Alina Bronsky - The Hottest Dishes of the Tartar Cuisine

I sighed because this Chinese woman was not my granddaughter. She looked so hardworking that it was easy to see she would soon have her own practice. The Chinese always got what they wanted.

Now she was telling me I had to stay here because my kidneys were on the brink of failure. I laughed out loud and made a gesture that made clear how crazy I took this suggestion to be. She’d have to stay after school, this Chinese doctor. My Aminat would never have made such an error.

I told her I wanted to leave that night. The following morning at the latest. The woman in the white smock rolled her squinty eyes. Her eyes reminded me a little of Aminat’s almond-shaped eyes. My mood was deteriorating.

The neophyte left, taking the results of my blood tests with her. I turned on the TV. There was an old lady in the other bed emitting a rattling noise. I turned up the volume so she could hear, too — and to drown out the rattling sound. I kept looking over at her. Someone should sit her up, I thought, so she can breathe more easily. I was about to ring for a nurse when I heard a voice on TV that made me forget the old lady.

On the screen was Aminat. At first I was surprised, then shocked, and finally ashamed. Aminat was on TV — it was more than I could ever have dreamed for. But my God, the way she looked! Why hadn’t anyone told her what to wear? Why had they let her on TV with her hair like that? Why hadn’t they made her up? Why would they let her go in front of German viewers and disgrace herself that way?

Aminat’s black hair was pulled into a scrawny ponytail. You could see it because the camera kept circling around her. You could also see what bad posture she had. I was thoroughly ashamed of her. She wore a blue t-shirt on which my eagle eyes were able to spot tiny stains. Her jeans sat very low on her hips. At least she was slim. Very thin, in fact. She looked very young, as if the time since I had last seen her had never passed. She also looked as if she hadn’t eaten since I last saw her. She was still a child, despite the fact that almost ten years had gone by.

And she sang. She sang on TV. And everyone could hear that she hadn’t practiced enough. I should have sent her to music school. Maybe then she’d have sung a little better now and not have embarrassed herself. She sang a song in English, one I’d often heard on the radio. I think it was about love. In any event, it had a very melancholy melody to it.

Aminat sang a little softly. It was difficult to hear her. Now I noticed that in the room where she was being filmed, three people were seated at a long table. A woman and two men. They were listening to my little girl sing. And although the way she sang didn’t appeal to me, it was clear how infinitely sad her song was. Even the old lady in the next bed stopped rattling.

Aminat was finished. Her bottom lip was swollen. Maybe she lived with a man who beat her. She must have lived off something for all these years. And since she couldn’t do anything, she had probably found a man to take care of her — probably an old sad sack hot for some thin, young flesh. Just a shame he couldn’t have bought her some nicer clothes. The camera focused on Aminat’s eyes — black, nervously blinking in the close-up. Everyone could tell she had tried to apply eyeliner but had then wiped it off. Very sloppy.

The name they showed was hers: “Aminat K., 19 years old.” It would have been nicer if they had written out her family name so everyone could read it.

We hadn’t seen each other in nine years. She must have been nearly thirty, but it could stay her secret. Mine, too, I thought. She had every right — she looked very young. And anyway, who would put a thirty-year-old on TV?

“How old are you, Anita?” asked the bald-headed man at the table.

Aminat managed on the third attempt to say the number nineteen. She was so nervous because she was lying, it was clear. Pull yourself together, I whispered. And stand up straight! And as if she could hear me, she squared her shoulders and repeated: “I’m nineteen years old.”

“And are you still in school?” asked the bald man.

She shook her head.

“And you want to become a famous singer?”

The camera caught Aminat’s mouth. Anyone could see — she was missing an incisor. The mouth opened, the tongue licked dry lips, and Aminat said hoarsely: “Yes, I’m going to be a famous singer.”

I clasped my hands as the three people at the table put their heads together. They didn’t let Aminat out of their sight. She stood still, alone in the middle of the room.

“You’re in,” said the pretty woman with flat blonde hair and a glittering dress. She looked very fashionable, perfect for TV.

You’re in, I whispered, as the camera started to rock and the bald man sprang up from the table. Then the entire TV-viewing country saw Aminat faint and fall to the floor.

I felt in perfect health after seeing Aminat on TV. I told the Chinese woman and her two co-workers — two older doctors she’d brought in as reinforcements. They had all zeroed in on my kidneys. Maybe they needed donor organs. I let it drop that I’d just seen my missing granddaughter on TV, and that she was soon going to be a famous singer. The white-smocked doctors exchanged glances. Finally I signed a piece of paper that said I was leaving the hospital against medical advice.

I called Dieter and told him he needed to pick me up. He sounded weak on the phone — as if he had just gotten out of intensive care instead of me.

I went to the little sink in the corner of the room and looked at myself in the mirror. I went and got my bag and began to put my face in order. My colorless days were over. In the hospital I had worn just a little mascara and lipstick. I pulled out all the stops — it was as if someone had warned me that when the door opened John would be standing there instead of Dieter.

He was really there. This tall man with straight posture and gray hair, a real-life British gentleman. I was as bashful as a young girl.

“Where’s Dieter?” I asked.

John shrugged his shoulders. He picked up my three travel bags and carried them along the hall of the hospital. I hurried along behind on high heels, and the nurses craned their necks. I saw for the first time what kind of car John drove. It was an old sand-color Mercedes. It suited him perfectly. He opened the door for me.

“Where are we going?” I asked, as he turned at the third intersection in a row and I no longer recognized the route.

“Home,” he said.

“Aha,” I said, and only when he carried my bags into the house did I realize he meant his home.

I never asked myself whether John had honorable intentions. I didn’t care. I hadn’t worked in a long time, I had no money, and John had a TV in the room where I now lived. I turned it on and searched all the channels for the show with Aminat. Once in a while John came in and took my blood pressure or brought me tea.

Sulfia sat on the edge of the bed and smiled. Aminat sang on TV and the woman with the long, gleaming hair told her she should dress differently. Aminat listened to her with a furrowed brow. I clapped my hands together — that was exactly what I had always told her. But Aminat shook her head. Stupid girl, she never listened to anyone.

John came in just then with a cup of green tea on a silver tray. I looked at him over the rim of my glasses. I wore glasses ever more frequently.

“What nonsense are you watching?” asked John.

“That,” I said proudly, “is my granddaughter.”

John sat down — not on the edge of the bed but in a chair in the corner. I was beginning to sense that I might be living in his dead wife’s bedroom. I lay in a canopy bed with cream-colored sheets, all the furniture had curved legs, and all the upholstery was done in a pastel floral pattern.