Alina Bronsky - Baba Dunja's Last Love

My dear granddaughter Laura,

I handed in the first letter, but I doubt you will have received it yet. It is a little difficult for me to write you because I don’t know for sure what you are up to. It takes a long time for mail to get from here to you in Germany. My interrogator, the head investigator from the military police, is getting nervous because he’s not getting anywhere in clearing up the crime and the dead man’s next of kin are getting impatient. I think the dead man must have had a lot of money and people knew his face. What good was it to him?

I now have a lawyer. He is paid by the state and is still quite young. His name is Arkadij Sergejwitsch.

Baba Dunja, he says to me, if all you ever tell me about are the potato bugs in Tschernowo, I can’t develop a strategy.

And I say, Strategy? What does an innocent person need a strategy for?

Yesterday he said that a German magazine asked him to put them in touch with me and provided him questions for me. Naturally I wondered whether your mother had something to do with it? Why else would a German magazine be interested in me?

I wanted to tell you a bit more about prison life in general, so I’m not always writing about myself. One can get by here. The girls are getting along with each other better. Marja saw a report on television that said it was easy to come by drugs in prison but I told her and the others that we weren’t having any of that in my cell, that our cell would remain clean. Marja was mad, she said I’d spoil any fun.

And she said the others didn’t listen to me because I’m Baba Dunja from Tschernowo. They don’t read the papers. They listen to me because they saw the eye tattoo on my hand. In prison, only important people have eye tattoos, and everyone is afraid of them (Marja figured out).

Of course, it’s not an eye but a letter O like Oleg. I tried to fill in the O with color because I didn’t want it anymore, and that’s why it looks strange. Even good ink slowly fades over the course of seventy years. But that’s another story.

The food is alright. In the hall by the cafeteria there’s a display case where every afternoon they put a sample portion of the soup or gruel so nobody grumbles they got too little. An old woman doesn’t need much, I can usually give some of mine to Marja.

I don’t want to think about the state of my garden while I’m in here. I hope you are doing well, and that you are getting good grades in school.

Your loving Baba Dunja.

My dear granddaughter Laura,

Baba Dunja writing again. You are probably wondering why I am writing so often now.

It’s not just that one has more time in prison. One also has more to write about.

In two days there will be a court hearing. It will take a long time according to Arkadij Sergejewitsch, the little boy with the briefcase. The charges will be read and witnesses will be questioned, and there will be so many of us in the dock, the entire village. There will probably be people in the gallery, too, because the case is so unusual and because some people out there seem to think they know me even though I don’t know them. I asked myself whether I should be ashamed and then decided: No, I have no need to be ashamed because I didn’t do anything wrong.

I have to think about a few things that I’m going to say in court. I’m not used to speaking in front of a lot of people. But if Arkadij Sergejewitsch reads a statement from me it’s possible that some people won’t believe the words are really mine. So I have to do it myself.

Whatever you hear about me, never forget: your Baba Dunja holds no one more dear than you, regardless of the fact that we’ve never seen each other.

During the night I’m awakened by Marja, who is sitting on my cot, crying. I can see the trembling outline of her body. She is trying to be quiet because Tamara, who killed her husband with an electric iron, doesn’t like it when anyone makes noise during bedtime hours.

“What is it?” I whisper. Marja just breathes haltingly.

“I don’t understand, Maschenka.”

I press myself against the wall as she tries to stretch out beside me. It’s an awkward undertaking: either Marja is going to crash to the floor or she is going to lie on top of me and suffocate me with her bosom. I suck in my stomach and try to make myself as narrow as possible.

She puts her arm around my neck and presses her lips to my ear.

“I’m so afraid, Dunja,” warm tears trickle into my ear canal, “I’m afraid they’re going to convict us all and shoot us.”

“They’re hardly going to shoot us, Marja. Maybe fifty years ago they did that.”

“You have it good, nothing ever rattles you.”

I don’t say anything.

“Obviously it’s true that we buried him together, but only one person killed him!”

Marja’s tears burn in my ear. I free up a hand and pat her shoulder. She’s worse off than I am, her lawyer didn’t show up. I asked Arkadij whether he could defend her, too, but he said it was prohibited. I’m getting the impression that a particular chaos prevails here in prison. And then add to that the camera teams outside which disturb everyone as they are working.

“Surely you know who it was, Dunja!” Marja is less and less able to control herself, she is working herself into a hysterical fit. “Please do something so I can go home. I want to go back to Tschernowo. Nobody can bother me there. That’s why I moved there, because I thought I’d have peace and quiet, but they found me anyway and locked me up.”

My heart begins to palpitate. I press my lips together. She doesn’t know that she calls her Alexander’s name during the night sometimes.

“Do something! You’re the boss!” she sniffles.

“I was never the boss.”

But she isn’t listening to me. She is trembling and I am trembling with her. “I can’t take it anymore, I’m losing my mind in here.”

“Calm down,” I say. “You have to keep it together, my girl. I’ll make sure that you get home. I promise you.”

She cries really loudly now, at full volume, until a boot thrown by Tamara silences her.

“Arkadij Sergejewitsch,” I say, “how can you find out what language something is?”

“I’m sorry?” he says.

We always meet in the same room. It’s square and so small that only a table and two chairs fit in it. The door stays open and now and again a guard sticks a nose in to bark at us or secretly take a photo. Sometimes Arkadij gets up then and goes out and yells. It surprised me that he could be so loud.

He’s slight of build, wears a white shirt and a suit, the briefcase sits between us on the table, next to it a portable phone with a big screen that constantly lights up. The dark rings beneath Arkadijs’s eyes reach all the way down to his sunken cheeks. He has a wedding ring on his ring finger. Instead of being with his wife, he is squatting here with me, asking me questions that are always the same, leaving me ever less inclined to put in the effort to answer them.

He opens his briefcase and pulls out a bar of chocolate.

The wrapper is printed with golden letters in a foreign script. It’s the same alphabet that Laura’s letter is written in.