The Hottest Dishes of the Tartar Cuisine

by Alina Bronsky

  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.

  But there was nothing about me

  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.

  Lena

  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.
r />   “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.

  Germany is a small country

  I was happy that John decided to take care of Lena. He gave her a tour of the area, driving her around in his Mercedes. She had evidently coped well with the urn incident and squealed happily around the house. She was thrilled by how clean and green everything was in Germany. She had brought Russian books for me, and a poppyseed cake from a Tel Aviv bakery. She was a somewhat different Sulfia, lighthearted, with a gleam in her eyes. She was almost always in a good mood and she didn’t get upset about things or hold grudges. She asked me a thousand questions about me and her mother. But I didn’t feel like answering. John didn’t know anything about our history so luckily he couldn’t help her, either.

  About Aminat I said only that she was away.

  I found out from John why Lena had suddenly landed on our doorstep. She had a boyfriend who was a little bit older and who had a job that revolved around mass-produced Chinese copies of well-known paintings by Van Gogh, Rembrandt, that kind of thing. Lena’s boyfriend sold the copies in Germany. Why, of all things, an Israeli was selling Chinese forgeries wasn’t clear to me. It all sounded downright crooked to me. Lena said he wasn’t making much at it but that it allowed him to fulfill a dream—living in Germany. She’d been to visit him in Hamburg and now she was here with us. Finally, she said. And as she did she took my hand. I took it back.

  John said she could stay at his house as long as she wanted. I gasped silently. I tried to talk to him about it and he said: “It’s no problem, I like your family.”

  “This little whore is not family and never will be” were the words that came to me, but I swallowed them as I heard Lena’s laugh waft in from the garden, where she was talking on the phone. Sulfia had never laughed like that. Maybe she would have if she had ever had something to laugh about.

  I was still waiting for Aminat. But who should ring? Kalganow.

  I recognized him from the wheezing on the line long before he spoke a word. He had snored in exactly the same rhythm.

  “Kalganow,” I cooed pleasantly. I was in a good mood because Lena was out somewhere and John had brought home some new kind of cookie. “Kalganow, are you calling in your sleep?”

  “Rosie,” said Kalganow, choking back a miserable cough. “Rosie, my most beloved.”

  It turned out his teacher of Russian and literature had died.

  “When?” I asked mistrustfully.

  “Two weeks ago,” he said.

  The time that had elapsed since then was sufficient for him to realize he could no longer live without me—that, in fact, he never had been able to.

  “Kalganow, I have a man!” I yelled. “I have an English gentleman with a big garden and twenty kinds of tea in the pantry.”

  “It doesn’t matter, Rosie,” said Kalganow. “We’re still married for all eternity.”

  “You wouldn’t even survive the plane ride,” I said.

  “Then you can bury me, which would suit me just fine,” he answered.

  I didn’t say anything to him about how expensive funerals were in Germany. I went straight to John. I said that Kalganow was an old relative of mine and didn’t have long to live. John kissed my hand. At that moment I wished very much that he would ask me to be his wife. I even thought about telling him how much I wanted it. After all, he had fulfilled all my wishes up to now—with the exception of seeing Aminat. But I was too proud. And besides, it was true: I was still married to Kalganow.

  I sent Kalganow a plane ticket and the formal invitation necessary for a visa. With John, I picked him up at the airport. He had gone completely gray, still wore his old work jacket, and walked with a cane.

  Kalganow wet my cheeks with his kisses and said that everyone around him was old or dead, and I was the only one who was still as fresh as in the days of our youth. And that was true, of course. John shook Kalganow’s hand and took his luggage—an old suitcase with holes in the leather and wire wrapped around it to hold it closed, and a big plastic bag. Kalganow leaned on me as we walked to the parking garage. Using all of our strength, John and I managed to help him into the backseat and balance him upright. We put his cane in the trunk.

  Kalganow pressed his face to the window. He liked the autobahn. He kept letting out cries of excitement. It reminded me of my arrival in Germany. I felt ashamed—both for him and because of my memories.

  “You are so beautiful, Rosie,” muttered Kalganow from the backseat.

  I looked at John out of the corner of my eye. And although his face was as placid as always, I had the feeling that somewhere in the corner of his mouth a smile was hiding.

  When we entered the house, Kalganow’s feeble eyes played a mean joke on him. Lena came down the steps calling “Grandpa!” loudly, and Kalganow opened his arms wide, barely keeping his balance. As he did, however, he crie
d out the name of our daughter. They fell into each other’s arms and said silly things to each other. I couldn’t stand it any longer and went to my bedroom, turned on the TV, and cheered on Aminat.

  “Show them what you can do, my child. Don’t let me down.”

  The four of us sat together on John’s leather sofa as Aminat was crowned the most talented young singer in Germany, having won the final round of viewer voting. Kalganow cried, I sat there frozen with excitement, unable to move. John’s face was as clear as a cloudless sky. Lena had her hands squeezed between her knees and shook her head.

  “What is it?” I hissed at her, for in her ability to annoy me, she exceeded even Kalganow.

  “Poor, poor thing,” whispered Lena.

  I attributed the distressed look on Lena’s face to pure envy.

  Aminat stood on the stage with a stone face as glitter rained down on her and white doves circled above her head. She now had a record contract. All the cameras were pointed at her and all the microphones awaited her words. The audience was giving her a standing ovation and she lifted one of her stiff, thin arms and waved. I just hoped the viewers wouldn’t realize what a mistake they had made in choosing her. But anyway, I thought, the first step to fame has been accomplished. She still had a lot ahead of her. Germany is just a small country.

  Tartar cuisine

  Dieter died the day after Aminat was crowned.

  It would be blasphemous to suggest that it actually suited me. But the timing really wasn’t bad. I had to take care of everything, and I was happy to get out of the house. Lena and Kalganow somehow managed to be in every nook of the house at every moment—her giggling, him wheezing—and I couldn’t just lock myself in my room all day. John trimmed the roses, looked at the clouds, and made tea. I didn’t ask him whether the company of a poorly raised Israeli and a slobbering old Russian suited him. The smile I’d always thought I detected lurking in his face had recently come tentatively to the surface. To keep myself occupied, I organized Dieter’s funeral and cleaned up his apartment. When I went into his bedroom, in which the stench of sickness and fear still hung, I opened a drawer and found a pile of handwritten notes.