Work Text:
Out in the living room, Kala was humming over the stacks of grading she was working through.
YA-datata YA-datata YA-datata, ya da da
Wolfgang paused in mincing the garlic in front of him to listen more closely, the knife hovering above the wooden cutting board. His head tilted slightly. He could only just barely see her, framed by the door, but the echo of her voice in his head rang clearly. The tune teased at him with a distant familiarity, and he started humming it to himself under his breath in its hushed minor key. He returned to mincing the garlic, the knife rocking under his hand across the board in rhythm with the melody now stuck in his head, barely audible over the hiss and sizzle of the skillet on the stove beside him.
YA-data YA-data YA-data, ya da da
He scraped the garlic into the pan with the back of the knife, already sizzling fragrantly with minced and shredded vegetables. Standing over the stove, his mind flashed back to a different kitchen, more confined but taller somehow. The rich smell of butter-fried onions and mushrooms, cut with the clean scent of fresh dill, drifted with him from kitchen to kitchen as the melody hummed in his head fell into sync with the song warbling out of the tiny, portable record player.
Million, million, million alykh roz
Iz okna, iz okna, iz okna videsh ty
Kto vlyublyon, kto vlyublyon, kto vlyublyon i v seryoz
Svoyu zhizn dlya tebya prevratit v tsvety
The rest of the words escaped him; it must have been decades since he heard it last. The chorus of the song repeated on a loop in his head, as if the record was skipping improbably. His eyes searched the room frantically. If Pugachova was playing on the turntable, if there was food cooking on the stove, then she must be here somewhere. As he took a step towards the record player, he felt the soft pressure of a hand on his shoulder. Whipping around, it took him a moment to process why Kala was standing here with him.
“Is this where you grew up?” she asked as her hand slid down his arm and she took the three small steps to cross the room towards the stove. The sight of her leaning down over the stove - that stove - inhaling the steam rising from the pan deeply caught in his chest.
This building didn’t exist anymore. He’d brought Kala to the site of it soon after she’d joined him here, through streets he could navigate with his eyes closed. These days, he could almost navigate East Berlin better by feel than by sight, saving himself the distraction of what had been rebuilt away from what he remembered of it from his childhood. A sleek glassed-in monstrosity stood there in its place these days, its lines crisper, more antiseptic than the drab gray concrete apartment block that stood there in his memory.
He had held her there, standing across the street, breathing deeply to still himself, as he tried to rouse his memories in their minds together so she could see the neighborhood the way he did: the streets humming with blocky Trabants and Ladas held together with tape, wire and hope. What had ever made it feel like home, though, was here in this room somewhere between the crackling music and the fragrant steam. The outside of the building, even many of the physical spaces inside of it belonged to his father as much as his mother. The way his mother brought the kitchen alive, somewhat dated Russian pop and all, was hers and hers alone. Kala had understood that, at least in some way, standing with him there on the concrete with her eyes held soft, her head resting against his as their deep breaths fell into the same rhythm, trying to render his memories as vividly as possible.
The thought ran through his head again. She must be here. He saw Kala turn towards the door as the she bustled in, a slight blonde woman with loose clothes hanging around her, a boy of about four with a mop of blond hair right at her heels. Kala stood quietly by the stove, watching as she briskly stirred the vegetables in the pan with a wooden spoon
“Did you wash your hands?” the woman asked the boy as he stepped up onto a wooden crate pushed up next to the small kitchen table. He offered no answer but to push his stubby hands into the bowl in front of him.
“Volchonok moy! Оkh ty,” she half-scolded, and he finally looked up at her, with a defiantly impish twinkle in his eye. The utter familiarity of it made Kala giggle, a hand over her mouth to stifle it, though the sound had no bearing on the scene playing out around them.
She set the spoon down and stepped over to push the boy’s sweater sleeves back away from the food in the bowl. She let out an exasperated sigh as she tried to push the sleeves back behind his elbows, where they might actually stay up. Tiny morsels of meat and rice clung to his fingers as they hovered above the bowl.
Her face was half-frozen as the record skipped back the to the beginning of the song’s chorus again. Wolfgang studied her from both of his vantage points in the room: from his view as a child, her eyes were stern warmth as she fussed over him, but even from across the room his older eyes could read the exhaustion sunken into her face, the way her focus on him spoke to how closely the walls of the apartment hung around her.
His memories of this place were crisp, but usually gone quickly. There was something about sharing the moment, captured as it was in the space between the verses of a song, that let it hold depth in a way the flickering moments he could catch on his own could barely imagine.
Even at that age, he had been aware that something wasn’t right. He knew he wasn’t supposed to dread his father coming home, though he was often gone for several days at a time, the schedule unpredictable. He knew he wasn’t supposed to want to sleep underneath the bed on the nights he couldn’t stay with his mother in her bed, but the tight space always felt safer, especially when the noise started: yelling, broken glass, indeterminate thumps that shook the floor. He lay there as in a cocoon, willing his body to become stronger.
As he’d grown, he’d realized there were any number of other things that were not how they were for others, how they should have been. But it wasn’t until right now that he realized just how small his mother's world had been here. It wasn’t even the size of the physical space, though it would only take him two or three steps to cross the whole of the kitchen, maybe five steps to the record player, a dozen total to the door. There was a closeness to the drab-colored walls, a hollow silence that lingered somewhere behind the sizzle of the stove and the warble of the record through weak speakers. A static pull like dust in the winter, clinging to a sweater.
As his eyes felt out the edges of the space, arms wrapped around him from behind and he tensed briefly before relaxing into Kala’s embrace, the wooden spoon still clutched tightly in his hand. The framed photograph of the interior of Kala’s family’s restaurant they had hung in the kitchen came back into focus in front him. He breathed deeply, feeling Kala’s cheek pressed warm against his shoulder through the thin cotton of his shirt.
He took another breath like that and stirred the pan briskly. With a last gentle squeeze, she loosened her grip and slid to his side to sniff at the pan, holding back her long curls.
“It smells as good as hers - well, almost,” she said. He could feel her grin as she spoke and his lips finally cracked into a soft, close smile as he chuckled quietly under his breath.
“I’m still not sure how these are going to turn out without meat in them,” he said, lifting the pan out from under her nose and scraping it into the bowl of rice waiting beside the stove. The recipe itself was more like guidelines. The proportion of rice to vegetables to meat varied based on what was available, but he couldn’t remember ever leaving the meat out altogether.
“You know, you say that every time you try to make one of the things you grew up with for me and I have never once been disappointed,” she said. His grin opened just a little more and he remembered the sight of her holding her hair back as she leaned over his mother’s stove. “It smells magnificent, but when do onions frying in butter not?”
He laughter crackled warm relief through his chest as her dark eyes caught his and held them until he couldn’t help but lean over to kiss her, lips as soft as the butter sitting by the stove. He was still puzzled at times by how easy it was to be around her, that it scared him if he stopped to think about it too long. As if he had no choice but to leave himself completely open before her.
“This was her favorite, you know,” he said quietly. His aunt - his mother’s sister - had mentioned as much the last time he’d eaten her stuffed peppers. It was the only time she’d come up in conversation during the visit. It hurt too much to bring her up openly. For both of them, not that either would ever say it in so many words.
“I know,” she said.
“I didn’t know that for a long time,” he said, thinking of what he’d noticed about her sharing the memory with Kala. “I should have.”
“Why do you say that?” she asked, delicately pinching a fingerful of hot veggies from the top of the bowl as he turned back to the counter.
“I don’t know,” he said, his hands rocking across the cutting board with the quick rhythm of the knife through a pile of walnuts. “I think that’s it, though. I don’t know. Have you ever found out something new that makes you realize just how much less you know than you thought you did?”
Kala shrugged and mumbled something that sounded agreeable as she licked her fingers.
“My mother - she told me once that secrets were better than love, because they kept people together,” he said, “but I never really thought about her keeping secrets from me.”
“What kind of secrets do you mean?” she asked and he paused in his movements.
“Don’t know,” he said, shaking his head as he added the finely chopped nuts to the bowl, “I couldn’t tell you what they are, just that there are empty parts that I can’t explain. I’m still not entirely sure what she meant by it. I’m not sure what she was trying to keep together.”
Kala paused, fiddling with the tiny elephant charm on her necklace.
“Never doubt how much your mother loved you,” she said finally, looking back up at him.
“I don’t,” he said with a shrug, starting to massage together the rice, vegetables and nuts with his hands, “I just don’t know that she wouldn’t have been better off if she didn’t.”
“We’re not going down that way again,” Kala cut him off, her voice taking on the unbreakable firmness that it could. There was no sharpness to her tone, just even clarity that made it difficult to challenge. “You can’t change anything about the past by hating yourself. It won’t do much for the future, either.”
She was right, of course. She usually was. Infuriatingly so, at times. Of course she knew what he was feeling right now. Secrets, in the strictest sense, were impossible between them. But feeling was one thing, knowing was one thing - understanding was another. He turned his focus back into the bowl. The familiar wet squelch of the seasoned rice through his fingers was soothing in its own way. He scooped up a handful of the rice mixture and squeezed it through his fist into the bowl like he had always done with the filling for the peppers since he was a small boy, making a sloppy peak in the bowl. The chorus of the song echoed in his head distantly, again.
He licked some of the mixture from one of his fingers. It didn’t taste quite like his memories, but he had to admit it was quite good. Though, as Kala had pointed out, when were onions fried in butter not? The same could be said of mushrooms in butter too, he supposed.
“Here, taste this,” he said, offering her a fingerful of the mixture in the bowl. She looked him over awkwardly, her hand reaching for his tentatively before he raised his fingers slightly and she took them into her mouth, delicately sliding the food off of them with a single light swirl of her tongue. She covered her mouth as she chewed, her eyes flashing up at him playfully as she did.
“More,” she said and he scooped a little more onto his finger, bringing it right to her mouth this time, a grain of rice catching on the edge of her lip. Her tongue darted out of her lips to collect the stray morsel and she grinned at him, their eyes held together in a way almost as palpable as the feeling of her tongue on his fingers.
The melody of the song registered in his head again.
“What is that song, anyway?” she asked.
“It’s an old Russian pop song from before I was born. It was one of the few records my mom had. Alla Pugachova was, like, the Soviet pop star. There wasn’t much Russian stuff on the radio, so she listened to the same things over and over again,” he said, working his hands through the filling some more. “Can you bring the peppers over here? My hands are all covered.”
“Where are they?” she said, starting to look.
“Stove. The covered pot that’s not cooking right now.” He pointed with his sticky hand.
“Do you remember the words?” she asked as she set the pot down beside him and pulled the lid off.
“Really only the chorus,” he said, picking up one of the limp, hollow peppers from the steamer and starting to press the filling mixture inside of it, “but the whole thing is about an artist who falls in love with an actress and gives up everything he has to buy her a million roses.”
“Seems impractical,” she said, and he saw a brief flash of her cubicle back in Mumbai, flower vases covering every available surface. The laugh rumbled deep in his belly.
“You would say that,” he chuckled at her, his eyes narrowing playfully. Her patience for empty performances of romanticism had plummeted in the time he’d known her, for somewhat obvious reasons relating to her ex and the elaborate story he’d lain before her that had never really been hers. It was refreshing, for the most part, but there was a certain implicit pressure in the emotional honesty it demanded of him.
“I did say that,” she protested with a smirk. “And I meant it. Can I help with these?”
“You don’t have to,” he said.
“What if I want to?” She said, reaching for an empty shell of a pepper and he smiled back at her.
“If you like,” he said, “You just need to make sure to really press it in down to the bottom point of the pepper,” he said and her hand dipped into the bowl after his.
“So how does it work out for him?” she asked, her fingers pressing deep into the pepper.
“What?”
“In the song? With the million roses?”
“Oh, she ends up with someone else,” he said offhandedly, hoping he was remembering correctly, “Pretty sure. Either that or he dies. It’s Russian - it’s not allowed to have a happy ending.”
“Hm. Sounds about right,” she snorted out a laugh.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” he said.
“I mean, when you start by dismantling your whole life for someone else with nothing to rebuild it, what do you expect?” she said and he stopped, setting the pepper in his hands down in the bowl of filling. His eyes caressed her with an intent softness.
“Are you happy here in Berlin?” he asked. It had been nearly six months since she had picked up and moved here to Berlin with him, after leaving the relationship that had been held in limbo there and the job that was too close to that part of the past.
“Are you trying to do what I think you’re doing?” she asked, setting her pepper down next to his. Her sticky-coated fingers settled on top of his with a short, sharp breath as her eyes turned towards him. “It’s not the same thing.”
“You’re sure you wouldn’t have been happier if I had come to Mumbai?”
“I’m not just here for you,” she said flatly, pushing their coated hands together, the fingers squelching together softly as they interlaced. “I needed a change. If it weren’t for you, I might have chosen somewhere else, and, yes, I suppose I wish my family were a little closer, but I left Mumbai for me. You need to remember that. I was not the one who dismantled things there. And before you say anything, neither were you. It doesn’t always have to be someone’s fault. Especially when it’s not actually a problem.”
She reached up with her free hand and set it on the strong curve of his jaw. She began to draw his face towards her own, but her own stern expression began to bend around a laugh as she realized that she had just smeared pepper filling onto his face. His smile bloomed almost instantly, and his sticky hand rose to her cheek in parallel. Their linked hands pulled apart and rose to frame both sides of their faces as their lips met over the bowl.
As they pulled apart gently, he felt her mouth grin against his and her hand dragged against his cheek, leaving behind streaks of seasoned rice. Her eyes flashed up at his from mere centimeters away before her lips followed her fingers to kiss the smears from his skin.
The weight that had settled in his chest as he had entertained his worries lifted in Kala’s touch. Each kiss seemed a promise to him that she’d meant each of her reassurances. His thumb slid in a curve up along the length of her cheekbone, and he pulled away from her attention to follow that line with his own kisses, the tip of his tongue slipping out to better lift the smears of food from her face. They quickly found themselves with dabs of food on other patches of available skin, both laughing and Wolfgang thought then that his heart was just as full.
“We should actually finish filling the peppers,” he said, arms around Kala but hands stretched out away from her to avoid getting food on her clothes. “But,” he trailed off, pulling back from her slightly. Her face still had brown and green flecks of food stuck to it and he hoped to always remember how beautiful she looked just like that. He smiled slyly as he continued. “They do need to simmer for over an hour once they’re in the pot, though.”
Kala grunted thoughtfully, nodding her head as her own smile narrowed slyly.
“I suppose the prudent thing would be to get that started, then, volchonok,” she said in a soft, low voice that made him shiver. Right then, the thought drifted through Wolfgang’s head that maybe roses had nothing on peppers.
volchonok (волчонок) - baby wolf
Вегетарианский фаршированные перцы с грибами и орехами
Vegetarian Stuffed Peppers with Mushrooms and Nuts
Makes 3-4 servings
Vegetarian, gluten-free (notes for vegan mod. included)
Takes a long-ass time, but is worth it
So, this is actually a vegetarian adaptation of my family's stuffed pepper recipe that I developed for the purposes of this fic, and it's really good, though it might actually be more fatty and caloric than the meaty version. It would be less good without the nuts in it though. Mushrooms and nuts are a totally drool-worthy vegan combo. This is written as a vegetarian recipe, but I've included a few notes about how this could easily be made vegan. If there's any interest, I can also write up the original meaty version (which is what Wolfgang and his mom are making in the flashback - update: meaty version written up here). I usually make this with cubanelle or frying peppers, but bell peppers work fine, too. They just take a little longer to cook all the way through. Often, my inspiration for making stuffed peppers is finding a bag of them on the reduced price produce rack. Somehow, this makes them feel more traditional.
Ingredients:
- 6 cubanelle peppers (~5-6 inches long) or 4 smallish bell peppers
- Filling:
- 1½ c. coarsely-ground nuts (I use mostly walnuts with a handful of almonds - the food processor makes this go fast, but isn't necessary)
- 1 c. minced onion (2 medium onions is enough for both filling and sauce)
- 2 c. grated carrot
- 2½ c. minced mushroom (good even with plain white mushrooms - same note about using food processor applies))
- 3 cloves garlic, minced
- 2 Tblsp butter (or vegan margarine such as Earth Balance)
- 1 tsp kosher salt or ½ tsp plain salt
- 1 Tblsp minced fresh dill
- 1 tsp ground sage
- ¼ c. grated parmesan (optional)
- 2 c. cooked rice (⅔ c. dry white rice w/ 1⅓ c. water)
- Sauce:
- 1-2 tsp vegetable oil
- ½ c. minced onion
- ½ c. grated carrot
- 1 c. crushed tomato
- 2 c. water (including the pepper-steaming water)
- 1 Tblsp minced fresh dill
- 1 tsp paprika (smoked if available)
- ½ c. sour cream (or ¼ c. tahini for dairy-free version)
Ahead of time:
Cook the rice and steam the peppers. cut out the top as close to the stem as possible and lift the stem and core out together. Rinse the rest of the seeds out. You can steam them in a steamer basket for 10-15 minutes OR You can put them in a covered container in the microwave with a cup of water for 8 minutes and then ignore them for a while.
Filling:
Melt the butter in a large skillet over medium heat, then add the onion, carrot, garlic, mushroom and salt and cook until the onions start to grow soft and browned. Add the sage and dill, then add to the cooked rice along with the coarsely ground nuts and cheese, if using. Mix until thoroughly combined. The best way to do this is with your hands - it seems to work the rest of the seasoning into the rice best. They're going to get sticky when you stuff the peppers anyway.
Sauce:
In a large (at least 5 qt) pot with a lid, start sauteing the onion and carrot in the oil. When they start to soften, add the rest of the sauce ingredients.
The best way to stuff the peppers, especially for longer varieties, is with your hands. It's the best way to get the filling all the way down into the ends of the pepper. Because the rice is already cooked, you don't need to worry about the filling having room to expand. Fill the peppers all the way to the top.
Arrange the stuffed peppers in the sauce so they are as covered as possible. The sauce should be enough to mostly cover the peppers, though you might have to rearrange them to get them to fit well. Any extra stuffing can get dropped into the sauce by spoonfuls.
Simmer for about an hour and serve, ideally with a little more sour cream and minced dill on the side.