That night in bed she couldn’t sleep – she had itches here and there as if suddenly being bitten by fleas herself. Eventually she fell into an oppressive, fitful half-sleep – it appeared to her that the earth was full of tiny people trampling its round belly and gnawing at it and whining snidely and jostling and tearing at each other, but the earth kept on spinning beneath them. It wasn’t really a dream, more of an anguished feeling, and it prevented her from nodding off… Some time later she began to feel the anguish mounting, gaining strength, and she suddenly noticed that she was not in fact asleep and that the anguish was real, audible from the adjoining room – that meant that Mum had come home without her noticing, and she was now asleep and moaning in her sleep as was usual of late… But Sofia was so horrified that she ran into her mother’s room and shook her.
“Mum, are you ill? Are you ill?”
Mum woke up with difficulty.
“Two hundred and fifty…” she murmured.
“What do you mean – two hundred and fifty?” Sofia almost screamed, and shook her mother again.
“I, I don’t know. It’s nothing…” her mother said, more clearly now.
“What’s wrong?” Sofia demanded, she felt so awful, she had the feeling that somewhere deep beneath their feet, under the building, deep in the heart of the earth something might suddenly happen, that everything might suddenly crumble to dust…
“Nothing,” said Mum, “it must just have been an incubus. An incubus might come if you sleep on your back. They throw themselves on you and try to smother you… you just have to roll over…”
“Mum, can I come in with you? I can’t sleep, I want to come in with you, there’s room for me,” begged Sofia and pushed her mum towards the wall.
“What are you doing?” her mother pushed her away. “You’re a big girl now… I’m not clean… caught something from the patient… Not OK…” but in the end when she saw Sofia sitting on the end of the bed and not going away, she said, “OK, let’s go into the kitchen, we’ll make some sugar water, tomorrow’s Sunday, we can have a lie-in in the morning…”
Sofia felt suddenly better and content. Sunday mornings were the best mornings – she could sleep and she knew that Mum wouldn’t be visiting the patient in the evening, so the strange family would have to look after him themselves… And the sugar water that she sipped was like something very clean and light that gradually, comfortingly spread through her… As if it made everything as smooth as glass…
“Mum,” she asked, “is the earth, our planet, alive?”
“I don’t know,” said Mum. She was quiet for a while – perhaps she was thinking about something else entirely – but then suddenly she added, “We Russians call the earth Matushka Zemlya, as if it were a mother to us, a good woman … So for us it’s as if it’s alive… Or is that what we say about Russia?”
When Natalya woke in the morning and looked in Sofia’s room, Sofia was curled up asleep in bed, hugging a globe. Natalya was surprised – Sofia had cuddly toys, a large black bear and a small, light brown cub, that she hadn’t cuddled for years, presumably from embarrassment that she was too big for them, but she would still arrange them at the head of her bed in the day and by the wall at night where they would watch over her from their station between the wall and her pillow. The bears would have been much nicer to hug; the globe, although smooth, was hard and had an angular handle… but she didn’t dare take it from Sofia’s arms. She’d wake up in her own good time, today was Sunday and she could sleep…
It was on her third visit to read to Rael’s grandma that Sofia found a stern-faced man with round eyes suddenly standing before her. Sofia hadn’t noticed how he had got into the flat or even the room, because she was tied up with an English article. The text was oddly worded and interesting at that. She didn’t understand all of it, of course, but as she read, a general picture formed naturally in her mind, and it was accompanied by photos that she’d have liked to look at and read the captions. She wasn’t able to because she had to read the article – and keep an occasional eye on Grandma as well, but now all of a sudden a black wall loomed between the two of them. He was a burly man, dressed in black, with black hair and strict-looking, bulging brown eyes that looked fixedly at her and said, “Ah, so you must be Sofia then?”
Sofia nodded because she’d lost the power of speech.
“And you’re the one working while Rael’s asleep?” he continued sternly.
“N-no,” stammered Sofia, although unjustifiable guilt brought her voice back, “Rael’s making tea in the kitchen…”
“Ah, Rael’s making tea in the kitchen, is she?” mocked the man. “Come and see how she’s getting on with it!”
He took Sofia by the hand and dragged her behind him into the kitchen. Rael was sprawled on the sofa, arms dangling, headphones on, eyes closed and a happy expression on her face.
The man removed her headphones and Rael sat up quick as a flash, snatched the headphones back and clasped the music player and the headphones tightly to her chest.
“Sofia said you’re making tea in the kitchen – making tea like this, are you?” the man asked, now scoffing.
“Yes,” grumbled Rael in an injured tone, “in principle I am, but it’s a bit early yet…”
“Ah, in principle you are, is that it? Well carry on with it then!” yelled the man, pointing at Rael under her nose. “Can you not get it into your skull that if you let someone else read while you make the tea, then you’ll carry on making the tea and be a kitchen girl all your life! You’ll throw away everything I’ve earned! Just you wait and see!”
“But I’m not just making tea,” whined Rael, “I’m listening to my music too! I have to keep in touch with the tracks! If I’m not up to the minute, what will I talk to other people about? Who’ll ever talk to me?”
“That music player!” shouted the man, and made a threatening movement that made Rael cower protectively over the player again. “Music players should all be smashed, destroyed; you’ll drive yourselves doolally with all that listening. The beat makes your brain soft. You’ll see, when you’re a deaf kitchen hand… or… or a tramp hunting through bins for food.”
He then turned abruptly to Sofia and asked, unexpectedly quietly but sternly, “Tell me, Sofia, what do you want to be?”
Sofia suddenly felt herself blush, her ears tingle and a throttling feeling somewhere deep in her throat…
“I…” she said, “I want to be an orthodontist!”
“A what?” the man asked, bemused.
“An orthodontist,” Sofia repeated, now confident, and explained that an orthodontist was someone who corrected people’s teeth and jawbones, and that it was very important because a narrow bite could put so much pressure on the jaw joints that they stiffen, leaving the person unable to open their mouth any more, or only able to open their mouth slightly so that they’ll have to eat only soup through a straw and put thin slices of things in their mouths, and it wasn’t an easy thing at all to become a good orthodontist, you had to be good at 3-D visualisation, 3-D visualisation was really important; you had to have very good spatial awareness… She explained it all quickly and enthusiastically – everything that her lovely doctor-orthodontist had explained to her while working on Sofia’s mouth, and Sofia felt that being an orthodontist really was her dream in life.