Baba Dunja's Last Love (8 page)

“What do you know anyway?” he grunts as he jabs roughly at my shoulder. Now I really do fall over. I'm lying on the ground, above us the Big Dipper illuminated in the cloudless sky. He kicks me in the side with all his weight, his face looks distorted. His fingers close around my throat. I hear myself wheezing. How quiet two people can be when one is in the process of killing the other.

Jegor stands behind him, crying.

What happens next I don't understand at first. A dry snap out of nowhere. The man, who never introduced himself by name, stands up straight and lurches. For a second he stands there in a contorted, unnatural position. Then he falls to the ground right next to me.

Against my will I suddenly start to moan. When a strong man just falls over like that it's always a fright. My first imperative is to stand up. I roll onto my left side and then onto my stomach. Next I get to my knees and brace myself with my hands. I crawl over to the fallen man.

“Sir, what is with you, sir?”

His face is lying in a pool of blood. There's a hatchet stuck in his skull. I look over at Jegor, who is holding his hands up as if to say: You can see for yourself that I'm unarmed. I kneel there groaning with pain and my gaze wanders slowly through the dark, against which a figure slowly starts to form.

“Petrow,” I say. “You swine.”

There's a maniacal grin on his face. His eyes look into the distance. I wonder if perhaps he is sleepwalking. Then he shakes himself and tries to help me to my feet, which just causes me more pain.

“Why were you fighting with him, Baba Dunja?”

“I didn't want to have him here.”

“Was he misbehaving? Didn't show you respect?”

“You can see for yourself.” I stand up and let him kneel down and let him brush the dirt off the hem of my skirt.

“I'm terribly sorry to muck up such a lovely evening, but I'm afraid I've killed him.”

I've seen too many wounds in my life to contradict him.

“The question is an easy one,” says Petrow. “What shall we do with him?”

“At this point,” I say, holding my ribs, the stabbing pain screaming with every breath I take, “the question doesn't concern him.”

 

 

The girl sits in bed and blinks in the dark. Our dirty faces must have given her a terrible scare. But she's brave. She doesn't cry, she stares at me, now barely blinking. I probably remind her of someone.

“You're going to come with me now, Glascha,” I say, trying not to betray my distress. “Your papa's just conked out.”

She doesn't ask about him. It's a good sign. Actually a bad sign, but for us at the moment a good one. She crawls out of bed, a proper little girl in a polka-dotted nightgown. Her little suitcase is lying open on the floor, and on her pillow there's a stuffed animal with a long tail.

“Early tomorrow morning it's back home,” I say. Actually tonight would be better, but I can't work magic.

I take the girl by the hand. She doesn't notice as she walks past the body of her father, lying like an oblong mound of dirt in the dark. For tonight I'll take her to my place.

Petrow carries her little suitcase and talks to me the whole time. He's making me crazy, because at the same time I feel as if I can see the radiation pressing through the pores in the skin of this child. It allows me to forget my own injuries.

“Aluminum foil,” I say loudly. “If anything can help us now, it is aluminum foil.”

“Who here has aluminum foil?”

“I do. I have foil.”

I do in fact have some, thanks to Irina. She has sent me all sorts of things for the kitchen, practical, German things that we never had in the past. Parchment paper to bake bread on without getting the baking sheet greasy. Silicone forms for baking small cakes, which in the past I had to use rinsed-out jam jars for. And good, strong aluminum foil reinforced in a honeycomb pattern.

“Glascha,” I say. “You are going to be surprised.”

The girl must have an old soul. She isn't surprised by much. I ask her if she knows what is unusual about our village. She shakes her head. Maybe it's better that way. I've seen people get burns because they imagine they have touched something glowing. If I tell the girl about the radiation she won't survive even a month.

“It's like a game,” I say. “You're going to think it's silly, but in exchange you'll stay healthy and grow up to have five kids with a nice man.”

She laughs, apparently she finds the image funny. I unpack the aluminum foil, Petrow helps me. In her suitcase Glascha has a pair of tights and a long-sleeved shirt, she has to put those on so that the armor doesn't scratch her tender skin. Then she stretches out her arms and legs and we wrap the silver foil around them. Glascha giggles. I'm thankful for her agreeable nature, that she doesn't cry and she doesn't balk. Even the iodine tablets from my home pharmacy she gulps down without grumbling. If she's always so obedient you almost have to fear for her.

She falls asleep in my bed without complaint after she has tossed and turned in the foil. I lie awake next to her feeling weighed down, breathing shallowly so my ribs don't hurt too badly. I used to sleep like this with Irina and Alexej when they were little and nestled against my body, which back then was quite sizable. They liked that I was so soft and warm. Jegor liked it, too.

The girl breathes as delicately as a bird in my bed, Petrow is swaying in the hammock in his garden, and Jegor haunts his way around the abandoned gardens and bemoans the loss of things he can never bring back.

 

 

It's embarrassing, but I have to stick to the truth. Of all mornings, I slept late on this one. I open my eyes and the bed beside me is empty. If I were to get up hastily I'd have to spend the rest of the week crawling on all fours, and I'm too old for that. A crackling sound directs my gaze. Glascha is rolling old buttons across the wood floor, she must have found them in a drawer. The buttons stop at the bedside carpet. The aluminum foil hangs from her in tatters.

Now I do jump out of bed. For a second the pain pins me back down on the mattress and I suppress a groan.

“You have to watch out for the foil, my little gold piece.”

“It got messed up.”

“I see that. We'll make you a new set of armor.” Now I also have to cough miserably because my throat feels so damaged.

We are just finished with the foil when someone knocks on the door. I quickly wrap a scarf around my neck to hide the strangulation marks. Then I open the door. The Gavrilows are standing there, both with the same look on their faces. Mr. Gavrilow looks as if I have pooped in front of his garden gate.

“Baba Dunja,” says Mrs. Gavrilow while her husband peers past her into my sitting room. “We think that you should be the first to know.”

I shove Glascha behind my back, as if I could shield her this way from all the evil of this world.

“The newcomer is lying in the garden with a split skull,” Mrs. Gavrilow reports precisely and spitefully.

“My papa?” asks Glascha startlingly astutely behind my back.

“No, another person,” I answer automatically.

“But where is my papa?”

“He had to make an unexpected trip, dear.”

She accepts this. Or, at any rate, she doesn't ask any more questions and gets down on her knees to collect the scattered buttons.

“And what do you expect from me, Lydia Illjinitschna?” In special situations we address each other by first name and father's name. We've never lifted a drink to friendship together.

“There are flies on him already,” says Mr. Gavrilow, looking at me reproachfully.

Not ten minutes later they are squatting on my bed drinking the African coffee Irina sent me from Germany. The Gavrilows are at least twenty years younger than I am. And yet they seem to think that the death in the garden is more my concern than theirs. The rationale for this they keep to themselves for a while until Mr. Gavrilow tentatively lets it out of the bag.

“You are sort of like the mayor here.”

“Nobody has ever insulted me like that before.”

“I understand that you have a lot to do, Baba Dunja, but it's unhygienic.”

Ten minutes later my house is so full that I send Glascha out to play. I would like to go with her but everyone is talking at me. Even Lenotschka is there. Scattered among them are the dead, who grimace disgustedly when the living step on their feet. All of them want to tell me that the newcomer is lying in the garden with an axe in his head. All of them look at me and expect me to make him disappear. Along with the flies. And the commotion.

My own head hurts so badly by this point that it feels as if I have an axe in my brain, too. Usually those of us here in Tschernowo leave each other in peace. Sometimes we visit each other, but never all at once. We have an unspoken agreement that everyone takes care of his or her own problems without disturbing the others. For example, I don't wave Laura's letter and shout, “Who can tell me what this says? Can anyone tell the difference between German and English?”

But now there is a collective problem, and there are flies on it.

Petrow turns up at some point as well. Everyone moves aside for him: his apparent proximity to death affords him respect. He wasn't expecting the crush of people and he peers around somewhat intimidated. From the look on his face it's clear that he, too, wants me to decide what to do next. I sigh. My ribs hurt worse and worse, but that's not something I want the others to notice. I press a hand against them as inconspicuously as possible.

“Petrow,” I say loudly. “Don't you also tell me there's someone lying in the garden.”

Petrow closes his mouth and tries to read my expression.

Sit down with the others and act shocked, I try to tell him with my eyes. I won't betray you. The others have no idea it was you.

The animated chattering continues.

“We have to call an ambulance!”

“A hearse,” corrects Petrow shyly.

“We need to go to Malyschi.”

“What would we do there? They're all corrupt and drunk.”

“I can't manage the hike there.”

“Who here is in the best shape?”

“Me, I'm practically dead.”

“I've had water in my lungs for five years.”

“My heart laughs itself silly if I take more than three steps.”

The ones who feel sickest of all are the two rosy-cheeked Gavrilows. Of course. In the end, it emerges that they all consider me the fittest.

“The audacity you all have to suggest an old woman, who already has one foot in the grave, undertake this journey. Don't you have any conscience? I was just in Malyschi and won't manage it a second time.”

“All right, Baba Dunja.” That's Petrow now. “I'll go. You look really pale. Everyone out, she needs to lie down.”

The Gavrilows do in fact make a show of trying to get up from my bed. But then they sit back down. I look at Petrow's translucent face. He almost certainly hasn't eaten anything today, and very little yesterday. His eyes gleam and the few hairs on his head are standing on end. You didn't have to have been a nurse's assistant to see that Petrow wouldn't make it far.

It really will have to be me. I'll take Glascha. If I walk slowly and breathe gently, I might make it. I just need to gather my strength a little, for fifteen minutes at least. But before I can tell everyone, Sidorow's voice quakes through my house.

“One could also call the military police.”

 

He really said it: One could also call the military police.

A feeling of awkwardness spreads through the house.

“Perhaps you can phone home like E.T., but us earthlings need a functioning line.”

That's Petrow. I can tell from the faces of the others that as far as they are concerned he is speaking in riddles. Who knows what half-rotted book he's been reading.

“I only wanted to help you idiots.” Sidorow's voice wells up, offended. “It won't be long before he stinks to high heaven.”