In Times of Fading Light

family’s surprise allowed herself to drink a small liqueur. She had earned it, declared Charlotte, she’d been positively working herself to death recently, she was totally overworked, on the brink of a nervous breakdown…

Irina slipped away to the kitchen.

Now and then she heard Charlotte’s fluting tones mingling with the Umnitzer voices. Good heavens, she’d survived that, too, thought Irina as she peeled the extra potatoes for Kurt, she’d escaped that misery as well, and maybe that was what she liked about Christmas, once it was over she could close the door behind Charlotte, her own door, the door of her own house. How she’d admired Charlotte’s house when she first arrived from Russia! And now Charlotte admired her house. Sometimes, to be honest, when Irina walked around the rooms looking at her handiwork, she herself was surprised to see how successful it was. Almost all the thousands of decisions that had to be made when you were renovating a house like this—and that she had made by herself, because Kurt was always in favor of the simplest, cheapest solution, the solution entailing the least trouble and expense—all those decisions had turned out to be right in the end: the walls that she had taken out, the walls that she had put in, the conservatory extension, and God knows that cost a lot, the design of the annex into which Nadyeshda Ivanovna had recently moved, the size of the bathtub, the height of the tiles, the location of water pipes and radiators, power outlets and light switches, the place for the stove—all of it, in the end, had been sensible and right, except that she ought to have ignored Kurt’s advice not to take out the useless stove that they never lit in the living room (Kurt had fantasies about the end of the world; who knew, bad times might come and then they’d need that stove again). And she ought to have gone right ahead with the loft extension instead of leaving it until later, at Kurt’s urging; it was so difficult to start again after a break.

Irina washed the potatoes, peeled them but left them whole (she liked potatoes to be left whole), poured away the water for washing them, salted the potatoes and shook the pan with its lid on to distribute the salt. Then she carefully poured in a cupful of water, holding the pan at an angle so as not to wash the salt off again. Only one cupful; if potatoes were to taste like potatoes, they had to be simmered rather than boiled fast.

She put on the water for the dumplings, and was beginning to grate the other potatoes for the Thuringian dumplings, the ones she had already cooked and cooled, when the children came in.

“We’ll set the table,” said the new girlfriend.

“We’ll set the table,” said Sasha.

“You don’t know where the crockery and cutlery are kept.”

“I do,” said Sasha.

“Alexander will set the table,” said the new girlfriend, “and I can shape the dumplings.”

“I’ll do that myself,” said Irina.

But Sasha was already busy with the box of cutlery, of course taking out the wrong set, and as Irina handed him the right cutlery the new girlfriend was already shaping the dumplings—with her not particularly well- manicured fingernails.

“But the fried bread cubes have to go in,” said Irina.

“I know,” said the new girlfriend. “My granny is from Thuringia!” Irina had no choice but to turn to her radish salad, chopping walnuts, mixing it all with cream, tasting it.

“Is there already salt in the water for the dumplings?” asked the new girlfriend.

Good heavens, she’d almost forgotten that. And the goose had to be basted, damn it, she was thrown right off her stride!

She quickly picked up the oven mitt, took the goose out of the oven, tilting the pan so as to get all the bubbling meat juices up from the bottom of it.

“It’s all black,” said the new girlfriend.

“It’s Monastery Goose,” replied Irina.

The bird was carved at the table and distributed in suitable portions, first the legs—Sasha got one of those, that was easy enough. She offered the other leg to the new girlfriend. Kurt and the two old people preferred breast meat anyway.

The new girlfriend looked at Sasha. Hadn’t he said anything?

“Oh, by the way,” said Sasha, “Melitta is a vegetarian.”

“A what? Vegetarian?”

“Mama, she doesn’t eat meat.”

“But this is poultry,” said Irina.

“I’ll try just a little bit,” said the new girlfriend. “But not a whole leg.”

Irina’s eyes traveled around the table—and lit upon Nadyeshda Ivanovna. You are going to eat that Christmas goose with us today.

“Hand me your plate,” she said.

Nadyeshda Ivanovna handed her the plate. Irina forked up the goose leg, but it fell off, leaving only some of the crisp glazed skin on the fork. Irina put the glazed skin on Nadyeshda Ivanovna’s plate, and was following it up with the rest of the leg—but at that very moment Nadyeshda Ivanovna took her plate away.

“Oh, that’s quite enough for me!”

The goose leg dropped on the tablecloth.

“Nu tchyort poberi!” Irina still couldn’t swear except in Russian. Nadyeshda Ivanovna crossed herself. Irina slammed the leg down on her plate.

For a few moments unaccustomed silence fell over the table, until Charlotte, obviously reminded of the existence of Nadyeshda Ivanovna by the incident, began chattering away in so emphatically innocent a tone of voice that Irina almost felt offended.

“Nadyeshda Ivanovna, kak nravitsya vam u nas—how do you like it here with us?”

“I’ve been here before,” said Nadyeshda Ivanovna.

“Yes,” said Charlotte. “But now you’re living here, you have your own room now.”

“Nice room,” said Nadyeshda Ivanovna. “Yes, it’s all fine. Only we ought to have bought a TV set in Moscow.”

“But Mama,” Irina put in. “I did buy you a TV set! You have your own TV set.”

“Yes,” said Nadyeshda Ivanovna. “But it would have been better if we’d bought it in Moscow.”

“What nonsense,” said Irina. “As if we didn’t have enough baggage already! Anyway, the TV set I bought you here is much better than anything we could have found in Moscow.”

“But if we’d bought it in Moscow,” said Nadyeshda Ivanovna, “it would have spoken Russian.”

Everyone laughed. Wilhelm even laughed twice, once when everyone else laughed, and once when Sasha had translated this exchange for him. Then he said, “However, there are also very good TV sets to be had in the Soviet Union.”

Silence fell again.

Then the new girlfriend said, “Oh, I must say, this tastes just great. I’ve never had such good green cabbage before!”

“Excellent,” said Charlotte, who claimed to have gone hungry all day but wasn’t eating enough to satisfy the appetite of a mouse.

“Can’t chew the meat, myself,” said Wilhelm.

And Kurt said, “The meat is excellent. It’s only the potatoes, to be honest, that aren’t quite cooked all through.”

Then eat dumplings, why don’t you? Irina thought, but she said nothing, and swallowed her annoyance. The fact was that if only she had set the table herself, everything would have been ready at the same time. But when other people came interfering in her kitchen…

She tasted a slice of goose (she hadn’t eaten any of the meat yet, because she had had plenty of the giblets)—and sure enough, the goose wasn’t as tender as it might have been.

No one had eaten any of her radish salad.

At least the red fruit pudding was a success.

Time to clear the table.