10. The monkey's head

In the back of my mind, I suddenly heard a voice – a female voice – telling me she needed to speak to me urgently, to leave everything and meet her, because she had something she needed to tell me. Now, and, if not now, later, as soon as I finished my business. The voice, though faint, was distinctively real. Stupidly, I checked my mobile phone for messages: nothing. On an instinct, I turned around, half hoping, for a fraction of a second, she’d materialise behind me. Obviously, no‑one – at the exception of Dahila, who remained, unperturbed, at the side of the Filipino, in the shadows, her face visible in flickers in the light cast by the candles.

I tried to disguise my awkwardness, but there was no need: no‑one seemed to have noticed it. Besides, I’d been restless in my chair ever since dinner began on account of the heat. And why should I even feel the slightest embarrassment in the present entourage?

Wu stood up, turned towards Dahlia and made yet another of his theatrical gestures. It worked – Wu did well even without a drum roll –, because a silence installed forthwith, in anticipation; Mrs. Wu did her part, an accomplice to her husband, but looking expectant like the rest of us, as if, even if she’d knew what would follow next, the magnificence of it would still surprise her. “The pièce de résistance!” exclaimed Wu.

Dahlia and the Filipino brought in a large silver tray with gilded handles and laid it on a supporting table at an angle behind me. Whatever was on the tray was covered with a white linen cloth, and Dahlia rolled it back a bit ­– about a third of the tray’s length –, revealing pieces of meat, red and soaked in a gravy that looked more like blood. For once I was happy my palate was dead.

Wu searched his pocket and took out a remote control and pulled a small antenna from it, like those old Panasonic mobile phones. A small green neon‑like light flashed intermittent and left an eerie psychedelic trail when Wu pointed the control around. Music. Incredibly loud music, Japanese trash techno, started blaring from four speakers that descended from the four corners of the ceiling. What was Wu thinking? Wu opened his arms wide, his belly protruding ever more; like a man who’s making space in his stomach for the entire planet.

“Ah, wunderbar!” Wu said in a loud voice over the music, as if introducing a new circus act. Mrs. Wu applauded vigorously. Klipspinger winced. Anna smiled enigmatically as always and clapped her hands. Lyubova took a deep breath, not of fright, but rather of some deep physical pleasure inside. She turned to me and fixed her blue eyes on me; a look of a woman about to kiss you in the mouth, just waiting for you to make the final move and close in on her lips.

To my right, close to my right, Dahlia took a long knife from her black apron and began sharpening it. The shrill of the blade against the sharpener came in tune with the music from the speakers, as if rehearsed beforehand. It was too hot.

I gulped down a full glass of tasteless Pessac-Léognan. The Filipino started popping open bottles of red wine. I recognised the label – another good choice: a 2001 Chambertin. At least, Wu had the good sense of not serving Californian wines and, what’s more, (and this really surprised me; pleasantly, if my taste buds would co-operate) he had the good sense of not serving French wines from the same region at the same meal. Bourgogne red followed Bordeaux white.

A minuscule stream of sweat flowed at the surface of perception under my eyes.

Dahlia was still sharpening her long knife, her sleeves pulled up, showing her bare wrists that only in minute, precise, movements, revealed the contained strength beneath her skin. Long, finishing in perfect oval‑shaped nails, pearl‑cream fingers; articulated in such a beautiful way they conveyed elegance to every move and twist of her hands; like her fingertips had never touched anything harder than the soft clouds of the dreams and longings of a man really, deeply, in love. These fingers, these hands, were now adeptly manoeuvring a blade, sharpening it. And speaking to me in a foreign tongue I struggled to understand.

If anything, the music seemed only to make the room even hotter. Wunderbar.

I could not take my eyes off Dahlia’s fingers' languid sway; it took me a minute to sense the stare of Lyubova and, when I finally met her eyes, she appeared aghast from taking me that long. Intensely, without uttering a word, she kept looking into my eyes, embarrassment creeping up the veins of my neck and flushing my cheeks. “What?”, I silently interrogated her with what seems in hindsight a gauche facial expression. She stared and stared, pulling my senses towards – inwards – her. I frowned in a futile attempt to distract her and reassert myself. Instead, she rolled her tongue out and twisted it sexually in a mock kiss. Trying, barely, to keep my cool, I blew her a kiss back and smiled painfully, but this only made her burst out in a haughty but muffled laughter. Defiantly, Lyubova kept smiling at me, like a woman, swung on sex and enjoying scornfully the ridicule of a sexually inept male partner – me. As if she’d read my mind earlier in Central Park and was now taking her revenge.

Dahlia began carving pieces of raw meat. I tried to catch a glimpse of her eyes, but all I could make out was her curved black thick eyelashes. Undeterred, I confronted her. I leaned back, on my chair, clumsily, and asked her the most pathetic of questions I could ever ask: “So, I gather you’re Chinese?” This was something Klipspringer might’ve asked, but even he, by now, could probably come up with better pick‑up lines than me.

“No, sir. Korean.” her voice as sharpen to my ears as the blade in her long knife.

“Didn’t you want to speak to me urgently? Tonight? Or as soon as I’d finish here? I thought I heard a woman ­–…” “No, sir.” Biting my teeth, unsuccessful at seeing her eyes, I regained my composure at the table.

The candles started flickering oddly, spurting little purple sparks that twinkled high in the room like little pinkish fireworks. With the help of the Filipino, the dishes began being served. Soaked red dark meat in thin stripes with steamed exotic vegetables, yellow, green and red.

Trumpets came out of the speakers now. What the hell…?

All of a sudden, a dog – a Pomeranian – ran off from under the table, yapping mercilessly. Anna rose from her chair to chase after the dog, but Lyubova took her by the elbow and pulled her back to her seat. The Filipino swiftly and adroitly caught the hysterical little beast, which did little to reassure Anna, who kept calling after her pet. Lyubova put a hand over her lips to silence her and then, with Anna’s face close to her own, removed gently her hand over Anna’s mouth, making sure she’d be silent, and clasped her cheeks. Lyubova gave her long kiss in the mouth to which Anna violently surrendered, offering her lips and tongue, as what can only be described as passion rediscovered after a long winter of disenchantment.

Smouldering hot, like baking my heart in a fire; so hot – hot – breathing was painstaking. I was panting and not as drunk as I wished I’d be. The Chambertin (equally lacking any flavour; not that was any longer important to me) only offered a mild palliative to my unquenchable thirst.

Klipspringer rose, glass in hand, and inconsequentially, but, despite that, formally, stated “Dear Mrs. Wu, let me say that I think that Schmied is simply not up to snuff!” I had no idea who this Schmied was, because Wu, majestic and supercilious, waved for him to sit down, which he did and kept silent hitherto.

“This is special, exquisite. A meal for distinguished guests, like yourselves. I’m proudly associating myself to a very special, unique show, and I want you all to be there. I got this order…”, Wu looked at his wife before proceeding “… from – well, I won’t reveal that. No need, no need. You know, you will understand. Of course, of course. No? Of course! You will understand. I only tell you this – but I needn’t, really, tell you this; you ought to know already, of course. He – he is a very important person. I must pay homage to him. Well, of course. You see my position – so would you, no? Of c‑ourse! And – oh, well –, no better way to do that than by inviting you all over for this – very special, very special – dinner. Thank you – thank you again – for coming over to my place on Pell Street. Now – enjoy, enjoy, enjoy!”

Trumpets and fireworks and little spots dangling before my eyes, playing like fawns in the woods. Naked. And Japanese techno, and the sirens of ambulances and foghorns. And the heat. Oh, boy, the heat!

And there we were, eating raw, blood‑soaked stripes of unknown meat. And the shadows grew deeper and wider; and the fireworks brighter; and the music random and relentless and loud. And I couldn’t still taste or smell whatever, but feeling hot. Hot like burning my soul in a furnace.

Dahlia kept dishing out slices of dark red meat. Anna and Lyubova were kissing, entangling their tongues in furious passion, oblivious of everything else but their kiss – their intermittent but, yet, continuous lesbian kiss – and the touch in their fingertips, like the fresh discovery of someone else’s skin… Their pale cheeks now smeared from the blood of the meat they occasionally forked and brought to their mouths; something that only seemed to entice – to arouse - them (hell, to arouse me!) more. And it was hot, hot, hot, and the room began spinning around its centre. And pop, pop, pop, the Filipino kept uncorking bottles of red – blood red; the image of it almost brought tears to my eyes – Bourgogne wine. Twinkle, twinkle, another purple minuscule firework. Please!

“Mrs. Wu is having an operation. She’s rejuvenating. A miracle, a miracle. My wife, young in body as she’s young at heart. A miracle, a miracle. Justice! A toast!”

We all raised our glasses to Wu’s toast. All the while, Mrs. Wu got up and climbed atop the dining table and spun around herself. In a movement I’m yet still to comprehend – like a magician’s pass – she faced us, the audience, and took her nylons out and lassoed them on Klipspringer’s neck, whose only reaction was to salivate and brutally laugh like an untamed beast from hell, waiting to be predated on.

“Eat and dance. Oh, the flesh, the flesh. The flesh that dances before us. What a show, Lyubova, dear Lyubova. What a show it’ll be, dear Lyubova!”

From the speakers a slow waltz came flowing down, like a sound veil dropped from above. Dahlia kept carving the meat, gradually unrolling the cloth covering the tray; the Filipino opening bottles. All sorts of bottles. Of all shapes, colours and labels. I don’t know what we were drinking anymore. I still couldn’t taste anything but – somehow – it now felt sweet; not so much a taste but an after‑taste; something you remember more than discern. And the music played on, loud and filling the room, which was now like a boat adrift in the waves of sound and burning incense and burning purple candles…

I found myself with no trousers, only my shirt on; my penis half erect, and moving, almost dancing, to the waltzing rhythm, while Wu & wife were in full swing, dancing like it was New Year’s Eve in Hong Kong; while Klipspringer jumped up and down, excited like a capricorn, like he’d lost all senses. Anna and Lyobova – where were they? Drink, drink, drink.

Dahlia rolled down the last piece of cloth to uncover the tray completely.

Streams of angels could’ve passed, flying by, in that room, because time stood still – absolutely still; and it was like plunging into a bottomless well and keeping one's breath for minutes, hours, days. Nothing else mattered; you just waited for those angels to pass flying by, till the very last of them.

And then Dahlia, sharpened knife in hand – its edge glittering pure white, like the first rays of a summer morning sun shooting into a dark room –, revealed the tray to the guests. There were no more stripes of flesh left, everything had been carved out.

A monkey's head.

All it remained in the tray was a severed monkey’s head. Still with fur, black and thick, its eyes closed like testimony of a long painless death that only hurt its chimpanzee soul, and it’s tongue sticking out. Like a final message of dispossession to all who’d witness it.

It was then that I saw Dahlia’s eyes. How could I not? - she was staring at me. Green; green were her eyes. Such a deep green you could almost mistake it for blue. My clothes bothered me ­– I wish I’d be naked there and then, as if on a beach, and bathe on that deep green, green ocean.

“Sir,” she said in her sharp voice and in a smile that promised the tranquillity I longed for, “you’ll maybe hear from her tomorrow. There is no urgency.”