Baba Dunja's Last Love (12 page)

“Congratulations,” I say, cautiously, because something in me refuses to believe this development.

“Thank you.” He tries to kiss my hand but I take it away from him and tell him he should save his gallantry for his fiancée.

He begins a long speech, loses his train of thought, stops, confused, and then starts again from the beginning. I listen intensely. At some point I realize that he is worried about fulfilling his marital duties.

“You should have thought about that,” I say mercilessly. He blinks. He could almost make you feel bad, but old men who seek younger women should consider in advance what they are getting themselves into.

“I wanted it to be you,” spills out of him, but I don't want to talk about it, it seems rude to Marja.

He leaves, his back more hunched than usual. I bet his rabbit heart is galloping wildly.

Next, surprisingly, comes Mrs. Gavrilow. She sits down on my chair and says she has heard something. Her way of beating around the bush gets me worked up.

“You heard right,” I say. “We will soon celebrate a wedding here in Tschernowo.”

“But isn't it somehow immoral?”

“The engaged parties are both of age.”

“The question of age is exactly what I wanted to get at.”

“The law doesn't bar anyone from marrying after they reach a certain age.”

“But where will they live?”

“Why are you asking me, Lydia Iljinitschna? I'm not the mother-in-law. The engaged couple has plenty of square meters of space at their disposal.”

Suddenly Mrs. Gavrilow roars with laughter, and the tension in her face dissipates.

“Ach, it's fine with me. At least she'll be out of the way.

I look at her. Marja's strange words about being raped by Gavrilow come back to me. Marja is not a woman who places any value in being handled delicately. And Mrs. Gavrilow is anything but stupid. Perhaps she can even speak German.

“God help him,” she says, with schadenfreude in her smile.

A little later Petrow comes by and, before he even enters the house, recites a love poem. And then another. By the third I've had enough.

“What do you want?”

“We're going to celebrate a wedding, and if things keep going like this we will soon hear the patter of tiny feet.”

“Then the sky really would fall.”

“Isn't it all wonderful, Baba Dunja?”

I answer with a look that makes him cringe. I'm not sure which of his moods bothers me more.

“Okay,” he says. “You don't think it's wonderful. You're jealous.”

“Not me,” I say. “But some here in Tschernowo will be able to sleep better as a result.”

Petrow has to sit down as his strength is waning. The skin of his face is waxy and clings to his skull. It looks as if it might rip if Petrow were to smile too broadly.

“You need to eat something,” I say. “Otherwise you'll lose your strength too quickly.”

“Apparently, there's someone in India who subsists on sunrays.”

Petrow stands up. He takes a few steps and then falls onto my bed. I'm actually not thrilled that my bed is now communal property that anyone who happens to stop by feels free to sit on without asking. But if I shoo him off it he'll fall flat on the floor. They've already removed quite a few of his organs; it's a wonder that he's still able to be such a bother.

“I'm sure I'll cry at the wedding,” he calls from my bed as I leave my house. “I get more sentimental every day, have you noticed?”

 

 

What I would never trade for running water and a telephone in Tschernowo is the matter of time. Here there is no time. There are no deadlines and no appointments. In essence, our daily routine is a sort of game. We are reenacting what people normally do. Nobody expects anything of us. We don't have to get up in the morning or go to bed at night. For all anyone cares, we could do it the other way around. We imitate daily life the same way children do with dolls, or when they're playing store.

At times we forget that there is another world where the clocks move faster and everyone is plagued by horrible fear of the earth that feeds us. This fear is deeply rooted in the other people, and interactions with us bring it to the surface.

Seventeen and a half years ago I dialed Irina's German phone number, which with the country code and area code was very long. She hadn't been reachable by phone for a few months prior to that. She hadn't written me anything either. I had a feeling that it meant something, but I didn't know exactly what. I still lived in Malyschi then, regularly bought five-minute phone cards, stood in line at the international phone booth, waited to be connected, and listened to the outgoing message in German on her answering machine. I always hung up immediately in the firm belief that Irina would pick up the phone at some stage. If something truly awful had happened I would have heard about it already. She would have made sure of that.

And one day she did in fact pick up the phone and said, “Mother, it's good that you called. I wanted to tell you something. You have a grandchild. She is eleven days old and healthy. Her name is Laura.”

And I asked: “Are you sure?”

“Of course I'm sure, I named her.”

“I don't mean the name.”

“You can never be sure. But I did count the fingers and toes.” She laughed.

A cry rang out in the background. It sounded like a kitten whose tail had gotten pinched.

“It's a great joy,” I said. “Go to your daughter. I'll call you another time.”

I didn't call for a while. I knew what it was like when you first had a baby, you don't have a lot of time to talk. I sent Irina a letter in which I remembered what she herself had been like as a baby, and I began to save money. Irina wrote back:
Forgive me, Mother, for not telling you about the pregnancy beforehand. I wanted to wait for the birth
.

She included a photo of a suckling baby with a giant pacifier in its mouth.

I knew exactly what she meant.

When Laura was three, Irina came for the first time to take sick children to Germany. She didn't have Laura with her.

I didn't ask her a single time when I could see my grandchild. I didn't ask why she never brought Laura with her to see her old homeland. I know the answer. I wouldn't want Irina to feel bad about it. She invited me several times to come to Germany, she suggested she could pick me up and take me back. It sounded so easy when she said it. But I don't have any experience with travel. In my entire life I never made it beyond Malyschi.

I regret not taking Irina up on her invitation. When Laura was younger I didn't have the heart to do it. I didn't want to impose on Irina's family. Now I'm too old. The walk to the bus station, the bus ride, and then another bus to the airport, the airplane, the drive to Irina's, I couldn't make it anymore.

And besides, I know that I give off radiation just like the ground and everything that comes out of it. Shortly after the reactor I, like many others, took part in studies—I went to the hospital in Malyschi, sat on a chair, told them my name and birthday while the meter next to me clattered and a nurse's assistant recorded the readings in a notebook. A biologist explained to me later that the stuff was stuck in my bones and gave off radiation around me so that I was myself like a little reactor.

The strawberries and huckleberries in our woods give off radiation, too, as do the porcinis and the birch bolete mushrooms that we gather in autumn, and the meat of the rabbits and deer that Gavrilow sometimes shoots. No outsiders will touch any of it, the most they will do is take samples for their research, but it seems like such a shame to us to put it to that purpose.

Sometimes I think that I owe my long life to the good air and the freshly tapped birch sap I drink early each year. I go into the woods with pickling jars and take the time to find birch trees that seem strong and willing to give me a bit of their sap. I find it barbaric to injure a tree again and again or to take too much sap at one time the way some people do in areas that enjoy a much better reputation than ours. Birch sap sells for a lot, and nobody cares about the scarred, desiccated trees. Me on the other hand, I carefully bore through the bark and insert a tiny capillary tube, hold a jar beneath it, and secure it. The elixir trickles out drop by drop, and when I go back and pick up the jars days later, I tend to the wounded spot with the same care I used to show my patients.

I taught Irina and Alexej that, too: don't destroy anything if it isn't necessary. It's difficult to repair things and something is always lost forever. The village children had a better feeling for it than the summer holiday children who came out from the city. More than once I saw Irina smack their hands when they impatiently plucked an unripe berry or heedlessly pulled a mushroom from the ground only to throw it back down.

I offer the valuable birch sap only to guests who are particularly important to me. I had become fond of the biologist and handed him a glass of the translucent liquid.

“Are you trying to kill me?” He shook his head, laughing.

I love this land, but sometimes I'm glad that my children aren't here anymore.

 

 

I knock on Marja's door, a gesture she purposefully neglects when she comes to my place because she mistakenly believes that I have nothing to hide.

She yells for me to come in. She is sitting on her bed and has her long, golden hair down, combing it like an overripe Rapunzel.

“So, bride,” I say, “are you getting excited?”

“I've never been a bride,” she moans.

“I thought you were married before?”

“Ach,” she says, waving her hand dismissively, “that doesn't count. That was a hundred years ago. I don't know what I should wear.”

“What are you two going to do with your houses?”

“What do you expect us to do? We'll both keep our own.”

“You're not going to sleep together?”

“A boil upon your tongue.”

“Why are you getting married then?” I sit down next to her. The mattress is very soft and sags precariously beneath our weight. Marja cries out and grabs me. We have never sat together on her bed, only on mine, which holds up better.

“Let go of me,” I sniff. “What has gotten into you, stupid woman, let go of me and help me stand up.”

“I'm trying,” she whines, but with every movement we are just pressed closer together by the buckling mattress.

When it cracks, I feel as if salvation is at hand. The bed collapses and Marja and I land among the covers on the floor. I crawl out of the mountain of covers, brace myself against the wall, and stand up.

Marja sits between the pillows and sobs.

“Now I don't have a bed anymore.”

“But you have a husband who will build you a new one.”

“Him? Haven't you seen him?”

“Demand it before you give him a yes.”

She runs her hand over her face. “You always have such good ideas. Without you we'd all be done for.”

“Don't you start now, too.”

Marja looks at me sadly. “I want you to marry us.”