Grandpa knew better than most people that you should always obey the
law. When he was a young man he had lived through a time when no one had been obeying the law and it had been awful, worse than awful.
But all the same he had been looking after his granddaughter since
she was a little girl and if now, at the age of nineteen, she had
decided to overthrow the government then he supposed he would have to continue to look after her, even if it meant disobeying the law.
Someone had to make sure that she ate proper meals.
It was dinner time and hot and humid. Grandpa climbed up the roof of the parliament building holding his wok in one hand. He had been
doing this each dinner time for a week now because his granddaughter
would not leave the other students to come down to the cooking area
to eat her meals in a regular fashion. The roof of the parliament
sloped to ground level so it was not difficult to mount onto it at
the sides. Why the builders had built it that way, Grandpa could not tell. But in any case its surface was covered with some slidy
material, some sort of stone or artificial blocks, like polished
ivory, and this made climbing to the top a tricky business. Maybe it was ivory. You could not put it past the president; he was that sort of man. But whatever it was, Grandpa was worried that his
granddaughter or one of the other young people would lose their
footing. He nagged at them to move to a safer spot. But they just
laughed and shouted, “We’ll all move when the president is expelled from office!” And so far that had not happened.
Grandpa placed his wok in the centre of the circle of young men and
women and removed the lid. Steam swirled from the noodles he had
prepared. “Grandpa,” one of them said to him in high spirits and with his mouth full, “these noodles are the best noodles in the
world. I’ll bet the pre sident doesn’t eat noodles as good as these!”
“Just watch your step,” Grandpa responded. “You could take a nasty
fall from up here.”
“Just like the president!” they all laughed.
And as they hoed into their dinner they began a lively discussion of
the progress they were making in overthrowing the government. Some
maintained that at this rate the president would have to resign
within the week. Others were less pessimistic and claimed that by
tomorrow morning he would be history. Grandpa listened to their
prognostications, but was not convinced. He knew quite well that the government had been in power since the end of the war when the
occupation forces had left, which was long before these hungry young
people had been born. He had lived many years under the government’s heal through bad times and even worse times and he could not see it
being out of power just because these young people did not fancy it
anymore. But then what did he kn o w? If someone had told him that
one day he would be carrying a wok of noodles up onto the roof of the parliament building he would have blown his nose and told them they
were crazy. So he held his tongue and served out his noodles until
there were none left.
“I think you will soon be back in your classrooms,” was all he said.
“Studying hard for your exams.”
But no one listened. Instead they switched on the boom box and
played loud music with words he could not understand. The parliament was on a hill and from their position on the roof they could see the
city skyline stretched out in front of the setting sun. Two
helicopters were circling at a distance. It was like a postcard.
You could send a picture of this to someone as if you were on
holiday. It certainly felt like a holiday. No one was working.
Everyone seemed to be dressed in holiday clothes, staying up late at
night, singing, laughing, joking.
He had never been to the pa rl iament before. He had not had the
time. All his life he had worked hard, setting up his restaurant and then taking care of his orphaned granddaughter. When the child’s
mother, his own daughter, had died he had taken it upon himself to
look after the little girl rather than to pack her off to boarding
school. This had not pleased his wife. After their daughter’s death she had become very religious and had occupied herself with praying
and going on retreats and fasting. It was rather awkward behaviour
for the wife of a restaurant owner and it meant she had no time to
help with her granddaughter’s upbringing. In the end Grandpa had
told his wife it would be better for her to go and live with her old
mother and pray. He would take care of the restaurant and the
granddaughter. His wife had been a little too good for him, he came
to realise. She had expected a life of leisure when they married and while he had not really expected her to do m uch work in the business
it was not in his power to avoid work himself and be a man of
leisure. That was not how a restaurant owner lived. But his wife
did not seem to accept this.
“You should go back down, Grandpa,” his granddaughter said to him. “There’s no need for you to be up here.”
“I will,” he told her. “I will go back down. But I will come up again if there is any trouble,” he added. He had a sense that there would be trouble and he was keen to keep his granddaughter out of
it. Why tempt fate? Tempting fate had been the downfall of his
daughter and her husband. The husband had been a real fancy pants.
For no good reason he had decided to buy himself an aeroplane. The
dill! His friend had given him flying lessons then he and his wife
had gone flying around it in. They had flown all the way to a resort in Thailand. Before they left they had asked Grandpa to come in it
with them. They had taken him to the airfield to show him. What a < BR>tiny little thing it had seemed, ridiculously tiny when you
considered how much money they had paid for it. No, he had said to
them. You are not getting me in that thing. Of course it had
crashed. They had been flying home and without any warning they had
come face to face with the side of a mountain. Apparently they had
been ignorant that it was there and had rammed straight into it. As
luck would have it their baby daughter had been at home with the
chicken pox.
Grandpa ambled gingerly down the ivory or whatever it was using his
wok in one hand like an ice pick. At the encampment the students had made in the forecourt of the parliament he supervised the washing and drying of the bowls and the cooking implements. When he had arrived
here a week before there had been such disorganisation—rubbish,
rotting food, nothing to cook with. Young people could be so
amusing. They could overthrow a government but they could not run a
kitch en. In a restaurant they would not have lasted ten minutes.
He had given them all a good talking to. Now things were much
better. Each of them had their jobs to do and it was running like a
proper kitchen, or as much as could be expected. When the army came if it came—they would see that these people knew how to feed
themselves. They were not an irresponsible rabble. He had taught
them to fry noodles very well. If the president were to turn up
suddenly with all his generals they could at least offer them a bowl
of well-fried noodles.
He must have dozed off in one of the plastic chairs because all of a
sudden there was a lot of noise. “Troops!” people were shouting in the dark. There was a sort of exuberant panic. “Grandpa!” his
granddaughter shouted in his ear. “Wake up! You need to get
inside. Quick!” She had obviously come down from the roof with her other friends. He rubbed his eyes and tried to focus. He needed his spectacles, but one of the students had stepped on them before things had been organised properly. Almost directly overhead he could hear
the din of helicopters, beating up the sky as if they were mixing
omelettes. Painfully bright lights were beamed down upon the ground
from them. Such a racket. Such a disturbance. He stared at them
with his ancient eyes. He managed to discern some figures up in the
doorways of the helicopters. They appeared to be soldiers and they
were holding silly guns, not rifles, but funny toy-like guns. Pang! Pang! They shot little bombs that arced outwards and down, hitting
the ground dully and lying there fizzing. Out came clouds of white
smoke that hurt everyone’s eyes. It was like when a kitchen catches on fire.
His granddaughter and all the other young people showed not the
slightest inclination to move from where they were. They stood in
the open and gawked. After a few moments his granddaughter turned
her attention away from th e spectacle of the helicopters and saw that the gas was causing her grandfather to splutter. “Go inside,
Grandpa,” she urged him. “Remember your heart.”
That was true. He had almost forgotten. His heart had been giving
him a little trouble lately. Had he popped his pill this morning?
It was hard to maintain regular habits in this irregular situation.
Better follow his granddaughter’s advice. “Go in, Grandpa,” he was
urged again.
He made his way through the cavernous parliamentary entrance and into the abandoned building. Up on the wall in front of him were
displayed the inflated words from the opening of the constitution,
cast in bronze. Someone had recently added to them with black
paint. He stood for a moment and tried to make out what the added
words said. They were not at all well written, which was a bit
shameful really, when you considered that these young people were so
well educated. Also in the entrance was an effigy of the president
dangling by a cord from one of the great chandeliers. That was
rather disrespectful, he had to say. Surely they didn’t mean this to be the fate of the president. If the president simply slipped away,
that would be enough. On holiday perhaps. A nice relaxing holiday. Though not, if he had any sense, in a small plane.
Grandpa climbed the curving staircase to the mezzanine from where he
could look out through the glass front of the building. It was like
being at the cinema. He could see the action as it took place in the forecourt. The helicopters were still outside hovering quite low in
the air, like ducks unable to make up their minds whether it was safe to land. Then all of a sudden thick, silvery ropes tumbled from the
sides of the machines. And down the ropes slid soldiers with rifles
slung over their backs and helmets and big boots and on their faces
strange masks. To Grandpa it seemed particularly odd. He reflected
that in t he long-ago war he had been involved in as a young man only
the generals had been flown places. The rest of them had had to walk everywhere and carry all their belongings. Could these soldiers not
have marched? It was surely not that far from the barracks to the
parliament. Being flown this short distance in helicopters made them seem like spoilt children. A little march like up a nice gentle
hill, on a pleasant evening in the middle of the dry season would do
them the world of good. They would work up an appetite.
Meanwhile the young people in the forecourt seemed to grow very
exited. They were evidently shouting, though he could not hear what
it was they were shouting above the racket of the machinery. Their
faces were screwed up and they were shaking their fists at the
descending soldiers. It was not long before they were actually
throwing things—pieces of fruit, shoes, books. They must be quite
upset, Grandpa supposed, but all the same it can not have been safe
to throw things at helicopters. They were such primitive
contraptions. Grandpa had inspected them at the airfield where his
son-in-law had parked his ill-fated aeroplane. They were nothing
more than a propeller stuck on top of a box. Imagine the
consequences of even a stray shoe. The vital mechanism might jam and cause the whole thing to come down on their heads.
Oh, and now what? What had he just said to himself? One of the
machines was in trouble, tilting over in a way that looked quite
insecure, like a wounded pigeon. It was heading this way, coming
down, down—bump. It hit the ground and smashed its rotors all to
pieces. Men tumbled out, apparently not very hurt, though their
flying machine was clearly not in any state to take off again. They
waved their rifles about quite unprofessionally, pointing them at the crowd that flocked around them. There were hundreds of young people
and they were a cting in a strangely excited way that alarmed the
soldiers no end. They were shouting and cheering, as if they wanted
to see the soldiers climb into their helicopter and perform the trick of crash landing again. Indeed they seemed to be shouting, “Troops out!” or some such thing. But they did not look like they actually meant any harm. The soldiers, for their part, were not taking any
chances. Still aiming at the crowd they scurried backwards or
sideways looking for cover. The other helicopters all lifted higher, still decorated with their strings of men and disappeared into the
dark sky, leaving their friends behind to fend for themselves.
Well, that was interesting. What was going to happen now, with these solders abandoned in the middle of all these other young people? He
had probably better not go looking. He had probably better stay
where he was, as his granddaughter had suggested. Gas was still
wafting about the forecourt and his eyes could detec t a certain
invisible concentration of it even here. It would probably be all
right. The young people would probably sort it out with the
soldiers. The soldiers were young people too. So long as the
wreckage did not ignite, there seemed to be no problem. Someone
would come with a truck tomorrow to retrieve the broken machinery and transport it to the repair shop. Simple as they were these
helicopters cost even more than aeroplanes so they would want to fix
it. He knew that from his silly son-in-law.
He decided to go for a stroll and inspect the insides of the
building. Proceeding down a thickly carpeted corridor he passed many doors. This was one of those buildings that seemed larger on the
inside. How could they possibly need so many rooms, Grandpa thought
to himself as he moved deeper inside. It was not as if they spent
that much time running the country, given the state it had been in
for the last twenty years. So why the need f or so much
accommodation? As he walked up and down and around and around, never seeming to pass the same doorway twice, he could not help noticing
places where the carpet had been stained by the recent occupation.
There would be a job of cleaning up for someone when this was over.
A number of portraits hanging in the hallways were now quite beyond
cleaning—they had been the targets of all sorts of projectiles, a lot of it food, and not terribly wholesome looking food either. Seeing
this a thought occurred to him. That is where I should go, he said
to himself. He had heard reports about the kitchens and he had been
meaning to have a peak at them but had not had the opportunity. They would be interesting to see. Now seemed as good a time as any. It
was only a matter of locating them. So which way? Down, of course;
that would be the logical place. They would be in the basement.
Kitchens were always in the basement.
This turned out to be c orrect. His nose guided him. The smell of a
large kitchen was unmistakable even when nothing had been cooked it
for days. He paused in front of the swinging double doors and was
about to enter when there was a terrific bang. He hurried in to see
a young soldier inaccurately pointing the muzzle of his rifle at his
own head. “Hey, what do you think you’re doing!” Grandpa demanded.
But at that point the soldier got off another badly aimed shot, this
one striking a big wok that hung with many others on a rack by the
wall and piercing it clean through. “Idiot!” Grandpa yelled, lunging
at him. “Here, give me that.” He grabbed hold of the weapon and wrested it from its owner’s grip without much resistance. “What’s
got into you? Do you think that’s any way to handle a rifle?”
The young soldier promptly covered his face with his hands and burst
into tears. But Grandpa paid no attention, stepping over instead to
examine the wounded w ok. “Wel l, that’s ruined it,” he commented.
“They won’t be using that for anything.” He returned to the young
soldier. “How did you get in here?” he berated him. “This is a kitchen, not a firing range.” The young man lifted his face from his hands and looking very sorry launched into a tearful explanation of
why he was trying to shoot himself. It was not a very coherent
explanation but from what Grandpa could make out the young solder had come from a nearby army base in one of the helicopters. Before
dispatching him his superior officers had informed all the recruits
that the parliament had been overrun by spies and foreigners and that the country was in danger of invasion and that it was their duty to
shoot all the traitors. But when his helicopter had crashed he had
been helped out of the wreckage by a young man he recognised as an
old student from his own high school and when the true situation
became clear he realised that he had been li ed to and that the people occupying the parliament were not traitors at all. So he could not
possibly follow the orders he had been given. Now he had deserted
and could not return because doing so would lead to him being shot
and he did not know what to do and in his despair he had thought it
best to do the job himself straight away because his parents would be so ashamed if the truth was ever learned. Or something very like that.
Grandpa allowed him a minute or two of snivelling after he had
finished his story. “I am not sure I understood all that,” he said finally. “But lets see if you have caused yourself any harm, or if you are only capable of wounding the cooking pots.”
The young man stopped snivelling and carefully felt over his head,
rolling his eyes up as if he expected to be able to get a look at
himself, while Grandpa examined him for blood. “No,” the soldier muttered.
“Then they must not have trained you very well in the army,” Grandp a
com mented. “But never mind about that. I expect you are finished
with the army now. You had better get yourself out of those clothes.”
Grandpa began to shuffle about the kitchen, past the giant benches
with their monstrous mixers and microwaves and cauldrons. He peeked
into the cupboards until he located what he was looking for, a set of new clothes. Picking up the young man’s military uniform from the
floor Grandpa folded each item and set them neatly on the bench.
“Here. You put on these nice checked trousers and see how they fit. There. Very good. Don’t you look smart in those. And a nice white shirt. Oh, yes, excellent. Now you can learn to be a chef. Would
you like a hat too? No? Perhaps not.”
One of the tall refrigerators had a shiny stainless steel finish to
it. Grandpa propelled the young man in front of it and made him
stare at his reflection. The reflection stared back dumbly,
incredulously. It was the image of a new kitche n hand on his first
day at work. “What do you think? Not bad, eh? Well, I suppose now we are here we should cook something,” Grandpa announced. “Can you cook?” The young man looked at him as if he was nuts. “What? Are you serious? Not at all? That’s no good. A young man like you
should know how to cook. It is far more important to know how to
cook than to fire a blasted rifle, don’t you think? Well, never
mind. Help me find some ingredients. There is surely something
around here to go in a pot. This place could feed everyone if it was organised, even an army, I suppose. Here, you look strong. Fill
this big pot with water for me and get it onto the stove.”
The young man might have looked strong but his hands were shaking and after he had clanged the pot against the shiny sink and sprayed water over himself and the benches he managed to drop everything. “No, no, that won’t do,” Grandpa scolded him. “If that had been hot soup you
would have jumped, young man. Now there’s no need to burst into
tears again. Go and get yourself a mop and a bucket and clean it
up. I am too old to be slipping over.” The young man found a mop
and mopped the floor with tremendous inefficiently, making it obvious that he had never done such a thing before (what did they teach them
in the army these days?), after which he seemed happy to follow
Grandpa’s orders. Grandpa decided that he would start by showing
this poor young fellow how to make soup. Once they had some soup in
the pot they would see what else they could cook. He located some
chickens and some pork in the refrigerators, both a little old, but
for soup it hardly mattered as he explained to his new apprentice.
“Now there’s a thought,” Grandpa said to himself. “What do you say?
If you have nothing else to do when all this is over and we are back
home you could become my apprentice. I don’t have an apprentice
anymore. It is pretty hard to keep t hem these days. My last one
decided he would go to France and he never came back. Would you like to be my apprentice? I can guarantee it would be better than the army.”“Oh, yes,” gasped the young man, bowing slightly, as if that really was what he wanted, though perhaps he was just being polite.
After a good deal of scavenging followed by some slow and inexpert
chopping and some moderately incompetent pealing and the opening of
various bottles and packets they had the soup bubbling away nicely.
Grandpa’s attention was so taken up with guiding the apprentice’s fingers out of the way of the kitchen knife he was wielding that he
totally forgot about the events taking place outside the parliament. It was only when they were making plans for a second course to follow the soup that they were interrupted by some of the crowd who had been in the forecourt fighting off the helicopters. They were about a
dozen in number, young men with bandanas tied about the heads . They
appeared very agitated. They rushed into the kitchen in a great hurry.
“Grandpa, what are you doing?” they demanded when they saw him.
“What does it look like?” Grandpa said to them. “I am making soup.”
“Never mind about soup,” the leader of the group announced. “We’re
looking for weapons. There’s going to be an attack and we need
something to defend ourselves. Where are the cleavers, Grandpa?
Hey, what’s this?” he demanded, seeing the soldier’s rifle standing
against one of the benches. “Where did this come from?”
“It belongs to him,” Grandpa explained, pointing to the young
soldier. “He brought it.”
“Who’s he?” the group demanded.
“He is my new apprentice,” Grandpa told them. “He came in one of those helicopters.”
“A soldier!” they shouted in outrage and two of them grabbed hold of
the young man and held him roughly, although he had shown no sign
that he was going to struggle. “The enemy!” one of the young men shouted an d pointed the soldier’s own rifle at him.
“Put that down,” Grandpa scolded. “He’s not your enemy. If I had
not stopped him when I got here he would have shot himself. He
doesn’t want to be in the army anymore. Let him go. I need him to chop chillies.”
But the leader of the group was in no mood to hear about chopping
chillies. “Grandpa,” he shouted, “there’s no time for this. We’re
about to be attacked. The president’s ordered the army to storm the building. He’s declared war on us. We have no choice. We’ll have to use this one as a hostage. Come on, take him away.”
“But…,” Grandpa objected, “who is going to help me with the cooking?”
“We need bombs, Grandpa, not cooking.”
And with that they bundled the poor deserter out of the kitchens at
the point of his own rifle.
Grandpa was left on his own. He looked at the soup and thought how
stupid young people could be. They had been here the best part of a
week and the army had not done anythin g apart fr om fly their
helicopters around and make lots of noise. Storm the parliament,
indeed. Declare war—what melodramatics. Everyone would simply get
tired of the business and in a little while they would go home. That would be it. He stirred his soup and ladled himself a bowl. He drew up a stool and sat down at one of the big benches used for chopping. It was not bad soup, considering. Quite good soup, really. He had
better take some to his granddaughter or she would not eat anything. She had been such a good eater as a child, but lately she had grown
into bad habits. If he did not remind her to eat she would become
horribly skinny and then who would want to marry her? But first he
would have another bowl himself. He had not realised how hungry he
was. And quite tired too. He got up from the stool and laid himself down on the pile of chefs’ uniforms he had pulled from the linen closet.
He must have fallen asleep again because all of a sudden he found < BR>himself waking up. The soup! Hobbling to the stove he found that
his concoction was about to stick to the pot. It would not do to
burn the soup. He stirred it about for several minutes and then
tasted it once more. It tasted even better now. He would take some
upstairs.
When he reached the entrance level he realised that he must have
slept for longer than he had thought. It was already daylight and
the place, which had been full of activity when he left it, was now
deserted. Maybe everyone had gone to bed. But no, that could not be it. They had been sleeping out in the open air—in fact some of them had been very foolishly going to sleep on the roof. But there were
no sleepers to be seen.
Grandpa walked through the entrance hall where the president remained dangling from the chandelier in effigy. He stopped, put down the
bowl he was carrying and untied the end of the cord. He carefully
lowered the president to the ma rble floor, as if he were taking down
a flag. The effigy makers had purloined one of the president’s
official portraits, taping it to the head and then daubing a little
black moustache onto the glass just above the presidential lip. Was
this supposed to be funny? Grandpa decided that he did not
understand the modern sense of humour. So he took the effigy over to a chair where it could wait comfortably for whatever was to eventuate.
Outside there was still the mess of displaced furniture and crates
and boxes and the bus on which many of the students had arrived and
which had been used as a sort of headquarters. But there was no sign of where the young people had got to. There was an eerie quiet after the carnival of the past few days.
Maybe they had grown tired of demonstrating and gone back to their
homes. Well, that would be timely. He should really check on his
restaurant. The staff could be trusted to manage without him, but it would be reassuring to know . He was about to step outside when there was a dreadful din. It was like the sound of a rhinoceros charging
out of the bushes. A great grey beast appeared, facing him and
roaring. It was a tank. Not an armoured vehicle with rubber tyres
such as the riot police would use, but a tank, a tank for fighting
military battles. “Good heavens,” he said to himself. Before he knew it there were several more. They roared into the forecourt,
doing much damage to the paving stones in the process. The sight was amazing. What were they up to? He stood and watched.
From behind a side wall came a sudden movement. One of the young
people raced out towards the first of the tanks. He was shouting
something, Grandpa could not make out what. But he could see that in his hand he had a glass bottle from which hung a burning wick. The
youth took a couple of sideways strides and was about to unleash his
missile on the tank when he was cut down by a b urst of gunfire. Th e
bottle dropped from his hand and rolled unbroken over the pavement,
the wick burning for a little longer and then seeming to go out.
“Good heavens,” he muttered once more. What on earth was going on?
Then he noticed something odd about the fallen youth. He was wearing chef’s trousers.
“Why did you do that?” Grandpa yelled out to the tank. There was no
one visible for him to address his words to, but he was so angry that he spoke to the dull grey armour plating anyway. “Did you think he was going to hurt you with that little bottle of burning petrol?”
“Surrender!” came an amplified voice out of the tank, followed
shortly by another burst of gunfire. Grandpa could hear the bullets
ricocheting off the roof. It made him jump.
Now he could see other young people huddling behind the walls. More
were laying flat on the parliament roof. Apparently they were all
still here but they had been hiding, which was why he had not s een
them. They l ooked very frightened. Then there was more gunfire.
What on earth was the reason for this, thought Grandpa. Shooting
from a tank at unarmed students. It was too much. He folded his
arms tightly about his chest and looked across to where the poor
young fellow lay. The leading tank started grinding its tracks into
the courtyard and veering about so that it pointed directly at the
fallen body. Grandpa saw that if no one did anything the great beast would most likely drive off and straight over the top of the
unfortunate boy, squashing him flat. That would be just too much.
Some one should make them stop.
Still carrying his soup pot he stepped out of the entryway and walked directly towards the tanks. He held himself upright, so as to appear as dignified as he could, though his clothes were not quite as fresh
after his having slept in them for several days. When he had
positioned himself in the way of the tank he looked ar ound. Students were m otioning at him from their hiding places as if they wanted him
to move away. He pulled up an abandoned box and sat down. The tank
paused with its loud engine grumbling and Grandpa stared at it
angrily. “You ought to go away and leave these people in peace,” he
said to it. “Just look what you’ve done.” The tank revved and then
began to inch its way towards him. As it ground up the pavement it
crunched and squeaked horribly. But Grandpa was not impressed. He
stayed where he was.
Finally, still metres from where he sat, the tank seemed to lose
heart. It stopped moving. The motor cut out and a few seconds later the lid of the turret opened and a head emerged wearing a helmet.
The eyes under the helmet blinked. Grandpa gave them a stern look
then bent over and dipped his spoon into his pot of soup. It was
definitely very good soup.