The Hottest Dishes of the Tartar Cuisine

I was actually rather inexperienced

I decided I was ready. I would let men initiate conversations with me on the street. Up to now I had always put on a face that discouraged it. Even the stupidest man could see that I wouldn’t answer him. I was pretty, but not something for him. One day I flipped the switch.

The first man spoke to me on the bus. He stood up to offer me his seat (men constantly offered me their seats when I used public transportation). Earlier I had always just nodded and forgotten about them immediately. This time I looked directly into the eyes of the man who gave me his seat. He had somewhat dilated pupils and a burst vein in his left eye. It was dark in the bus, but maybe he’d been aroused by my gaze. I estimated his age at thirty-seven or thirty-eight years old. He had on a wedding ring that was thin and probably didn’t cost much. His fingernails were cut short, something I welcomed in men. Though in his case they were cut angularly. The first thing I’d teach a man like that would be to use a nail file.

I exited the bus just to test him. Naturally, he followed me out. The bus was full. Rather than elbowing people out of the way, he kept repeating in a loud voice: “Excuse me, please! I need to get out! Excuse me, please!”

The other passengers cursed at him and called him an idiot. I agreed with them in principle. He finally extricated himself just as the bus doors were closing.

I waited until he had gotten out, then began to stroll slowly along Lenin Avenue. Almost immediately he was by my side. We walked a few steps together. He said nothing and didn’t look at me. I lost my patience and began to walk faster. He picked up his pace, caught up with me, and put his hand on my elbow.

“Take your hand off me,” I said gently. He looked at me. His pupils were the size of pins because the sun was shining directly in his eyes.

“You are the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen,” he said ardently.

I found him charming. With a few subtle hints, I let him know that I wouldn’t consider it beneath me to eat an éclair with him at a café. We sat down and talked about my beauty and my thoughts about Shakespeare. We discovered the first thing we had in common: we both loved springtime. We talked a little about his marriage. I finished my coffee and could feel a sad look lingering on my back as I walked away from him.

He appealed to me. Two days later we saw each other on the bus again. It was something I knew would happen. He beamed when he saw me. This time he couldn’t offer me his seat because he was standing, holding on to a pole with one hand. He smelled of soap and nervous sweat. When the bus braked, I leaned against him as if by accident and felt his heart beating with excitement.

I was excited, too. I was actually rather inexperienced, at least about the logistics of these things. I suggested we go to my place. He didn’t say another word.

Klavdia wasn’t home. I asked the man to wait in my kitchen, locked the door, and dialed Sulfia’s number. I told her to call me in an hour. If I didn’t answer, she should call the police. The man looked harmless enough, but I wanted to be sure. What I liked about Sulfia was that she always did whatever she was told, and didn’t ask any gratuitous questions.

While the man waited in the kitchen, I went into the bedroom. I decided to take off all my clothes. I was really out of practice. I didn’t need any strange, nervous fingers on my hooks and buttons. As I pulled the nylons from my legs, I was enraptured by the form of my calves. I freshened up my makeup, slipped into bed, pulled the covers up to my chin, and called loudly to my new acquaintance.

He fumbled his way down our long dark hallway until he found the right door. Then he entered. I had practiced my seductive smile in the mirror. He took a running start like a long-jumper, threw himself on me, and began to kiss me. You could tell he hadn’t cheated very often. He couldn’t kiss well and his hands felt clammy.

My excitement faded. He peeled off his shirt and simultaneously kicked off his pants. I thought he was funny but made sure not to laugh. He threw himself on me again and caught my hair under his elbow. I let out a cry. He took it for a sign of impatience and headed directly for the target. My hair was still pinned. I was worried he’d scalp me. He finished and rolled off me. I patted my hair back into place. I had just had the second man of my life.

He put an arm around me and whispered, “I love you.”

“I love you, too,” I whispered back.

I asked myself when he was going to leave. Then the phone rang. It was Sulfia. I had to answer. Otherwise she’d call the police according to my instructions. But it hadn’t been more than half an hour. She couldn’t even read a clock correctly. I told her everything was fine, and told my guest that my daughter was on her way over to see me.

He began to collect his things, he straightened his wedding ring, and approached me with his eyes gleaming and his arms held wide.

“When will we see each other again?” he asked.

I shrugged my shoulders. He asked for my phone number. I could hardly say I had no phone since he had just heard me talking in the foyer. I rattled off a random series of numbers, which he wrote on his hand with a pen. Next to it he drew a rose, something I found charming.

Once he had finally left, I took a shower. It was strange to smell of a man. I scrubbed myself. I sprayed myself too generously with perfume I’d bought three months before at a bazaar. Now I smelled like a girl who worked as a cashier. I got back in the shower and washed off the scent.

I was making tea when Klavdia came home. She was breathing heavily. In the last few years she had added to her already excessive weight by gaining at least thirty more pounds. She plopped onto a stool, pulled my plate of cookies to her, and began to stuff them into her mouth one after another. I watched her, happy not to be in her skin.

“If you smack your lips like Klavdia while eating, then one day you will look like Klavdia,” I told Aminat sometimes.

“You’re so strange,” said Klavdia, looking me up and down. I was worried she’d smell the man on me and, just to be sure, went and took a bath.

I was used to male attention. Men had always turned to watch me go by. They held their umbrellas for me and let me slip into line in front of them. That was earlier. What happened now bordered on magic.

I was constantly stopped and asked for my number. Several times men spontaneously handed me bouquets of flowers on the street. I ate pastries at cafés more often than I had ever before in my entire life. I could leave my wallet at home with confidence. Strange men paid for me at cafés, on the bus, and in grocery stores, saying it would be their pleasure.

I couldn’t have them all. That just wouldn’t work. I didn’t want to have them all anyway. But even among those I wanted in theory, I couldn’t have them all. I still had to work, eat, sleep, and call Aminat on the phone to go over homework.

I had a scheme to make it easier to choose. I immediately eliminated men who smelled, who had acne, or who had a cold. Good manners were important, and so were clean fingernails. And I always sent men to the bathroom to wash their hands before they could get in bed with me. After all, they would be touching intimate parts of my body. Talking too much was a negative, as was a sullen look.

Male beauty made me weak. I was an aesthete. A wedding ring was always good. Someone like that wouldn’t be always pestering me. Nice clothes — yes. That was impressive because it was so rare. Same with owning a car — I began to automatically eliminate men who rode the bus. With one exception: those who looked as though they were riding the bus because their car was in the shop.

I must say that I rarely made mistakes. I had a good eye for men with enough sense to be tender and decisive in the right moments, and who were man enough to understand when I no longer wanted to see them. On occasion one would ambush me at a bus stop or in front of my office to ask why I no longer wanted to meet him. Every once in a while one cried, too. Two took sleeping pills but were saved. Flowers often appeared on my doorstep or in my mailbox. Hardly any calls, though: I let everyone know I didn’t appreciate it when my phone was monopolized.

In my spare room, sumptuous bars of chocolate piled up along with shrink-wrapped bottles of perfume, a few books, costly bottles of liquor in gift boxes, cast-iron sculptures, vases, imported nylons, a Russian-Polish dictionary (you never knew what you might need), and a little oil painting of an orange on a wooden table (one of the men had a studio).

Of course, it wasn’t possible to hide all of this from the ever-watchful Klavdia. Too often she was sitting in her dirty bathrobe sipping tea in the kitchen as I was tasting a new acquaintance’s lips for the first time and reaching as I did for the key to my room. That’s why, right from the start, I didn’t try to keep her out of the stuff. I gave her the perfumes I didn’t like or had multiple bottles of. I gave her most of the chocolate (I had to watch my figure), a pair of nylons, some foreign buttons with animated film characters on them, and a cassette by a woman who shared her name with the mother of God.

Klavdia changed, too. She got a perm and polished her nails with the nail polish I gave her from among the ones I’d received. But she began to be nasty to me, and I realized what she needed.

I wasn’t greedy. Klavdia could have my discarded men. The next time I broke it off with one for good, Klavdia took over, looked after him with tea and chocolates from among the gifts of his predecessors, and let him cry in her lap. This took the bite out of her nastiness and allowed us to put up with each other again.