This time

This time I didn't want to leave Russia. It's all rather interesting, you see, because when I go there I habitually count the days  -- and then feel very guilty about it -- until I'm finally on the plane back to fairy-tale Amsterdam, away, away, away.  Of course this time I counted the days too, but only because I wanted none of them to end. And that, dear Reader, came to me as a surprise of the size of an elephant, no, a jumbo jet.

We started our Russian vacation in the south where I'm from. We hadn't yet boarded our flight, but I was already rolling my eyes and warning Anthony about Shakhty's limited number of sights: four main streets, an obligatory Lenin stature (every city and town in Russia has one) and a green park (that goes by the name The Park of Culture and Relaxation). What else is there to see? Maybe that newly rebuilt church, its walls whiter than white, that once was wiped out (the Bolsheviks) and the plot converted into a tram depot? What else? Overgrown playgrounds, and beat-up buses, and heavily dented roads, perhaps?

We landed in Rostov-Don at midnight. When the air suddenly turns into velvet -- sultry, fragrant, green velvet -- you know you are in the southern Russia. I always forget how luscious and scented the late spring there can be, in fact, alway is. My parents met us at the airport, and off with a taxi we went to Shakhty. You can rely on me to arrive with a bang, by which I mean I'm such a idiot. I managed to lose my phone when the taxi driver stopped to fill up on gas and we had to get out of the car and my phone slipped off my lap and none of us heard it drop on the gravel. The next morning, ratracing our steps, my mother and I again took a taxi and went to the gas station in question. The phone lay untouched (!) on the ground, only by then it had been run over by a fleet of cars. I'm such an idiot! Or was it an early misfortune for the fortune later? And what fortune that was, Reader! Our week and a half in Shakhty was a ton of fun, and cake, and family dinners, not to mention sun, and short-sleeve weather, and more food!

I'm loving it, Anthony didn't fail to say every day. Russia may be rough arounds the edges, but there is something so charming about it. Like that colorful make-shift stage next to my parents' apartment block where, back in the 80s, children could act out their performances, only by now the benches for spectators were almost all long gone, the rusty thills in their place fully consumed by grass. Or that iron play house where I kicked it as a child, it still stands there hiding now under the canopy of trees. And that old man's little patch of soil next to the rusty garage fenced off by the bushes of tea roses the color of the fire engine and filled to the brim with garden plants, each row a geometric line. And what about my grandparents' next-door neighbour who turned her patch into an open-air exhibition of garden statuary, that is, if one can call statuary the swan figurines made of frayed car tires. All those things I had, worryingly, overlooked but Anthony took notice of. And you said there is nothing to see!

Did I mention that neither of my parents speak English -- although my father did extraordinarily good this past year in regards of mastering the ABC's of English grammar and the beginner's vocabulary -- and Anthony is only starting on his textbook Learn Russian the Fast and Fun Way? What would they do when I wasn't there? I don't know if you can tell, but I was worried about that too. Indeed, what would they do? Here is what: they would watch The '80s: The Decade That Made Us on National Geographic, the Russian voice-over for my father and the English original in the background for Anthony. They say vodka connects people? I say television! (There also were Goodfellas and Rambo: First Blood Part II.)

My seventy-eight-year-old grandfather outdid everybody on the language front.  I mean, he cracked everybody up when he limped towards Anthony and, combining his microscopic knowledge of German with even smaller expertise in English, introduced himself as the gross father. We all bursted out in laughter, each probably giggling for different reasons. I chuckled from the realization that we were together at the time, and it was all that mattered, god damn the unswept side-streets, and dented roads, and other such things! My favorite moment every day was sitting down across the open balcony in the living room after everybody had gone to sleep and, one lung-ful after another of the sullen and soft air filled with the scent of acacia blossom, find comfort in the fact that Anthony snoozed in one room and my parents in another, and for the time being I didn't have to miss either.

I'm not even going to start on the food we had had. It's the subject for another post or two or three. We sat down for a full-scale dinner -- zakuski, first course, main, and desert -- every night. One thing Anthony thought could be bad, or mediocre in the least, was Russian food -- and this I don't know where he got from! --  but it only took him a day to fall head over heels with the local fare. Stay tuned!

On our last night in Shakhty we all went to a restaurant to celebrate my mother's birthday. We sat down and raised our glasses, and then a band started playing and a red-faced woman the shape of a watermelon from the table next to ours ran up to Anthony, grabbed him by his shirt, and swirled him into a dance. Don't scare him, mom said rushing after her. Let me dance with a foreigner!, cried the red-faced woman the shape of a watermelon. Rough around the edges but charming.

Next afternoon we flew to Moscow -- the city of 24/7 everything: weight loss clinics and breweries next door (!) -- to see my uncle's family. When we weren't at my uncle's devouring the crayfish he expertly cooked in a heavily salted broth with dill and bay leaf, and washing it down with beer, we walked. 

I sprained my foot and it swelled, but we walked on! We did the obligatory saunter around Red Square, and through Kitay-Gorod, and down the Boulevard Ring. We took a boat ride along the Moskva river and saw beautiful things like the new Cathedral of Christ the Savior that had been demolished by the Bolsheviks and in its place came a public swimming pool. 

One late evening we returned to Red Square to see it in the lights, and it was special. By which I mean there were hundreds of people and more flash lights coming off every second wherever you looked, and yet somehow I found myself standing there a few meters off the stone gate leading to Red Square and there was not a soul around me, a soft breeze the only disturbance. It felt quiet and comfortable, as if the whole world just folded itself up and I had nothing to do other than to feel the breeze in my face, and look at the colorful onion domes of Saint Basil's Cathedral on the horizon, and at Anthony ahead of me taking pictures with the enthusiasm of an American who finds himself at Red Square. And I felt very glad about where I was and where I'd just been. As if there were cracks in me, and now, for an instant, I was whole. I remember saying to myself: Please do not forget this moment. A second later -- hundreds of voices around me again and even more thoughts.

I've been thinking about that moment everyday since. But most of all, I've been thinking how I can't wait to go back.

Where you may be now

Dear Grandmother Glanya, my gentle babushka --

Never in my life I wrote you a letter before, and now that it's been three months since you are gone I can't help it. I still can't accept the fact that you are no more. There are many things I want to tell you now, but nothing is more important than this: I love you. Hard to tell what's gnawing at me more now: the fact that I didn't tell you as much when you were there to hear it or that I'll never, not in this lifetime, be able to again. I was thousands of miles away when you left. You went so quickly. That time when I hugged you goodbye this May, I should have hugged you more, I should have said I love you. After my mother called to tell me you'd left, I went out onto my balcony and looked up at the sky. It was dusky and the air was smoky, fluffy clouds unhurriedly drifting across the lavender sky. I watched planes ascending, and a few bird flocks heading somewhere far. I kept thinking, looking, even, where amidst all those clouds and birds and planes you may be now, the images getting distorted and blurry from tears.

You ended but I have yet to visit your grave. And your home. It must be so empty of you there now. Before, you would be in your kitchen hunching over your flower pots or shredding cabbage for your signature sauerkraut with redcurrant berries, or in your living room reorganizing your limitless cache of medicine or reading a history book with a magnifying glass, stating loudly it's not working but turning page after page after page. Today, no one there. Your winter coat and a couple dresses must be hanging purposelessly in your wardrobe, sharing spare space with this summer's jams and jars of pickles (you and your canned goods!). I can't believe you are gone. I know you are, yet in some sort of a haze I sometimes secretly dial your number to see that maybe, just maybe, you would pick up and ask when I would come to visit and I would loudly say that I would come soon, please wait for me.

I've told Anthony so many stories about you. His favorite is that about your two names. He finds it incredulous that when for some reason you had to renew your passport in your mid-thirties, a consulate clerk told you she didn't know of such name as Aglaya and so she typed in Alla instead. You said you didn't want to waste more time to re-new your renewed passport and carried on -- so nonchalant! -- with Aglaya, or Glanya, for us and Alla for everybody else. And everybody else it was. I recall running errands with you. It seemed that every other passer-by was somebody you knew, a former colleague, a friend, a friend of a friend, an old neighbor. You stopped for a hello, how's life? with everyone.

It snowed here today. Winter holidays are coming up. I miss the way we used to celebrate. Annually, we would have you over at my parents' place for New Year's, and come Christmas, January 7th, we would all go to you for a flamboyant meal. Even these years when you grew weaker and weaker to cook, the table still moaned under all that food: herring, boiled potatoes, shashlik (cooked on an upright grill set up right on the table!), chicken tabaka, pickled wild mushrooms, salad olivier, napoleon cake, and so much more. I loved it all, except for what had mayonnaise and sour cream, but your fresh cabbage salad was the best thing in the world for me. You turned that tight-lipped cabbage so juicy, and you could cut it into paper-thin shreds even with the dullest of knives. Utterly delectable. At the table I always chose a seat closest to that glass bowl, the one with tiny spikes on the outside, you used to pile the salad into. A week later, on the eve of Old New Year, my mother and I would come over, and the three of us would spend the night forecasting our fortune. We each burnt a piece of paper on an upended saucer, and after the flame had ceased we had to make out what exactly the shadow from the paper's silhouette resembled. I remember the shadow often looked like a standing bear, but I don't recall what it meant. Or candle wax, we would hold a lit candle over a bowl of cold water to see what shape molten wax will form into. Mostly it would coil into bizarre abstractions, but occasionally we could see a tea cup, an open book or a horse. One time we tried the cards -- they said you would live to see your ninetieth. Grandma, you came only six years short.
                                                       
                                                 ---
                

My Grandmother's Fresh Cabbage Salad with Carrot and Apple
Yield: 4-6 servings

1/2 small to medium white cabbage, outer leaves and core removed
1/2 tsp table salt
1/2 medium carrot, coarsely grated
1 medium to large apple (such as Jonagold or Golden Delicious), peeled, cored and coarsely grated
1 tsp apple cider vinegar
2 Tbsp olive oil
freshly ground black pepper, to taste
a small handful of finely chopped fresh dill

Slice the cabbage as thin as you can. Place in a large bowl, add the salt and mix by hand for a minute, kneading and crushing the cabbage to release the juices. Add the rest of the ingredients and mix well. Adjust the seasoning, if needed, and serve.

Where I've just come from

I got back from Russia two weeks ago on the nose, which is to say I should have stopped by to say hello sooner than this. But I couldn't. I'd sit down ready to write and I'd fall short, for I didn't see how to mince my rib-poking post-trip melancholia that left me in a shambles and rendered me tearful, speechless and inadequate for a good two weeks and then some more into paragraphs, sentences, words...

That time with my parents, so long planned, so long awaited, couldn't have raced past any faster. I'm glad I chose early May as the time for my visit. It felt like summer, hot and scorching. I don't remember it being so years ago; back then when late spring was still a jacket season. Despite my parents' precautions that I take light, short-sleeved clothes, no need for a coat, do you hear me? It is hot here, I did what I usually do -- the opposite. For one, I really didn't believe the heat would be that lasting (It is hot my foot!); and two, my residing in Amsterdam for as along as almost four years now taught me that local springs/summers are not very often in sync with my expectations of them, which is why I don't own that many sheer summer outfits. But man oh man, was it heavily hot indeed. At times it felt I, dressed in jeans and woolen (!) pull-over, could easily melt into asphalt leaving behind not as much as a pool of sweat (not even shoes) or better yet, evaporate into thick, hot, fumy afternoon air with a dull whoosh. But when the sun would hide behind the horizon and the air would get saturated with the night's ink and the sweet floral smell of that lone acacia tree out there below the windows (oh southern nights!), it couldn't get any more comfortable. Still warm, but not stuffy, there wasn't a night when I'd reach for a sheet, let alone a blanket. In the weather like that, local short and bumpy cucumbers and crunchy deep-pink radishes popped up at the markets in spades, and I ate tons of them, plain out of hand, or thinly slivered, salted and bedded on a slice of dark coriander seeds-encrusted rye bread.

It was a blast waking up to seeing my parents every day, sharing with them copious amounts of brewed-right-in-a-mug coffee, grounds and all (a Soviet rudiment), hearing my father's rattled opinions about Russian politics, staying up late with my mother watching silly TV series and movies. It was a blast, too, seeing my grandparents. They looked more stooped, more...aged. One of my grandmothers, who had been in the hospital throughout my stay, shrank like a wizened fruit. I wasn't prepared to see her so battered. My grandfather had had surgery before my arrival, and he didn't shine with much health either.  As I was saying good-byes to all my three grandparents, I caught myself thinking that it could be the last time that I see at least one of them. It gave me the creeps.

When Mom and Dad hugged me good-bye at the airport, amidst the cold-voiced departures announcements, they cried. As did I, but not only because of the farewell blues and my already missing them, the feeling that grew stronger with my every step away. I sobbed because of the chest-hurting remorse for wishing sometimes to get out sooner, to be finally back in Amsterdam again, wishing those two weeks go faster as much as I wished them to stay still. I kept sobbing once I'd flown back, too, for I couldn't help but longing so badly to return where I've just come from. Longing to be where I'm not, always.

I haven't cooked that much yet after my return, but there's been one dish that already found home on my plate a few times by now. I find it quite lovely and comforting, and hope you will, too.

White Beans with Dried Mushrooms

Adapted from Saveur, May 2012

Yield: 6-8 servings

No major deviations from the original recipe, except maybe that I use canned beans in place of their dried brethren, which is for no reason other than my impatience with this overnight soaking business.

This bean stew, it is no big deal. It tastes like a sum of all its few flavorful components -- dried porcini mushrooms, tomatoes, cannellini beans -- coaxed by heat into bright, luscious oneness. Nothing effete, nothing fussy.

15 g (1/2 oz.) dried porcini mushrooms

2-3 Tbsp olive oil

1 medium yellow onion, finely chopped

4 garlic cloves, finely chopped

3 Tbsp tomato paste

3 * 400 g (15 oz.) cans white beans (e.g., cannellini, butter beans, or lima beans), rinsed

1 * 400 g (15 oz.) can whole peeled tomatoes in juice, slightly crushed

500 ml (2 cups) vegetable stock or water

2 bay leaves

Salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste

Fresh herbs for garnish (optional)

1. In a bowl, soak the mushrooms in 1 L (4 cups) boiling water, about 20 minutes. With a slotted spoon, remove the mushrooms to a cutting board; chop finely. Slowly pour the soaking liquid into a large measuring vessel until you have 750 ml (3 cups), taking extra care to leave any sediment in the bottom of the bowl; chuck away the sediment. Set the soaking liquid along with the mushrooms aside.

2. Over medium flame, heat the oil in a large heavy-bottomed pot. Add the onion and garlic and cook, stirring frequently, until fragrant, about 4 minutes. Dump in the tomato paste, and keep cooking for another 2 minutes. Add the mushrooms, soaking liquid, beans, tomatoes, vegetable stock, and bay leaves; bring to a gentle boil. Scale the heat down to medium-low, and cook, partially covered and stirring occasionally, for 30-50 minutes, or until the beans are very tender and the cooking liquids get thicker. Season with salt and pepper, to taste. Sprinkle with some fresh herbs (the choice is yours; I went with fresh basil) before serving, but that is optional.