I rolled down to the cellar and found my manservant, Timofey, sleeping on a soiled mattress beside my prized German laundry machine. His hands were tucked angelically beneath his big snoring head; the cord of the Daewoo steam iron I had given him for New Year’s was tied several times around one leg to prevent another servant from stealing it. I thought about throwing a shoe at him, but instead gently pushed him in the stomach with my foot. “Up, up, up,” I growled. “Rise, Timofey. Rise!”
“Please forgive me, batyushka,” Timofey murmured out of instinct, trying to shake off a deep slumber. “Timofey’s just a sinner like the rest of them.”
“Make pies,” I instructed my manservant, my body leaning precariously over his, so that he held up his arms out of fright. He mumbled incomprehension. I tried to explain: “Meat pies, cabbage pies, venison pies. I don’t want you to stop making pies, you hear? Whatever’s in the refrigerators, I want to eat it right away. Don’t disappoint me, Timofey.”
“Yes, batyushka!” Timofey cried. “Pies, pies, pies.” He sprang up from his mattress and started running around the cavernous cellar, rousing the servants and commandeering them up the stairs. The house shook with commotion. As usual, when crisis struck, the servants began taking their frustrations out on one another. Yevgenia, my fat cook, was hitting her common-law husband, Anton, who in turn was giving it good to Lara Ivanovna, the pretty new servant. I returned to my analytic room and picked up the laptop. The quick-witted Timofey had already furnished my desk with a half-eaten tin of salmon pâté and a tub of artichoke hearts. I began to fill my mouth with two shaking hands as Rouenna’s letter came out of the printer.
Shteynfarb. I could see him now: an ugly little man, dry lips, a Mohawk of black hair carved out by teenage alopecia, dark lizard pouches beneath his eyes, everything in his manner filled with artifice, bullshit laughter, and easy bonhomie. He probably impregnated half his writing class, the half that wasn’t knocked up already. Rouenna’s major accomplishment in life was staying clear of pregnancy by the advanced age of twenty-five. She was the only woman in her family who didn’t have kids, for which her tías and abuelas and primas made fun of her mercilessly. Now even that was in danger. And once Shteynfarb gave her one kid, the rest would start coming. Once a girl got “belly” on 173rd Street, she’d be pregnant till menopause.
I reread the letter. It wasn’t my Rouenna writing it. The feistiness was gone. The humor and rage. The love, given either unconditionally or with a poor woman’s protective reserve. She claimed Shteynfarb was restoring her “self as-steam,” but for the first time since I’d met her, Rouenna seemed to me utterly servile and beaten.
Timofey brought in the first steaming meat and cabbage pie, the room suddenly ablaze with heat and sustenance. I licked my lips, locked my feet together, clenched my right hand into a fist, and swallowed the pie in three takes. Then I went back to the letter, circling sentences with my red pen and writing my responses in the margin.
Proffessor Shteynfarb had a hard life being an immigrant so he knows about hard work.
Bullshit, Rouenna. Shteynfarb’s an upper-middle-class phony who came to the States as a kid and is now playing the professional immigrant game. He’s probably just using you for material. We got so much more in common, the two of us. You said it yourself, Rowie. Russia is the ghetto. And I’m just living large in it, that’s all. Who wouldn’t live large in the ghetto if they could?
You always secretly look down at me.
From the first night I met you, when you kissed my thing so tenderly, there hasn’t been another woman in my life. I am so proud of you for being strong and not giving in to peer pressure and trying to make your life better by becoming an executive secretary. You are worth ten thousand Jerry Shteynfarbs on a bad day, and he knows it.
Proffessor Shteynfarb said its wrong when you throw your shoe at your servant
Why don’t you ask Professor Shitfarb to explain the term “cultural relativism” to you. When you live in this kind of society, you’ve got to throw your shoe sometimes.
If you want to stop paying my hunter tuition I would understand, although I would have to go back to work in the tity bar.
Of course I’m not going to stop paying your tuition. I’m the one who got you to stop working at the titty bar, remember? Everything I have is yours, everything to the very last, my heart, my soul, my wallet, my house. [I decided to finish my response with an appeal to Rouenna’s favorite imaginary character.] Just remember, Rouenna, that whatever you do, it is between you and God. So if you want to hurt me, go ahead. But you know that He watches every move you make.
I put down my red pen. I was thinking of the homemade sign crayoned on the door of Rouenna’s family’s apartment by one of her nineteen little nieces: NO SMOKING NO CURSING NO GAMBLING INSIDE THIS HOUSE JESUS LOVES YOU. We used to sit on a creaking bench in a weed-choked yard behind Rouenna’s housing complex, doing a bit of what she called “roughhousin’,” as beautiful brown children ran around us, engulfed by summertime happiness, yelling to each other: “When I get out, puta, I’m gonna break your fucken face, I fucken swear.”
What I wouldn’t pay for one more July night on the corner of 173rd Street and Vyse, one more chance to kiss Rouenna and cradle her in my big arms. I always dream of your arms around me and your weird kui in my mouth.
My laptop beeped demonstratively. I was worried it might be more bad news from Rouenna, but the message was from Lyuba Vainberg, my father’s widow.
Respected Mikhail Borisovich,
I have learned to use the Internet because I hear it’s how you prefer to communicate. I am lonely. It would be my pleasure to invite you for tea and zakuski tomorrow. Please tell me if you can come and if so I will send my servant girl out for meat in the morning. If you refuse me, I won’t blame you. But perhaps you will find pity for a lost soul.
With respect,
So that’s how it happened between us. We were both lonely and lost.
11
Lyuba Vainberg Invites Me to Tea
Lyuba lived on the English Embankment, a gorgeous pastel crush of mansions anchored by the yellow curve of the old Senate Building. The Neva River does its best to be civil around here, flowing with a majestic resolve and lapping up the granite embankment with a thousand frothy tongues.
Speaking of tongues, Lyuba had prepared one of her celebrated lamb’s tongue sandwiches, very tasty and juicy, with extra horseradish and spicy mustard and garnished with a dollop of gooseberry preserve. She even prepared it in the American manner for me, with two pieces of bread instead of one. I quickly asked for seconds, then thirds, to her immeasurable delight. “Ah, but who looks out for your diet at home?” she asked, mistakenly using the polite form of address with me, as if acknowledging the fact that I was thirty.
“Mmmm-hmmm,” I said, letting the tender tongue dissolve on my own (like making out with a sheep, I thought). “Who cooks for me? Why, Yevgenia, of course. Remember my cook? She’s round and rosy.”
“Well, I do my own cooking now,” Lyuba said proudly. “And when he was alive, I always supervised Boris’s diet. There are things to consider other than taste, you know. You have to think of your health, Misha! For example, the lamb’s tongue is widely known to possess minerals that give you energy and manly power. It’s terribly good for you, especially when you alternate it with Canadian bacon, which helps heal the skin. My servant girl gets only the best from the Yeliseyev store.” She paused and looked me up and down, enjoying my girth, my time-tested ability to expand under pressure. “Perhaps I should come over and cook for you,” she said. “Or else you’re always welcome to come here and eat with me.”