Food as a Vehicle in Fiction

Food is one of the threads that stitches together my stories.  From the opening welcome of bread and salt, to Massey and Akulina's wedding feast in Ikons, and then to Stepha's coming-of-age in Slogans with borscht and black bread, the importance of food in Russian culture is shown.

The “Bread and Salt” tradition / Alexander Tikhonov / foto-planeta

Being a family headed by a Russian father and a Slovak mother, we had our share of exotic, (meaning Yuk! to the following generations) Eastern European meals.  Our mother ladled up bowls of soup loaded with chicken hearts, livers, gizzards, and feet all swimming in a sea of yellow fat globules.  We enjoyed (?) meals of purple blood sausage, stuffed cabbage rolls, pickled herring, calf's brains with scrambled eggs, headcheese, borscht with sour cream, and an occasional serving of cow's tongue.  As my sister said after watching an episode of the television show Survivors' disgusting food challenge, "That was Sunday dinner."

But there were also the rewards.  After finishing our meal and we got dessert: nut or fruit filled kolaski, poviticia with cream cheese, or any of a variety of cookies.  They were well worth the wait.

Poviticia

The importance of food in my novels was expressed in one harrowing scene from Slogans: Our Children, Our Future, in which Stepha and Vanya are caught in an artillery bombardment.  Stepha comforts his little brother by conjuring up memories of meals past.

* * *

“I'm hungry,” Vanya said after several more distant explosions.

“Me, too.  When this is over maybe Mati will make us eggs.  Fried in butter with crispy brown edges.”  Ka-rump.  “And maybe sausage.  Do you like sausage?”

Vanya attempted to nod, but couldn't raise his head.  “Yes,” Vanya said, “but I would rather have blini.  I miss Babushka Koscik's blini.”  Ka-rump.  “With slivki and berries.”

“I like blini, too,” said Stepha. 

 

The two huddled together and talked of food.  They spoke of plemei with balls of minced meat and varenki filled with berries or potato.  Ka-rump.  Kolobok topped with a dollop of sour cream and buttermilk fresh from the churn.  They envisioned honey cakes, priohi and mushrooms in cream.  Ka-rump.  Ka-rump.

Vanya recalled the cream they scraped off the frozen milk when their mother wasn't looking and how they would eat it with their hands before it thawed.  “And Dadushka's lamb.  I liked how he cooked lamb.”

* * *

In another scene, the breaking of the Christmas fast is celebrated with generous helpings of Grandfather's sausage and customary Yuletide treats; and later in the story, Stepha is welcomed to manhood through a ritual of borscht and black bread.

Borscht and black bread.

* * *

After his fifth spoon, Boris pointed at his oldest grandson.  “Stefan Mataovich,” Boris said, “come sit with me.”  At first Stepha didn't move, but when his mother motioned to him, he followed his grandfather's command and took the spot to Boris' right.

“Lena, bring this young man a proper bowl.”  Stepha's mother scurried to the shelf and pulled down a wooden vessel, wiped it with her apron and placed it in front of her son.  “Give him borscht,” Boris said.  “If he is to be a man, he will have to learn to eat like a man.”

* * *

Stepha's grandfather shows him how to slurp soup and chump garlic seasoned black bread like a man.  Stepha later mimics his grandfather's lesson when he assumes the role as the head of the family and instructs Vanya through the same ritual.

I believe it is the small details, such as food, that transports the reader to foreign counties and customs, and brings the historic fiction genre to life.

Dead End Subplots - Part Two

Anyone who has watched an episodic crime series on television knows a good villain never goes away.  He's the uber-criminal, always ready to pounce at the least likely moment to battle our hero.  My uber-criminal was the boogeyman, Schoko.  I introduced Schoko in Ikons: Saint Nicholas the Wonder Worker and used him again in Banners: For God, Tsar and Russia.  In the final chapter of Banners, I left him in limbo.  Was he or was he not dead?

Schoko - My Uber-Villain

Since I already established Schoko as an informant for the Secret Police and a budding psychopath, it was not difficult to bring Schoko into my third novel, make him a member of Lenin's Cheka and hold him responsible for the atrocities to follow.  My subplot in Slogans: Our Children, Our Future called for Schoko to mastermind the slaughter of Hutava's inhabitants.  In this scene, Schoko learns of the villagers whereabouts and schemes his revenge.

* * *

Lenoid Schoko's smile made people shudder.  It wasn't so much the way his lips curled back revealing yellowed, misshapen teeth and the hissing laughter that followed, but rather the knowledge that when Schoko smiled, people died.  Today Schoko was smiling.

"They found the citizens of Hutava. They're in Unkurda, Chelyabinsk area, Siberia.  Thought you'd like to know."  Those few whispered words from a fellow guard were all Schoko needed and gave him an elation he hadn't felt since the drowning officers' screams.  At long last the blackness eating at what remained of his soul would be avenged. 

Like puss spurting from a infected wound, events from Schoko's tortured past erupted: his outcast life as Hutava's whoreson, the nocturnal visits from all those uncles who kicked him from his slumber seeking his mother's pleasure, his toil as the village pastok cleaning night soil and removing dead carcasses, the children's cutting taunts when he declared his true father was Tsar Nicholas, and the train.  Especially the train.

Nearly six years had passed since those same villagers of Hutava had flung Schoko from their railcar into the icy darkness. Every day since, the memory of the bitch-girl's vicious lies, the sham trail, and the humiliating punishment had festered and screamed for revenge.  Finally it was possible.  Schoko summoned the demons from the depths of personal hell and prepared to unleash them.  Before he was finished the entire village would grovel at his feet and plead for the mercy he would not grant.  But one family in particular would be singled out for special treatment.  The full wrath of Lenoid Schoko would come down on Boris Koscik and his bitch daughters.  All it required were the right words.

When Schoko strode out of Secret Police headquarters that night, his smile broadened as he envisioned the future.  "Yesss,” he hissed.  “The children."

* * *

Unfortunately, Schoko never got to carry out his revenge.  While Schoko was my best attempt at a true villain, he paled in the presence of the real culprits.  Nature and Lenin's government conspired to create one of histories deadliest famines.  Lenin knew from personal experience that revolution in Russia's cities sprang from hungry bellies.  So to spare the population centers, he sacrificed the rural. 

A communist confiscation team ferreting out hidden food

Government raikon, food confiscation teams, scoured the county side seizing grain and animals.  They even grabbed the peasants' seed grain, ensuring no harvest for the coming year.  The final result forestalled the urban counterrevolution at the cost millions of rural dead; a drastic, but according to the Soviet rulers, necessary solution.

Alas, I had to delete poor Schoko.  His fictitious evil plan and my well constructed subplot could not match the villainy exhibited by real life. 

Dead End Subplots

What adds more to an historic saga than a shipboard romance?  Just look at what it did for the blockbuster Titanic.  In Ikons: Saint Nicholas the Wonder Worker, I wanted to add one, but I could not very well have Massey, a happily married man, engage in oceanic high jinxes.  So the amorous task is performed by the addition of two young Polish brothers, Marko and Roman Kozlowki.

* * *

"They both looked like barrels with heads attached.  Although the heads seemed ridiculously small for the bodies, the determined look emanating from the faces told Massey the heads knew exactly what to do with the strength on which they rest.  With arms thick as stovepipes the closest Pole picked up Massey's belongings swung them away from the bunk and let them fall to the deck."

* * *

Following this inglorious meeting, the three become fast friends.  Marko, the more outgoing of the two, is a real lady's man.  However, his random evening flings came to an end when he meets and falls in love with the alluring Korin Meshanko.

* * *

"She was attractive, blond, tall, and promised to wed another.  Marko had watched for her each day since they left Danzig.  Korin would stand alone by the rail watching the sea, her blond hair tangled from the wind.  She did not wear her hair braided as the others, nor did she keep it covered.  Instead, she wore the scarf over her shoulders and allowed her hair to flow free." (I would write this passage much different today, but I was just starting my writing career.)

* * *

Immigrant Women enjoying the fresh air topside

Marko's romance with Korin is ill-fated.  In my intended subplot, Korin's father is leader of a Lithuanian nationalist group conspiring against the Tsar.  In order to unify her father's power within the cabal, Korin agrees to marry her father's rival. I had plans to integrate her story into Ikon's plot, but found it was too complex.  Instead, I allowed Marko's romance to fizzle when the ship docks in New York.

* * *

"All the waiting women were dressed in their best clothes with colorful scarves adorning their heads.  All that is but one.   A tall blond woman stood off to the side with her head bare, as if in defiance to the rest.  Korin Meshanko waited for her name to be called.  Waited to see for the first time the man who would be her husband."

* * *

Korin just disappears into the crowd, never to be seen again.  I intended to reintroduce her later, but never did.  

A more seasoned writer probably would have rewritten the Atlantic passage chapters and deleted Korin.  But I liked her subplot and knowingly violated the rule about "killing your babies."  Several readers have inquired as to what became of Korin.  To  them, I can only shrug.