The Woman Behind The Waterfall

by Meriel,Leonora

  But that was better than the other noises. The late-night horrors when his father was home, drunk, and his mother was struggling in their bed in the corner with his father grunting like a hog over her and it sounded like Mother was suffocating. More pain.

  And then there was the real pain. That was when he had to lie in his bed, not moving, while his father swore at his mother in a low, guttural voice. After that, there would be a silence, and he would clench his fists and wish, wish that the next part would not come. But it always did.

  A thud. And the strange, bird-like whistle that his mother gave out when she was struck.

  Another thud. And he would hear his mother fighting back, pushing against the heavy flesh.

  And then a third thud, and he would hear the chairs moving, as she would try to get away, into the corners of the room.

  The first three blows and sounds were so distinctive, he sometimes heard them in his head when they weren’t happening. He would hear a bird chirping, and think that it was his mother, and that it was beginning. Or a tussle between boys, and think that it was his mother trying to push his father away. Or the scraping of a chair, and instantly he would see his mother trying to escape from the room. Although she never did escape.

  He understood later that she didn’t want to leave their father alone, drunk, in a house full of children.

  After the first three blows, which followed the pattern, he would put his hands over his ears. It didn’t last for long. He could still feel the thuds through the walls, and hear the whistle of the suppressed pain, but eventually it stopped. Sometimes, a baby would wake up in the middle and start to wail, and his father would finish with her early, and he would see his mother in the moonlight through the curtains, hurrying across the bedroom to the child, hunched over, and a face shaped differently to how it was during the day. She would pick the baby up and hold it to her body, which was in a strange position, twisted to one side, or uneven, and the baby in her arms would make them look even stranger, like some kind of deformed monster in the silver of the moonlight, and she would pace up and down the bedroom with it, not returning to the kitchen; this strange, night-time creature.

  Those were the good times, when the baby cried, and often his father would fall asleep in the kitchen and he would hear the heavy, guttering breath and know that he could sleep. And eventually his mother would creep back into her bed, the baby calmed, and wait for morning.

  It was never long before a new baby was howling.

  T

  When he was older, Volodiya tried to stop these night-time beatings.

  When he thought that his father was angry, or he knew something had gone wrong on the farm, he would stay up late with his mother, resisting her demands for him to go to bed. They would hear the footsteps together and wait, and when he entered the kitchen, they would know, from the smile on his face, if it was to be a night of jokes and friendly advice and then the suffocating grunts, or a night of pain.

  The first night he stayed up, it was a night of pain.

  “Father.”

  Volodiya stood up from his chair when the kitchen door opened. His mother remained seated, in her usual place, so very still.

  His father stopped in the doorway, his eyes moving from one face to the other, reading the situation, his smile held poised.

  “Vova – come to your father.”

  Volodiya had felt his legs starting to shake when his father spoke, and a white sickness came into his head and stomach. He moved forward towards the door. His father waited, his bulk holding the space of the doorway, his face red.

  “Come. Come here.”

  His father waited until Volodiya was standing directly in front of him, his head barely level with his chest. He reached out and grasped his son’s shoulders with his huge hands, squeezing them, making him feel the vast strength behind them, reminding Volodiya of his own smallness, his inability to match his father.

  And then he saw his father’s arm moving back into a practiced movement, and swinging round again in a familiar arc, and the hand was meeting with his head and all the white sickness came rushing in and then it merged with a darkness, and the two were together for a moment, the darkness and the whiteness, and then Volodiya remembered nothing else.

  When he awoke, with his head pounding, he could hear a new sound. The guttural snoring from the kitchen, but then from his mother’s bed: a repeated, jagged breath, as if there was not enough air to take in. He had wanted to go and see her, but then the whiteness came over him again, and he slept.

  T

  After that, he stayed in the bedroom while it happened. But he hated himself more and more for not being there, for not taking the blows. He grew taller, and started to feel strength gathering in his body, and he worked hard on the farm, determined to make his body huge like his father’s, a body big enough to protect, to stop anything bad happening.

  And he started to make promises to himself. Promises that he would repeat between the lessons at school, and after school helping with the farm work, and in bed at night. The words of his promises became like the hands of a clock for him, ticking behind every action, waiting for their next repetition, measuring out the moments until their fulfilment.

  “I will have a big house,” he promised himself, “with rooms and light and space for everyone.”

  And then: “I will have the most beautiful wife. I will buy her everything she could ever want. Every time I open the door of the house she will be happy. She will not know what it means to be in pain.”

  And then: “I will have money for everything. I will have money to travel to any country. I will buy a car. I will have endless food and drink for my family and for my friends. My house will be the biggest in the region.”

  He would repeat these pledges over and over, and as he got older, he began to understand how he might fulfil them. He started to earn some money on the farm, and he saved it up to buy an old Zhiguli from a friend of his father. It needed a lot of work, but it was his own car, and it was the very first of his dreams fulfilled.

  13

  He first saw her from the edge of the building site next to the school grounds. She was leaving the main schoolhouse, and the sun caught on a mass of her hair and it was dazzling in the light; a waterfall of gold shining through the greys and blacks of school clothes and village dust. He couldn’t take his eyes off her. She was tall, and as he watched she moved forwards, and he saw that she was slender, and had a young woman’s body in profile. The sun was shining so brightly that he couldn’t see her face at first, but he had stopped his work to stare at her amongst the other students coming out of the school door and onto the main street.

  Then she had turned to speak to a friend – a dark-haired girl with a shorter, stouter figure – and she was laughing, and her pale, lovely face was lit up in the midst of her mass of shining hair. It was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen.

  He watched the girls until they had turned the corner off the dusty road, and then he brought his hand up to his eyes to shade them, feeling blinded by what he had seen.

  He closed his eyes and images of black and white were swimming in his vision, and it was several minutes before he could see again properly and return to the building work, smoothing wet mortar and laying the bricks of a new wall.

  That night, in the rundown apartment he was sharing with three other men, he lay on his mattress and thought of her. She was so young, and so beautiful. She would be the perfect woman to build his dream with. They could create a life happier than any other. They could build a house on a hill together. In time, they could have a family.

  He decided to meet her.

  T

  “Excuse me.”

  The two girls looked round.

  “I’m sorry to interrupt you, but I’m trying to find Moon Hill. I’ve heard it has the most beautiful views around here, and I don’t know which direction it is.”

  The girls were studying him. He was staring directly into the eyes of the one wit
h the golden hair. They were light brown, flecked with green and gold. They were looking directly into his. He drew his gaze over the rest of her face. She was smiling.

  “Who told you it has the most beautiful views?” the one with the golden hair asked. Her voice was low and full of laughter. Not a girl’s voice.

  “I work at the school. I’m building the new classrooms. The men from the construction site told me.”

  “Did they?”

  “It’s a sunny afternoon. There’s no more work today. I decided to explore the area. They told me to find this hill.”

  “What about your friends?” It was the dark-haired girl.

  “All the men from the site have gone drinking. I don’t have any friends yet. I’ve only been here a week or two.”

  The girls were both watching him. The brown and golden eyes held in his own made his stomach move in a strange way. He turned to the dark-haired girl and smiled.

  “Do you know where it is?”

  “We can take you there!” The golden-haired girl touched her friend’s shoulder. “Can’t we, Sveta? It isn’t far. Come on!”

  She was laughing and her friend was laughing and it was so easy. The two girls were walking up the village street, arm in arm, and he found himself hurrying to keep up with them.

  It was the beginning of a dream.

  T

  From the top of the hill, they could see for miles around. The Carpathian Mountains rose up in the distance, wooded peaks with strands of cloud drifting among them; and before that, rolls of the deepest green and then stretches of yellow corn and black soil. The land he had grown up with had been flat, ploughed farmland as far as could be seen, broken up with pig farms and storage sheds. It was good, fertile land, but it was not beautiful like this. It was not the Carpathians.

  The wind was strong at the top, and the girls were laughing and shouting to each other. They asked him questions – where he was from, why he was here, what he thought about this and that – and he answered them calmly, catching the golden-brown eyes when he could, and each time feeling that whiteness moving in him as their eyes met; her attention entirely on him for just that quick moment, her body and her voice so close.

  “We can show you other things,” Sveta said, when they had climbed down the hill and were approaching the village. “There are lots of places nearby. Castles, waterfalls, forests.”

  “And next time, Vasya can come, can’t he?” the golden-haired girl turned to Sveta.

  Sveta giggled. “Yes. We can take his car. You can make a friend.”

  “You can find me at the site next to the school,” said Volodiya. “I’m there every day. Thank you for showing me the hill.”

  “We’ve got to go now,” said Sveta. “Goodbye, Vova!”

  “See you soon,” he said to Sveta. He turned to the other girl, hoping to catch her face again, and there it was, waiting for his words.

  “You never told me your name,” he said.

  The girl smiled. Her cheeks were flushed and she held his gaze.

  “It’s Lyudmilla. Lyudmilla Hrihorivna.”

  He nodded. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Lyudmilla Hrihorivna. I’ll look out for you tomorrow. Maybe come to find me when your day finishes?”

  “We’ll see. Goodbye, Volodiya.”

  She turned, and Volodiya watched the two girls until they disappeared into their houses further down the street, and then he began his journey back to his shared room at the edge of the village, his mind full of gold and laughter and sunshine.

  T

  “Lyuda, this is for you.”

  His hand was resting on her knee and the Carpathian Mountains were stretching out before them. The wind was blowing her hair into a net of gold.

  She turned to him and saw that he was holding out his hand, and in the curve of his palm there was a gold ring.

  “Vova, what is this?”

  He leaned forward until his lips met hers and he held her face against his.

  “Lyuda, I want to live with you here. I want us to be together. I want us to live here in a house and I will give you everything you could ever want.”

  “Right here?”

  “Yes. Right here. I’m going to build you a house where we can see all of this. The first money I have, I’ll buy the land, and then we’ll build it. And we’ll live together and we’ll have a family.”

  “I’ve got to finish school first.”

  “Of course you do. But I want you to have this waiting for you.”

  He opened his palm again with the ring. “Give me your hand, Lyudichka.”

  Her fingers were shaking. She held out her hand to him.

  “There.”

  Volodiya clasped her fingers in his, and pushed the ring easily onto her right hand. He held it there for a few moments longer, and then he brought it up to his mouth, to kiss.

  “I’m going to give you everything you ever wanted, Lyudichka.”

  Lyuda brought the hand up in front of her face. It looked different. It looked like the hand of someone older. Her body felt light and strange. Volodiya was running his hand up her leg, pushing her short skirt higher. The sun was in her eyes and she was feeling dizzy, and he had wanted to make love to her for weeks now, but she had held out. She had listened to all her friends at school advising her not to do it, telling her to keep him waiting.

  But now something was different. Now, it was as if the desire in her body was flowing evenly with the desire in her mind, as if everything was coming together. There was nothing more to hold out for. He was here, and his hand was moving over her waist inside her skirt, and down.

  And then his body was moving on top of hers – gently, for his size, for his weight – and the dizziness in her head was getting stronger, and her body seemed to be deciding everything for her, and she lifted her hand, feeling the gold on her finger, and she put it behind his head, stroking the short brush of his hair.

  Her eyes met his. Dark, deep, loving eyes.

  “Yes Vova,” she said. “Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes!”

  14

  “Vova, I’m going to have a baby.”

  She was stroking his head, just as she always did after they made love, running her hands over his hair, smoothing his forehead, touching the skin of his cheeks. He liked to feel her fingers on him as he drifted off, knowing her face would be there to meet him when he opened his eyes again, and her body, naked beside him, her breasts and her small waist and her smooth back and arms.

  Her words were soft, and it took some seconds for their meaning to reach him through the daze, through her gentle touch. A baby.

  He opened his eyes. A baby.

  He shook his head and pushed himself up in the bed.

  “Lyuda?”

  She had moved back a few inches on the mattress, and was watching his reaction. She pulled the sheet up to cover her breasts. She was studying his face.

  “How do you know?”

  “I’ve been throwing up for three days now. My whole body is sore. I can feel it.”

  “You could just be ill?”

  “Vova, I’m sure. It’s a baby.”

  There was a pause.

  “It’s our baby, Vova.”

  He closed his eyes. It was too soon. He didn’t have enough money. She hadn’t finished school yet. It was too soon. He thought they had been careful, but then it had been going on for weeks now, the lovemaking, and he knew that things could happen. It was too soon.

  He reached out under the sheet and found her hand, resting on her stomach. He pulled it out, feeling for the ring on her finger.

  “What do you want to do?” he asked.

  T

  It was Volodiya who drove her to the maternity hospital, when the time came. Her mother was still in the forty-day mourning period for her father, and refused to leave the house. There was more room there since Grisha had died, and yet everything seemed smaller somehow. Her mother had started wearing headscarves, even in the house, as if she was practicing to be an old woman,
and her black clothes had shrunk her body, as Lyuda’s figure grew larger with every month, her pale face filling out and her golden hair lustrous and thick like a sheaf of harvest corn.

  Volodiya moved into the house after Grisha’s death, and they shared the small bedroom to the side of the back room, where Lyuda’s mother slept. The house was hot and small and Zoryana barely spoke to him, laying out the food for each meal with a sullen face, and sniping at Lyuda for every detail.

  He kissed Lyuda at the entrance to the hospital, holding a small bag with her slippers and nightgown and soap and money to give to the nurses.

  “I’ll see you soon, Lyudichka. Everything will be fine. Sveta will be with you. I’ll come as soon as they let me in.”

  She waited for him to say more, or for something to happen, for a moment of sunlit hilltop romance, his arm around her waist, her heart beating with excitement. But it never came. Another wave of the spreading pain entered her body, and she drew her face into a tight grimace.

  When it had finished, she opened her eyes and he was walking towards the car.

  She could feel the baby inside her, kicking against her womb, ready to come out. She turned and pushed open the door of the hospital.

  T

  Three days later, he came to pick her up.

  Lyuda looked bloated and shaken, holding a small baby wrapped in hospital cloths.

  “Lyudichka!”

  He hugged her and kissed her face, while she stood stiffly, the baby in her arms. He led her to the car and opened the door. As he drove, she looked out of the window.

  “I’ve got to work tomorrow,” he said. “I’m being moved to a new site. I’ve got a chance to be the next foreman so it’s a good opportunity.”

  “Can’t you stay a few days?” she asked, in a small voice.

  “It’s a great opportunity, Lyudichka,” he said again. “I want to build that beautiful house for us. We need money for that. I need to take the work where I can get it.”

  “How far is it?”