Authors: Paullina Simons
“Isn't she a little young to be so touchy-feely?” Chloe whispered to Mason after he'd managed to disengage.
Rolling his suitcase through the gate, he smiled. “She's almost fifteen, she told me. Do you remember us at fifteen?”
Shaking her head, Chloe looked away. He talked about being fifteen like it was seventy years ago.
The single-story cottage was clean but cramped. There was stuff everywhere. Samovars, platters, silverware, tablecloths, steins, cups, canning supplies in the living room, gaskets and covers on the floor by the television, and, on the stretches of paneled walls, family photos.
Hannah and Chloe would be sharing a room with Carmen. The room had one bed and a stretch of wood plank floor. “I sleep with you,” Carmen said. “I take the floor. I don't mind. You guests. You have my bed. I sleep with dog.”
“You live here?”
“Yes, this my room, my bed,” Carmen said. “My mama and papa are down hall. They not here, they work at market. We very
honored you come to our house. Grandmother wants to know if you will drink vodka. She knows in America young people don't drink.”
“Young people drink,” Mason said. “They're just not allowed to.”
“Grandmother wants to make toast at dinner.”
A stinky, shaggy mongrel barreled into the bedroom and sank into the laid-out bedding, smelling everything up with his mangy fur and rancid dog breath. His name was Patton. Hannah looked very disapproving of his presence in her bedroom.
The boys got the glassed-in back porch. There was an old wicker couch for Blake and a long chair for Mason, since he was shorter than his brother. The sun set in front of Varda's house. Which meant it rose in the back. Which meant that tomorrow morning, bright and early, Mason and Blake would be wakened by sunrise.
“What time is sunrise around here?” Mason asked Carmen.
“Is very beautiful, sun,” she replied. “We close to water, and sun has extra special color here.”
He pointed to the glass walls, the glass doors. “What time does the beauty come in the morning?”
“Around four. You want me to wake you so you can see sunrise?”
“I don't think that will be necessary,” said Mason.
From the porch the young people stepped down into the backyard. The house was normal-sized, but it was attached to a very large piece of property. It almost looked like a farm, with a fence and untrimmed hedgerows around it. The garden was a working orchard. Row upon row of apple and peach trees bloomed. Fragrant black-currant bushes bent like willows with heavy black berries. There were beds the length of streets filled with holy vegetables. Roses blossomed chaotically in one of their three greenhouses. Chloe didn't see bees anywhere.
“Come,” Carmen said to the four of them. “I want you to meet Otto. My grandfather.”
“I thought he was dead!” whispered Mason, nudging Chloe.
“Haiku knows nothing, bro!” Blake whispered back.
Near the vines of black currant on one of the paths close to the house, the kids found a thin, silent, and completely bald Otto, sitting on a wooden bench, drinking a gallon-sized stein of beer. “I bet that's Black Balsam,” Blake said excitedly. Wearing an old, grossly oversized army uniform, Otto sat surrounded by hundreds of pieces of wood of varying widths and lengths; they lay on the ground by his feet like a fallen-down forest. He would take a gulp of brew and then pick up a few of the pieces. He was concentrating on making something and barely acknowledged the new arrivals. He glanced at them, grunted in their direction, maybe even nodded to Chloe, but generally remained silent and unimpressed.
“So that's Otto?” Blake whispered. “The famous bee farmer? What's he doing?”
“Looks like he's all farmed out,” said Mason.
From the steps of the house, Varda yelled something in Otto's direction. He ignored her too, paying careful attention only to the sticks in his barely functioning hands. She yelled again.
The young people backed away from the warm, stenchy beer Otto was exhaling. “So many awful smells,” Hannah whispered to Chloe.
Mason turned to Carmen. “Is this bee-farming season for your grandfather? Because it is in Maine, where we come from.”
“Here too,” said Carmen. “But what it have to do with Otto?”
“Isn't he a bee farmer?”
Carmen laughed. “Who says this? The only time my
vectev
catches bee is when he eat watermelon and it sting him, and he slap it dead. My
vecmamina
grow bees.”
Blake gave Chloe a mocking shove. “Can't you get one thing right? So Otto is not the
beer
farmer.”
Carmen lowered her voice. “Don't let grandmother hear you,” she said. “You don't understand. Women do everything here. I'm flower girl. I grow flowers. But I will be just like grandmother.
She drive wagon in the old days, but she still harvest flax, pile grain, tend cows and chickens. She shovel sawdust, and grow vegetables and sell them in open market. She load vegetables in her wagon. Papa drive our truck now. We bought new truck.”
“Must be nice,” Mason and Blake muttered enviously in unison.
Carmen agreed. “She also split wood herself with axe. And yes, she farm bees.”
Before Chloe could ask anything else, she had to know. “Carmen, um . . . what's flax?”
Carmen laughed. She pointed to a long row of tall-stemmed blue flowers that stretched down a hundred densely planted feet.
“That's flax. It's seed. Use for food and to make clothes. Flax is linen.”
“Oh.” Chloe couldn't believe she didn't know this. “So, what does Otto do?”
Carmen put her hand on her grandfather's sloped shoulder and kissed his bald head. “As long as I know him, this.”
“Yes, but what is that?”
“Drink beer. Make picture frames.”
“Make picture frames to sell?”
“No. You will see in house. Grandmother so tired of picture frames. But he won't stop. You can't tell him what to do. Because he was in war.” Carmen smiled. “Grandmother says Otto was in war, got shot, got medal, and after medal, was done. So now every time he bring her new picture frame, he does it so proud and she yell at him, what do you want, medal?”
They all stared at Otto. Chloe wanted to hug him. Although he didn't look the huggable type.
“I wish he spoke English,” Blake said.
Hannah said, “What war did he fight in?”
Carmen stared uncomprehendingly at Hannah. “
The
war,” Carmen said, opening her hands. Then, raising them high: “
The
war. Is there any other?”
Varda was shouting at them from the porch.
“She ask us to come inside,” Carmen said, pulling on Mason's arm. “Dinner soon. And you so sweet, mosquitoes will eat you alive. She want to spray you with vinegar.”
Mason
I'm not
un
comfortable. But I don't understand what anyone is saying to me. Old Otto keeps pointing at the food in front of me and repeating the same thing over and over, even though he sees I don't understand. He thinks the solution is to shout it. Carmen, who sat me by her side, has barely turned my way. She can't translate everything at once, and she is busy running interference between Varda and Chloe. So I have an old man, in whose house I'm staying for free, yelling at me at the dinner table. I'm afraid to eat, afraid to look at anyone, afraid to gesture. What do I do? I sit like an idiot and smile at him like a moron, and nod every once in a while. He remains adamant. I pass him the dish of gruel in front of me, but he swats it away, grabs the ladle and pours three helpings of mud into my bowl. It looks so gross. But what if I don't eat it and then find out it's the national dish of Latvia? Who can I ask? Blake, because he's got no sense, is eating the mud, the gruel, the cabbage, the sausage, the bread, everything. Why is the bread black? I asked for some white bread, and they all laughed.
The part I liked was how Varda stood up at the head of the table. I thought she was going to make a toast, but then she pressed her hands together and I thought, oh good, maybe grace, and she said,
PienaËcis mans Kungs
. Sounded like
beer nutty manse coons
. Maybe not grace, then.
While Blake eats, he chats happily to Hannah, as if everything is right with the world. He's got his arm around her, he's stroking her hair, and she's nodding her head. Those two are having an intimate dinner date, while I'm being attacked by Otto in a crowded room in a foreigner's house, and no one sees and no one cares. I think Otto is saying shishkebob. But what's in front of me
doesn't look like shishkebob. It looks like a camouflage-colored stew made of gray peas and zucchini. I hate regular green peas and I hate zucchini. I can't eat it. Whenever Chloe's mother offers it to me, I can't even fake it.
“It's not zucchini,” Chloe says to me across the table when she gets a break from Varda. “It's gray peas, pig snout, and sauerkraut. Eat it.”
Is she joking? What I want is the thing that looks like meat pie down the table, right near the romantic couple giggling away, their heads touching. I glare at them, to no avail.
Carmen finally directs her attention to me. “Otto wants to know if you think it delicious,” she says. “He keep asking: Delicious?
Garsigi?
” The girl spoons something onto my plate and I raise my hand to say NO MORE, but she thinks I mean more and gives me another helping. I ask what it is. Herring in milk, she says.
Help!
Chloe is wrapped up with Varda, who is feeding her eggplant and poppy-seed cake and rubbing her back and stroking her hair. I feel bad for Chloe, because she doesn't like to be touched. Carmen would like to talk to me, but without her, Varda and Chloe wouldn't be able to speak. What are Blake and I going to do tomorrow in a city where no one speaks English? I know coming here is the price we had to pay for getting to Europe, but I'm starting to doubt if it was worth it. Am I going to be able to eat in the next three days? It's not
all
going to be alligator soup and lizard eggs? Aren't there some kind of hospitality rules against this sort of thing? Don't you condemn yourself for all time if you serve your poor starving guest pig snout and sour porridge?
Blake
The food is fantastic! The meat pie, the poppy-seed cake. The peach preserves. Everything is out of this world. The whole house smells sweet like burnt jam. A little like Chloe's house.
I really wish Otto spoke English. He's awesome. He sits at the table in a vintage army uniform about three sizes too big and keeps trying to get Mason to eat some food, but Mason would rather be stabbed through the eye than eat a muffin with grated carrot. He's a fool. It's so good. Varda wanted me to learn how to say it, but I just wanted to eat it. The dark bread is good, the freshly churned butter. Carmen served us herring boiled in milk. She said it was a delicacy. I can see why. It was super tasty.
Varda's house is cozy, and she is so happy to have Chloe with her. You can tell she loves Chloe even though she's never met her before today. Chloe asked me how I knew this. And I showed her the photos all over Varda's house. They're all of Chloe. There are also some of her many cousins, but mainly of her. Moody must have sent them. And Otto has made a frame for each one.
Through Carmen, Varda keeps asking Chloe if we can stay longer. Stay, stay, she keeps saying while kissing her, hugging her. Chloe, who doesn't usually get pawed like this, is enamored by the affection. I know she wishes her own mother hugged her more. Varda seems to be a different breed of woman entirely.
My poor bro can't find anything at Varda's table to eat. He'd probably opt for two weeks trapped in the snowed-in ski lodge with Hannah than another night here.
I almost don't want to go anywhere tomorrow. I want to try to talk to Otto and play with his dog. Please, God, let it rain. He's got a German Shepherd named Patone. That's the only word Otto said to me. His dog's name. Patone. He's such a great dog. I want to take him for a walk but don't know how to ask if he's got a leash. Maybe tomorrow I'll ask Carmen, if she ever stops making googly eyes at Mason.
Chloe leaned over to rain on my parade and said, you do know he's saying Patton, right? Not Patone. Patton, the greatest war commander the world has ever had.
I know who Patton is, I said, quite grumpily.
If you know who he is, then why did you say Patone?
She's impossible. I don't care. I can't stop petting the dog, whispering to it. When God created you, I whisper to it, He told you to sit by the front door of your house and bark at anyone who walks past or comes in. For that God is giving you a life span of twelve years. Nine if you're unlucky. I asked Carmen how old the pup was. It was almost eleven. I leaned toward the dog. You don't have much time, I whispered, shooing it away. There's the garden. Don't just sit here. Go do something fun. Dig a hole. Rearrange the flowers. Lick somebody. Go.
Poor Chloe. No one wants to go with her to the orphanage tomorrow. She doesn't want to go herself, so how can she expect us to? I know someone
has
to go with her, but I need Mason with me, and Hannah doesn't want to do it. I spent all dinner trying to persuade her to go. She says she'd rather take a tour of Stalinist architecture in Riga than go to an orphanage. I told her that could be arranged, and I'm not kidding. She is going to get a tour of Stalinist architecture. But seriously I don't know what to do. Do I offer to go with Chloe myself? And how is that supposed to work? Mason and Hannah will wander around Riga, the blind leading the blind, while Chloe and I travel on a train across Latvia? They don't know what they're saying. When I suggested all four of us go, Mason and Hannah laughed at me. She can't go alone, I repeated. They didn't offer a solution. They didn't say, okay, I'll go. They didn't say, you should go. They just stared at me like I was sour porridge.