At this point our maternal candidate revealed another aspect of herself that was found on the list of Characteristics of Excellent Mothers: she was able to make quick situational assessments and change course. So Nina removed her hands from her stomach bulge and shook off her confusion and terror. She shook them off as naturally as a lifelong smoker taps ash from the end of a burning cigarette (Nina didn’t smoke), like someone leaving for a party inconspicuously brushes the dandruff from the shoulder of a black blazer (Nina didn’t have dandruff). She strained her senses to understand what these two enraged women’s problem was. And, sure enough, they did have a problem, an extremely concrete problem, and the problem had a name: Rosa Imaculada.
Nina bent to one side, finally bringing into her field of vision the third woman, who had been behind the two adversaries. Arrival number three sat with legs bent, arms around her legs, face pressed to her knees. In a strained voice she muttered something like a lullaby and rocked back and forth like a lunatic. Nina called to the woman, but she didn’t lift her eyes and only continued stubbornly rocking.
So was this the problem? How to stop the poor woman rocking? How to make eye contact with her, how to get her to quiet down?
And then, apparently not for the first time, Shlomith snapped: ShutTHEfuckUPPPPPHHH!!! And Nina wasn’t sure, and Shlomith likely wasn’t either, at whom that shout was directed: the Russian arguing for a soft approach and arguing aggressively against violence, or the Brazilian, who had unilaterally abandoned all contact with the outside world and chosen wailing as her method of communication. Perhaps Shlomith was bellowing at them both, perhaps also at herself, perhaps at the entire situation, which was, in a word, agonizing.
In any case, Shlomith’s shout hung heavily over them like a wet sleeping bag with a school of dead herring rotting inside. Soon it would start to stink. Soon everything would be ruined for good. Soon Shlomith wouldn’t be able to restrain herself any more and would begin shaking Rosa Imaculada by the shoulders, force her onto her back, and press her foot to her neck, and then nothing would be the same again.
Nina decided to act. Maternally. She pushed aside her own questions—their time would come—and the panic simmering in her breast, which in Nina’s case was also the type that can be pushed aside: a convenient, compact panic, a pre-prepared microwave dinner. Nina stood up and walked with the force of will of the women of her family straight to Rosa. (Later, after the situation relaxed, Nina realized that walking hadn’t been quite so easy, that unfortunately one had to learn to do it again here, like many other things.) Without asking her leave, Nina’s fingers began deftly to braid Rosa Imaculada’s enormous head of hair, and Rosa calmed down like a child calms down when her mother’s loving fingers stroke her scalp.
Shlomith and Polina glanced at each other in embarrassment. Finally, as Nina was working on a seventh plait the thickness of her pinkie finger, Shlomith straightened up and found her missing leadership qualities: We’re so sorry you had to get involved in this dreadful situation. What’s your name, dear?
N°4. The ability to melt with tenderness. Nina absolutely looooved children! N°5. Health. There were no known hereditary diseases in Nina’s family line. N°6. Secure finances. Nina had understood to marry a man with money, old dignified money not new, tipsy money, not Lamborghini money, and not even Chevrolet Bel Air money, but more like Citroën Déesse money (and even that sympathetic jalopy spent most of its time in the garage). In his youth, Jean-Philippe had liked to hitchhike. Jean-Philippe gazed at the sun while others like him fixated on Rolexes and Raymond Weils. Wristwatches depressed Jean-Philippe. He did have one brand new luxury watch called a Brighella, part of the Italian luxury brand Bulgari’s Commedia dell’Arte series. His parents had given it to Jean-Philippe as a fortieth birthday present. It was partly a joke, but they were thirty-five percent completely serious. They had decided that their son had to have a watch, and they believed that this unique contraption with its €370,000 price tag was sufficiently extraordinary for their extraordinary first-born son.
“My son,” Jean-Philippe’s father intoned at the dinner table on the sixth of January as he handed the leather watch box to the birthday boy, “as you may remember from theatre history class, Brighella is a layabout who only works when his money runs out. Brighella loves to swindle people stupider than himself, amuse women, and play as much music as he can. Perhaps you recognize yourself in him?” Jean-Philippe’s father burst into laughter, which his mother dutifully joined in on, and then grew serious again. “Each detail of the watch face was painted by hand using a microscope. After each layer of different colored paint, the face was placed in an oven to enamel. This watch may have been in the oven as many as fifty times! Every single tiny piece was made by hand, without regard for the labor time. And that isn’t all. You can also bring the watch face to life by pulling this lever on the left. Look!” The father reached over the table and grabbed the watch from his son’s hand. “You can make Brighella and his friends dance the polka, heh heee!”
The hero at the center of the watch, Brighella, in a white suit sitting at the base of a set of stairs, jerkily raised his hand, which held the bow of a violin. A shrill jingling began. Brighella began shaking the violin back and forth, lifting it closer to his chin and then lowering it again. A woman in a white dress sitting higher up on the steps began to pluck a harp. In the right lower corner of the clock face sat a man, also in white clothing. He began nodding his head and counting time with his hand. Between the harpist and the timekeeper crouched a strange oddity resembling a turtle with a harlequin checked cape on its hunched back. The turtle man twitched his head in a nod, chin up, chin down. Those were all the clock face’s animated parts, three hands and two heads in jerky motion.
Masks covered the upper parts of the faces. Everyone wore foolish headgear, like collapsed chef’s hats or crumpled nightcaps. The only woman in the group bore a sort of Valkyrie helmet on her locks. Really, when you thought about it carefully, the characters looked more like Star Wars heroes than commedia dell’arte figures. They were situated on the imposing white steps of a Renaissance-style mansion, but the view out the window was an entirely different, almost futuristic scene, some kind of space station with rockets prepared to lift off. The numbers on the watch face didn’t follow normal watch face logic (so much for practicality and usability!), instead resembling more a countdown. Along the left edge of the watch face near Brighella’s lifted violin bow snaked the number series 60, 50, 40, 30, 20, 10, 00. Did this thing only measure one minute?
The watch was butt ugly. Even uglier was its six-figure price, which is worth mentioning again: €370,000. For that you could have bought 190 water tanks (at 8,000 liters a piece) for use in an emergency. Or 1,947 family tents (at 16 m2). Or 74,000 warm blankets. Or 411,111 measles vaccinations. “There are a total of twenty-four Commedia dell’Arte watches in existence, one of which now belongs to you, Jean-Philippe,” the birthday boy’s father said in conclusion. Then he winked. “Now you can’t miss the last train any more! In future you’ll always be able to make it home in time to your little Ninjuška!”
N°7. Optimal body structure. Nina had ideal birthing hips, which also appealed to most hetero men. In Jean-Philippe’s words: Plus que fantastique! N°8. Efficiency. Nina could operate on four to six hours of sleep even if she only enjoyed them in two-hour stretches. N°9. Imagination. Without this you can’t be a Good Mother. At most you can be middling but more likely bad. In the modern multiple choice world, an unimaginative mother is no better than a chain-smoking mother, a boozer mother, an absentee mother, a mother who uses the belt, a profligate mother, or, worst of all, a scene-scripting drama queen mother (which Jean-Philippe’s previous fiancé doubtless would have become), who believes her home is a stage and her children paying customers, expecting to receive applause and roses after every show. An unimaginative mother fails to offer her children the best opportunities. She operates on autopilot. She glides along in one rut, blinded by the speed, an
d never sticks her head out the window.
Nina had a singular imagination that always activated in difficult situations. It was a minor miracle, at least if you consider her first and third characteristics, Nos. 1 (“pragmatism”) and 3 (“apt situational assessments”), which are counterforces to imagination. Imagination springs from disorganization and failed situational assessments. Life doesn’t conform to the ideal and heaps obstacles in the wanderer’s way. Imagination is an adaptation. As the species improves, it will disappear. In three hundred thousand years, no one will remember Proust, Nerval, Pascal, Brecht, Luther, Puccini, Rosa Luxemburg, Wittgenstein, Louise Bourgeois, Paganini, or Sappho. They simply aren’t needed. In the future, all scientific and artistic struggling will only weaken the species.
Nina was an almost perfect woman. All of her sharp edges had been smoothed away. However, the world around her was not on the same level with her perfection. It was illogical and capricious, cruel, and sometimes even ugly. Nina’s mild temperament and maternally oriented, well-incubated Words of Sense simply weren’t enough in all situations.
Now and then, to everyone’s surprise, Nina’s hibernating imagination awoke and lifted its drowsy head from beneath the covers. It found focus. It found the solution that no one else had thought of. Take one example. Let us return to the series of events currently underway. Nina is doubled over, holding her belly with both hands, bellowing like a lioness. The women have gathered around her. They flail frantically without a clue as to what to do. Now Nina collapses on her back. Now Nina whimpers. Now Nina is in such a bad state that she must be helped instantly!
Surprisingly, Wlibgis makes the first move. She has a son herself, a thirty-year-old good-for-nothing, so she knows something about pregnancy and childbearing too. From being in the hospital, she’s also used to the idea of turning and tugging and rolling a person during washing; lifting them from bed to bed using a sheet, or easing them to the side when the bedpan needs to be changed. Wlibgis doesn’t hesitate to take hold of Nina’s stylish maternity shirt, which has smocking around the stomach region. Unapologetically she reaches and makes a modicum of contact with the fabric. The stretchy rayon moves. She flexes her fingers and begins to pull. Nina’s shirt hem rises, revealing as it does the white mound of her belly, which is adorned with an out-turned belly button and the exploding purple lightning of stretch marks. Based on this quick examination, nothing appears amiss. This is how a pregnant woman’s belly looks. A big raw bun.
Wlibgis waves Ulrike over closer, points to Nina’s turquoise trousers, and makes off-off gestures. Ulrike understands: it’s her turn. With her fingers, which have retained slightly more feeling than the others’, she takes hold of the luxury fabric, the cotton satin, and begins with two hands to roll down the front panel, which is made of sturdy stretch jersey. When the trousers are at her ankles, Maimuna comes and on her own initiative lifts and bends Nina’s legs. She grabs the pure white panties and pulls: Mamabel Basic Maxi, in the gusset a panty liner, on the panty liner a tiny rust yellow stain. Nothing else.
Nina’s vulva is also very clean. No bloody mucus and no one coming out either, head or toes first. Her inner labia fold nicely, slightly asymmetrically. The clitoris is covered by a small hood with a slightly teasing lift, and a halo of fine hair covers the mons veneris. Wlibgis, Shlomith, and Polina stare, wistful at the sight. But Ulrike can’t take her eyes from Nina’s stomach. A skin-colored mound like that attached to a human, and it’s supposed to be natural! Where does it all go once the birth is done? Does it collapse like a soufflé, its dreams disturbed by opening the oven door at the wrong time . . . ?
Shlomith carefully places her gaunt hand on Nina’s belly and smiles. The other women nod, murmuring encouragingly: the babies are absolutely safe. But they’re wrong. Nina knows better. She’s stopped wailing, because that’s the kind of person she is. In Nina’s head, someone has already pressed Rewind, then Play.
And so it went: they took each other by the hand and tried to recite the magic word together, but they couldn’t reach the end. Their mouths were open in confusion, and just at that moment some power inside of Nina shifted slightly. It was no normal physical sensation, no complaint of the internal organs: her stomach, lungs, and heart had all long been silent. The babies had been quiet too, but she could almost bear that, because Nina believed (ultimately perhaps stronger than anyone) in the theory called “death”. That was the only sensible explanation when she inspected the issue from a sufficient number of viewpoints. However, the babies had still been inside her. Of that she was sure. She was their tomb. That thought was macabre but also strangely bewitching. They were all of the same substance, one and the same after-worldly dust, and even so something continued—death did not mark the end of EVERYTHING.
The rainbow shimmering soap bubble burst when that power, which only made itself known by moving, shifted inside Nina. It was as if it lurched to the side, leaving in its place an emptiness, the most phantom of phantom pain. Then Nina knew: Little Antoine and Little Antoinette were gone. She had ceased to carry them.
Nina’s imagination burst into flower amidst that catastrophic crisis following the babies’ alleged disappearance. The women stare at Nina, almost angrily. This woman with the distended belly is insisting adamantly that her babies are gone. Are they supposed to believe that? At this, their whole miserable world, stitched together with assiduous chatter and good will, begins to crumble. There are far too many unanswered questions—above all, why? Why are they here, why has Rosa Imaculada faded away from them, and how can fetuses simply disappear from a womb? Why hasn’t the prospective mother surrounding the babies disappeared with her children? In general: where are the boundaries of transition and dislocation? If they are dead, they are strangely untouched, uninjured. They are wearing their clothes (or at least some of them), and nothing much else. And when they really start thinking about all of this . . .
Shlomith lets her tongue sing again. Why, for example, hadn’t the bed the dead person had been lying on come with her, the white mattress the corpse lay on, with its purple-red knee joints, its blotches, its livid palms? Why not the floor that touched the bed where the small, withered body lay, the corpse with the purple back and its purple knee joints? Why not the whole building connected seamlessly to the floor, first one wall, then the second, then the third, and finally the fourth, the ceiling, the corridors, the other levels, and the stairs? Why not the whole hospital where all the incurable patients are brought, the ones for whom nothing more can be done? Why not all the sick? Why not the whole city, the whole country, for example Holland (for some reason, mute Wlibgis is Shlomith’s favorite example)? Why not the whole continent, Europe, and the waters that led to America? Why not the whole world?
Why? Why? Why?
Nina is unique in that she has never surrendered to that line of thought or anything similar. Not even out of peer pressure. Just as she doesn’t laugh if she isn’t really amused, she also doesn’t go hysterical if she doesn’t see any cause for hysteria.
Nina knows that too much thinking is harmful. That simplicity is beautiful. The way to calm a rebellious child howling over the agony of existence and tormenting her parents with whys is through creative diversion. And this is the method that Nina now intuitively adopts to soothe her afterworldly sisters as they approach the brink of mass hysteria. Suddenly, interrupting everything, she says, We’re going to build a world. Right now. Right here.
With the eyes of her soul, that gifted platinum blond fée blanche saw in a vision how they would all soon be living in a cute little house where it would be spring outside on a lane lined with linden trees. Or cherries! Why not cherries? If someone wanted a seaside boulevard, that was available too. All they needed was a dash of imagination. Let each make her world as she saw fit!
And it isn’t long before all the women are hard at work building their home. Peace and good will reign over the land, once again thanks to Nina. Mothers, especially excellent mothers, have a special talen
t for sweeping big questions under the rug and redirecting the attention of children confused by too much asking. At this task they are more imaginative than anyone else in the world.
N°10. The gift of love. At times it seemed that Jean-Philippe loved his old leather jacket, with the holes worn in the elbows, more than his wife. His feelings toward people were of a combustible nature, alternating between flames and ashes. Symptomatic of this was the way Jean-Philippe took it as his right to enjoy freedom more than was appropriate to his class. However, far-seeing Nina understood that it was best to give her husband a long leash, to a certain point. That point, which was frequently tested, was located unambiguously in the genital area.
Despite it all, Nina loved her husband, for better or for worse. She had a gift for loving that not all do, just as not all have perfect pitch or a poker face. Nina sensed that the gift of love would burst into full flower after her children were born, and so she, with ant-like diligence and determination, arranged the surrounding conditions to be as favorable as possible for the maternal love that awaited her. Nina and Jean-Philippe had an excellent marital contract. They had 220 affectionately decorated square meters in an awfully beautiful house on a lane lined with lindens, and ten thousand euros of IVF babies on the way—love was one thing they wouldn’t have lacked.
THEN THEY MADE A HOME
Nina was right. They need a home and walls around them as protection. Space is unbearable. White causes blindness. White will drive you mad. Another person can also drive you mad, even if there are more than two people, even if there are seven people, six for each to look at in turn. So they need a kitchen. The heart of a home. Sitting around the campfire is beginning to feel insecure; walls behind their backs would do them good.
But where will they get walls? What will be the construction materials? Each has her clothes but not much else. Nothing beyond the odd little thing that happened to come with them when they left; something forgotten in the bottom of a pocket. So they start with the easiest thing and empty their pockets. They all have pockets except for Wlibgis, who is wearing ugly, green hospital pajamas. The pajamas have faded to barely discernible vertical stripes. Really they are prison pajamas. Wlibgis had harbored a bitter hatred for the hospital pajamas when she'd had time to hate, when thinking the garments were dreadful and the buttons most dreadful of all made sense. Yes, those big, white pancakes with their four holes were the worst. Was anything more tasteless than hospital pajama buttons? Sitting on her hospital bed, Wlibgis had obediently fastened them from the bottom up, obediently but angry. “Is this the best they can do?” As if the designer had intentionally made the ugliest possible poison-green clothing so the patients wouldn’t begin to think too much of themselves, secretly becoming prideful and growing lazy as a result of the high-quality, tender care they received.
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