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

stomach.
    I casually put my hand on her head. I wasn’t going to show what a happy day this was for me.
    We had covered a big table in one of our rooms. For such an occasion, we didn’t want to sit in the kitchen. This was the room in which Sulfia had grown up, as a child, as a girl. Later she had shared it with Aminat, and then for a time it had been Aminat’s room. Since I’d lost Aminat it had sat empty. The furniture was still in it, cold and unused, but I had not been able to breathe life back into it, even when I bought a few new children’s books and a puppet. So I had packed them away; they were stuffed into the depths of my wardrobe biding their time.
    This empty room served as the storeroom for my tea fungus, which was doing so well that it took up more and more space. At first I had kept it in a five-liter jar, where it looked like a dozen crepes stuck together and dropped into slimy liquid. But it kept growing and the drink it produced kept getting more and more flavorful—at some stage it got too strong. I separated the individual layers and moved each into its own new jar, where they could continue to grow. I lined up the jars on the broad windowsill in Aminat’s old room. I was more comfortable with it there, too, because I worried that Klavdia would secretly put bits of trash into the jars if they were left unattended in the kitchen much longer.
    It wasn’t easy to get hold of so many empty jars. Canning jars were a valuable commodity, and I had to get them from all over. I asked co-workers for them, searched for lids that would fit the jars I did find, and never threw anything away.
    Now we had our big table set up in the middle of the room. I was the best hostess you could possibly imagine. I had spread out a starched white linen tablecloth and decorated the table with a vase of magnificent red roses. I’d been given the roses by the parents of a girl who was on the verge of being kicked out of the school where I worked for skipping class. The parents mistook me for the director of the school because I carried myself like one. When they realized they’d given the bouquet to the wrong person, it was already too late and they were too polite to ask for the roses back.
    The frozen carnations brought by my son-in-law I left in the kitchen; putting them side-by-side with the roses would surely have been embarrassing for him. I had brought out our best silverware. There were glasses for wine and water. I had cooked a shulpa —delicate beef broth with pieces of meat—in a clay pot. Then came the main dish, a rice pilaf with mutton and raisins.
    We sat down at the table. If Aminat hadn’t chattered the whole time there would have been silence throughout the meal, in which case I would have to have made conversation. Actually it would have been my husband’s responsibility, but he was never any good at it. He liked to eat in peace. But Aminat was stuffing her mouth full and speaking for five. She asked questions and answered them herself. She had no manners. She had completely forgotten everything I’d taught her.
    “My child,” I reminded her with deep affection, “we don’t speak with our mouths full.”
    She stopped talking and stared at me, seeming not to understand what I meant. Table manners were apparently not a topic of discussion at Sulfia’s. In my eyes, denying a child a proper upbringing bordered on abuse.
    “Why not?” said Aminat, half-chewed meat visible in her sweet little mouth.
    “It just looks disgusting, my dear. And you are pretty—you shouldn’t look disgusting.”
    Aminat chattered on and interrupted every timid attempt by the adults to converse with each other. Sulfia continued to say nothing, leaving me to do what was necessary.
    “Sweetie, be quiet for a moment. The adults are talking right now.”
    “Who is? Nobody’s saying anything.”
    Aminat turned her head happily from one silent face to the next.
    “That’s because you keep interrupting everyone. Good