All Russians Love Birch Trees Read online

  Copyright © Carl Hanser Verlag München 2012

  Originally published in German as Der Russe ist einer, der Birken liebt by Carl Hanser Verlag, Munich, in 2012.

  Translation copyright © Eva Bacon, 2014

  The translation of this work was supported by a grant from the Goethe-Institut that is funded by the German Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

  Chekhov epigraph from The Complete Plays, translated by Laurence Senelick (New York: Norton, 2006).

  Production Editor: Yvonne E. Cárdenas

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from Other Press LLC, except in the case of brief quotations in reviews for inclusion in a magazine, newspaper, or broadcast. For information write to Other Press LLC, 2 Park Avenue, 24th Floor,

  New York, NY 10016.

  Or visit our Web site: www.otherpress.com

  The Library of Congress has cataloged the printed edition as follows:

  Grjasnowa, Olga, 1984- author.

  [Russe ist einer, der Birken liebt. English]

  All Russians love birch trees / by Olga Grjasnowa; [translation by Eva Bacon].

  pages cm

  ISBN 978-1-59051-584-6 (pbk.) — ISBN 978-1-59051-585-3 (ebook)

  1. Jews—Azerbaijan—Fiction. 2. Jews, Russian—Germany—

  Fiction. 3. Jews, Russians—Israel—Fiction. 4. Jewish women—

  Fiction. I. Bacon, Eva, translator. II. Title.

  PT2707.R587R8713 2014

  833’.92—dc23

  2013008395

  Publisher’s Note:

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  v3.1

  Vershinin: Why should you care? Here there’s such a wholesome, bracing Russian climate. A forest, a river … and birch trees here too. Dear, humble birches, I love them more than any other tree. It’s a good place to live. Only it’s odd, the train station is over thirteen miles away … And nobody knows why that is.

  Anton Chekhov

  Three Sisters

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Epigraph

  Part One Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Part Two Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Part Three Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Part Four Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Acknowledgments

  About the Authors

  part one

  1

  I didn’t want this day to begin. I would rather have stayed in bed and kept sleeping, but the laughter of the fruit vendor and the rattle of the streetcar invaded our bedroom through the wide-open window. Our apartment wasn’t far from the central station, which basically meant that in our neighborhood there were streets better left avoided, with discount stores and huge erotic cinemas. Here—between an old Chinese Laundromat and a left-leaning youth center, whose visitors often mistook our front door for a urinal—was our home. Our apartment was ramshackle and rundown, but cheap. Every morning at about five o’clock, fathers, brothers, and cousins unloaded their vans beneath our windows. They slammed their doors and assembled their stands, drank tea, roasted corn on the cob, and waited. They waited for the street to fill so that they could advertise their fruit in automated singsong voices. I tried to follow their conversations, but mostly just understood a bit here and there, or fell asleep again.

  Elias was lying next to me: stirring, lips slightly parted, eyelids fluttering, irregular rise and fall of his chest. “Fucking pig faggot, I’ll kill you!” yelled a drunk under our window. The fruit vendors laughed at him and spit sunflower shells onto the street.

  Elias woke up and turned toward me. Without opening his eyes, he rested his head on my stomach. His hands followed mine. We stayed there, wedged together, until someone else’s alarm clock went off behind the wall and my hand grew numb beneath his weight. When it went completely numb I climbed out of bed to take a shower.

  The kitchen was crammed with yesterday’s dishes. Pots and pans with crusty rims, plates and half-full wineglasses were stacked on top of each other on the counter. The air smelled like exhaust and stuck to my skin like syrup. It was going to be the hottest day of the year.

  Elias was sitting at the kitchen table. In his right hand was a spoon full of granola. Crumbs were scattered in front of him. Half a roll sat on a plate, covered in a dark red layer of jam. I took a seat facing him, reached for the newspaper, and then, instead of the paper, studied his face. He had high cheekbones, gray-blue eyes, and dark lashes just a little on the short side. Elias was little-boy-pretty. His good looks annoyed him—people would never remember him as a person, but as someone resembling an actor, whose name they never quite remembered. It wasn’t his beauty, but rather his intuitive politeness that gave him the effect he had—on impatient cash register ladies, who suddenly forgot to check their watches, on giggling schoolgirls, medical assistants, librarians, and me. First and foremost on me. The gifts of a con man, my mother said. But she loved him, because of those gifts especially, and because Elias, for whatever reason, knew how to behave around an Eastern family.

  He poured coffee into his granola. White dissolving into brown and raisins bobbing on the surface. On the kitchen table, under the newspaper, lay an open cookbook. On the page a fish’s head stared out at me questioningly. I flipped it shut.

  “I hate to remind you, you’re a vegetarian!” I said jokingly.

  “At least I check what it is that I’m putting into the oven,” he replied, irritated.

  He was alluding to the night before. I had attempted to make a quiche because I wanted to try out the word quiche for my vocabulary. As if I were a French actress playing a French housewife awaiting her French lover, who was returning from the war an invalid, and she is baking a quiche for him, not knowing which limb he’s lost. Quiche rolled nicely off my tongue. La quiche. I’d purchased frozen shortcrust pastry, which turned out to be sweet shortcrust pastry. The quiche was inedible.

  In France the dough was neither sweet nor salty. Elias ate my quiche anyway. I hadn’t insisted on this polite gesture, but he was still suffering from the aftereffects of his good education. He had immediately washed down every bite with water.

  “Have you seen
my shin pads?” Elias asked as I was rifling through the fridge, searching for the quiche.

  “Have you seen dinner?” I asked.

  “I put it in the freezer.”

  “What?”

  “I didn’t think you still wanted it.”

  “You always have to play the compassionate German, huh?” I asked. Elias grinned, pushing the milk and the granola toward me and getting me a bowl from the shelf. I took a seat and sorted my school stuff into one neat pile—notepads, vocabulary lists, flash cards, and dictionaries that I memorized from A to Z. When Elias returned to the table, he softly kissed the top of my head and asked again: “Have you seen my shin pads?”

  “I already told you.”

  “But you always lose things.”

  “No idea where they are,” I said.

  He carefully put the dishes into the sink, making sure that the plates didn’t touch each other.

  “And since when do you play soccer?” I asked. “And with whom?”

  “I’ve played before.”

  “I’m sure you’ll break something.”

  “Do I need an immigrant background to play soccer?” he asked, looking me straight in the eye.

  “Not that again.” I tried to sound as ironic as possible, but without much success. Whenever I came across this expression I could feel bile rising in my throat. The only thing worse was the adjective postmigrant. I hated the discussions related to these words, not only the public ones, but also the ones between the two of us. Nothing new was ever said in these conversations, but the tone was patronizing and strident. One of us provoked disagreement and then we both got caught up in allegations and rebukes. Elias accused me of caginess and I blamed him for being pushy, at which point he tended to move from general to specific claims.

  Elias looked offended, so I went over to him and he placed his hands on my hips. On his chin hung a single dark-blond hair. I removed it. He rested his head on my shoulder, I kissed his neck and pushed my knee between his legs and unbuttoned my summer dress a little. But Elias shook his head and whispered: “I’m running late.”

  I slammed my palm onto the counter. Elias shot me an accusing glance and said: “I didn’t mean it like that.”

  “My grandma once said always have a pair of fresh panties on you.”

  “Why?”

  “In case something happens.”

  “You’re crazy. And I have to go.”

  I accompanied Elias to the door and watched him run down the stairs. He always took two steps at once, sometimes three. He never walked, he leaped and ran. I made myself a coffee and started studying.

  2

  The information desk was manned by a nurse who was wearing a long pullover, despite the heat. She was pale, which accentuated her flaming red hair, pulled tightly into a bun. She smiled sweet-and-sourly and told me not to worry needlessly and to refrain from further inquiries. I had run all the way to the hospital and was now standing in front of her, drenched in sweat, red-faced and completely out of breath. Elias was in surgery.

  I sat down in the waiting room. A radio was on in the background. I translated the news simultaneously into English, the ads into French. In Kabul there had been an explosion, in Gaza shots were fired, and in Portugal the forests were burning. The chancellor was on a state visit. I flipped through an old issue of Vogue and waited in fashion. Handbags. Jewelry. Eye shadow. Whatever. I read about last November’s trends: fur and floral prints. I tore out the first page, folded it, and put it into my bag. Then I tore page three out, folded it, and put it into my bag. Page five got torn out as well, folded and put into my bag. By page 107 my bag was full.

  A doctor approached, smiling. He was tall and broad-shouldered. Hair brushed back neatly. As a greeting he folded my hand into his and held it just a bit too long. His eyes were brown and very alert. The smell of disinfectant, decay, and old people engulfed me. I gasped for air. The doctor put his hand on my arm and I was surprised by the intrusiveness of the gesture. He said something, but I didn’t hear him and had to ask again.

  “Do you speak German?” he asked slowly, over-enunciating each word.

  “Of course,” I answered.

  “My name is Weiss. Resident Physician Weiss. Are you a family member of Elias Angermann?”

  “I’m his girlfriend.”

  “Then I guess I’m not really supposed to speak with you.”

  “That shouldn’t be a problem, should it?”

  He reflected for a moment. The decision seemed not to come easily. Finally he nodded and said, “Oh well. What is your name?”

  “Maria Kogan.”

  He regarded me from head to toe. “I’m not sure I would pronounce your last name correctly. Can I call you Maria?”

  “No.”

  He shrugged. His voice growing louder with each syllable, he explained that a nail had been inserted into Elias’s femur. An intramedullary fixation. That they had nailed metal plates to the thighbone and that Elias had lost a lot of blood. I noticed splatters of blood on his lab coat and wondered whether they had come from Elias or a patient before. I nodded and opened the door of the anesthetic recovery room. The recovery would be a long one, the doctor’s voice reverberated behind me. The room was empty, save a bed that was fenced in by monitors, tubes, and a single chair. The curtains were closed. I opened them just a little, so that a sliver of light sliced across the floor. I lay my hand on the bedrails. Elias’s face was wan, as if every last drop of blood had drained from his body. A thin white crust caked his lips. He murmured my name and looked past me. A surgical drain emerged from his thigh.

  I bent down and the smell of cold sweat reached my nose. I kissed his forehead and stroked his hair. He moaned. I extended my hand to touch his, but then I saw the IV drip in the back of his hand, hesitated, and withdrew.

  “I’m not doing so well,” Elias said so quietly that he couldn’t possibly have meant for me to hear it, and suddenly a memory came back to mind, of him remarking that there are only two schools: old school and the Frankfurt School.

  I stayed until late. Feverish Elias hoisted his head from side to side. At times an “Are you still there?” punctured his restless sleep.

  That evening I made myself an instant soup and called his parents. Nobody picked up. I thought about calling Elke on her cellphone, but I already heard myself leaving a voicemail. “Hi, it’s Masha. Hey.” I paused and bit my lip. “Elias slipped while playing soccer. He broke his thighbone. He’s in the hospital.” The sentences came out labored. It had been a decade since I’d struggled so much to speak German. Elke called back in the middle of the night. Was it bad? No, I assured her. She said she couldn’t leave the restaurant. Every night it’s busy. I told her that I’m here. Elke said she’d try to come as soon as possible. I told her not to worry, I’m here.

  I packed a bag for Elias. I folded his underwear, T-shirts, and the sole pair of pajamas in his possession. Then I added his overnight bag, his camera, a sketchbook, and charcoal pencils.

  His roommates were watching afternoon talk shows. TV sounds blended in with snippets of conversation and laughter, the rustling of candy wrappers and magazines, the squeaking of shoes, and the wheels of food trolleys in the hallway.

  Elias was lying in the middle, his bed flanked by two other beds. Beside every bed was a little nightstand. His neighbors’ tables were piled high with chocolate bars, open packs of cookies, bags of gummi bears, Sudoku books, cigarettes, and magazines. I said hello to everyone in the room, but nobody paid attention to me.

  Elias lay pale and dull-eyed in his hospital bed. I put on a smile and approached him. I sat the bag down next to his table and listed out what I had brought. Like Christmas, Elias joked, exhausted.

  Elias spent most of the time sleeping, dazed by medication. Only breathing in and out. I sat next to his bed, peeled sour apples, pears, and a mango. The mango juice stuck to my fingers. I drank coffee and disappeared into the bathroom, where I splashed cold water onto my face to fend off tears and a h
eadache. The morning and the afternoon passed. The sun set excruciatingly slowly. Outside the shadows got longer and Elias’s hand rested in mine.

  By the next morning, he was already taking photos of the room, of his wound, and of me, who wasn’t able to look at his wound. The roommates also wanted to get some camera time. They were done playing cards and now forced us into conversation. He wouldn’t want to miss out on the opportunity to get his picture taken by a professional, Heinz said, when he learned that Elias studied photography.

  Heinz had served in World War II and Rainer was a locksmith. There were some things they would do differently today. Though not much, of course, not much. The person in the bed to the left of Elias cleared his throat and said he had to pay me a compliment. That my German is better than that of any Russian Germans he’s met at the social services office. I had hardly said anything yet. Heinz started talking about his time as a prisoner of war—until Elias asked him to please be quiet. Then Elias asked me to be quiet as well.

  It was hot and humid. The asphalt reflected the heat and even at night the streets didn’t cool. I got off my bike in front of the hospital and wiped the sweat off my forehead. The bicycle rack was filled to capacity, so I pushed my bike a bit. Then I spotted a free rack after all and squeezed it in. The green bike on the left fell and I laboriously brought it back to an upright position.

  The hospital was an elongated low-rise with a stone facade that stood in the middle of a residential area—an edifice completely devoid of architectural ambition and solely intended to best serve its medical purpose. The resident physician who had removed Elias’s surgical drain the day before sat in front of the entrance to the orthopedic ward and smoked. He had dark circles under his eyes and unkempt hair. I had seen him yesterday afternoon in the hospital and he looked as if he had worked through the night. He nodded toward me and I slowed until I waveringly stopped right in front of him. He held out his cigarette pack, light blue with Arabic letters. I offered him a croissant. He breathed out smoke and reached into my bag. The skin of his hand was cragged, his nails had yellowed from the tobacco.