Andre and Ondřej
One would think growing up in a landlocked country would make Andre extra keen on the seafood in America, but it managed to repulse him more than before. The odor of fish was strong tonight. Tuna reek, whitefish must, urchin ooze. Where he came from, fish were mainly decorative fixtures in a child’s bedroom aquarium or novel christmas treats, where carp were battered up to a golden sheen and doused in lemon juice. To see them hanging by tail, lying supine, sliced, diced, and besocketed underneath fluorescent bulbage seemed profane to him, especially in the middle of a New York January.
“Andre approached shopping for groceries spontaneously; as he also approached catching the bus.”
The fishy smell really bothered him more than anything else about the supermarket nearest their place. Tonight was his turn to make the trip, so he’d have to fight through it. Sara had her spin class til 8, and since it was only their second year of living together, they still took their dinners together rather seriously.
Andre approached shopping for groceries spontaneously; as he also approached catching the bus. He didn’t check a schedule before catching the bus: when it came, it came. When he thought of something to cook, an idea would come to him in the produce section, or frozen food aisle, or the deli counter. No recipe preparation needed.
Braving the odor, he swung his cart past the spices, then found himself meditating on the ungodly selection of canned soups. At a $4.49 price tag, one could crack open said can of soup and plop its contents directly onto the stovetop saucepan. Andre even entertained the idea of surprising Sara with a minestrone from a can. He imagined the work that would need to be done to convince her that he’d made it from scratch. Maybe smearing a little tomato sauce on the counter and knife, dirtying up the cheese grater, destroying the evidence in the neighbor’s recycling bin. How many times had that trick been pulled off? Heroic husbands and wives whipping up improbable feats against imposing deadlines. Children’s sauce-lipped smiles and spouses’ hearty kisses acting as sworn testimonies to the authenticity laid down in the lab by Campbell’s, Progresso, and Amy’s.
On Sarah’s cooking nights, she’d scour her favorite culinary blogs, digging up trendy recipes with buzzy ingredients which Andre didn’t even know the name for in his native language. On his nights, Andre opted for a more standard European fare: pasta, risotto, chicken cutlets, salads and variations on potatoes. He made a point of spending no more than $20 on ingredients for two. He was also adamant that the food should last for at least two meals. Before living in New York, the math came out to around $8 after conversion, and even after two years, he was still having a hard time convincing himself that cooking was the most economical choice in this city. In one of his first weeks, he’d even experimented with having fast food for every lunch. That was until an ill-fated CrunchWrap Supreme dismantled his fantasy just four days in.
Andre was in the midst of his soup section stupor when a voice grabbed his attention from an aisle over. Living in a foreign city, identifying someone speaking your native tongue comes over you like hearing a song you’ve known all your life, recognizable even at the faintest of volumes. Individual notes and lyrics may not even be detectable, but the song is so deeply embedded in your consciousness that it hangs over you like a specter. Any other Slavic language would whisk by Andre unnoticed, but even a hush of Czech snapped him right to. It was a man’s voice, somewhere in his 30’s, with a gruffness to it acquired by European men through a steady diet of cigarettes and lagers.
“He could remember the enthusiastic, tiring game of charades that his mother played with the attendant while shopping for lemons...”
‘Pastinak’ was the word he kept repeating to himself. He must have said it 20 times before Andre heard the man ask for assistance. “I’m looking for Par-sneep,” he asked.
“Ah, par-snip” a woman replied, popping the ‘P’ with a corrective zest that Americans like to use on those with foreign accents. Andre was taken back to a trip he’d taken to East Germany with his mother when he was a child. He could remember the enthusiastic, tiring game of charades that his mother played with the attendant while shopping for lemons, feigning a bite and a sour face with an embarrassed laugh which could’ve passed for a whimper. As his mother roved around the supermarket, she would send him off on missions to track down the ingredients in their German form. When he found her stooped over a freezer in the meat aisle, she appeared lost in a daze, her eyes frozen cold. For a split second, he doubted that she recognized him when he appeared at her side with a can of cranberry sauce. Ondřej never understood why they went grocery shopping on just a two-day vacation. He’d always figured that it was because it was too expensive to eat out in Leipzig.
❦ ❦ ❦
When the Czech man appeared in Andre’s field of vision, he was aided not only by the woman from the supermarket, but by his phone as well. “Smetana, hovězí sklíčidlo, brusinková omáčka, houskový knedlík, citron…Cream, beef chuck, cranberry sauce, bread dumplings, lemon…” His translating app spit out ingredient after ingredient, while the woman guided him to each item. Andre still couldn’t get over the one-on-one service that you could receive in this country. Before they were out of earshot, the mystery recipe occurred to him: he was gathering ingredients for svíčková, a childhood favorite of his. He hadn’t had it since his mother passed away.
“Cart empty, Andre began his pursuit, nabbing the recipe’s ingredients as he heard them...”
Cart empty, Andre began his pursuit, nabbing the recipe’s ingredients as he heard them, keeping an eye and ear on the man and his translator. Moving through the meat department, grain aisles, and the misty produce section, he tried to maintain a sense of the man’s location, anticipating his next stop. He stopped to consult his phone for a few items, but managed to catch up to the man in the checkout line. To avoid suspicion, Andre scooted into the ‘10 Items or Less’ queue, not worried about the amount of contents in his cart.
The concept of the express line at the supermarket struck Andre as paradoxical to the American way: rewarding those in a hurry, while also incentivizing customers who’d purchased less. But as he found out through Sara, the 10 item count wasn’t as strict as it led on to be. He’d seen her get through with entire weeks’ loads of groceries. Such instances made him anxious. What if somebody entered the line behind her with a single box of diapers or tampons, or a bottle of water to save them from dehydration? How would she face up to anyone in an actual, dire, real life, 10 Items or Less situation? So far, in the handful of times she’d used the express lane with him, they’d been lucky to pass through.
To mitigate any remaining guilt and pass the time, he counted out the svíčková ingredients in his cart: 12, counting the carrots as individual entities. Glancing over at the man, he witnessed him bid a curt farewell to his personal translator as he began placing his items on the belt.
❦ ❦ ❦
At the supermarket in Leipzig, Ondřej watched his mother nervously place the items of the belt. Her hands lost traction on the jar of cranberry sauce. Ondřej remembered dipping beneath her to catch the jar and save a bit of shattered glass from causing her further embarrassment. Sweat beaded on her forehead and he could read in her complexion that she actually was on the verge of tearing up. Her brown hair looked thinner than usual and had taken on a muted tone.
She had become increasingly restless in the weeks leading up to their drive up to Leipzig. Ondřej later found out that surveillance had been increasing on his father the previous month or so, and that they’d decided it was best for the two of them to leave Prague and take in some new scenery. He would stay there.
“Ondřej would play counter spy from his perch on the windowsill, guiding his father to safety...”
Driving north, she made frequent use of the rearview mirror, wearily looking in the direction of home. Ondřej would crane his neck to see what she saw. All the horizon offered were boxy Škodas and Trabants dotting the highway, each driver brisk and anonymous, yet laden with a potential to expose them on what was to be their innocent mother and son trip abroad.
In the dead of January, Leipzig didn’t offer much in terms of escapist imagery. It was Ondřej’s first time out of Czechoslovakia and he was fascinated merely by the simple elegance of the blue and white German street signs.The grey swath of sky that day in Leipzig held an oppressive weight over the handful of Germans walking the sidewalks. Drab in their greys, olives, and browns, they didn’t look much different than Czechs after all. They shielded their faces with their jacket collars, reminding Ondřej of his father.
Every evening back in Prague, Ondřej would play counter spy from his perch on the windowsill, guiding his father to safety inside their building doors. He would peer down below at the street and beyond, noting down details of possible intelligence agents in his school notebook. Men, women, and children filled his notebook pages: their height, weight, a brief clothing description, hair color, etc. Eye color was a stretch from his distance, but he made his guesses anyway. When he was finished, he planned on handing the report over to his father so he could stay a step ahead of his followers.
❦ ❦ ❦
Snow was falling in Queens when Andre left the supermarket, bags in hand. The snowflakes eased past the glow of the traffic lights, gathering in a fuzzy layer on the sidewalk. A mile or so west on Flushing Ave, Sara was wrapping up her spin class; blaring the final track on her workout mix, patting her forehead dry with a towel, and swigging generous gulps from her water bottle; refreshing herself through and through.
“Soon enough, the Q54 would come to sweep the man homeward, then Andre would go on his own way.”
Several paces in front of Andre, the Czech man huddled under the bus stop shelter, resting his bags on a dry patch of bench. He looked skyward, letting out a grieved sigh. The glass of the shelter protected him from the snow, but drew the man into a tight frame, making him appear small, even isolated. Andre felt a strain of pity that he hadn’t felt for a stranger in a long time. He made his way underneath the shelter to join the man. Soon enough, the Q54 would come to sweep the man homeward, then Andre would go on his own way.
Andre was only a ten minute walk from his apartment, but when the Q54 wheezed up to the bus stop, his legs carried him onto the bus and back to a seat right across from where the Czech man had sat down. They both occupied their respective window seats, with their grocery bags resting on the aisle seats; the fact of their identical contents known only to Andre.
After a few minutes, the bus passed his stop as Andre gazed out the window, not concerned about where the bus would take him. The cozy brick houses, yellow school buses, and green street signs passing by had always existed in his imagination of what America would look like. What he hadn’t anticipated were the assortment of shops and restaurants that would complete the tableau of the American street. Prague and Leipzig had offered a standard, homogenized take on European city life: bakeries, pharmacies, traditional restaurants, and pubs displaying local beer emblems wedged themselves into pastel residential blocks. Between the familiar glow of chain restaurant signs towering high, the Queens streets displayed a dizzying variety of fares: Thai massage parlors, Russian supermarkets, Polish delis, Caribbean diners, Korean BBQ joints, Chinese take-out spots; all intermingling with used furniture warehouses, mega malls, and entire buildings dedicated to pet supplies. As the soup section testified, America was a maze of varieties, options, and paths. While one road led to comfort and bliss, the other could easily drive you to envy, regret, and that unceasing itch for more.
Andre didn’t know how many stops had passed, but he’d assumed it had been about twenty minutes since his stop had faded from sight. As the man scrambled to collect his bags, Andre caught a glimpse of his face for the first time. He was younger than Andre expected, but had a drained look on his face that added five years to his appearance. His hooked nose and blue eyes could have been Andre’s own and the two days worth of stubble on his face resembled Andre’s fathers’ as it had been on the January morning when he and his mother left for Leipzig.
❦ ❦ ❦
Their pension’s kitchenette in Leipzig was small, but his mother always had a magical way of making the best out of tight situations. She rolled up the sleeves of her sweater and tied her hair into a ponytail as she began prepping the meal. Ondřej watched her work through the recipe, more invigorated than he’d seen her in months. She tossed him the lemons for slicing and carrots for dicing. He retreated to the bedroom to use the top of the dresser to carry out his task. By the time he returned, the scent of braised beef had consumed the entire apartment, turning the pension’s dull atmosphere into a homey space through smell alone.
“At home, she would play him records from her youth. Joni Mitchell and Leonard Cohen were her favorites.”
Andre missed the way his mother’s hair swayed in its ponytail and how she padded around a room barefoot, her jeans cuffed to her ankles. He was reminded of how her smile looked when it wasn’t forced, and how the glint in her eyes could wash away his fears, anxieties, and uncertainties about a grey future.
At home, she would play him records from her youth. Joni Mitchell and Leonard Cohen were her favorites. She regaled him with the stories behind their life and music. They seemed to him to be romantic figures from a distant, snowy continent. Their lives just happened to be made into recorded story books for the world to flip through.
❦ ❦ ❦
Stepping off the bus, the snow whipped Andre’s face. He thought of Leonard Cohen’s “Winter Lady.” There was a line in particular that his mother just loved: “Well I lived with a child of snow, when I was a soldier.” It didn’t snow their whole weekend in Leipzig, but his mother would sing that line over and over throughout the weekend to herself, almost as if it were her mantra.
“Leonard Cohen said that he would shave when he was feeling like things were becoming too much for him to handle. It would reset him,” she said as she served the beef and bread dumplings onto his plate. “I guess that cooking svíčková is what resets me.”
❦ ❦ ❦
Following a man to his house was not something Andre ever thought he’d do. He’d seen firsthand how such a furtive act could destroy a family. So, he was relieved when he saw the man enter a brick complex some ten storeys high. The man would soon be lost in one of the vertical nooks of the cityscape.
Andre’s journey would have to end here. Sara would be getting home soon. Across from the man’s building, he sat on a bench, setting his bags down beside him.
“Where they came from, men and women would dissolve as subtly as snow, though they wouldn’t leave droplets in their wake.”
The snow tumbled down from the pitch of darkness, illuminated by the streetlights. Andre watched the flakes as they drew nearer, waltzing to a silent tune inaudible in the city night. Specks of snow touched down in his grocery bag, dissolving to droplets in seconds. He thought about the snow in Prague on the last night he saw his father. He thought how painful it must have been for his mother to make svíčková the next evening in Leipzig and he knew then that dining in Leipzig was no more expensive than in Prague.
Neither he nor his mother would ever know what would become of his father. Where they came from, men and women would dissolve as subtly as snow, though they wouldn’t leave droplets in their wake.
❦ ❦ ❦
The light above caught his eye first. Inside the square window, a pregnant woman greeted a man. He placed grocery bags on the kitchen counter and patted her shoulder gently. In the waxen light, her face appeared sunken like his. He left the kitchen and another square lit up next to it: the bedroom. The man took off his jacket and work clothes, damp with melted snow. He sat on the bed, bare-chested, and peeled off his work boots and socks. Andre watched as the man walked over to the fish tank against the wall, glowing a surreal blue in the snowy window. Puffing his cheeks, the man dunked his head into the tank. His eyes opened underwater to another planet where all was quiet and still. Flashes of orange, yellow, green, and silver darted around his white face. Silence consumed him as if he were at the bottom of a great ocean.
Across the street, Andre texted Sara that he was running late, and that he would be on his way home shortly. When he returned his glance to the window for the last time, only the kitchen window was lit. Inside, a man and woman were embracing as if it were both their first and last evening together on this planet.
Max Kaplan lives in Queens, New York. He spends most of the day reheating coffee in the microwave. He occasionally writes fiction.
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