All of us in Tschernowo know the bus won’t keep running for much longer. What we’ll do then, we don’t know. Maybe by then there will be someone who can bring us the things from Malyschi that we can’t grow ourselves. Petrow already tried to hire somebody, but nobody would do it. We scare people. They seem to believe that the death zone stops at the borders people draw on maps.
It’s a joy every time the bus turns up.
I had to wait for less than an hour and could enjoy the fresh air in peace and quiet and lose myself in my thoughts. The few kilometers from the village to the bus stop are no longer just a stroll at my age. When I return, my basket will be full and the walk will feel even longer.
The driver has been driving this route for five years. His name is Boris and a year and a half ago his first grandson was born. I cautiously ask how the baby is doing. It’s a delicate subject and I don’t want to cause anyone pain. Boris answers hoarsely that the boy has a good appetite and is growing well.
I exhale.
He takes the exact change from my hand. The transit authority hasn’t raised the fare for thirty years. You couldn’t even get a glass of water for this amount in Malyschi anymore. It’s fine by me, my pension hasn’t gone up at all either.
I sit in the front so I can chat with Boris. He has a big belly and slumped shoulders, and there’s something in his face that makes me nervous. When I was a nurse’s assistant I was often called to men like him who were lying next to a conveyor belt or in a garage with cardiac arrest.
We have more than an hour’s ride together. The road is bumpy, gravel shoots out from under the tires as they labor along the unpaved surface. The little bus shakes and the soccer team pendant hanging from Boris’s mirror rocks back and forth.
I look out the window, hawks circle above the fields, between the trees I see a deer and a rabbit. The animals seem to act as if they discovered the area for themselves. We pass two abandoned villages on the way to the city, a cat sitting on the main street of one, licking its paw.
Boris tells me what he’s seen on television. Lots of politics in the Ukraine, in Russia, and in America. I don’t pay too close attention. Politics are important, of course, but at the end of the day, if you want to eat mashed potatoes it’s up to you to put manure on the potato plants.
The important thing is that there’s no war. But our president will see to that soon enough. Sometimes I feel queasy about the fact that Irina now has a German passport.
The jerking of the bus makes my old bones rattle, and I have the impression that one can hear them clanking against each other. I doze off now and then. When I open my eyes we are in the middle of the city. Boris steers his way through the rust buckets at the bus station to a parking spot at the rear.
The noise in Malyschi seems to get more deafening all the time. Despite the fact that there are fewer and fewer people on the streets, even here at the bus station there are at most a half dozen bus drivers and twenty passengers waiting in various lines. But they are all making a racket. I’m not used to it anymore.
My objectives are set. First I’ll go to the bank where Irina opened an account for me into which my pension gets paid. Even though I can’t buy anything at home, I withdraw it all because life has taught us not to trust the banks.
There are machines in the foyer of the bank. A girl with a scarf asks if I need help. I don’t need help, I just need my money, and not from a machine but from a person at a counter. So I go into the main room. While I’m waiting, an icy wind blows up my calf and I’m happy about my wool stockings. When finally it’s my turn, I mention the chilliness. The girl at the counter, who smells of perfume and chewing gum, says proudly that they have an air conditioner now. She looks as if she has never in her life had a potato bug on her hand. I see the goose bumps in her décolleté and warn her that she will catch a cold. She says she’s had a cold for ages and shoves me the money from my pension, which I count and then divide into two halves and put into the cups of my bra.
Every time I pick up my pension I have an intense desire to buy something for Irina, Alexej, and Laura. When Laura was first born I sent her things, teething rings, rattles, leggings, until I realized that nobody needs that stuff. There are nicer things in Germany anyway. Maybe the tomatoes are bigger here, but the rompers are better there.
That’s why I stopped buying useless things and instead put all my money in my old tea caddy. When Laura is eighteen, and that will be very soon, I will give it all to Irina, except for a reserve fund for my funeral. I will ask Irina to change the money into marks or dollars and put it into Laura’s piggy bank. Laura is the youngest member of our family and young people need money.
Irina always corrects me, tells me that the mark no longer exists, but I can never remember what they have instead.
Next I go to the post office and on the way I pass the market. I indulge myself with a break, go into the market hall, which smells of fish and rotten vegetables, and lean against a stand selling crullers. The scents drifting by bother my nose. I eat a piece of cucumber from my garden.
The vendor looks down at me from the stand and I realize that it bothers him when I stand in front of his stand and eat something I’ve brought with me. It’s impolite of me. I reach for my bag and apologize to him. He just throws his hand up and continues to stare at me. Then he asks me if I am Baba Dunja from the death zone.
I could ask him where it is he thinks he is right here. But I don’t. If he feels safe here behind his greasy rings then let him indulge himself. Not to mention that I’m flabbergasted he knows me. I can’t get used to it.
He hands me a baked good in oily paper. “On the house,” he says. I don’t want to offend him and take it even though I know that so much as a bite would ruin my pancreas.
“Do we know one another?” I ask and act as if I’m going to take a bite. When I was a nurse’s assistant lots of people knew me, even in the neighboring villages. They always came to me when something was wrong. But in Malyschi they had their own doctors and nurses even back then. Maybe this man is from one of the villages. I have a good memory, but it contains only the faces of the children.
I ask him who he is.
He says I wouldn’t know him but that everyone here knows me because they all talk about me. And the other returnees.
He turns and rummages in a box for a newspaper in order to show me something, but I tell him it’s not necessary. I don’t need to know what somebody said about me or, worse, wrote about me. In the past few years reporters have come again and again and taken photos of our gardens and asked us questions.
“I have to get going,” I say and leave the market hall. The cruller I wrap more tightly in the paper and then in a napkin from my basket. Then I stow it in the basket. Marja will be pleased.
There’s a big sign at the post office saying it’s closed for lunch. I look at the clock. It’s a bad sign if they are already on lunch break shortly before eleven, they’re going to be a while. I go to the park, sit on a bench, and catch my breath. Walking on asphalt is poison for your joints, and the air is also polluted.
The park might as well be a cemetery, there’s just one young couple hugging on the lawn. I sit with my back to them so as not to make them feel bashful, and fan air on myself with a magazine I’ve just bought for Marja at a kiosk. It’s one of those foreign magazines that now has a Russian edition. The pages glisten, there are lots of pictures of thin women in sumptuous clothing. At the back are recipes, but they’re mind-boggling to me. I don’t know what tahini is and I’ve never even heard of risotto. I only know cream of rice with apples, maybe risotto is a foreign word for that.
Once I’ve rested sufficiently, I’m on my way again. I pass the time by going shopping. I buy cream that won’t spoil in the heat, cheese, a ballpoint pen, and notepaper with roses on it. I want to write to Laura. I buy salt and five lemons. I see plastic containers with colorless mushrooms whic
h are marked “imported champignons,” the word “imported” is in block letters and underlined.
I buy three bananas and eat one straightaway. Bananas are baubles for the senses, they’re really too sweet but they are nice to chew on. I tuck the peel into my basket until I come across a garbage bin.
At the pharmacy I look at the list of medicines Marja has given me and grab this one or that one from the shelves. The ones I regard as nonsense I don’t buy. Then my gaze falls on a pallet of pain relievers and I buy a huge container just to be safe.
My basket is filling up. I haven’t gotten much for myself. That’s good because it means more money is left over for Laura. I go back to the post office and see that the sign is gone.
Marja’s postbox is empty. I won’t tell her, I’ll say they were being strict again today and wouldn’t let me pick up her mail without authorization. There are three packages and five letters in my box. I stow everything well so nothing will get broken. It’s late, the air smells smoky, and I need to get back to the bus station.
It’s still light when I arrive in the village. The summer nights are long and merciless, there’s a buzzing restlessness in the air, even here. Nobody is visible on the main street. The door to Sidorow’s place is open. There is motion behind the windows at Marja’s. She hasn’t been sleeping well of late. That’s why she gulps down colorful pills that make her wake up late and then leave her staring into space with glassy eyes.
Petrow is lying in his hammock with a book. The Gavrilows are sitting in front of their house playing chess.
I need to sit down. The city sucks the strength right out of you. After I’ve taken my shopping inside, I sit on the bench out front.
I take off my hiking sandals, which suddenly feel too small, and can hardly suppress a groan.
I strip off the wool stockings, my feet appear. If one were to add up all the time these feet spent dancing it would surely be more than a year. If I were to count the distance in dance steps it would be many kilometers. Now I have calluses and corns, and the nails are yellow and warped.
I place my feet in a bucket of ice-cold springwater. Beneath the surface of the water they look blurry. The cold creeps up my legs enlivening the old veins and withered muscles.
I take my feet out and put them on a terrycloth towel. I’d love to dry the toes individually but I can’t reach them.
I go into the house barefoot, the wood floor is warm and mop-clean. I turn on the light in the kitchen and set the teakettle to boil. I eat the little piece of cheese that I bought in Malyschi with a cracker and a sprig of red currants. I can’t figure out how I survived the years I spent in the city after the reactor without breaking down. Maybe it was the work that gave me strength. I knew that every pair of hands was needed in the public hospital and didn’t allow myself to be forced into retirement. I was nearly seventy when I turned my back not only on the hospital but on the city, forever.
Before I go to bed, I open one of the letters. Opening mail from Irina isn’t something I could ever do quickly or casually. I need to sit, I need to have time, my head needs to be clear. I don’t want to be disturbed by a knock at the door. Now is actually an ideal time, and I grab the letter that was sent most recently. Something seems different. The envelope is white, and below the foreign postmark are my name and the address of the postbox, but not written with the surgeon’s hand of Irina, which renders them uncomplicated like a man’s writing. These letters are round and sweet.
I cut open the envelope with a knife. I already figured there wouldn’t be any photos of Laura inside because the envelope is thin and feels soft. A sheet of paper falls out.
I shift closer to the lamp and push my glasses up on my head. My heart pounds. Normally I have a calm, level-headed heart. But whenever I begin to read a letter from Germany it races right up to the moment when it becomes clear that everyone is alive and healthy and that, at least in this particular letter, there’s no bad news.
This time I have to make many attempts and still I don’t understand a thing, and my heart continues to beat loudly. The letter is signed by Laura. But it’s not in Russian. Without my previous job experience I wouldn’t have been able to decipher the style of lettering. Some doctors write their diagnoses in Latin letters instead of Cyrillic.
I lie awake trying to calm my heart until dawn starts to break. The uneasiness just won’t let up. I hear my own breathing, labored and wheezing.
I don’t fear death. But in moments like these, when I have no peace of mind, I remember what it is like to be afraid. Not about the children, but about myself. It’s stupid to cling to a body that has already been through it all. But these moments demonstrate to me that I’m not as ready as I might think. There are still things that need to be arranged. Words that need to be written. When I’m no longer around I don’t want it to be any more burdensome than it has to be for Irina and Alexej.
In my head I begin to organize all that I absolutely need to take care of so I feel better prepared. It settles me down a bit. In fact, I give up on my plan to go ask Marja for some valerian oil. If Konstantin were still around he would be crowing now. But it’s only his ghost sitting on the fence squinting at me reproachfully.
I put on a cardigan, shove Laura’s letter into the sleeve, and from my rolling shopping basket take a packet of coffee from Irina’s parcel and the bag of medicines for Marja. The letters from Irina I picked up the day before are all sitting open on the table. Contrary to my usual habit, I rashly read them all at dawn, one after the next. The usual—the weather, work, the European Union. No explanation, no hint at what Laura could have written to me.
I go past Konstantin carrying all the stuff. It’s eight in the morning by now. Marja is in bed sitting awake but ill-humored, a mountain of pillows behind her and a down comforter across her knees. I look around for the goat. Maybe it’s grazing out behind the house.
“Are you sick?” I unpack the things I’ve brought.
“As if you’re healthy?” But Marja can’t keep up her grumbling for long once she sees the new packet with foreign words on it. I’m just happy we have such bad reception here. If she could watch proper television she’d immediately need everything the pharmaceutical ads tout.
I wipe off a bronze coffeepot I find under some of Marja’s pots and pans. Then I count out the spoonfuls of coffee, pour in water from the canister, and stir thoroughly. I light the fire and let it heat up, holding the pot over the flames. Foam wells up, I skim it off and divide it into two cups. First comes the foam and then the strong, black coffee. My hand trembles as I pour it. It looks beautiful in the cup, the surface looks as if it is decorated with lace.
Marja sips her coffee and burns her mouth. She curses, the stuff is so bitter it could wake up the dead. It would be good enough for me if it just got her out of bed. She braided her blonde hair into two pigtails the evening before. During the night they’ve come apart, leaving the individual strands hanging. It occurs to me that Marja has hardly any gray hair.
“How was it in the city?” she asks.
“Same as always,” I say. Although that’s not true. Everything stands still here but the city changes constantly. Malyschi is dying. Other cities transform themselves in order to survive, but Malyschi can’t manage it.
Laura’s letter crackles in my sleeve. I had wanted to tell Marja about it, but I don’t have the heart to. I keep Laura stashed so deeply inside me that I can’t bring myself to talk about her. It would feel like exposing my innards.
“You’re so strange today.” Marja drops several sugar cubes into her coffee.
I get up from the chair, it’s time for me to go.
“Hey, hey,” she says, grabbing my skirt with her soft, white hand. “Stay a little while.”
“Do you know German, Marja?”
“What would make you think that?”
Of course she doesn’t. She probably wouldn’t even
recognize it if it were put in front of her.
“Could you tell the difference between German and English, Marja?”
“What on earth are you talking about?”
I sit down again. The feeling that I’m looking at the young woman from Marja’s photo is so strong that I dry my eyes with a handkerchief so I can see her better.
“Fine. I’ll stay a little longer.”
Marja drinks down her sweetened coffee and drops her feet to the floor. They are bare, the toenails painted pink. They gleam like raspberry candies.
“You know,” she says, “I’m so happy that you’re back. Every time you go to Malyschi I worry that you will never come back.”
There are days when the dead trip over one another on our main road. They talk all at once and don’t even notice what nonsense they are speaking. The babble of voices hovers over their heads. Then there are days when they are all gone. Where they go, I do not know. Maybe I’ll find out when I’m one of them.
I see Marina and Anja and Sergej and Wladi and Olya. The old liquidator in a striped shirt, his sleeves rolled up, with muscular forearms and polished shoes. He was a dandy at the outset. He died quickly.
The baby that was stillborn in my hands seven months after the reactor. I wrapped it up, unwashed, in a towel and handed it to the mother. She had given birth in her old farmhouse rather than in a birthing center. Se we had time and nobody disturbed us. The father turned away and left the room, the mother pulled open the corner of the towel and smiled. I knew what that smile meant. She would soon follow and thus didn’t feel any sense of loss.
Baba Dunja's Last Love Page 4
