Perestroika!

The starting moments of Perestroika.

May 1945

Rejoice, for we have won the war!

Twenty million of ours are dead, and there’ll be more to that figure when we start counting properly, but for the magnitude of what we have gained in return it’s perfectly plausible, appropriate, necessary, laudable.

Twenty million of ours are dead - and so is Germany.

Now we shall split their country in half just as we did their dream of national socialism, and though this is a joint agreement with Roosevelt’s tribe to give them an ally and us an example they will nevertheless find their reasons to throw thorny roses in the grand and inevitable path of socialism, but it does not matter. The destiny of the internationale is unavoidable for the world, and we shall guarantee it.

For our nation is the greatest nation on earth: the nation of the united soviet.

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Zero

I am a recognised authority on Pierogi. I believe I shall expound on the history of this dish.

Seven-hundred years ago a Taoist pilgrim named Sun Baoyuan crossed the eternal Taklamakan and presented the brutal Mongol ruler Batu Khan there the golden droplets of his Kaifeng hometown: dumplings.

Initially the leader gave his criticisms. He was yet an amateur with chopsticks, and he complained that the supposedly iconic silky skin made it trouble for him to pick up. When Baoyuan recommended the emperor eat with his hands it nearly earned him an honourable skewering. Then the Khan sent for a spoon carved from the spine of the venerable Mongolian Death Worm, and finally, he could eat.

Batu Khan loved it.

The first dumpling ordered lawmakers to decree the dish as the national food of that nation, the Golden Horde. There would be banners made, kitchens built, and histories altered: ‘Our honourable Batu Khan is a studious ruler, but also a chef in closeted nature. This dish is the product of a lifetime of sheltered talent!’ And the second dumpling sent cooks across the lands to deliver the recipe and the sentiment surrounding it, to all corners, to all allies and enemies and willing and unwilling tributaries. The Khan was gleeful, and he toasted his pilgrim friend and took another bite.

The third dumpling had poison and Batu Khan died writhing at the feet of the soon-to-be-impaled Baoyuan. It was apparent: this pilgrim was an assassin sent by Batu’s rival Kublai Khan, the self-titled god of the world, to usurp his throne.

But in those times news moved slowly, and the death rattle did not reach the emissary chefs. In clean consciences they went to Ukraine, to Romania, to Georgia. They bisected the steppe and brought the food to Poland, and the German merchants that went so often for Mink furs took it to their kitchens as a ceremonial dish for kings and then as sustenance for their servants. After a few years the emissaries settled and their march did not go much beyond the Rhine, and likely owing to the parsimony of Hanseatic traders neither did they spread it. The dumpling had discovered a new homeland, but the dumpling wasn’t the dumpling anymore.

They were varenyky. They were Knödel. They were colțunași. Somewhere in the world, they were knedlíky. After a few centuries everyone had their own name and their own edition of the origin tale to tell, and not even this one is excluded from that rule.

There was one emissary who went leeward, however. He’d arrived at the river Volga when he thought he was at the Dnieper, and he wended his way up to the grand duchy of Muscovy thinking it was Kiev. Evidently he was not the brightest man, but he had a grip for language. He went into the nearest tavern and presented his Asiatic gold to the owner in general Slavic.

“But this is Muscovy, my friend,” it was revealed to him. “Though, whatever this food is you have brought here, it is delicious!”

Disheartened perhaps, the emissary chose to stay there instead of recourse to Kiev, and the dish that he brought lingered in the bars, the taverns, the low places of society, long after he and his children and their children were dead, far after Batu Khan had succumbed to his unlucky third dumpling and his golden empire had been churned into dust by the incorrigible winds of time. Then it became the food of terrible Ivans, of Romanovs and Bolsheviks, enduring the augmentation of the Muscovite Rus’ into Russia, through the transformation of Russia into the Soviet Union.

This incarnation of the food is known as Pierogi, and that initial town of Muscovy is now called Moscow. As the superior authority of Pierogi in all Europe I recognise this one city as having the best of this dish in the world. And today I, Otto Hansel, have arrived here to prove it!

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 November 1978

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Two

Other than the passport inspector, his stand, the failing lamp on the east wall, and the aroma of sulfur-filled snow that permeated through the halls like cold, noxious dust, the arrivals section of Moscow’s Khodynka Aerodrome was deserted.

I’d stepped off the plane expecting to bump into all sorts of people of the wide world. To my dismay, I only heard the tapping of the impatient army man’s boots. In a drab green coat that was the image of Castro, he filled out a system of papers and dossiers at his station that was clearly kept in order by a man with too much time. I was the only one on the flight destined for here and not a transfer, and when this lone nekulturny passenger gave his passport he presented a ripely sour face for it.

Then his face wasn’t sour any more.

“East German,” he said to himself, and he scanned the page that had the photo and all the info. “Otto Hansel?”

I nodded.

“Twenty-years old. No, turning twenty soon. Come for university?” He flipped through the passport.

“No,” I replied.

He froze, and his eyes dodged to me. “You speak Russian.” Then the inspector went on with the papers, talking lighter. “Well, don’t feel bad. Not many people get college places. And it’s not so much the smart ones who do, but I wouldn’t let anyone catch me saying that.”

I didn’t reply, and he went on.

“I was in university, actually… not here, but in Leningrad. In 1941. I think I was studying law. I wanted to go abroad, but I didn’t consider that communist law was useless anywhere but here, so the dream was always going to be dashed. Though I never got to finish the degree, anyway.”

“…Wanna tell me why?” I dared.                           

“The war happened.” He was looking at me, then. “Germans.”

He did not spit the word but his eyes flared when he said it. He held my passport between his knuckles and stood up in the booth to go on talking.

“I was at Kiev… nearly dead. Six-hundred thousand were there and I was one of the fifteen-thousand that left. It was very hard for me, because I was not a volunteer. But I was also one of those who reached Berlin. I was under that flag when they held it over the Reichstag and took a picture. You know that photo?”

“…It’s famous,” I replied.

“Then let us hope it always stays that way.” He put the passport in the transport tray but kept his fingers on it. “Our greatest Russia over Germany. Because Germans are good people. The easterners are good. Your hidden police, Stasi, is very good. But you are not Stasi, hmm?”

I leaned back. For the first time the man smiled, and he pointed with the tip of his finger on the booth dividing glass:

“You are KGB.”

Indeed, this was my calling to Moscow. Exactly nine years, eleven months, and eighty-nine days had passed since then: under unfortunate circumstances surrounding the St. Boniface’s orphanage in East Berlin I was visited by the distant beneficiary of death and given the choice of that life ending or this one beginning. The rest would be the dissidence of normal routine.

“But don’t worry.” The man saw my expression, and comforted. “Knowing the jobs of whoever comes through here is my role. After all, no civilian passenger has ever stepped in this terminal. I haven’t done any snooping… and won’t do any when you leave.”

When I did not produce an answer he nodded to himself again, and I took the passport. I came to the exit, however, and was called again in place. Now out of the booth, the man told me this:

“You know, the best Pierogi in Moscow can be found in Manezhnaya Square.”

For one moment I was surprised, but however he knew my favourite food I dismissed as coincidence in the run of the moment. I stepped out of the airport and would not look back.

Author's Note

Just your general opinion on the manuscript so far.