The Cook — Chapter from the Novel "Stone" by Volodymyr Shablia

 

The Cook

Stone — Book One: First Steps Toward the Light and Back — Chapter 7

 by Volodymyr Shablia

March 1924. The village of Tomakivka.

Barely awake, Peter opened his eyes and realized that something interesting was going on in the kitchen. His nose immediately caught some wonderfully appetizing smells—and that could only mean one thing: Grandma was making something delicious.

Without wasting a moment, the boy sprang out of bed, hastily pulled on his trousers and shirt, and dashed into the kitchen.

“Grandma, what are you doing?” he blurted out from the doorway.

“Good morning, my little grandson!” Iryna replied with a smile.

She looked expectantly at the boy, as though waiting for him to return her greeting, while her flour-covered hands continued busily at work.

“Good morning, Grandma!” Peter called out, not very loudly, and then returned to the question that mattered most to him:

“What smells so good?”

“It smells delicious—of vanilla and cinnamon,” the woman explained. “Would you like to smell them?”

“Yes!”

The boy hurried closer and grabbed hold of his grandmother’s apron. Iryna shook the flour from her hands, wiped them on a cloth, then took one of the jars from the shelf and showed it to her grandson.

“This is cinnamon. Smell it.”

She opened the lid and held the jar close to Peter’s face. He buried his nose in it and, with an air of serious concentration, began drawing in the scent.

“Smells good!” he pronounced like an expert.

“And this is vanilla,” Iryna continued, repeating the same procedure with another jar.

The boy sniffed it in exactly the same way, then looked puzzled.

“So they’re different?”

“Who?” Iryna asked, not understanding.

“The jars,” Peter explained.

At last, the woman understood what he meant.

“The jars are the same, but the spices inside them are different, and they smell different,” she explained.

Until that moment, Peter had never suspected that there were special ingredients used to give food a particular smell, much less that they could smell so different from one another. Now this new discovery had taken tangible shape in his mind, and the child immediately moved on to the next question:

“And what are spices?” he continued with his usual stream of questions.

“They’re dried herbs or other things that smell nice or taste good. We add them to different dishes.”

“Then why are you putting the spices in jars instead of in the dishes?” Peter persisted.

“No, dear. The spices are only kept in jars. We add them to food—to borscht, cutlets, buns—so that everything tastes better and smells nicer.”

“And what are you going to put them in now?”

“I’ve already added both the cinnamon and the vanilla to the dough,” Iryna assured him. “Can you smell them?”

She moved the dough closer to the edge of the table where her grandson was standing. Peter brought his nose close to the springy lump dusted with white flour and tried to identify the familiar scents.

“Yes, I can smell them,” he said, pleased with himself. “But what do you need the dough for?”

“I’m going to make buns, shanezhki, and kulichi.”

“I want to make buns too!” the boy declared.

“Then you can help me knead and roll out the dough, and together we’ll make all sorts of delicious things,” Iryna suggested.

“Okay!”

Grandma hoisted her grandson onto the sturdy chair at the end of the table and settled him where he could work comfortably with the dough. Then she tore off a small lump for him.

“I’ll knead my piece, and you knead yours. We’ll get the job done faster together,” she assured him. “Watch what I do and copy me.”

Watching Grandma closely, the little boy enthusiastically set about kneading his lump of dough. Before long, he was covered in flour from head to toe.

Grandma merely chuckled and encouraged him, vigorously kneading her own dough as she chanted:

“Knead the dough, knead, knead, knead!

Press the dough, press, press, press!

For our little Peter dear,

We’ll bake lots of buns right here!”

After a while, Peter began chanting along with Iryna, repeating the little rhyme with her.

At last, the dough was ready.

“Well, we certainly worked hard together,” the woman concluded. “But we’re awfully tired, aren’t we? Phew!”

With a theatrical gesture, she wiped the sweat from her forehead with the back of her hand. Her grandson immediately copied her, like a parrot.

“Yes, we’re tired… Phew!” he agreed.

“Then let’s have a rest.”

Grandma placed a small wooden block on the chair as a step for Peter and sat the boy on it, wiping the flour from his face with a towel as she did so. Then she sat down on a stool herself, and together with her grandson began reciting another little rhyme:

“We’re tired and sweaty,

From all the work we’ve done!

Now it’s time to take a rest—

We’ll sit and sing for fun!”

After repeating the rhyme several times and making sure the boy had learned it by heart, Iryna moved on to the next part of their little lesson.

“Well then, we’ve recited our little poem. Now let’s sing, just as the poem says.”

She straightened her shoulders and began her favorite song:

“I gaze upon the sky and ponder:

Why am I not a falcon? Why can’t I fly?

Why, O God, did You not give me wings?

I would leave the earth and soar into the sky.”

Iryna had a beautiful, deep voice. She sang with such feeling that Peter listened, spellbound. Toward the end, he tried to sing along, but he still wasn’t very good at it.

“Never mind—you’ll learn!” Grandma reassured him. “And now let’s make buns, shanezhki, and kulichi from the dough. What are you going to make?”

“Buns!”

“All right, then. You roll out the dough, and I’ll shape the buns,” the woman suggested, handing her grandson a small rolling pin.

“No! I want to shape the buns!” the boy protested.

“All right,” Iryna agreed. “First we’ll roll out the dough together, and then we’ll shape the buns, shanezhki, and kulichi together.”

“All right,” the little boy relented.

The grandmother and grandson got back to work, reciting another little rhyme as they went:

“We’re shaping kulichi,

Round as little faces!

And when they come from the oven,

What tasty little treats!”

Iryna deftly and quickly worked the dough, all the while keeping the little boy’s enthusiasm alive and convincing him that it was he who had prepared such beautiful buns, shanezhki, and kulichi, while Grandma had merely given them a little finishing touch.

Sensing that the boy had reached the height of his excitement, she gently redirected his attention to the toys that had been sitting bored in the corner. Then she slid the baking tray into the oven and set about peeling potatoes.

…

When the time came to share the freshly baked treats, everyone in the household was summoned to the table.

A huge platter piled high with baked goods stood in the middle of the table. And, of course, the “star of the show” was the most beautiful and delicious of all the buns, shanezhki, and kulichi—the ones shaped by the newly proclaimed “cook.”

His mother, father, and grandmother lavished praise on Peter’s creations, marveling at their golden-brown crusts and their fanciful shapes, which looked like strange little creatures from a fairy tale.

The “master” himself merely smiled.

He could not respond to the praise, for he was too busy stuffing the fruits of his own—of this he had no doubt—culinary artistry into his mouth.

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