Читать книгу Miss Boo Is Sixteen - Margaret Lee Runbeck - Страница 13

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If he hadn’t been undeniably the best cook on earth, we couldn’t have put up with the suspense, surprise, and general emotionalism of Tumpti’s cooking. Scarcely ever was a meal a routine matter, negotiated without shock of some kind. But as one of us said in defense of him, “Well, at least he shocks you upward.”

Also he talked to himself. And not in any pleasant amiable dialogue, as one might expect between congenial comrades. He argued with himself, sometimes in crackling Japanese, and even more terrifying, in gunfire English. The part of him that did the bullying had the other meeker part completely cowed. But occasionally there was answering back.

With us he was usually pleasantness incarnate. Obviously he liked us better than he liked himself. And we intended to keep it that way, if we possibly could.

That wasn’t too difficult. We had a method for getting along fine; when we inadvertently proposed something he didn’t want, he tolerantly ignored the proposal.

“No good,” he’d say cheerfully. “I show you how I do it.” So we always came to a compromise by having it his way.

Sometimes I used to worry about his food. Every five or six days he would cook up enough for a week of his meager rations. As he had promised in the beginning, it would always be lice in some form or other. The quantity would be about enough for two normal people to eat at a sitting.

When I timidly inquired if he were getting enough to eat, he got quite mad. “You want me fat! Everybody too fat. I stay with health.”

He had his own time for doing chores, and nothing could divert him from his private schedule. For instance, on Wednesday morning he put all of his Tuesday’s clothes in the washing machine, and on Thursday morning Wednesday’s aprons, white trousers, and shirt had to be washed, and so on through the week. Our washing machine is not one of the silent varieties you see on TV when you want to see a Spectacular. Ours rumbles and quivers and the whole house vibrates in harmony with it. Consequently when you woke up at our house, your first thought was that you were on a seagoing vessel. But it was only Tumpti taking care of his daily cleanth.

His private cooking he always did when he was in the grip of the whim. Usually it would be on the rare occasions when I had asked him to put together a tea tray, and bring it into the living room for guests. Since he usually enlivened the lice with raw fish, this wasn’t the best moment for concocting his own fare.

In many ways he had a positive genius for picking an inconvenient time for doing everything. But we loved him so much, and we were so aware of his incomparable virtues, that we naturally made the quiet best of it all.

But I did think that the day he was preparing a big buffet for twenty-five people (the hungriest people imaginable, too, this being a writers’ club) was hardly the time for him to cook up one of his own private recipes.

The buffet, in fact, had been his idea from the beginning.

“Not enough company,” he had grumbled. “House too quiet. I go someplace else.”

“Why, we’ve thought ...” I said apologetically.

“You invite. I make beeg buffet supper. Turkey, ham, cleamed potatoes. Stuff for party.” He danced on his little feet like a boxer, sparring in the air to indicate the size of his preparations.

He kept at me, too, until I set the date and called up the guests. Whenever I brought up the subject of the menu, he was indignant. “I fix. Nobody bother. You bring in turkey ... twenty pounds. Also big ham. Maybe oysters, sweet potatoes. I make chelly pie. I borrow big coffeepot next door.”

“I’ll buy a big coffeepot,” I said quickly, feeling sure that borrowing isn’t done in Beverly Hills.

“Waste money. I already arrange,” he said haughtily. “I rend cook next door two thlee things.” His face looked greased with craftiness.

We insisted on eating our lunch out on the day of the buffet. For one look in the kitchen told us that when big events are marching, small episodes must retreat.

That’s why it was such a ridiculous moment for him to decide to cook up his private “lice.” Not just the little supply for a week, either, but a huge quantity, enough to see him through a month.

“What’s this?” I asked innocently, as if I didn’t know when I saw the kettle boiling.

“My lice,” he said indignantly, just daring me to comment, for or against.

So I said in a most conciliatory voice, “Well, one thing about a buffet supper. It really doesn’t matter whether or not it’s served exactly on time. Don’t you worry about it.”

“Wully? I don’t wully.” He wagged his little head cheerfully, and I could see that in his mind worry is an unadmirable Occidental pursuit holding no temptations for him.

But when I told the family about his picking today to cook for himself, they weren’t too indulgent.

“I think he just tries to see how annoying he can be. Why couldn’t he eat a few slivers of turkey and ham? It wouldn’t kill him.”

“He rikes his lice,” I said. “And this is a free country. That’s why he’s lived here for fifty years.” But privately I thought there was a point in the rare criticism.

We were all prepared to have the buffet appear late, like a prima donna. But on the dot of seven, Tumpti came to the door of the living room, stiff and sparkling in fresh white.

“Buffet leddy,” he said, faultlessly.

And there it was, all present and accounted for ... the turkey, its breast rippling into snowy slices, as regular as the pages of a new-opened book ... the ham pink-petaled and luscious with a garland of spiced crabapples ringing the platter, sweet potatoes, creamed potatoes, broccoli with flawless hollandaise, fruits in a salad which looked like a travel folder for the Garden of Eden ... rolls under wraps ... And then my eye stumbled and stopped. For in the very center of the buffet... the pièce de résistance, supported by the entire caste of lesser viands ... was a mystery performer.

“What on earth is that?” I whispered in horror to Tumpti, standing by with eager tiny hands clasped in pride under a fatuously enthralled face.

“That lice,” he whispered back. “Ve’y good. I fix for sooplize.”

He had prepared an enormous flat pan of it ... so huge that he had had to buy it somewhere out of his own salary (or maybe the neighbors on the other side were the owners?)

Everyone was dipping into it, and its hidden goodies were being turned up to view. Tiny shrimps, almonds, mushrooms ... heaven knows what. But principally lice.

Everybody came back and asked for more of it. And the entrepreneur produced another immense panful, just as good as the first. Everyone ate until the last grain and morsel was gone, and the rest of the buffet just sat there looking mortified.

Every time our paths crossed, he said, “I sooplize you!” His face was the happiest one in the room. The writers had been invited, but Tumpti was the honored guest.

So now day after day the family, badly outnumbered, has been working away on an ole twenty-pound turkey, and a ham what am, which looks as if it will continue am-ing forever.