Summary

Paul’s death had changed Hassan. He was restless and irritable. He was having trouble sleeping. There was a constant feeling of doom following him. He accompanied Jean Luc to the kitchen. The apprentice had told him that the ptarmigan had arrived. Jean Luc opened the crate and removed the fragile poultry. His staff began butchering the birds. Hassan carefully watched over the process.

When Hassan first trained, he had to pluck feathers from game birds, sometimes forty at a time. The apprentices were lucky that feather plucking machines did the job for them. He took the plucked grouses over to the fire to remove any remaining feathers. Siberian ptarmigan was Hassan’s signature dish at the time. He showed Jean-Luc the step by step process he took in preparing the birds.

With images of Paul’s demise in his thoughts, he called his...