So the interrupted argument began to perturb Shlomith again. They hadn’t belabored it completely, and unbelabored arguments tended to return to the scene of the crime even more charged than before, practically snapping their suspenders; you couldn’t simply spit them away along the road. Especially not here.
Nina didn’t understand the slightest bit of the content of the argument. The women’s expressions were terrible. Shlomith and Polina were entirely focused on each other. They would have made low growls at one another if they hadn’t had words to use. They would have rushed at each other’s throats like mongrel dogs if their words had failed. But they didn’t fail. English blasted from both of their mouths, with a Slavic accent and without. Nina quickly understood that she was not the subject, had not been and would not be, that her situation did not interest anyone, that no one would ever help her again.
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
