The Hottest Dishes of the Tartar Cuisine

Gefilte fish

I told Sulfia what she should wear. I didn’t want to leave anything to chance this time. Even Sulfia seemed to understand this.

I had a feeling that the situation this time worked in our favor. Sulfia’s ugliness and shyness would make her the perfect bride in the eyes of the Rosenbaums. She was modest and a nurse to boot. After all, the Jews knew what it was all about. Now all that was left to do was to cover up her shortcomings as a housewife.

First, I wanted to tell them that the meal I served them had been cooked entirely by Sulfia. I rummaged through cookbooks and asked co-workers and thought long and hard. I decided to make gefilte fish and vorschmack, and for dessert tzimmes. I’d be making all of these things for the first time in my life, which excited me. The vorschmack turned out to be the same as an appetizer I’d made every New Year’s Eve for years. I put chunks of brined herring, moistened white bread, onion, and a large apple through a meat grinder and grated hard-boiled egg yolks with vinegar.

The gefilte fish turned out to be a sort of cold fishcake that took hours of my time only to taste like nothing at all. I didn’t think the effort was worth it. The grated mixture of horseradish and red beets made up for that a bit, and I ate a large amount of it on white bread to make sure I had gotten it just right. As for the tzimmes, I decided not to hold myself responsible for the flavor. Braised carrots with raisins and dried plums, served with balls of cream of wheat — if that was what the Jews ate, there was no magic I could perform to improve things.

Sulfia dressed herself properly for once. That is, not particularly attractively, but at least appropriately for the occasion. Her knee-length gray dress looked cheap, but at least it was clean. She had pulled her hair into a ponytail like a schoolgirl. It was obvious that a daughter-in-law like this wouldn’t spend all the money on clothes.

Aminat had to be there, though I’d rather have been rid of her. I had worked so hard with her and had made a lot of progress, but she was still so unpredictable. But the Jews should see the whole family. Aminat was also the best evidence that Sulfia was capable of producing a pretty and healthy child.

I took Aminat aside and insisted to her that Sulfia would become sick if she, Aminat, acted out of line. Other than losing her cat Parasite, that was the only thing Aminat really feared.

An hour before our guests arrived, Kalganow rang the doorbell. He had on a gray suit that we had bought together once. Lint and threads hung from the arms, so I took a brush and cleaned it up. I retied his tie, too — at least Kalganow hadn’t forgotten it. I had called him three times to remind him.

“Sit down somewhere and wait for the guests to get here,” I said. “Don’t make a mess or get yourself dirty.”

“Yes, Rosie,” he answered.

And then they arrived — the Rosenbaums, in their brown clothes made out of high-quality material. They brought Aminat a piece of halva and were all quite shy. Rosenbaum wasn’t a big man, but his parents were tiny.

Sulfia hid herself behind my back. I grabbed her and shoved her in front of me. Then I pulled Aminat aside by her pigtail. She shouldn’t steer all the attention to herself. Sulfia was the one who was supposed to be getting married.

Her conduct was exemplary. She faced Rosenbaum’s parents, nearly as short as they were, very bashful, and smiled at the floor as red splotches spread across her face. I thought to myself: if I had such a mama’s boy as Rosenbaum, I’d be quite pleased with a daughter-in-law like Sulfia. And indeed Rosenbaum’s parents seemed to look on her favorably.

I sat Aminat next to me so I could monitor her at all times. Sulfia I sat between the two old Rosenbaums. The young Rosenbaum sat beside me.

I instructed Kalganow to sit at the head of the table and, given the opportunity, to talk about his work — but not about anything else.

I had made just one mistake: I had forgotten to tell him that Sulfia was pregnant. And so it came to pass that we were in the middle of a perfectly smooth conversation about how children were the joy in life, and Rosenbaum’s parents, like Kalganow, were poking at their fish with preoccupied looks on their faces, when Kalganow, pulling a bone from his mouth, cried, “But of course, we’ve got one already, and that’s more than enough!”

Sulfia turned a shade of pink. I tried to kick Kalganow under the table. Then Rosenbaum’s father wiped his lips with a napkin and started to make strange noises. I looked at his small mouth and tried to figure out what the sounds meant. Only gradually was I able to figure out he was giggling. Yes, giggling like some demented fool. God, he wasn’t going to keel over, was he? Just because his son had impregnated a not-so-young Tartar girl? He pointed with his finger at the fish left on his plate and laughed himself senseless. I had just explained that Sulfia made these strange fishcakes once a week. (Somehow I’d be able to get her to master it by the time of the wedding, I thought. If I really wanted to, I could teach even a guinea pig to cook.) Then I said that all people were friends, something like what Kalganow had always told me at the beginning of our marriage. Then old giggling Rosenbaum lost his balance and his gray-haired head fell onto his plate.

His wife looked at him sternly and he straightened himself up again and kissed her on the temple. Then he reached across the table, took my hand, and kissed it. I wasn’t sure for a second how to take this. His wife looked on rigidly, but not upset. Apparently he did this kind of thing often.

I found him gallant. My husband had never been so gallant. He, Kalganow, was now leaning slightly to the side. No, it couldn’t be true. He was about to fall asleep at the table. How could he? What had the teacher of Russian and literature let him become? He was on the verge of falling out of his chair snoring, and nobody but me had noticed. Unfortunately I couldn’t reach him to nudge him discreetly.

Something had to be done to distract the guests before he disgraced us all. I couldn’t think of anything except setting the tablecloth on fire. I had a pack of matches in the pocket of my skirt; I always needed them for the gas stove. I decided to sacrifice my beautiful tablecloth to this higher cause. And as the flames began to dance up the cloth and everyone screamed and jumped up, nobody noticed how hard I yanked on Kalganow’s ear in order to wake him.

The young Rosenbaum brought a bucket of water and dumped it on the dirty plates. Soon the fire was out. Kalganow looked around with an irritated look on his face, as if he no longer knew where he was. Dinner was over.

Rosenbaum went out laughing. His wife hissed and cursed at him — I could hear her from the staircase. Apparently the Jews lived just like normal people.

Rosenbaum and Sulfia wed on a bleak, cold winter day. The wedding was modest. It snowed nonstop, and as the bridal couple left City Hall, giant snowflakes stuck unmelted in Sulfia’s black hair. Neither family had invited many guests. Rosenbaum’s side thought big weddings were bourgeois. In reality they were just cheap, but I acted as if I took their reasoning at face value. I had decided it was wiser not to insult them before Sulfia had the ring on her finger. And anyway, as far as I was concerned it made sense — no reason to draw undue attention from potentially jealous people to the fact that Sulfia had once again somehow ended up with a good man.

She wore the bridal dress that Rosenbaum’s mother had worn to her own wedding. They were both scrawny women, but that cream-colored dress could make a princess out of anyone. Even out of Sulfia. Her black hair was pinned up, the train reached to the ground, and her eyes glowed so with happiness that it was tempting to take her for pretty. She was now Sulfia Rosenbaum. I’d have to get used to that.

For the photos, Rosenbaum’s father stood behind Sulfia and giggled the whole time. Rosenbaum’s mother stood next to him holding her husband’s arm and trying to keep him under control. I was grateful to Kalganow for leaving his teacher at home. The Rosenbaums didn’t need to know the family wasn’t whole until after the wedding.

Rosenbaum didn’t move in immediately with Sulfia and Aminat. I was prepared to give him some time. Not too much, of course. By the time of the birth of the new baby he should have gotten used to being Sulfia’s husband. Little by little, the newlyweds developed a certain rhythm. Rosenbaum began to stay with Sulfia and Aminat over the weekend, then also during the week. He brought things from home when he had a chance, homemade cookies, a piece of a roast, meatballs, or a jar of marinated tomatoes. He didn’t boss Aminat around and he washed his own dirty dishes. He took his laundry home to mother Rosenbaum. It wasn’t a situation meant for the long term, but it was perfect for Sulfia.