Olga Grjasnowa - All Russians Love Birch Trees

Elke’s restaurant was dim, an oily gloom of dark wood tables and chairs. Again the mourners were assembled in small groups. All healthy, rosy faces, their skin shining greasily. Otherwise: dying flowers, beer breath, and moist handshakes. Horst and Elke mingled, moving in small steps, receiving condolences. Some said that one shouldn’t die this young and least of all of a broken bone. Older ones begged to differ: In the war …

Elke showed me a brochure with pictures of gravestones. They had decided to get a simple flat marker made of solid black granite, polished surface, scratch-resistant and highly durable, timeless and classic — that’s how the brochure described it. Then Elke went off to say hello to distant relatives.

I went over to Elias’s grandmother. For the funeral of her only grandson she’d been given leave from her retirement home. She was a slender woman with thin, white hair tied into a tiny knot. She reached out her bony hand and pulled me close. I could smell her sweet breath and the faint lavender scent of her clothes.

We got back by midnight. My parents were the first to say good night and go to bed. Cem and Sami didn’t let me out of their sight. I knew what they were afraid of.

The clocks weren’t in sync. One cuckoo after the other was pushed forward on a small wooden panel to screech its eerie hymn to the night. Following their mechanical bird cry, some of them remained silent on their board for a moment and stared out into the room with dull eyes. Then the mechanism kicked into motion again. The bird disappeared into the clockwork and then another one shrieked. At ten past twelve it was over.

“Dude,” said Sami.

“Germans,” said Cem.

“I’m going to bed.”

“Me, too.”

“Masha?”

I said I’d have a cup of tea before bed. I opened the door leading out to the deck and sat outside. It was a clear night and with my finger I traced the constellations of the stars, just as I had with my father when I was little.

The next morning we drove back home. Father sped way past the speed limit. I looked at him and didn’t understand how he could still be alive and Elias could not. The landscape rushed past and never changed much. Fields, grassland, rest stops whose McDonald’s signs looked like the crescents on minarets. Next to the highway a carnival was in the process of being broken down, a half-assembled Ferris wheel reaching up into the cloudy sky.

My immune system gave out shortly after the funeral. Everything hit me — partly in succession, partly at the same time: an inflammation of the middle ear, bronchitis, a stomach flu, migraine. My body was giving up. I did nothing to get better, but a death wish alone wasn’t enough. I lay in bed and stared at the ceiling. The paper planes that Elisha had made for me because I loved mobiles were still hanging there. I knew neither what day nor what time it was. I wasn’t even clear about the month. I lived in a vacuum. Sometimes I forgot that Elisha wasn’t there. Sometimes I waited for his key to turn in the lock. To hear his footsteps on the floor.

Cem and my mother gave me medicine and forced me to eat. Sami often sat next to me and looked like the world had just ended.

On Christmas Eve I strolled through the park, along the Main riverbank and its backdrop of skyscrapers, museums, and darkly painted benches. It was the perfect night for outdoor exercise. The only people out on the streets were Muslims, Jews, and a few lonely Christians. My legs were heavy and tired, and in front of me a couple strolled slowly. Their kid cried, looking distinctly like a moth in its yellow snowsuit. Trying to pass, I tripped over a tree root and fell onto my hands and knees. The acute pain brought tears to my eyes. The kid clapped excitedly and stopped crying. My pants had torn and my palms were scratched. I cursed, climbing slowly to my feet. A pair of eyes and a hijab were focused on me. The man asked if I was OK. I nodded and he nodded, too. The woman quickly produced a pack of moist wipes from her bag, came toward me, and handed them to me. When I reached out to grab the wipe, she took my hand and proceeded to clean my wound. Her movements were fast and precise. I thanked her. Then I went home where I wanted to tell Elisha everything while he washed out my wound. He would put his arms around me, caring and lovingly.

“What happened?” My mother sat on the stairs facing my front door, legs tucked up. Gigantic shopping bags stood at her feet. She came every night around six, an aluminum foil — covered bowl in hand.

“Nothing. I slipped.”

“Can’t you pay more attention?”

“Mom.”

“Seriously, you’ll have to take better care of yourself. You hardly eat, never clean, and don’t even bother to put on makeup anymore.”

“Mom.”

“I know that I’m your mother. As if that was any help to you.”

I unlocked the door with my stiff, cold fingers and let my mother go in first. She put down her bags, took off her coat and shoes, and put on the slippers she had brought for herself a while ago. Then she went on to fill my kitchen shelves and the fridge with milk, yogurt, cereal, bread, oranges, vegetables, and chocolate pudding.

“Did you know it’s Christmas?”

“What do we care?”

Mother rummaged through my drawers. She thought she knew what was best for me and took advantage of the fact that I had no energy. She found the drawer with the dish towels, took one out, held it under cold water, and cleaned my cuts. Then she poured a generous helping of iodine over my hands.

“By the way, what I meant to tell you,” said my mother, “I looked at your sheets. You don’t wash them properly. I don’t know what you’re doing wrong, but as it is, they’re going to tear in five years.”

I looked at her, thankfully, and laughed out loud. Her face was full of tenderness.

Mother watched me eat. She herself did everything to remain underweight. We sat in the kitchen and Mother smoked one of her long white cigarettes, which in her case looked slightly frivolous. I opened a bottle of Georgian wine and mother spoke in a serious, calm tone that she must have prepared beforehand: “I’ll help you sort out his things.”

“No.”

“Then I’ll do it myself.”

Again, I refused, this time perhaps louder and with more force than strictly necessary. In the apartment above us, children sang “Stille Nacht.” An offkey recorder accompanied them. A moment of silence followed the song. Then a man yelled something that I couldn’t make out. Then the woman. The kids cried. My mother and I sat and listened as doors banged upstairs.

“I had planned on giving your neighbors almonds. For Christmas. But I didn’t get around to it.”

The recorder started over with “Stille Nacht.”

“I tried my best. You had everything you needed to become a happy child,” my mother said.

“I know.”

“Your father was one of the first who had to go. They pulled all Russians from the ministry and sent them as nonpartisan observers to Karabakh. I didn’t even know if he was still alive. Well. Supposedly the Russians were neutral, but the Azerbaijanis thought your father was an ally of the Armenians and the Armenians thought he was an ally of the Azeris.”

The neighbors got louder and louder.

“Afterward—” She didn’t say after what, but I knew what she meant. “It was just you and me. You didn’t say a word, didn’t even look at me. I wasn’t allowed to touch you either — a little like now. You were like a stranger, and you lost all warmth. You never got it back. From that day onward you became withdrawn and I never regained access to you. It’s absurd. I didn’t want to let you go. I knew it was wrong, but what should I have done? We had a dead body in our house.”