Laia Jufresa - Umami

Marina comes back, takes a little bow and hands me the prettiest, tiniest, most ridiculous hammer I’ve ever seen. It’s half the size of a normal hammer and has an elaborate, flowery, leafy pattern printed on it. Marina unscrews it and shows me how, inside the handle, it has a spade hidden on one side and a brush on the other. I laugh.

‘The land,’ she says, ‘belongs to she who decorates it.’

‘I’m going to get it dirty,’ I say, ‘maybe even get lead on it.’

I say ‘lead’ slowly and deliberately, to impress her. Marina squints.

‘Keep it,’ she finally rules.

‘You sure?’

‘It was a gift from a total waste of space. You can cover it in mercury for all I care.’

‘Lead.’

‘Whatever.’

Very gently, Marina pushes me toward the door.

‘Thanks so much,’ I tell her, ‘I like your lampshade.’

She takes me by the neck, kisses my forehead, and just before closing the door behind me points to the ceiling and clarifies, ‘It’s called a chandelier, darling.’

*

By the time I leave Bitter House, The Girls are nowhere to be seen, which means I’ll find Alf at home. His mailbox says Doctor Alfonso Semitiel. I’ve known him since I was born. His wife was the doctor really, but ever since he retired a couple of months ago he’s been supplementing his pension selling the prescriptions she left behind. He doesn’t skimp on diagnoses either. No matter what time of day you pop by, he always insists on giving you an alegría (which are kind of like cereal bars, only made of amaranth, ‘So not a cereal bar, Agatha Christie, but a seed bar!’) from the basket he keeps in the hallway. He says amaranth is the food of the future. And of the past. Above all, the past. Alf is my friend. In fact, Alf is the inspiration behind all of this: it’s thanks to him I know how to grow things. I spent my entire childhood sowing amaranth and other Mesoamerican pseudo-cereals: quinoa, chia, acacia. And real cereals, too: wheat, barley, oats, millet, corn (naturally); and corn’s two sisters: beans and pumpkin. He called it his MM or Modern Milpa . Over the last years almost everything we planted was destroyed by the toxic summer rains, but some of them did OK. The MM used to be in his yard, but he let it die when his wife died. Now, in its place, there’s a built-in jacuzzi. My dad, who is the least medically minded person in the whole mews, diagnosed Alf with depression. But when I go over, Alf’s always soaking in the jacuzzi and reading. He says he’s learning to swim or, at the very least, to take little dips. Missing the MM; wanting to bring it back to life, for Alf and for all! These were some of the arguments that helped me finally convince Mom that the whole yard-renovation thing could really work.

Alf seems pleased to see me when he opens the door (looking like a dog fresh out of the water). He is wrapped in a pinkish robe that looks like it might have belonged to his wife, but I have the goodness of heart not to comment. I follow him to the yard, skipping over his wet footprints. I don’t need to explain my plan to him because he already knows it. In fact, it was to him and not to Pina that I took the serviette contract the day we signed it. Pina is my best friend, but for her the word agriculture might as well refer to the superstore around the corner. Or La Michoacana. Her idea of a harvest is when she buys herself two horchatas in a row.

We sit down on the rocking chairs on the terrace looking out over the jacuzzi. The Girls are sitting on a bench, one looking at us and the other out to the horizon. I explain to Alf that I need tools.

‘I’m so frickin’ proud of you, Agatha Christie.’

He’s always called me that, and coming from him I like it, because Alf is an investigator. Not a private investigator, but definitely a research investigator something or other. Alf is actually a doctor too, but in anthropology not in curing people. It could be I’m the only person who knows this because hardly anyone goes into his study where he keeps all his diplomas and books, some of which he wrote himself. His doctoral thesis is about umami, the fifth taste, which wasn’t at all known except in Japan, and it was him who helped to spread the word about it in the West. Or at least in Mexico. Mexico is in the West. I don’t dare tell him, but I’m proud of him, too. He carries his grief better than my mom. He doesn’t act like a ghost, or go totally nuts over songs. At least not in front of me he doesn’t. I guess I’d have to ask The Girls what they think about it. But The Girls don’t think.

Alf starts pulling tools out of a mini-shed, which he keeps locked, as if someone might come steal his shovel.

‘Where’s your friend?’ he asks.

‘Pina? She’s with her mom.’

Alf scans my face to see if I’m lying.

‘She turned up, didn’t she?’ I say, then try to think of something to change the subject quick because I don’t want him to ask me any questions. I don’t know if Pina wants Alf to know her mom has resurfaced after all these years, and that she’s living on that Mazuzzy beach, which isn’t even that far from Mexico City.

‘When was the very, very first time you heard anyone talk about umami?’ I ask.

‘I never told you? I was at a conference dinner where I got lumbered sitting next to a grouchy Japanese man, one of those people who make waiters miserable for sport. He complained that his food didn’t have enough umami in it, and of course I had no idea what he was talking about. It was 1969. Is this any use to you?’ he asks, holding up a microscopic hose, which I immediately recognize.

‘A Dampit?’ I say.

‘A what?’

‘A Dampit. It’s a guitar humidifier.’

‘Really?’ he asks.

‘I think so, let me see. Yep.’

Alf laughs, ‘I always thought it was to keep cacti and other things you don’t need to water from going dry; I found it one day out in the corridor!’ He’s really losing it now: ‘I suppose one only sees what one wants to see.’

‘It was probably my brother’s.’

‘Well, in that case, take it.’ He takes a couple of deep breaths and manages to stop giggling. ‘Tell him I nicked it off him.’

‘I haven’t seen you laugh like that for ages,’ I say without thinking. He sighs and his face relaxes into a smile somewhere between stoical and serene, and which makes me feel older than I am. Emma always says I have an old soul, and sometimes I think she’s got that right.

*

I leave Umami with a loaded trolley. Aside from Marina’s dainty hammer and Theo’s useless Dampit, I have: a shovel, a rake, a pair of enormous, mucky gloves, an extension hose and some garden shears which Alf uses to prune the little tree on his porch. It’s a lemon tree that has never given lemons. I’ve only just started to appreciate the huge amount of plants in his house. Before, I always focused on the MM, never on the pots inside, which I thought were more his wife’s territory. Her name was Doctor Noelia and she always offered me sugar-free candy because she was worried I would get fat. It worries me too now, a little bit, but I can’t consult her anymore because she died three months after my sister. When I ask my mom if I’m fat she says no, that it’s only baby fat and that I’ll grow out of it.

‘So, what you mean is that I’ll keep growing till one day I burst out of my fatness and leave it behind like snakes shed their skins?’ I ask her.

‘Calm down, Ana,’ she says.

‘I’m not a baby,’ I say.

‘You’ve got such beautiful eyes,’ she says, and I get mad because she’s always trying to change the subject.

Growing the milpa is a matter of principle, but the houseplants inside are more like Alf’s pets. That’s what I think as I leave Umami. He looks after them lovingly. Not as lovingly as he looks after The Girls, but almost; a lot like the other old folk in the neighborhood look after their dogs. Normally I like to hang around Umami for hours, but this time I left quickly because ever since I let slip about Chela I feel bad. Sort of like a traitor. This reunion with her mom is going to be the weirdest thing that Pina’s done in her life, and it’s going to happen without me. I didn’t even help her pack. I decide I’m going to call her tonight. I hope her cell works in Macuque, or whatever that beach is called. Me, I don’t have a cell. One day I asked Dad for one and he said, ‘If you lived in the nineteenth century, what would you think of a thirteen-year-old girl who spent all day glued to the mailbox waiting for a letter?’