The Hottest Dishes of the Tartar Cuisine

The best daughters

I was pleased with myself. I was working a lot because I wanted to take Aminat to the beach that summer. Without Dieter, but with Sulfia — she needed to see a bit of sun, too. Then the phone rang one night and Kalganow was on the line. The same Kalganow Sulfia had been taking care of for four years now since his stroke. I didn’t recognize Kalganow’s voice. It was different than I remembered it. But it didn’t matter whose voice it was once it said that Sulfia was dead.

“What?” I asked. “Why?”

I dismissed it as a tasteless joke and hung up.

The phone rang again. I looked at the display and saw a long number starting with the Russian country code. I didn’t move. It rang and rang, until Aminat came out from her room still half asleep, looked at the number, and grabbed the phone.

“Mama?” she cried.

She had finally gotten over the ski holiday and was in a better mood. I looked at her, still hoping she would tell me any second that nothing I had heard was true. But I saw her face change as she held the phone to her ear. At first her face froze in a stiffly pensive expression. Then she frowned deeply, and I knew immediately that my powers of comprehension had not deceived me.

I flew to Russia and Aminat stayed at Dieter’s.

I had to take care of the funeral. Who could possibly have handled it better than I could? When I arrived, I ran into people acting as hysterical as orphaned children. The biggest child was Kalganow, on whose conscience — I told him this immediately — Sulfia’s death should have weighed very heavily. It was all because of him that she was kept far from my supervision and care. Now Kalganow was in a state of shock, which meant he was actually doing better. He was able to get out of bed and speak — his call with the news of Sulfia’s death had been the first time he’d been able to compose a sentence.

His teacher of Russian and literature looked every bit the stereotype of an old teacher. She got on my nerves with her endless sobbing. I looked at her for the first time and had the feeling that she vaguely reminded me of someone. Every once in a while she clutched at her heart until finally I told her she should lock herself in her room and stop getting in other people’s way.

“People like you live forever,” I said. “And you kill the best daughters of other families.”

A lot had changed in my old country. It had a new name. My city had a different name now, too. Everything was very dirty, and everybody was selling something. Stands and kiosks — some made out of nothing more than stacked cardboard boxes — stood shoulder to shoulder. Groceries, clothes, books, and empty Coca-Cola cans were all for sale.

People were dressed poorly and everyone looked miserable. All the girls looked like hookers. Most of them were hookers, too. Old women counted out coins with shaking hands. A decent woman couldn’t contemplate entering a public toilet.

Kalganow’s country relatives from outside Kazan suggested Sulfia be buried in the traditional Tartar way, wrapped in a cloth instead of a coffin. I didn’t even react to that crazy idea. I had enough to worry about. They tried to convince Kalganow, but he just said, “Rosie always knows best.” They gave up after that, but during the funeral they wore openly reproachful looks on their faces.

In the coffin, Sulfia had on a white dress and white silk shoes. I put flowers on her forehead and on the pillow her head was resting on and urged the funeral director to put real effort into her makeup. A lot of people came. It was news to me that so many people knew Sulfia. People who had gone to school with her, co-workers, neighbors, there were hundreds of people. Everyone could see what a beautiful woman she was: the long black hair, the white face, as symmetrical as a doll’s, the fine, curved nose, the black eyelashes that cast shadows on her cheeks. I guess she had inherited quite a bit from me after all.

It emerged that Sulfia had not had her own room. She had a cot at Kalganow and the teacher’s place. It was in the living room, separated from the rest of the room by a folding screen. Kalganow and his woman had a double bed in their bedroom, and they’d turned it into a double sickbed. Nightstands stood on each side, each covered with medicines.

After the funeral, I lay down on Sulfia’s cot. It sagged, and the comforter on it was worn to tatters. I gritted my teeth. The bloodsuckers in the next room alternately sobbed and talked quietly to each other. I took off one of my shoes and threw it against the wall. Then it was quiet.

It was disgusting to lie in bed fully dressed and with one shoe on, but I did it anyway. I stared at the ceiling. At some stage the neighbor above must have had flooding because the ceiling was covered with stains shaped like exotic flowers. If someone had done that to me, I would have dangled them out the window by their feet until they agreed to pay for renovations and a new carpet — even if they had to pay with their gold fillings. But Sulfia was as gentle as a flower. If someone spat on her she took it for fresh rain and stretched out her petals to soak it up.

My head began to swell from within. It was probably just too full. The thoughts began to ball together, got tangled up with each other, pulled at others. My mind was an unimaginably crowded place. Everything pushed outward against my temples, pressed hard against my eyes and even my tongue. I held my head together with my hands. Sulfia, I thought suddenly. Sulfia always knew when someone was doing poorly. She could tell when someone needed her. You never had to say anything. She just knew where it hurt. She could tell from thousands of miles away. And she knew what she could do about it. She could chase the pain away. Sulfia, I thought to myself, had been a magician.

“Sulfia,” I whispered with my lips stiff and unwilling to obey me. “Sulfia!”

My eyes burned and throbbed. The pressure was so extreme I worried they might pop. I held them in with my hands.

Then the pain let up. It happened so slowly and subtly that I didn’t even notice it until I was able to open my eyes again, still worried they might pop out of their sockets. My thick, elongated eyelashes, from which I had yet to remove my makeup, tickled the palms of my hands as I pulled them off my eyes. I sat up. The room was dark, a streetlamp shone in the window. The headlights of passing cars crisscrossed the room and played on the pattern of the comforter.

“Sulfia,” I said. “Sit down.”

Sulfia sat down next to me, but not the one who had just disappeared into the crematorium. This was the Sulfia I had seen at our last meeting, exhausted but smiling, with tired but attentive eyes. So lifelike that I began to worry about her again. Then I stopped and grabbed the sides of the cot so I didn’t give in to my urge to reach out to a ghost.

“Sulfia,” I said. “I. . ”

Sulfia looked at me and smiled. She was too tired to speak. She was always working so much. She put her finger to her lips. And then I lay down in bed again, fully dressed, still in my makeup. Sulfia thought it would be okay for me to do so on a day like today. The second shoe, however, fell to the floor. The comforter, which smelled like Sulfia, shielded me from the emptiness and loneliness of this room and held the heartbreak at bay.

“Stay with me,” I begged as I fell asleep.

Sulfia did as I asked. She always did. I couldn’t compel her to do anything, but the things I simply begged her to do never went unfulfilled. Sulfia never left behind anyone in need. That wasn’t her way.

When I woke up, my entire body ached. The fake lashes had fallen off and lay on the pillow. My face was encrusted in dried makeup and tears. The black dress that so flattered my figure did not smell too good.

I went into the kitchen. Kalganow and his teacher were there. She sat on a stool and he stood at the stove stirring something in a pot. I suddenly saw them as a unit, like two drops of grease on the surface of a bowl of soup that melt into one. Later I’d tell them what I thought of them.

I went to the bathroom and got myself together. I ran cold water through my hair so it would shine, and washed my face and refreshed it with cold water, too. I wrapped myself in a bathrobe that was hanging from the back of the door. It had no scent. But I could tell it had belonged to Sulfia and now it was mine.

Kalganow put a bowl of cream of wheat in front of me. I tried it. It was clumpy but I didn’t say anything. I studied the kitchen tiles, each adorned with Sulfia’s face. It was a wonderful portrait, an almost photographic likeness. I touched one of the tiles. It was warm and smooth.

“How did you do that?” I asked Kalganow.

“What?”

“That. . the images on the tiles.”

“What images?”

“Those,” I said, pointing to Sulfia’s face on one of the tiles.

“They’re white,” he said.

We had to sort out a few things. Material things. Sulfia’s belongings. She didn’t have much. She had two shelves in the bureau. She didn’t have anything else — she had signed over the lease on her apartment to Kalganow.

“You took everything away from her!” I yelled.

“Rosie,” Kalganow whispered. “It was her idea.”

“But why? You’re just a couple of old bags. She was young and. . had her whole life in front of her.”

There was nothing to be done at that point about the apartment. Unless I wanted to take the two of them to court. At first I planned to do that. I convinced myself to do it in Sulfia’s name. But it was hard to commit to it — I just had no desire. I was exhausted. Normally I was never tired. I didn’t sleep much as a rule — five hours was fine, and with six I was completely rested. But now I was sleepy. I covered my mouth with my hand so I wouldn’t yawn directly in the bloated face of the teacher of Russian and literature.

“I’m tired,” I said to the teacher.

She looked at me as if I were crazy.

“Then you might consider going back to bed,” she said.

She was speaking in a more formal tone to me now, which I liked. During the funeral she had tried to speak to me in a very familiar way. I had thought it rude for her to try to ingratiate herself with me at a moment of weakness.

“I can’t lie down,” I said. “Unlike you, I have a lot to do.”

I wanted to sort out Sulfia’s things. Her few things — clothes, letters, documents.

But instead I went back to my cot and fell asleep.