Baba Dunja's Last Love (9 page)

Everyone nods. Nobody wants Sidorow to get upset.

“The sound quality is VERY GOOD!”

“Thank you, Sidorow,” I say. “Maybe later.”

He slams the door as he leaves, shaking my entire cottage. Someone must have found what was left of my gooseberry vodka, which I keep for medicinal purposes. When the bottle is passed to me it is as good as empty. I look around for a glass but then just pour the rest straight into my mouth from the bottle.

The door suddenly opens and Glascha appears on the threshold in aluminum foil.

“I called Mama,” she says loudly, after she has found me.

I shove the empty bottle behind my back, ashamed.

“I told you.” Sidorow rocks back and forth behind Glascha like a reed in the wind. Glascha's whole face is lit up.

“I called Mama. I knew the number.”

“You are my clever little piece of gold,” I say. “Sidorow, I tell you this in all sincerity: I'm already sick to my stomach without your help. Get out of here and don't make the child crazy.”

“Mama is picking me up!” says Glascha. “Together with the military police.”

 

 

I feel during the next few hours that they could be the last for our village. The Gavrilows have done something sensible for the community for a change and covered the dead man with a tarp. I didn't even know they had one, though I had a feeling their farm was a stockpile of valuable and useful things. The others have scattered and gone back to their own houses and yards, and I'm alone with Glascha and Marja, who has spread out on my bed. I sit on a chair and try to find a position in which my ribs hurt a little less.

“I don't think the foil does anything,” says Marja.

“Pffff,” I say. “It helps a lot.”

“Do you know who did it?” asks Marja.

As long as the child is sitting nearby with her ears perked up I can't risk Marja elaborating on her thoughts to me. I shush her admonishingly.

“I think it was Gavrilow,” says Marja, not wishing to understand my warning.

“Stupid woman, a boil on your tongue, what motive would he have?”

“He was afraid that he was going to get robbed.”

“You spent too long in the sun, Marja.”

“Or it was you. You hunted him down.”

I spring out of my chair in shock. But I get dizzy and nearly fall over. Marja doesn't notice, she is working on her fingernails with a file Irina sent me.

“Why would I have done it, Marja?”

“Because he was evil.”

“I can't kill everyone who is evil.”

“Not everyone, naturally.” Marja yawns. “Don't get so upset, I'm not going to snitch on you.”

“Neither am I,” says Glascha.

If I were ten years younger I would now be very scared. But as it is I'm just tired. I'm waiting for everyone else to hole up in their houses so I can sit undisturbed on the bench outside. I dream of winter: everyone cowering inside and the wind blowing snow against the window. I'm even looking forward to Glascha no longer being here. She's constantly hungry and I won't let her eat vegetables from my garden. I make her gruel with UHT milk I fetched from Sidorow, and mix in the last of my sugar because she won't eat the mush otherwise.

“Your mama will surely be here soon.”

“My mama is coming as fast as she can.” Glascha presses into my hip and buries her snub nose in the folds of my skirt. “My mama cried on the phone.”

“And did you really hear her voice? On that broken phone?”

“It wasn't broken. It just crackled a lot.”

I sit on the bench and wait. The others are back in their houses, though noses are pressed against windows and eyes peek through the holes in fences. Only Petrow sways in his hammock as if even the end of the world wouldn't disturb him. I would like to tell him not to worry. Nobody will incriminate him.

 

 

You can hear them from far off, and it's obvious that it's more than one vehicle. Soon we see them, and it's three. Out front is a tall black vehicle with thick tires. Behind are two cars belonging to the military police. They stop in a cloud of dust on the main road.

Glascha placidly licks clean her bowl of mush. The driver's-side door of the black vehicle is the first to open. It's the type of car that a man should step out of, not a blonde woman in pants like a man and shoes with high heels. Her hair sticks to her head and her mascara is running.

“Where is she?” she calls heartbreakingly. “Where have you hidden her, you vulture?”

“Glascha,” I whisper. “She's crazy, don't look.”

“That's my mama.” Glascha puts the spoon down on the bench and runs off. The woman falls to her knees, opens her arms, and whimpers like she's been shot. The aluminum foil flutters. The girl hangs on the neck of the woman and I get tears in my eyes.

“What have they done to you?” Glascha's mama begins to rip away the foil.

“Dooooon't,” Glascha shrieks, sending chills down my spine. “Don't take it off. Or else I'll drop dead.”

Everything blends together. The air shimmers. The soldiers surround the mother and child as if they need to protect them from attack. The woman screams unintelligibly. And she pulls a protective suit out of the trunk of the car and tries to force Glascha into it. I wonder why she herself isn't wearing one if she thinks they work. Intermittently she yells “Germann, Germann, you won't get away with this!”

Germann is not her dog, I assume, it's her husband, who is lying beneath Gavrilow's tarp. And on whom the flies are gathering.

I stand up. My ribs make their presence felt again, a miserable groan sneaks out of me. Very slowly I approach the group. The soldiers look at me. The woman presses Glascha to her chest. Glascha turns and beams at me.

“Drive away, daughter,” I say to the woman in pants. “Take your child to safety.”

The madness seeps from her eyes and it becomes clear that she is a woman like any other, and you can talk to her normally.

“You mean,” she peers into my eyes as if she hopes to find the answers to all her questions there, “You mean it's not too late?”

“It's never too late,” I lie. Why does she have to ask me, of all people?

“You are Baba Dunja, aren't you?”

I nod. She sniffles like a little girl, wipes her face, and pulls something small and rectangular out of her pocket. “May I?” she asks, and before I can answer she presses her cheek to mine and takes a photo of us with her portable telephone. Then she takes Glascha by the hand and goes to the car.

The soldiers call to her and ask what to do about serving the criminal complaint. She waves her hand dismissively. She doesn't ask about her husband. If she wanted to see him I would have a problem. But she has her child back and just wants to leave. I can only welcome this decision. Glascha puts on her seatbelt in the backseat and looks at me as I lean against a tree because my legs have gotten weak. I try to return her smile.

“Let the woman drive off, comrade soldier,” I say quietly. “But you, please remain here.”

Only later do I realize what a colossal mistake I've made. We should have taken care of the man ourselves. If a dozen lame and infirm people join together, they'd have no trouble making a corpse disappear.

I do my citizenly duty and take the military police to the garden. I stand aside while they lift the tarp. I can see the balefulness in their faces. They would also have preferred it if I had not enlightened them. There are too many of them for us to strike a deal that they didn't see anything.

“Who is the mother of the girl anyway?” I quietly ask the youngest of them, a wispy fellow who fidgets with the fluff on his upper lip.

“You do not want to know,” he answers just as quietly. “But believe me, she will not grieve.”

That is obvious to me. The ones with grieving looks on their faces are the soldiers. One of them takes photos. Another wraps his arms around himself as if he were freezing. A third shakes his portable phone.

“There's no network here. We have to make a call. Where was the mother called from?”

I take them to Sidorow's house. They enter without knocking. I wouldn't do such a thing and I'm practically his fiancee. Sidorow takes no notice of them; he's snoring on his worn-out ottoman like a sheik. A cable runs from a wall socket to the formerly orange phone, which is sitting on the floor.

The youngest policeman lifts the device and picks up the handset. He holds it to his ear and then passes it on. Presumably his superior, who looks at me furiously.

“Are you trying to yank my chain, old woman?”

He is livid and it looks as if he's going to strike me. But he doesn't after all. Perhaps the soldiers today are different than those in the past, or perhaps he has an old mother or grandmother at home. The young soldier turns the rotary dial, fascinated.

“I would be very grateful, captain, if you would take the dead man with you. The temperature is high and the vermin are multiplying quickly. We don't want disease to break out here.”

“As if you were in a sanatorium here. I don't drive a hearse, old woman, in case you haven't noticed. We are going back to Malyschi now.” He smiles. “Expect a visit from our colleagues.”

 

It is this smile that sends me back to a time when my heart seldom beat slower than a hundred beats per minute. I'm not a cold-blooded person, never have been. Basically I've always just tried to get by. At times like this I forget that I'm old and no longer need to go anywhere.

It is like I am thirty again and must do everything by myself. Wake up at five in the morning, milk the cows, set a chicken soup to boil, then gruel, put both under a fur coat to stay warm. Collect the eggs in the chicken coop and hard-boil a few for the lunch break. Wake up Irina, she yawns and whines. Wake up Alexej, which is quick and easy, he hops around the house like a rabbit and can only be corralled with great effort. I put their spoons in front of them and check to make sure they eat all their gruel. I don't check their school satchels, there's not enough time. I give them the exact number of coins for school lunch and tell Irina that she should warm up the chicken soup for them later. I don't even have a second to spare to watch them walk down the street.

I pack two hard-boiled eggs in a napkin and stow them in my bag. I run to the bus stop and break a heel along the way. I quickly take off the other shoe and break that heel off. In the little bus to Malyschi I have to stand; an unwashed armpit blocks my view, but I'm a medical professional and will certainly be confronted with worse smells during the course of the day. Once I've arrived at the city's emergency ward, I put on my white hospital smock. From that point on I am a machine that bandages wounds, removes splinters, splints a broken leg, comforts a vomiting child, and wraps a tape measure around a pregnant woman's belly. The doctor insists it must be twins and I argue with him because I don't think that's the case. The baby will weigh nearly five kilos when it is born, it's a boy.

At lunch I eat my eggs with a piece of bread and wash it down with kvass that the doctor has brought in a plastic bag from a street merchant. I think about Irina and Alexej and wonder whether they did everything properly today. I can't call them because we have no phone at home. We are on the waiting list for a phone line, but it's expected to take at least another five years. But the children know how they can reach me at work, and I cringe every time the phone rings here. The device was similar to Sidorow's, and I would have cut off a finger to have one like it at home.

In the bathroom I wash my hands and put on lipstick. A worn-out woman with drooping eyelids looks out at me from the mirror. I feel ancient and look it, too. I haven't seen Jegor for three days and have no idea where he is hiding. I take off my shoes, sit on the lid of the toilet, and do some vein exercises that I read about in
Woman Farmer
.

When I come to, it is ten at night. The children are sleeping back to back in the big bed, and I pull their notebooks out of their satchels and correct their homework. The dishes are washed, the socks are stuffed. I'm no good at homework, but I do my best. I go to the kitchen and drink a glass of tap water. It tastes salty because my tears are dropping into the glass. I'm just a woman like millions of others and still so unhappy, I'm an idiot.