Stalina: A Novel Part 9

Svetlana was happily rubbing the sides of her mouth with her ebony and white paws.

"Could it be the crow thinks you are one of hers, my little black cat? The worms are probably healthier than the stuff we feed you."

The foul-smelling cat food we fed her reminded me of the "tourist's lunch," cans of ground fish parts they used to sell in Leningrad in the 1950s when the Baltic Sea had no more fish for the season.

My mother ate the foul-smelling stuff out of some kind of fanatical pride. It was slimy and smelled like a rotten animal carca.s.s. She called it her "fish lover's pate" and always spread it on soda crackers and drank a gla.s.s of vodka to wash it down. I was sure they'd used rotten fish and other refuse in the recipe because when you would puncture the can, there would be a hiss and the stench would fill the room. There were times when I was very hungry and would join my mother in this dreadful delicacy. In order to swallow it, I had to first take a sip of vodka, then hold my nose and place a forkful to the back of my throat. Luckily it was ground up like that crow's worm, so no chewing was needed. The museums were being gilded with gold while there was nothing for us to eat. Any tourist who dared to eat a forkful of "tourist's lunch" would have had a true Soviet experience.

"Svetlana, you would probably love 'tourist's lunch.' You can be sure the cats at the Kremlin were never fed that slop. Let's go see Mr. Suri and ask him what he thinks about your foster mother, Mme Crow."

The wind made the pine trees bend, and the crow kept shrieking at me. I don't think she liked to see me touch Svetlana. Mr. Suri was poring over some paperwork at the desk.

"Good evening, Mr. Suri."

"Stalina, Amalia called. She wants you to call her."

"I saw something very strange out there."

"In room two? What happened? Are they going to sue us?"

"No, they don't want the attention. Something else, under the trees. Svetlana and the crow-"

"What about under the trees?"

"The crow was feeding worms to Svetlana."

"Did you go where I sit?" Mr. Suri asked, somewhat agitated.

"You mean where you draw? Yes, near there. The crow adopted little Svetlana."

"You saw my drawings?"

"The wind blew pine needles over them."

"It sounded like Amalia needed to talk to you."

"I'll call her, but what about the cat and the crow?"

"Maybe we should call a vet to make sure the worms won't poison her."

"I'm happy you have concern for Svetlana."

"I need a good mouser for the motel."

"You hear that, Sveta? You have to earn your keep."

"Let her grow up to be a big cat with a big hunger," Mr. Suri said as he held Svetlana's black face still in his hand for a little moment.

"She's getting a taste for raw meat from the worms. I have a friend who is a vet; let's see what he thinks," he said.

"Thank you, Mr. Suri."

"Stalina, what about the guy who fell off the bed?"

"He got a bit carried away on the 'roller-bed-coaster.'"

"You're sure he's not going to sue us?"

"Absolutely not, and besides, he was fine when they left."

"Call Amalia," he said, handing me the phone. "She's at home."

I dialed. "Preevyet, Amalia," I said when she answered.

"Da...da.... da.... da...spaseeba. Do svidaniya."

I put the phone down slowly and quietly.

"Stalina, is everything all right?" Mr. Suri asked.

"It's my mother; she died yesterday. The rooming house called. They want to know what to do."

"I'm sorry." He put his hand on my shoulder.

"Thank you, she was old and..."

"And what?"

"And sad. She missed the old Russia."

"She missed the Communists?" he asked.

"She believed in our world," I said.

A heavy weight pushed down on my emptied chest. Mother mourned the loss of Russia's collective power. Dementia or not, she knew her world was gone, throwing her into a place filled with fear and anger. It was difficult to catch my breath. A car leaving the motel scrunched and spun in the gravel, and the desk in the office shook slightly from the movement.

"Sit." Mr. Suri pulled up the chair for me. "Is that why she named you Stalina?"

"My name was for protection. Why else would a Jew name her daughter after Stalin? My mother named me Stalina as a joke," I told Mr. Suri.

"What do you mean?"

"She was playing a joke on him."

"On Stalin?"

"He wanted to send all the Jews to Siberia, so she named me after him. His obsession for power was fueled with paranoia. He feared many, not just us Jews. My mother hoped he would never harm his namesake. That's how her mind worked. My mother worshipped and feared him at the same time. My father hated him. I grew up with Stalin's image in my dreams."

"Did you ever meet him?" Mr. Suri was very curious.

"No, not really. Only in my dreams...and my nightmares."

"Did your mother think you would?"

"When I meet someone and they love my name, I know what they believe. In that way it does protect me. Those I can trust hated my name and wanted me to change it."

"But here you are, safe and untouched, so it must have worked," Mr. Suri said. He took my hand.

I could not tell if Mr. Suri was touching me out of pity or affection. I was still having trouble breathing. My mother was no longer breathing.

"I would like to know how she died," I said, staring at a calendar from Domenico's Pharmacy behind the front desk. It was February 16, 1994. She must have died the day before. The calendar's picture of the month was of a pharmacist pouring little oval-shaped blue pills through a paper funnel into a brown jar. On the bottom was an advertis.e.m.e.nt for a drug called Xanax, with a suggestion: "Come out from under that cloud. Talk to your doctor about Xanax." My eyes started wandering around the calendar. Next to the calendar was a Valentine's Day card from Mr. Suri's son. In Russia there are saints for every day, but the picture of a puppy holding a red heart in his mouth with the words "Be Mine" scrawled across the card made no sense to me. We don't celebrate that day in Russia. We don't need a special day for the heart. Emotions for Russians are like test tubes of boiling sulfurs. Everything is potentially a drama. I noticed that holidays here always coincide with sales in stores. In Russia we have parades.

"What are those drawings you make?" I asked Mr. Suri. "Are they plans for something?"

"Changes to our little strip of motels. Let's not talk about this now, Stalina. What about your mother?"

The well-fed Svetlana was asleep in my lap. I began to feel sad. It felt like a bony hand was reaching into my gut, twisting my insides, and pulling them down to my feet. A sound was forming in the silence. It was a long, exhausted sigh. It sounded so far away, but it was mine, and it grew into a sob.

"Stalina, I am so sorry about your mother," Mr. Suri said, touching my shoulders. All of a sudden I felt very old. My two and a half years in the USA suddenly seemed very long. My fifty-eight years caught up with me. Death always makes one feel old.

"Tell me something about Russia," Mr. Suri said very gently.

"You should...I mean, you have to give room one a warning." I liked that he was trying to get me to stop crying.

"You are so efficient, Stalina. Soon you'll be running this place."

"Oh no, Mr. Suri, I would never think of..."

Everything embarra.s.sed me-his attention, my mother's death, my feelings-it all made me go slightly faint. I focused on the apple sitting on the counter. Mr. Suri always had an apple for a snack. I began to tell him something from my past.

"When autumn came, my mother and grandmother closed down our summer house. My job was to take the curtains from the windows and throw mothb.a.l.l.s in the corners of the closets and on the beds."

"No wonder you were such a good maid when you first came here," Mr. Suri said, picking up his apple and shining it.

I continued.

"We did not pack up the kitchen. Every pot and pan remained on a hook, all the plates were kept unwrapped in the cupboards, and all the knives sharpened in the drawers. During the last days of summer, there were squash the size of canoes in the garden, and you could not step in there without smashing tomatoes under your feet. Our wooden kitchen table was big enough to seat ten, and in the middle my mother always kept a basket woven by a local farmer from reeds that grew at the edges of the marshes. I used the basket to collect apples for my grandmother Lana's special applesauce. She would say about the big load of the beat-up reds I picked off the ground, 'They may not be very pretty, but I can make delicious sauce with them.'"

"I am a fan of applesauce," Mr. Suri said.

"I would wear the reed basket on my head like a great wizard's hat. The sunlight would filter through the slats and make flickering jewels all over my body. Inside the basket was dark and close and smelled of the earth. We had only four apple trees, but we called them 'the orchard.' The stand of trees made a pool of shade on one side of the yard, with gra.s.s underneath that was always cool and moist. I used to lie out under the trees with my dog Pepe, throwing him apples to fetch until his tongue dragged on the ground."

"A dog-maybe we need a dog for the motel? Or here at the front desk for protection," Mr. Suri interjected.

"I feel perfectly safe with the bat under the counter, sir."

"Stalina, remember what I said about calling me sir." He continued to shine his apple.

I went on. "Collecting the apples I'd pretend to be a spy on an espionage mission gathering data on Russia's enemies. One summer, soon after the war was over, we were still unnerved by the Germans. I imagined the apples picked off the ground were battle-weary German soldiers holding secrets and treasures they stole from Russia. The apples picked fresh from the trees were the shiny, bright Americans-our friends who would soon turn and go rotten."

Mr. Suri was rubbing his apple vigorously on his pant leg.

"My grandmother would stand on the back steps, wiping her hands on her ap.r.o.n. I always called her Lana Lana because that was my grandfather's pet name for her. She watched me work under the trees. Proud of her acute eyesight, she'd point to places where I'd missed apples. I carried the basket on top of my head; fifty apples was no problem. She would hold the door open as I ran for the table to drop my load."

"Hold on one moment, Stalina," Mr. Suri interrupted. "I have to give room one a warning."

He dialed the room. "h.e.l.lo, this is the front desk. You have fifteen minutes left."

"I saw that young couple going in. They looked nervous; I thought maybe it was their first time." I realized that I had stopped crying.

"You should have heard the grunt that came over the phone, Stalina," he said, laughing. "They definitely figured out how to do something with each other."

He smacked his lips with the first bite of the young apple. I continued.

"Lana Lana and I would sit side by side at the table and examine each apple. The bright, smooth ones were for eating, and the nasty fallen ones were for sauce. Separating the apples was our time together. My mother would be at the stove cooking dinner surrounded by the swirling steam from the boiling pots of sauteed onions mixed with rosemary and dill. She looked as if she were floating in the clouds. The rosemary smelled like cedar trees, and the dill had the scent of the ocean. The outside brought inside."

Mr. Suri's mouth was filled with apple as he nodded at me to go on.

"After every apple pa.s.sed through her hands, my grandmother would select the most perfect one and shine it on her soft ap.r.o.n. She would pull out my grandfather's folding knife. She always had it in her pocket since he died of a heart attack. The knife, opened and glinting, fit perfectly in her broad, well-worn hands."

Mr. Suri had stopped eating and was just listening.

I told him how with the polished apple in her left hand she began the ritual peeling of the fruit's skin in one long spiral. Hoping to learn the subtleties of her moves, I would watch the waxy, red skin drop from the slowly turning apple. She would move the knife through the skin so close to the surface that the white fruit inside remained untouched. At every curve, moving the knife, she would look up to be sure I was watching. The red skin fell like a snake to her feet. It was mine. I retrieved it from between her leather-thonged feet and stretched the shiny peel lengthwise between my hands. Reflections of the kitchen stretched in its slender red curves. She held the apple up to the light. Naked in her hand it was a pearl, the full moon, a finely carved muscle all at once. Sweeter than spun sugar, the smell hit me as I leaned against her big chest and looked up, fascinated by her delicate work. She would then move the knife in her hand and make a slice following the curve of the apple. "You must always slice the apple before it starts to change color," she explained. Again, with the apple slightly turned, she made another fresh cut, and with a final flip pulled out a perfect wedge, held at the tip of her blade, just for me. "Here, Stalina, the first slice is the best," she would say and watch carefully as I ate the piece of apple.

"I love apples," Mr. Suri said, biting into his again.

"I feel better now," I said.

"What are you going to do about your mother? In India we cremate and send the ashes on a paper boat into the river."

"I think the rooming house can organize a cremation. They are very practical about such things in Russia."

"Will you go?"

"It's very expensive. Olga can..."

"What about Olga?"

"She can help with the arrangements. She has her own beauty salon not far from the rooming house."

"Do you think people need to have their hair done for cremations?" he asked and c.o.c.ked his head. In that moment I saw him as a very young boy. Innocent and curious.

"No, that wouldn't be very practical. I need to go home, Mr. Suri."