Aminat watched a little girl walk off with a hamster in a plastic bag. The little animal flailed in agony in the shredded paper lining the bag. It would suffocate by the time she made it to the trolley, I guessed. At the latest. But I didn’t say anything. People need to make their own mistakes. It was enough that I helped guide my own family.
“Can I as well?” breathed Aminat.
“What?”
“Get a hamster like that.”
“I thought you wanted a cat?”
She smiled tentatively, one side of her mouth curling upward. She didn’t trust me. We walked along the rows. There were loads of cats: little fur balls purring in baskets, boxes, and on spread-out blankets.
“Pick one out,” I said.
Aminat took me by the hand. The backs of her hands were raw and cracked, which happened when she walked around in freezing temperatures without gloves or when she didn’t dry her hands sufficiently. I would have to rub glycerin into her skin that night so her skin would get soft again.
“I want that one!” said Aminat, pointing to a gray kitten sitting in the palm of a bearded man who reeked of alcohol. It was certainly the smallest and most nondescript cat that would be sold here today.
“Pick out another one,” I said. “That one’s too small—it’ll die immediately.”
“No, I want that one,” said Aminat and asked the man, “How much is this cat?”
The bearded man moved his giant hand and squinted at Aminat. The kitten fell to the ground and he picked it up again.
“This is a pure-blooded Chinese shorthair,” he said passionately. “It’s a special cat. It’s ten rubles.”
“What?” I said, annoyed. “Let’s go, Aminat.”
“I want this one,” she said stubbornly.
I walked on but she just stood there. The bearded oaf stretched out his hand to her. Aminat stroked the tiny kitten with one finger as the man talked persuasively.
“You should be ashamed,” I said indignantly.
“A better cat you will not find,” said the man conspiratorially in Aminat’s ear. He had leaned way down to her. I could tell Aminat was doing her best not to show her disgust at the smell of his breath.
“You’re not getting this one, Aminat,” I said from a few steps away.
“Then I don’t want one at all,” she said.
“But look at all the beautiful cats here.”
“I want this one.”
“We can try to find one like it,” I said. I made clear my strong opposition, but she just shook her head.
“This one.”
“Then we’ll go home,” I said and took her hand.
She immediately tore her hand away.
We headed for the exit. I was upset with myself. I was here to indulge Aminat, and that had backfired badly. I should have known. Trying to fulfill a child’s dreams was treacherous business. Instead of love and gratitude I had earned only resentment. Aminat was about to cry.
“Stop!” we heard from behind. “Wait, Tartar woman!”
The bearded liar was running after us in his giant rubber boots.
“Don’t pay attention to him,” I ordered.
Aminat dug in her heels and waited until he caught up to us.
“Here,” he said, placing the gray fur ball in Aminat’s hands. “You should have it. For free.”
Then he trudged back to his car and Aminat, her eyes lit up, turned her triumphant gaze to me.
“Aren’t I lucky, grandma? Don’t I have the most incredible luck?”
I said nothing. It had been a bad idea to take her to the bird market and let her choose. Aminat began to shower the little cat with kisses and terms of endearment. Before I could react, she had surely infected herself with all the diseases this runt had in its miserable body.
“Keep it away from your face!” I cried. “Cats are dangerous. You can get blotches over your entire body from them, and intestinal worms.”
Aminat was no longer listening to me.
Rosenbaum
For the first few weeks I waited for the little cat to die. I’d been through this kind of thing before: if I didn’t happen to like someone, then sometimes that person just up and died. But the cat didn’t die. It just got very sick—no wonder, since it had been separated from its mother too early. The cat came down with sticky eyes and diarrhea, and Sulfia called me in a panic.
In the background I could hear Aminat sobbing. At first I thought the problem had taken care of itself, but I had underestimated this cat’s will to live. I told Sulfia that she had to take care of at least a few things on her own. Sulfia agreed with me, apologized, and hung up.
I later found out that she went to a veterinarian and got a prescription for medicines and a special food mixture. It cost a fortune. This cat was tough. First it managed to get up from its deathbed, and eventually it returned to full health. Aminat named the cat Little Peter, but I always called it Parasite.
The cat had its pluses. For some incomprehensible reason, Aminat assumed Parasite belonged to me. All I had to do was threaten to take it away from her and Aminat did anything I wanted. Among those things was to stop taking leftover sausage to the stray cats.
I had heard that cats brought luck to a home. And sure enough, Sulfia met another man just one month later.
This man also had been one of her patients. One day I found him in Sulfia’s kitchen. I had managed to get hold of two pounds of oranges for Aminat—after waiting in line for hours—and I was worried this man was immediately going to eat them all up. I had the impression that with Sulfia that when she fell for a man, he could have anything from her. But not Aminat’s oranges!
This man wasn’t bad. He was cleanly dressed, and his shirt had a dignified pattern. He was, however, a Jew. I could always recognize a Jew. When he saw me, he stood up and kissed my hand. He seemed chivalrous. He told me his name—Michail. I asked about his last name. And sure enough—his name was Rosenbaum.
I found this alarming, but not catastrophic. Jews were Jews. You had to watch out for them, but wasn’t that true of everybody? I was sure that it had never occurred to Sulfia that he was a Jew. She smiled at him shyly, like a little girl, and he smiled back. He must have noticed what a great apartment Sulfia had. Jews were practical.
“Where do you live?” I asked.
He lived near the main station, which wasn’t exactly around the corner. Did he work someplace near here, I wondered—was he trying to use this acquaintance to shorten his commute? If you were unlucky and had to get to the far side of the city every morning for work, you might wait for an hour for a bus that was then too full to squeeze your way onto when it finally arrived.
“And do you live alone?” I asked.
“With my parents,” he said in a friendly tone.
“And what do you do for work, if I may ask?”
He was an engineer.
“That’s original,” I said.
He was also into sports. In winter he skied and in summer he climbed mountains. I was astounded that Jews did such things. I had always thought them to be too sensible. He’d sustained a compound fracture on one climb. Sulfia had nursed him back to health. Admittedly, he did have a limp, but there was nothing she could have done about that. He was bald and nearly forty years old. That was good. It was probably best for Sulfia not to be with a man any other woman might want.
I said a friendly goodbye. Out in the hallway I found Parasite chewing on one of my boots and shoved the beast aside. Once I got home, I rang Sulfia. The Jew had already left, which spoke well of him. A man who wanted to stay too long was suspicious. I told Sulfia he had nice teeth. Sulfia didn’t understand what I was really trying to tell her: that I thought the Jew was alright and that I wished her luck with him.
Of course, I didn’t mean that she should get pregnant straight away. But Sulfia was still haunted by Sergej and remembered what might happen if she ignored my advice. In any event, she was soon pregnant with a tiny Jew. I wouldn’t have expected su
ch virility from Rosenbaum.
Sulfia was happy. Aminat as well. Her deepest wishes were being fulfilled. First she got a cat, and now a baby sibling would soon follow. She began to sort her toys so the new baby would have things to play with.
There was just one problem: Rosenbaum was in no hurry to marry despite the fact that my daughter was carrying his Jewish baby beneath her Tartar heart. I sat Sulfia down for a talk and found out he hadn’t even proposed to her. Worse still, his parents didn’t know that she even existed.
“His parents are old, and his mother has heart problems,” said Sulfia. She was already in her fourth month.
“He needs to tell his parents and marry you,” I insisted. “Immediately. Otherwise he’ll weasel his way out of it.”
“He wouldn’t do that,” said Sulfia dreamily.
“Then he should marry you.”
“He will. Later.”
“With some things, you shouldn’t wait too long.”
It was clear that I’d have to look after everything once again.
“Give me his address,” I said.
“What for?”
“Just give me his address.”
“Please don’t, mother.”
“I’m not going to do anything. I just need the address.”
“No,” said Sulfia.
“Don’t tell me you don’t have his address!”
She said nothing. I had hit the bull’s-eye again.
I found the address in the phone book.
As always, I prepared myself systematically. I didn’t want to attack them, I wanted to give them a chance to treat my pregnant daughter right. They should see me as a sort of dove—an emissary of peace.
I took two bars of chocolate with me from Sulfia’s supply—I wanted to be friendly but also humble. I rang the bell by a wood-paneled door (just the kind of door I had always wanted) and waited.
It took a few minutes before the door was opened. First I saw a dark shadow in the peephole—someone looked at me for a long time.
The door opened slowly, with the chain still on. I saw a nose and the lens of a pair of glasses, then the whole woman—small, gray-haired, intellectual.
“Hello,” I said. “I’m Rosalinda Achmetowna and I’d like to speak to you about your son. About Michail,” I added, so she knew I wasn’t just bluffing, that I really knew him.
The eyes behind the glasses took on a look of concern.
“Has something happened?”
“Depends on how you look at it,” I said.
She took off the chain and let me in.
Rosenbaum’s mother was round and tense. Her entire being gave off a sense of distrust. Nonetheless, she gave me a pair of slippers to slip over the skin-colored nylons on my delicate feet and led me into the kitchen, where she sat down and folded her hands in her lap.
She blinked, agitated. I wondered what she was expecting. The situation was clear: Rosenbaum was a Jewish mama’s boy. Here in this place, lined with carpets and filled with heavy furniture, he had grown up like a frail flower in a greenhouse.
“It’s about my daughter Sulfia,” I said. “She’s a very sweet girl.”
Rosenbaum’s mother blinked repeatedly.
“We’re unbelievably excited about the baby,” I said.
She opened her mouth and froze, a dumbfounded look on her face.
“It’s so nice to have a chance to meet you,” I said. “I’m sure our families will get along swimmingly.”
She clutched at her chest.
“We’re Tartars,” I said. “And you’re . . . well, anyway, my husband says all people are the same. The only important thing is that they have a sense of decency.”
Rosenbaum’s mother started to keel over.
Rosenbaum was upset with me because his mother had had a heart attack. He put the blame on me. I put it right back on him. He shouldn’t try to make me responsible for his failure to tell his parents about Sulfia and about his imminent fatherhood.
One thing that spoke well of him: once Rosenbaum’s mother had been released from the hospital he immediately arranged a get-together. He wanted his parents to invite us over. I wanted it the other way around. I wanted to show that Sulfia had a good family and that she would be a good mother. I knew Jews were very critical. That was something we had in common with them.
The Rosenbaums accepted my invitation. What else could they do? With this occasion in mind, I phoned the teacher of Russian and literature and asked to speak to my husband. I always called him “my husband” so the ownership of the title remained clear, this despite the fact that “my husband” sounded increasingly like “my problem.”
He got on the phone and said, “Rosie, how nice to hear your voice.”
I got right to the point.
I said, “Kalganow, your daughter is getting married.”
He said nothing.
“Sulfia,” I said, helping him along. “She found a man.”
I told him what I wanted. The parents of the groom were coming to see us, to have dinner with us, and I wanted them to have a good impression of the family—first and foremost of the bride’s parents.
“That’s me and you,” I clarified. “Do you understand?”
“But . . . ” he said and fell silent again.
I sighed. Then I started to explain everything again from the beginning. I told him this had nothing to do with him coming back to me. It was just to create a good image. The Jews needed to have the impression that our family was whole. Kalganow breathed heavily into the phone. He’d been in better shape when he was with me.
“What is it?” I asked, annoyed. “Will you come or not? It’s for your daughter’s sake.”
“For Sulfia,” he said.
“Have you any other daughters?” I asked and hung up.
He would come. Of that I was sure.
Gefilte fish
I told Sulfia what she should wear. I didn’t want to leave anything to chance this time. Even Sulfia seemed to understand this.
I had a feeling that the situation this time worked in our favor. Sulfia’s ugliness and shyness would make her the perfect bride in the eyes of the Rosenbaums. She was modest and a nurse to boot. After all, the Jews knew what it was all about. Now all that was left to do was to cover up her shortcomings as a housewife.
First, I wanted to tell them that the meal I served them had been cooked entirely by Sulfia. I rummaged through cookbooks and asked co-workers and thought long and hard. I decided to make gefilte fish and vorschmack, and for dessert tzimmes. I’d be making all of these things for the first time in my life, which excited me. The vorschmack turned out to be the same as an appetizer I’d made every New Year’s Eve for years. I put chunks of brined herring, moistened white bread, onion, and a large apple through a meat grinder and grated hard-boiled egg yolks with vinegar.
The gefilte fish turned out to be a sort of cold fishcake that took hours of my time only to taste like nothing at all. I didn’t think the effort was worth it. The grated mixture of horseradish and red beets made up for that a bit, and I ate a large amount of it on white bread to make sure I had gotten it just right. As for the tzimmes, I decided not to hold myself responsible for the flavor. Braised carrots with raisins and dried plums, served with balls of cream of wheat—if that was what the Jews ate, there was no magic I could perform to improve things.
Sulfia dressed herself properly for once. That is, not particularly attractively, but at least appropriately for the occasion. Her knee-length gray dress looked cheap, but at least it was clean. She had pulled her hair into a ponytail like a schoolgirl. It was obvious that a daughter-in-law like this wouldn’t spend all the money on clothes.
Aminat had to be there, though I’d rather have been rid of her. I had worked so hard with her and had made a lot of progress, but she was still so unpredictable. But the Jews should see the whole family. Aminat was also the best evidence that Sulfia was capable of producing a pretty and healthy child.
I took Amin
at aside and insisted to her that Sulfia would become sick if she, Aminat, acted out of line. Other than losing her cat Parasite, that was the only thing Aminat really feared.
An hour before our guests arrived, Kalganow rang the doorbell. He had on a gray suit that we had bought together once. Lint and threads hung from the arms, so I took a brush and cleaned it up. I retied his tie, too—at least Kalganow hadn’t forgotten it. I had called him three times to remind him.
“Sit down somewhere and wait for the guests to get here,” I said. “Don’t make a mess or get yourself dirty.”
“Yes, Rosie,” he answered.
And then they arrived—the Rosenbaums, in their brown clothes made out of high-quality material. They brought Aminat a piece of halva and were all quite shy. Rosenbaum wasn’t a big man, but his parents were tiny.
Sulfia hid herself behind my back. I grabbed her and shoved her in front of me. Then I pulled Aminat aside by her pigtail. She shouldn’t steer all the attention to herself. Sulfia was the one who was supposed to be getting married.
Her conduct was exemplary. She faced Rosenbaum’s parents, nearly as short as they were, very bashful, and smiled at the floor as red splotches spread across her face. I thought to myself: if I had such a mama’s boy as Rosenbaum, I’d be quite pleased with a daughter-in-law like Sulfia. And indeed Rosenbaum’s parents seemed to look on her favorably.
I sat Aminat next to me so I could monitor her at all times. Sulfia I sat between the two old Rosenbaums. The young Rosenbaum sat beside me.
I instructed Kalganow to sit at the head of the table and, given the opportunity, to talk about his work—but not about anything else.
I had made just one mistake: I had forgotten to tell him that Sulfia was pregnant. And so it came to pass that we were in the middle of a perfectly smooth conversation about how children were the joy in life, and Rosenbaum’s parents, like Kalganow, were poking at their fish with preoccupied looks on their faces, when Kalganow, pulling a bone from his mouth, cried, “But of course, we’ve got one already, and that’s more than enough!”
The Hottest Dishes of the Tartar Cuisine Page 10
