My son-in-law stood behind her with a bouquet of frozen carnations in his hand. He’d probably just bought them in a subway station. He smiled proudly. It hadn’t been easy. Together he and I had overcome resistance, appealing to Sulfia on two fronts. He evidently had a lot of influence over my daughter. I think it tickled Sergej to have such a graceful swan like me as his mother-in-law, especially given that he had married such an ugly duckling.
The most important thing, however, was Aminat. It was all I could do not to grab her in my arms immediately and kiss her beautiful little face.
“Please come in, my dears,” I said graciously, and took the bouquet of flowers from my son-in-law’s hand.
“Don’t be so shy,” I said. That was for Sulfia’s benefit; she was standing there as if turned to stone.
Aminat peeled off her hat and her white fleece jacket in a single motion, let both fall to the floor, wrapped both of her arms around me, and pressed her face to my stomach.
I casually put my hand on her head. I wasn’t going to show what a happy day this was for me.
We had covered a big table in one of our rooms. For such an occasion, we didn’t want to sit in the kitchen. This was the room in which Sulfia had grown up, as a child, as a girl. Later she had shared it with Aminat, and then for a time it had been Aminat’s room. Since I’d lost Aminat it had sat empty. The furniture was still in it, cold and unused, but I had not been able to breathe life back into it, even when I bought a few new children’s books and a puppet. So I had packed them away; they were stuffed into the depths of my wardrobe biding their time.
This empty room served as the storeroom for my tea fungus, which was doing so well that it took up more and more space. At first I had kept it in a five-liter jar, where it looked like a dozen crepes stuck together and dropped into slimy liquid. But it kept growing and the drink it produced kept getting more and more flavorful — at some stage it got too strong. I separated the individual layers and moved each into its own new jar, where they could continue to grow. I lined up the jars on the broad windowsill in Aminat’s old room. I was more comfortable with it there, too, because I worried that Klavdia would secretly put bits of trash into the jars if they were left unattended in the kitchen much longer.
It wasn’t easy to get hold of so many empty jars. Canning jars were a valuable commodity, and I had to get them from all over. I asked co-workers for them, searched for lids that would fit the jars I did find, and never threw anything away.
Now we had our big table set up in the middle of the room. I was the best hostess you could possibly imagine. I had spread out a starched white linen tablecloth and decorated the table with a vase of magnificent red roses. I’d been given the roses by the parents of a girl who was on the verge of being kicked out of the school where I worked for skipping class. The parents mistook me for the director of the school because I carried myself like one. When they realized they’d given the bouquet to the wrong person, it was already too late and they were too polite to ask for the roses back.
The frozen carnations brought by my son-in-law I left in the kitchen; putting them side-by-side with the roses would surely have been embarrassing for him. I had brought out our best silverware. There were glasses for wine and water. I had cooked a shulpa — delicate beef broth with pieces of meat — in a clay pot. Then came the main dish, a rice pilaf with mutton and raisins.
We sat down at the table. If Aminat hadn’t chattered the whole time there would have been silence throughout the meal, in which case I would have to have made conversation. Actually it would have been my husband’s responsibility, but he was never any good at it. He liked to eat in peace. But Aminat was stuffing her mouth full and speaking for five. She asked questions and answered them herself. She had no manners. She had completely forgotten everything I’d taught her.
“My child,” I reminded her with deep affection, “we don’t speak with our mouths full.”
She stopped talking and stared at me, seeming not to understand what I meant. Table manners were apparently not a topic of discussion at Sulfia’s. In my eyes, denying a child a proper upbringing bordered on abuse.
“Why not?” said Aminat, half-chewed meat visible in her sweet little mouth.
“It just looks disgusting, my dear. And you are pretty — you shouldn’t look disgusting.”
Aminat chattered on and interrupted every timid attempt by the adults to converse with each other. Sulfia continued to say nothing, leaving me to do what was necessary.
“Sweetie, be quiet for a moment. The adults are talking right now.”
“Who is? Nobody’s saying anything.”
Aminat turned her head happily from one silent face to the next.
“That’s because you keep interrupting everyone. Good children don’t do that.”
She fell silent and pouted. But it didn’t bother me. I knew children needed to be treated like a beet garden. When you eliminated weeds from their character, you got a better harvest.
“How are things at your job?” I asked my son-in-law as he was noisily slurping his soup.
“The work doesn’t do itself, that’s for sure,” he said and guffawed. Once again I didn’t know what to think of him. He ate enough for three and kept pointing out to Sulfia that she didn’t serve Tartar dishes as tasty as mine. He told Sulfia that she should make schulpa. Or any kind of soup at all.
“She was never particularly interested in cooking,” I said.
“I’ve noticed,” said my son-in-law.
He laughed. Aminat laughed with him. I gave them both a stern look. Laughing at Sulfia was something only I was permitted to do.
“She had other interests,” I said. “I encouraged her to do other things. . for instance. . ”
I looked at Sulfia and thought about what talent could justify her household deficiencies. Nothing occurred to me. She had always been miserably lazy, just like her father.
“So how are things at your job again?” I said, turning back to my son-in-law.
At that moment, Aminat knocked over her glass of sea buckthorn berry drink and I sent her to stand just outside the door of the room so she’d feel a bit ashamed. After ten minutes I let her back in and gave her dessert. She sat still on her chair now, looked at me out of the corner of her eye, pushed the nut-sized balls of dough of the chak-chak around on her plate, and said not a word more. Handled properly, she could still possibly grow up into a well-bred child.
Nobody could see what sorrow or joy was in my heart at any given moment. But in Sulfia’s colorless face you could read every thought that flitted through her head.
I had tried to teach her that nobody should be able to see when you were scared. That nobody should be able to tell when you were uncertain. That you shouldn’t show it when you loved someone. And that you smiled with particular affection at someone you hated. I worked so hard with Sulfia, but it was all for naught. She had no talent, not the slightest understanding of what I meant. It had repercussions to that day: over dinner Sulfia was for some incomprehensible reason very unhappy, and anyone who wished to could see it.
My son-in-law liked me. It was understandable. I was a handsome woman. In my late forties I still looked as if I were in my mid-thirties at most. My skin was firm and radiant, and I made myself up every morning before I went anywhere — even if it was just to the kitchen. I wore only red and black. I could pull it off.
At the first meal with our new extended family, I wore a simple black dress and black nylons. I had nicely shaped legs and made sure not to let them get too thin.
I always wore high heels. Sulfia never did. Today she had things on her feet that looked like a cross between an indoor slipper and a sneaker. She said my son-in-law had brought them from America. From America! Did people really wear that kind of crap over there, or had these shoes just been really cheap? If my husband had given me shoes like that I wouldn’t have let him into our bed for weeks.