The Hottest Dishes of the Tartar Cuisine (23 page)

It was a women’s ward, and you had to start very early. That was fine with me, because Aminat was no longer going to school and otherwise I just sat around all morning stewing about it. The work would distract me. It wasn’t much money, but it was a proper job—my first in Germany.

I signed a contract and received a white smock. I’d have to bring my own white slippers. I was extremely proud: I was a full-time employee of a hospital.

Some rooms housed three women, others were set up for just one per room. I cleaned quickly and well, and as my hands did the work I asked the women in the beds what was wrong with them. Some of them didn’t answer at all. But a few talked. There were some with uterine myomas, others had cysts, a few were trying to conceive, and a few were already pregnant and had to be on bed rest in order not to lose the baby.

Soon I got to know them all—the talkative ones and the silent ones—because I worked very quickly. And because I also cleaned the offices and conference room, I saw all the patients’ records, which were kept in large black folders in a rolling file cabinet. I knew all the women’s names, their birthdates, and their addresses—some of the addresses were familiar because I’d cleaned somewhere nearby.

I read their medical histories, though the writing was difficult to decipher. I looked in the medicine cabinet, saw who got what and how much, and filed away all the information in my head. I have a good memory and an astute understanding. I spent all morning at the hospital. After I’d gone through all the rooms I’d be sent to change the sheets or take care of some mess or other that had happened during the course of the morning. I also pushed patients down to the OR if the nurses were too busy. Some of the patients were scared before their operations. I told them everything would be fine, and since I knew what was wrong with everyone I was able to be very precise about what exactly would be fine for each of them personally.

After three weeks I felt totally at home at the hospital.

I put off my plans to enter a medical training program. There was enough to learn here. I began to be able to read the doctors and nurses’ writing more easily on the forms they filled out about the patients. I figured out where each type of medicine was kept. Then came the first time that a patient fresh from surgery was moaning in pain and I couldn’t find anyone to help her. I went and got the right little vials and added them to her IV drip. I watched over her for a while to make sure I hadn’t made a mistake and that she didn’t die. A day and a half later her husband picked her up and she walked out leaning on his arm.

At home I chatted with Dieter about the medical histories of the women in my ward. I called it “my ward” and also soon referred to “my women.” Sometimes Aminat came in and slouched down in a chair while we talked. She began to shower again, to iron her t-shirts, and to go to the salon to have her hair done. I continued to ignore her. She started going outdoors again. She never said where she had gone and I never asked. I ignored her. She began looking through her biology textbook again. I took care of my own business. I had taken a textbook out of a doctor’s office and read it all the way through at home. Somehow I realized that Aminat had also paged through it. I let her. Perhaps she’d become a renowned doctor after all.

Just as I thought her life might be heading in the right direction, one that didn’t lead to the gutter, she disappeared along with a large sum of cash from one of my drawers, money I had been saving for her education.

Dieter wanted to go to the police and register her as a missing person. Sulfia kept me from doing that, and I in turn kept Dieter from doing it. I should just leave Aminat alone, Sulfia said. It was no easy trick, since I figured I had lost her forever. I pictured her hacked up in the trunk of a car somewhere. But Sulfia laughed—as she often did at the most inappropriate times—and shook her head.

Aminat was eighteen and had run away from home. It was an embarrassment. Granddaughters didn’t run away from good grandmothers. At first I reacted all through the night to any noise in the staircase and checked several times a day that the phone was working.

Sulfia took all the blame. She said she’d been a miserable mother and that there’d been no way for me to compensate for that. She was right, of course. But we were still in a pickle. Dieter blustered, but I told him that if he filed a missing persons report, I would go to the police to file a very different report. He quieted right down.

In order to keep from going crazy, I poured myself into my work at the hospital. I studied the new patients and tried to figure out what was wrong with them from their facial expressions and body language. I sketched out a clinical diagnosis of my own, and then I read what my scientifically trained colleagues had written in their files. At first I made a lot of mistakes, but the accuracy of my diagnoses soon improved. I began to immediately recognize women who were unable to have children. They all looked the same. But I also could tell whether the fallopian tubes were blocked, or whether the women were too masculine, too thin, or were with the wrong man. I was surprised nobody else could see these things. Then came a day when I approached a patient who was pulling on some anti-thrombosis stockings in preparation for surgery and said in her ear: “If I were you, I wouldn’t let them remove my uterus. You might still need it.”

Her fingers, fighting with a sock, suddenly froze.

“It’s your body,” I said. “Don’t listen to their hogwash. You’re fine.”

I went into the hall and started washing a windowsill. I heard a door close. The patient had gotten dressed and run down the hall with her overnight bag. Her compression stockings lay on the floor next to her hospital gown. I picked them up and threw them in the trash, and began to strip the bedding.

The next morning I was fired.

Now I had time. Time I spent with Sulfia. I lay in bed talking to her. Then I got up and went searching. I went to the park. I usually avoided it because of all the homeless people loitering there. I talked to them now, asking their names and whether they’d seen my girl. I went to the train station and even took trains a little way to their next stop. I didn’t know whether Aminat had left town and if so in which direction she’d gone.

Sulfia walked along behind me but she didn’t participate in the search. Sometimes I thought I saw Aminat in the middle of a large group of people. I’d run to catch up, grab breathlessly at her arm—and a total stranger would turn to me. I carried photos around with me. Of Aminat somewhat younger, with nicely groomed hair and a smile that even then was unusual. And of Aminat as she had last looked, a disagreeable vision with straw-like hair and infected pimples on her forehead. Every day I removed her photo from my purse and showed it at least a hundred times.

After I’d been thrown out of the hospital, I also lost five important clients one after the next. Eventually I had just two cleaning jobs left, one of which was at John’s place. Then only John was left. But I no longer did my work thoroughly. When I went to John’s I had no desire to do anything. It would have been more honest just to quit.

I tried, actually, but he wouldn’t allow it. So I showed up fifteen minutes later than arranged (me, who was always so punctual!), and instead of wearing my boots and changing into rubber slippers, I would wear normal street shoes and walk straight across his Persian rugs into the kitchen and sit down at the table. I didn’t even bother to pick up the cleaning rags. He would just have taken them out of my hand.

As I sat there and read the Meals on Wheels menu that was stuck on John’s refrigerator, he made tea with milk, following all the rules of tea-making that at one time I had paid such attention to. A heated teapot, loose tea leaves from an expensive-looking canister, boiling water, and warm milk that John poured into each cup before the tea. He served it with English cookies topped with sugar crystals. I dipped them in my tea. I drank two or three large cups while John told me about the goings-on in the world. He had begun once again to read the papers and watch the news on TV. I acted as if I were listening. I asked him to keep an eye out for Aminat’s face or name, preferably in reference to someone who was alive. He promised me he would. I gave him some photos of Aminat. He put them on his refrigerator with magnets.

Once I had finished my tea, I got up from John’s kitchen stool. He handed me the envelope with the usual fee for cleaning, but I pushed his hand aside. When I got home, however, I found the envelope in my purse.

It was, by the way, always quite clean at John’s still. His daughter was happy with the way it looked. I asked him who was cleaning the place and he smiled a proud gentleman’s smile.

“I am,” he said.

The next few years went by quickly even though nothing really happened.

I kept looking for Aminat. What else did I have to do? But my searching had become half hearted. Now if I thought I saw her in line ahead of me at the bank, I didn’t go running up and grab some stranger’s sleeve anymore. I carried her photos around in my handbag still, but I no longer showed them to people.

John went to his brother’s in England and stayed there. His house stood closed up and empty among the other houses like a dead tooth in a smile. I had a key. John had asked me to go by regularly, make sure everything was in working order, and dust, and for doing that he left me a nice sum of money. I did something I had never done before: I broke my promise and shirked my duties. It was just too much of a hassle to make my way to his house.

I didn’t talk to anyone at all except Sulfia. Things happened that I wasn’t sure had really happened. Perhaps I just thought they happened because it would have been good if they had. For instance, I wasn’t sure whether Aminat had really called me during the first year after her disappearance and spoken three sentences over the phone: “I’m doing well. Leave me alone. You’ve done enough by killing my mother.” Or whether she had wished me a happy birthday in the third year after her disappearance. Sulfia said I shouldn’t make anything out of it. She assured me that Aminat still loved me, but in her own way, from afar.

Yes, that was Sulfia. She saw only the best in everyone. I took to doing something that had once been completely foreign to me—staying in bed. I locked my bedroom door and one night I even put a dresser in front of the door to guarantee I wouldn’t be disturbed.

Dieter knocked on my door. I told him—from my bed—to go to hell. Sulfia convinced me that I should get out of bed and go have something to drink. I begged her to leave me in peace. I had earned it. She sat down on the edge of my bed and cried. It got on my nerves and I turned my back to her and faced the wall.

I prayed to God to bring Aminat back to my side because my final hour was approaching. I whispered it at the white wall as if God’s ear was right there. Then I suddenly heard John’s voice—outside the door. He called my name—loud, deep, hostile. He was asking why I hadn’t gone over to his house as agreed. He was upset I had neglected my responsibilities. After all, I had been paid.

“Go away!” I called.

It was supposed to sound loud, but I didn’t have any strength left. What came out of my mouth was just a weak hiss.

I had completely forgotten what a deep voice John had, a real teacher’s voice. His voice filled my room even through the door. Dieter’s croaking, on the other hand, barely registered.

I didn’t move when the door broke down with a terrible crash and John fell into the room over the dresser—my attempt to keep the outside world at bay. Fleeting thoughts about what a bad impression this was going to leave John with ran through my head. Fortunately my silk nightgown was still fresh and its trim still nicely pressed—because I’d barely moved in bed. But I certainly hadn’t figured on a visit from a man. I hadn’t put on any makeup before I laid myself down (I hadn’t considered Dieter a man for a long time). Which is why I stayed in my original position, with my face turned to the wall, so John couldn’t see my naked face. All he could see was my long hair, freshly braided before I had gotten into bed.

He shook me hard by the shoulder and asked if I was sick. Given how long it had been since we had seen each other, he was acting very familiar. Although I tried to stop him, he managed to roll me onto my back. He was shocked at what he saw.

“She’s deathly pale!” he called to Dieter. John had never seen me without my skillfully applied rouge. Dieter volunteered that I’d been in my room for two weeks without eating or drinking anything. Unless, of course, I had slipped out to the kitchen during his occasional absences. (Such impudence!)

John shook me as if he were fluffing a pillow. I groaned. I became painfully aware of my situation. I’d be unable to remedy the impression I had just made on him for the rest of my life (though, I forgot for a second, my life was about to end). Why did he have to show up now, of all times? Couldn’t he have remembered me as the beaming Rosalinda I once was?

John disappeared into the hall, for which I was thankful. I didn’t know yet that he’d called an ambulance that would transport me—lights flashing and siren blaring—to the intensive care unit at the municipal hospital.

I was the prettiest patient in the intensive care unit—and the loudest. It bored me to lie in bed with tubes sticking in me. The treatment seemed exaggerated. I had to go to the toilet and rang for one of the nurses in purple smocks. She brought me a bedpan. I screamed at her—I wasn’t potty training! She looked at me totally shocked. Nobody ever screamed in the intensive care unit. At most maybe the occasional death rattle. I knew, I had worked at a hospital. The nurses spoke very slowly to me, in short sentences, everything repeated—as if I were brain damaged.

Two days later I was transferred to the normal ward. I walked there myself while a poorly shaved nurse’s assistant pushed my things along behind me in a wheelchair. I lay down in bed. Here, fortunately, there were TVs. I wanted to see the news. Maybe Aminat would turn up. But I was also completely out of touch with what was going on. I also wanted to delay the talk with the doctor and call Dieter to have him pick me up.

A doctor came in. She was Asian, with flat black hair. She was very young, maybe even younger than Aminat was by now. Her white smock fit perfectly. She wore her stethoscope around her neck, as elegantly as a feather boa. On her chest pocket were a few syllables that sounded like bird calls. She was Chinese.

I sighed because this Chinese woman was not my granddaughter. She looked so hardworking that it was easy to see she would soon have her own practice. The Chinese always got what they wanted.

Now she was telling me I had to stay here because my kidneys were on the brink of failure. I laughed out loud and made a gesture that made clear how crazy I took this suggestion to be. She’d have to stay after school, this Chinese doctor. My Aminat would never have made such an error.

I told her I wanted to leave that night. The following morning at the latest. The woman in the white smock rolled her squinty eyes. Her eyes reminded me a little of Aminat’s almond-shaped eyes. My mood was deteriorating.

The neophyte left, taking the results of my blood tests with her. I turned on the TV. There was an old lady in the other bed emitting a rattling noise. I turned up the volume so she could hear, too—and to drown out the rattling sound. I kept looking over at her. Someone should sit her up, I thought, so she can breathe more easily. I was about to ring for a nurse when I heard a voice on TV that made me forget the old lady.

On the screen was Aminat. At first I was surprised, then shocked, and finally ashamed. Aminat was on TV—it was more than I could ever have dreamed for. But my God, the way she looked! Why hadn’t anyone told her what to wear? Why had they let her on TV with her hair like that? Why hadn’t they made her up? Why would they let her go in front of German viewers and disgrace herself that way?

Aminat’s black hair was pulled into a scrawny ponytail. You could see it because the camera kept circling around her. You could also see what bad posture she had. I was thoroughly ashamed of her. She wore a blue t-shirt on which my eagle eyes were able to spot tiny stains. Her jeans sat very low on her hips. At least she was slim. Very thin, in fact. She looked very young, as if the time since I had last seen her had never passed. She also looked as if she hadn’t eaten since I last saw her. She was still a child, despite the fact that almost ten years had gone by.

And she sang. She sang on TV. And everyone could hear that she hadn’t practiced enough. I should have sent her to music school. Maybe then she’d have sung a little better now and not have embarrassed herself. She sang a song in English, one I’d often heard on the radio. I think it was about love. In any event, it had a very melancholy melody to it.

Aminat sang a little softly. It was difficult to hear her. Now I noticed that in the room where she was being filmed, three people were seated at a long table. A woman and two men. They were listening to my little girl sing. And although the way she sang didn’t appeal to me, it was clear how infinitely sad her song was. Even the old lady in the next bed stopped rattling.

Aminat was finished. Her bottom lip was swollen. Maybe she lived with a man who beat her. She must have lived off something for all these years. And since she couldn’t do anything, she had probably found a man to take care of her—probably an old sad sack hot for some thin, young flesh. Just a shame he couldn’t have bought her some nicer clothes. The camera focused on Aminat’s eyes—black, nervously blinking in the close-up. Everyone could tell she had tried to apply eyeliner but had then wiped it off. Very sloppy.

The name they showed was hers: “Aminat K., 19 years old.” It would have been nicer if they had written out her family name so everyone could read it.

We hadn’t seen each other in nine years. She must have been nearly thirty, but it could stay her secret. Mine, too, I thought. She had every right—she looked very young. And anyway, who would put a thirty-year-old on TV?

“How old are you, Anita?” asked the bald-headed man at the table.

Aminat managed on the third attempt to say the number nineteen. She was so nervous because she was lying, it was clear. Pull yourself together, I whispered. And stand up straight! And as if she could hear me, she squared her shoulders and repeated: “I’m nineteen years old.”

“And are you still in school?” asked the bald man.

She shook her head.

“And you want to become a famous singer?”

The camera caught Aminat’s mouth. Anyone could see—she was missing an incisor. The mouth opened, the tongue licked dry lips, and Aminat said hoarsely: “Yes, I’m going to be a famous singer.”

I clasped my hands as the three people at the table put their heads together. They didn’t let Aminat out of their sight. She stood still, alone in the middle of the room.

“You’re in,” said the pretty woman with flat blonde hair and a glittering dress. She looked very fashionable, perfect for TV.

You’re in, I whispered, as the camera started to rock and the bald man sprang up from the table. Then the entire TV-viewing country saw Aminat faint and fall to the floor.

I felt in perfect health after seeing Aminat on TV. I told the Chinese woman and her two co-workers—two older doctors she’d brought in as reinforcements. They had all zeroed in on my kidneys. Maybe they needed donor organs. I let it drop that I’d just seen my missing granddaughter on TV, and that she was soon going to be a famous singer. The white-smocked doctors exchanged glances. Finally I signed a piece of paper that said I was leaving the hospital against medical advice.

I called Dieter and told him he needed to pick me up. He sounded weak on the phone—as if he had just gotten out of intensive care instead of me.

I went to the little sink in the corner of the room and looked at myself in the mirror. I went and got my bag and began to put my face in order. My colorless days were over. In the hospital I had worn just a little mascara and lipstick. I pulled out all the stops—it was as if someone had warned me that when the door opened John would be standing there instead of Dieter.

He was really there. This tall man with straight posture and gray hair, a real-life British gentleman. I was as bashful as a young girl.

“Where’s Dieter?” I asked.

John shrugged his shoulders. He picked up my three travel bags and carried them along the hall of the hospital. I hurried along behind on high heels, and the nurses craned their necks. I saw for the first time what kind of car John drove. It was an old sand-color Mercedes. It suited him perfectly. He opened the door for me.

“Where are we going?” I asked, as he turned at the third intersection in a row and I no longer recognized the route.

“Home,” he said.

“Aha,” I said, and only when he carried my bags into the house did I realize he meant his home.