whole lot is moist-dry and ready for the table, to to be packed up into freezer bags, for another day’s quick defrost and reheat.

And that’s exactly what I did.

I expected the tongue to remember its travels, the memory of taste and smell stronger than any mental narrative. I hadn’t expected the poems, though, partly-written, to whisper in my ear again; or to relive the ego’s deconstruction in that foreign vocabulary.

It is years since I thought of Gatot with his halus high-Javanese manners; or Ayam and his ability to mimic the call of any animal (from the back of a 250cc motorcycle which I guided along palm-lined avenues, after midnight, returning from the sacred beach); or Muller whose Sumatran smile was as wide as daybreak, and considerate as the sun’s first rays. Or the stumbled-upon love that had traveled with me from one side of the planet to the other, only to be stumbled away from. Or the portion heart that was discovered on that distant archipelago and is with me still.

Well!

What a fine meal it was; and how full is our table.

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