Her name was Maria de Jesus Portilla. The first time I saw her she was coming down the garden path in that measured, dignified gait that only an Indian woman has. She was barefooted, her white apron had lavender pockets on it, and black braids that showed almost no grey hung over her shoulders. On her head she carried a ten-gallon gasoline tin in which grew a gardenia shrub newly blossomed, the perfume of which preceded Maria de Jesus.
Her dark old face wrinkled into a friendly smile as she caught sight of me lying in a deck chair under the orange tree. “Señora,” she said, “in the market they say that you need a cook. I am a cook.” She lifted the gardenia plant from her head and set it on the grass. She looked it over carefully, and picking the whitest and most perfect flower, handed it to me. Then she sat down on the grass near me.
“What can you cook?” I asked.
“Pejerreyes,” she answered promptly. “They are good when you fry them in Spanish olive oil and serve them with a sauce of garlic, onions, tomatoes, and chile.” The Peruvian pejerreyes, the tiny delicious white fish, I knew, but not the sauce, which I guessed to be of Maria's invention—probably very hot and very good.
“What else?” I questioned.
“What does the Señora like?” she countered.
“At the moment nothing appeals to me,” I said dismally. “I have just come this morning from the Clinica Americana where I’ve been for weeks with malaria. I have no appetite whatever.”
Maria’s face grew sombre with sympathy. “Ah, Señora,” she sighed, “I, too, have had the paludismo. I know.”
“There is one thing I never want to eat again,” I reminisced with some bitterness.
“Yes, what is that?” she asked with interest.
“Red jello. I had it for breakfast, I ate it for lunch, and I dined on it. It was all I had to eat for days and days.”
“What a barbarity!” exclaimed Maria de Jesus. “I could make you a nice little caldo for dinner—a pretty little soup of clams, the kind we call señoritas—small ones.” She chatted on about steaming the clams in an iron kettle (did we have one?), and adding the juice of the raw fish with crushed garlic, onion, and cloves. I got lost in the maze of unfamiliar cooking terms, but the concoction began to sound very much like the soupe à la Vendeenne for which I remembered a strange little Paris restaurant.
She glanced up at the morning sky. “It is still early enough that I could find good little clams in the market; what else shall I buy for the Señora?”
At that point I said, “Whatever you think we should have. Please bring me my purse from the dining room table.”
She came back with Tuti, the big police dog, sniffing her heels. “For this policía so handsome and grande,” she announced, “I shall buy a pound of ground beef. I shall salt it and cook it with carrots and spinach.”
I gave Maria de Jesus Portilla a twenty soles note and said, “You’d better look in the kitchen. I think it’s absolutely bare. The tenants who moved out this morning have left not so much as a grain of salt.”
Victoria, the maid who had been left by the departed tenants, appeared in the garden shaking her dustcloth. She looked in astonishment at the erect little old figure disappearing into the kitchen as though she had always belonged to the household. “Maria is the new cook,” I told her. “Please show her around.”
Cooks in Lima, good or bad, I knew were scarce; the people to whom my friends Lyn and Manuel Manduley had rented their house while they were on vacation in the United States, had thoughtfully taken with them the cook Lyn had been at so much trouble to train. Now Lyn and Manuel were expected back in two weeks or so, and I wondered what kind of a showing I’d be able to make for them when they did come. Perhaps Maria de Jesus of the bare feet and the gardenia-crowned head wouldn’t be Lyn’s idea of a servant, but just then I was too enervated from fever to care very much. I had been Lyn’s guest upon various occasions when I had returned to Lima for brief respites from jungle life; always her cuisine had seemed perfect, and her hospitality of no less a quality in graciousness. Now, as some small return for her kindness, I had left the hospital to take over the house and the dog until she should return.
Maria returned to the garden ticking off things on her fingers and murmuring to herself. “What a mountain of things we need, Señora!” she announced. “No hay, no hay in the kitchen.” No hay—there is not—is one of the most frequently encountered phrases in Latin America. Tying the twenty soles note in a corner of her handkerchief, she went off with a huge basket on her head and a big bag under her arm.
On her return she came to me in the living room with a few cents change, a brown paper bag, and a stub of pencil. “Now,” she said, “that you understand I do not deceive you or rob you, write down as I tell you what I have bought.” She went through a long list of her purchases and seemed to remember to the penny what everything had cost. When I had them all down, she said, “Now suma bien”—do your accounts well. When I had added up the column, I found that she was right to the last centavito, the last little cent. I marveled at her mathematics and her memory, for she had made no list to take with her.
That morning I had fever, and I dozed. Malaria is an illness that can drain one of every ounce of energy, and at times I found it difficult to summon enough strength even to walk across a room. I wakened to find Victoria bringing to the living room a tray which she put on the coffee table. On it was a tall glass of golden yellow papaya juice which looked inviting. The first sip of the lukewarm stuff was a sad disappointment. “Have we no ice?” I asked. Victoria shook her head. “The ice man comes very early, before I arrive.”
“Then you do not sleep in?”
“No. I must go home to my two little sisters; they have no one to stay with them.”
“Then I must ask Maria if she can sleep here. Will you please send her in?”
“But she’s not here,” returned Victoria.
“What do you mean?”
“She said she had to go home for a time. She’ll be back at two.”
When Maria came back promptly at two, as promised, I questioned her as to why she went home.
“Why, to feed my chickens and turkeys and my doves,” she replied, as though I should have known that all the time.
“After this you can feed them in the morning before you come,” I told her.
Maria, with an air of patiently explaining something to a child, sat down on the edge of the sofa. “Señora,” she said, “the chickens and the turkeys always sleep in the trees. They do not dawn as early as I do. I go to market before it is yet light. Then how, Señora, can I feed them? Would you have me throw the corn up into the trees?”
I had to admit that such a procedure would be difficult. Maria threw back her head and laughed—a young, irresistible laugh that gurgled in her throat. I was to hear it many times before I left Lyn’s house.
“But,” I then asked, “can you leave your chickens at night and sleep here—just until I get a maid who can sleep in?”
She glanced swiftly at me; her dark Indian eyes were shrewd but kindly. “Si, Señora, I will arrange to stay at night until you can find someone.” She padded back to the kitchen on her bare, splayed feet. As I again dozed that afternoon, my half-dreaming, half-waking state seemed to be shot through with low, bubbling laughter.
It was about dusk that I aroused myself sufficiently to make a telephone call or two, and then discovered Lyn’s address book with a separate page for tradespeople. That would help a great deal in getting the house running smoothly, I thought. I showed Victoria the book and said she’d find the grocery stores, the bakery, and all the best shops listed; all she’d have to do was to telephone for what was needed, as the Señora had accounts at all of them. Even the ice man had a telephone, and I looked forward to having cold drinks the next day.
The doorbell rang; Victoria ushered in Pat and Jean Johnston, the British vice-consul and his wife, two of the most charming people in Lima.
“This,” I told them, “is as good as a shot of adrenalin to a dying man. I was just sitting here feeling a bit sorry for myself.”
“We heard this afternoon that you had just come out of the hospital today, and we thought we’d drop by to cheer you up. We brought this,” announced Jean, “to help in the process.” She upwrapped a bottle of Chilean Ondurraga, a dry white wine.
“My favorite,” I said. “But unfortunately there is no ice to chill it, else I'd ask you to share it with me now.”
“Let’s have it anyway,” said Pat.
I rang for Victoria, but instead Maria padded in. She took in the situation at a glance and took the bottle to open in the kitchen. She came back with glasses and said, “Señnora, wouldn’t you like to ask your friends to stay for dinner? You have been very triste all day, and I think it would be good for you to have company.” Her dark, leathery face wrinkled into an enchanting smile. “They seem,” she added, “to be people de confianza.” A lovely phrase that—people of confidence.
Pat threw his lean, lanky body back in the armchair, ran a slim hand through his red Irish hair, and burst into laughter. “Thank you very much,” he told Maria. “We’d love to stay.”
At dinner Maria came herself with the pretty little clam soup she had made and stood by me while I tasted it. It was a pretty little soup, every whit as good as the more elaborate Parisian version I remembered. “There is not enough for you,” she said to Pat and Jean, “but there is something else.” Victoria set before them tall frappé glasses with crisp bits of lettuce showing over the edges. The “something else” seemed to be an appetizer of some sort. Jean took one bite and opened her eyes wide. “I’d like to know how she made this.”
“We’ll ask,” I said. But Maria had already anticipated the question and was peering around the pantry door.
“You take,” she told Jean, “a nice, ripe, fat palta (alligator pear) and cut it small. Then you take your fresh- cooked shrimps and chopped walnuts, and mix them just before serving with mayonnaise. You know how to make that with Spanish olive oil and garlic juice, eggs, and lime juice? It is a great pity,” she added, “that it is not cold. God willing, the next time you come we shall have ice.”
“God willing,” returned Pat. “We hope that will be soon.”
The Johnstons left early; my first day out of bed in weeks had pretty well exhausted me, and wearily I climbed the stairs with Tuti, the police dog, at my heels. For how long I dozed I do not know, but I woke with a start sitting bolt upright in bed. There was no sound from Tuti on his rug, but still there was an indefinable sense of something wrong in the house. The feeling was so strong that I slipped into a dressing gown and crept downstairs, snapping on lights as I went. There, in the patio, sitting up in a straight kitchen chair, was Maria, her head nodding in sleep.
“Maria!” I exclaimed. “Why aren’t you in bed?” The servant’s room opened just off the patio.
“Because,” she replied, “there is no bed.”
Snapping on the light in the little room, I saw that indeed there was no bed. A little investigation proved that it had been put in an unused room upstairs; it had never occurred to me that the cook’s room wasn’t in order.
“But,” I said, “why didn’t you come to me?”
“Ah, Señora, you were tired and ill. I did not want to wake you.”
In the days that followed, Maria produced miracles of delicacies from the strange fruits and foodstuffs she brought from the market. I loved the savory broths she made, but I had no appetite for solid foods, craving cold drinks instead. But there was never any ice. I complained feebly about it, but both Maria and Victoria said, “Ojalá (God willing), tomorrow we shall have ice.”
I explained, “All you have to do is telephone,” and slipped back into feverish dreams, leaving the household to run itself as best it could.
A week went by, and still I had not the cold drinks I wanted. But the morning came when Maria, beaming, padded into my bedroom with the breakfast tray on her head. She deposited it carefully in my lap, propping up the pillows behind me. “Señora,” she almost sang, “today you will have as many cold drinks as you like. We have ice. A man came this morning bringing a fine large piece.”
“And what miracle finally brought him?” I inquired.
“I myself walked all the way to his house across the city and told him.”
“But why did you not telephone?”
I wondered what taboo in her Indian mind the telephone might represent.
Maria twisted her apron in her hands, hanging her head. Finally she said, in so low a voice that I could scarcely hear her words, “You see, neither Victoria nor I can read or write, Señora.”
I cursed my own stupidity. I should have realized that Indian servants seldom can, but I thought of Maria’s daily accounts that came out so perfectly. I also excused myself on the grounds that the combination of fever and the unholy amount of quinine and atabrine I’d taken had stupefied my mind. But cheered that day by the thought of a cool drink, I struggled downstairs earlier than usual. Propped up on the sofa with a tall, icy glass of pineapple juice that Maria had prepared from fresh fruit by putting it through the meat chopper, I felt as though life were returning. I felt so much better that I decided to try to read the Spanish newspaper.
Victoria looked for the paper, but a thorough search of the house produced nothing more than one ten days old. It seemed very mysterious to me, since I knew that a paper was delivered daily. But that afternoon the mystery was solved. I myself went to the kitchen just to see the beautiful big piece of ice. It had been carefully and lovingly wrapped to preserve it well—in the morning newspaper.
A few days before Lyn and Manuel were to arrive by plane, and while we were making plans for their homecoming, Maria came to me with an official-looking envelope and asked me to read it for her. It was from one of the well-known banking houses in Lima. It took me a little time to translate the unfamiliar terms, but it soon dawned on me that her savings account ran into so many thousands of soles that she was being asked if she did not want to invest some of it in bonds.
“Why, Maria,” I exclaimed, “you are a very rich woman. I wish I had as much money as you have.”
Maria looked out the window in the direction of the barren desert hills. Her face was impassive, and her dark Indian eyes saw things that a white person can’t imagine.
“It comes from my hacienda in the Sierra,” she said, “where I have herds of vicuñas, llamas, sheep, and cattle.” She was silent for a space, and then, saying, “But money doesn’t mean very much,” she left the room.
I was curious to know how she happened to be so rich. Maria was uncommunicative; but the day that Señor Juan da Silva came to call I told him of Maria, for by that time she seemed to have become my chief topic for conversation.
“Ah,” said Juan, “a compatriot of mine, a wealthy and eccentric doctor, left her a fortune. Maria took care of his paralytic wife for many years, and when she died, all the wife’s money went to Maria. She has one of the finest haciendas in the country and a good manager. But I know Maria—she’s social. She prefers to be a cook in Lima.”
It was, I believe, the night Maria had so carefully poached fresh tuna fish in dry white Santa Eulalia wine, that, after my first delicious bit of it, the malarial chills returned so violently my teeth chattered and my fork fell clattering to my plate. Maria and Victoria put me to bed, and a neighbor called the doctor.
“What does he say?” inquired Maria gravely after he had gone.
“That I must have a change of climate—that I’d better go north,” I told her despairingly. I talked quite at length to Maria, who sat on the edge of the bed. I told her that I didn’t want to go home yet, that I wanted to learn more of her fascinating country—and that it would be expensive to have to go north at this point.
Maria was silent for some time. “Señora,” she said, “my hacienda is at ten thousand feet in the Sierra; that would be a good climate for you. I myself will take you there and fix up a little casita for you. I have money, so do not let yourself be troubled. You must say in el Peru.”
Who knows but that I might have accepted the offer of Maria, save that the chills and fever became worse, and that nothing that she cooked could tempt a nonexistent appetite? I knew that I must fly north as soon as Lyn and Manuel came back.
I was packed and ready to go when the cable came announcing their arrival. Victoria and Maria had done everything possible to make the house beautiful; there were huge clay ollas filled with tall calla lilies in the hall, gardenias and roses everywhere. Even Tuti had been bathed and brushed, and the menu had been much discussed. Maria had been planning for days the first dinner they should eat in their own house after a long absence. The chief dish, she said would be one she was sure they’d never heard of. She had learned how to make it from a Mexican painter who had been a guest in the Señor Doctor’s house. The Mexican artist had been very famous “and a little mad,” she confided. Then she giggled, childish, infectious laughter. “Even the dish is a little crazy,” she said. “It’s called el platillo loco … ‘the mad plate.’” But it was “muy sabroso,” and she smacked her lips.
Now I must confess that I never tasted the “mad plate,” for at Lyn’s and Manuel’s gala dinner it was all I could do to drink the pretty little broth that Maria had prepared especially for me, but my host and hostess loved it … and, needless to say, they loved the cook along with it.
But in case you’d like to try it, here is the way Maria told me she made it, one afternoon, as she sat on the grass under the orange tree. I sat in the deck chair and took down notes in Spanish just as she gave the recipe to me.
El Platillo Loco. Stew a chicken until it is tender. Remove the meat from the bones, and cut it in small pieces. In the broth gently simmer ½ cup diced carrots, then ½ cup diced potatoes, and the same amount of chopped onions. When all are half-cooked, add ½ cup each of cubed pineapple and apples, 2 quartered tomatoes, ¼ cup chopped green olives, and the following sauce: Crush together 2 whole peppercorns, 4 cloves, a quarter-teaspoon of cinnamon, a dash of caraway seed, marjoram as desired, and 1 tablespoon chopped, hot pickled chiles. Simmer gently until the vegetables are tender.
The ingredients of the “mad plate,” according to Maria, may vary with the season, using what fruits and vegetables are obtainable. Sometimes cooking bananas are used, sometimes squash. When properly prepared, it should be a blend of all flavors, with none pre-dominating.