The Hottest Dishes of the Tartar Cuisine

It just wasn’t possible without me

One Sunday, a lover had just gotten up and dressed himself to go pick up his wife and mother-in-law at the airport. While I lay in bed playing with my new ring, I realized what I had been forgetting the whole time.

I kissed my lover and pushed him toward the door: “You’ll be late!” I said, though in reality it was I who was in a rush.

I put on a pair of Indian jeans and a sky-blue sweater that I had knitted myself. I zipped up my boots and put my hair up in a bun with knitting needles.

Klavdia stuck her head out the door of her room, looking satisfied; she’d had a man the day before.

“What are you wearing?” she said. “Has all that sperm gone to your head? Have you forgotten how old you are?”

“In the West,” I said, smoothing out my sweater, “everyone dresses like this.”

At work I often leafed through the pages of a sewing magazine one of my co-workers borrowed from her neighbor and brought with her to the office. I couldn’t take it home with me and make copies of the patterns. But I took note of the things that appealed to me.

I took a private taxi to Aminat and Sulfia’s place. Although I had bought new clothes, mostly from private collections rather than from shops, I still had more money than ever. Sometimes I found large banknotes in my coat pockets.

I hadn’t seen Aminat in four weeks because I’d been so busy. I had just called her from time to time. Now I was suddenly anxious: how was she doing without me?

Sulfia was sitting in the living room, sewing. She was putting cuffs and a collar on Aminat’s school uniform.

The school clothes were brown but had cuffs and collar made out of white lace. The clothes didn’t need to be washed very often because they didn’t show dirt — and besides, it took them ages to dry. But the cuffs were constantly dirty. All the mothers took the cuffs and collar off each weekend, washed them, ironed them, and reattached them.

I had done this for Aminat, too, so she wouldn’t look messy. Later I had shown Sulfia how you reattached the ends, and I had also gotten hold of a second set of cuffs and a spare collar. That way she could exchange them without having to wash them immediately.

Now I saw Sulfia trying to sew them on. She held a large needle in her hand, and her fingertips were covered with red pinpricks. As I walked in, she stuck herself once again and shoved her finger into her mouth. She was so clumsy. She held a cuff with her thumb and pressed it onto the needle. She stuck herself again. She was a nurse, or a half-nurse, I thought to myself — is this how she tried to stitch up her patients?

She looked up from her sewing, let Aminat’s dress fall, stood up, came over to me, and without warning draped herself around my neck. I patted her bony back. I put my arms around her not because I wanted to but out of a sense of duty.

“Where’s Aminat?” I asked.

She looked at me.

“Aminat,” I repeated.

“Aminat?”

“Aminat. The girl, Aminat. My granddaughter, your daughter.”

Sulfia looked at me silently.

“AMINAT!” I roared.

I spent the next hour running through the building. I managed to get out of Sulfia that Aminat had been there at noon. What had happened after that, she didn’t know. I rang the neighbor’s doorbell.

From almost a dozen mouths on four different floors I heard that nobody had seen her that day, and that, changing the subject, it would be nice if she wouldn’t stomp and scream so loudly. The walls were thin, and the floors, too. I promised to tame Aminat. Three times I was asked to make sure Aminat stopped putting stray cats and their newborn litters behind the dumpster. One neighbor said he had found the animals and thrown the kittens into the dumpster and chased off the mother cat. I promised everything to everyone and ran on, until I heard Aminat’s voice calling from above.

I went back up to the apartment, angry and panting heavily. Aminat was standing in the door smiling. She had a gap in her teeth. Her hair, which had already grown back somewhat, was standing up; she had dirty fingernails. She wore a nightgown she’d long since outgrown, along with tights that had a hole in the knee. She was a neglected child once again. I looked at her and sighed. My men would have to wait for me a bit until this child had grown up. It just wasn’t possible without me. I had to invest every second in this child or else everything would fall to pieces.

“Where were you?” I asked, my voice shaking with rage.

“In the wardrobe,” said Aminat. “I often hide in there, ha ha. And mama looks for me.”

I reached out and smacked her in the face.

“Whore,” I said. “Evil, evil child. Show me your notebooks.”

Aminat silently brought me her schoolwork. I looked through everything, reading every page. I was amazed. The notebooks were clean. No smudges, no stray marks, precise and orderly handwriting, straight lines.

I looked at her journal. The grades were flawless, all her homework had been completed, and there were just a few things here and there in red: “Was fresh to the teacher,” “Ruined the other children’s appetite.”

I closed the journal.

“You’ve done well at that, at least.”

I pulled out my wallet, found a one-ruble banknote, and gave it to her. It was a lot of money. She wasn’t sure whether to take it. Apparently no one had ever given her money; it must be a mistake.

“It’s for you,” I said. “You earned it.”

I had an idea. I called Aminat over to me, gave her a pen and piece of paper, and asked her, “What do you want most in the world?”

“A father and a cat,” said Aminat without hesitation.

“Then listen up,” I said. “If, first, you take care not to look so messy, and, second, keep doing so well in school, and, third, you do the washing up every other night, switching off with your mother, and, fourth, you vacuum every Saturday, and, fifth, lay your clothes out so they are easy for your mother to wash, and, sixth, remind her when it’s time to buy food. . Have you got all that? Good. If you do all that for three months, you can have a cat.”

Aminat listened without blinking. She held the pen firmly in her fist.

“Go on now, write it down. Do I need to repeat it?”

Aminat scratched her neck with the pen, then began to write. A few minutes later she showed me a numbered list. The last line read: “If I do this, I get a CAT.”

I took the pen and signed my name beneath it.

My private life I put on ice. We women always have more important things to worry about. After work, I went to Sulfia’s. I opened the door with my own key and went through the rooms peering into the corners. It was as if a confirmed bachelor had suddenly gotten married. Dirty laundry no longer lay around, the floor was clean, and the piles of empty milk and kefir containers had disappeared.

Finally there was a housewife in this apartment, a head of the family, a proxy for me, all rolled into one person: my eight-year-old granddaughter Aminat.

When she was at home she was always busy doing some kind of work, warbling the theme songs from movies as she worked. You barely had to instruct her because she had learned so many things on her own. She collected the empty plastic bags, rinsed them out in the sink, and hung them to dry on the heaters as if she’d done it her whole life. She never threw out any food. When a sausage in the refrigerator started to turn green, she cut off the bad spots, boiled the sausage, and then pan-fried it briefly. I couldn’t have done it more expertly myself.

It was clear. Children need responsibility. Maybe I had gone about things wrong with Sulfia; because of her shortcomings I had done much too much for her. Aminat greeted every visit with a loud command: “Take your boots off, I just mopped!”

Even her voice changed, and she often held herself a certain way in order to speak. She reminded me uncomfortably of someone I knew. But I couldn’t think who it might be. I asked Sulfia.

“She’s imitating you,” said Sulfia.

I thought of my childhood. I had always been hungry, had only one dress and one pair of tights, and four of us lived in a single room. And those were the best parts of it. In comparison, Aminat was spoiled.

I met my end of the bargain shortly before three months had passed.

Aminat had not once spoken of it. Three months was a long time — it represented many hours with the vacuum and countless cleaned plates. But Aminat didn’t whine or ask about it. Later, stuck to the inside of a cabinet door, I discovered a piece of paper on which she had been crossing off the days.

On a Saturday seven days before the end of her obligations, I picked Aminat up. I had on a somewhat older jacket that I usually wore only when I went to my garden out in the country. Sulfia was peeling potatoes. Aminat’s mother had followed her example. She too had picked up some skills that would make survival easier.

I told Aminat to dress herself warmly but not in her good clothes. A surprise awaited her. I was secretive. Aminat grew very quiet as we got off the bus near the bird market. She had never been to the bird market, and if I had told her where we were heading she would have been disappointed because she might have taken the name literally.

There were birds for sale here, of course — canaries, parakeets, parrots, ravens, and chickens, birds bred and birds caught, in all sizes and colors. Chirps and tweets from thousands of throats hung in the air, mixed with the barks and whines of other animals that for a few rubles would change hands today.

“Oh!” was all Aminat said, and her eyes became big and round. “Oh! Oh!”

The birds, flapping around in cages far too small for them, chirped frantically. Puppies and piglets were sold out of the trunks of cars. Falsified certifications of origin were shuffled here and there.

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.