Vintage (26 page)

As they approached Vnukovo Airport, Bruno grew steadily more morose. He became in turns angry and frustrated with Anna for crushing his dreams and the faith of his daughter. He was also bitter with himself for leading the poor girl to believe that putting her life savings into his project was somehow a good idea.

They stalled in traffic alongside the runway at Vnukovo and Bruno watched planes taxiing. He was in for a full day or more of endless lines and standby flights.

They funneled down to a queue leading to departures. Bruno spotted a family getting out of a cab. A little girl stood next to her father as the driver hoisted their suitcase out of the trunk. The girl looked up at the man and reached out, smiling. The dad lifted her to his shoulders and they disappeared into the crowd.

A thought suddenly struck him.

“My daughter . . . she looks up to me.”

“Excuse?” the driver said, looking at him in the rearview.

“She's sixteen years old. A teenager. And she looks up to me. That's strange, isn't it?”

“I no understand.”

“Me, either. Teenagers just don't do that. Look . . . I sleep on my mother's couch. I don't have a job. I tend to drink too much. I haven't written anything worthwhile in ten years. She's a smart girl. You might even say wise. But she decided to underwrite my
whole career. She made a decision to put everything she had in the world on the line . . . for me. How do you explain that?”

The driver shrugged.

“She still believes. ‘I believe in you, Daddy.' She said that, just last night. It's that simple. She believes in me.” A hot tear slipped out and trailed down his cheek into his beard. He didn't wipe it.

The cab pulled to the curb.

Bruno tightened the grip on his suitcase.

“So where's the best market in town?”

The driver shrugged.

“You know. Market? Shopping. Where can I buy fresh ingredients?”

“You want airport, no? Is here.”

“No. I changed my mind. I want to shop. Fish. Food. Vegetables.”

“Okay. Danilovskii Rynok is best. I take you?”

“Drive on, driver!”

The cab peeled away from the curb back into the honking stream of airport traffic.

*      *      *

Bruno smelled the market at the same time he saw the huge building's rumpled dome. He crossed the street and walked into a wall of smells: dill, dried fruit and sweat. This trip was just for planning. He would scout the ingredients and allow them to dictate how he would prepare the salmon. It was far too late in the day to buy fish, but he would investigate the location of the best market for seafood the next morning.

Slipping under the white dome of the Danilovskii was akin to walking into a cathedral for Bruno, and his soul immediately began to levitate. The reverent murmur of voices, the red-coated butchers
lifting pork shanks from hooks and slapping them on blocks, the clink of jars of candied fruits, carefully arranged pyramids of fruit, mounded cones of dried spices displaying every earthy hue and aroma: all of this was the language of Bruno's religion.

He inspected the stalls and aisles carefully. As he expected, the fish here was questionable, too pungent and the flesh soft to the touch.

He spotted a round, red-faced woman with the double-buttoned jacket that gave her away as kitchen staff or a culinary student, and he approached her. “Excuse me, but do you cook?” he asked in French and then German. She stared at him, not understanding. “I'm sorry, but I don't speak Russian,” he said in English.

“That's fine by me, because I'm American,” she replied, beaming at his surprise. “And yes, I do cook,” she said, after he repeated his question in English.

“So, I've got an important meal to fix, and I'm in desperate need of a guide.”

“Well, you're in luck, because I was just going to pick something up for dinner. Come along!” She offered her arm, which he seized and they squeezed into the crowd.

“Restaurant?” Bruno asked, gesturing to her jacket.

“Catering,” she answered, dragging him through a thicket of bodies outside a produce stand and wending into the heart of the market until he was completely lost. “I'm Janice, by the way.”

“Bruno,” he said.

She led him to her favorite herb vendor, a wizened old woman with papery skin and bright blue eyes wearing a white smock and a babushka. Bruno bought fresh dill that had a sharp, clean tang, and then some ripe ginger that made his eyes water when he cupped it in his hands and pressed his nose to the root.
He scraped the ginger with his fingernail to release more of the aroma and breathed in the sweet bite of it, which was rich and layered as if it were a library of the concentrated, autumnal fragrances. That settled it! He would make a simple honey-ginger glaze for the salmon. Janice suggested visiting the Dorogomilovsky Market the following morning as early as possible, as that was where professional cooks went prior to dawn to haggle over the best fish arriving overnight.

They bought sweet pirozhki from a stand and sat on the market steps. Janice was a young woman with a quick laugh, a self-described “food nerd” and medical school dropout.

“One thing led to another and I somehow wound up stuck in Moscow,” she said.

“That's precisely the situation I find myself in now.” Bruno explained his predicament of having checked out of his hotel before a change of plans, wondering if she knew of an affordable place to stay.

“You're welcome to stay with me,” she offered. “I've got a couch and an Internet connection at your disposal.” He allowed himself to imagine a romantic dinner and was only a little disappointed to learn she was happily married to a Russian cook named Dima.

At the market, Janice also bought dill, green onions, cucumbers, turnips and cuts of beef for an
okroshka
, a cold soup based on kvass, a drink of fermented rye bread.

They ate the soup later on the couple's tiny balcony in an old stone building in a middle-class neighborhood and then Bruno used their telephone to make arrangements with Khramov.

Dima was a gregarious collector of Moldovan, Greek and Georgian wines, and they stayed up far too late drinking and talking about the meal Bruno was planning for Varushkin.

“You have luck,” Dima said, clinking glasses. “I go to Dorogomilovsky in morning. I take you.” They finished the bottle and Janice was already asleep on the couch, but Dima merely threw her over his shoulder and hauled her off to the bedroom without even breaking her snore. Bruno was asleep in moments, feeling the lingering warmth of Janice's imprint on the couch and sensing Dima tucking a blanket over him.

It was pitch-black when he was shaken awake, and he was still foggy when they reached the market. There was already a fleet of restaurant vans, and a low rumble of haggling, and Bruno worried that they might be too late or that a vendor wouldn't be willing to part with only a small amount of his best fish.

He tasted and sniffed his way through the fishmongers' stalls, reveling in the beauty of the blue and silver creatures lying on their beds of ice, and then the bright colors of the salmon flesh. He finally was able to intercept a delightful steelhead that smelled precisely of pure seawater. He was only a tad reluctant to give up on the symbolism of the salmon, because steelhead don't die after spawning, instead returning to the sea, but maybe that meant that Varushkin might eventually be set free . . . Why not be hopeful? Most of the salmon he encountered were spent and soft despite good flavor. When Bruno pressed the steelhead's flesh with his thumb, it had a buoyancy and character that hinted at good texture and mouthfeel. It's always a mistake to rely too heavily on aroma and flavor at the expense of texture when cooking. The ginger glaze would work equally well on the steelhead.

With the fish in hand, he was free to concentrate on the rest of the meal. Free to improvise: he was inspired by the availability of good oysters at Dorogomilovsky, so he purchased them
and eventually decided on a French bisque recipe that he hadn't made in years but would fit the meal perfectly. He gathered more ingredients and then asked around for the best wine shops.

Bruno bought a cooler with wheels and a pull-up handle for twenty-five hundred rubles from one of the vendors for transporting the fish. He filled the cooler with crushed ice and dragged it to an electronics store across from the market that was just opening for the morning, where he bought a disposable cell phone.

He called Khramov to finalize arrangements.

“Kitchen is five hundred. Interrogation room, five more. Table and chair rental, two hundred,” Khramov said, as if the price list was in front of him. “One thousand two hundred total. Plus tips for guards. Is okay?”

“Is okay,” Bruno said with a gulp, doing the math and realizing he was stretching his budget dangerously thin. “Can you guarantee that Varushkin's ex-wife will be there?”

“No problem. Is already arranged,” Khramov said. He explained that she had been making regular visits trying unsuccessfully to extract information on the whereabouts of some of the hidden assets. The fact that Khramov knew all this confirmed Bruno's suspicion that he had listened in on the visit, and he made a mental note to be careful. He didn't want the corrupt prison official to get the jump on him in locating the Trevallier.

Making a roux is the culinary analog to raising a child. It demands your absolute love and attention. If you allow it to burn or crust over, even slightly, your soup will be flavored with a touch of unwanted bitterness that you may never be able to remove. If made properly, with the utmost care and delicacy, it will become the foundation for something brilliant.

—
B
RUNO
T
ANNENBAUM,
T
WENTY
R
ECIPES FOR
L
OVE

B
runo went through the list of ingredients in his head as he crossed the courtyard toward the prison. He was sure he was forgetting something. Once inside, he wouldn't be able to leave again until the meal was over . . . Khramov had made that very clear.

He hugged a sack of groceries and dragged his cooler behind him, which also had his suitcase strapped to the top. An old woman in a gray overcoat with a red headscarf dragged a battered grocery trolley with a squeaking wheel in the other
direction, and she eyed his cooler with envy. He winked at her and she seemed startled and then offered a hesitant, toothless grin.

Focus, Tannenbaum, focus!
He reviewed the list again: fish,
check,
oysters,
check,
ginger,
check,
caviar,
check
. He'd found a specialty vendor who sold Italian truffles and also truffle oil. He'd found excellent butter and cream, thick-shelled eggs (he had to crack a couple to be sure), parsley, shallots, black bread, brown sugar, clover honey. Four outdoor markets and seven specialty shops later, he now had a working map of the city's Métro system in his head.

Claire's money was basically gone when he discounted the envelope for Khramov, gratuity for the guards and what he needed to fly home. He was officially living without a net. But with a sack of good groceries and a cooler of fresh seafood, he still had at least one good meal ahead of him. It didn't matter if he was cooking or eating . . . he enjoyed both equally. What else did you need in life?

Well, wine, of course.

After a quick call with Nikolai, he learned of a shop just off the subway line where he selected a bottle of white Rhône, which cost him dearly but was necessary, and an Oregon Pinot Noir. It was a risk, to be sure, to go red with seafood. But he thought he could pull it off with just the right amount of glaze on the steelhead and not a touch more. Bruno always dismissed the silly rules and advice for wine and food pairing they had started publishing on back labels. The only rule was
harmony, patience and a little love. If the whole world strove for this combination, there would be no trouble, at the table or beyond.

But trouble loomed ahead of him now, with the barbed outer walls and short round crenellated towers of Butyrka rising before him. It was dim and gloomy and smelled of must, rot,
cold stone and a trace of raw sewage. How could he make such a place inviting?

A flea market had helped.

Tablecloth,
check
. Candles,
check
. Good china.
Check
.

He was led into the barred holding cell and locked in. He sat on the wooden slab of a bench feeling trapped, the walls pressing in. How could he relieve Varushkin from years of this? How could he make Katya feel comfortable in this prison? Had everything he'd ever written been hyperbole? After all, a writer can say anything with the tap of a few keys or the stroke of a pen. Now he had the chance to back up his words. And it seemed fairly impossible.

One meal. Just make one good meal, old fellow,
he told himself.

A guard opened the door, startling him. Khramov stood in the corridor, motioning for Bruno to follow without meeting his eyes. After the guard unlocked the door to the next hallway and slammed it behind them they were alone for a brief stretch and Khramov unceremoniously held out his hand. Bruno handed him the envelope . . . the last of Claire's money, save for a supply for a return flight and some random bills for the guards.

“You can serve in the room where you met Varushkin before,” Khramov said. “Katya arrives in three hours.” He then pulled his key ring from his belt and unlocked a narrow, stained door, swinging it open to a narrower room. “Here is the kitchen.”

Bruno's heart sank.

It was a tight galley with a few rusted pans, a pair of hot plates, a double sink and what appeared to be a toaster oven. There were a few indecipherable cans on a shelf above the sink, and some random, battered implements on the counter.