Читать книгу A Piece of Me - Beatrix Ost - Страница 19

On the blackboard that hung on the kitchen wall, written in chalk: ­Potato soup. Olga, our cook, slowly deciphered my mother’s orders, glancing at the clock above the door.

Mne nado poiti nakopat’ kartochki v ogorode. Vsyo rabota da rabota. I have to go dig up potatoes in the garden. Nothing but work, work, work. She peered through the window into the snowy whirlwind.

Ah, ya, she groaned. You want come along to garden?

Yes, I happily nodded, already climbing into my clammy leather boots.

Going out with Olga was a privilege. Olga was an authority. She was still young, in her mid-twenties, with a strong peasant’s build, her broad face typically set in skepticism. She obeyed only my mother and father. Not promptly, not immediately, more slowly, in her own rhythm. Olga’s Siberian tempo, my father called it, and had to laugh, since he liked her.

Olga alone had the key to the icehouse, and sometimes she took me along. To lock in the cold, the door was reinforced with layers of peat. Inside stood row after row of preserves. Frost covered the glass containers; meat and innards, wrapped in cloths, were frozen on ice-covered shelves. In tin buckets trout and carp stared open-mouthed through ice. Breath steamed up, and freezing fear crept into my heart at the thought that someone could lock us in. But Olga always took the precaution of sliding the key, fastened to the end of a wooden spoon, into the side of her boot. No joke this! she would say sternly.

In the farm kitchen, the oven sat solidly in the middle, and in the middle of the stove, framed by the fire, was the hot water cistern. Every morning a regiment of cockroaches scrambled about in search of food. Great hordes of hungry insects scurried soundlessly across and around the cool stove. Da chort poberi! Olga cursed. The devil take it! First she tossed a load of hot water at the creepy-crawlies. Then another, until the kitchen floor was flooded. She pulled up a chair and observed the roaches in their death throes. In one hand she held her mug with hot grain coffee; in the other, the ladle, reaching into the steaming kettle. Elbows propped on her knee, lost in thought, she stared blankly ahead. Olga’s morning meditation.

The kitchen door opened, and my grandmother poked her head in. No reaction from Olga.

Hrrrr. Olga is back with “the Russians,” my grandmother grumbled, using the Bavarian folk term for roaches, and threw the door shut.

Olga and my grandmother waged incessant war. Yet again that Russian tramp is not listening! she would say. When Olga simply did not wish to hear Grandmother, she rolled her eyes to the ceiling and groaned. Then my grandmother really got cross. But Olga remained unmoved, stoic and solid. Sometimes, at that crucial moment, Justa, the chambermaid, entered the picture. To unload her frustration, my grandmother gave her an undeserved box on the ear. Olga clattered loudly with the stove rings. Justa held her cheek. She was like a little dog, forever plagued with pangs of guilt and language problems. Somehow she regarded every box on the ear as just what she deserved.

Grandmother left the kitchen with a huff.

All Justa could say was: Stupid cow.

You stupid cow self! said Olga, brandishing the knife through the kitchen steam. Why you say nothing? Not hit me! Ya, Russkaya! pounding repeatedly on her breastbone. She underlined her point with a poke on Justa’s forehead.

Now, with my leather boots laced up, the coat pulled about me, I was ready to go out with Olga. She was already fully dressed in her Russian military fur, felt boots, fur cap with earflaps, fingerless gloves, and the basket.

No, you not enough warm, she said. She lifted my skirt to pull on a scratchy pair of baggy Bleyle tights, just high enough to cover the holes in my stocking knees. Far too large for me, these tights hung formlessly from beneath my coat. But warmth was the main thing, so I did not protest. I wanted to be with Olga.

Thus we set out across the little bridge, on past the frozen rock garden. Mounds of snow revealed bushes and shrubs; rectangular markings meant frozen vegetable beds. We trudged further through the sleeping orchard, leaving behind Grandfather’s tobacco row on our left. Its remnants leaned in the frost like scarecrows. A thin cut of black earth sliced the field in two. Rows of snowy mounds spread before us. We had arrived.

When fresh turnips, potatoes, red beets, or celery root were needed in wintertime, Olga ventured out to hack up these frozen mounds. She shoveled the earth aside, revealing a thick layer of straw beneath. There, protected from the frost, slumbered the fresh vegetables.

Vsyo rabota, da rabota, always work, nothing but work, Olga groaned, and dug.

How come you don’t talk like us? I asked into the cold, between Olga’s lunges.

Olga stopped.

I not German. Ya, Russkaya, Russkaya, Russkaya, I Olga Vlatinova. Rossiya, moya rodina, Russia is my homeland. You not understanding. You, best one, best one, she said, digging further. I speak language, that my mother, home, she said, laughing, and pressed me to her chest with her moist earth hand.

I helped gather vegetables into the basket, and above all, a few celery knobs. My mother had taught Olga to make one of my father’s favorite dishes: cooked celery knobs, finely sliced, mixed with minced apple, walnuts, pepper, salt, oil, vinegar, and mustard.

Fritz be jolly, Fritz be gay

Today is celery salad day

My mother sang her little tune, hoping the celery would perk him up. My father chuckled briefly.

You have no clue.

Yes, I do, more than you think, she replied gaily.

Adi never got cross, and that got on Fritz’s nerves. As he silently spooned up his food, charging the air with unspoken tension, my mother simply left the room.