The Hottest Dishes of the Tartar Cuisine (24 page)

I never asked myself whether John had honorable intentions. I didn’t care. I hadn’t worked in a long time, I had no money, and John had a TV in the room where I now lived. I turned it on and searched all the channels for the show with Aminat. Once in a while John came in and took my blood pressure or brought me tea.

Sulfia sat on the edge of the bed and smiled. Aminat sang on TV and the woman with the long, gleaming hair told her she should dress differently. Aminat listened to her with a furrowed brow. I clapped my hands together—that was exactly what I had always told her. But Aminat shook her head. Stupid girl, she never listened to anyone.

John came in just then with a cup of green tea on a silver tray. I looked at him over the rim of my glasses. I wore glasses ever more frequently.

“What nonsense are you watching?” asked John.

“That,” I said proudly, “is my granddaughter.”

John sat down—not on the edge of the bed but in a chair in the corner. I was beginning to sense that I might be living in his dead wife’s bedroom. I lay in a canopy bed with cream-colored sheets, all the furniture had curved legs, and all the upholstery was done in a pastel floral pattern.

“That’s Aminat,” I said. “She’s very talented.”

She was on TV all the time now. John looked silently at the screen. He didn’t know anything—how I raised Aminat, how much effort I’d made, how time and time again she had spurned my good will, and how finally she had run away from me. He didn’t know anything about me, and I didn’t have any desire to tell him.

“Pretty girl,” said John. “Though much too thin. Her voice is unbelievable.”

“You think so?”

He didn’t have any grandkids and was lonely. I thought it was gallant of him to watch the show—with Aminat struggling to hit the notes—without saying anything more. Not then and not the next day or the one after that.

Suddenly I had everything I needed, without having to fight for it. It was an unfamiliar feeling. I didn’t need an alarm in the morning. I could sleep in. I didn’t need to make breakfast. John took care of that. He did the shopping. It turned out he could cook. Simple Italian dishes, but they tasted good. He served the food in the living room and cleaned up himself afterwards. I didn’t even go into the kitchen. I was mostly in my bedroom, occasionally in the living room (either eating at the table or sitting in the chair), and also sometimes in the garden. John’s house had a magnificent garden—giant, with rosebushes lining the house, and softly sloping down to fruit trees that were already setting fruit.

“Why don’t you plant vegetables?” I asked.

“I don’t know how,” said John.

I took off the rhinestone-bejeweled slippers with high heels and walked barefoot on the lawn. The lawn was his, too. He was a real English gentleman.

The grass caressed the soles of my feet. Behind the fruit trees I discovered a greenhouse. The glass was frosted with pollen. I ran my finger over it. I’d never been here. John’s wife had probably raised tomatoes here.

“I do well with tomatoes,” I told John over tea that afternoon. We were sitting on the terrace with our cups of tea in front of us and a tin of gingersnaps. “I have a green thumb.”

John answered: “Go ahead and grow them for next summer then.”

We went shopping in shops I’d never been in before. The saleswomen brought me clothing and lace underwear, John drank espresso on an upholstered bench in the corner, and he just raised his eyebrow occasionally when I came out of the changing room and walked around to see whether the clothes fit well.

John’s face was inscrutable and I didn’t ask his opinion. I knew that I looked good and that I had a nice figure. I also had great taste—I left the dressing room only in things that accentuated the delicateness and gentle curviness of my body. I could see in the merciless light of the dressing room itself that here and there some muscle and skin had lost its tautness. But I knew I’d soon have that back in hand. It stood me in good stead to be so slim just then. I had always had a healthy appetite, but it had left me of late. I was living primarily on tea with milk and ginger snaps.

I didn’t say thank you when John paid with his credit card and carried the shopping bags to the car. I knew I had earned it all. At home I changed and we watched Aminat again. She looked better, too. She’d gotten over her constant trembling and the panic had faded from her eyes. Her hair was freshly washed and fell so naturally over her shoulders that I could tell immediately how much work had gone into it. She was now one of twenty girls being shouted at by three choreographers. Now and then they inserted scenes in which the girls sang individually and I thought to myself: Mine is still the prettiest.

John occasionally said: “What a horrible show.”

And less frequently: “My God, what a voice.”

I didn’t think Aminat sang very nicely. I’d often heard her and I had never particularly liked the way she sang. Her voice wasn’t powerful or melodic. But it did tug at your heartstrings. That much was true, I had to admit. And it was probably the reason they’d chosen Aminat. People liked it when someone tugged at their heart strings. I couldn’t understand why.

I put on a silk pantsuit and new golden shoes and put my hair up. I bought a rotisserie chicken, peppers, marinated sheep’s milk cheese, and a honeydew melon. I didn’t ask John whether I could use his Mercedes, I simply said: “You needn’t accompany me today.”

He nodded.

How often I had taken this same route on the bus, transferring twice, waiting between five and forty-five minutes at the stop. I didn’t feel a sense of triumph now, just a blessed peace.

I parked in front of Dieter’s building. How long ago was it that I had moved out of here? How many years of my life had I spent here? I pulled out my key and walked past the burnt mailbox—someone must have put a firecracker in it. The place smelled stuffy, like stagnation and chronic sinus infections.

I went to open the apartment door with a familiar motion and felt a faint echo of the one-thousand-times-more-powerful worries the turning of this key had caused my soul in the past.

I fought a bit with the lock. It jammed and wouldn’t let me take the key back out. Someone shuffled toward the door. It reminded me of a sound I’d heard while working at the women’s ward of the hospital—when, after a stomach operation, my patients ventured into the hallway for their first steps, bracing themselves with their hand against the wall, they made a similar shuffling noise. A ghost now appeared in the doorframe. He was wearing a worn bathrobe that allowed a view of skinny legs and an equally gaunt neck poking out of the greasy collar. Dieter’s face was no longer Dieter’s face. Maybe it had something to do with the fact that his hair was also missing.

“Oh!” I said, trying to sound happy as I looked him in the eyes. “You look good, and I’ve brought something very nice!”

If I had ever permitted myself to talk to one of my patients in a tone like that, I would have despised myself for a week afterwards.

I put utensils on the table, cut up the vegetables, fished a couple of plates from the sink, and washed the dried food bits off of them. Then I brushed the crumbs off the table and put down a clean tablecloth.

“Food!” I called.

Dieter sat down at the table and lifted a piece of roast chicken to his mouth. I had already removed the skin for him. He chewed on it and swallowed it. I could see it make its way painstakingly down his throat.

“And?” he asked. “What’s the story?”

He meant with me and John. I shrugged my shoulders. I ate the entire chicken by myself. Along with fresh organic peppers and crunchy chunks of bread torn from a baguette. Dieter wasn’t hungry and chewing caused him pain.

“Everyone has left me,” said Dieter. “Everyone, everyone. Even you.”

I chewed thoroughly and looked past him.

I didn’t tell John that Dieter was going to die soon. The good thing about John was that you didn’t have say much to him and yet he knew everything. He always handled the bare necessities. That may not sound like much, but it was. John did the things that were absolutely necessary—and without ever needing to be asked. Everything else he ignored. But everything else was superfluous.

Sulfia came less often now. She didn’t like TV, and I didn’t want to monopolize her. I let her peel away. Together with John I watched the show featuring Aminat. John didn’t offer any more commentary. But I talked nonstop.

“Look, John, what an outfit they’ve packed her into this time. You can’t even recognize her. But maybe it’s better that way. She’s moving much more confidently onstage than last time, don’t you think, John? The dance lessons really helped. She’ll show them all, my Aminat. That baldheaded judge must be sleeping with her—he loves her even when she doesn’t hit a single note. And that pretty woman, the other judge—why did she have tears in her eyes when Aminat sang? It was obvious to everyone. And the voting—the viewers deciding who stays and who goes . . . surely that’s all rigged, right? Otherwise she couldn’t possibly still be in the competition. John, why does everyone still call her Anita and Alina—is it really so difficult to remember her name? The main thing is that they all continue to believe she’s really that young. When I was her age . . . ”

John rarely said anything. But one day as we sat eating breakfast, he excused himself, got up, and came back a few moments later with a stack of newspapers. He put it down in front of me and before I could ask him the point of it all, I saw the photo on the top page. Aminat. All these papers had written articles about her and published photos of her.

“Tartar Orphan Causing a Stir,” “Anorexic Abuse Victim Sings Circles Around Competition,” “Descendent of Genghis Khan—Most Beautiful Eyes on German TV,” “Childhood Stolen, Girl Sings Her Way Into Viewers’ Hearts,” “Is She Really nineteen? Ten Pieces of Evidence That Suggest Aminat K. Is Still a Minor.”

I spread the papers out on the table in front of me so I wouldn’t miss a single column. I started to read. My Aminat was in the papers—and not just one paper, she was apparently in every paper, over and over. The photographers couldn’t get enough of her narrow face and mysterious eyes and shiny hair. Yes, she was beautiful, even though some of the shots didn’t capture her in the most flattering light. She looked so much like me.

I read how Aminat had grown up in a Soviet ghetto without a father, just her mother’s ever-changing men. How she had starved and had been beaten for being such a disobedient child. How finally she had been sold to a German pedophile by her grandmother in exchange for him marrying her mother, and how she landed in Germany as a result. I read and read, but there was nothing about me. Typical.

“Look, John,” I said. “Nothing but lies. The papers always do that.”

John nodded.

“She’ll be the best. She’ll make it big and earn lots of money,” I said. “All the work and love I put into her won’t have been for nothing. She’s going to be someone. She’s going to be famous!”

“She’s already famous,” said John.

He was right. Though I normally noticed things right away, I’d missed the fact that my Aminat had become famous. I guess I’d been talking too much with Sulfia. Everyone was talking about Aminat. The papers wrote contradictory things about her. She couldn’t have grown up in Kazan and Sverdlovsk simultaneously. She couldn’t be both fluent in Tartar and not speak a word of it. She couldn’t possibly be a virgin, have AIDS, and be pregnant. It was obvious from all the lies—Aminat was a star.

I discovered that I missed Aminat. I thought I’d gotten used to her absence, that it didn’t hurt anymore, that I was doing well. Until, that is, I realized I couldn’t stand being without her. On the one hand I could see her round the clock. I saw her constantly on TV and had bought magazines with posters of her in them. I’d bought a compilation CD of her and the other competitors on the show. That was even before she won. Her song was being played all over the radio.

“I want to see her,” I said to John. “I want to see her before I die.”

I also realized that all the requests I would earlier have held God responsible for I now put to John. Whether I wanted something big or small, I simply turned to John. It was uncomplicated and had quick results. Unlike God, John had yet to misunderstand anything. I also didn’t have to constantly apologize to John or promise him anything in return the way I always felt obligated to do with God. It made things easier.

“I have to see her,” I said to John.

He nodded.

I wouldn’t have been surprised if an hour later the doorbell rang and Aminat was standing there in the sequined dress from her last show with a bouquet of flowers in her hand for her beloved grandmother. But nothing happened. Not that day or the next. She didn’t call. And John just trimmed the roses in front of the house. I didn’t pressure him—he was after all no God.

The phone hardly rang at our place anyway. Sometimes John’s daughter was on the line and sometimes Dieter, for whom I bought groceries and whose apartment I cleaned. He, too, collected newspaper clippings of Aminat and doused them in his tears. He watched the same shows, though he seemed to see something completely different from me. He saw her as a victim of all the media attention.

But then one day the phone rang and there was a young woman’s voice on the line speaking somewhat shyly in broken Russian.

“Aminat!” I cried, hardly able to believe it was her. “Aminat, has your polished Tartar completely displaced your Russian?”

“I’m not Aminat,” said the girl. “I’m Lena.”

Lena. Who was Lena again, I asked myself, but then hit upon the answer. I remembered it like it was yesterday—the ugly, chubby-cheeked baby, Sulfia’s daughter with Rosenbaum. Lena! The one who’d been kidnapped and taken to Israel by Rosenbaum, breaking Sulfia’s heart. That Lena was on the line now. She’d probably heard that Aminat was a star and wanted money. I decided to play dumb.

Lena had called Dieter—Rosenbaum had that old number—and Dieter had given her my new number. She said she was coming to Germany and, if possible, hoped to get to know her sister and her mother—the whole family. Lena didn’t even know that Sulfia accompanied me in an urn now, and she acted as if she had no idea about Aminat’s success. I acted as if I believed her.

“How’s your grandmother?” I asked, assuming that not only the grandmother but both old Rosenbaums were long since dead.

“Very well, thanks,” Lena answered cheerfully.

On the day Lena’s plane landed, I had a migraine. John drove to the airport in his sand-colored Mercedes. I gave him Lena’s mobile number and described her to him, at least the way I remembered her: big head, short legs, small eyes, fuzzy hair.

John nodded and drove off.

Less than two hours later, he was back. He carried a little rolling suitcase into the house. Then he stepped to the side to let the girl behind him through the door. I was stunned. Before me stood Sulfia incarnate, an eighteen-year-old Sulfia in flesh and blood, slightly stooped and with a shy smile. This Sulfia had brown hair and light brown eyes—the copy had somewhat different coloration, but the rest was a perfect facsimile. She even dressed like Sulfia—the loose jeans created the suspicion that the person in them was overweight in the most inopportune places. She had on a dark-blue t-shirt with writing on it I couldn’t read, and not a single piece of jewelry beyond her gold earrings. Neither John nor Lena understood why I was frozen in place. Then Lena wrapped her arms around me. She was apparently a very impulsive girl.

I sat down on the sofa while John showed Lena around the house. They chatted away chirpily in English, which I couldn’t understand. I decided I needed to ask John to teach me. It bothered me that Lena could speak it and I couldn’t. I also wanted to speak English with John.

They came back to the living room and Lena kneeled in front of me and said with a shy smile, “And where is mama?”

She wasn’t a baby anymore, and I didn’t like her smile. Others might say it was charming, but I refused. I stood up and gestured with a wave of my hand that she should follow me. Lena traipsed happily along behind me as I led her into my bedroom. I took her by the shoulder (she was shorter than me, just like Sulfia), pointed to the urn, and, relishing this moment, said, “In there.”

At first she didn’t understand. Then she approached the urn and read the golden lettering on the marble—the name and date. Her lips began to quiver and she turned to me.

“Why didn’t anyone tell us?”

“Because none of you would have given a shit,” I said.