Latvian Supper Dish: Nāc rītā atkal
(slightly adapted)
In German – Komm Morgen Wieder –
translates as Come Back Tomorrow.
3 eggs (2tbsp water to one of egg powder)
1 pinch salt
4-5oz flour (for stiff batter)
Half pt milk
3oz diced onion
7oz corned beef (for filling)
Another species of stuffed pancake. The filling is traditionally leftover roast meat but corned beef makes an acceptable substitute. Simplicity itself to make and an excellent use for the dreaded powdered egg.
Prepare pancake batter. Make up the equivalent of eggs, add to flour, mix in milk and salt. Let stand. Fry the minced meat (or CB) with onion until browned, add bouillon (OXO), add sour cream (if available), if not a grate or two of cheddar would do.
The house was silent except for the ticking of the hall clock that was screwed to the wall. Probably the reason it was still there. Edith unwound her scarves, hung up her hat and coat, kicked off her boots, put on her ‘indoor’ shoes. It really was like being at school. There was a noise from the basement. The Schmidts back? Hardly. They returned late from country excursions.
‘Hello? Anyone there?’
‘It’s me, Agnese,’ the Latvian girl’s blonde head appeared. ‘Frau Schmidt asked me to come in. Prepare supper.’
Edith went down into the kitchen. The girl looked near to tears.
‘Did she say what she wanted prepared?’
The girl shook her head. ‘I don’t know what to cook.’
‘Let’s see,’ Edith opened and shut cupboards. It was going to have to be pretty basic. ‘I know, let’s have something Latvian, shall we?’ The girl brightened a little. Everyone liked to cook something from home. ‘Know any recipes? What would you have on Sunday nights, for example, before …’
Before everything. Before your homeland was invaded, first by the Russians, then the Germans, before you had to flee and leave it all behind.
Agnese nodded. She understood ‘before’.
‘At grandparents’ house, we would have Nāc rītā atkal. In German – Komm Morgen Wieder.’
Come Back Tomorrow. Edith tried not to reflect on the irony.
Agnese explained the dish and Edith collected ingredients, making substitutions: OXO for bouillon, corned beef for leftover roast, sour cream – optional anyway. The recipe required a lot of eggs for the batter, but the dried variety wasn’t so bad in pancakes.
‘We’ll start with the pancakes, shall we? Batter needs to stand.’
Agnese measured flour out in cups. She was missing half her little finger and the nails on the remaining digits were bitten to the quick. Edith carefully reconstituted the dried eggs. It was tempting to be overgenerous with the powder but the result would be rubbery pancakes. The same with the dried milk. The secret was to sprinkle the powder a little at a time, whisking all the while.
She kept up a running commentary as a way of gaining Agnese’s trust. She was like some shy, wild creature who could bolt at any second. She said she was twenty but looked quite a bit younger. There was a wary, frightened look about her pale-blue eyes but as they worked together, she began to relax. Her German was heavily accented, her answers halting in response to Edith’s gentle prompting. She tried not to ask too many questions. It was best just to let Agnese talk. She’d lived in Riga with her parents. Valdis – Molly’s boyfriend – was not her brother. He was her cousin. His parents were dead, killed by the Russians. He’d come to live with her family. Life had been hard, first under the Russians and then the Germans. Which was worse? A shrug. Both the same. Life was hard everywhere. It was war. Her father was not strong. He had a bad heart. Valdis had looked after the family. She didn’t say how.
When the Russians were advancing, they’d had to leave. Why? Another shrug. Wasn’t it obvious? It was cold. So cold. They had got as far as Gdynia, the Germans call it Gotenhafen. They had found a ship, the Wilhelm Gustloff, to take them to Kiel and safety. Edith frowned. The name rang a bell, a feeling the story would not end well. There were only a few places, so they decided that her parents should take priority. The ship was hit by a Russian torpedo. It was winter. Her parents either drowned or died of exposure out among the Baltic ice floes, along with most people on board, nearly ten thousand souls. She and Valdis had got passage on another ship bound for Lübeck. So crowded, they’d had to stay on deck. The ice was thick, coating everything. She held up her mutilated little finger. Lost it to frostbite. Somehow, they’d run the gauntlet of Russian mines and submarines. They were fortunate to be here, to have survived.
‘Hello? Who’s down there?’ Miss Slater’s voice followed by steps on the stairs.
‘Fraulein Slater.’ Agnese whispered. She looked alarmed, as if she’d been caught doing something she shouldn’t.
‘Just us,’ Edith called back. ‘We’re preparing supper.’
‘Who’s “us”?’
Miss Slater’s platinum head appeared, her thin pencilled eyebrows raised, her blue eyes dark with suspicion.
‘Agnese and I,’ Edith wiped her hands on a tea towel.
‘Aren’t the girls supposed to do that?’
‘There’s only Agnese here, as you see, and I don’t mind. I like cooking.’
Miss Slater gave her high-pitched, peeling laugh. ‘Rather you than me. Agnese? I have washing. I’d like you to collect it. If you can be spared, that is.’
The girl hesitated, looking from one woman to the other, older to younger. Miss Slater drummed her scarlet fingernails.
‘We’ve nearly finished,’ Edith said quietly. ‘There’s only the pancakes and we can’t do them until the others arrive. You go, Agnese.’
‘What were you doing?’ Miss Slater demanded as Agnese followed her.
‘Cooking. Frau Graham helped me.’
Edith drifted to the foot of the stairs to hear what she could of the conversation.
‘That’d better be all. If I find out different, I’m telling Val.’
‘Miss Graham? Can I have a word, please?’ Miss Slater caught her just as she was going up to change.
‘Certainly.’
Miss Slater paced up and down the hall, arms folded, hands cupped round her elbows.
‘I’ll thank you to stop spying on me.’
‘Spying?’ Edith hoped she sounded suitably thunderstruck. ‘What are you talking about?’
‘Asking questions about my private life. Interrogating Agnese. And, and today, I saw you and that driver chap down on the promenade. If that’s not spying—’
‘Spying? I wasn’t spying! And I wasn’t interrogating Agnese. I was helping her. She’d been left on her own, poor little thing. As for this afternoon, it was a nice day. The first one for ages. The rest of the billet was there, along with half of Lübeck.’
Miss Slater ignored Edith’s perfectly reasonable explanations.
‘I’m warning you. If you carry on poking your nose in, you’re going to get it put out of joint good and proper.’ Her carefully developed accent was slipping into something more demotic. ‘If you carry on with this, you’ll be sorry, you see if you’re not. You’ll find yourself in a whole lot of trouble. A whole lot,’ she repeated for emphasis, in case Edith had not understood.
‘What kind of trouble?’ Edith asked casually.
She didn’t like being threatened and had begun to feel the first stirrings of annoyance but she was careful to keep her expression a suitable blend of puzzlement and innocence. She had triggered something but it wouldn’t do to get on her high horse just yet.
‘That’d be telling but you’d be upsetting people a bloody sight more important than you. Keep this out of it.’ Miss Slater touched the side of her thin nose. ‘Mind your own business in future.’
She swept past Edith and up the stairs. Edith went into the sitting room and poured herself a whisky, slightly discomforted by Molly’s outrage but more curious to know what had caused it. What exactly did Miss Slater think she could do? As she sipped her drink, Adeline’s drawl came back to her. ‘Throw a stone in. Count the ripples. Flip a stone. See what crawls out.’
After dinner, Edith slipped upstairs to compose a message. She took a card from Travemünde.
From the card, Dori would construe that something of interest had occurred involving Latvian Nationals, her German housekeeper and her husband. She wrote out the recipe, coded message folded into the list of ingredients for this Latvian recipe: Nazis. SS. Photographs.