Drrra-bub-bub-b… The earth-mover wheezed and expired.
«Our friend finished up a bit early today, didn't he?» said the Girl-woman. «Of course, if I'd known my kidneys would go on the blink, I wouldn't have lied in the first place.»
«Look, I just won't have time to phone anybody,» Alena said in an interval between contractions.
«So what do you want,» Masha asked her, «a boy or a girl?»
«Agirl. Isolde.»
«I want a boy — Vadim,» Masha answered.
«The patronymic will be awkward for his children: Vadimovich. One has to think of the future.»
«Who knows what people will be called in the future? Perhaps they'll all have nuclear names or something like that.»
«Maybe it's false labor after all, huh?» The Girl-woman was using her fingers for complex calculations of the term of her pregnancy.
But this was no false labor. Alena understood at last that she was giving birth in earnest and it was time for her to go to the delivery room. She asked Masha to dispose of her apple cores and watermelon rinds.
«Is the bathroom far?» Masha could hardly see through the specks dancing before her eyes.
«Yes, and be grateful that it is — it doesn't smell so much.»
«Is it true there's no water there?»
«How can there be water in a building that hasn't existed for five years?»
Masha walked along the corridor and found her destination. She tossed the garbage into a trash can where it became a committed partisan in the battle among the many other odors hanging there. But she'd had enough for now. Masha walked back to the ward. Alena was gone.
The women asked whether there was a line for the lavatory. Yes, there was. Damn!
«Even in the hostel where I hang out it's not so bad as here,» said the Girl-woman, and she sat down across from Masha.
Masha understood that the Girl-woman wanted to have a chat and said through the red speckles, «You hang out in a settlement house, but my hangout is the barracks.» She lay down.
«What about me — I usually hang out at the train station,» announced the woman who had been so interested in the shot of alcohol earlier. «In a barracks, you say? And your husband does… what?»
The words somehow came out against Masha's will. «Well, let's see… he was a photographer for awhile, but now he's gone out to do some construction.»
He was a photographer, in fact, only he never had become Masha's husband, even though he used to say to her: «There's an old saying: 'It's a quicker trip to the registry office from the bedroom than from the cinema'.» As it turned out, the quick trip had been to the maternity hospital. But after all, she was thirty-one; when would she be able to have a child if not now? It was three years since her mother had died, leaving her and her sister alone in the world. They'd hold things together somehow and raise the child. But then again, barracks was a barracks.
«He's trying to get an apartment, hmmm? They say working on a construction site helps you get one sooner.»
Masha realized it was the Schoolmarm speaking to her. Yes, he was trying to get an apartment. Yes, they'd been married a year. Yes, it was because of her blood pressure that she'd been hospitalized earlier. I'm staying in a hospital that doesn't exist, talking about a husband I don't have. Here the midwife called her for an injection and Masha returned to reality. She went out into the corridor, and suddenly her water broke.
«My water broke,» she said aloud.
«What happened, Golubova?» asked the midwife, peering out of the treatment room. «Here's the water, but what about the contractions?» she fretted.
«I don't know.»
«Let me take some blood from you right away and we'll send you over to pre-birthing. They'll give you some castor oil there, maybe the contractions will come. But this stimulation…»
When Masha arrived in pre-birthing Alena was hollering above the noise, lying in bed and waving her arms as if preparing for takeoff.
«What about you-ou-ou?!» Alena bellowed to Masha, and they carted Alena off to delivery.
Masha could hear the powerful voice of the gynecologist, Alena's silence, and then the hoarse cry of a baby. But I'm not having any contractions, Masha thought, noticing that the window and wall were tilting slantwise. Outside it was already night. «It's my blood pressure again,» Masha said softly aloud. She knew she would leave this place with a baby, and for its sake she could endure anything.
At midnight the doctor gave Masha some castor oil and then began sliding obliquely to the floor. Masha grabbed him by the arm.
«What's the matter with you?» she heard.
«Nothing. This happens sometimes because of my blood pressure. Things move.»
«Do objects move, or do you?»
«I don't move, no.»
«That's not so bad. Drink the castor oil in one gulp. That's a good girl.»
Masha gulped it down, and soon the first contraction overwhelmed her. Those that followed frightened her, and she begged and begged: «Vadim, Vadim, have pity.» But Vadim was bursting pitilessly into the world — Masha could already feel his head. Such a world you're pushing into, where some things don't even exist on paper, Masha thought, and she cried out into the darkness of the corridor, «My baby's coming!»
The night made no response. Masha slid out of bed and, crouching on all fours so as not to crush the baby, crawled out of the ward through the open door. A midwife, very young, was asleep at her desk.
«Midwife, I'm giving birth,» Masha bellowed.
The midwife opened her eyes wide for a second, and then, apparently deciding she was having a dream about a person on all fours, calmed down and went back to sleep. Masha returned to the ward, struggled back onto the bed and there gave birth. At the cry of the newborn, the midwife came running at a trot and called the doctor. He came in and then ran out, quickly reappearing with his instruments.
«Blood type? Rhesus factor? All torn up. Be sewing all night…» carried darkly through Masha's confusion, then she caught the order, «Now make an effort!»
«I can't.»
«Why not?»
«I don't have the strength,» Masha grew bolder on seeing the expressions on the faces of the doctor and midwife. «Not so young anymore — I'm thirty.»
«I'm also thirty, but I certainly don't consider myself a senior citizen,» said the doctor.
«You don't have to give birth either.»
«On the contrary, I give birth fifteen times every other day,» he answered, injecting something into a vein on her right arm. «Remember, five minutes after four.»
«Who was born to me?»
«What do you mean, who? It's a girl.»
«Let me see her.»
«We'll go over to neonatal.»
They took Masha on a stretcher to the newborn ward and there pointed out her daughter, already swaddled.
«What a little terror,» Masha said with contentment.
«Spit 'n' image of her mother,» replied the midwife.
Masha was happily silent.
By seven the next morning she was lying in a ward with Alena. Both were disappointed that the births had turned out so perversely: Alena had a son, Masha a daughter. On the wall was a colorful admonition: TURN ON QUARTZ LAMP THREE TIMES DAILY TO SANITIZE WARD. Masha looked around for the quartz lamp and there it was, good. The sun was also doing its utmost to sanitize the ward for them, though September was nearing its end.
«Did I cradle my belly with my arms?» Alena asked.
«No, you just flapped them about like sails.»
«An old woman told me you shouldn't use your arms during labor, or the child will be unlucky.»
Masha remembered how she had been walking from the barracks to the hospital when she was stopped by Granny Anya and Granny Tanya, sitting on a bench: «Hey, want us to tell you what your baby's going to be?» Granny Anya had predicted a girl, while deaf Granny Tanya, not hearing a word her friend was saying, had nodded vigorously and said, yes, it would be a s
on.
«I've got a yen for some grapes,» Alena started up.
«Take some from my bag,» Masha said, gearing up for a detailed discussion of their birthing experiences.
But Alena was off on another tack. «I'm so hungry! If only I had some coffee and cookies or something. Boy, have I got some wonderful cookies at home, Yugoslavian. Taste just like cream. If only I had a Thermos right now, and the coffee was good and hot! My husband should be here any minute.»
«That sounds like him calling you now.»
Alena went to the window and a volley of exclamations and purring ensued. «So much for your Isolde,» she said to her husband in parting. «Now think up a name for your son.»
«Excellent, I'll think about it. Lena, where do we keep the money?»
«Where else? In the cream jug.»
«What's there won't do for a crib. Where's the rest?»
«Where it's needed, there it lies. Suppose you just go get me a care package and be sure you don't forget the cookies.»
Alena's husband, she had just been explaining, played bass guitar in a restaurant after work.
«I was having the time of my life,» Alena was saying, «but no, the doctors made me have a baby. After I went to work at the food warehouse in the grocery department, I gained forty-five pounds over the summer. Do you think I used to be like this? I weighed 103 pounds! There was no reason to start somebody. Why rent your body out to someone else for nine months, or even eight and a half — I'm not crazy! But it couldn't be helped. This extra weight landed me in pathology twice — the first time with such clods, you wouldn't believe — somebody brought them fried fish, imagine, store-bought, batter-fried fish, what a stench, you couldn't breathe — not only did it stink to high heaven, but to watch them eating it. What can be keeping my precious? He must want me to sic the dog on him today.»
Yet another new mother was brought into the ward, and she asked who it was that had given birth right in the pre-birthing area.
«I did,» Masha answered, «What of it?»
«The head doctor scolded your doctor so — he works three jobs, she says, and she got in trouble because of him — he shouldn't have fallen asleep.»
«What's your name? Rosa. You know, Rosa, many people have to work two jobs these days,» Alena said, nibbling her way through a package of Yugoslavian cookies.
When her husband arrived after dinner, Alena asked playfully: «So why are you coming empty handed? I've already gone through the provisions.»
«Lena, you've got to tell me where the money is — that guy Vaska from our band is about to leave, and I won't be able to get the crib without him.»
«Are you going to bring me a care package?»
«But what about the crib?»
«I told you.»
«But I'm telling you; I need that money.»
«Well, why are you getting ugly with me when I'm having such a tough time here?» Alena began to dab at her eyes.
Alena's husband went out to get a food package. Soon they brought two newborns into the ward to be nursed. They gave one to Alena and the other to Rosa. Masha saw the familiar specks before her eyes.
«Your baby is at risk for newborn trauma.»
«How's that?» Masha asked in a whisper.
«She's too excitable and cries too much. You know you had her in bed, after all — those are considered hazardous births. We're giving her a mixture of bromide and magnesium.»
It seemed to Masha that she was bobbing up and down, or more nearly, that she was being tossed up and down. The doctor's words returned to her: «Do objects move, or do you? It's better when it's the objects that move.»
But the lactation nurse had already brought decanters to express her milk into and had cautioned her, «Don't drink much the first two days. The milk doesn't really come in until the third day, so you can develop mastitis.»
Masha didn't know how mastitis and drinking were related but felt too shy to ask about it. And here were the pediatric nurses back again for their charges.
«Couldn't you just leave them with us until the next feeding,» said Rosa, regretfully parting with the precious bundle but, looking at Masha's face, she had second thoughts and lapsed into silence.
«Why should they leave them with us?» Alena remarked. «What if they did let us unbundle them and change their little didies, what then? Let's have some fun while we still can, huh? Masha, take less into your head and more into your stomach.»
Alena herself was constantly taking something into her stomach: a cutlet, a pie, an apple, a bunch of grapes, a chicken leg, followed by another apple. The thermos of coffee ran out along toward evening, and Alena was sadly obliged to get by on cream and juice before the last feeding at midnight. Masha put herself in Alena's place and mentally drank a mug of coffee. With a pie. She'd brought a bit of fruit with her, but that was all she'd managed to grab. Now she felt exhausted with nothing to fortify her after giving birth. It would be nice to have some chocolate, like Rosa. Rosa had been receiving an uninterrupted avalanche of relatives, and all of them had, for some reason, brought chocolates. At long last she shared them with Masha and Alena. Masha put herself in Rosa's place and did not refuse the treat. No one had come to see her on either the first day or the second. Masha's sister had taken a seasonal job on a farm, and her coworkers probably didn't even know about the birth yet. On the third day a friend from the barracks, Liza, arrived, bringing a hunk of semolina pudding and a can of pickled mushrooms. But Masha could not manage much glee over this since Liza had also brought some disturbing news: the night before, the Belyaevs had all but burned the kitchen down — they'd left a saucepan with some kasha cooking on a stove burner and gone out to party. Half the wall had burned out. Liza was sorry the whole barracks hadn't burned down, but Masha didn't know whether to be glad or distressed. The bits and pieces she had acquired over thirty years would be difficult to replace. Things were easy for the likes of Alena; that's why she could be so audacious.
Masha witnessed Alena's audacity again on the fourth day. That was when they first brought Masha's daughter, recovering at last, to be nursed. Once Masha's milk had come in, her daughter nursed well; she didn't have to express as much milk as before. But Alena had so much milk remaining after nursing that she spent half an hour expressing one breast while the other grew hard and reddened. She could not expel even a drop from it. It was as though all the fruit, pies, and chicken had been accumulating in her body and now there it all was, stuck in the path of the milk. By evening Alena's breast had swelled enormously, its color no longer red but crimson with shadings of violet. Masha attempted to help Alena, and the lactation nurse also bustled around her, but all in vain. At night her temperature rose. They couldn't reach the doctor because women were giving birth left and right in the delivery room. At first Alena got on the phone, calling friends for advice, but later announced she was going to file a written grievance with the Ministry of Health. At that, the doctor appeared on the spot. He held an ice bag to Alena's violet breast, waited for the pain to subside, then began expressing. The milk came in seven spurts.
«This is what you need to do; continue with that, and try to drinkless.»
Alena happened to have some coffee left in her thermos which she immediately offered Masha, even pouring it with her own hands. To refuse would have been silly, and Masha accepted the cup.
«It's so hot, it even made the milk stir in my breast!»
«This is one of those imported vaccuum bottles,» Alena replied happily, energetically expressing her breasts. «Well, comrade titty, it seems you're saved,» and she moved the ice bag to the other breast.
That very night the thought ripened in Masha's head that she too needed to write a letter to Moscow. It was five years ago, after all, that they had promised to demolish the barracks in their settlement, but to date, nothing had changed. Again that summer they'd whitewashed the entryway, which meant that no changes were foreseen in the next three years. The only hope was that the Belyaevs would start a rea
l conflagration. But Masha did not want to wait for a fire. She might have to leave her daughter alone in the room to run out for food, and now the Belyaevs with their pyromania…
Masha spent all of the fifth day writing a letter to Moscow, while Alena waxed indignant over having to give presents to the pediatric nurses.
«It's their job to take care of people. Why must they be given something extra?»
«Probably because the pay is so low no one comes to work here,» Rosa said.
«For example, everyone wants to work at the food warehouse,» Masha added.
The next day they were discharged. While Masha was phoning Liza, Rosa's husband, surrounded by relatives, arrived to pick her up, and Alena watched out the window to see how they would all fit into three cars.
When Liza appeared, Masha showed her the letter first, then her daughter.
«Well,» Liza said, «They'll wear you out. They'll twist you around like a snail.»
«I only described matters as they are. I added nothing. Didn't they promise to demolish it five years ago? They promised.»
«Well, just watch out.»
* * *
In answer to Masha's letter, a large envelope arrived which proved to contain a map of the town and its environs. It was a very beautiful map: emerald green squares of parks, intricately scattered threads of railroads, the wide blue ribbon of the Kama River elegantly dividing the town into two parts. On official letterhead was written:
Dear Comrade Golubova, M. V.
In re yours of 9/30/82, we advise you that the Levanevsky settlement was demolished last year and replaced with Lake Jolly. We enclose a map.
And, indeed, on the map Masha found in place of the settlement a bluish spot with washed-out outlines along which the words LAKE JOLLY were written in capitals. The map gave off an impressive odor of printer's ink.
This was how everyone in the barracks learned that they were living at the bottom of a lake. Granny Anya humbly opined, «The people in Moscow, they know better.»
«At least we'll have fish to eat now,» agreed Granny Tanya.
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