Baba Dunja's Last Love

by Alina Bronsky

  I pack two hard-boiled eggs in a napkin and stow them in my bag. I run to the bus stop and break a heel along the way. I quickly take off the other shoe and break that heel off. In the little bus to Malyschi I have to stand; an unwashed armpit blocks my view, but I’m a medical professional and will certainly be confronted with worse smells during the course of the day. Once I’ve arrived at the city’s emergency ward, I put on my white hospital smock. From that point on I am a machine that bandages wounds, removes splinters, splints a broken leg, comforts a vomiting child, and wraps a tape measure around a pregnant woman’s belly. The doctor insists it must be twins and I argue with him because I don’t think that’s the case. The baby will weigh nearly five kilos when it is born, it’s a boy.

  At lunch I eat my eggs with a piece of bread and wash it down with kvass that the doctor has brought in a plastic bag from a street merchant. I think about Irina and Alexej and wonder whether they did everything properly today. I can’t call them because we have no phone at home. We are on the waiting list for a phone line, but it’s expected to take at least another five years. But the children know how they can reach me at work, and I cringe every time the phone rings here. The device was similar to Sidorow’s, and I would have cut off a finger to have one like it at home.

  In the bathroom I wash my hands and put on lipstick. A worn-out woman with drooping eyelids looks out at me from the mirror. I feel ancient and look it, too. I haven’t seen Jegor for three days and have no idea where he is hiding. I take off my shoes, sit on the lid of the toilet, and do some vein exercises that I read about in Woman Farmer.

  When I come to, it is ten at night. The children are sleeping back to back in the big bed, and I pull their notebooks out of their satchels and correct their homework. The dishes are washed, the socks are stuffed. I’m no good at homework, but I do my best. I go to the kitchen and drink a glass of tap water. It tastes salty because my tears are dropping into the glass. I’m just a woman like millions of others and still so unhappy, I’m an idiot.

  “Tell me what I should do,” Petrow demands, jarring me from my reverie. “I’m full of nervous energy.” As proof he hoists his scrawny little arms and balls his bony fists. “Shall we burn him like the Indians do?”

  “Where do you get such garbage in your head?” He has succeeded in perking me up, but I don’t show it. “Nobody will come to get him. We have to dig him a grave.”

  “We’re not qualified. But I’m with you.” He wanders off and returns with a shovel that looks suspiciously like one that belongs to the Gavrilows.

  We wait until the sun isn’t beating down and then get started. Or rather, Petrow does, beginning to dig. He has overestimated himself. After every scoop he has to catch his breath for a few seconds, and after five he has to take a break for a few minutes. But he keeps going. He is a man, so I can’t say anything. I bring him hot water with mint.

  “I’d rather have a cola with ice cubes,” he groans, propping himself up on the shovel.

  “Cold chemicals in the heat will kill you,” I say.

  Every now and again he sets himself down in the grass, at which point I pick up the shovel and ignore the pain in my ribs. I’m surprised how difficult it is. The fact that I’m apparently weaker than the infirm Petrow frightens me, but I don’t think about it for long. The rich, reddish-brown dirt piles up in puny molehills.

  “You are not allowed to say that we cannot do it. You have to believe in us,” says Petrow, but I ignore his nonsense.

  Flies buzz above the tarp. Time is working against us. Sweat runs down our faces, but the molehills barely get bigger. I sit down next to Petrow and close my eyes.

  When I open them again I see Marja shoveling.

  I have to say, she is of a completely different caliber. I’ve never seen her work before, and I didn’t know what I was missing. Her huge white body proves strong. She shovels like a backhoe and is barely breathing hard. It must be all the pills she gulps down daily, or her iron constitution that even the pills can’t weaken.

  Petrow and I watch speechlessly. Marja doesn’t look at us. She concentrates on shoveling. The dirt flies into our faces. She pauses only to wipe her brow. Her round cheeks have reddened and her braids are coming undone. She could be the featured soloist in a folk-dancing troupe.

  Maybe she once was, who knows.

  When she takes a break on the grass next to us, Petrow tries to stand up again. He can’t. He makes a few jokes about it, that we might as well dig a grave for him while we’re at it, but Marja ignores him. She reaches out for some juicy burdock leaves, rips a few off with a precise motion, and puts one on her forehead and two smaller ones on her cheeks.

  Soon Sidorow takes up the shovel. He looks over at me proudly but a moment later nearly falls into the hole. Marja takes the shovel from him. He props himself up on his cane and watches her with a look that betrays the fact that he hasn’t given up on finding a good match.

  Marja takes off her wool jacket. Her upper arms are round and quiver like jelly. The flesh is so pink that you want to bite into it. Mr. Gavrilow comes and watches silently. Marja indulges him. At some point she takes off her kneesocks and puts her shoes back on. Sidorow wipes his face. Gavrilow gulps loudly. Only Petrow keeps his eyes closed.

  Marja shovels with a victorious smile on her face. She is now standing in a knee-deep pit. She shakes her head like a wild horse and then hands the shovel to Gavrilow.

  Mr. Gavrilow, whom I have never seen doing anything that doesn’t directly and exclusively benefit him, takes the shovel. His hand brushes Marja’s. She shows her teeth, her laugh sounds fake in my ears. The fact that she’s younger than I am does not make her a spring chicken. Gavrilow doesn’t seem to notice. Under Marja’s watchful eye, he begins to dig wildly, furiously, like an anteater.

  His rhythmic grunts spur Mrs. Gavrilow into action. I fear that he’s earned himself a smack on the head later. But for now, Gavrilow is king of the pit and we are his audience. We breathe in unison. The mounds of earth grow.

  Jegor comes, too. I want to deflect his attention toward Marja—he always knew when there was something about a woman to look at—but he fixates on me the way a cat fixates on a bottle of valerian. Other dead gather as well. Glascha’s father isn’t one of them; I’m happy about that. His body lies under the tarp and his blood has seeped into our earth.

  It is getting dark by the time Gavrilow retrieves from his house a tattered bedsheet splattered with pale stains. I pull the tarp away. A swarm of flies rises. Marja turns away and throws up in the raspberries.

  Pooling our strength we wrap Glascha’s father in the sheet, tie it head and foot, and pull him into the grave. We all push and pull together. Our hands brush one another in the silence that is broken only by the scraping sound and our breathing. The body lands with a thump in its new bed.

  Filling the hole back in goes more quickly, even though we are tired. When everyone has left, I stomp the soil smooth on top. My bones feel hollow from fatigue.

  Nothing in the world is as horrible as being young. It’s okay as a child. If you’re lucky there are people to look after you. But from sixteen on it gets harsh. You’re really still a child, but everyone just sees you as an adult who is easier to step on than one who is older and more experienced. Nobody wants to protect you anymore. New responsibilities are constantly foisted upon you. Nobody asks you whether you understand the latest thing you are supposed to do.

  It really gets bad after marriage. Suddenly you are responsible not only for yourself but for others, and there are always more and more who wish to ride on your back. In your heart, though, you are still the child you always were and will remain for a long time. If you are lucky you’ll be half-mature by the time you get old. Only then are you in a position to be able feel sympathy for those who are young. Until then you begrudge them for whatever reason.

  Those are the things that go through my head
when I think about Irina and Laura.

  I want to send Irina a letter. She complains that I don’t write often enough. I know that in reality she doesn’t sit around waiting for my letters. But she wants me to think that she cares about me. She’s also afraid that I’m bored, and writing a long letter is a peaceful and sensible activity. She doesn’t believe me when I say that I don’t even know what it means to be bored. She is a good daughter and wants confirmation from me that she is paying sufficient attention to me. Since Alexej took off to the other side of the globe, she’s my closest kin, geographically speaking as well. She must live with a permanently bad conscience.

  So I sit down at the kitchen table, grab my school-style graph-paper notebook and a pen, and start to write. I don’t touch the new pink paper, that’s for Laura. Irina doesn’t care for pink.

  My dear daughter Irina, I write, my dear son-in-law Robert, and my beloved only grandchild, Laura. Baba Dunja greets you warmly from the village of Tschernowo by Malyschi. How are you all? I am well, even though I can tell I’m no longer 82 anymore. But for my advanced age, I am very content. I am particularly pleased with the hiking sandals that you, Irina, sent me from Germany. You are always so good at picking out the right size for me. Since I’ve been wearing them my feet hurt much less.

  I went to Malyschi this week and retrieved the new letters and packages. Much gratitude to you all. I particularly appreciate the vanilla sugar, which I use sparingly, and the reading lens. Though actually I’m still quite satisfied with my eyes. When I was your age, Irina, I thought I would soon go blind. It still hasn’t happened.

  The weather is summery, early in the morning it’s 60 degrees or so, and by noontime the thermometer pushes toward 90. It’s not always easy to bear, especially when evening temperatures only cool down to the mid-70s and, as I mentioned, don’t reach the 60s, which I find most comfortable, until the early morning.

  The mood here in Tschernowo is very good. I often have my neighbor Marja over for coffee, which you, Irina, sent. I’ve told you about her. She’s not too clever but she’s good-natured. She’s younger than I am.

  I lean back and think. I feel obligated to tell Irina something about yesterday, but carefully, so she doesn’t get upset.

  This week something unusual took place. We gained two new residents, but they were unable to stay. Life in Tschernowo is very nice, but it’s not suitable for everyone.

  I want to say something to Robert, too. I’ve never seen Irina’s husband, but I want to demonstrate my respect for him.

  I know that you have a lot to do as a family. Laura will graduate soon and will turn eighteen, and you, Irina and Robert, work so much at the hospital. I am sure that you do a lot for people through your work and that they are thankful to have you.

  Irina has never told me much about Robert. The last time she sent me a photo with him in it was probably ten years ago. He was balding and had a big nose. But a husband needn’t be handsome. Jegor was, but what good was it to me?

  Irina, I think often about your father. He had his failings, but he was a good man.

  I know that you sometimes worry about me. You needn’t. I am getting by very well, and I feel very much at ease. I hope that you are taking good care of yourselves.

  I turn the page over. My pen marks have pressed through the back of the paper. I’ve already written a lot. Irina will be comforted.

  I’ve written so much already. Please forgive me for taking so much of your time.

  Fond greetings from Tschernowo, your Baba Dunja.

  The letter needs to be mailed. But I won’t make it to Malyschi in the next few days. I need to rest, for at least two weeks. If it were me, I wouldn’t return to Malyschi for the rest of the summer. I’d like to sit on the bench and stare at the clouds and once in a while exchange a word with Marja.

  In reality I rarely sit on the bench. And most times when I do I get up almost immediately to go sweep the floor, beat the rugs, clean the pots with sand, or scrape the rust off the teakettle. Weeds are sprouting green and luscious, I rip them out, and when I straighten up again I see black. It doesn’t make me afraid, I just wait for my vision to clear.

  The haze before my eyes dissipates, and I see the face of a serious little girl with pale blonde hair. My beloved granddaughter Laura, whom I have never met and who has written me a letter that I can’t read.

  For a moment I feel a sense of horror. I think that Laura has come to Tschernowo as a ghost. But it’s just the heat and my old veins. Laura is at home in Germany. She is safe. I didn’t mention in my letter to Irina that Laura wrote me. I don’t actually know anything about Laura. The things that Irina writes about her don’t give a clue about what Laura is like as a person. Laura is in first grade, Laura transferred into fifth grade, Laura will graduate this year. It doesn’t tell you anything.

  I don’t even know what language she wrote her letter in and why. Maybe she needs help and I can’t do anything for her. It breaks my heart.

  Her reality, which I know nothing about, now stands alongside Irina’s, which I can really only guess at.

  That Irina is a good woman I believe deeply and firmly. She wears a white lab coat. On her chest pocket, her name is embroidered, a German one. The name of her husband. I have a photo of her in a lab coat like that, it’s hanging next to the photos of Laura.

  Irina competes with men, men who have a lot more muscle than she. Unlike me, she is a doctor. I know what that means. My superiors were doctors. They ruled over me, or acted like they did, though often they left me to my own devices because it saved them a lot of work. Some insisted on meddling in everything and dictating your every move. Some thought they knew everything. A few drank liquor in the examination room or locked themselves in the supply closet with one of the female medics. I knew about it but I never said anything; when it happened I did my own work and that of the doctor and medic, and I did it well. And through it all I had to be sure not to damage the men’s egos.

  Irina told me that she doesn’t have the same problem. But I don’t believe her.

  When Irina comes to visit me, it’s never just about me. An old woman is not sufficient justification for a trip like that. She leads groups of sick children from our region back to Germany, farms them out to families, and lets them have three weeks of vacation with fresh air and no radiation. She examines them in her hospital and sends them to the zoo and the pool accompanied by volunteers. That’s my daughter. After three weeks the children are sent back, sunburned and with a little more flesh on their bones.

  I pull out Laura’s letter and look at the words, but I can’t even guess at what it says.

  Later I take a stroll through the village to look in on Petrow. I have two cucumbers and three peaches along with me. The cucumbers are from my garden, the peaches I plucked from an abandoned property. The peach tree stands buckled over and knotted, straining under the weight of the fruit. It has been a bountiful year: apricots, cherries, apples—all the trees are bearing more fruit than ever before.

  I think of the lab technicians who marched into our village and wanted to take samples of our crops. Sidorow proudly gave them his monster zucchini, Lenotschka handed them eggs over her fence, Marja yelled derisively, “Of course, I’ll get up right away and milk my goat for you, anything else?” and I shrugged my shoulders and left the masked figures, saying they could gather up whatever they wanted. They needed to do their work, after all. The first time they came I opened a jar of pickled mushrooms for them because I wanted to treat them like guests. They forked a mushroom and stuck it into a container with a screw-top. They handled my tomatoes with rubber gloves. During their next visit I left my preserves on my shelf.

  From the squeak of the hammock I can tell that Petrow is still in the land of the living. He is lying there like a giant grasshopper, his dark, bulging eyes looking at me. I approach him and put the fruit in his lap.

  He waves a bo
ok he has in his hand. “Have you ever read Castaneda, Baba Dunja?”

  “No.” I sit down on a chair with a sawed-off back that he keeps in the yard and fold my hands.

  “You’re not much of a reader, isn’t that right?”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “You have never read much, I asked,” he yells, even though I can hear him very well.

  “We didn’t have any books at home. Magazines maybe. And reference books, for work. Textbooks during my training. I sent them all to Irina when she began to study medicine.”

  “All of them? Don’t you have any left?”

  “No, they’re all gone.”

  “And what if you have to look something up here?”

  “I don’t need to look anything up. Whatever I need I already know.”

  “Funny. For me it’s the other way around.” He tosses the book carelessly to the ground. “And don’t you get bored without any books?”

  “I don’t get bored. I always have work to do.”

  “You are a wonder, Baba Dunja.”

  I don’t respond.

  “Have you ever heard of the Internet?”

  “I’ve heard of it.” And it’s true, I have. “But I’ve never seen it.”

  “Where would you. We live in the Stone Age here. Instead we have a ghost telephone that works once a year and nobody can explain why.”

  “You can’t explain everything in life.”

  “From anyone else that would be an unbearably banal statement.”

  That’s how Petrow talks. He’s a man who needs books the way an alcoholic needs liquor. When he doesn’t have enough to read he’s insufferable. And he never has enough. Tschernowo doesn’t have a public library, and he’s already devoured everything here, right down to instruction manuals that are older than he is.

  “I wonder if the phone will work when my time is up.”