Something about it wasn't quite right. Of course, the assignment he had received was inconceivable in its presumption that he knew anything at all about baking a cake. Among his many talents and skills, baking was not among them.
"How's that cake coming along, tovarsch?" Napoleon's flippant use of the Russian term often came at very inopportune moments; those wherein Illya Kuryakin's response was decidedly unfriendly.
"How do you think it's coming along? I have no idea what I'm doing here, and yet …" Frustration stopped his words, he simply had no idea what to do here.
The room was rustic, with only a rudimentary little kitchen set within a cottage in the woods. Why the two UNCLE agents should be here, baking a cake no less, was the tactic of their wiley Chief, yet neither Napoleon nor Illya could see that the scheme had any merit. But, theirs was not, as had been recited many times, to wonder why.
Napoleon was a better cook, if his ability to broil a steak and bake a potato could qualify. He never attempted much beyond that, it was a meal he had mastered and could not imagine needing to be amended in any way.
Illya, on the other hand, was a man given to simple preparations of grains and canned vegetables. Habits garnered over a lifetime of deprivation and frugality had developed in the Russian an aversion to doing more than was necessary, and he saved extravagance for restaurants and other people's tables.
Napoleon glanced at the counter behind his friend.
"Umm, Illya, why don't you check the recipe books that are on the counter. I bet there's a cake recipe there.' He watched as color rose in the blond's complexion, a pink shade that betrayed both his frustration and ire.
"I imagine you could be correct.' Illya reached for a volume that seemed to indicate it had a wealth of information.
"How To Bake A Cake. Is this a joke of some sort? I am entirely at a loss as to why this assignment is considered something important." The Russian didn't often grouse about the missions, at least not the way he was expressing himself today. He was feeling sorry for himself, put upon by a mission that was marked only by the necessity for him to bake a cake.
"And why are we in this pitiful cottage, where no one seems to be living? I can't…" Once again he stopped in mid-sentence and continued to search for a recipe.
"Everything is in Russian. What the devil… why?"
Illya woke up with a start. The dream had seemed very real, but it made no sense. Why would he be baking a cake, using a recipe from a book in Russian? He tried to think back to the last time he'd been injected with a THRUSH serum, but …
"Oh.' He said it aloud, a small smile creasing the handsome features.
A treasured image of his mother rose up behind closed eyes, and for a moment Illya could see his mother, in her best dress with a shawl draped around the slender shoulders, long dark hair pulled back in an ornate barrette.
"Z dnem narodzhennya mama."*
In the best efforts of a son attempting to treat his mother to a birthday present, Illya had conjured up a long ago memory from a childhood he didn't often revisit. He and his grandmother, his babushka, had made a honey cake for his mother on her birthday all of those years ago. It was before his father began playing with the symphony, before the purges of the artistic communities. It was before his life succumbed to the terrors of Stalin's Russia.
The memory faded, and Illya rose from the sofa and the dream to go into his kitchen to make a cup of tea. This life that he lived was what had been dealt to him, but had he been able to choose for himself, he might turn back the clock. He would undo the horrors his country had endured, restore his family to the happy times he sometimes remembered.
The teakettle whistled, announcing the time for brewing tea and living in the present. But somewhere from out of the past, he heard his mother's gentle voice…
Dyakuyu synku. YA tebe lyublyu**
mfumfumfu
*Happy Birthday Mama
**Thank you Son, I love you.