All Russians Love Birch Trees Read online

  “Did you switch to filtered cigarettes recently?”

  “Not really. Those are from a patient.” He looked down at the pack, turning it over a couple of times and running his thumb over the Arabic letters as if he’d just noticed them for the first time.

  “I can’t read it,” he said.

  I translated the text for him.

  He sighed, never taking his eyes off the pack.

  “The patient died yesterday afternoon. We’re finishing off his last cigarettes.”

  I choked on the smoke and had to cough.

  He turned the pack over a couple of times more, then put it back into his pocket. He took a bite of the croissant, crumbs falling onto his lab coat like dandruff. He alternated between looking at me and the croissant. “You’re with Mr. Angermann, right?”

  I nodded.

  “He had a spot this morning.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “A spot.”

  “On his lung?”

  “What makes you think that?” The doctor laughed out loud. “No, around his surgical scar. A little spot, not uncommon. Don’t worry.”

  He gave me a friendly pat on the back and disappeared into the building.

  In the evening, Elias’s scar was weeping. The pus gave off a sweet, biting odor that reminded me of the Soviet perfume Warszawinka and triggered a gag reflex. Elias’s camera was lying on the nightstand. He was facing the wall, feverish. We had rung for the nurse, but she took her time and then appeared in the room so suddenly that at first I thought she was a ghost. Wearing a short lab coat, the nurse exposed her teeth. Her yellowish incisor was decorated with a blue rhinestone. Not to be taken seriously. She stood there with her hands on her hips and her head thrown back. Her eyes had a fundamentalist glow to them. In a quick, deep voice she said that Elias should get up now. I didn’t think that was a good idea. But when she loudly pointed out that I didn’t know what I was talking about, I had to agree. Although I kept that bit to myself.

  The nurse jockeyed Elias out of the bed: “Come on, young man. Get up!”

  Elias bit his lip and stood. I saw the pain in his face and yelled at the nurse. My words sounded shrill.

  “It’s for his own good!” she yelled back.

  When Elias took a step forward he moaned with pain, but remained standing. He stood and suffered and the nurse nodded encouragingly. “Go ahead, go ahead.”

  Elias took another step, this time no sound escaped him. His face was white as a sheet.

  “Can’t you see that he’s in pain?”

  “Pain is a part of life. Believe me, I’ve been working here twenty years!”

  “Twenty years too long!”

  “Masha, it’s OK!” Elias’s forehead shone with little pearls of sweat, his breathing fast and irregular. He took a wavering step toward the bed, looking for something to hold on to, and with an audible gasp he clasped the bedpost with both hands. I pushed him onto the bed. Elias gave in to my movements and allowed me to sit him up. I laid my hand on his cheek, which was rough and hot. His eyes were filled with tears. As were mine.

  I stood in front of Elias, ready for anything. But Elias pulled me down toward him onto the bed and feebly told the nurse: “Please leave.”

  “That’s a first.” The woman stormed out, slamming the door shut behind her.

  Elias put his head on my shoulder and I helped him to lie down. He got into a fetal position and turned to face the wall. Shortly after, his whole body started shivering. I stroked his hair, but he didn’t react. I ran into the hallway and dragged the next nurse who passed by into the room. She removed the dressing from Elias’s wound and quickly closed the curtains that separated his bed from the others, even though the other beds were empty. The wound looked bad.

  Elias was sent to the radiology ward. When he was brought back, he was convulsing with pain. The doctors were waiting for the lab results. Finally, the senior physician came in, a short bald guy with a paunch. He was followed by a dozen medical students, because this turned out to be a teaching hospital. The senior physician examined the wound, furrowing his brow. Afterward the students hunkered over Elias. Some assumed a disgusted expression, others pushed their colleagues aside to get a better look. I stood in the corner and refused to look at both Elias and the wound. I could smell it.

  Elias, pale and no longer responsive, was wheeled back into the operating theater early in the morning. His parents had left home before dawn. Now we were all waiting in the cafeteria: his father with his large-pored nose and brutish face, his mother, chubby cheeks and robust arms. Both sat silently in front of full mugs and homemade sandwiches.

  Horst read Der Spiegel while Elke and I looked out the window. The sky was dreary. The weather had turned windy and rainy overnight. The father and mother took turns covertly examining me. I looked at their faces and was reminded of Elias’s childhood pictures: first day at school, Elias in front of the Christmas tree, at his civic initiation ceremony—a pale and shy child. When they both happened to be looking at me at the same time, I suddenly felt embarrassed about my clothes, for having put on makeup and for wearing heels—despite the fact that I had spent the night at the hospital and that it hadn’t been this morning when I’d put on the makeup, but the morning before. Elke cleared her throat and checked her watch, Horst nervously rustled the magazine.

  The window where we were sitting was facing the narrow and empty street. A gray bundle in the middle of the road caught my eye. At first I thought it was just a plastic bag, but plastic bags are rarely gray. Then I thought it was a stuffed animal. I excused myself, setting my mug on the table a little too loudly, and said I had to use the restroom. In the restroom the mirror reflected a rather unpleasant image: my nose was shiny, which made it look bigger and bumpier than usual. My mascara was smudged. The doctor couldn’t tell how long the surgery would take.

  I was standing out on the street and kept my breathing low to calm myself. The wind was icy and my hands shivered. For a while I monitored my breathing, then I spotted the animal. A rabbit. And it was alive. At least its ribcage rose and fell in irregular intervals. I knew only two prayers: the Lord’s Prayer and Shema Yisrael. The Lord’s Prayer was useless and Shema Yisrael by itself wouldn’t be sufficient. I would bargain with God. Elias versus the rabbit. HE should let the rabbit die and not Elias. I deeply regretted not being religious and not having anything more impressive up my sleeve than “Hear, O Israel: the Lord is our God, the Lord is one. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your might. These words which I command you today shall be on your heart.” I swayed in prayer as I had seen the Orthodox Jews do on one of the public channels. Not Elias. Please not him. Not him. Not him. I would bury the rabbit and recite the rabbit kaddish by heart.

  I told God that HE could kill the rabbit right away. The rabbit kept breathing, no car in sight. I carefully lifted the rabbit. It didn’t have any exterior wounds, but its ears hung limply, its fur full of street dust and its red eyes as good as dead (insofar as death can be predicted from red eye color). And what if it wasn’t hurt? What if it was just lying down for a quick rest?

  I put the rabbit back down and once again recited the Shema Yisrael. On the right a small GM Opel passed by. Elias’s parents were watching me from the cafeteria window. Panic rose inside me, I searched for a stone. The thought “There are no stones here” passed through my head. But Elias’s life was at stake. I walked along the street and next to the bus stop there was a stone. A good sign. I climbed over the guard rail and took the first stone that I found.

  When I returned, the animal had remained persistently alive. How do you explain faith to a rabbit? I bent down to pat its head—it was soft and wet and didn’t react to my touch. My hand shook. I stood up, took aim. The stone hit the ground next to the rabbit’s head. Again I lifted the stone and had the distinct feeling that the rabbit was staring at me. I asked it for forgiveness and once more let go of the stone. This time I hit the mark and its skull burst. The brain mass leaked and mixed with blood and bone splinters. I turned away and suppressed a rising sickness.

  As I returned to the cafeteria and to Elias’s parents, I tried to tread lightly and not to let my heels clatter too loudly on the marble steps. My hands were red from the cold.

  The surgery had been successful, Resident Physician Weiss informed us. He stood there bow-legged and grinning, shaking Horst’s and Elke’s hands. I stood by their side, looking at Elias. He lay motionless in his bed. An even longer piece of metal protruded from his thigh. In three weeks, approximately, he would be allowed to return home. He could then continue the treatment as an outpatient. The rain pattered against the window and out on the street. Pedestrians under umbrellas were trying to outrun the weather.

  3

  My mother kept calling and asking whether I wanted her to visit, and I kept saying no. She came on Sunday and brought the leftovers of my father’s birthday dinner. I put two plates out, as well as forks and knives. I left the food itself in the Tupperware containers, not bothering to reheat it. Mother gave me a concerned look and I stared back wearily. She wanted to know everything about Elisha’s diagnosis. My parents had long agonized over how to Russify Elias’s name, to impose both their love and an affectionate diminutive on him. When my father finally exclaimed “Elisha,” my mother applauded in delight—Elisha it was.

  We ate in silence. I didn’t mind it, but my mother couldn’t bear the quiet and started talking about her job. She was a piano teacher—first at a music school, then at an academy. She, too, initially struggled with the new system: trained at a Soviet conservatory, she had professional standards which she couldn’t just leave behind. When the father of one of her students, a priest, complained to her that his daughter didn’t have fun in class, my mother’s heart started racing and her hands grew sweaty. Thus far she had not been aware that the purpose of art was fun. And she would’ve least expected to hear it from a priest. Music had been taken very seriously in the USSR, as were ballet and the visual arts. Unlike in Germany, every child had the opportunity to get not only a school education, but also a highly professional and—on top of that—free artistic education, as long as the child was willing to work hard. And it was completely unfathomable to my mother how somebody could not want that.

  Back in the day, when she was still young, gorgeous, and successful, and before she married my father on a whim, our living room had held a grand piano. Preparing for a performance, my mother would practice for days on end. Because of hygienic concerns and the General Situation, I’d only gone to kindergarten for a few weeks. Instead, I’d stayed in the living room, sitting under the grand piano and listening to my mother play. Whenever I saw my parents now, I always assured them that I was fine. I talked about my stipends, summer academies, internships, and stays abroad. I told them about my plans; where I would work and how much I would earn. I told them about Sami and then about Elias, and my parents believed every single word because I played my role well. When we got around to the meat dish, lamb with steamed chestnuts, dried fruit, and dolma (those grape leaves stuffed with rice, ground lamb, finely minced onions, and nuts), my mother laughed. I told her hospital anecdotes that I made up as I went along.

  She finally left, leaving behind pomegranates, oranges, pears, bananas, stuffed puff pastry, and the last piece of chocolate cake. I turned on the TV. A rerun episode of Tatort flickered across the screen. All signs pointed toward the detective spending a hot night with a Southern European. I cranked up the volume and went off to take a shower. I thoroughly scrubbed away dead skin cells and the faint smell of hospital. I tried to recall Elias’s body without the screws and the long scar on his thigh. Then I imagined kissing a woman in the staircase, in the midst of banging doors, cooking smells, and screaming children, and how I would slip my hands between her thighs. I was back on the couch, putting cream on my legs, before the murderer was caught. I had a suspicion and awaited the solution.

  The digital display on the clock radio showed four a.m. My stomach cramped, I had a bad taste in my mouth, my neck ached. Grudgingly I schlepped myself to the bathroom and looked for the tampon box. Under the warm stream of the shower I washed off the blood, then wrapped myself in a mint green towel and went back to bed.

  It was quiet in the apartment. I wondered whether I had locked the front door, whether it was normal that the fridge made such dubious noises and why the neighbors were already awake, stomping down the stairs. At five a.m. I decided that staying in bed was pointless. I picked up the first piece of clothing I found, a red-and-white-checkered summer dress that barely covered my hips so that I looked like a child that had grown too quickly. I tied my hair back and went into the kitchen. I tried to imagine all the things I could do now that Elias wasn’t there, but couldn’t come up with any. And therefore I also stopped doing the things I used to do in his presence: every surface was cluttered with open packaging, newspapers, used mugs, bowls; the trash was overflowing and of course I’d not bothered to separate out paper, plastic, compost, metal, electronic appliances, and bulky items. I turned on the radio and translated the morning news into French while I rinsed out the stovetop espresso maker and soaked a crescent roll in a bowl of milk. The phone’s ringing startled me and I choked on the roll, which I hadn’t bothered to bake prior to consumption. The display showed Elisha’s number.

  “Already awake?” I asked, surprised.

  “What do you think? They wake us up at six a.m. for the ward round and stare at us like rabbits pulled out of a hat. And if somebody sleeps through the magic trick, they’ll come back.”

  “How are you?”

  The line crackled.

  “Are you in pain?” I asked again.

  “No,” he replied.

  Both of us knew this was a lie.

  “Do you think you could come earlier today?” he hesitantly asked.

  “Yes.” I tried to sound tender, and just then recalled that I had a seminar today. But it was too late. I had already agreed to come.

  “Thank you.”

  “No problem. Should I bring you anything?”

  “Warm clothes—I have to keep the windows open here.” He murmured something into the telephone that I didn’t understand and then continued in a normal volume: “A scarf and a pullover if possible, the black one and the light gray cashmere one.”

  “Do you want anything to eat?”

  “God no. I’m constantly being force-fed here. I’m starting to beef up. But you could bring me the books and the lens from the dresser, first drawer on the left. This time the right one, please.”

  “You hardly need all your fucking equipment there, do you?”

  I hung up and tried to fish the soggy piece of bread from the cereal bowl. It turned out to be easier to just drink everything. I was furious. With Elias, with myself, with the entire world.

  I wandered through the art academy library that was so very different from the one in my department. Again and again I pulled a book from the shelves and leafed through reproductions of old Flemish masters and descriptions of happenings. Holding in my hands the catalog for the Sonic Youth exhibition, I asked myself whether my life had taken the right course. Languages come easily to me. I quickly grasp the patterns and have a good memory, but in the last few years I had hardly done anything other than learn technical terms and grammar constructions. I was disciplined and hungry for success. In school I had studied English, French, and a bit of Italian, then I had spent a year as an au pair in France to perfect my French. Afterward, I’d enrolled to study interpreting. In my free time I studied Italian, Spanish, and a bit of Polish, but I never managed to work up enthusiasm for the Slavic languages. Nonetheless, I spent a semester at the Lomonosov University in Moscow, then did internships with international organizations in Brussels, Vienna, and Warsaw. A scholarship had freed me from having to work on the side. But by then I had compiled a respectable CV and was familiar with the use of Ritalin and other substances that facilitate an easier learning process. I finished college in record time and started taking Arabic lessons. Sami had been a good teacher, but he returned to the United States. A year later I met Elias.

  We’d been together for a mere two months when we decided to travel together. We were on the road for almost four months, crossed France, into Italy, from there on to the Balearic Islands and Spain, then to Morocco, Egypt, and Turkey. During the trip Elias took pictures for his thesis show. Upon our return he disappeared into his darkroom and I started a double master’s degree: interpretation and Arabic.

  The librarian wore large horn-rimmed glasses and stared at my T-shirt. I pushed the books toward him. “I’m sorry, I can’t help it. They’re beautiful. Your breasts, I mean.”

  I looked him straight in the eyes—they were cold and gray. Obviously he was at ease, didn’t feel embarrassed or caught in the act, and smilingly handed me the books. Probably he had deconstructed his own sexism and now felt that he could get away with anything. I was tempted to drop the heavy stack of art monographs onto his fingers, but he withdrew his hands just in time. Then I thought about spitting at him, but that seemed a little overly theatrical.

  I was so angry that I walked the entire way to the university. I hoped that would calm me down. On foot it took an hour. I had to cross the crowded downtown and financial districts. En route I was asked to donate money three times, smiled at six times, two people asked for a cigarette, three people asked me for a euro, and an aging hippie asked me to give him a tantra massage. I was too late for my seminar and my French translation was subadequate. In general, I wasn’t in the mood for Simultaneous Interpretation French–German III and Introduction à la problématique des techniques industrielles. Or any translation for that matter.

  My professor asked me to come to his office hours. Over the course of my studies I had never gotten worse than a 3.7 and that was by accident in the first semester. This afternoon he would be sitting across from me, stirring his spoon around his blue mug and asking me to work harder. Then he would inquire about vineyards in Azerbaijan and would pity me for becoming multilingual so late in life. I would never be a native speaker, nothing to be done about that. And I would remain silent and stir my unsweetened tea and not mention the superb cognac from Ganja. A cognac that is available neither in an elegant bottle nor at a fancy specialty shop on Fressgass Street, but only in Ganja and only in small canisters that are mailed exclusively to real connoisseurs or close relatives. I furthermore would abstain from mentioning that I didn’t learn Azerbaijani from my parents, but from our neighbors, and that I’d spoken it fluently and without an accent until we emigrated to Germany, where I no longer had a reason to speak it in my daily life anymore. And I would leave him in the dark about the fact that in Azerbaijan, starting at age five, I had a private tutor in English and French and that my mother had to sell her mother’s diamond ring to pay for it. I wouldn’t tell him that people who live without running water aren’t necessarily uneducated. But my professor was my professor. He sponsored foster children in Africa and India. His multiculturalism took place in congress halls, convention centers, and expensive hotels. To him integration meant demanding fewer hijabs and more skin, hunting for exclusive wines and exotic travel destinations.