Odesa of My Childhood #2: Secret Ingredient

The Secret Ingredient

“Gran, tell me a story,” I make myself comfortable on a handmade stool and move the plate of borscht closer to me.

“What do you want to hear about today?” Grandmother looks at me with deliberate thoughtfulness, smiling with her eyes alone.

“About the hunger crisis.* You’ve survived three of them!”

“It was like this,” she nods. “The times were hard. Hunger everywhere you look, and the old church is full to the brim of wheat grain. The grain is rotting, and the mice are gnawing at some of it as well. The rats get fatter, and the people die from starvation. Why are you frozen in place with a full spoon? Eat, vnuchek*, eat.”

She pronounces this “vnuchek” with particular tenderness. The sound “ch” she makes in the middle doesn’t chirp like it does for others. But it is softer, with a bit of indistinct sadness to it.

“Gran, if the grain was rotting, why didn’t they give it away to the people?”

“Who can figure them out, these country leaders?” Grandma quickly turns away and wipes away a particularly vivid memory from her eyes.
“We had this neighbor. They called him Kolya. The guy became completely desperate. One night he crept to the church and managed to sneak himself two handfuls of grain through a mouse hole. Just as he carefully poured the grain into his pockets, suddenly–bright lights, screaming. They grabbed him and drove him off to another region for court and sent him off somewhere far away for eight years.”

“For what?” I scoop up borscht with a spoon, but I don’t eat it. As if my conscience doesn’t allow it when others are hungry. Even if it’s in a story.
“For wanting to save his family from starving to death.”

“But is that really a crime?” Bitterness at the injustice swells in me.

“If someone from the top has planned this death, then any resistance to this plan will result in a punishment more severe than that of the most terrible theft or murder.”

“Does it have to be this way?”

“No, it doesn’t,” Grandma sits down on the chair next to me. “But it’s how it was. And we survived it.”

“But how?” I don’t let up.

“In our family, I was the oldest,” Grandmother looks me straight in the eyes and I let myself plunge into her inexhaustible pain. “I had to go to work and school. But I didn’t go to school to learn. They gave out food there–a crust of bread. But I wouldn’t eat it–I’d take it home. My mom would crumble it up into the pot, pour water over it, add to the stew anything she could find around–some grain, or roots. And then she spent a long time conjuring over this brew, simmering over a low fire, and served it on the table in the evening.”

“Did it actually taste good?” I inquire carefully.

“Very. We would pester her with questions, ‘Mom, what did you add to the stew to make it so delicious?’ ‘I have a secret ingredient,’ she slyly smiled and gently tapped her fingers to her chest. The left side, closest to the heart. ‘Without this ingredient, no meal can taste as good.’ Now eat, your borscht has gone cold already. Do you know what our dad would tell us during those times?”

I do know, she’s told me a hundred times already. But I shake my head no.

“He said, ‘If there’s food–eat. If not–endure it.’ A whole school of thought packed in these words.”

I nod with understanding and quickly get to work with my spoon. Grandmother studies me with a contented smile, measuring the rapidly dwindling contents of my bowl.

“Thanks, Gran,” I jump from the stool, “for the delicious lunch and the stories. I’m off to play now, ok?”

“Go on,” she laughs, “Sashka is probably tired of waiting.”

I fly out into the yard like a bullet. True enough, Sashka is already pining away, kicking a rusty tin can with his foot.

“What took you so long?” he asks sullenly.

“Gran was telling me about the hunger crisis.”

“Understood,” Sashka sends the can into the far corner of the yard with a strong blow. “Meanwhile, I want to do something special for Natashka.”
I almost sang the “Sashka and Natashka, sitting in the tree” but held my tongue, because my friend’s expression suggests that this is serious business and there is no room for jokes.

“Tell me!” I demand.

“I like her,” he sighs.

“Some secret!” I shrug my shoulders. “The whole yard knows.”
“I think I need to hint it to her somehow,” he scratches the back of his head worriedly.

“Let me tell you something,” I suggest. “Maybe it’ll be useful.” And I tell my friend the story I just heard from my grandmother. Understanding flashes in Sashka’s eyes.

“I have an idea. Will you help?”

The next two hours we spend in his kitchen. A cursory inspection of the refrigerator shows that we will have to exclude its contents from the composition of our forthcoming culinary masterpiece. The only useful items found are a modest piece of sausage and a slice of black bread, which for some reason is found lounging in the freezer.

After the manipulations at the kitchen table, we make our way outside. The air seems to be especially clean, filled with a freshness unknown until this morning.

“Hi,” Natashka’s voice disrupts my peaceful state with a ringing overflow of gaiety. “What were you boys up to here? The whole yard is full of stench.”

“We were preparing a culinary masterpiece,” Sashka answered proudly. “Specially for you.”

He disappears from view again, but the next moment appears in the doorway of his apartment. He hands Natashka a plate with our creation and winks meaningfully, as if to say, have a taste!

Natashka casts a quick glance in my direction and resignedly pulls an alarming-looking structure from the plate. She takes a careful bite and instantly changes her expression. Whether delight blossoming in her chest, or nausea rising in her throat–it’s hard to tell.

“What is this?” Her words stick to her teeth and refuse to come out. I could answer her question, but let Sashka do it. His idea, he gets all the laurels.

A slice of black bread fried in sunflower oil, generously seasoned with green apricot minced through a meat grinder, pressed on top with a circle of sausage, generously smeared with apple jam.

“Don’t talk with your mouth full, or all the good stuff will spill out,” Sashka says solicitously. “So, do you like it? It’s all about the secret ingredient.”

And he lightly taps his fingers on his chest.

The left side, closest to the heart.

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* Ukraine recently commemorated the Holodomor Remembrance Day. This story is about those times.