To Sing Frogs Chapter 11a

The Pyramid Hotel in Nakhodka, Russia

Chapter 11

 

Rules of the Game

 

The soup was good. Really good. I could feel the blood slowing as my arteries clogged just a little bit more. Solyanka. Russian meat soup. When I saw it on the menu I assumed it would be tough pieces of gristle and fat boiled from a soup-bone and drowning in weak beef broth. I imagined overcooked vegetables too old to be served in any other form but soup. Still, it beat taking a chance on something weird.

This had shoestring slivers of peperoni, ham, salami, and summer sausage. A few black olives floated on top. What are those light-green toothpick sized slivers? I pulled one out and tasted it. Dill pickle? Okay, a bit weird…Good though. The lemon slice garnish added just the right amount of whatever might have been missing from the various flavors of all the prepared meats. I ordered another bowl. Might as well get my money’s worth out of my blood pressure and cholesterol medicines.

“You must really like Solyanka,” Anya said while she and I sat with our partners at the Pyramid Hotel in Nakhodka, the nearest city of consequence to Partizansk. (Important pronunciation tip: There is no way to spell Nakhodka in English that would get someone close to pronouncing it correctly. If an attempt is desired the “kh” should be replaced with the sound made when someone is trying to hock up a loogie.)

I smiled as I looked up from my bowl. “It’s my favorite Russian food,” I said decisively.

Stass didn’t want to talk about food. “Olga is very happy you want to adopt Luba. She likes both of you a lot.”

“That’s nice, I’m glad,” Amy responded courteously.

“Yeah. It’s great. What’s not to like?” I joked. “Anyway, is it important for Olga to like us?” I didn’t know we were in a popularity contest or I might have opted out.

“With Luba, it is,” Stass said seriously. “If you didn’t notice, Luba is kind of Olga’s favorite there at her orphanage. Really there are two of them. It’s her and a little boy named Sergei. He’s a year older.”

“We did see some signs,” Amy responded. She leaned forward hoping for more.

I rolled my eyes. Signs. Like a cargo jet in a tailspin is showing signs of engine trouble.

Stass explained. Orphanage directors have quite a bit of say in whether or not hopeful parents will be allowed to adopt a particular child. According to him, most people don’t realize it because the directors almost never get in the way. “Luba and Olga have a significant history together. In fact there is a lot to Olga’s history over the past few months…”

So we would get a file on “Mama Olga!”

Apparently Sergei and Luba were best friends who ruled the orphanage like a tyrant prince and princess. Of course Stass and Anya were more politically correct. In their version, this pair of orphans was the cutest little couple ever seen. They were constantly found hand in hand leading each other around and playing. They were almost never apart. Olga found it adorable and she couldn’t bear to see them separated. She and her husband decided to adopt them.

Olga had been the one who cared for Katya’s burn—there at the Partizansk Baby Hospital—until she recovered and reached the age where she should be moved to the Children’s Home. Then the director moved her. It was nothing out of the ordinary. Katya was getting too old to be adopted anyway. The longer a child stays in an orphanage setting the more difficult it is to get them past troubling emotions and bad behaviors. Such is life.

Luba and Sergei were still fresh enough to move on in a family setting with few serious challenges. Besides, Luba was so young she probably wouldn’t even remember her sister. This was particularly true because they had spent six months together separated residing at the Partizansk Baby Hospital just as any other orphans who were nonrelated.

Then catastrophe struck. Olga’s husband experienced a stroke. It had come as a complete surprise. The man had been in excellent health (ignoring the fact that in Russia, outside a hospital, no one has ever had their blood pressure taken). The attack all but paralyzed the right side of his body. Olga had dreamed of raising another family ever since her two daughters had grown up and gone away to college. That wish would now be impossible to fulfill.

 

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