Olga Grjasnowa - All Russians Love Birch Trees

My subway was late. The stream of pedestrians on the opposite track reminded me of a viscous trail of honey, embedded with a few lonely raisins. The woman across from me was wearing a burka. I could only guess her shape. The veil left a thin slit for her eyes. She was following behind a small man who repeatedly turned to her and the child — a chubby-cheeked boy — seated in the stroller she was pushing. The boy clung to a plastic airplane. I leaned on a blue campaign poster for the conservative party: STOP YPSILANTI, AL-WAZIR AND THE COMMUNISTS!

When I arrived they were just handing out dinner. A plastic bowl full of brown soup and two slices of wholegrain bread. From the shared bathroom came the sounds of a thundering flush, followed by violent snorts and farts. Elias looked bad: his face was haggard and pale, his eyes red. His hands rested flat on the bed. I asked if he was doing better and he nodded, which again was a lie.

His stubble prickled me as I kissed him. Silently we drank the hospital tea and I climbed into bed next to him and he held me. We had not made love in a long time and now, lying next to him, I remembered the lust and thought that he felt it, too, and I felt guilty. The fall in Minna’s apartment had left a big purple bruise on my knee and I hoped that he wouldn’t see it. Then I realized that he was crying, without making a sound, just his chest trembling a little. I clung to him tighter, slipped my hands under his pajamas, and kissed him on the mouth. He looked at me apologetically, his eyes full of tenderness and love.

Elias had gotten a new roommate — a small, burly man, artificial hip, Jewish quota — immigrant from Ukraine, presumably demented. He thought Elisha was his grandson Stasik and called for help all night long: “ POMOGITE, boze moi, da POMOGITE mne .” HELP, for God’s sake, HELP me. When Elias got up, despite the pain, and walked over to the man’s bed, asking what was the matter, the man replied: “Stasik, adjust my right leg. It’s hurting so much.” Once Elias had finished this task, hobbled back to his bed, and had almost fallen asleep again, the screams would start all over. “ POMOGITE, boze moi, da POMOGITE mne .” Of course Elias got up again and helped. The procedure went on like this all night. After two nights and three days Elias was done with the world. His eyes were bloodshot and his leg swollen from constantly getting up.

When I visited Elias in the evening, the grandpa snored complacently. I lay down on the bed next to Elias. He whispered into my ear, I stroked his arm and felt his breath. When I traced his breastbone down to his navel, the neighbor started calling for help again. I asked him in Russian what was the matter and he repeated his slogan: “ POMOGITE, boze moi, da POMOGITE mne .” I rang the bell for the nurse. She came right away and asked him, also in Russian, what was the matter. When she didn’t get a reply, she waited for a moment and then repeated her question. This time, the man answered, as if under torture, “Water.”

She gave him water, spoke a few encouraging words, and he said: “ POMOGITE, boze moi, da POMOGITE mne .” Whereupon she shrugged, shot us an apologetic look, and left.

“I would love to travel with you once I’m out of here,” said Elias.

“Where should we go?”

“Where would you like? Tel Aviv?”

“ POMOGI, Stasik, POMOGI .”

I went over to him and again asked what was wrong. He called me Stasik as well and asked me for water. I gave him his sippy cup but he changed his mind and asked me to adjust his pillow. I adjusted his pillow, but then he wanted me to move his left leg, and when I did it, I saw that he grinned. The grandpa grinned.

It was time to take action against the grandpa. The next day I skipped my seminar on French engineering terminology and went to the hospital early in the afternoon. The grandpa’s daughter stood at the entrance of the ward. She was shrouded in a cloud of Chanel and cigarette smoke. I had seen her once, briefly, in Elias’s room. Next to her was a frail old lady with noticeably expensive jewelry and purple hair, accompanied by a nurse.

When I greeted them they paid no attention to me. Nevertheless I joined their group. The old lady lamented heartrendingly in Yiddish. About her fate. Her husband’s fate, her cat, the hospital, the hospital sheets. I took a deep breath and introduced myself. Then I said that something had to be done regarding her father and husband, respectively. They said nothing and stared at me. They stared at my dirty white sneakers and my tattered jeans.

The younger one stubbed out her cigarette and started speaking loudly and quickly: her father had been a partisan, fighting against the Germans in the Ukrainian forests. Was it too much to ask to take care of a veteran, or was my husband a Nazi? Or maybe he wasn’t even my husband? Maybe that was the reason why he hadn’t married me yet? If I had the irrepressible urge to complain about an honorable man, I should talk to his nurse, Bella. Thereupon the daughter left. Her perfume remained.

Bella grinned. She wore brown leather shoes and a beige suit. A butch through and through.

The yellow eyes of the old lady glowed maliciously. The diamonds sparkled in her old ears. She, too, berated me. We should be ashamed of ourselves, unmarried, fucking in her husband’s room as if it were nothing. She actually said fucking . I blushed and wanted to reply something, but the nurse laughed, shot her a stern look as if she was her property, and whispered to me: “No worries, she’s a slut herself. I had to take her to the gynecologist countless times. And the things he excavated from her — rags, bottles. For her, only size matters.”

Suddenly the old lady started yelling at me: What kind of a woman was I? How dare I talk to her, the wife of a partisan? My husband must have ordered me from a Ukrainian catalog. Did I have no manners at all?

I left both of them alone.

This afternoon Elias was to be released from the hospital. I had spent half the morning painstakingly waxing hair from my body. Then I cleaned, swept, mopped, and went shopping.

At the entrance to the supermarket I took a basket in due form. Then I stood around indecisively in the vegetable section before finally moving to the aisles, where I started filling my basket with random items. I would squeeze oranges, caramelize pears, cut and steam vegetables, stay clear of the pork, knead dough, then roll out and bake it. I just didn’t know how to do all this and therefore added a few housewifey magazines to my shopping basket. Another woman also stood indecisively in the aisles. She had soft features, wore no makeup, and had on flat gray velvet shoes with a little bow on each rounded toe. She studied the small print on the boxes, wheezed, then lunged at a supermarket employee, waving her tote bag threateningly. “That’s just not possible. The organic lettuce can’t be sold out. Just like that? You’re hiding it. The other one is no good, you understand me? No good. All that stuff comes from America!” And then she broke out in tears. The undercover security guard and I looked at her, stunned.

At the cash register I got a pack of cigarettes and smiled. My fingers drummed a march on the conveyor belt. The female neck on line in front of me was so perfect, so slender and white, that it immediately sparked a desire in me.

Elias filled the bed again. I was grateful that he lay there, on his back, his arms spread wide, breathing calmly and regularly. The comforter wasn’t big enough to cover his feet, arms, and shoulders at the same time. So I covered him with my half and went into the kitchen to get a glass of water and cigarettes. Then I sat down on the windowsill. The bedroom seemed somehow bigger now, and the sticky, grayish layer of dust that covered the white wood of the shelves now rested in the dark — colorless like everything else. The morning air was fresh. I stubbed out my cigarette and crawled back into bed. In his sleep Elisha turned to me and kissed my shoulder and continued sleeping peacefully.