The Russian Dreambook of Color and Flight (3 page)

The simplest of these soups is called the bride's soup, a dish Olga remembered preparing on her wedding day under the watchful eye of Ilke, her soon-to-be mother-in-law. There was Zvi, his best trousers rolled up and the guests standing behind him. Ilke brought in a basin of river water and Olga knelt and washed Zvi's feet. When she'd washed to Ilke's satisfaction, Olga drank the water, drank until she drained even the dirt. For a Jewish wife it has to be this way, taking the dust of the road, of her husband's journey, into herself so that they can carry the road between them. What words? No words, just the dust, the only true element. 'Cry out,' the rabbi canted. 'What shall we cry?' the guests asked. All men are like grass, like the flower that fades. To dust they return. 'It's bitter,' a male guest sang. 'So a kiss to make it sweet,' they all replied. And they kissed. For the first time, Olga with grains of dirt lodged between her molars.

It was just one of the many old steppe traditions that Olga wanted to teach her future daughter-in-law, whoever that
might be—but this girl here, dumb as a Tula cookie, simply could not or would not catch on. At this precise moment, for some reason—God only knew why—maybe because her eyes and ears had become well turned for a disaster in progress—Olga looked up. A dark form fell past the kitchen window and landed on the heap with a loud thud.

'Good God!' Yuri jumped from his chair. Olga threw open the window. For a long moment Olga, Yuri and Zoya observed Mircha's broken body, steaming in the snow beside the heap. A disaster all right, and Olga couldn't find the words for it. All the phrases and euphemisms flapped about uselessly, overcoats four sizes too big.

'Go and bring him in,' Olga turned to Yuri at last. 'We'll put him in the bath,' she said, pulling the window closed and drawing the curtain over it.

***

Having read
The Death of Ivan Ilyich
several times, and being university educated, Olga took Tolstoy quite at his word when he advised keeping death in the living room in order to appreciate life. She just didn't account for Mircha's body bloating so. Normally so small and wiry, it was now at least twice its usual size. And him still missing an arm! It was as if, Olga decided as she poured the last of the three buckets of water over Mircha, that in death God made us larger to give us all a glimpse of how we might become grander in ways we'd never dreamed.

With Yuri's help, Olga repositioned Mircha in the bath. An oddity of the building, this porcelain tub. It had faux gold spigots and claw feet. It was as if the building was so ashamed of its outward appearance, that the building planners, in an attempt to suggest a grandeur of long-gone days, bestowed this strange relic of misplaced opulence. Especially incongruent now, as they had been without running water in the building for over three months.

After towel drying Mircha with a cloth made with no seams or knots, Olga and Yuri dressed him in his military uniform, though already he'd acquired so much gas they could not button the trousers at the waist and they left the service coat open.

Zoya observed their progress from her chair in the kitchen. Occasionally she rose to stir the soup, still simmering on the stove. She pinched her nose. 'Why do we have to lay him out here? He stinks.'

An old and slow-burning irritation flared inside Olga's chest. 'A wife should not have to lay out her husband. We'll do this for Azade and mark my words—she'll thank us for it later.' Olga leaned over Mircha, polished the prized Zhukov medal, brushed the stiff shoulder boards. She made one last adjustment to his collar and then returned to the kitchen for the salt. Olga handed Zoya a small blue bowl filled to the rim with salt. 'Put this on his stomach,' she said.

Zoya brought her hand to her face. 'Oh, no. I'm not touching him.'

Olga sighed. It was the way of these younger girls, she
knew, to turn their noses up at antiquated ideas like duty or compassion. But what are we without our traditions? Olga wanted to ask the girl. Who are we if we will not honour our dead?

Just then Lukeria and her granddaughter, Tanya, pushed through the door. Lukeria wore her second-best dress, the one peppered with the tiny periwinkle- and violet-coloured flowers. She kept her chin tucked to her chest and shuffled towards the bath, ignoring Tanya's attempts to guide her toward a chair. Approaching the tub, Tanya drew the sign of the cross with her forefinger and thumb, and sat in a chair, that tattered notebook pinched between her elbow and her side. A thinker, that one. Given the trouble her own words had been causing her, Olga understood the need to set things down, peg them right and true.

Vitek arrived next, his crow-black hair stiff with shoe polish. He'd slathered thick layers of the blacking on every crease of his leather jacket as well and now that the polish had hardened, Vitek had to walk in a most unnatural way, lest the jacket shatter. Following Vitek was Azade's goat, Koza, and lastly Azade, the widow herself, red in the eyes and looking altogether like a wet newspaper wearing boots. Mircha was no treat to live with—anyone could hear their arguments from the first floor to the fifth, carried through the heating pipes. But Olga understood her tears. Women needed men. What was a woman to do if she fell down some steps and broke her leg? It was only one of the many permutations of fear, that unrelenting
contract holding so many unhappy marriages together. Each of them—Olga, Lukeria, and now Azade—had one way or another been left behind. And now Olga knew it was the one thing, this fear, about which they'd never openly talk.

'I'm so very sorry,' Yuri murmured, setting a chair for Azade near the head of the bath. Zoya handed Azade a tissue. Olga brought more chairs in and placed a large chunk of ice in Mircha's outstretched hand. At such occasions it was customary to gather around and think of complimentary things to say about the dead until the ice melted, the signal that they could begin long rounds of toasting.

Five minutes passed, then ten. Drops of water pooled on the floor beneath Mircha's hand, and still no one said a word. The man had loved the bottle. He said strange things. He believed absolutely that all the transcaucasus people—Laks, Avars, Circassians—mountain people at heart—should unite and secede from Russia. Steppe Jews like Olga, who could be more mountainly in their thinking if they tried a little harder, could possibly be grandfathered into the cause. 'Just think—a free state for all of us misfitted types. Free and autonomous. After all, who can deny that Russia has been and will always be a mother to some and a stepmother to others? This is the only solution really, and I can be president. And you, Olga, you can be my secretary.' All this he had said just days before he leapt from the roof.

Olga scooted her chair a little closer to the bath, adjusted a stray strand of Mircha's silver hair. Now just what had
changed, what unexpected reconfiguration occurred in his thoughts so that jumping from their roof was the only acceptable solution? When a man loses his dream, he ceases to be a man, he ceases to be alive. Now wasn't it Mircha who said that to her Yuri once? Olga wagged her head back and forth and made her signature sad clucking sounds.

Finally, the last bit of the ice melted. The vodka had grown warm where she'd been holding the bottle next to her body. Olga cleared her throat. 'He was a good man in a tangential way. You could feel that behind the vitriol, the bile, and rage, really he meant well.'

Another long moment of protracted silence, and then Yuri coughed. 'He was in terrible agony,' he said. Yuri touched Mircha's creased forehead, the source of so many of Mircha's agonies.

'He might have jumped sooner,' Vitek stuffed his hands into his coat pockets. 'But at least he did it.'

'He always was one for grand gestures,' Lukeria added.

'A mule among stallions,' Azade whispered.

Olga filled everyone's glasses. 'Well, that's that and God rest him, he's settled now and at peace.' Olga raised her glass and they all swallowed.

'He was never a good-looking man,' Zoya started off.

'But God rest him, he's got both arms and legs now,' Tanya replied, her open notebook balanced on her lap.

'And may he have better boots for longer journeys.' Azade raised her glass.

And may he teach the angels how to fish the glass sea,' Yuri said, bringing his sleeve to his nose.

And then they grew quiet again, thinking.

'It is just me, or is the stink in here worse than ever?' Lukeria said suddenly.

'The soup!' Olga cried, rushing for the kitchen.

'What I don't understand,' Zoya turned to Yuri, 'is how a Sabbath soup can double for a funeral soup.' Now Zoya turned to Tanya. 'You should write that down in your notebook.'

Vitek leaned toward Tanya. 'Zhirinovsky will save the country. Write that down in your notebook.'

'Please.' Tanya, overwhelmed by the combined odours of Vitek's breath and Mircha's body, waved her hand near her nose. 'There's a man dead here.'

'Zhirinovsky is an idiot. He sleeps with a pogo stick,' Yuri said.

'Please.' Olga returned with the tureen of soup, set it down on the table with a loud thunk. 'There are women here. Jews.'

'Zhirinovsky is a Jew.' Vitek smiled broadly.

'He's a madman,' Zoya said.

'He's inspired,' Vitek said.

'The things people like him call people like us.' Olga looked at Zoya, who looked at Yuri. Olga distributed the bowls, the bright orange ones with the white polka dots.

'Zhids,' Yuri wagged his head from side to side.

'Kikes,' Azade said.

'Dogs,' Tanya whispered.

'Swine,' Lukeria said nostalgically.

'Rodents and murderers,' Vitek sang.

'Well, thank heavens nobody thinks like that anymore,' Yuri said, his voice bright.

At this the room fell silent. Unnaturally silent. Olga saw that Yuri's ears were beetroot red and she knew he was not altogether the child that he so often pretended to be.

'Let's eat,' Olga said and they dragged their chairs to the other side of the room, where she ladled out the soup and they fell to eating in silence. After each mouthful of soup Azade licked the spoon, tucked it into her left boot and pulled a different spoon from her right boot. On this went until Azade had gone through at least twenty spoons and the sheer wonder and excess of it mesmerized Olga, who could not take her eyes off the woman.

'It must be a Gypsy thing,' Lukeria whispered in a voice so loud that everyone could hear her plainly.

'Avar,' Tanya whispered back. 'I think she's Avar or perhaps Lezghin.'

'Well, whatever she is, clearly she's quite mad with grief.' Lukeria paused for a split second and then added as if as an afterthought, 'This soup, it's got a distinct something about it.'

Zoya hooked her chin toward Olga. 'That's because she burned it.'

'In that case,' Lukeria stood slowly and patted her busy print dress into place, 'I won't ask for the recipe.' Lukeria turned to Tanya. 'Let's go. The smell in here is slapping me in the face.'

At that very moment Vitek's pager bleated. 'Big bizness,' he said with a smile, his gold tooth winking. Vitek pushed himself up from the chair with his legs, the whole time keeping his torso straight and level. Still his jacket creaked and complained. He tucked the opened bottle of vodka into his waistband and followed Lukeria and Tanya out the door. The goat trailed at his heels, its thick hooves thudding over the floor.

Azade stood to her feet. She bent over Mircha and looked at him with suspicion. 'Well,' she turned to Olga. 'I better get back to work.' And she shuffled out the door.

Strange, Olga thought as she watched the door fall back into its locks. Strange how they all couldn't help but be ugly at a time when people usually try to offer their best, if only to prove to each other for a short time that they can rise above themselves. It felt strange to recognize that sometimes death did not bring people together, but provided instead one more reason to further the distance between them. It was like digging through her secret stash of socks and boiled sweets only to discover that she'd come up short. That's how she felt: cheated somehow.

And she missed Zvi. Looking at Mircha, dressed in his uniform and stretched over the bath and so still, it was hard not to look at him and think of Zvi. Hard not to wonder what had become of him. She wasn't so lost in her old grief to forget that there were thousands like her in apartment buildings everywhere quietly wondering if their husbands or brothers or sons would miraculously appear. Called out of the dust, from
the air, they would somehow be spirited to their doors and they would knock. Weary from their years-long journey they would be faint, tired—but alive. Marvellously alive. Although she knew from her many years at the
Red Star
where she examined so many reports to the contrary that this wouldn't happen, Olga liked to imagine that it could. Without a dream we are dead. Now she remembered, now she knew who said that. Not Mircha, but Zvi. In his service uniform, one of the last things, in fact, that he had said. And the gummy notion that there must be a vital clue in that bit of advice, something essential that she should have decoded by now, something she'd missed that would tell her how better to live, stuck to her like a bathhouse leaf.

Zoya and Yuri had already retired behind their shared privacy curtain, an intricate arrangement of tablecloths and sheets hung over fishing wire. Olga pulled a sheet over Mircha and blew out the candle. In the morning she would think about what to do with his body. But today, she'd had enough trouble. She gathered the bowls and carried them back to the kitchen, where she filled the sink with a little soap and some water from the kettle. It wasn't fair, this life. All these years Azade stuck with a husband she didn't want and Olga longing for Zvi, whom she did want. It was wrong to be bitter, she knew, but a person can't help feeling the way she does. Olga reached for a bowl. It slid from her hand and dashed against the sink, breaking to shards and cutting her palms.

She leaned her elbows over the sink. The tears were there,
she was just that angry and beaten, but on days like these even crying required too much effort. Olga straightened, wrapped her hand in a dishcloth and crossed the darkened room, feeling her way through the strung sheets for her bed. She unbuttoned her sweater and her housedress, and hung them in the tall wardrobe. Lined her slippers carefully at the side of her bed. Then she lay on the mattress and listened to the sounds of her neighbours around her carrying on with their nightly business. Lukeria's heavy breathing rose up through the air vents and from the courtyard she could hear Vitek serenading the moon. Here, inside the apartment from behind the privacy curtains, Zoya and Yuri churned through separate dreams, Zoya murmuring her disapproval, while Yuri called out the names of rivers and the beautiful names of the beautiful fish that swam in them.