“That can’t be,” his wife said. “They never get the dates wrong. When did you come back from the army?”
And they began to argue, standing there at the foot of his mother’s unkempt grave. The wild grass, which had grown considerably over the summer months, reached to their knees until, at long last, they bent down and started clearing it.
Allegories
Hygiene
ONE TIME THE DOORBELL RANG AT THE APARTMENT OF the R. family, and the little girl ran to answer it. A young man stood before her. In the hallway light he appeared to be ill, with extremely delicate, pink, shiny skin. He said he’d come to warn the family of an immediate danger: There was an epidemic in the town, an illness that killed in three days. People turned red, they swelled up, and then, mostly, they died. The chief symptom was the appearance of blisters, or bumps. There was some hope of surviving if you observed strict personal hygiene, stayed inside the apartment, and made sure there were no mice around—since mice, as always, were the main carriers of the disease.
The girl’s grandparents listened to the young man, as did her father and the girl herself. Her mother was in the bath.
“I survived the disease,” the young man said simply, and removed his hat to reveal a bald scalp covered with the thinnest layer of pink skin, like the foam atop boiling milk. “I survived,” he went on, “and because of this I’m now immune. I’m going door to door to deliver bread and other supplies to people who need them. Do you need anything? If you give me the money, I’ll go to the store—and a bag, too, if you have one. Or a shopping cart. There are long lines now in front of the stores, but I’m immune to the disease.”
“Thank you,” said the grandfather, “but we’re fine.”
“If your family gets sick, please leave your doors open. I’ve picked out four buildings—that’s all I can handle. If any of you should survive, as I did, you can help me rescue others, and lower corpses out.”
“What do you mean, lower corpses out?” asked the grandfather.
“I’ve worked out a system for evacuating the bodies. We’ll throw them out into the street. But we’ll need large plastic bags; I don’t know where to get those. The factories make double-layered plastic sheets, which we could use, although I don’t have the money. You could cut those sheets with a hot knife, and the material will seal back together automatically to form a bag. All you really need is a hot knife and double-layered plastic.”
“Thank you, but we’re fine,” repeated the grandfather.
So the young man went along the hall to the other apartments like a beggar, asking for money. As the R. family closed the door behind him, he was already ringing their neighbors’ bell. The door opened a little, on its chain, leaving just a crack, so the young man was forced to lift his hat and tell his story to the crack. The R. family heard the neighbor reply abruptly, but apparently the young man didn’t leave, for there were no footsteps. Another door opened slightly: someone else wanted to hear his story. Finally a laughing voice said: “If you have some money already, run and get me ten bottles of vodka. I’ll pay you back.”
They heard footsteps, and then it was quiet.
“When he comes back,” said the grandmother, “he should bring us some bread and condensed milk, and some eggs. And soon we’ll need more cabbage and potatoes.”
“He’s a charlatan,” said the grandfather. “But those aren’t burns; they look like something else.”
Finally the father snapped to attention and led the girl away from the door. These were his wife’s parents, not his, and he rarely agreed with them about anything. Nor did they exactly ask his opinion. Something really was happening, he felt: it couldn’t help but happen. He’d been sensing it for a long time now, and waiting. For the moment he was experiencing a temporary stupor. He walked the little girl out of the foyer—there was no need for her to stand there until the mysterious stranger knocked again. The father needed to have a serious talk with the stranger, man to man, about treatment options, escape routes, and the overall circumstances on the ground.
The grandparents stayed at the door, because they could hear that the elevator hadn’t been called up. The young man would still be on their floor. He was probably asking for all the money and shopping bags at once so that he wouldn’t have to run back and forth. Or else he really was a charlatan and a crook and was collecting the money only for himself, something the grandmother knew a little about since the time a woman knocked at their door and said she lived in the next entryway and that an old lady, Baba Nura, had died there. She was sixty-nine. The woman was collecting money for the funeral, and she held out a list of people who’d donated, their signatures, and the sums they’d given: thirty kopeks, a ruble, even two rubles. The grandmother gave the woman a ruble, though she couldn’t actually recall anyone named Nura—and no wonder, because five minutes later one of their nice neighbors rang the doorbell and said that they should be careful, some woman no one knew, a crook, was soliciting money under false pretences. She had two men waiting on the second floor, and they took off with the money, dropping the list of names and sums to the floor.
The grandparents were still at the door, listening. Nikolai joined them; he didn’t want to miss anything. His wife, Elena, came out of the shower at last and started asking loudly what was going on, but they hushed her up.
Yet they heard no more doorbells. The elevator kept going up and down, and people got out on the sixth floor and made noise with their keys and their door slamming. This meant it could not have been the young man: he didn’t have any keys. He’d have had to ring the doorbell.
Finally Nikolai turned on the television, and they had supper. Nikolai ate a great deal. He ate so much the grandfather felt compelled to make a remark. Elena came to her husband’s defense, and then the little girl asked why everyone was arguing, and family life went on its way.
That night, on the street, someone shattered what sounded like a very large window.
“It’s the bakery,” said the grandfather, looking down from the balcony. “Run, Kolya, get us some supplies.”
They began to collect equipment for Nikolai to go out. A police car drove up, arrested someone, and drove off, leaving a police officer posted at the bakery door. Nikolai went downstairs with a backpack and a knife. By then a whole crowd had gathered outside. They surrounded the policeman, knocked him down, and then people began jumping in and out of the bakery. A woman was mugged for a suitcase filled with bread. They put a hand over her mouth and dragged her away. The crowd kept growing.
Nikolai returned with a very full backpack—thirty kilos of pretzels and ten loaves of bread. Still standing on the landing, he removed all his clothes and threw them down the trash chute. He soaked cotton balls in eau-de-cologne, wiped down his body, and threw them down the chute as well. The grandfather, very pleased with the new developments, restricted himself to just one remark—the R. family would have to budget their eau-de-cologne.
In the morning, Nikolai ate a kilo of pretzels all by himself. The grandfather wore dentures and dipped the hard pretzels lugubriously into his tea. The grandmother seemed depressed and didn’t say anything, while Elena tried to force her little daughter to eat more pretzels. Finally the grandmother broke down and insisted that they ration the food. They couldn’t go out robbing every night, she said, and look, the bakery was all boarded up—everything had already been taken away!
So the R. family’s supplies were counted up and divided. During lunch Elena gave her portion to her daughter. Nikolai was as gloomy as a thundercloud, and after lunch he ate a whole loaf of black bread by himself.
They had supplies enough for a week.
Nikolai and Elena both called into work, but no one answered. They called some friends: everyone was sitting home, waiting. The television stopped working, its screen blank and flickering. The next day the phone stopped working. Out on the street, people walked along with shopping bags and backpacks. Someone had sawed down a young tree and was dragging it home throug
h the empty yard.
It was time to figure out what to do with the cat, which hadn’t eaten in two days and was meowing terribly on the balcony.
“We need to let her in and feed her,” said the grandfather. “Cats are a valuable source of fresh, vitamin-rich meat.”
Nikolai let the cat in, and they fed it some soup—not very much, no need to overfeed it after its fast. The little girl wouldn’t leave the cat’s side; while it had been on the balcony, the girl kept throwing herself at the balcony door to try and touch her. Now she could feed the little creature to her heart’s content, though eventually even her mother couldn’t take it. “You’re feeding her what I tear out of my mouth to give to you!” she cried. There were now enough supplies for five days.
Everyone waited for something to happen, some sort of mobilization to be announced. On the third night they heard the roar of motors outside. It was the army leaving town.
“They’ll reach the outskirts and set up a quarantine,” said the grandfather. “No one gets in, no one gets out. The scariest part is that it all turned out to be true, what the young man said. We’ll have to go into town for food.”
“If you give me your cologne, I’ll go,” said Nikolai. “I’m almost out.”
“Everything will be yours soon enough,” the grandfather said meaningfully. He’d lost a lot of weight. “It’s a miracle the plumbing still works.”
“Don’t jinx it!” snapped his wife.
Nikolai left that night for the store. He took the shopping bags and the backpack, as well as a knife and a flashlight. He came back while it was still dark, undressed on the stairs, threw the clothes into the trash chute, and, naked, wiped himself down with the cologne. Wiping one foot, he stepped into the apartment; only then did he wipe the other foot. He crushed the cotton balls together and threw them out the door, then dipped the backpack in a pot of boiling water, and also the canvas shopping bags. He hadn’t gotten much: soap, matches, salt, some oatmeal, jelly, and decaffeinated coffee. The grandfather was extremely pleased, however—he was positively beaming. Nikolai held the knife over a burner on the stove.
“Blood,” the grandfather noted approvingly before going to bed, “that’s the most infectious thing of all.”
They had enough food now for ten days, according to their calculations, if they subsisted on jelly and oatmeal, and all ate very little.
Nikolai started going out every night, and now there was the question of his clothing. He would fold it into a cellophane bag while he was still on the stairs, and each time he came in he would disinfect the knife over a burner. He still ate plenty, though without any remarks, now, from his father-in-law.
The cat grew skinnier by the hour. Her fur was hanging loose on her, and meals were torturous, for the girl kept trying to throw bits of food onto the floor for the cat as Elena rapped the girl on the knuckles. They were all yelling, now, all the time. They’d throw the cat out of the kitchen and close the door, and then the cat would begin hurling itself against the door to get back in.
Eventually this led to a horrifying scene. The grandparents were sitting in the kitchen when the girl appeared with the cat in her arms. Both their mouths were smeared with something.
“That’s my girl,” said the girl to the cat—and kissed it, probably not for the first time, on its filthy mouth.
“What are you doing?” the grandmother cried.
“She caught a mouse,” said the girl. “She ate it.” And once again the girl kissed the cat on the mouth.
“What mouse?” asked the grandfather. He and his wife sat still with shock.
“A gray one.”
“A puffy one? A fat one?”
“Yes, it was fat and big,” said the girl happily. The cat, in the girl’s arms, was trying to free herself.
“Hold her tight!” yelled the grandfather. “Go to your room now, girl, go on. Take the kitty. You’ve really done it now, haven’t you?” His voice was growing louder. “You little tramp! You brat! You’ve played your games with your kitty, haven’t you?”
“Don’t yell,” said the girl. She ran quickly to her room.
The grandfather followed, spraying her path with cologne. He secured the door behind her with a chair, then called in Nikolai, who was resting after a sleepless night outside. Elena was sleeping with him. They woke up reluctantly; everything was discussed and settled. Elena began crying and tearing out her hair. From the child’s room they could hear knocking.
“Let me out, open up, I need to go to the bathroom!”
“Listen to me!” yelled Nikolai. “Stop yelling!”
“You’re yelling!” cried the girl. “Let me out, please let me out!”
Nikolai and the others went into the kitchen. They were forced to keep Elena in the bathroom. She was beating on her door, too.
By evening the girl had calmed down. Nikolai asked her if she’d managed to pee. With difficulty the girl answered that, yes, she’d gone in her underwear. She asked for something to drink.
There was a child-sized bed in the girl’s room, a rug, a locked wardrobe with all the family’s clothing, and some bookshelves. It had been a cozy room for a little girl; now it was a quarantine chamber. Nikolai managed to hack an opening high up in the door. He lowered a bottle filled with soup and bread crumbs through the hole. The girl was told to eat this for dinner and then to urinate in the bottle and pour it out the window. But the window was locked at the top, and the girl couldn’t reach, and the bottle turned out to be too narrow for her to aim into. Excrement should have been easy enough: she was to take a few pages from one of the books and go on those, and then throw this all out the window. Nikolai had fashioned a slingshot and after three attempts had managed to put a fairly large hole in the window.
But the girl soon showed the signs of her spoiled upbringing. She was unable to defecate onto the pages as she was supposed to. She couldn’t keep track of her own needs. Elena would ask her twenty times a day whether she needed to go poo; the girl would say no, she didn’t; and five minutes later she’d soil herself .
Meanwhile, the girl’s food situation was becoming impossible: There were a finite number of bottles, and the girl was unable to retie the ones she had used to the rope. There were already nine bottles scattered on the floor when the girl stopped coming to the door or answering questions. The cat must have been sitting on her, though it hadn’t appeared in their line of vision in a while, ever since Nikolai started trying to shoot it with the slingshot. The girl had been feeding the cat half of every ration—she’d simply pour it out on the floor for her. Now the girl no longer answered questions, and her little bed stood by the wall, outside their line of vision.
They’d spent three days innovating, struggling to arrange things for the girl, attempting to teach her how to wipe herself (until now Elena had done this for her), getting water to her so she could somehow wash herself—and pleading interminably for her to come to the door to receive her bottle of food. One time Nikolai decided to wash the girl by pouring a bucket of hot water on her, instead of lowering the food, and after that the girl was afraid to come to the door. All this had so exhausted the inhabitants of the apartment that when the girl finally stopped answering them, they all lay down and slept for a long, long time.
Then everything ended very quickly. Waking up, the grandparents discovered the cat in their bed with that same bloody mouth—apparently the cat had started eating the girl, but had climbed out the makeshift window, possibly to get a drink. Nikolai appeared in the doorway, and after hearing what had happened slammed the door shut and began to move things around on the other side, locking them in with a chair. The door remained closed. Nikolai did not want to cut an opening; he put this off. Elena yelled and screamed and tried to remove the chair, but Nikolai once again locked her in the bathroom.
Then Nikolai lay down on the bed for a moment, and began to swell up, until his skin had distended horribly. The night before, he’d killed a woman for her backpack, and then, right on the
street, he’d eaten a can of buckwheat concentrate. He just wanted to try it, but ended up eating the whole thing, he couldn’t help himself. Now he was sick.
Nikolai figured out quickly that he was sick, but it was too late—he was already swelling up. The entire apartment shook with all the knocks on all the doors. The cat was crying, and the apartment above them had also reached the knocking phase, but Nikolai just kept pushing, as if in labor, until finally the blood started coming out of his eyes, and he died, not thinking of anything, just pushing and hoping to get free of it soon.
And no one opened the door onto the landing, which was too bad, because the young man was making his rounds, carrying bread with him. All the knocking in the apartment of the R. family had died down, with only Elena still scratching at her door a little, not seeing anything, as blood came out of her eyes. What was there to see, anyway, in a dark bathroom, while lying on the floor?
Why was the young man so late? He had many apartments under his care, spread across four enormous buildings. He reached their entryway for the second time only on the night of the sixth day—three days after the girl had stopped answering, one full day after Nikolai succumbed, twenty hours after Elena’s parents passed away, and five minutes after Elena herself.
But the cat kept meowing, like in that famous story where the man kills his wife and buries her behind a brick wall in his basement, and when the police come they hear the meowing behind the wall and figure out what happened, because along with the wife’s body the husband has entombed her favorite cat, which has stayed alive by eating her flesh.
There Once Lived a Woman Who Tried to Kill Her Neighbor's Baby Page 3
