31

My nose quivered with the delicious odors of cooking. I followed these scents like clues in the darkness until I could go no farther. Turning my light back on, I saw a shining black door ahead of me. I hesitated a moment, then knocked.

“Come in,” called a woman.

I stepped through the door into a kitchen like no other I’ve seen. It had giant refrigerators, large tables for food preparation, stoves with a dozen burners, and an oven with a door like the opening to a barn. As my eyes adapted to the light, I looked at the woman, who stood beside a rectangular table with a butcher-block top. It was Numun, the gemlike woman, with her rubious skin aglow. She wore a dress, cape, and hood of immaculate white. Covering much of the floor were large woven baskets shaped as cornucopias, which overflowed with corn, squash, yams, melons, beets, turnips, carrots, artichokes, and more. Before her, on the table, an equally white sheet covered a shape that might have been a body. In fact, seeing her this way, I imagined her like a priestess of some ancient cult.

“Are you hungry?” she asked. “This kitchen is so extensive that you can ask for almost anything. Perhaps a ragout of kangaroo tail or bird’s nest soup?”

“What’s that?” I interrupted.

“The nests are made from saliva of the cave swift. The soup aids digestion, alleviates asthma, and raises libido. Or you could have a steak of camel’s hump, raw or roasted termites, maggot cheese … ”

“No no,” I demurred.

“Ant stir-fry?” She raised her eyebrows with the question. “Take three hundred large, female red-bodied ants, add one tablespoon of vegetable oil and one medium-sized chopped onion. Heat the oil in a skillet, then stir-fry the onion and ants together until the onion is well browned.”

I shook my head.

“Or locusts? The book of Leviticus allows the eating of locusts. In Mark and Matthew we’re told that John the Baptist nourished himself on locusts and wild honey.”

“I don’t think so,” I managed to interject.

“What a shame,” she said. “Perhaps golden salamander en papillote? The recipe calls for fennel seeds, black peppercorns, powder of rhinoceros horn, coriander seed, red pepper flakes, bay leaves, oil of sperm whale, lemon slices … ”

She continued, but I was remembering walking by a stream as a child. One by one I turned over the flat rocks, curious about what lay beneath them. I saw worms, ants, grubs, centipedes, and tiny dark salamanders that scattered in fear. But under one rock I found the golden salamander of which she spoke. It was enormous in comparison to the others, three or four times as big, and on its golden skin were black dots. It didn’t try to run but looked unblinkingly at me like a king who finds an intruder in his domain. I wanted ever so much to pick him up and take him with me, but something in his dark eyes deterred even my boyish enthusiasm. So I lowered the rock and restored him to the darkness he ruled.

“I’m not really hungry,” I offered.

“Yes, you are,” she contradicted me, moving closer. “You’re afraid to eat what I offer you.”

“No no.”

“Salamanders are immortal.” She stepped to within a hand’s reach of me. “Eat, and become like them.”

“They aren’t immortal,” I said, uneasy with her closeness.

“Yes, they certainly are.”

“How do you know?”

“Because they cast no shadows.”

I pictured that golden salamander. It was many years ago, but I didn’t remember a shadow, just the dark intensity of its eyes.

“Anyway,” I replied, “I really have no appetite.”

“But you’re my guest. Tell me what I can do to please you.”

With this she stepped forward and touched the shells of my ears. I trembled as first she rubbed the tops and then the bottoms and the lobes. She was against me, her stomach pressing into me. Pleasure quivered in the base of my spine. It rose ever so slowly, vertebra by vertebra, like an exquisite flower lifting toward the ecstatic light pouring in through the openings of my eyes.

“Are you pregnant?” I gasped when I could speak again.

She had moved away from me and stood by the table. In her flowing garments, I couldn’t be certain whether her abdomen rose in a mound.

“If I were, would you marry me?” she teased with a smile. “This kitchen is tiny compared to my house, which is filled with wealth and things of beauty. You can share all I have.”

“I can’t stay here.”

“But your choices are limited,” she replied.

“What do you mean?”

“You can either remain here or you can go back the way you came. Nothing more.”

“But … ” I’m not sure why, but I couldn’t believe those were my only choices. The impulse that made me come all this way … I felt it still. I wanted to continue.

“Of course, each alternative has its nuances, its special attractions,” she continued.

“What are they?”

“This is a large kitchen, very large. I could use help here. Perhaps you would like a job.”

I had a recollection of once wanting employment of this kind. I frowned, but the details eluded me.

“What do you think?” she inquired when I failed to respond.

“What would my title be?” I asked to gain a little time.

“Sous-chef. You would oversee the transformation of raw vegetables and meats into edible and delicious foods. I know you have the training for it.”

“You do?”

“From the CIA.”

How could she know about my visit to the Culinary Institute of America?

“You have a knack with recipes, with the processes that change one thing into another.”

“No, not sous-chef,” I answered.

“Choose your title,” she offered grandly, “and you have a place here.”

“Thank you, but no.”

“No?”

I didn’t know what to expect. She turned to the massive oven, reached up to grasp its silver handle, and pulled open the door. Her white garments were silhouetted by the orange flames leaping inside that inferno. I came closer, expecting a searing blast of heat. But the flames had the quality of ice as well as fire. The immense oven had no floor, and the flames leapt above a column of magma that must have risen miles from the mantle of the earth.

“Here you can prepare your recipes.” She encouraged me with a wave of her hand. “Won’t you reconsider?”

I stared into this conflagration. Once I would have been delighted at such a job offer. But why should she care about my recipes?

“I have to keep going forward,” I answered at last.

She shook her head.

“There is no forward from here,” she said sharply, “only back.”

Moving to the butcher-block table, she rested her hands on the sheet covering the form beneath it. I wanted to remain gazing into the depths of the magma, but I went to face her across the table.

“The question is whether you’ll go back alone.”

“What do you mean?”

“Take someone with you if you want.”

“But who?”

“What about … ”—with a dramatic sweep of her arms, she pulled back the sheet that covered the form on the table before her—“… this man?”

I looked at the tall and slender body of a pale-skinned, elderly man clad in a loincloth. His eyes were closed as if in a peaceful dream. I felt a glimmer of recognition. Gently I placed my hand on his forehead, but he felt neither warm nor cold.

“Why is he here?” I asked her.

“He’s between,” she answered.

“Between what?” I waited for her to reply. When she said nothing, I haltingly added, “He was my mentor and … my friend.”

“Here”—she gestured to the four walls of the kitchen—“he’s in transition, unless you take him with you.”

Slowly she lifted her open hand, and the body creased at the waist and rose like a cobra to the melody of a fakir’s flute.

“Is he dead?” I asked.

“I told you,” she answered, her gesture bringing him off the table and onto his feet. “He is between. If you choose, he will follow you wherever you go. Sunlight will waken him. Then, for a time, he will be as he was before.”

“Only for a time?”

She gave a fleeting smile but didn’t answer.

“And there is a condition.”

“What?”

“Until the sunlight opens his eyes, you must not think of him as he used to be.”

I considered this.

“And if I do think of how he was?”

“He will vanish.”

“And go where?”

“You know the answer to that.”

I thought of the first cemetery, with its innumerable headstones.

“How can you hesitate?” she demanded as the aged body stood slackly beside her.

“No,” I said.

“No?”

I repeated the word more loudly. In response, she raised an arm and pointed the body toward the open door of the oven. Without opening its eyes, the slender figure followed her direction. Step after step it advanced toward the flames. I wanted to cry or reach out as it paused at the mouth of the oven. Then it stepped forward and vanished in the flames and molten magma.

Turning around, I was shocked to see Numun lying on the butcher-block table. She rested on her back, her legs bent and her white gown pulled up around her waist. She wore no underclothing. Between her legs, in the opening of her vagina, I could see the crown of a baby’s emerging head.

She caught my expression and laughed despite her exertions. Suddenly I connected the body that had vanished in the oven to this baby being born before me. In that moment I saw an option beyond staying here with her or returning in the darkness through which I had come.

Her laughter continued—laughter for all she knew that I would never know. She watched me as I moved and neared the oven door. Then, to the cascades of her wild laughter, I leapt to join my mentor in the salamandrine fires.