Джанет Фитч - Chimes of a Lost Cathedral

But then the door opened, and sun splashed the aperture. Dawn, and with it the horrible midwife. She stepped between me and tender Death. No! But my savior, the Dark Virgin, retreated into the shadows. And this old woman blazed in the doorway, blazed like sun on Scythian armor. “How is she?”

The daughter shook her head.

“I was afraid of that. Go get your sister.” The old warrior lowered herself to the bench next to me, her hand on my brow, so ugly and mean compared with my golden Virgin. She wiped my face with cool water. “This has gone on long enough, don’t you think?” she said to me.

I would have laughed if I’d had an atom of life left in me.

She held out a glass with some tea. “This will make it go faster.” She propped me up, held the rim to my lips, helped me drink. Bitter. I drank it all. Anything that might kill me faster. She let me lie back down. “Sleep a little now.”

I dozed for a while, praying for the figure in black to return and fold me into her cloak of night, for this all to be over.

All at once, my body, this tormented forked thing, began to convulse, a pain such as I had not yet known, a pain that bowed me back like a bridge, and it—I—emitted a scream that should have brought the hut down in a pile around us.

The old woman laughed with diabolical pleasure. She really did hate me. How she loved my screaming. “ Now we’re getting somewhere.” While my body seized again. Once again I was possessed by raging life, plunged into this battle. They flogged them with iron rods until the flesh fell from their bodies…

“Now you’re going to work, my girl.” No retreat without orders. “Scream all you want, Bolshevik.”

I twisted, I writhed in her arms, I tried to get away from her, but she was as strong as five men. My body split open like a great door pushing aside the rust of the ages, like the earth cracking open in a terrible quake. The sorrowful Mother of God, hovering in the shadows, disappeared, abandoning me to this hellish old crone. “Are you ready to have this baby?”

The pain was tearing me open the way a cook dismembers a chicken, and I emitted the high yelps of a half-killed beast. The midwife held me from behind on the bench, the blue daughter before me, massaging my legs. A bedspring of iron screwed its way through me. No, no, no…

“Oh yes,” grunted the old lady. “Say yes!”

But I could only howl.

The door opened, the bright morning like knives in my eyes. “Getting close?”

“Shut the door!” the midwife shouted as a giant burst of pain tore through me. “She screams like the devil. Pray, devushka ! Mother of God, save us. Holy Mother, All-Preserving Queen… ”

“It’s coming,” said the red daughter, kneeling.

“There you go, Bolshevik,” the witch gloated. “You thought you’d outfoxed us, didn’t you?”

I wept. “I can’t… I can’t!”

“It’s coming! The head! I see it! The hair. It’s a redhead!”

“Push!” commanded my tormentor. Sitting behind me, her arms under mine, bracing my back.

I didn’t care about the pain now. I didn’t care if I died. I didn’t care if I ripped my body loose from my body to trail behind me like a sheep torn open by a wolf. I leaned back against the old woman and turned myself inside out.

“Here it comes!”

“No, wait! Something’s wrong!” A hand on my thigh.

“Holy Mother of God, what now?” spat the witch. “Take her!” She handed me off to one of her moons. “Stop pushing, you. Stop it. Turn over.” She thrust me down on the straw, on my knees, my head in the red lap, fingers up inside me, digging—was she going to pull the child out of me like a goat? The flat of a hand on my back, the way you’d steady a horse. “I’ve got it! Yes, now.”

Suddenly, arms lifted me to the birthing stool, where I squatted as they held me, pushing my life out.

Blood slick, the twisted gleaming cord still attached.

A girl, alive.

Eyes open, as green as grass. Full head of hair.

Laughter welled inside me like a spring.

“Look, she’s looking at you.”

Staring at me in wonder. She wasn’t even crying! And how beautiful she was, my daughter! Eyes, upturned at the corners, just like his! Her mouth a little bow, her big cat’s eyes. What a beauty, krasavitsa. No redness, no swollenness, after all that. Nothing was as I’d imagined. It was uncanny the way she examined my face, with such surprise! So this is the world, she seemed to say. The air we breathed in her little lungs. “She’s not even crying.”

“Oh, she’ll be crying plenty,” said the midwife. “So much trouble for such a little nub.” She wiped her forehead on the back of her arm. “I’ve never worked harder in my life.”

They wrapped the cord in a piece of red embroidery thread and bit it off, wiped her, put her into my arms in a clean dish towel.

“I could have a kid like that in my sleep,” said the red daughter.

“Look at those eyes.”

My child, staring at me in wonder. As if I were the miracle.

“The shoulder got stuck,” explained the blue daughter.

“Never thought that’d be over. Is there tea?” said the red one, stretching, cracking her spine.

She weighed nothing in my arms, as light as a rabbit. My daughter! Suddenly she opened her tiny mouth and began to wail. Not a full-lunged baby’s scream, more a high creak like a cat’s cry. “No, no, please don’t cry, baby.” It pierced me, that tiny high needle of a sound. My child. My sweet disaster. What was I doing wrong? She was as hot as a biscuit. That little mouth, and the bright flame of red hair. Did she not like me? I was crying too.

“What’s her name, milaya ?” said the blue daughter.

“Iskra.” My voice was sanded to a whisper. Spark.

“It just was the feast of Alexander and Antonina,” said the midwife, holding a cup to my lips. “How about Alexandra?”

The milk was sour now. I turned my face away. “No.”

Another round face swam into view, the red sister. “You can’t call a Bolshevik Alexandra.” It was the tsarina’s name.

The midwife crossed herself. “May God keep her.”

“Antonina, then,” said the blue one. “Look, Tonya, there’s titty.” And put her on my steaming, rock-hard breast. I struggled to stay awake. Her name was Iskra, not some saint they’d just pulled out of a bag! I thought I was shouting, but they couldn’t hear me at all.

“At least they can’t say we killed the girl,” I heard the midwife say. “Theotokos be praised.”

Her name is Iskra. But I was too tired to argue, I couldn’t stay awake. My red-haired baby, my Iskra, my Spark.

We led our camels, our lop-eared goats, across the dry, hard red plains. Red dust in our hair, in our mouths. Loose shale slid and clacked underfoot on the paths, the sound of the camels’ bells purer than water. Our small band of Ionians—Ilya, Anna, Bogdan, Lilya. The skins of water shifted on the saddles, dry bread in our packs, dates. The sun ate up half the sky. Tam! There! The red sandstone walls of a great city loomed, blue domed, with massive iron gates, the Master’s walled citadel. I knew it instantly. In the center, the Tower, like a giant rook in chess. But he never said how small we’d feel standing before its gates in our rags and coating of red dust, the goats bleating, the sun pounding down like a fist. I couldn’t even reach the rope to pull the great bell. How long would they leave us to stand here? We beat on the doors, cried out, but our puny fists made no sound on the enormous gates, and there were no guards to hear us.