Baba Dunja's Last Love (15 page)

“Surely you know who it was, Dunja!” Marja is less and less able to control herself, she is working herself into a hysterical fit. “Please do something so I can go home. I want to go back to Tschernowo. Nobody can bother me there. That's why I moved there, because I thought I'd have peace and quiet, but they found me anyway and locked me up.”

My heart begins to palpitate. I press my lips together. She doesn't know that she calls her Alexander's name during the night sometimes.

“Do something! You're the boss!” she sniffles.

“I was never the boss.”

But she isn't listening to me. She is trembling and I am trembling with her. “I can't take it anymore, I'm losing my mind in here.”

“Calm down,” I say. “You have to keep it together, my girl. I'll make sure that you get home. I promise you.”

She cries really loudly now, at full volume, until a boot thrown by Tamara silences her.

 

 

“Arkadij Sergejewitsch,” I say, “how can you find out what language something is?”

“I'm sorry?” he says.

We always meet in the same room. It's square and so small that only a table and two chairs fit in it. The door stays open and now and again a guard sticks a nose in to bark at us or secretly take a photo. Sometimes Arkadij gets up then and goes out and yells. It surprised me that he could be so loud.

He's slight of build, wears a white shirt and a suit, the briefcase sits between us on the table, next to it a portable phone with a big screen that constantly lights up. The dark rings beneath Arkadijs's eyes reach all the way down to his sunken cheeks. He has a wedding ring on his ring finger. Instead of being with his wife, he is squatting here with me, asking me questions that are always the same, leaving me ever less inclined to put in the effort to answer them.

He opens his briefcase and pulls out a bar of chocolate.

The wrapper is printed with golden letters in a foreign script. It's the same alphabet that Laura's letter is written in.

“This is for you,” he says.

“Thank you, but it's really not necessary.”

“I've been racking my brain trying to think of a way I could make you happy.”

“I have everything and am content. Thank you for the kiwi the other day, I hadn't had one in a long time.”

“Baba Dunja! I'm at my wit's end.”

“What would happen if someone were to confess?” I ask. “Would all the rest be allowed to go home?”

“It would depend.”

“On what?”

“On who confessed.”

This is the way our talks always go. It's exhausting.

“I'm going back to my cell, Arkadij.”

“Wait, please!”

The constant standing up and sitting back down gets to my knees.

“It's impossible to answer your question about finding out what language something is in. There are too many languages on earth,” he says.

“And what if it is written on paper?”

He leans back and closes his eyes. For a few seconds he wobbles in his chair like a little boy who is bored in class.

“If the word
the
appears frequently, then it is English. If there is a lot of
der
,
die
, or
das
then it's German. And if you see
un
or
une
then it's French. And with
il
it could be Italian. Or it could also still be French.”

I look at him respectfully. “You are so young and already so knowledgeable,” I say. “Go home to your wife and get a good night's rest.”

 

 

Petrow and the other men I see for the first time again on the first day of the court proceedings. We are taken one by one into the holding pen inside the courtroom and sit on a bench inside it. Sidorow's knees are stiff, he remains standing and braces himself on Petrow's shoulder. You didn't have to be a former nurse's assistant to see it: he wasn't going to last long. Though actually I expected everyone to be in worse shape than they are.

I see my Arkadij Sergejewitsch with red spots on his chalk-white face. He is sitting opposite the holding pen. The courtroom is bursting with people, though I expected the room to be bigger. Photographers and camera teams are shuffled past us at short intervals. They call to us but we just stare blankly into their lenses.

We villagers of Tschernowo don't greet each other, we don't even look at each other. It could be construed as impoliteness. But in reality we are all bound to each other and have no need of formalities.

The judge is a sturdy woman with bleached blonde hair. She is wearing a black robe and there's a white bib dangling from the collar. While she speaks I scan the faces in the room. Men and women in suits, in shirts, in jean jackets.

I turn toward Petrow. I have to look at him. I need to ask him my most important question. He stares back at me provocatively. I briefly shake my head. This is the wrong time to act like a defiant child.

I'm going to be dead soon anyway, I read in his eyes. Do you really want me to spend my final days in prison?

I stand up, step up to the lattice of metal bars and knock on it.

The judge pauses in the middle of her oration.

“One needn't drag this out unnecessarily,” I say. My rusty old voice clangs through the courtroom.

Arkadij stands up frantically. I motion to him with my hand that he should sit back down.

The judge looks down at me. She has the face of a bank teller from the 1980s. She wears fat rings on her fingers. That comforts me. This woman is from a world I still understand. Perhaps she was one of the first babies I helped deliver. Perhaps I once splinted her leg. Perhaps I pronounced the death of her grandmother. There were so many who passed through during all those years.

“Baba Dunja?” she asks, and everyone laughs. She clears her throat and calls for order. “Pardon me . . . Evdokija Anatoljewna. Are you unwell?”

Evdokija Anatoljewna is the name in my passport. A murmur goes through the room.

“I'm doing fine,” I say. “But I need to say something. All of us here in this holding pen are either old or infirm or both. Nobody should be treated this way, it is dishonorable. Please, your majesty . . . unfortunately I don't know your name or your father's name. I don't know the customs here, so I beg your pardon if I do something amiss.”

The judge looks at Arkadij. Arkadij looks at me. The uniformed personnel whisper to each other. What follows is a series of gestures and looks. Suddenly I feel weak and try to steady myself on the bars of the pen.

Everyone is looking at me and nobody knows what really happened on that day in Tschernowo. Aside from the dead man, a total of just two people in the world know. I am one of them.

“None of you know what really happened,” I say. “Please excuse me for disturbing this proceeding. But in this pen is a one-hundred-year-old man who cannot stand up much longer. I will tell you what this is all about. I'll be brief. We are the last inhabitants of Tschernowo. The dead man, whom this case concerns, wanted to move in as well. He brought his little daughter.”

If I thought it was quiet in the court before, then I was wrong. Now it is really quiet.

“Tschernowo is a beautiful place,” I say. “A good place for us. We don't chase anyone away. But I would, however, advise against it for someone young and healthy. It's not for everyone. Anyone who takes a little child there in order to exact revenge is an evil person. A child needs a mother and clean air.”

I fix my gaze on the judge's white bib. I have to concentrate. For a second the thought crosses my mind that she probably doesn't speak English either.

“And now I ask that you take note of the following statement. Arkadij, let me be, I am an old woman and sound of mind. Listen, your majesty. I, Baba Dunja of Tschernowo, killed the evil man with an axe and forced the others under threat of violence to help me dig a grave for him in the garden. It was impossible for them to resist me. I wish to hereby petition your grace to release the others and punish me as the sole perpetrator.”

 

 

My dear granddaughter Laura,

I hope you and your mother and, naturally, your father, whom I hold in high esteem, are doing well.

I am using my fifteen-minute break from work to write you, as long as there is still light. You must have seen on television that your grandmother is now a felon. I was sentenced to three years' imprisonment for voluntary manslaughter.

I'm a little bit ashamed to write you, because you are probably ashamed of me. But you needn't be. First, because my conscience is clear. I only did what needed to be done. Second, because you would be a good girl even if you did have a crazy person for a grandmother.

I keep your photo with me, the one where you are wearing a red T-shirt. I don't have many things here, just a few things for daily use. I often think about my beautiful house in Tschernowo. It looks now as if I won't die there after all, as I wanted. I haven't gotten used to this thought yet. Believe me, Laura, I have experienced a lot in my life. But my most peaceful years I spent there.

Now I am housed in a camp. But life is fine here. I get along with the other girls. We are awoken at six, and after washing up and eating breakfast (barley mush), we go to the sewing machines in the workshops. We sew pillowcases. I am permitted to receive six packages per year but I made sure not to write that to your mother because I don't want her to start unnecessarily spending money on me again.

In addition, we are allowed four multiday visits and six short visits of up to three hours each. It's a shame that you are so far away and can't visit me. It's also too far for Marja. Arkadij signs up for short visits as if he has nothing else to do. We are separated by a glass partition and speak by way of a telephone handset. He can't say anything mean about anyone though, because if he does the guard who listens in on all conversations will interrupt us immediately. So he reads to me from the magazine
Gardening Today
. Once we had trouble because the warden mistook a manure schedule for a coded message.

I don't count the days any more than I did in Tschernowo or anywhere else.

 

I don't manage to finish this letter. My hand refuses to cooperate any longer. I try to stretch my fingers but they remain cramped. I look distrustfully on my treasonous appendages, which have never before left me in the lurch, and extricate the pen with the help of the other hand. Then I want to stand up. I realize just in time that I'm not able to, and I remain seated. A fall with a possible broken hip as a consequence is not something I need.

I sit there for what must be half an hour. Maybe more and maybe less. Then I try to call for help, but I'm not able. Slowly my eyes start to close. I know exactly what is happening to me, but the word for it escapes me. My back hurts from sitting too long. When will they come looking for me, I should have been back at work ages ago. Someone turns me onto my back—I hadn't even noticed that I'd fallen over.