Igor Eliseev - One-Two

“It seems like poisoning,” Sasha said. “And it is not surprising at all. Lately we have been fed like cattle.”

“What shall we do?” you asked.

“About her? What can we do? We have to call an ambulance, or Inga Petrovna.”

He even called Adoter Inga Petrovna. He got into his wheelchair and accompanied us on our search. The window at the reception desk was locked; clearly, we were late; nobody seemed to care. We went round the entire foster home but did not meet any of the employees. Only in the dining room did we manage to find some spark of life in the shape of the rectangular-bodied cook. Sasha tried to explain the danger Half-Jane was in, but the cook muttered something about the borsch she was cooking which allegedly she had to keep an eye on all the time, and she quickly left for the kitchen.

When we came back to our room, we found Half-Jane delirious, all wet; she had already stopped groaning. She was pale and her eyes were wan like those of a rotten fish. I had never seen anything like it before. Her breath was fast and irregular, but it sometimes stopped as if she were constraining herself and did not want to disturb anybody; or maybe that was her way of fighting the pain. Godly Girl, red as a crawfish, put a wet towel on her glowing forehead and lamented with fear. Exhausted, we dropped on to our bed and fell asleep at once. Sasha returned to his room. It was completely dark outside when I heard a deafening crack, resembling radio interference rather than an indistinct whisper. I woke you up and, having found our shoes by touch in the dimly lit room, we approached Half-Jane’s bed. She seemed to be completely out of her senses, her pupils were enlarged, her face has drawn. For a while she opened her mouth but didn’t make a sound, putting her gray tongue out, then with force she grabbed hold of the sheets as someone falling over a precipice might grab hold of bushes, turned her head to one side, and, having made her last gasp, quietened down.

I can only vaguely remember what happened afterwards; I was probably crying or sleeping. In the morning I saw Sasha who took a lively interest in recent events, then Marfa Ilyinichna’s scared face replaced his, and at last, Adoter appeared, accompanied by the new head physician. He examined Half-Jane with unspeakable disgust and announced:

“The death occurred somewhere between three and four o’clock in the morning.”

“A merciful release,” Marfa said under her breath.

“The autopsy will show the reason,” the physician concluded loftily.

“Reason!” I nearly cried. “What the hell! She died of human indifference. She died right in front of our eyes.”

Her body lay in the room till evening, and then they put her on a filthy blanket and carried her away to the basement. She was buried the next morning by our own efforts. After digging a shallow pit in the frozen ground with great difficulty, the boys lowered the body, wrapped up in old sheets, into it. After returning to our room, we went into the bathroom and cried for a long time; cried in turn, as we had agreed to do before this dreadful event. We mourned not only the deceased girl, but also ourselves; it seemed so offensive and terrible that we could appreciate Half-Jane only after she had died.

There was no monument, no cross on her grave – just a tin plate saying “Zinaida Stepanovna Puss”. That’s when we finally found out Half-Jane’s real name.

About a week later, several inspectors came to the foster home. Adoter accompanied them every second. First, she showed them the dining room, the gym and the physiotherapy procedure rooms, and then she took them away to the academic building. When they entered our room, everybody stopped talking; Adoter, with a straight face, answered the trickiest questions with ease. We stood by in cowardly silence. It really should be stated that the foster home had been put in order prior to the inspection: doctors showed up for work, the school was open again and everyone was in his or her place. Even the lavatory had been scrubbed clean with chloride lime; however, the heating was still off, its absence blamed on force-majeure circumstances, natural phenomena beyond reasonable control.

A day before the inspection, Adoter had gathered everybody in the assembly hall and, strolling between the rows, repeated how important it was to respect the established standards. Her speech was uneven and at times devoid of any sense whatsoever. Indeed, she seemed unable to understand many of her own statements, but all her declarations could be summarized in the following: Behave quietly, do not complain, do not stand out. This was nothing new; such a slogan had been repeated and re-enforced a thousand times to disabled children spending their unpretentious lives “under the roof of her house”.

Everything went well and the examination was already proceeding to its well-greased and predictable end when some inspectors decided to take a look in the men’s room. I don’t know exactly what happened in there, but after a while they leaped out of it with gray faces; the procession was brought up by a running and very agitated Adoter who was trying to explain something. Apparently she was successful, because we never saw them again.

An unspoken rule was applied in the foster home: never wash your dirty linen in public, and woe betide anyone who did. Sasha tried because he was convinced that he could break the rigid system single-handedly. He told the guests from the capital city about everything that was happening in the home and what he had witnessed himself. It came as a bombshell. By the evening rumors had spread that Disaster’s days were numbered and that he wouldn’t be let off with incarceration in the isolation cell. I knew trouble waited for him, but I could not imagine its full extent.

The next day we were arranged in rank in the assembly hall once again. There was a strange, hardly describable smile on Adoter’s face. If you have ever seen somebody smiling at a funeral, you may have a notion what she looked like. She pointed her finger at Sasha, asked him to “step” forward, and to turn and face everyone.

“Something happened in our foster home yesterday, something unpredictable and gross. A patient in our big and close-knit family disapproves of everything here. He firmly opposes the rules and does not agree with living like everybody else and being content with his lot. He also enjoys grassing to the authorities. Now, I must ask all of you, is there anyone else who feels like this fellow, my critic, your critic, our critic? Please, don’t hesitate. Take a step forward. We must know our heroes, and our critics, by sight.” And she looked around at everyone very slowly.

That was probably the look the Gorgon used on her victims the first and the last time – clear, cold, stony. There is a type of fear that makes you run away, but the fear we felt at that moment was totally different. We were all petrified, not only in our bones but also in our minds. Afterwards, I kept coming back to that moment, trying to understand why no one had taken a step forward but it was obvious why. We were scared out of our wits. We were weak. We were selfish.

An ominous, almost tangible silence reigned in the hall. Adoter spoke in a whisper, but everybody could hear her quite distinctly:

“Doesn’t anyone want to support Alexander? Are all you others happy? Doesn’t anyone want to complain about anything?”

Sasha was sitting in his wheelchair with his head down, paying no attention to her words.

“Do you see, Alexander, what I see,” Adoter said and haughtily raised her exquisitely shaped eyebrows. “You are all alone, just an upstart who is impossible to please. For your actions you deserve to be publicly shamed and reproved. From now on you are to be ostracized; anyone who starts talking to you will be punished. I will personally supervise any punishment that needs to be administered. Did everyone hear that?”