“Look what I found,” he says conspiratorially, reaching behind his back.
I have to push my glasses up to the top of my head in order to make it out. A pale blue packet of Belomor cigarettes, dented, with the letters on the label running together.
“Where did you get that?”
“Found it behind the couch.”
“Looks empty.”
“There are three left.”
He holds the packet out to me. I pull out a bent stalk. He pulls out another and clamps it between his teeth. Then he gives me a light. The smoke burns in my throat.
“You’re no freeloader,” I say. “You are a generous man, you share your last cigarette with me.”
“I’m already regretting it.” He sucks on his greedily, the same way he just spooned up the soup. “I’m no gentleman.”
My cigarette goes out with a fizzle. Either I did something wrong or it is old and damp. Petrow pulls it out of my mouth and lays it carefully on the bench next to him.
“Now I have a bellyache,” he says. “My stomach is full of dead old rooster. That soup will be the death of me.”
I pluck a large leaf from the fat thistle that is trying to pry Petrow’s house out of the ground with its roots and wipe the bowl with the leaf. I can’t remember the last time I smoked.
My sight has deteriorated but I still hear perfectly. Which certainly also has something to do with the fact that there’s little noise in the village. The whir of the electrical transformer hums in my ears as steadily as the buzz of bumblebees or the song of the cicadas. Even here the summer is a rather loud time. In winter it’s stiller than still. When there’s a blanket of snow on everything, even your dreams are muted, and only the bullfinches hopping through the undergrowth provide any color in the white landscape.
I don’t worry about what could happen if one day we no longer have electricity. I have my kerosene cartridges, and there are candles and matches in every house. We are tolerated, but none of us believes that the government would come to our aid if we used up all the resources. That’s why we think in terms of self-sufficiency. Petrow has taken to using the neighboring house to heat his own during the winter. There’s enough wood.
The biologist told me that not only do the spiders weave different webs here, the cicadas also make a different sound. I could have told him that, anyone with ears can hear it. The biologist doesn’t know why, though. He recorded their songs with his machines and listened to them with a notepad and a stopwatch. He took more than a dozen cicadas to his university in a see-through box with holes in it. He promised to let me know if he figured it out. I’ve never heard from him.
We are not easily reached in Tschernowo. Actually completely unreachable, particularly if one doesn’t wish to be reached. We have postboxes in Malyschi. Whenever someone goes there, he or she brings a bundle of mail for the others. Or not.
I never ask anyone to bring me anything because I always have mail in my box and it’s heavy. Irina sends me packages. Alexej does not. I’m not sure which one of them I’m more grateful to.
If I were to stack up all the packages that Irina has sent me from Germany, the pile would be several stories high. But I fold up the yellow cardboard containers neatly and carry them to the shed. Everything that Irina puts in the packages seems very carefully thought out. Smoked sausages and preserves, vitamin pills and aspirin, matches, thick socks, underwear, hand soap. A new pair of glasses, prescription sunglasses, toothbrushes, pens, glue. A thermometer, a device to measure blood pressure (which I gave to Marja), and batteries of all kinds. I have a collection of brand-new scissors, pocketknives, and little digital alarm clocks.
I look forward to the German gelling sugar, which isn’t available here, because it means I don’t have to simmer my jams for hours. Same goes for the baking powder and the spices with Latin letters on them, the little baggies of bean and tomato seeds (though I like to cultivate my own). I give away the large boxes of adhesive bandages and the rolls of gauze bandaging.
I used to often write to Irina that I don’t lack for anything. Or almost anything. She could send me seeds from her region so I could get to know something new. But she doesn’t need to feed me from Germany. Then I realized that she needs the packages more than I do. Ever since, I just say thank you and every once in a while mention things I might want. Like for example gummi bears and a new potato peeler.
What I await anxiously are the letters. A letter is always a party. I don’t even need to buy a newspaper, but I buy one anyway when I go to Malyschi, just to see a bit of what’s going on in the world. I read the newest letter every night before I go to bed, until the next one arrives.
Petrow says that these days nobody writes letters anymore and that messages are sent from computer to computer and telephone to telephone. And some even from computer to telephone. In Tschernowo there are no telephones, that is, the devices themselves are here but there aren’t any functioning lines. A few people have little handheld phones but they only have reception when you get closer to the city. Petrow has one, he showed it to me. He plays stacking games on it like a little kid.
When he was new in town he trudged around town holding his phone up. “No reception, no reception,” he yammered and suggested we collect signatures to petition for a transmitter tower. Nothing came of it.
The Gavrilows said that anyone who wanted to make phone calls didn’t belong in Tschernowo. Marja said the things gave off radiation. Old Sidorow, who is at least a hundred years old because he was already old when I was still young, Sidorow said his landline functioned perfectly and that Petrow could use it anytime he wanted, the way it should be among neighbors.
He showed us his old phone, it consisted of a plastic housing that must have been orange at some point, with a handset and rotary dial. It was sitting on Sidorow’s table between some gigantic yellow squashes he had just harvested.
Petrow picked up the handset and held it to his ear. Then he passed it around.
“Kaput,” said Marja, handing the phone on to me. I hung up.
“The line is dead, Opa,” said Petrow. “All the lines here are dead, do you understand? All of them.”
Sidorow insisted that he regularly—not every week, but almost—spoke to his girlfriend in the city.
“Natascha,” Sidorow clarified, seeing my skeptical look, then he pointed to Marja. “A little younger than her.”
Later Petrow tried to convince me that old Sidorow wasn’t all there. I just shrugged my shoulders. If there was one person who shouldn’t have been casting stones, it was Petrow.
I sit on the bench in front of my house as Sidorow shuffles by, propped up with a cane. He doesn’t look too well, either. After a few steps he turns around and walks wearily back. He straightens himself up in front of me, everything on him is trembling. If he had more teeth they would be chattering.
Then he asks me why I don’t invite him in.
So I invite him in. Except for the spiderwebs, my sitting room is clean and tidy, and guests can stop in anytime. I’m prepared. Although I hadn’t expected Sidorow. He lowers himself onto a chair, places his cane between his knees and his hands on the tabletop. I set the teakettle to boil.
He’s wearing an old gray suit that is worn but clean. His legs are bony and his beard is scraggly and wiry.
“Dunja,” he says. “I’m serious.”
“What are you serious about?” I ask.
“I’m about to tell you.”
I give him time. The kettle whistles, I put broken peppermint sprigs into two teacups and pour hot water over them. I let my cup sit so it will cool off a little. Sidorow sips his tea immediately and asks for sugar.
I get a packet out of the cabinet. It’s old and the cubes of sugar are crumbly. I don’t put any in my tea because pure sugar makes one anxious and greedy.
Sidorow drops two cubes into his cup and tries to
stir it. The sprigs of mint get in his way.
“I want to tell you something,” he warns me.
“I’m all ears.”
“You are a woman.”
“True.”
“And I am a man.”
“If you say so.”
“Let’s get married, Dunja.”
I choke on the mint tea and cough until my eyes start to water. Sidorow watches my coughing fit with sympathy. As I pull out my handkerchief to wipe my face, he seems to attribute the tears to my emotions.
He clears his throat. “Don’t get the wrong idea. I like you.”
“I like you, too,” I answer automatically. “But––”
“So it’s settled,” he says, standing up and getting ready to leave.
I’m speechless for a moment. Then I collect myself and catch him at the door. “Where are you off to so quickly?”
“To get my things.”
“But I didn’t say yes.”
He turns and looks at me, his eyes pale blue like the summer sky above the village. “What did you say then?”
I guide him back to the chair and put the teacup in his hand.
“I don’t want to get married, Sidorow. Not to anyone. Never again.” On the back of my hand, there where the thumb meets the hand, is a small faded tattoo that I did myself with a needle and ink when I was fifteen. And now, of all moments, it starts to itch. These days it looks more like a flyspeck than a letter of the alphabet.
“Why not?” A childlike wonder shines in his eyes.
“I didn’t come here to get married.”
He sniffs huffily. Then he stands up again with an effort. “Think it over. I could repair your fence.”
“Why now?”
“Because we’re not getting any younger.”
“I thought you had a girlfriend in the city?”
He sniffs again and waves his hand dismissively. His departure cannot be hindered any longer. I take him to the door and watch as he walks down the street and the cane raises little clouds of dust. A puff of wind makes the back of his shirt billow.
I’ve known him my whole life. Other than me, Sidorow is the only one who lived in Tschernowo before the reactor. When I was still a little girl he was a grown man with a family, and a head taller than I was. I lost track of him after the reactor. When I moved back to Tschernowo he apparently read about me in the newspaper. In any event he was the next to come, and I never asked him what had become of his boisterous wife and their two sons.
I can pretty well imagine what put thoughts of marriage in his head. He is a man and when his things become caked with dirt he washes them with household soap in a wash pan only to hang them to dry in the garden without rinsing them. For food he wets a bowl of oats twice a day with watered-down milk if he has it and with springwater when the milk is gone. On holidays he adds frosted corn flakes or colorful fruity loops from a big box with a foreign logo on it. His vegetables spoil because he has a green thumb but can’t cook.
Me on the other hand, I cook fresh every day and my garden thrives.
I haven’t been to Malyschi in more than a month. If it was up to me I wouldn’t be in any rush to go back. But my provisions are depleted, the butter and oil, the semolina and the alphabet noodles. The evening before, I get my rolling basket out of the shed and clean off the spiderwebs. The spiders work quickly, we should follow their example. It makes me think of the biologist and the fact that he had collected the webs so cautiously, with tweezers, and deposited them in a canister.
I can’t see anything special about the webs. They’re silvery and sticky.
I ask Marja if she needs anything from the city, I ask Petrow, and think about asking Sidorow, too, but then I leave it be. I don’t ask the Gavrilows. Lenotschka doesn’t answer when I knock. Marja asks for magazines, knitting wool, and a bunch of pills, including some for constipation. I’m not going to bring knitting wool. There are piles of holey wool sweaters in her wardrobe that she can unravel. My basket will be full enough as it is.
Petrow asks me for good news.
“Don’t joke around,” I say. “I can bring you honey.”
“I don’t want any honey,” he says. “I don’t eat honey because it’s made of bee vomit. Bring me good news.”
That’s how he always is.
In the morning I get up before five. The ghost of Marja’s rooster is sitting on the fence looking at me reproachfully, but at least he’s quiet. I wave to him and start to get ready for the trip to the city. Since I got the hiking sandals I no longer have to put lotion on my feet before a long march, that’s how comfortable the shoes are. I put on a fresh blouse and an old skirt that feels a bit loose, apparently I’ve lost weight. I get money out from under the dirty laundry pile in the cabinet and put it in my wallet, and the wallet I stick in my brassiere.
I don’t need to write a shopping list, I have it all in my head. I slice a fresh cucumber and put the slices in a plastic container that Irina sent me last year filled with paper clips. I have no idea what I would do with paper clips, but the container is useful. I don’t salt the cucumber because I don’t want it to lose too much water in transit. There are still a few pieces of the homemade bread I left in the sun to dry into zwieback, and I take those, too. The food you get in the city doesn’t agree with me.
It’s a long trek, and I know that by evening the fresh socks in my hiking sandals will be dusty. A year ago it still only took me an hour and a half to make it to the bus stop, but now it takes over two. A few years ago I still used to ride my bicycle but now I feel too unsteady. The Gavrilows always go by bicycle but they never ask if they can bring anything. It’s probably to do with the fact that they are the only couple and can’t imagine what it is like alone.
I can’t help thinking of Jegor and our wedding. It was a huge wedding, the whole village celebrated. I had a small wedding ring and he had none at all because we wanted to save for the child that was growing in my belly. At thirty-one I was an old bride. Originally I hadn’t planned to say yes to Jegor. Three long years we used to meet up before the child nestled inside me and surprised us both. I had thought myself barren. And even though I knew that older first-time mothers experienced more problems and had sick children, the pregnancy was like a miracle to me.
After we’d been to the civil registry office and everyone had eaten and drunk, I took off my shoes in the yard and danced. All the men sang, whistled, and howled. Jegor pulled me out of the middle of them, pushed me into a corner, and said that from now on I had to keep my shoes on. He gestured like he was going to step on my bare toes with his heavy boots. I knew I had made a mistake.
I don’t hold it against Jegor; most men were like that back then. The mistake wasn’t picking the wrong one. The mistake was marrying at all. I could have raised Irina and Alexej myself, and nobody would have been able to stipulate what I did with my feet.
The bus stop is called “Former Golden Rabbit Factory” and it’s the last stop on the 147 line to Malyschi. The old factory is a few hundred yards from the stop. It’s an abandoned brick building with looming towers. The windows are all broken. Inside you can see rusty machines in an eternal state of sleep.
I can still remember how, earlier, so many people from Tschernowo and neighboring villages used to ride to the factory by bus or bicycle to work on the conveyor belt. The pralines were very good, dark, melting chocolate shells, a filling with little pieces of nuts, packed in gossamer paper and then wrapped in foil and another sheet of paper that had a picture of a little rabbit and her baby rabbits on it. For the New Year’s holidays, the foremen received a special collection in a giant gift box. Just thinking about the fillings made my mouth water back then: jelly, cognac, truffle cream.
For special occasions I bought a handful of pralines for Irina and Alexej, and once a patient who supervised the night shift at the factory gave me one of the
New Year’s gift boxes. He had probably received two. It was great fortune.
We opened the box, as was intended, when the clock struck midnight. We divided each praline into three—Jegor didn’t eat any. The box lasted for three-quarters of a year. We kept the packaging, too: out of the foil we made ornaments for the New Year’s tree the following year, and the rabbit paper we flattened between the pages of books and hoarded like treasure. The children traded pieces of the rabbit paper for other praline wrappers with bears and foxes and red-cheeked, pigtailed girls on them.
When my children were little there were none of the overpoweringly scented stickers that come in packs of Turkish chewing gum that I smelled for the first time in the nineties, before I moved back to Tschernowo. In Tschernowo there was no Turkish gum, no counterfeit Chanel perfume or fake cognac, no girls with lurid make-up on their faces, no faded jeans, and no shrill music. In Tschernowo there was just silence and me. A few months later Sidorow arrived, and then the lights came on in one house after another.
The memory makes my mouth fill with sticky saliva. I had once been a sweet tooth, but these days the thought of chocolate just makes me feel sick. I’d rather eat currants from my garden than cream-filled pralines. It’s a function of age and my pancreas. I pull a small bottle with a twist cap out of my bag and drink a sip of springwater.
I sit on the bench, the factory at my back, and look out at the dry, summery yellow landscape. The fields haven’t been tilled for decades but they have retained their structure. Here and there scattered ears of grain grow skyward, grain that reseeds itself year after year. If you walked on you could find corn, sugar beets, and potatoes. They’ve been grown over by thick, green weeds, by large-leafed plants with light purple stems the name of which I don’t know because it wasn’t around during my youth.
The bus station shelter is painted green and clean. Nobody would come this far to scrawl on it. The area is considered scary. The factory is in what many call the death zone. Tschernowo is deeper inside the zone. This bus station marks the border. A soldier with a machine gun used to stand here, bored to death. These days the border is no longer guarded. In the Ukraine, on the other hand, they make a big drama over their zone, with barbed wire and guard posts. Petrow told me that. I understand less and less of what happens beyond the border.
Baba Dunja's Last Love Page 3
