Alina Bronsky - Baba Dunja's Last Love

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.