The Hottest Dishes of the Tartar Cuisine (14 page)

I wouldn’t be easily defeated. I prayed to God for another chance for Sulfia. Aminat needed to grow up someplace where milk was available for purchase everyday, not just on lucky days. And it shouldn’t be someplace hot and full of Jews. It should be someplace like, perhaps, Europe.

God answered my prayers more quickly than I had expected. In fact, that same day a foreigner was brought into Sulfia’s nursing station. A fantastic foreigner: early forties, clean, in a coma—and German.

I heard about him when Sulfia and Aminat were arguing about foreign languages in the kitchen. Aminat would soon be entering the fifth grade and had to decide between English and German. Aminat said there was no reason to learn German because nobody spoke it. Sulfia contradicted her: just three days ago a man had been admitted who would speak German as soon as he regained consciousness. I perked up my ears.

“Does he have a wedding ring?” I asked immediately.

Sulfia shook her head. The German had been found unconscious on the street, apparently beaten and robbed, she said. He didn’t have a briefcase with him, but fortunately he did have a passport. It was possible he’d had a wedding ring and it had been stolen.

“No, no,” I said. “Wedding rings don’t come off so easily. They would have to have cut off his finger.”

Sulfia rubbed the sleep from her eyes.

“What’s his name?” I asked.

“Dieter Rossman.”

“What a nice name!” I said. “And you’re taking care of him? Has he said anything to you yet?”

“I already said he was unconscious, mother.”

“Sulfia,” I said, “this is your last chance.”

This comatose German revitalized our family. We had something to talk about. Every day I asked Sulfia how he was. At first she brushed me aside, annoyed, but eventually she began to talk about him. She always worried about her patients. Dieter appeared to be all alone in our city. Nobody had turned up looking for him. It wasn’t even clear whether he had been staying at a hotel or in someone’s home, or what he had been doing here.

“You have to be there when he wakes up,” I insisted.

“Oh, mother,” said Sulfia. But this exact approach had already yielded two husbands.

“How does it work,” I asked, “when somebody like that wakes up from a coma—can they speak right away?”

“It varies a lot, mother. But for the most part, no.”

“And can you tell right away whether or not the person can remember things from before the accident?”

“Only gradually, mother. It takes time when someone is so badly injured.”

“And if you were to tell him that you were his Russian fiancée, would he believe you?”

“Please don’t talk such nonsense, mother,” said Sulfia. She had no respect for me anymore.

She was also always busy. We had grown accustomed to the fact that hot water came out of the tap only occasionally and that otherwise we had to heat it on the stove. I thought nothing could shock us anymore. And then came the first winter in ages when the water was shut off completely, time and time again, for days on end, and I felt the pain of life without men. I was still weak, and for the most part Sulfia had to go to the water station a kilometer away and carry home two full buckets, taking small steps so as not to spill a drop. Once home she spent a long time rubbing her hands and the small of her back.

When I told her she should wear her hair up at work but let a few playful strands trail down her forehead, or when I offered to do her hair for her, or suggested she wear a nice skirt under her nurse’s apron, Sulfia just rolled her eyes.

One overcast evening the doorbell rang. Sulfia had the late shift and Aminat was still at school. Through the peephole I saw a round, clownishly distorted face and an oversized bald pate. I threw open the door and found my husband Kalganow, who had left me a long time ago for a teacher of Russian and literature. His body was hunched to one side, the result of his holding a huge suitcase in his hand.

“Forgive me, Rosie,” he said.

I stepped aside to let him into the apartment. I was too shocked to do anything else. And he looked sort of pitiful. He walked in, put his bag down on the floor, closed the door, and turned to me.

“My love, I’m back now,” he said, and, to my horror, wrapped me in his arms.

It took my breath away. He smelled like an unwashed, sick old man. I wasn’t used to it anymore.

I pushed him away.

“Tea?” I asked.

I hadn’t had any visitors in a long time and I wanted to know what had gotten into Kalganow.

He sat down at the kitchen table as naturally as if this were still his home.

“I’m happy to be served by you, Rosie,” he said.

“It’s not easy out there these days,” I said, so he wouldn’t get the idea that I was going to put a plate of food in front of him.

“Particularly for a single woman,” said Kalganow meaningfully, taking my hand and putting it to his lips.

“What’s gotten into you?”

Kalganow’s brow furrowed.

“It was a huge mistake, Rosie. But you were always so strong. I never thought that you’d suffer so badly.”

“What?” I asked.

“Please, don’t ever do it again, my beautiful wife,” said Kalganow, getting off the chair, scooting toward me on his knees, and placing his head in my lap.

I jumped up in surprise and caught his jaw with my knee. He groaned and wrapped both his arms around my legs. I found the feeling of his hands on my skin uncomfortable. As far as I was concerned, he’d lost the right to grope me. I put my hands on the table and carefully moved my legs. He just held on to me more tightly.

“Kalganow, sit back down,” I demanded. “I want to look you in the face.”

He sat back down on his chair and looked at me sadly.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” he asked.

“What on earth are you talking about?”

“The fact that without me, you lost the will to live.”

“Without you . . . ,” I repeated. “The will to live?”

Now he put on his trustworthy face.

“I know everything, Rosie. Our daughter told me everything.”

“Our daughter.”

“Sulfia.”

“Who else.”

Kalganow took a sip of his tea and pulled the sugar bowl toward himself.

“A little bitter,” he said as he shoveled four spoons of sugar into his cup. I began to shake inside—this was the last of our sugar, and I used it to sweeten Aminat’s oatmeal.

“You know, through it all, I never forgot you.”

“Clearly,” I said.

“I did what I could,” said Kalganow. “I know how proud you are, so I did it secretly.”

I wanted to ask what he meant, but then I remembered the banknotes I’d find in my pockets. He had a key the whole time and had come and gone and filled my shelves and drawers without me ever noticing. To thank him now, however, seemed a bit much.

“You were never alone,” said Kalganow. “As long as I live, I’ll be with you. And afterward, too.”

I looked at him silently.

“Now we’ll stay together forever, Rosie,” said Kalganow.

His hand started to wander across the table toward mine. Sulfia had set a trap for me.

That night I took a bottle of vodka and knocked on Klavdia’s door. Klavdia was lying in bed watching a concert on the screen of her tiny black-and-white television set, but with the sound turned off. I closed the door behind me and leaned backward against it. Meanwhile Kalganow was talking to Aminat about her grades. She answered civilly but curtly—she didn’t really know who he was anymore.

“What is it?” asked Klavdia. I hoisted the bottle. Klavdia’s eyes began to gleam.

“Hang on, hang on,” she said. “Just a second. Don’t go anywhere.”

She took two empty glasses from the windowsill and put them down on the little table next to the bed. I poured, we clinked our glasses without a word. She drained half of hers. I took a sip. That was enough to start my tears flowing.

“He waaaants me baaaaack,” I sobbed as Klavdia refilled her glass.

“Yikes,” she said. “What on earth’s gotten into him?”

“He thinks I can’t live without him.”

“Pig,” said Klavdia.

I told her about my dilemma—that I didn’t know whether to take Kalganow back or leave him outside the door, because it probably wouldn’t be bad to have a man in the house in such tough times. But that the idea of lying next to him in bed seemed unbearable.

Klavdia nodded sympathetically, without taking her eyes off the television screen.

“I just can’t!” I howled.

Klavdia said, “Then kick him out!”

“But he always slipped money to me, and we need to count our pennies.”

“Then let him stay.”

“Keep the bottle,” I said and left the room.

I went to the phone, opened a drawer, and found the piece of paper with the telephone number of the teacher of Russian and literature, written down years ago and rarely touched since. It was late, but nobody was ever considerate of me, either. I dialed the number and it was answered immediately. She had been sitting by the phone waiting.

“This is Rosalinda Achmetowna,” I said courteously. “Please excuse me for disturbing you so late, but my husband is suddenly back here. Did you possibly have an argument?”

She said nothing.

“Can you hear me?” I asked. “Could you possibly pick him up? I would like to go to bed. Take a taxi. He’ll give you the money back.”

She hung up. I waited ten minutes and went into my bedroom. Kalganow was sitting on the edge of the bed in his underwear and an undershirt as if he’d never left.

“Your teacher called,” I said. “She can’t fall asleep without you. She’s picking you up.”

“What?” he asked.

“Get dressed. Don’t keep her waiting.”

“What?” he asked again.

When she rang the door, I’d just convinced him to get dressed. I gave him his heavy suitcase and sent him out into the foyer. He opened the apartment door, and I heard the clap of a smack in the face and Kalganow moaned sorrowfully. The door clicked shut. I went into the foyer and locked it.

The next morning I woke up well rested. I went into the kitchen and found Sulfia sitting at the table with her head resting on her hands, which were folded on the tabletop. Sometimes she was so tired after work that she fell asleep sitting up.

I touched her shoulder. She lifted her head and looked at me. Her hands shook, her lips were swollen and bitten, and her eyes had a maniacal glint.

“Dieter came out of the coma,” said Sulfia.

It turned out that Dieter Rossman had blue eyes and spoke a little Russian. He didn’t remember the accident, but he did know who he was and what unusual concern had brought him to our cold city.

“You have to talk to him a lot,” I insisted. “You have to become his one and only while he’s lying in bed and you’re caring for him.”

“Oh, mother,” said Sulfia.

But she finally listened to me. Before work she made up her eyes and lips and let me put waves in her black hair with the curling iron. It gave her hair a bit more body. I tried quickly to remember as much as I could of the German vocabulary I’d learned in school and taught it to Sulfia. “Good day,” “How are you,” “Hands up,” “My name is Sulfia, and what is yours,” and “It’s a pleasure to meet you.”

Unfortunately I didn’t know how to ask, “Are you married or engaged?” But Sulfia said Dieter knew how to say all the important things in Russian anyway.

“It doesn’t matter,” I said. “If you make an effort to speak his language, you’ll immediately have a key to his heart.”

“Oh, mother,” said Sulfia, though she wasn’t as stubborn as usual.

“Germany is a good country,” I told her. “I’ve heard they wash the streets with shampoo there.”

I tried to understand what Dieter was doing in our city. He was the only foreigner I’d ever heard of here. Sulfia said he was some sort of journalist and was writing some sort of book.

“A book about what?” I asked.

I’d heard about foreign journalists before, but nothing good. They illegally gained access to our orphanages and prisons and wrote about sex trafficking and HIV infections.

Dieter wrote about food, said Sulfia.

“What about food?” I asked.

“About our national cuisine,” said Sulfia. He had already traveled around the Caucuses and wanted to go to the villages of the Ural Mountains to track down more recipes from our multiethnic country.

“Recipes?” I said, confused.

We’d all had the same recipes here for a long time: noodles with butter, sausage with boiled potatoes, oatmeal with old marmalade, tea with rock-hard cookies. Those were the only foodstuffs you could get hold of without connections.

“What would a man want with recipes?” I asked Sulfia. “Is he gay?”

“He’s writing a book,” she repeated.

“Have you told him yet that you’re Tartar?”

She shook her head.

“Oh, boy, are you stupid, Sulfia. Tell him he should visit us. Explain to him that I’ll tell him all about Tartar cuisine—tell him I’ll give him old, secret Tartar recipes passed down from generation to generation.”

“Then what?”

“Sulfia,” I said, “just do it.”

It took a few months before Dieter was sufficiently recuperated to accept my friendly offer.

During that time, I felt as if I had gotten to know him quite well. Sulfia seemed to have established a good rapport with him. Sometimes I wondered why her coworkers didn’t fight her over such patients. Then I realized—Sulfia’s men had faults. You could tell at first glance that Sergej was a skirt chaser and Michail a Jew. I knew too little about Dieter. He was a foreigner, yes, but whether he was much of a catch wasn’t clear at first glance. He apparently had no relationships and little money—otherwise he wouldn’t have spent several months in Sulfia’s care in a ten-bed hospital room without receiving a single visit. It was fitting that Sulfia’s foreigner wasn’t the luxury model. But Dieter Rossman was certainly better than nothing.

He had blue eyes, a snub nose, and a small mouth. His face reminded me of a pig. He was wearing a leather jacket, and beneath that a coarsely knit sweater he’d probably bought at a bazaar from some old lady.

He looked pale and malnourished, but still had a big stomach.

When I went to give him slippers, he lifted a foot to show me his thick woolen socks that matched the sweater. If he hadn’t been a foreigner and our situation so dire, I would have decided at that moment that Sulfia could just as well grow old in peace without a man.

Dieter had a look that must have attracted small-time criminals on the street. His smile said, “I’m new here and don’t have the slightest clue. Please take all my money and punch me in the head.”

I invited him to the table with a smile so sugary sweet that the corners of my mouth hurt.

It wasn’t so easy in these meager times to put something on the table. I got hold of some old beef that had been several times deep-frozen and thawed, but I was missing butter, eggs, and sour cream. I tried to make up for that with carrots, potatoes, and sour pickles from my garden. We sat down at the table and I was already sorry about the effort and the money I’d sunk into this.

Dieter sat across from Aminat and looked at her intently.

“Is this also your daughter?” he asked me in his funny Russian.

“
No, that is her daughter
,” I said, pointing to Sulfia.

My German was improving with every sentence.

“
How are you
?” I asked. “
Does your head still hurt
?”

I filled Dieter’s bowl with a kvass soup into which I’d cut vegetables. It was actually a summer dish, but at least I had the ingredients. Dieter took his napkin, unfolded it, and spread it across his lap.

“Don’t stare,” I said quietly to Aminat.

“She looks like you,” said Dieter to me.

“Who?” I asked.

“She,” Dieter said, pointing his spoon at Aminat.

“That’s right,” I said proudly.

Dieter ate oddly. He skewered pieces of vegetable with his fork, guided them into his mouth, and closed his eyes. As he chewed his eyeballs moved beneath his closed eyelids. We were all a bit embarrassed. Sulfia and I averted our eyes at the same time. Aminat snorted. I kicked her under the table. Dieter swallowed and opened his eyes. He picked up his wine glass, raised it to his mouth, and sniffed at it extensively.

“The wine’s not gone off,” I said hurriedly. Sulfia had received it as a gift, but naturally I didn’t say that.

Dieter moved his eyebrows, which crawled around his pig face like two fat caterpillars, and took a sip. It looked disgusting: instead of swallowing, he slurped the wine from one cheek to the other as if he were rinsing his mouth to dull a toothache. The only thing left was for him to start gargling it.

“I’ve heard that you collect recipes,” I said, so he would stop eating. I was practically nauseous. It was easier for Sulfia. As a nurse, she was used to much worse.

Dieter finally swallowed the wine.

“Oh yes, oh yes,” he said with his childlike delivery.

“And what do you do with them?”

He took a corner of the napkin in his lap and dabbed at the grease on his lips.

“I’m writing a book,” he said.

“What about, if I may ask?”

“About recipes, just recipes,” said Dieter. “Old, original recipes.”

“And who will make the recipes—your wife?” I asked unhopefully.

“I am a person who is not with a woman married,” is how Dieter formulated his answer in his funny Russian.

“Then your mother?”

“God forbid.”

I was getting a headache. Dieter smiled broadly.

“I cook,” he said. “I, I, I.”

“Oh,” I said.

A foreign idiot. As if we didn’t have enough of our own.

I could hardly wait for him to leave. He stubbornly remained seated, however. He probably felt comfortable here. Because he ate in such tiny bites and chewed for such a long time, it took forever for us to work from one course to the next. I waited for him to ask questions about the dishes, but he didn’t. He ate my born-out-of-necessity delicacies as if they were the-day-before-yesterday’s mashed potatoes. I was a bit relieved, though, that I didn’t have to provide him with commentary and answers. I had tried to remember the dishes Kalganow’s country relatives prepared, but they certainly weren’t the types of things that would interest the German. And in order to get the right ingredients for them I would have to have been a magician. I had decided that in a pinch I would just lie and make up recipes and say they had been passed down from generation to generation. But I was also happy to be able to put that off.

Between the main dish and the dessert, Dieter suddenly asked Aminat to show him her room. I pinched her under the table. They withdrew together and I cleared the dirty plates with Sulfia and put out the clean ones. We put a new tablecloth out. I pulled out the dessert of my own invention—a sort of cold cake made out of ground-up butter cookies, margarine, and apples.

Then I went to Aminat’s room, stood behind the partially closed door, and eavesdropped. Dieter was playing with Aminat’s things. He had taken a little stool, covered it like a table, and placed three of her old puppets and a teddy bear around it. Aminat hadn’t played with dolls in a long time, but she played along so as not to offend the guest.

“And what should they eat now?” asked Aminat. I could hear how annoyed she was in the tone of her voice. But she fought bravely to improve our living conditions.

“
Kystybyi
,” said Dieter. “Do you like it?”

“I don’t know it,” said Aminat.

“
Kullama
?”

“Don’t know it.”

“
Talkysh-kaleve
?”

“What are you talking about?”

Aminat didn’t know anything about Tartar cuisine, and I had failed to prime her for the unusual questions. She had become a Soviet girl, just as Kalganow always wanted. She had no idea what the words were and didn’t hide her ignorance.

“Will you give me a kiss?” asked Dieter.

“Only if you marry my mama,” said Aminat.

I didn’t tell Sulfia about the conversation I’d overheard. I had to think it over first. Of course, now I knew I could reach my goal much more quickly than I had planned, and that it didn’t matter whether Sulfia wore short skirts or fishnet stockings. I kept my knowledge to myself—I wanted to wait until we had red passports in our hands.

Sulfia had watched Dieter sorrowfully after he stuck his wool-stockinged feet in his shoes and laboriously tied the laces. He formed loops with each set of laces and wrapped them around each other in an odd, very foreign fashion.

Aminat, Sulfia, and I stood in a row in front of him, watched, and waited until he was finished. This didn’t disturb him. He pulled on a finished knot and undid the entire structure. Aminat sighed and shifted her weight from one foot to the other. Sulfia moved her fingers. She was barely able to keep herself from kneeling in front of Dieter and doing the task for him.

As the door closed behind him, I looked around. Aminat’s face was contorted, as it always was when she had to keep herself under control. She had really worked wonders as far as her composure. Sulfia looked sad and wistful. I cast a sideways glance at my face in the mirror. It had a look of grim determination.

“And now?” asked Sulfia, heading into the kitchen with her head hanging. I followed her. She turned on the water but nothing came out. We were prepared and had a supply in buckets and in the bathtub. I poured some into our largest pot and put it on the stove in order to heat it to use to wash the dishes.

“We’ll see him again soon,” I said.

“You think so?”

She looked at me as if once again she believed I knew everything in the world. Unlike Aminat, she was apparently reaching an age at which she finally valued maternal wisdom.

“He’ll be back very soon, my daughter,” I said. “Didn’t you notice—he practically devoured you with his eyes. There are no women like you in Germany.”

“But he barely looked at me,” Sulfia countered tentatively.

“Out of shyness,” I said. “Chin up, daughter. If we all play our cards right, we’ll soon be in Germany.”