The Hottest Dishes of the Tartar Cuisine (21 page)

It came to my attention that I still lacked a few skills. Everyone here knew how to swim, for instance—even the little kids. Even though you saw four-year-olds still in diapers, five-year-olds running around with pacifiers, and kids who started school unable to read or add. Even those spoiled children knew how to swim. They were taken by their mothers—my clients—to swim classes, the trunk of the car filled with bathing suits, towels, inflatable floatation devices, kickboards, and pool noodles. And in the summer they all drove to the beach.

I told Dieter he should take our child to the beach. Aminat could barely swim and I couldn’t swim at all. That was a situation that had to be remedied. We shouldn’t be any less skilled than the rest.

Dieter said maybe the year after next—there was no way he could do it on short notice. It was winter.

God consoled me: no sooner had I said this to Dieter than one of my clients asked whether I had time the following week to go with her family to the mountains. She wanted to take her husband and two kids to Switzerland. She had planned to take her mother-in-law to look after the pair of spoiled brats each afternoon. But the mother-in-law had intestinal polyps and had to undergo an operation.

When I was younger, Kalganow went cross-country skiing in the forest almost every weekend. Sometimes I went along, but for the most part I wasn’t bothered with such idiotic pursuits. So I could ski, though I’d never been to the Alps. Aminat didn’t know how to ski and also had never been to the Alps.

My client and her husband agreed to let Aminat come. They agreed to everything.

They drove there ahead of us and took our luggage with them. My client had given me a snowsuit she no longer fit into and a red ski jacket for Aminat. I bought a pair of sunglasses and two pairs of pants and we were all set. We took the train, transferring in Basel and getting out in Chur. There I caught sight of the mountains, very high, gray with snow-covered peaks. From Chur we got in a bus that wound its way up mountain roads. We sat directly behind the driver. It was the spot where you had the best chance of survival in case the bus fell off the edge of the cliff.

Aminat had turned all green beneath her pimples. She didn’t do well on bus and car rides. She had inherited too much from her mother. We drove past forests, snowdrifts, and little villages. When the bus arrived at the next to last stop and we got out, Aminat threw up in the snow. Thankfully she was all finished before my client showed up to take us back to their vacation condo.

I had forgotten what it was like to be around so much snow. It glittered and smelled like watermelon, just like in my childhood.

The condo had two bedrooms. One had a double bed for my client and her husband, who was a senior government prosecutor, and the other had bunk beds. My client’s children, Julius and Justus, slept next to each other on the top bunk. Aminat and I shared the lower bunk.

My employer was glad I was there. She didn’t have her kids under control. In the morning, Julius and Justus went to skiing class. The senior government prosecutor plunked helmets on their heads, put their feet into ski boots, and pulled them on their skis to a little igloo, where other little brats were standing around on tiny skis.

It was my duty to pick up Julius three hours later, cook him lunch, and put him down for a nap. We picked up his older brother later. After naptime I put Julius on a sled and pulled him around. We went to the bottom of the ski lift and watched people swooshing down the hill. I couldn’t get enough of it. They all looked so graceful. In this setting, Aminat’s scowl suddenly bothered me. Her facial expression was ruining my stay, and probably that of my client as well. I told Aminat she had to wipe that look off her face.

The first night I made goulash and spaetzle. My employer and her prosecutor sat at the table with red cheeks, and the children were too tired to whine. Well-fed contentedness reigned.

“You’re a jewel,” said my client.

“I know,” I said.

Now there was only one more thing I needed: to ski.

I was the first one up in the morning and made coffee and toast, and set the table. The children were difficult to wake. They slept soundly and were still tired, but they had to get to their skiing class. I executed all my duties flawlessly. By the time the parents emerged from their room, their kids, Aminat, and I were seated at the table.

“Do you know how to ski?” my client asked me.

“I’ll be a quick study,” I said in my unimpeachable German. “And so will Aminat here.”

I didn’t ask her for anything. She booked spots for us at the ski school on her own. We rented skis and went to meet our private instructor at the lift. In my jacket pocket I had the prosecutor’s mobile phone. If the kids got into any trouble, I would get the call, not their parents.

I had already realized the men around here were good-looking and very healthy. These weren’t men who sat around the office. They did lots of exercise out in the fresh air. Wiry, not too tall, with black hair and blue eyes. Our instructor was named Corsin. He led us to a kiddie slope and showed us how to ski. I mastered it immediately.

“You’re talented,” Corsin said to me. I found him charming. He took a very informal tone with me, which normally bothered me. He probably didn’t realize how much older I was than him.

Aminat embarrassed me. All the other girls her age could ski very well. And they looked good. Aminat, on the other hand, was a clumsy beginner whose basic motor skills stood out for their awkwardness. She didn’t have good coordination like me.

My employer was prepared to pay for three mornings of private lessons. I wanted to be able to ski like everyone else at the end of those three days.

On our last morning together, Corsin took us up the mountain on the lift. I shared a T-bar with Corsin; Aminat had one to herself. We could see her from behind. Several times she looked as if she was going to fall off the lift. I wished it would just happen. She clung with every ounce of strength to the lift, flailed with her legs, and got her skis tangled with each other. It was a wonder that she didn’t fall. The way down was just as disastrous for her. I skied on ahead, elegant and agile.

After the final session Corsin gave me a piece of paper with his number on it. It looked like something a little kid had made in art class to look like a business card.

“Give me a call if you come back next year,” he said.

I didn’t let myself feel sad. In fact, I was happy—in the mountains, on skis, living very close to the way I felt befitted me.

The next morning Aminat refused to continue practicing. I was sorely tempted to smack her in the face, but my client and her prosecutor were still in the apartment and I didn’t want to make a bad impression. I left Aminat in the apartment with a book.

I got dressed, took my skis, and went by myself to the lift. I was just as elegant and confident as the arrogant bitches that came here every year and wore their mirrored sunglasses pushed up on top of their heads.

Once at the top, I started down, gliding along behind the skier in front of me and matching his speed. Below me everything was white. Everything all around me was white, too. Then suddenly I realized that it was white above me, as well. I slowed and then fell down. I was taken by surprise by the snow. The flakes swirled around me and I could no longer distinguish the sky from the ground. The wind blew tiny pieces of ice into my face, making my eyes water.

I couldn’t see a thing. The tears froze on my eyelashes, blinding me. The mountain didn’t want me. I’d been too brazen for its taste, and now the mountain wanted to kill me.

I had stopped myself just in the nick of time at the edge of not just a drop but an abyss. My legs were shaking. I asked God whether my time had come and God answered with a flash of inspiration: Corsin!

That’s right, Corsin, who could ski even better than I could, who said he knew every slope around here like the back of his hand. I stripped off my glove and pulled the prosecutor’s mobile phone out of my pocket along with the piece of paper with Corsin’s number on it. For a second, my fingers were too stiff to move. Then I pulled the antenna out. It was the first time I’d ever used a mobile phone. I breathed on my fingertips and then started to push the buttons with the number. Calling a Swiss number was probably going to cost a fortune, I thought.

There was a tooting sound in the earpiece and then someone answered. It wasn’t clear whether the voice belonged to a woman or a child. I had forgotten for an instant that even though Corsin skied like a god, he spoke like a five-year-old.

“Help me!” I yelled.

I shouted the name of the slope I’d started down, but Corsin—if it was even him on the line—didn’t understand. He just kept asking: “What? Who’s there?”

The wind howled in the phone. It was probably difficult to understand me, but then again understanding wasn’t Corsin’s strength anyway. In any event, I was lost.

I shouted, “Drop dead!”

The mountain was saying the exact same thing to me.

I hung up on Corsin and tried to reach my employer. It was futile.

I shoved the phone back in my pocket, put my glove back on, and grabbed my ski poles. I looked down at the slick, ice-covered wall below. This must have been what they called a black diamond trail. I tried to calculate how many shifts in direction I’d have to make to get down the hill—or rather, how many I could survive.

Just as I was crossing myself with my cramped fist, a fleck of red appeared in the swirling snow. A person, maybe a man. I was just getting ready to start skiing, and had with superhuman effort positioned my skis parallel to the cliff edge. Now I shouted and waved my poles to draw attention to my precarious position. The person in red stopped just below me, hanging on the wall of ice like a fly on a window. I saw a flash of teeth through the snow soup, and Corsin’s soft little-girl voice said, “Hold on to me, I’ll get you down.”

I was nearly paralyzed with happiness and relief. Corsin took the ski poles from my hands and tucked the ends into his waistband. He stood with his legs wide apart and reached out his hand to me. I slid toward the wedge Corsin had formed, my legs weak and shaking. The wind whooshed in my ears as I followed Corsin’s broad shoulders, braking just enough to avoid planting my face on his red jacket. It felt as if it took an hour, maybe even two, and by the time we reached the parking lot at the base of the ski run, blood was dripping from my lips because I had bitten them so badly. Corsin smiled—he hadn’t so much as broken a sweat.

“You’re a brave woman,” he said. “Going up the mountain alone even though you can’t ski.”

“How did you know it was me?” I asked.

He put his hand on the left chest pocket of his jacket and said, “I had a feeling.”

I came out of the mountains like a conquering hero, slightly bronzed and with the bearing of a ski queen. The only problem was that I couldn’t say the same of Aminat.

Corsin sent me postcards of bright, picturesque Alpine cottages. As a result I realized that what I had taken for an odd, childlike version of German was actually a completely different language. He and his entire village spoke the language of the ancient Romans, and he wrote in that language on his postcards.

He wrote, “
Gronda buna a mia amur e splendur al firmament
,” and “
vaiel tei fetg bugen
,” and “
far lamur in cun lauter, leinsa?
” I had no idea what any of it meant.

Corsin was like a Tartar in his country. He had other roots, other dishes, another language, and, importantly, a much more handsome look than the rest of the populace. In Russia, nobody would ever have considered sending out words someone else couldn’t understand. But Corsin obviously thought nothing of it. I had tried to talk about it a few times with him. At some point I realized that his enthusiasm for talking about how different he was from normal Swiss people wasn’t a flaw in his upbringing. It was just something deeply ingrained in him, something that couldn’t be erased. Of course, he hadn’t experienced a Soviet upbringing. His was somewhat more primitive. His urge to show off his roots reminded me of the way little children lifted their skirts to show everyone their underwear.

Once Corsin sent me a postcard written in German. He wrote that he missed me and that he was coming to visit the following Tuesday, driving the five hours from the mountains in his car.

His visit put me in a predicament. Fortunately one of my employers was on vacation. I took Corsin to her apartment in a nice old building, hoping not to be seen by the neighbors. It occurred to me only belatedly that beyond the ski slopes a man like Corsin was less a trophy than a joke. He was muscular, perhaps just a little too thin, and he looked around like a scared rabbit. Between the sheets my suspicions were confirmed: he only knew his way around the mountains.

I was pleased with myself. I was working a lot because I wanted to take Aminat to the beach that summer. Without Dieter, but with Sulfia—she needed to see a bit of sun, too. Then the phone rang one night and Kalganow was on the line. The same Kalganow Sulfia had been taking care of for four years now since his stroke. I didn’t recognize Kalganow’s voice. It was different than I remembered it. But it didn’t matter whose voice it was once it said that Sulfia was dead.

“What?” I asked. “Why?”

I dismissed it as a tasteless joke and hung up.

The phone rang again. I looked at the display and saw a long number starting with the Russian country code. I didn’t move. It rang and rang, until Aminat came out from her room still half asleep, looked at the number, and grabbed the phone.

“Mama?” she cried.

She had finally gotten over the ski holiday and was in a better mood. I looked at her, still hoping she would tell me any second that nothing I had heard was true. But I saw her face change as she held the phone to her ear. At first her face froze in a stiffly pensive expression. Then she frowned deeply, and I knew immediately that my powers of comprehension had not deceived me.

I flew to Russia and Aminat stayed at Dieter’s.

I had to take care of the funeral. Who could possibly have handled it better than I could? When I arrived, I ran into people acting as hysterical as orphaned children. The biggest child was Kalganow, on whose conscience—I told him this immediately—Sulfia’s death should have weighed very heavily. It was all because of him that she was kept far from my supervision and care. Now Kalganow was in a state of shock, which meant he was actually doing better. He was able to get out of bed and speak—his call with the news of Sulfia’s death had been the first time he’d been able to compose a sentence.

His teacher of Russian and literature looked every bit the stereotype of an old teacher. She got on my nerves with her endless sobbing. I looked at her for the first time and had the feeling that she vaguely reminded me of someone. Every once in a while she clutched at her heart until finally I told her she should lock herself in her room and stop getting in other people’s way.

“People like you live forever,” I said. “And you kill the best daughters of other families.”

A lot had changed in my old country. It had a new name. My city had a different name now, too. Everything was very dirty, and everybody was selling something. Stands and kiosks—some made out of nothing more than stacked cardboard boxes—stood shoulder to shoulder. Groceries, clothes, books, and empty Coca-Cola cans were all for sale.

People were dressed poorly and everyone looked miserable. All the girls looked like hookers. Most of them were hookers, too. Old women counted out coins with shaking hands. A decent woman couldn’t contemplate entering a public toilet.

Kalganow’s country relatives from outside Kazan suggested Sulfia be buried in the traditional Tartar way, wrapped in a cloth instead of a coffin. I didn’t even react to that crazy idea. I had enough to worry about. They tried to convince Kalganow, but he just said, “Rosie always knows best.” They gave up after that, but during the funeral they wore openly reproachful looks on their faces.

In the coffin, Sulfia had on a white dress and white silk shoes. I put flowers on her forehead and on the pillow her head was resting on and urged the funeral director to put real effort into her makeup. A lot of people came. It was news to me that so many people knew Sulfia. People who had gone to school with her, co-workers, neighbors, there were hundreds of people. Everyone could see what a beautiful woman she was: the long black hair, the white face, as symmetrical as a doll’s, the fine, curved nose, the black eyelashes that cast shadows on her cheeks. I guess she had inherited quite a bit from me after all.

It emerged that Sulfia had not had her own room. She had a cot at Kalganow and the teacher’s place. It was in the living room, separated from the rest of the room by a folding screen. Kalganow and his woman had a double bed in their bedroom, and they’d turned it into a double sickbed. Nightstands stood on each side, each covered with medicines.

After the funeral, I lay down on Sulfia’s cot. It sagged, and the comforter on it was worn to tatters. I gritted my teeth. The bloodsuckers in the next room alternately sobbed and talked quietly to each other. I took off one of my shoes and threw it against the wall. Then it was quiet.

It was disgusting to lie in bed fully dressed and with one shoe on, but I did it anyway. I stared at the ceiling. At some stage the neighbor above must have had flooding because the ceiling was covered with stains shaped like exotic flowers. If someone had done that to me, I would have dangled them out the window by their feet until they agreed to pay for renovations and a new carpet—even if they had to pay with their gold fillings. But Sulfia was as gentle as a flower. If someone spat on her she took it for fresh rain and stretched out her petals to soak it up.

My head began to swell from within. It was probably just too full. The thoughts began to ball together, got tangled up with each other, pulled at others. My mind was an unimaginably crowded place. Everything pushed outward against my temples, pressed hard against my eyes and even my tongue. I held my head together with my hands. Sulfia, I thought suddenly. Sulfia always knew when someone was doing poorly. She could tell when someone needed her. You never had to say anything. She just knew where it hurt. She could tell from thousands of miles away. And she knew what she could do about it. She could chase the pain away. Sulfia, I thought to myself, had been a magician.

“Sulfia,” I whispered with my lips stiff and unwilling to obey me. “Sulfia!”

My eyes burned and throbbed. The pressure was so extreme I worried they might pop. I held them in with my hands.

Then the pain let up. It happened so slowly and subtly that I didn’t even notice it until I was able to open my eyes again, still worried they might pop out of their sockets. My thick, elongated eyelashes, from which I had yet to remove my makeup, tickled the palms of my hands as I pulled them off my eyes. I sat up. The room was dark, a streetlamp shone in the window. The headlights of passing cars crisscrossed the room and played on the pattern of the comforter.

“Sulfia,” I said. “Sit down.”

Sulfia sat down next to me, but not the one who had just disappeared into the crematorium. This was the Sulfia I had seen at our last meeting, exhausted but smiling, with tired but attentive eyes. So lifelike that I began to worry about her again. Then I stopped and grabbed the sides of the cot so I didn’t give in to my urge to reach out to a ghost.

“Sulfia,” I said. “I . . . ”

Sulfia looked at me and smiled. She was too tired to speak. She was always working so much. She put her finger to her lips. And then I lay down in bed again, fully dressed, still in my makeup. Sulfia thought it would be okay for me to do so on a day like today. The second shoe, however, fell to the floor. The comforter, which smelled like Sulfia, shielded me from the emptiness and loneliness of this room and held the heartbreak at bay.

“Stay with me,” I begged as I fell asleep.

Sulfia did as I asked. She always did. I couldn’t compel her to do anything, but the things I simply begged her to do never went unfulfilled. Sulfia never left behind anyone in need. That wasn’t her way.

When I woke up, my entire body ached. The fake lashes had fallen off and lay on the pillow. My face was encrusted in dried makeup and tears. The black dress that so flattered my figure did not smell too good.

I went into the kitchen. Kalganow and his teacher were there. She sat on a stool and he stood at the stove stirring something in a pot. I suddenly saw them as a unit, like two drops of grease on the surface of a bowl of soup that melt into one. Later I’d tell them what I thought of them.

I went to the bathroom and got myself together. I ran cold water through my hair so it would shine, and washed my face and refreshed it with cold water, too. I wrapped myself in a bathrobe that was hanging from the back of the door. It had no scent. But I could tell it had belonged to Sulfia and now it was mine.

Kalganow put a bowl of cream of wheat in front of me. I tried it. It was clumpy but I didn’t say anything. I studied the kitchen tiles, each adorned with Sulfia’s face. It was a wonderful portrait, an almost photographic likeness. I touched one of the tiles. It was warm and smooth.

“How did you do that?” I asked Kalganow.

“What?”

“That . . . the images on the tiles.”

“What images?”

“Those,” I said, pointing to Sulfia’s face on one of the tiles.

“They’re white,” he said.

We had to sort out a few things. Material things. Sulfia’s belongings. She didn’t have much. She had two shelves in the bureau. She didn’t have anything else—she had signed over the lease on her apartment to Kalganow.

“You took everything away from her!” I yelled.

“Rosie,” Kalganow whispered. “It was her idea.”

“But why? You’re just a couple of old bags. She was young and . . . had her whole life in front of her.”

There was nothing to be done at that point about the apartment. Unless I wanted to take the two of them to court. At first I planned to do that. I convinced myself to do it in Sulfia’s name. But it was hard to commit to it—I just had no desire. I was exhausted. Normally I was never tired. I didn’t sleep much as a rule—five hours was fine, and with six I was completely rested. But now I was sleepy. I covered my mouth with my hand so I wouldn’t yawn directly in the bloated face of the teacher of Russian and literature.

“I’m tired,” I said to the teacher.

She looked at me as if I were crazy.

“Then you might consider going back to bed,” she said.

She was speaking in a more formal tone to me now, which I liked. During the funeral she had tried to speak to me in a very familiar way. I had thought it rude for her to try to ingratiate herself with me at a moment of weakness.

“I can’t lie down,” I said. “Unlike you, I have a lot to do.”

I wanted to sort out Sulfia’s things. Her few things—clothes, letters, documents.

But instead I went back to my cot and fell asleep.