The Hottest Dishes of the Tartar Cuisine

Lena

I discovered that I missed Aminat. I thought I’d gotten used to her absence, that it didn’t hurt anymore, that I was doing well. Until, that is, I realized I couldn’t stand being without her. On the one hand I could see her round the clock. I saw her constantly on TV and had bought magazines with posters of her in them. I’d bought a compilation CD of her and the other competitors on the show. That was even before she won. Her song was being played all over the radio.

“I want to see her,” I said to John. “I want to see her before I die.”

I also realized that all the requests I would earlier have held God responsible for I now put to John. Whether I wanted something big or small, I simply turned to John. It was uncomplicated and had quick results. Unlike God, John had yet to misunderstand anything. I also didn’t have to constantly apologize to John or promise him anything in return the way I always felt obligated to do with God. It made things easier.

“I have to see her,” I said to John.

He nodded.

I wouldn’t have been surprised if an hour later the doorbell rang and Aminat was standing there in the sequined dress from her last show with a bouquet of flowers in her hand for her beloved grandmother. But nothing happened. Not that day or the next. She didn’t call. And John just trimmed the roses in front of the house. I didn’t pressure him — he was after all no God.

The phone hardly rang at our place anyway. Sometimes John’s daughter was on the line and sometimes Dieter, for whom I bought groceries and whose apartment I cleaned. He, too, collected newspaper clippings of Aminat and doused them in his tears. He watched the same shows, though he seemed to see something completely different from me. He saw her as a victim of all the media attention.

But then one day the phone rang and there was a young woman’s voice on the line speaking somewhat shyly in broken Russian.

“Aminat!” I cried, hardly able to believe it was her. “Aminat, has your polished Tartar completely displaced your Russian?”

“I’m not Aminat,” said the girl. “I’m Lena.”

Lena. Who was Lena again, I asked myself, but then hit upon the answer. I remembered it like it was yesterday — the ugly, chubby-cheeked baby, Sulfia’s daughter with Rosenbaum. Lena! The one who’d been kidnapped and taken to Israel by Rosenbaum, breaking Sulfia’s heart. That Lena was on the line now. She’d probably heard that Aminat was a star and wanted money. I decided to play dumb.

Lena had called Dieter — Rosenbaum had that old number — and Dieter had given her my new number. She said she was coming to Germany and, if possible, hoped to get to know her sister and her mother — the whole family. Lena didn’t even know that Sulfia accompanied me in an urn now, and she acted as if she had no idea about Aminat’s success. I acted as if I believed her.

“How’s your grandmother?” I asked, assuming that not only the grandmother but both old Rosenbaums were long since dead.

“Very well, thanks,” Lena answered cheerfully.

On the day Lena’s plane landed, I had a migraine. John drove to the airport in his sand-colored Mercedes. I gave him Lena’s mobile number and described her to him, at least the way I remembered her: big head, short legs, small eyes, fuzzy hair.

John nodded and drove off.

Less than two hours later, he was back. He carried a little rolling suitcase into the house. Then he stepped to the side to let the girl behind him through the door. I was stunned. Before me stood Sulfia incarnate, an eighteen-year-old Sulfia in flesh and blood, slightly stooped and with a shy smile. This Sulfia had brown hair and light brown eyes — the copy had somewhat different coloration, but the rest was a perfect facsimile. She even dressed like Sulfia — the loose jeans created the suspicion that the person in them was overweight in the most inopportune places. She had on a dark-blue t-shirt with writing on it I couldn’t read, and not a single piece of jewelry beyond her gold earrings. Neither John nor Lena understood why I was frozen in place. Then Lena wrapped her arms around me. She was apparently a very impulsive girl.

I sat down on the sofa while John showed Lena around the house. They chatted away chirpily in English, which I couldn’t understand. I decided I needed to ask John to teach me. It bothered me that Lena could speak it and I couldn’t. I also wanted to speak English with John.

They came back to the living room and Lena kneeled in front of me and said with a shy smile, “And where is mama?”

She wasn’t a baby anymore, and I didn’t like her smile. Others might say it was charming, but I refused. I stood up and gestured with a wave of my hand that she should follow me. Lena traipsed happily along behind me as I led her into my bedroom. I took her by the shoulder (she was shorter than me, just like Sulfia), pointed to the urn, and, relishing this moment, said, “In there.”

At first she didn’t understand. Then she approached the urn and read the golden lettering on the marble — the name and date. Her lips began to quiver and she turned to me.

“Why didn’t anyone tell us?”

“Because none of you would have given a shit,” I said.