shook her head as she locked her desk and headed off to the staff canteen.
The canteen was fairly empty. Nina stood at the till with her lunch, a light tomato and cucumber salad, mushrooms in sour cream and a yogurt and looked out of the window towards the still, silent, unmoving Volga and the flat rotunda of the river station which resembled an old slide-carousel. The fog lay silently on the water.
RosBank was situated in a very modern building. It was all silver-chrome and blue glass and stood sternly by the bridge that linked the north and south of the city like some guardian of the modern age. From the cafeteria, Nina could see across the dried-up bed of the old Tsaritsa river to the huge monument to the Tartars which had been erected in 1989 for the city's 400th birthday. Nina, a student at the time, had the day off college to party with her friends. She could see the back of the Children's Centre and the circus and the first stretch of Prospect Lenin. She could see, from the other window, all the way across Voroshilovsky, the nicest region of the city, to the first, white-tiled high towers of Sovietsky on the bend of the Volga, and Ploschad Chekistov with its towering monument to the men of the Cheka killed in the Civil War. The statue was clad in a long coat and cap and held aloft a long steel sword. Another monument to another conflict. Another monument to another population of dead and bereaved. So much history, so many changes. One city, three names.
Tsaritsyn, the fortress built in 1589 to defend the region against the Mongol Horde, had been badly damaged in the Civil War of 1918. There were almost as many monuments to the fallen Red Guard who had defended it under the command of Koba (later Stalin, the man who changed Tsaritsyn to honour himself) as there were to the people who had died defending Stalingrad against the Fascists in the Great Patriotic War. These days there were monuments too to the Whites who had been defeated in what was now the Children's Park behind the New Experimental Theatre, a sign of glasnost, a sign of reconciliation, a sign of the times when old injuries were said to be forgiven, old slights forgotten, and everyone friends with everyone else. A sign of the times.
Now it was called, rather blandly, 'the city on the Volga'. Nina wondered why, when the Khrushchev administration had deleted Stalingrad from their maps, they had chosen Volgograd and not restored the original name. Perhaps Tsaritsyn had Monarchist overtones. Poor city. So little remained of its past.
She paid ten thousand roubles for her lunch and went to sit with Nastia Suvorova, a pretty twenty-two year old teller who lived in Akademicheskaya, some twenty minutes walk from the bank. Nastia was toying with her Chicken Kiev.
"Any news?" she asked as Nina placed her tray on the table.
"Not yet. They're still operating."
Nastia smiled. "It'll be all right. These doctors are good."
"How's your sister?"
"Driving me crazy," said Nastia. "Do you want a lodger?" She pierced the cutlet with her fork and watched the hot, liquid butter gush out onto the plate.
"Who?" Nina laughed lightly. "You or Natasha?" She speared a piece of tomato. "Ivan would be pleased."
"Natasha wouldn't be interested in him." Nastia tore off a piece of bread and dipped it into the butter stream.
"Why not? What's wrong with hin?"
"Nothing," said Nastia, "But he's still a boy. Natasha only wants men, and men with money."
Natasha Suvorova had recently moved into her sister's flat. She was sixteen and coolly, cruelly elegant. She was studying at the Institute of State Administration but seemed more interested in parties and clothes and finding a husband who could be her passport out of Volgograd, out of the oblast, out of the country. America was the latest target. Natasha was sick to go to America.
"I keep telling her to finish her education," Nastia said, "Then she can do what she likes, but she doesn't listen to me. You know what teenagers are like."
Well, thought Nina, I know what my teenager's like. Parties, yes, clothes never, and as for finding a wife, this was as far from Vanya's agenda as getting an education. The only item of interest was football, playing and watching. She recalled her disappointment when he had given up his music lessons because they'd clashed with Rotor Volgograd's home fixtures. He had been a promising pianist, a decent violinist and a passable oboist but football, and more lately running, swimming and basketball, had consumed everything else except for television. Perhaps he was still a boy. He'd never had a girlfriend. He hadn't got the time.
"Does she go out every night?" Nina shovelled a forkful of mushrooms into her mouth. They were sweetly sour.
"Every night. And when I ask where she's been, she tells me I'm not her mother." Nastia sawed at the chicken. "So why am I looking after her? Let Mum and Dad move down here and do it. I can't have a life of my own. What man would come within a mile of me?" She started to prise some flesh away from a bone. "If I go out with my friends, she says I'm abandoning her. If I don't go out, she does and I'm up all night wondering where she is, and if I go to bed, she wakes me up when she comes home." Nastia tutted and pushed the uneaten chicken to the side of her plate. "Most of my salary goes on rent and the rest on food, then she asks me for an allowance to supplement her grant, and I can't give her anything, so she says I'm mean and jealous and tells me that I hate her ... if I buy her something, she says I've no taste, if I give her money, she says it's not enough. Whatever I do, I can't win. Dammit, this meat is too tough!" She tossed the cutlery onto her tray. It landed with a clatter.
"She's insecure, dear," said Nina. "A new town, a new college, a new environment, away from her parents for the very first time. It's all very unsettling. She's afraid, and she's lashing out at you, the one stable figure in her life."
"I thought it'd be fun having my little sister to live with me," Nastia said morosely, "But it's a nightmare." Nina peeled back the foil lid of the yogurt pot. "I studied German at university," Nastia said. "Did you know that?" Nina shook her head, stirring the yogurt with her teaspoon. "Five years. I'm virtually fluent, yet I'm stuck here counting other people's money." Nastia lowered her voice. "There's a play I read called Von Morgen Bis Mitternachts, 'From Morning till Midnight'. It's about a bank cashier who steals money from the safe and goes out to bring happiness to the world, but in the process he destroys everything including himself." She looked around the empty canteen. "I sometimes dream that I am the Cashier, that I steal the money to bring my sister happiness, but she just gives it to an old American in return for a passport. It turns out the money was the old American's anyway."
"What happens?" asked Nina, licking yogurt from the back of her spoon.
"I go to prison," said Nastia. "They take me down a long dark corridor to a cell, and the metal door scrapes open but there's no light and I can't see anything, but they push me inside and lock the door and, as my eyes adjust to the gloom, I can make out someone else in the cell, and the light gets better and I can see it's my sister ...Then I wake up."
Nina didn't know what to say. She dropped the spoon into the empty yogurt pot. "Give her time," she said. "Time heals everything."
The canteen door swung open. Andrey Andreyevich, red faced and sweating, came towards her, his expression troubled, his breathing hard. Nina's stomach lurched.
"Come quickly," her manager said breathlessly. She was already rising, her fingers pressed against her lips, her heart thumping, her stomach turning. "Your father-in-law's on the telephone. He's at the hospital. He needs to talk to you."
Suddenly, Nina felt sick.
Nina Ribakova's Mushrooms in sour cream
Ingredients
450 grams whole mushrooms
2 spring onions, chopped
2 tablespoons butter
1 tablespoon lemon juice
1 tablespoon flour
1 small carton sour cream
1 tablespoon chopped dill
salt
black pepper
Method
Saute mushrooms and onions in butter and lemon juice for 4 minutes. Stir in flour to thicken. Cook slowly, stirring, for 1 minute. Add sour cre
am, dill, salt, and pepper. Cook and stir for 10 minutes. Serve warm on brown toast or ryebread
For more recipes, visit www.russianfoods.com
Listen to Nastia's favourite song:
Byeli Oryel (White Eagle) perform their stadium anthem ‘Kak upoityelniy v rossii vyechera’
Lighters at the ready please!
And here are two pics of places Nastia visits, the New Experimental Theatre (NET)
And the Central Post Office
In the next story, Nina's in-laws reflect on the Battle of Stalingrad, the Great Patriotic War and family life. Grandma Lera will give us another recipe and there will be some of Grandpa Nikolai's favourite songs from the War.
Look out for 'Survivors', coming soon from David Brining.
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