The Fahrenheit Twins (9 page)

Does she notice what effect her stance is having on her audience? Her unblinking eyes survey the men as if they were no more than wooden puppets, carved ceremonial effigies arranged in rows. Indeed they have done their best to maintain such composure, but the provocation is too great. Flesh must move.

Miss Soedhono raises one hand off her hip. This time the click of her fingers is audible. The image on the video screen dissolves and is replaced by a startling picture of curdled fluid, ever-so-slightly out of focus.

‘When a tapped inflorescence is cut off close to the stem,’ she says, serene in her self-possession, ‘the flow continues for some time, reducing only gradually. Bleeding is strictly polar. At the cut-off lower surface of the inflorescence, not even a drop of the fluid appears, no matter how the inflorescence is positioned.’

To illustrate her argument, Miss Soedhono walks up to the video screen and touches the glass with her taloned forefinger, indicating first this example, then that. Her long skirt which, during the three or four steps she took to reach the video screen, delineated the curves of her backside in an evanescent shimmer of silk and shadow, hangs inscrutable. ‘In coconut,’ says Miss Soedhono, turning to face her audience once more, ‘the bleeding tissue is found at the extremities of the lateral branches of the inflorescence, close to the cut from which the juice flows. No doubt you are curious about anatomical differences between bleeding and normal branches. Yes, I can see you are curious. The differences can be seen here, side by side. Bleeding spikes experience a high incidence of clogged vessels. Look at the bleeding spikes, gentlemen. Nearly all the vessels are closed.’

By now, throughout the audience, more and more men are giving in to the irresistible. The temperature in the room has risen to an unbearable level, and the ancient air conditioners begin to complain, bemoaning their futile labour with an irritating ‘ar-ar-ar’ sound. The oxygen has long since disappeared into the lungs of those assembled, and is being devoured in their blood; what remains of the atmosphere is dense with percolating aluminium chlorohydrate, alcohol, hydroxypropylcellulose, and the other ingredients of chemically deodorised armpit, as well as an excess of carbon dioxide and a miasma of pheromone.

Miss Soedhono appears wholly unaffected; the satiny skin of her throat is free of any perspirous sheen, her forehead is smooth and unreflective, her soft black hair not in the least tacky. Since beginning her presentation she has shown no interest in the glass of water that stands on the table to her right, nor has she even licked her lips – those lips whose gloss is undiminished. She speaks for minute upon minute, never faltering, never hesitating for the correct word, never running out of breath even during sentences whose polysyllable count is in the dozens. Now she moves onto the topic of pollination, keeping her gaze level, making contact only with the imploring eyes of her audience, ignoring the agitation lower down.

‘The possible disadvantages of employing pollinating bags are these,’ she announces. ‘Use of damaged bags, or bags with large mesh that allow pollen, or mites carrying pollen, to pass through; not securely tying the mouth of the bag with the peduncle, thus keeping the bags open for longer durations during active female phase; and failure to emasculate properly. In dwarf coconuts, a small number of flowers are found to be bisexual, possessing both pistils and stamens. We conducted a random survey of two hundred Nias yellow dwarfs, and fifty-four of the palms were discovered to have at least one hermaphrodite flower, which means, as a rule of thumb, that twenty-seven per cent of Nias dwarf palms are polygamo-monoecious. You will appreciate the threat this poses to our breeding programme.’

One of the men has begun to make a soft, rhythmic sound, but he is elbowed in the ribs by his neighbours on either side. If their passions can no longer be secret, let them at least be silent.

‘The problem,’ Miss Soedhono explains, ‘is that at the time of emasculation, most of the hermaphrodites escape detection and pass for female flowers. We breeders must be vigilant, and act before fertilisation occurs.’

A birdlike flunkey dressed in a white Nehru jacket walks into the room, and carefully deposits two additional items on the table next to Miss Soedhono’s untouched glass of water. A murmur passes through the men, as they watch first the gleaming machete, then the massive, furry coconut, being laid side by side.

‘Each male,’ Miss Soedhono continues, as her assistant pads away, ‘each female, and each hermaphrodite flower, bears six perianth units or lobes. Everything you need to know, gentlemen, is governed by threes. The outer three whorls make up the calyx and the inner three the corolla. We also meet three kinds of aestivation within the coconut, where the members of unopened flowers just touch each other without overlapping: Firstly, valvate. Secondly, imbricate. Thirdly, contortion.’

Miss Soedhono’s voice, though still calm and coolly modulated, has been raised somewhat, to compensate for the worsening ‘ar-ar-ar’of the air conditioners, the rhythmic creaking of metal seats, occasional groans and grunts from the men.

‘Individually,’ she concedes, her eyes half-closing, her head tilting slightly to one side, ‘the male flowers may be sessile and small, but their aggregation on the spikes in large numbers with expanding petals and light-coloured stamens add to the allure of the spadix. The female flowers, when they are in this state of receptivity, offer excellent landing sites. The exposed portion of the ovary near the stigmatic end is covered with bright trichome units which can be irresistibly attractive for insects of all kinds.’

‘Oh God,’ cries a hoarse voice from the audience.

‘Shut up,’ hisses another. The noise of foot-shuffling, chair-creaking and heavy breathing has become obtrusive, and the air conditioner rattles louder, then abruptly dies away, like a lawn-mower whose blades have struck a boulder, fatally injurious to the mechanism. At once the room, which had seemed already as stifling as it could possibly be, is inundated with an invisible wave of additional warmth.

Miss Soedhono glances sidelong at the machete and the coconut, and someone in the audience cries ‘Yes!’ But she makes no move, content merely to verify that the sacraments are in place. Impatience can have no influence on her presentation; enthusiasm, even desperate enthusiasm, cannot alter the inexorable sequence of logic, the orderly progression of argument, the decorous enigma of learning. She parts her lips, licks her upper teeth, leaving the lustrous patina of her lipstick undisturbed, and continues: ‘When a young coconut spadix, still snugly wrapped in the spathe, is trained at the correct stage of its maturity, it can be made to bleed a sweet sap known as toddy or neera. This sap is procured by tapping the palm’s organs. What organ we tap depends on the species. For example, in
Cocos nucifera
and
Caryota urens
the flower-bearing portion of the spadix is pared in thin slices for the extraction of the juice. In
Arenga pinnata
and
Nypa fruticans
, it is the peduncle beneath the spike-bearing region of the spadix that yields the neera. In
Corypha elata
, the gigantic spadix is severed at the point where the first ramification develops, and the toddy starts flowing. In the case of
Phoenix
sylvestris
, a portion of the tender stem is pared, and the toddy trickles from the surface. Fresh sweet toddy contains twelve point five to seventeen point five sucrose, and sixteen to twenty per cent solids. Thus, apart from serving as a sweet or fermented beverage, toddy yields sucrose, alcohol, vinegar, treacle and sugar candy.’

‘Do it! Just … pick it up!’ exclaims one of the men, unhinged by the agony of anticipation. Hissing and groaning their disapproval, his fellows turn upon him, terrified that his misbehaviour at this crucial juncture may provoke Miss Soedhono to sweep disdainfully out of the room and leave them all unfulfilled. But, to their collective confusion and delight, she walks over to the table and, with a glimmer of a smile, enfolds the hilt of the machete in her hand.

‘The honey in the male flower,’ she purrs, ‘is secreted by three inter-carpellary or septal glands of the pistillode. In the female flower, the corresponding stigma manifests itself outside the perianth lobes just a couple of days before its receptivity. When readiness is reached, the three fleshy lobes secrete a viscous nectar on their inner surface. Profuse quantities of this fluid pour out through three one-millimetre long orifices or slits.’

Without warning, Miss Soedhono swings the machete down onto the coconut, burying the edge of the blade deep in the hard, furry rind. The shock of impact jolts through each of the sixty-six men as if they were a single giant slab of flesh.

Miss Soedhono uncleaves the machete blade from the coconut’s flesh with a deft twist of her wrist, and hacks a second time into the massive fruit. A neat wedge of shell is dislodged into the air and bounces onto the carpet at her feet.

‘The solid sperm of the coconut,’ she declares, each word enunciated with magisterial calm, ‘whether desiccated or creamed, is approximately sixty-nine per cent fat.’ She picks up the wounded fruit, cradling it gently in her palms, lifting it up to her breast. ‘The liquid endosperm, popularly known as coconut milk, is approximately twenty-four per cent. It is rich in lauric acid, which is converted by the human or animal body into monolaurin, an antiviral, antibacterial and antiprotozoal monoglyceride. An invaluable substance, which has been demonstrated to destroy lipid-coated viruses and bacteria such as
Listeria monocytogenes, Helicobactor pylon
, cytomegalovirus, chlamydia, herpes and H.I.V. All of this, gentlemen, is here for the drinking.’

Solemnly, Miss Soedhono lifts the hairy globe to her mouth, aligns the white gash with her lips, and shuts her eyes. As she tilts the sphere upwards, her facial features are eclipsed, creating, to the delirious gaze of her audience, a grotesque substitute face, a fibrous, bulbous, hairy face with three blind eyes and a fearsome array of pink teeth capped in gleaming orange enamel, a nightmare head made all the more bizarre by the immaculately styled hairdo framing it.

Once, twice, three times Miss Soedhono’s throat, exposed beneath this monstrous visage, pulsates in satisfaction, whereupon the sixty-six men groan and holler and whimper, each according to his nature. This is the moment of communal consummation they have all feared and resisted, and to which they now surrender themselves.

Miss Soedhono lowers the coconut, replaces it on the table. A single drop of milk twinkles on her chin as she surveys her audience.

‘Thus concludes,’ she says, ‘my presentation. I hope that you will honour us with your presence again next year.’

She bows gravely, to raucous applause, and strolls out of the room, past a phalanx of uniformed employees of the Hotel Magdalaya who stand ready with sixty-seven towels.

Sixty-seven? Yes, sixty-seven. One man, despite his best intentions, was unable to be here today. His flight was cancelled at the last minute, leaving him devastated at his misfortune. Vast merciless stretches of ocean have come between him and Indonesia – between him and Miss Soedhono. For longer than he can bear to think about, he’d been looking forward to his exquisite and shameful reward; now he wanders like a lost soul through the gift shops of his home city’s airport. He buys worthless souvenirs for his wife, his wife who is sweet and kind but knows nothing of coconuts. The digital numbers on the overhead clocks change without regard for his yearning, queues of travellers disappear into their appointed slots, the sky discolours from blue to orange, until he knows it is over, Miss Soedhono’s performance is over, it happened in front of other men and he missed it, and now he must wait another eternity to see it again.

FINESSE

Rumours that the dictator was ill were totally without foundation. He’d never been fitter, and anyone suggesting otherwise could expect to be forcibly corrected.

Nevertheless, the dictator considered it wise, from time to time, to confirm the robustness of his health by having X-rays made of his chest. And it was the fear of forcible correction that made his personal physician hesitate to speak when the great man asked if the X-rays showed anything unusual.

‘You have a very big heart,’ said the physician at last.

‘I know that,’ smiled the dictator. ‘But how big?’

They were standing in the dictator’s office; or rather, the dictator was sitting and the physician was standing. The physician hugged the folder of X-rays unhappily to his breast.

‘Bigger than …’ he began, looking to the open window for inspiration. ‘Bigger than is perhaps totally consistent with … with the size of heart that one might expect in a person who was … ah … in a state of health consistent with … with
remaining
in a state of health consistent with … um … sustained …’

The dictator sighed, impatient with this mealy-mouthedness. Sometimes it fell to a leader to rescue people from their own timidity.