was forgotten, their tans erased, Olga didn’t sleep for ten nights: the girl almost died. Everything in life seeks equilibrium, Olga said to herself, walking with her backpack, said it with such assurance she might even have said it out loud.
The path was soft, the soil here was mostly damp clay, and up ahead, where the road curves, we take a left past the doctors’ fence. That was what they called their neighbors, and it was true, in a way, the husband worked for the local epidemics control office. On Saturdays they’d pump out the waste from under their outhouse and pour it all over their garden, supposedly in the interests of ecology (actually because they didn’t want to hire a truck to take it away), and the smell of this organic fertilizer carried through the village. The same rotten wind was blowing now (which explained the graveyard smell, thought Olga).
Baba Anya used to laugh at this agricultural program. She’d been a crops specialist herself, had worked at an institute, even went on business trips, and it was only after retiring and moving out here that she returned to her peasant roots, to the language of her ancestors, calling strawberries “redberries” (alternately, “victoria”), wearing a kerchief on her head and remains of rubber boots on her feet, going to the bathroom behind the bushes (now that was fertilizing). Everything grew in her garden as if by magic, all by itself. She’d moved out here a long time ago, leaving her apartment in the city to her daughter, supposedly to give her space (actually it was only after a protracted civil war that had led to the destruction of both sides, as civil wars always do).
Olga successfully navigated the overgrown path, through the thinning black wild grass; it looked like no one had passed this way in a while. She took the rusted ring, which they used instead of a latch, off the gate, ran the damp gate away from the fence, and happily swung herself toward the house, seeing that a curtain behind the window had just shivered.
Baba Anya was home! She must have been so happy to see Olga; she’d always loved their family.
Knocking on the door, which didn’t even have a lock, Olga passed by the cold front hall and banged on the canvas that Baba Anya used in place of wallpaper.
“I’m coming, I’m coming,” came the hollow little voice of Baba Anya.
Olga entered the warm house, the smells of someone else’s home, and immediately her spirits rose at the sweetness of it.
“Hello, Babushka!” she cried, almost in tears. Warmth, a night’s rest, a quiet refuge, awaited her. Baba Anya had become even shorter, dried-out, but her eyes shone in the darkness.
“I’m not bothering you?” Olga said happily. “I brought your Marinochka some of Nastya’s things — tights, warm pants, a little coat.”
“Marina’s not here anymore,” Baba Anya answered quickly. “She’s not here anymore.”
Olga, the smile still on her face, grew terrified. A chill ran up her spine.
“Go on,” Baba Anya said, quite clearly. “Get out of here, Olga. Go. I don’t need it.”
“I brought you some things, too. I got salami, some milk, a bit of cheese.”
“Then, take it all with you. I don’t need it. Take it and go, Olga.”
Baba Anya spoke, as always, in a thin, quiet, pleasant voice — she wasn’t insane — but her words were inconceivable.
“Baba Anya, what happened?”
“Nothing happened. Everything’s fine. Now get out of here.”
Baba Anya couldn’t be saying these things! Olga stood there scared and insulted. She didn’t believe her ears.
“Have I done anything wrong, Baba Anya? I know I didn’t visit for a long time. But I always thought of you. Just, life, somehow—”
“Life is life,” Baba Anya said vaguely. “And death is death.”
“I just couldn’t find the time, somehow…”
“And I’ve got more time than I know what to do with. So go on your way, Olga.”
“I’ll just leave these things with you, then,” she said. “I’ll put them out, so I won’t have to lug them all the way back with me.”
(God, what could have happened?)
“For what, what for?” Baba Anya asked in a clear, aggressive voice, almost as if to herself. “I don’t need anything anymore. It’s over. I’m dead and buried. What do I need? Just a cross for the grave, nothing else.”
“But what happened? Can’t you just tell me?” Olga persisted in desperation.
The house was warm, and the floor of the corridor in which they stood was covered, as always, with cardboard, so there’d be no dirt in the house. The door to Baba Anya’s room stood wide open and inside you could hear the radio, buzzing like a mosquito, and through the windows you could see out into the trees in the yard. Everything had remained as it was — but Baba Anya, it seemed, had lost her mind. The worst thing that can happen to someone still alive had happened to her.
“I’m telling you what happened,” she said now. “I died.”
“When?” Olga asked automatically.
“Two weeks ago now.”
Horrible, it was horrible! Poor Baba Anya.
“Baba Anya, where’s your little girl, where’s Marina?”
“I don’t know. They didn’t bring her to the funeral. I just hope Svetlana didn’t take her. Svetlana was no good, oh she was no good, she must have sold the apartment and spent the money, she came dressed in rags to the funeral. She fell apart completely. She had sores on her feet, open sores, wrapped in newspapers. Dmitry buried me. She was useless there. Dmitry shooed her away.”
“Dmitry?”
“The one she left Marina with when she was just a baby. She was a one-year-old. Dmitry, Dmitry. He put little Marina in an orphanage then, I picked her up. You don’t remember, or maybe I didn’t tell you?”
“I remember something like that, yes.”
“Maybe I didn’t tell you. There were plenty like you here. They come, they leave, not a letter, not a word. I died alone. I fell down here. Marina was in school.”
“But I’ve come! Here I am!”
“Dmitry buried me, but he just had me cremated, and he still hasn’t picked up the urn. I wasn’t buried, so I came here. I’m just here for the time being. Svetlana has gone all bad, she’s a bum, a real bum. She doesn’t even realize she can live here. Dmitry scared her out of the crematorium when she sat down and started wrapping her feet in newspapers. Somehow she found her way to me in the hospital, then the morgue. She came off the bus, pus was leaking out of her sores. She found a newspaper in the wastebasket. Svetlana, I know, she was hoping to get a drink at the wake. Dmitry found her somehow, he didn’t know she’d become like that. But I won’t be here long, just until the fortieth day. After that, it’s good-bye. And that’s it, Olga, now go.”
“Baba Anya! You’re just tired, that’s all. Lie down! Maybe you’d like it if I stayed here with you a while? I’ll find little Marina. When did she disappear?”
“Marina disappear? No, no. When I fell down, I couldn’t remember anything at first, but then afterward, when they were taking me away, the only one I saw was Dmitry. Where was Marina? And Dmitry was the one who took me from the morgue.”
“Dmitry, what was his last name?”
“I don’t know,” Baba Anya mumbled to herself. “Fedosev, I guess. Like Marina. She’s Fedoseva. God bless him. He brought a priest to the funeral. That was it, they were the only ones there — no one was told, he didn’t know who to tell. He told Sveta and then chased her off forever. She’ll be here soon, I’m waiting for her. She’s about to die.”
“No one told me,” Olga said suddenly.
“And who are you, Olga? You rented the cottage a long time ago. You haven’t been here in how long — five years? Marina’s twelve already! I just hope she’ll stay away from here, oh I hope she doesn’t come!”
Five years. Nastya is fifteen already, a teenager. They haven’t had a summer here in five years! Nastya’s grandmother has a house in the town of Slavyansk in the Kuban. There’s a river there with ice-cold water in it. The girl comes back from there a total stranger, wild, smoking cigarettes. Already a woman, for certain.
“Forgive me, Baba Anya!”
“God will forgive you, he forgives everyone. Now go. Don’t stay here. And take your old rags with you. The thieves have been here already. I open the door for them all. I’m no one now.”
