The Hottest Dishes of the Tartar Cuisine by Alina Bronsky Read Free Book Online Page A

and proud woman she had been. There was Kalganow’s family, some of whom still lived out in the country, but what showed up on the table there made me sick to my stomach because it was so unhygienic.
    I decided to improvise. In my student days I had shared a dorm room with two women, one an Uzbek and the other a Bashkir. I still remembered the two of them and the things they had sometimes cooked. I hit upon an idea—and I’d like to see somebody try to tell me it wasn’t proper Tartar cuisine.
    I had bought rice and mutton at the market. Back at home I made dough for chak-chak for dessert. The phone rang. Ever since Sulfia’s disappearance, Kalganow had disliked answering the phone. But I yelled to him. My hands were covered with flour. He picked up the phone.
    “It’s Sojuschka,” he called from the foyer. “You’ll have to come.”
    I held my hands under the faucet and dried them on a hand towel. Then I went to the phone and took it from my husband. It still wasn’t clear to me who was on the line. I just couldn’t get used to Sulfia’s new name.
    “Yes?” I said into the phone.
    “I’m not coming,” the phone whispered in Sulfia’s voice.
    “Too bad,” I said. “I’ll have your husband take something home for you.”
    “ We’re not coming,” rasped Sulfia’s voice in my ear. “I just can’t. We can’t. I don’t want to.”
    “What is ‘I don’t want to’ supposed to mean?”
    “Over my dead body. Forgive me.” She began to sob and I pulled the phone slightly away from my ear.
    I could hear cars driving past at Sulfia’s end of the phone. She was obviously calling from a public phone.
    “Is your husband perhaps nearby?” I asked.
    “No!” she yelled. “Don’t talk to him!”
    “You listen to me, daughter,” I said. “We are a family. We need to act civilly to each other.”
    She hung up.
    I invited Klavdia to eat with us since we had extra food. We had mountains of it, and Klavdia had a mighty appetite. We hoisted our glasses and toasted. Sooner or later she’ll come, I thought to myself.
    I called my son-in-law at his office the next day. He apologized for Sulfia’s behavior. He said that sometimes she acted totally irrationally, and that he was helpless in the face of it. When she heard that he had accepted my invitation to Sunday dinner, she had started to sob and tremble. Then she had run out of the apartment.
    I repeated my wish for a civil relationship. I said we were still a family. I told him I was counting on him.
    He said he would do what he could.

No manners
     
    I barely recognized her.
    Sulfia was still scrawny. But she had on a pretty black dress with white dots. Not the kind of dress women like her usually wore. More something for women like me.
    She had on a wool hat like the ones old ladies wear when they have to wait in the cold at a bus stop. She took it off and her hair fell onto her shoulders, long, black, straight—had her hair gotten thicker?
    “Greetings, mother,” said Sulfia.
    My son-in-law stood behind her with a bouquet of frozen carnations in his hand. He’d probably just bought them in a subway station. He smiled proudly. It hadn’t been easy. Together he and I had overcome resistance, appealing to Sulfia on two fronts. He evidently had a lot of influence over my daughter. I think it tickled Sergej to have such a graceful swan like me as his mother-in-law, especially given that he had married such an ugly duckling.
    The most important thing, however, was Aminat. It was all I could do not to grab her in my arms immediately and kiss her beautiful little face.
    “Please come in, my dears,” I said graciously, and took the bouquet of flowers from my son-in-law’s hand.
    “Don’t be so shy,” I said. That was for Sulfia’s benefit; she was standing there as if turned to stone.
    Aminat peeled off her hat and her white fleece jacket in a single motion, let both fall to the floor, wrapped both of her arms around me, and pressed her face to my