The Hottest Dishes of the Tartar Cuisine (3 page)

Almost as soon as I saved Aminat from the dorm, I took up the fight against her chickenpox. She had big pustules on her face and body where she had scratched the chickenpox sores and caused secondary infections in them. She was basically one single pus-dripping pustule, and she had been such an attractive child.

I treated her sores with a concoction of boiled oak bark, taking it in stride when the compress ruined two entire sets of sheets—the bark left behind brown stains that couldn’t be washed out.

Her sores quickly healed thanks to my treatments, and the bark poultice fell away in flakes and revealed the extent of the damage. I could see some deep pits in her skin left behind by the pustules. It filled me with great sorrow. And it took awhile before I was once again sure she was the best-looking child in the world.

It was important to me that Sulfia not sneak off with her again. So I told the kindergarten principal that Aminat’s mother had sustained brain damage and was no longer allowed to look after Aminat on her own. The principal wanted to see some sort of certification from a doctor. I went to our live-in neighbor Klavdia. She got me papers certifying that as a result of an insect bite, Sulfia had difficulties with routine tasks, adding that anyone who came into contact with her was obligated to offer help. This doctor’s certificate was pure gold: from then on, everyone avoided coming anywhere near her.

She turned up one day and stood with her face pressed against the chain-link fence that surrounded the schoolyard. She watched the children swinging and playing in the sandbox. She never said a word and remained on the outside of the fence, but one of the teachers grabbed Aminat and took her inside. I had guaranteed that response with careful planning—and gladiolas.

When Sulfia called shortly afterward, I told her that if she ever got near Aminat again, she’d better have her things packed and ready because I would make sure she landed in the loony bin. And coming from me, it sounded extremely convincing.

At first Aminat lagged far behind in verbal skills. I had even begun to worry whether she might be slightly retarded. I kept repeating words to her, but she just ignored everything until one day her little mouth opened and out came an entire sentence: “When is stupid grandpa coming home from work?” From then on, she never stopped talking. At all. She talked day and night. And said peculiar things.

I was a good role model for her. She paid attention to the way I spoke, and to the fact that no Tartar words ever slipped out of me. Aminat needed to speak perfectly. She looked Tartar. She didn’t need to sound Tartar as well. I didn’t have any family left, but with Kalganow’s country relatives I’d seen what could happen. First you start saying a few Tartar words, then you forget the Russian equivalents, and the next thing you know you’re illiterate. That wasn’t going to happen to Aminat. She was going to be the best, the prettiest, and the smartest. A Soviet child without any ethnic or regional identity, said Kalganow proudly. In a rare instance of accord, we both wanted the same basic thing for our granddaughter—even if our reasons were different.

Each day after kindergarten I talked to her about how her day had been, correcting her grammar as we spoke and trying to expand her vocabulary.

“Electricity, my dear,” I told her when she tried to stick a nail file in an outlet.

“Communism, my dear,” I said when I managed to get hold of a bunch of bananas for her and let them ripen on the windowsill, giving her just one each day so they’d last for a while.

“Gravity, my dear,” I told her when she fell down yet again. It happened often; Aminat was incredibly clumsy during her first few years. For a long time, she couldn’t distinguish between left and right or stand on one leg. Spinning gracefully in a circle, like other little girls, was beyond her capabilities.

I took her to ballet lessons at the Center for Youth and Culture. They didn’t want to admit her at first. Until I let slip where my husband worked. Aminat got a spot.

We got a lot from ballet. Aminat slowly learned to straighten out her pigeon-toed walk. She fell down less frequently. When she sat down, she no longer automatically hunched her shoulders. Less and less often did I have to drill my finger into her back between her shoulder blades to make her sit upright.

A year went by, followed by another.

Aminat was going to be five and we decided to celebrate her birthday.

I spared no time or effort, and the resultant Napoleon cake would have been suitable for a state dinner. I had a way with puff pastry, as with so many other things. After four hours I had ten crispy cake layers that I slathered with custard and stacked into a marvelous structure every bit as light and sweet as I imagined Aminat’s future life would be.

My husband got hold of some balloons and blew them up with puffed cheeks and eyes reddened from the exertion.

We didn’t invite any children. We had just bought new furniture imported from Yugoslavia. We invited two of my husband’s colleagues, Klavdia, and my cousin Rafaella. I unplugged the phone so the constant ringing wouldn’t disturb us. I put Aminat in a frilly pink dress I had made myself, and combed her black curls.

She played with the balloons, hummed, and laughed like the happiest child on earth. She was given coloring books and felt-tip pens, tights, oranges, and a toy doctor’s kit. She opened the kit up immediately and began to sort through the instruments. Watching her warmed my heart. And I could tell as soon as I saw her playing that my granddaughter was going to be a doctor one day, and quite a doctor at that.

I laughed joyfully at this thought. A doctor was something missing in the family. Since Kalganow had become chairman of the union he’d finally become useful. In a pinch, Sulfia, when she still lived with us at least, could administer shots. But having a real doctor in the house was important, especially as you got older. It was a respectable profession, and it would win me the appreciation of all my neighbors and colleagues, since, like me, they would all get sick and need shots, doctor’s notes, and medicines.

“Stethoscope, my dear,” I said, immediately expanding Aminat’s vocabulary. “Intravenous drip, my dear. Tu-ber-cu-lo-sis.”

I shouldn’t have mentioned tuberculosis.

Mantoux tests were administered at Aminat’s kindergarten. The children received shots on their forearms, and green dye was used to highlight the skin around the injection site. If the child had been exposed to TB, the injection site would get infected and swell. If, on the other hand, there was no reaction, everything was fine.

In Aminat’s case, the swelling didn’t just exceed the green line drawn around the injection site. Her entire forearm swelled up and looked like a big red pillow. Right in the middle was the now misshapen spot of green dye. When I saw this, I grabbed Aminat, wiped her nose, quickly ironed her striped pants so she looked presentable, and ran with her to the local clinic.

The doctor in charge of our district looked at Aminat’s arm as I shoved it in front of her face and shook her head. She’d never seen
anything like it
, she said, not in her whole life. It could be helpful to repeat the test on the other arm. Aminat received a second shot.

By the next morning the swelling had reached her shoulders. The pediatrician shook her head disapprovingly and pulled out a stack of forms. Aminat would have to provide urine and feces samples, as well as have blood drawn and X-rays taken.

I was busy for the next few weeks. I collected Aminat’s excretions at the prescribed times, took the full glass jars to the lab and passed them through an oval window, washed Aminat’s neck, and took her in for her examinations. The doctors did their honorable work, and I did mine. I became a master urine sample collector. It sounds easier than it actually was.

I was happy about the many demanding tasks that fell to me because it gave me less time to spend worrying. With her red cheeks, Aminat looked resilient, but even resilient children sometimes keeled over dead with no warning or developed full-blown tuberculosis. I couldn’t sleep at night. I chased images of a child-size coffin from my head and prayed ardently. I reminded God how good I had always been to Sulfia. Now I was even prepared to reconcile with her, to give her a chance to put all the ill will behind, but only if Aminat grew healthy again. I lay with my head on my pillow and whispered to myself.

Kalganow turned his back to me during those nights and clapped his hands over his ears. He didn’t like it when I talked to God. He didn’t believe in God and found it embarrassing that I did. Most of all he didn’t want anyone else to find out I believed in God and even talked to him. There was nobody here in our bed except the two of us, I assured him. Or rather, the two of us and God.

Kalganow was hypersensitive through this entire period. A phrase like “thank God” would make him cringe. Even worse was when Aminat would use the word “tykryk” instead of “alley” or call Kalganow “Babaj” instead of “Papa.” He would scold me for smuggling these words into the house and denying Aminat the opportunity to grow up like a normal Soviet child. But I was innocent, as these words certainly never came out of my mouth in Aminat’s presence. Maybe they were just there in her Tartar blood. Still, I didn’t make an issue of it. Whenever it was possible, I kept my view of things to myself. After all, Kalganow was just a man and had weak nerves.

Aminat’s pediatrician laid the results of all the tests and exams out on her desk. Aminat’s leukocytes, thrombocytes, erythrocytes, antibodies, some sort of suspicious proteins, pigments, and rods were all tallied and recorded, some multiple times because the initial tests had been contaminated or botched. Aminat’s EKG was lying next to her X-rays, to which the patient reacted enthusiastically: “Look, a skeleton!”

I didn’t smack Aminat even though she wrinkled my skirt. I just looked straight at her doctor. This overweight woman with a derelict bird’s nest where most people had hairdos was supposed to give us a verdict now—whether my little girl would live, and if so, under what conditions.

I looked at her. She shook her head. I could feel my hands begin to shake.

Aminat hopped out of my lap and stood next to me. She began to play with my gold earring but I didn’t have the strength left to give her a lesson in good behavior as the doctor finally began to speak.

I listened to her for while. She spoke at length and I stared at her face, which reminded me of a poorly cooked crepe. I understood that Aminat wasn’t going to die. At least not now. That she was even healthy. But possibly not. One never really knew precisely. The results could be interpreted in different ways. Perhaps the swelling of her arms had just been an allergic reaction. Perhaps she had indeed come in contact with the bacteria first identified by Robert Koch. In any event, a sanatorium for children with lung conditions would be just the thing.

I lifted my eyes to the cracks in the white clinic ceiling and thanked God.

I didn’t tell Aminat that she’d be spending three months in a sanatorium for children with lung conditions. Saying too much often hurt as much as it helped. On the prearranged day, I packed Aminat’s underwear and clothes in a backpack and dressed her warmly. The sanatorium was in an old villa in a pine forest—the villa had at one time belonged to the enemy class. We had to take a train two hours north and climb out at a tiny, forgotten station.

It was very cold. Aminat held my hand. We walked for half an hour through the woods before we reached the gates of the sanatorium. I always managed to find the shortest route wherever I went, even when I didn’t know the area. I never got lost, not in the city, not in the forest. I also always knew when and where buses went, and could feel them coming toward a bus stop before they were in sight.

“Why is it so horribly quiet here?” asked Aminat.

“Because,” I said.

I knew these new surroundings must have seemed very unfamiliar to Aminat. She was a city kid born and bred. I’d never taken her to a forest before, just an occasional visit to the park. She’d never seen trees like this, packed so tightly together. For her entire life, the smoking chimneys of factories had decorated the horizon. When she lay in bed, traffic noise lulled her to sleep.

Aminat looked around. Her eyes had narrowed to slits, a sure sign that she did not approve. And she didn’t even know yet that she had to stay here for three months, all by herself, among strangers, without her grandmother.

I opened the gate, climbed a stone staircase to the door, and entered a dark vestibule where children’s jackets hung from a row of hooks. The walls were covered in a faded ladybug print. Something clanged in the distance.

“Let’s go home,” said Aminat adamantly.

I freed my hand from her grip, took her by her collar, and led her down the long hallway to a glass door, behind which children with blank looks on their faces sat around little tables eating from metal dishes—which explained the clanging. I handed over Aminat, her backpack, and a note from her doctor to the first member of the sanatorium staff we ran across.

The woman wore a gray smock that had faded from repeated washings. She had the face of a supervisor. She read the doctor’s note through and said, “Aminat Kalganova? Ah, yes.”

She took my Aminat by the hand and led her away. Aminat went with her obediently, like a good little girl, but kept turning around mid-stride to look back at me. It went much more smoothly than I’d feared. Though I suppose Aminat must have thought that when she returned, I’d be there to take her back home. Oh well.

I waited until the two of them were out of sight and then quickly left. I didn’t manage to get out of hearing range quickly enough, though. Out on the forest path Aminat’s desperate, angry screams reached me.

Three weeks later I got a call informing me that Aminat had contracted scarlet fever and had to be picked up. I took the train to the forest station and followed the path I now knew back to the sanatorium.

Aminat was sitting in a glass cell with a bed and nightstand in it. Here she could be kept away from the other children, explained the director of the sanatorium. She was ready to hold me personally responsible for the outbreak of scarlet fever that would have resulted if Aminat had managed to infect the other kids.

Aminat sat on the bed in a t-shirt and tights and peered through the glass wall at all the people going past her. At first she didn’t recognize me. Her black eyes passed over me and then the director of the sanatorium. Then her eyes returned to me and began to sparkle.

Aminat threw her entire body against the glass pane. I saw her white teeth as her mouth formed a hopeful smile, pressed flat against the wall. The blotches on her face I noticed only later.

We entered the glass cell and Aminat jumped on me, wrapped her arms and legs around me, and squeezed so hard I could barely breathe. I patted her on the back, saying, “There, there.”

I tried to put her down.

“So?” said the director triumphantly.

Without another word the director sat down on the bed, clamped Aminat between her legs, and lifted up her t-shirt.

Suddenly I was looking at countless tiny red bumps that formed constellations and whole galaxies on Aminat’s back. I put on my glasses and bent down. Among the many things I knew was that scarlet fever looked very different from this.

“She’s just had a reaction to something she ate,” I said. “That’s not scarlet fever.”

“Do you have medical training?” asked the director.

She had medical training but couldn’t distinguish scarlet fever from hives. Or she didn’t wish to distinguish them. I suspected that already. Aminat was not an easy child to deal with at home, and probably not here either.

“Take her to your district clinic,” she said.

“You’re going to hear from us,” I said as we left.

I carried Aminat’s backpack. The paperwork with the doctor’s assessment that the Kalganova child was suffering from a highly infectious disease that threatened her life, and that she must be quarantined, I ripped into pieces and let flutter off between the pines.

Aminat held my hand and skipped through the snow. Her smile spread across her entire face and she recounted her three weeks in the sanatorium.

It was grim. She had to sleep in a room with fifty other children. For the first few days she had been unable to eat from the metal dishes because they made such a shrill noise when the spoon scraped across them. Before bed, all the children had to wash their feet together. The towels were always folded a certain way: longwise, longwise again, longwise one more time and then crossways. One of the staff members constantly told horror stories. Almost every morning Aminat woke up in a strange bed next to another child and didn’t know how she’d gotten there. She never, ever wanted to hear stories again. They got shots every day with needles so long they could have gone all the way through their arms and out the other side. Any children who wanted to go to the bathroom at night had to use a chamber pot that was emptied only the next morning. Aminat had just yesterday made her first friend, a girl who had received a package of candies from her parents and shared them all with Aminat. In the middle of the night she had begun to feel itchy, and in the morning Aminat had been asked whether she had ever had scarlet fever. That was the happiest moment of the entire three weeks for her because I soon came and picked her up.

We reached the forgotten little train station and sat down on a bench. The train that would take me and my little girl out of the forest and back home wouldn’t arrive for an hour. The sun peeked over the tops of the trees and a few anemic rays brushed our cheeks. We held our faces up to the sky.

“Aminat, be quiet,” I begged. I was getting a headache from all her jabber. I’d forgotten over these weeks just how much she talked.

“We had buckwheat porridge almost every night,” Aminat continued.

“Should I tell you a story instead?” I interrupted.

“No,” she cried.

I have rarely seen her as happy as she was on that day. But as far as stories went, it was clear: she wanted nothing more to do with them.