The Hottest Dishes of the Tartar Cuisine

Rosenbaum

For the first few weeks I waited for the little cat to die. I’d been through this kind of thing before: if I didn’t happen to like someone, then sometimes that person just up and died. But the cat didn’t die. It just got very sick — no wonder, since it had been separated from its mother too early. The cat came down with sticky eyes and diarrhea, and Sulfia called me in a panic.

In the background I could hear Aminat sobbing. At first I thought the problem had taken care of itself, but I had underestimated this cat’s will to live. I told Sulfia that she had to take care of at least a few things on her own. Sulfia agreed with me, apologized, and hung up.

I later found out that she went to a veterinarian and got a prescription for medicines and a special food mixture. It cost a fortune. This cat was tough. First it managed to get up from its deathbed, and eventually it returned to full health. Aminat named the cat Little Peter, but I always called it Parasite.

The cat had its pluses. For some incomprehensible reason, Aminat assumed Parasite belonged to me. All I had to do was threaten to take it away from her and Aminat did anything I wanted. Among those things was to stop taking leftover sausage to the stray cats.

I had heard that cats brought luck to a home. And sure enough, Sulfia met another man just one month later.

This man also had been one of her patients. One day I found him in Sulfia’s kitchen. I had managed to get hold of two pounds of oranges for Aminat — after waiting in line for hours — and I was worried this man was immediately going to eat them all up. I had the impression that with Sulfia that when she fell for a man, he could have anything from her. But not Aminat’s oranges!

This man wasn’t bad. He was cleanly dressed, and his shirt had a dignified pattern. He was, however, a Jew. I could always recognize a Jew. When he saw me, he stood up and kissed my hand. He seemed chivalrous. He told me his name — Michail. I asked about his last name. And sure enough — his name was Rosenbaum.

I found this alarming, but not catastrophic. Jews were Jews. You had to watch out for them, but wasn’t that true of everybody? I was sure that it had never occurred to Sulfia that he was a Jew. She smiled at him shyly, like a little girl, and he smiled back. He must have noticed what a great apartment Sulfia had. Jews were practical.

“Where do you live?” I asked.

He lived near the main station, which wasn’t exactly around the corner. Did he work someplace near here, I wondered — was he trying to use this acquaintance to shorten his commute? If you were unlucky and had to get to the far side of the city every morning for work, you might wait for an hour for a bus that was then too full to squeeze your way onto when it finally arrived.

“And do you live alone?” I asked.

“With my parents,” he said in a friendly tone.

“And what do you do for work, if I may ask?”

He was an engineer.

“That’s original,” I said.

He was also into sports. In winter he skied and in summer he climbed mountains. I was astounded that Jews did such things. I had always thought them to be too sensible. He’d sustained a compound fracture on one climb. Sulfia had nursed him back to health. Admittedly, he did have a limp, but there was nothing she could have done about that. He was bald and nearly forty years old. That was good. It was probably best for Sulfia not to be with a man any other woman might want.

I said a friendly goodbye. Out in the hallway I found Parasite chewing on one of my boots and shoved the beast aside. Once I got home, I rang Sulfia. The Jew had already left, which spoke well of him. A man who wanted to stay too long was suspicious. I told Sulfia he had nice teeth. Sulfia didn’t understand what I was really trying to tell her: that I thought the Jew was alright and that I wished her luck with him.

Of course, I didn’t mean that she should get pregnant straight away. But Sulfia was still haunted by Sergej and remembered what might happen if she ignored my advice. In any event, she was soon pregnant with a tiny Jew. I wouldn’t have expected such virility from Rosenbaum.

Sulfia was happy. Aminat as well. Her deepest wishes were being fulfilled. First she got a cat, and now a baby sibling would soon follow. She began to sort her toys so the new baby would have things to play with.

There was just one problem: Rosenbaum was in no hurry to marry despite the fact that my daughter was carrying his Jewish baby beneath her Tartar heart. I sat Sulfia down for a talk and found out he hadn’t even proposed to her. Worse still, his parents didn’t know that she even existed.

“His parents are old, and his mother has heart problems,” said Sulfia. She was already in her fourth month.

“He needs to tell his parents and marry you,” I insisted. “Immediately. Otherwise he’ll weasel his way out of it.”

“He wouldn’t do that,” said Sulfia dreamily.

“Then he should marry you.”

“He will. Later.”

“With some things, you shouldn’t wait too long.”

It was clear that I’d have to look after everything once again.

“Give me his address,” I said.

“What for?”

“Just give me his address.”

“Please don’t, mother.”

“I’m not going to do anything. I just need the address.”

“No,” said Sulfia.

“Don’t tell me you don’t have his address!”

She said nothing. I had hit the bull’s-eye again.

I found the address in the phone book.

As always, I prepared myself systematically. I didn’t want to attack them, I wanted to give them a chance to treat my pregnant daughter right. They should see me as a sort of dove — an emissary of peace.

I took two bars of chocolate with me from Sulfia’s supply — I wanted to be friendly but also humble. I rang the bell by a wood-paneled door (just the kind of door I had always wanted) and waited.

It took a few minutes before the door was opened. First I saw a dark shadow in the peephole — someone looked at me for a long time.

The door opened slowly, with the chain still on. I saw a nose and the lens of a pair of glasses, then the whole woman — small, gray-haired, intellectual.

“Hello,” I said. “I’m Rosalinda Achmetowna and I’d like to speak to you about your son. About Michail,” I added, so she knew I wasn’t just bluffing, that I really knew him.

The eyes behind the glasses took on a look of concern.

“Has something happened?”

“Depends on how you look at it,” I said.

She took off the chain and let me in.

Rosenbaum’s mother was round and tense. Her entire being gave off a sense of distrust. Nonetheless, she gave me a pair of slippers to slip over the skin-colored nylons on my delicate feet and led me into the kitchen, where she sat down and folded her hands in her lap.

She blinked, agitated. I wondered what she was expecting. The situation was clear: Rosenbaum was a Jewish mama’s boy. Here in this place, lined with carpets and filled with heavy furniture, he had grown up like a frail flower in a greenhouse.

“It’s about my daughter Sulfia,” I said. “She’s a very sweet girl.”

Rosenbaum’s mother blinked repeatedly.

“We’re unbelievably excited about the baby,” I said.

She opened her mouth and froze, a dumbfounded look on her face.

“It’s so nice to have a chance to meet you,” I said. “I’m sure our families will get along swimmingly.”

She clutched at her chest.

“We’re Tartars,” I said. “And you’re. . well, anyway, my husband says all people are the same. The only important thing is that they have a sense of decency.”

Rosenbaum’s mother started to keel over.

Rosenbaum was upset with me because his mother had had a heart attack. He put the blame on me. I put it right back on him. He shouldn’t try to make me responsible for his failure to tell his parents about Sulfia and about his imminent fatherhood.

One thing that spoke well of him: once Rosenbaum’s mother had been released from the hospital he immediately arranged a get-together. He wanted his parents to invite us over. I wanted it the other way around. I wanted to show that Sulfia had a good family and that she would be a good mother. I knew Jews were very critical. That was something we had in common with them.

The Rosenbaums accepted my invitation. What else could they do? With this occasion in mind, I phoned the teacher of Russian and literature and asked to speak to my husband. I always called him “my husband” so the ownership of the title remained clear, this despite the fact that “my husband” sounded increasingly like “my problem.”

He got on the phone and said, “Rosie, how nice to hear your voice.”

I got right to the point.

I said, “Kalganow, your daughter is getting married.”

He said nothing.

“Sulfia,” I said, helping him along. “She found a man.”

I told him what I wanted. The parents of the groom were coming to see us, to have dinner with us, and I wanted them to have a good impression of the family — first and foremost of the bride’s parents.

“That’s me and you,” I clarified. “Do you understand?”

“But. . ” he said and fell silent again.

I sighed. Then I started to explain everything again from the beginning. I told him this had nothing to do with him coming back to me. It was just to create a good image. The Jews needed to have the impression that our family was whole. Kalganow breathed heavily into the phone. He’d been in better shape when he was with me.

“What is it?” I asked, annoyed. “Will you come or not? It’s for your daughter’s sake.”

“For Sulfia,” he said.

“Have you any other daughters?” I asked and hung up.

He would come. Of that I was sure.