Cleaving (33 page)

We make plans to tour his facilities first thing the next morning.

We arrive at the sauna, which is really just a small wooden outbuilding in Oksana's friend's backyard, just in time for our
appointment. I'd been expecting some vast tiled public bath full of naked middle-aged women and bad Soviet lighting, but instead
it's just a tiny suite of rooms that Oksana and I have to ourselves--a bathroom with cubbies for our clothes, a pile of towels,
plastic clogs, a resting area with bottles of water, a small fridge, and a table with four chairs, and the sauna itself. It's
about the size of a very good New York City walk-in closet, lined in wood, with two tiers of benches and an oven in one corner.
It is hotter than anywhere I have ever been in my entire, entire life. Unbelievable, the heat, like a fist squeezing us. Wrapped
in our towels, we sit on the benches, or lie on them, or lean against the wall, trying to talk but mostly not being able to
manage it. There is a pail of water with a scoop in it so that we can pour some over the hot top of the oven, but we do it
once and feel like we might actually die from the steam, so after that we just sit in our sweat.

The thermostat says 110 degrees... centigrade. Healthful? This? It can't be. But my one-upmanship gene kicks in, I guess, because
as long as Oksana stays in there, I'm not budging either. We stay for maybe thirty-five minutes, our first round. When she
says, "I'm going to take a break now," I nearly leap out of the sauna with her. Just standing up leaves me dizzy and feeling
a little sick. We retire to the other room, where we drink water for five minutes, wipe off some of the thick sheen of perspiration.
When words return, I ask what's next.

"We go back in. We're supposed to keep going back in until we stop sweating. That's when we'll know all the poison's been
flushed out of our bodies."

"Ah, okay, well, we'll see. I'm warning you, though, if that's the goal we could be here all night. I don't really stop sweating,
as a general rule. Too much to flush, maybe."

In and out we go, for slightly shorter periods each time, for nearly two hours. By the end, my legs are noodles and I think
I could sleep for days. It's true, though--I'm sweating almost not at all. We rinse off in the shower, dress, and get into
the cab that Oksana's friend has waiting for us outside.

Back at the bed and breakfast, Oksana and I wave our hellos and good-nights to whomever is in the kitchen. It's Ira and Vitaly.
Ira lights up when we walk in.

"My mother is ready to explain how to make
varenyky
," Vitaly says. "They are like, you know?" He holds up his thumb and forefinger to make a pinching gesture. "Little potato
dumplings."

I literally think I could fall asleep standing up. My skin feels strange, buzzy, under my clothes. But I'm leaving Kolimya
soon. Leavin' on a jet plane, don't know when I'll be back again. "Oh! Great, thanks!"

Oksana, who must be exhausted herself, stays to translate as Ira, with an efficiency and delicacy and utter sense of comfort
that I've never seen the like of among home cooks, shows me, step by step, how to make:

P
OTATO
V
ARENYKY

2 medium russet potatoes

cup finely chopped salt pork, rinsed

1/2 cup finely chopped onion

13/4 cups flour (or more if necessary)

2 large eggs

Pinch of salt

Peel the potatoes, quarter them, and boil them in salted water until soft, maybe half an hour. Meanwhile heat the salt pork
in a skillet, and when the fat is rendered out, lift the golden brown cracklings with a slotted spoon and set aside in a bowl.
Saute the onion in the rendered fat until golden brown. Set aside.

Drain the potatoes and mash them thoroughly, stirring in the onion mixture.

(Here Oksana raises her thin, arched eyebrows at me, and says something to Ira in Ukrainian that makes her laugh. "I told
Ira she's been tricking Andrea for two years." "Love it. 'Honey? You know why Ira's varenyky are so good? One hint--it ain't
the potatoes.' ")

Set aside until ready to fill the dumplings.

Using your hands, mix together the flour, eggs, and pinch of salt with about a cup of water, adding more flour if it's too
sticky to handle. Turn the mixture out onto a floured board and, adding flour as necessary, knead until you have a stretchy
dough. Divide the dough into two balls.

Roll out half the dough on the board until it's pretty thin--an eighth of an inch or less--but not so thin that it's in danger
of tearing. Cut into rounds about two inches in diameter. If you don't have a cookie cutter handy, you can also just cut them
into squares.

To fill the dumplings, put two to three teaspoons of the potato mixture on top of each round and squoosh it flat with the
back of a spoon until it covers most of the piece of dough, leaving a clean edge all around. Form the round into a half-moon
and pinch the edges closed. Repeat this process with the second half of the dough.

Then just drop the dumplings into a big pot of salted, boiling water. They will sink to the bottom at first, then float to
the top after about three to five minutes. Once most or all of the dumplings have risen to the surface of the water, that
means they're done. Drain them and rinse them with hot water from the tap.

Toss dumplings gently in a bowl with the cracklings and any further fat that has rendered off them. Makes enough dumplings
for four. Serve with a scoop of sour cream or creme fraiche on top.

It takes me a long time to make these
varenyky,
but then, I am not Ira. Her nimble fingers stuff and fold and pinch the dough at a flying pace. Oksana translates quickly,
but as Ira demonstrates she and I begin to outpace the words, Ira answering my questions directly. Of course we don't exchange
actual words, but with a single gesture, a mimed pinching motion or a finger point and questioning eyebrows, she can see what
I'm after, can nod her head yes or shake it no. I'm not the cook Ira is, but I'm a cook just the same. It's like with the
butchers I've met; though I can't understand the words she's saying, we share a language. By ten o'clock we are all sitting
together at the dinner table eating potato dumplings with pork cracklings and sour cream. They are divine.

Upstairs I get ready for bed. Pen and notebook are on the nightstand, and though my eyelids are drooping aggressively, I take
a moment to write Eric a good-night.

So after the sauna, I have this disturbing rash I see spreading across my arms and shoulders, a sort of latticework of red
lines, like perhaps my blood has been boiled to the surface. Oksana says that the sauna's "flushing out the poisons," but
this can't be good, right? Maybe the poisons are better off unflushed. Well, if I die in my sleep, I guess we'll know why.

"C
OME IN
, come in!" Misha motions to us as we ascend the concrete steps through early morning light into a stairwell that smells ripely
of apples. He kisses us both on each cheek and ushers us up the stairs. "You'll have breakfast now?"

"Oh, I already... no, I mean, yes, please. Thanks." Ira has fed me breakfast this morning, an omelet with sausages, but there
is no denying a Ukrainian who wants to feed you.

While Misha putters about in his small kitchen, we examine the other main room of the house. It is packed full of all manner
of stuff, the most prominent categories being taxidermy animals and Yulia Tymoshenko paraphernalia. There's a stuffed wildcat
stalking on a shelf up high near the ceiling. Tucked into a knickknack case is a Tymoshenko poster, showing the Ukrainian
politician with her familiar blond braids. "So what's with the hairdo, anyway?"

"She didn't always wear her hair like that. It's a traditional Ukrainian style, to prove she's very Ukrainian."

"And what's with the white robes, and the two guys with the swords?"

"You know... for young men, I guess." Oksana shrugs, rolls her eyes. "Politics."

"Huh." I suppose if I were a gorgeous blonde running for prime minister of an Eastern bloc country, I'd be gunning for the
D&D crowd too, but it's still a bit laughable, and creepy.

There are stuffed birds of all persuasions, stuffed rodents and snakes. A stuffed rabbit holds a snapshot of Yulia between
its paws.

Breakfast is--well, Jesus. First Misha serves us each six potato pancakes with his homemade jarred mushrooms, gathered from
his land. We each get a teacup full of kefir, and he urges upon us a "liver salad"--basically a great mound of chopped liver
layered with peppers, onions, mushrooms, other unidentifiable strata. Delicious--and, again, homemade--but like plutonium in
the stomach. Then he finishes us off with some apple cake and tea. Is this really how Ukrainians eat every day?

Next he takes us downstairs again, where we all stomp back into the shoes we'd removed at the door and head across the little
rutted road to his plant.

It's a Soviet construction, which he's bought to renovate. It's dilapidated now, with old black smokers and ice crusting over
the walls of the walk-in freezer. Misha's got big plans, though--he's putting in a new cooler and is purchasing all sorts of
other new equipment, grinders and stuffers and band saws. But the meat is just one part of his ambition. Misha also is planning
to build a big public sauna and, rising above it, a graded ski slope. He thinks he can start raking in the Sheshory tourist
dollars, maybe build a hotel. Oksana and I nod as he explains to us where everything will go, and how this will become the
greatest new complex in the whole town.

The first thing we hear when we step into the muddy courtyard in the center of the plant is a raucous chorus of howls and
barks from a kennel in one corner. "My guard dogs. Hunting dogs, too." He's got a Saint Bernard in one pen, a German shepherd
in another, and two leaping and yipping fox terriers. He speaks to each of them briefly, but doesn't encourage me to say hello.
"They're trained not to like strangers. With me, they are angels."

In another large pen is a chaotic roil of mud and roots, and two wild boars, who snuffle up to the fence as we approach, nudging
their snouts against the chain-link. "I found them in the mountains here, as babies," Misha says, as he presses a palm to
the fence for them to nuzzle at. "Their mother was dead." One of Misha's employees gingerly edges into the pen to dump a big
bucket of meat trim, apples, and vegetable cuttings into their trough. They busily attack--the meal, I mean, not the employee.

In yet another pen, built up off the ground like a rabbit hutch, are two foxes. "These also I rescued as babies. I used to
keep them in the house, but they shit all over everything." The pen smells wincingly noxious. "I tried to let go, but they
keep coming back. So now they live here."

The pair of foxes dash in endless, frantic circles around their cage, their eyes wide and their heads darting back and forth,
trying to see everything at once. They've clearly been driven insane. I feel sorry for them.

At the end of the tour, which probably took most of an hour, we head back to his house again, this time to eat some of his
"meat bread"--a dense meat loaf that edges into pate territory--and drink some of his cognac. (Oksana takes only one sip out
of politeness. Misha and I have several small glasses each.) He goes through his photo collection, which highlights vacation
snapshots by lakes and a complete history of the dogs he's owned through the years. Then he takes us back to town.

"Oh, and on the way, I have something to show you that you will like very much!"

So on the way back, we pull into a complex of buildings that looks rather like an old fairground. He talks to a man through
his window at a security point, who then unlocks a gate for us and swings it open so we can pull into a wide courtyard with
booths all around the perimeter. All are empty now; there's no one around, but there is a cage about the size of a horse trailer
in the center of the lawn of tamped-down dried grass. Inside, we can see as we step closer, are two enormous brown bears.
They too pace, and snuffle the air through shiny black noses. Their coats are bedraggled with mangy balls of fur hanging off.
Their eyes are sad, and insane too.

"These were rescued, as babies. Their mother was killed." Misha makes a mournful face that I believe, but there's the glow
of fascination there as well as he watches the mad bears pace, murmuring to them under his breath. I'm beginning to get wise
to this whole rescued-orphan routine. But nonetheless, I feel a little sorry for Misha. I know what killing with kindness
feels like--like there's no good option. You have to save what you've made bereft. You have to look after them. Even if it
drives them bat-shit crazy. I too have felt the irrational urge, the one that leads people to climb into gorilla pits or to
commune with large animals in remote Alaskan meadows, to comfort and befriend creatures that can and often will rip them to
shreds. I want to dig my hands deep into the bears' fur and figure out how to make them okay. The gratifications of cutting
down a side of pork are not so different, really--it's a facing up to your crimes, an attempt to make things right. And with
the added benefit of some nice plump pork chops to show for your work when you're done.