‘It is a complete mystery to me that Katya should love a great clumsy person like me,’ Mr Petrov says. ‘But from the first moment she sees me after she has recovered from the scorpion sting it becomes obvious to all that she only has eyes for me. That our love is a precious thing that has been made in heaven.’
‘Yuk!’ I think to myself, this is getting past even sloppy.
‘You made the right decision, the economic welfare of twenty villages was more important,’ the professor announced. ‘No question about it.’
‘More important than love?’ Anya, who has never been heard to raise her voice, asks, incredulous. ‘Nothing in the world is more important than love, Professor!’ Then she adds in a soft and disappointed voice, ‘You made the wrong decision, Petrov Petrovitch.’
‘There is more,’ Mr Petrov said.
Two weeks after the scorpion incident, news came from Moscow that the consignment of beluga I had salted directly after leaving Katya at her father’s cottage had arrived spoiled. Three days later from St Petersburg came another angry message. The caviar from twenty great beluga fish, the biggest catch of the season and worth millions of roubles, and all salted by me, had also arrived spoiled. And then more and more, every beluga fish I had touched from the day of the scorpion was found on its arrival to be unfit for consumption.
There was only one answer possible and it was contained within the heads and spilled from the lips of every villager. I had told a lie and had secretly taken Katya Markova into my bed.
The rumour soon spread that I had been seen in a cornfield with her and that I had been making love to her when the scorpion stung her on the instep. I had broken my vow and lied to a holy priest and therefore to Saint Peter the Fisherman and to God Himself! I had destroyed them all and must be destroyed myself and all that I possessed should be given as a penance to the Church.
It was the rough justice of the fisherfolk and would be more merciful than the torture and humiliation the caviar merchants would demand. I would simply be taken out on the great river and dropped over the side of the boat too far to swim back to shore.
I was forbidden to see my beloved Katya, but allowed a visit from my five sisters. I forgot to tell you that my parents had passed away several years before. This caused a great deal of crying and distress, but I knew, at least, that they would be well taken care of, even though they would forever remain spinsters. I had publicly disgraced my family and there could be no forgiveness, not even the poorest peasant would now take such soiled goods as his bride. Before the priest came to confiscate all my possessions I had buried gold coins in a secret place which they had been told about.
As they took their leave, Anna, the oldest of my sisters, kissed me and whispered, ‘God be with you, Petrov Petrovitch, and have mercy on your soul. We have decided to use the money you have given us to emigrate to New York and we will take Katya Markova with us so she will be safe.’
I was taken out at dawn, when the grey mist hung over the great river. Twelve of the village elders, all fishermen except for the priest, accompanied me in the fishing boat. After two hours, when we had reached the centre of the widest stretch of the Volga, where it was impossible for any man to swim back to the shore, the donkey engine was cut. The men sang the great song of our river and the priest heard my confession. When I did not confess that I had made love to my beloved Katya Markova, he demanded that I do so.
‘You will not be granted absolution, my son. You will forever burn in hell! You must confess at once!’
‘Holy Father, I cannot confess to what I have not done!’ I cried.
‘Lies!’ one of the fishermen shouted. ‘How else could the caviar spoil? Not once, but twenty times!’ There was a chorus of approval at this remark. But I would not confess. I knew that Saint Peter the Fisherman would know I was telling the truth and he is a greater authority before God than a village priest.
Mr Petrov looks up and shrugs. ‘So they threw me overboard and started the donkey engine and in a moment the boat was lost in the mist. I knew that soon I must drown, that the strength in my arms would eventually forsake me and that I would sink under the gloomy black water.’
‘But you didn’t! Here you are with us!’ Mr Mendelsohn cries, obviously delighted at this happy outcome.
Mr Petrov grins. ‘God is good. I struck out for the shore, thinking that I should die exhausted rather than simply give in to my fate and sink to the bottom of the river. I had almost reached the end of my strength when I bumped into something floating in the mist. It was a large heavy object, which I grabbed, though it was not easy to hold onto. It was a beluga fish, a dead sturgeon of massive size floating on the surface. I was fortunate for it was late summer and the water was not yet cold. Two days later we reached the estuary to the Caspian Sea, a distant shore well beyond the twenty villages and, like Jonah himself, I was saved by a great fish.’
‘It was her blood!’ Tamara Polyansky says suddenly. ‘The blood you sucked from the scorpion sting! It was a woman’s blood and it caused the spoiling of the caviar!’
Mr Petrov shakes his head and laughs. ‘No, not so, my dear Tamara Polyansky, I think maybe there is too much showbiz in your blood. As I floated downstream holding onto the dead fish I saw many others also dead in the river. There was a mysterious disease among the sturgeon that year and this is now a well-established fact. The roe, the precious beluga, carries the disease, and though it could not yet be tasted in a single grain of caviar, it was already potentially spoiled long before I salted it.’
We all applaud this splendid ending. ‘And now we know your destination when we get out of Russia,’ I declare happily.
‘Yes, Mrs Moses, that is quite true,’ Mr Petrov replies. ‘I shall go to New York to find my beloved Katya Markova.’
MISS SHOWBIZ AND THE DEATH OF COUNT TOLSTOY
Miss Showbiz, Tamara Polyansky, came to me this morning. ‘I’m ready, Mrs Moses,’she said.
‘About time if I may say so.’ I say this not without a little bite of sarcasm. ‘The others have been gone nearly an hour looking for tonight’s dinner and here is Miss Showbiz, Tamara Polyansky, still hanging around.
‘No, not ready for that!’ she exclaims. She has her hand around the top of a sack and now releases it, and bends and grabs the bottom corners and upends it. Out roll potatoes and beets, half a sack full and not one bad or mouldy. ‘There! Satisfied?’ she says smugly.
I am astonished at such a rich haul, but I can’t let her see this. ‘Don’t be impertinent, Tamara Polyansky. You know our rules.’
It’s funny me talking to Tamara like this, I am the youngest of us all, not yet twenty, and Tamara is twenty-six and very pretty with green eyes and blonde hair, a real Russian that one. She’s worked in the circus, knows her way around men and is a bit of a flirt, even with someone as flirt-proof as the professor. Her body is as supple as a snake’s and she spends most of her free time doing complicated gymnastics. The children say she can do a double backflip, then a somersault and land back on her feet just like that. But personally I have not seen this and, if I did, I would wonder what a lady was doing throwing her legs around and being definitely indecent in terms of what she shows in the process.
‘I’m sorry, Mrs Moses,’ she now says. ‘I was doing my exercises and forgot the time.’
I point accusingly to the vegetables at my feet. ‘You haven’t been out this morning, so where did these come from?’
Tamara Polyansky shrugs her pretty shoulders. ‘I don’t know, the sack was there at my feet when I woke this morning.’
miss showbiz and the death of count tolstoy
Unlike most of us, Tamara still cares about her looks, and her hair is neatly braided, her face scrubbed and her lips stained carefully with blackberry juice. Even her patched dress and coat somehow look more stylish on her thin body than Mrs Solomon’s still excellent coat looks on me. She is not a Mrs but a Miss and, unlike myself, doesn’t pretend otherwise.
I sigh and give her a ha
rd look. ‘Tamara, God is good, and with His help we will maybe someday get out of Russia, but so far He hasn’t started to leave food in a sack at our feet when we wake up?’
Tamara Polyansky’s eyes grow wide, ‘You don’t think I… ?’ she cries.
‘Tamara, men are your absolute known weakness. Who gave you this food?’
It is hard being a leader. It would be so nice sometimes just to follow for a while. You know, just put one foot in front of the other with somebody else doing the thinking and taking the responsibility for our safety, patching up the quarrels between people and worrying about what we will find to eat every long, tiring day on the road.
Sometimes, when I feel the stretch and the itch of the large, horrible crescent-shaped purple scar where the frying pan burned through my flesh as we were running away from the Tsar’s marauding troopers, I wish that the so-called miracle of the invincible Mrs Moses had never occurred. But then, on the other hand, I think, I’d be dead from the first soldier’s sword thrust into my back. So never mind a little scar, compared to being dead, I must say here and now being the leader of this bunch of no-hopers is definitely better.
Now I look steadily at Tamara Polyansky and my eyes narrow. She might be Miss Showbiz, but I know a little myself from acting. ‘It was the boy from the village, wasn’t it? That young man who followed us all yesterday afternoon? Followed you! You could practically see his tongue hanging out and not only his tongue!’
Tamara lowers her eyes and nods her head. ‘I swear I only gave him a little kiss, a tiny peck on the cheek.’
‘Tamara? Look at me. Say that and look me straight in the eye.’
‘No! I swear it! On my mother’s grave!’ Now she looks up at me, appealing for mercy. ‘You won’t throw me out, please, Mrs Moses?’
‘A kiss? Then another kiss and then another and
miss showbiz and the death of count tolstoy what follows after these kisses is another kind of acrobatics you also learned in the circus, eh?’ I say accusingly. ‘You have put us all in terrible danger, Tamara Polyansky!’
Tamara’s eyes brim with tears. ‘Believe me, please, I beg you!’ She begins to sob. ‘He, he, looked just like my Eugene, the spitting image.’She looks up tearfully, ‘I couldn’t help myself, it was just a little kiss. Like kissing a beautiful ghost!’
I am not so stupid that I ask who is this Eugene. To know is to allow her to change the subject. Maybe later I’ll get the juicy bits. ‘We are in danger!’ I shout. ‘Terrible danger! We have to leave now! At once! Go and find the others, tell them there is already food for tonight, never mind the mushrooms, we have to leave immediately.’
I am angry, but at the same time I wonder what a kiss feels like. In my village the first kiss you get from a man is on your wedding night. Kissing is strictly off limits at all other times and occasions. Maybe that’s why I am so angry with Tamara and her ghost kisser. Here she is kissing and smooching like it’s going out of style, and I’m stuck with leading a bunch of misfits out of the wilderness. I call myself Mrs and I’ve never even been kissed.
‘I’m sorry, Mrs Moses, I didn’t mean no harm. I swear it was only a kiss, nothing more.’
Yes, young lady, for you only a kiss, I think to myself, for me it would be an earthquake. But on the outside I stay calm.
‘Tamara Polyansky!’ I point out. ‘Maybe it was just a kiss. As a matter of fact I believe you. But this young man goes back to his village and boasts of your kiss. You know how it is. He tells all his friends and hints it was, well, you know, more than a kiss, a lot more than a kiss and he rolls his eyes and gets a dreamy look on his stupid peasant face. They drink a little vodka and next thing they all arrive, all the young men from the village with one thing on their minds, and it isn’t a sack of potatoes and beets!’
‘I didn’t think, Mrs Moses.’She stamps her foot. ‘I am so stupid! It will not happen again. Please! If you make me leave I will surely die!’
‘For God’s sake, woman!’ I yell at her, mostly so she can’t see I’m jealous, but I am also worried, I have seen what a group of drunken peasants can do. ‘Go and fetch the others, we have to get moving!’
Tamara grabs me and gives me a quick hug, ‘Thank you, Mrs Moses, thank you from the bottom of my heart.’ She leaves, running in the direction of a small forest of oak trees where Olga Zorbatov has been told by her husband in the sky that there will be blackberries and mushrooms. Anya, the mushroom expert, is leading this morning’s expedition.
You can kiss goodbye the mushrooms and blackberries, mushrooms with potatoes and maybe a little borscht and then fresh blackberries, that would be very nice. But now, suddenly, with the recall of the Olga Zorbatov Psychic Expedition, it’s potatoes and beet. Not so bad really, I console myself, at least our stomachs will be full tonight.
We will have to retrace our steps, I think to myself. We will go back around the village we passed through yesterday in a wide circle, so that if we are followed by a gang of sex-crazed youths they will think we have moved on further down the road. It means two days lost, maybe three. I must try to get us out of Russia before winter comes. I don’t think the professor with his pains could survive another Russian winter and Anya Mendelsohn’s baby, born last spring, could be another casualty. It is late afternoon and we’ve been back on the road several hours, going of course in the wrong direction, when I suddenly remember what Tamara Polyansky said to me in the first place before the debacle of the ghost kiss. ‘I’m ready, Mrs Moses.’
I approach her as we make camp in a small copse of trees where we can’t be seen from the road. She has avoided me all day and even helped Anya with the baby. ‘Ready for what?’ I ask.
‘Huh?’ she says defensively, thinking perhaps that I am back on the attack.
I smile to reassure her. ‘Tamara, what happened this morning is all over between us, completely forgotten and only to be remembered if you do it again! When you came up to me this morning you said you were ready. Ready for what?’
‘Why, to tell my story, Mrs Moses. I thought with all the nice food we’d have tonight, you know what’s in the sack and all, if I didn’t tell it as well as the others it wouldn’t matter so much. I mean all of our stomachs would be full from the potatoes and beet and people would have more patience, you know if…’ She shrugs as if to explain, ‘Well, I’m a trapeze artist, not a storyteller.’
I laugh. ‘Tonight then, Tamara.’ I give her a hug. ‘I’m sure it will be very good.’ A leader has to encourage also sometimes.
Everyone is tired and a bit grumpy, because today was supposed to have been a rest day. The morning was to be spent scrounging for food and the afternoon for bathing ourselves in the river and washing our clothes, doing some shoe repairs, sewing patches to worn garments and general maintenance. A haircut, a corn or blister treated or a pedicure given by one of the latest recruits to our little group, Mitya Shebaldin, a widow of sixty who seems to know a lot about feet but who can say why, she admits only to having once been a doctor’s wife. No questions asked, a foot doctor we need.
Though we are going backwards the promise of a good meal has cheered us all up a bit. Anya found the mushrooms before Tamara arrived. How does Olga Zorbatov do that? No blackberries though. Tonight, in the food department anyway, we are all happy.
Tamara is wearing her good blue dress, which has no patches, and she’s let her hair down and combed it until it shines in the firelight like spun gold. She has large green eyes that are very beautiful, and I think to myself that there is no point being jealous when someone is so far ahead in the beauty business.
I have dark hair with a funny blob of a nose and my mouth is too big, though I think maybe that I have nice eyes, dark but nice. But Tamara is tall with a beautiful bosom. As a matter of fact, when Mr Petrov was talking about his lost – hopefully one day to be found again in New York – Katya Markova, who remember is also a blonde with green eyes, I thought she must be a bit like Tamara. But when Tamara tries to flirt with Mr Petrov, who is
a big man and still full of vigour, she is no more successful than with the professor, so maybe not. When you are a brunette all blondes look the same. Titch! There I go starting to be jealous again.
Tonight we have eaten first, because Tamara has requested this for the reasons already given. Also, she has confided in me that her story involves a cake, a large pink cake, and, as she rightly points out, cake comes after fish with potatoes and mushrooms. I almost forgot to mention the fish. Mr Petrov caught a large eel in the fishtrap he’d made and left in the river overnight, so that last night, when the ghost kisser came to visit Tamara and left his sack, it became more than just a potato and beet night. It was an eel night too and also when Olga Z’s husband went hunting for mushrooms in the cosmos, a mushroom night. Some night, eh? So tonight, thanks to all these goings on, we have just completed a feast to remember. We can only hope, with our stomachs full for the first time in weeks, that the story of the pink cake doesn’t send us all to sleep before we can taste a single imaginary slice. Now, Tamara begins her tale:
I was an only child and my father doted on me. He was a fur trader and he dealt almost exclusively in mink, sable and ermine which he exported to Germany, America, France and Britain. He always said the Germans bought ermine because they were vulgar, the Americans mink because their money was new and they didn’t know any better, while the French and the English, both much admired by my dear papa, bought sable because it was neither vulgar nor ostentatious, and cost considerably more than the other two furs.
As you may gather we were wealthy and lived in a big house with a great many servants and I was taught to do all the things rich little girls must do if they are to marry into the right kind of family. Which, in my mother’s eyes, meant the next step up the social scale into the minor nobility. I took private music, singing and dancing classes. The dancing master, Eugene Wilenski, was still a student at the Académie de Danse. I learned about French cuisine and practised English table manners, and by the time I was twelve I could accompany my parents almost anywhere without causing them embarrassment.
The Family Frying Pan Page 10