“These aren’t rags, these are nice things for a little girl. Wool tights, a little coat, some T-shirts.”
Olga was trying to convince Baba Anya that everything was fine, that this horror was just a fantasy imagined by her aching heart, which was, like Olga’s, abandoned and hurt.
“Baba Anya, I came out here thinking this might be the last refuge for me.”
“There’s no such refuge for anyone on earth,” Baba Anya said. “Every soul is its own last refuge.”
“I thought at least you wouldn’t chase me away, you’d take me in. I thought I’d sleep over.”
“No, Olga, what are you talking about. I’m telling you. You can’t, I don’t exist anymore.”
“I brought some food, please try it.”
“You’ll try it yourself later. Now go, go.”
“It’s cold out there. Here, in the village, the sky and the air are just. Baba Anya! I so much wanted to come here, I was hoping—”
Baba Anya answered firmly: “I’m worried about Marina. I’m very worried about her.”
“I know, I understand that,” said Olga. “I’ll find her.”
“Svetlana’s on her way, she’s lost everything, but she’s still alive. If she were dead, she’d be here. But I don’t want to see anyone here, do you understand? Leave me alone, all of you! Where’s Marina? I don’t want to see her. I don’t want to, you get it?”
Baba Anya was obviously talking nonsense. Want, not want. But she stood firm, blocking the hallway with her diminutive frame.
Olga imagined walking home with her heavy load, the bread, the groceries, the liter of milk.
“Baba Anya, do you mind if I just sit here a minute. My legs hurt. My legs really hurt all of a sudden.”
“And I’m telling you one more time: Go in peace! Take your legs from here while you still have them!”
Olga went past her, as if Baba Anya wasn’t even there, and sat down on a chair in the room.
The smell of an outhouse from the neighbors came in even more strongly through the open window.
The room looked abandoned. There was a wrapped-up mattress on the bed. That never happened at Baba Anya’s, she was meticulously neat. She always made the bed very carefully, topping it with lace-covered pillows. And that awful smell!
“Baba Anya, can you put some water on for tea?”
“There’s no teakettle, I’m telling you, bad people came and took everything,” Baba Anya said from the hallway in that same crystal-clear voice.
“And the water, is there any water?”
“Water. There hasn’t been water in a while, only in the well. But I don’t go out.”
“I’ll run out and get some water?” Olga offered from the room. “You haven’t had tea in a while, probably?”
“I died two weeks ago.”
“You still have the bucket for the well?”
“They took the bucket, too.”
Olga took a deep breath, walked into the kitchen, and found it completely ransacked. The small cabinet was wide open, the floor was covered in broken glass, a beat-up aluminum pot lay on its side on the floor (Baba Anya used to make kasha in it). In the middle of the floor stood an empty three-liter can from some beans. Seryozha had brought that can once for some dinner, but they didn’t open it, they had baked potatoes instead, and they left it for Baba Anya when they went back to the city in the fall.
Olga took the can in her hands.
“And take all your luggage, too!” Baba Anya said.
“How am I going to drag all this to the well?”
“Take it, take it! Take your purse!”
Olga obediently slung her purse over her shoulder and went out the door with the can. Baba Anya dragged the backpack after her, but for some reason she didn’t come into the outer hall.
The cold met Olga outside, along with a strong fresh breeze, and everywhere in the abandoned garden were tall blackened weeds, their hollow seeds swaying in the wind. Olga stumbled over to the ravine, where the nearest well was. They’d put in running water for everyone long ago, except they didn’t quite reach here, to the impoverished Baba Anya, who couldn’t raise the funds for it.
The ravine was covered with old trash, it was practically a dump, and there was no bucket at the well, just a piece of folded brown string. The bucket had been expropriated, as Baba Anya used to say.
Here Olga’s head began to spin, and everything around her turned clearly, blindingly white — but only for an instant. Without losing consciousness, Olga found a big crooked nail, and pulled a chunk of brick from the ground. She broke a hole in the side of the can, though in doing so slashed the index finger on her left hand — she sucked the blood out with her lips — found a fresh ribwort leaf, placed it on the wound, then somehow managed to tie the rope to the can, and released the catch. Her improvised bucket dropped, picked up water, she brought it back up, now as cold as ice, untied the rope from it, and, holding it away from her body, carried the cold can, full to the brim, thinking only of poor Baba Anya, who didn’t have a drop of water in the house. She went up from the filthy ravine, up the clay path, her legs weren’t used to it and hurt, or rather they were numb. At the top of the path Olga put the can down and looked around.
Baba Anya’s tattered fence was filled with gaps, and you could see the house clearly from here. Now there were no curtains in the windows! Olga felt an ice-like fear, the dark fear of a healthy person before insanity — the sort of insanity that can tear all the curtains from the four windows in seven or eight minutes.
Still, Baba Anya needed to be fed or at least given something to drink. She’d call the doctors, lock the house, find Marina somehow, or Svetlana, or Dmitry Fedosev. As for who should live here — the homeless Sveta, the heir, who’ll drink away the house in the blink of an eye, or poor homeless Marina — wasn’t for us to decide. Or she’d take Marina herself! That’s what she’d do, now that she was involved in this business. You wanted to leave your life, well, now you’ve left it and ended up in someone else’s. No place in the world is free of lonely souls in need of help. Seryozha and Nastya will be against it; Seryozha won’t say anything; Nastya will say, That’s interesting, Mom, as if we didn’t know already you were koo-koo. And her mother will of course cause a terrific scandal over the phone.
Olga stood there thinking all this over, with difficulty, knowing that she should keep going, but her legs had filled with lead, they refused to take orders, didn’t want to carry three liters of ice-cold water to the pillaged house of the crazy old woman, didn’t want to experience more hardship in this life. The sharp wind howled up the hill where Olga stood, frozen, a mother and wife, standing there like a homeless woman, like a pauper, with her only worldly possession at her feet in the form of a three-liter tin can filled with water. The sharp wind blew, the black skeletons of the trees screeched, and the fresh watermelon smell of winter appeared. It was cold, bitter, it was getting dark quickly, and she immediately wanted to transport herself home, to her warm, slightly drunken Seryozha, her living Nastya, who must have woken up by now, must be lying there in her nightshirt and robe, watching television, eating chips, drinking Coca-Cola and calling up her friends. Seryozha will be going to visit his old school friend now. They’ll have some drinks. It was the usual Sunday program, so let it be. In a clean, warm, ordinary house. Without any problems.
Olga took the can in both hands and carried it down to Baba Anya, but slipped and fell on the clay, spilling half the water on herself. Oh, God! Her legs were hurting now for real.
But Baba Anya’s door was locked, and no one opened even though she kicked at the door with her sick legs and yelled like a woman possessed.
Someone above her noted, very clearly, very quickly: “She’s yelling.”
But Olga knew another way into the house, through the ladder into the attic, and there through the chute, along the steps in the wall, you could make your way down to the terrace — they’d climbed into the house that way more than once, she and Seryozha, late at night, when they couldn’t find the keys.
Olga left the can at the door.
Baba Anya was sitting inside that house, insane, without water, and there’s no way she’d be able to take the food out of the fastened backpack, not in the mindless state she was in. How quickly it can happen to you, when you lose everything, and the intelligent, kind, wonderful human turns into a wary silly little animal.
With some difficulty Olga got the ladder out from under the house, placed it against the wall, climbed up the rickety rungs, the third one gave way and she fell, hurting her legs again (were they broken?). Moaning, she kept climbing, got up on the roof after all, managed to injure her hands, too, and her side was now in pain, and her head,
