Eleven #4
The Russia of her imagination, a land of snow-covered steppes and solitary train tracks, onion domes and gulags—what did she know of Russia besides that?
At the Columbia Street School, 1986, her fourth grade teacher held up photographs of an American television, an American TV dinner, an American flag, followed by a cardboard box, a large carrot, nothing at all.
“This is all Russians have for television. All they have for food. All they have for freedom. So the next time you think you have nothing, think about the children in Moscow with their carrots and their cardboard boxes.” And Amy did, and felt guilty deep in her nine-year-old bones, ungrateful for all that she had, only cataloging everything she didn’t.
Andrei had grown up in that place, without television or freedom. She knew it was ridiculous, but there was a part of her that wanted to fix it all for him, that wanted to buy him a television. A new childhood.
A grown man walking around in the freezing cold without a jacket.
Inside the school the bell rang, and she could hear the children changing classes, laughing and screaming and pounding through the hallways in the way of children across the world.
The front door of the school opened, closed, a clique of teachers joining her on the stoop with their cigarettes.
They nodded at her, looking at her like she belonged.
But then someone said something to her and she didn’t understand and she smiled apologetically and knew it was time to move on.
Down the street, a bit of googling showed that there was an organization in Tbilisi that monitored the health of all the free-roaming dogs, spaying and neutering them, vaccinating them, and monitoring their health.
They had a PayPal button on their website.
Amy clicked over $50, then thought maybe she could go visit one of their clinics?
Or maybe the best thing she could do—the only thing she could really do—was give the people who knew what they were doing some money to do it.
She decided to keep walking. A dog barked across the street. Amy followed the bark to see where it led.
JUDD LOVED A public market. Whenever they found themselves near one, no matter how chintzy or touristy, no matter how overpriced the goods, Judd would usher her through the narrow alleyways separating coffee vendors from lamb cadavers, strings of dried chilies, fresh bread, chocolate.
In a particularly gruesome market in Spain they encountered a row of pig’s heads lined up toothlessly behind glass.
In the one in Seattle, strong young men threw entire salmons theatrically through the air.
In Philadelphia, she ate warm pretzels served to her by a dour Amish woman.
The market in Tbilisi was something like all of these, but also more crowded, more chaotic.
A sort of flea market spilled out into a plaza, and Amy wove her way past stalls selling counterfeit Levi’s, Chanel purses, Air Jordans, Estée Lauder perfume.
Headscarved women shouted at men in leather jackets.
She passed arrays of toiletries and cheap-looking jewelry, and legions of roaming dogs.
Amy lost track of a skinny shepherd, then picked up the trail of another indiscriminate mutt, following them as they scavenged for dropped food on the ground or stopped for pets from the otherwise distracted vendors.
She made accidental eye contact with a man who was fishing some dog treats out of a bin; he gestured to her to check out his wares (plastic cooking vessels and coffee makers), but despite her fondness toward fellow dog lovers, Amy did not stop to browse.
Carpets, dried beans, long ropes of something that looked vaguely intestinal, barrels of olives, no Angel.
Amy wondered if there was more she could have discovered at the school, if she had done a good enough job searching for clues.
Probably not. What had she learned? A teacher had made a stand against Russia.
Irine fired her. The students and teachers were upset. Angel disappeared.
“Kalbat’oni? Ginda Stsado?”
An older woman in a floral coat was beckoning to her, holding out a spoon.
“I’m sorry,” Amy said. “Me ar vlap’arak’ob kartulad.”
“English?” the woman said. “You want to try?”
“What is it?”
“Here, here,” she said. “I make myself.” She had a modest stall stocked with jars of what looked like different condiments or sauces in shades of red, purple, and green. “You try.”
Amy didn’t bother to consider whether or not it was a smart idea to try a spoonful of whatever this woman was offering her; she slurped whatever was on the spoon and found it delicious.
“Pepper sauce,” the woman said. “With walnuts. You like?”
“It’s great.”
“Here, try another—” The jars behind her had clearly been repurposed from other uses; they were glass and plastic and labeled with hand-drawn stickers.
The woman dug out a spoonful of something from a purplish jar; it was puckeringly sour and a little sweet at the same time.
“Good on potatoes,” the woman said. “Or meat. You are from Britain?”
“America,” Amy said.
“America! My brother lives in New York,” she said.
“You’re kidding! I live in New York.”
“He runs restaurant in Brooklyn. Georgian food. He serves same sauces. Tkemali, my mother’s recipe. You should go!” She took out a cell phone. “I text you address.”
“Have you been there?”
The woman laughed. “I cannot get visa. It’s very difficult. And too much money anyway. But why go to New York? We have everything they have,” she said, and she laughed again. “And better weather.”
“That’s right,” Amy said, cheered by her attitude.
“I haven’t seen my brother since 1984. But I know everything he does, how he opened restaurant. And how Americans come! Not just Georgians. We can Skype, I see his grandchildren. He is very upset, though, by political situation.”
“I know,” Amy said. “The Russians in the north, it’s terrible.”
“Not here!” the woman said. “There! You had Trump, now you have Biden, right? Old men? He says it is very bad. Everyone is depressed all the time. He pours chacha like water to cheer people up.”
“People are depressed about a lot of things in the United States,” Amy said. “I don’t think politics is at the top of the list.”
“How lucky for you! You can be depressed about other things!” she said. “So tell me, will you go to restaurant?”
“Your brother’s?”
“You go!” the woman said. “You tell me how it is!” She smiled so that Amy could see the gaps in her teeth. “He say he cannot get the right ingredients where he is, so maybe the tkemali doesn’t taste as good as mine.”
“He’s probably right,” Amy said, suddenly saddened for this woman and her brother, apart for forty years. “There are a lot of things in New York City I’ve never been able to find.”
Another dog skirted up to them, but it was mud-brown, smallish, of indeterminate breed. “Hey, have you ever seen a fluffy white dog around here? Sort of medium-sized? She answered to the name Angelozi?”
“Angelozi?” The woman appeared to think about it. “Yes, I know that dog.”
“You do? Really?”
“The school dog, yes? The one who disappeared?”
“You know Angelozi?” Could it possibly be?
“Yes, I know the story. That school is nearby. I used to watch her walk the children across the street in the morning. I found it very lovely, you know? To see the way the dog cared.”
“But you haven’t seen her since?”
The woman shook her head. “She disappeared. It breaks the heart.”
The mutt pawed at Amy’s jeans. She found a bully stick in her backpack, and gave it to the dog, who seemed startled by the unexpected treasure. He gobbled as much of it as he could in one bite and then raced away to hide the rest. Amy and the woman watched it go.
“Not all dogs can be like Angel, unfortunately,” the woman said. “Not everyone is so lucky.”
“Can I buy a bottle of your sauce? Actually, two bottles? The ones I tasted?”
“Yes, yes, of course,” she said. “One is pepper, one is plum. Oh, and here,” she said, pulling out a clear bottle from under the table. “We toast.”
“God, I don’t know if I can—” But the woman had poured two shots into tiny paper cups and Amy had no choice. She lifted her cup and murmured “Gaumarjos,” along with the woman, although victory didn’t seem particularly close by.
AS SHE WANDERED out of the market, Amy picked up a bag of beautiful fresh spring peas (so hard to get in New York!) and some feta-like cheese whose name was utterly unpronouceable and, from a stall bearing an Italian flag next to a Georgian one, sheets of fettucine.
She hadn’t made a real meal in so long but the thought of another pastry for dinner made her feel slightly ill, and the sight of all those beautiful peas—maybe she could make dinner for her hosts when she got home. A way to show her gratitude.
The dogs were eating when she walked into the house, bent over their bowls with a real seriousness of purpose.
She liked dogs that ate on schedule. Leo had always refused to, just kind of drifted back and forth in front of his kibble all day, a sort of twenty-four-hour graze, and in this way he put on twenty pounds.
(“Get this dog on a diet!” said the vet, but she didn’t, and then he died suddenly and Amy never forgave herself.)
Upstairs in the empty kitchen, she set about finding pots and pans. The kitchen was surprisingly well stocked, lots of sturdy saucepans and sheet pans and a large cast-iron skillet.
“Do you need help?”
Amy jumped up; Irine was standing behind her much as she’d been that morning by the doghouse, but now she was wearing sweatpants and a fuzzy sweater, her lovely dark hair in a knot on her head, and she was smiling.
“Irine! Hello! I thought I’d make dinner for everyone.”
“You are cooking?” Her eyes lifted when she smiled, and Amy caught a glimpse of Maia’s expression in hers. “What are you making? Can I help?”
“I was thinking like a pasta primavera.”