I should go home but something keeps me there. I have to really force myself to leave.
“One last question,” he calls after me. “Where can you buy something to eat around here?”
I turn around. I think starvation is a relatively gentle way to go, but it’s not in my power to decide how death comes to other people.
The man is waiting for an answer. He is not accustomed to waiting. His oily face twitches impatiently.
“Malyschi. Vegetable garden. Stockpiles. Neighbors.”
Then I finally go home.
My work taught me that people always and inevitably do what they want to do. They ask for advice, but don’t actually have any use for the opinions of others. From every sentence they strain off only what they want to hear. They ignore the rest. I’ve learned not to offer advice unless someone explicitly asks for it. I’ve also learned not to ask questions.
I wait until the evening hours to water my cucumbers and tomatoes. Bees buzz around the yellow zucchini blossoms. I watch them, spellbound. For a long time after the reactor I didn’t see any bees around here. Various creatures dealt with it differently. The bees just disappeared. I pollinated my tomatoes by hand with a little paintbrush. Perhaps the fact that bees are now crawling around in the calix of these flowers is just the good news Petrow asked for. If I were younger I would shout the news. I decide to write Irina about it. And Laura.
Later I make a cup of tea from fresh raspberry leaves. When I turn away from the kettle I see Jegor sitting there. I feel bad that I can’t offer him a tea. It’s always nicer to drink tea with someone else. It is perhaps the one thing that with age becomes better to do with company than alone. One time I poured a cup for him out of politeness, but I realized I wasn’t doing him any favor by doing that.
Jegor looks at me with his dark eyes. I’m getting self-conscious. I’ve aged since his death and he could be my son at this point. He doesn’t need to undress me with his eyes like that.
After a moment I can’t take it any longer. “What are you staring at?”
He leans back. “I love to look at you.”
“Do you know any languages other than Russian?”
“Surzhyk.”
“That’s not a language. It’s a dialect. Didn’t you learn anything in school?”
“We didn’t have any foreign languages in school,” he says unperturbed, looking through me. Surely he sees Laura’s letter in my sleeve. I’m grateful that he doesn’t say anything.
“Have you seen the newcomers?”
He raises an eyebrow. “The guy is an asshole,” he says.
I don’t contradict him. Even though I don’t believe there are good and bad people. I wouldn’t know which group I myself would belong to, for instance. When I was young I put so much effort into being a good person that I was dangerous to others. I was very strict with my children so they’d be decent, hardworking citizens. Now I’m sorry I didn’t indulge them more. But indulging children was looked down on in our day. People used to say that the only thing you got from indulging your children was coddled good-for-nothings, and I wanted to spare them that. I was particularly strict with Alexej, even though it broke my heart.
“The girl is going to die,” says Jegor.
I look up from my teacup. Of course she will. We are all going to die. Some sooner, some later, and a child who moves here certainly won’t be around long. Children are frail and delicate. It’s the tough, old lumps like Marja and I who hang on forever. No microwaves are going to wear us down.
“He’ll kill her with his own hands.” Jegor looks out the window knowingly.
“What can he do about her being sick?” Even in death I won’t let him get away with it when he acts as though he is the smarter of us two.
“He is doing something about it because he brought her here.”
And then I begin to understand what he is getting at because I was thinking the same thing the whole time. “You mean she’s not sick?”
In the past he would have spat on the floor. Now he just shrugs his shoulders. “Not yet. But that could change fast.”
“But why would a father do something like that?”
“Fathers.” Now he spits on the floor after all. “You know everything about fathers. What kind of father was I?”
For the sake of civility, I remain silent. Most women I know would have been better off raising their children on their own rather than constantly stumbling over the boots of their drunken husbands.
But I don’t think it’s right. Deep in my heart I feel that humans belong in pairs. At least if they have responsibilities. A family is for two. I missed Jegor even while he was alive, no matter what I always claimed. Now he’s here and it’s too late.
“You know something,” I say.
“His wife left him. He wants to teach her a lesson,” says Jegor.
I always forget how old I am. I’m constantly surprised by my creaking joints, by how difficult it is to get out of bed each morning, by the unfamiliar puckered face in the scratched mirror. But now, as I cross the main road, actually running, it feels effortless again. It probably couldn’t feel more effortless unless I were dead. I yank open the gate, hurry through the garden, and beat my fist against the blue-painted planks of the side of the house.
The man is soon standing in the doorway in jeans and sneakers. A T-shirt with foreign writing on it is stretched across his shoulders.
“What do you want?” He shrinks back from me. I put my foot into the doorway before he can close the door.
“You’ve brought a healthy child here?”
He tries to shove my foot in the hiking sandal out of the doorway with his sneaker. We grunt like a couple of mating wild boars.
“Have you completely lost your mind?” That’s me.
“You should concern yourself with your own sanity.”
“Your wife left you, but why drag the little girl into it?”
“Nonsense.” He kicks my foot and I stumble backwards, nearly falling over. Jegor is standing behind me but he can’t do anything to hold me up.
“You have to leave here right away!” I haven’t shouted like this in ages. “She’s healthy!”
“Who among us is really healthy?”
He steps out of the house and comes right up to me. I plead with him, saying how sweet his daughter is, that he should go somewhere else with her, that he can jump in front of a train for all I care but that he needs to take the child home, away from here. His face contorts into a grimace. He shoves me, I stagger and grab his T-shirt to steady myself. He swats at my arm. The cloth rips with a dry sound, or maybe it’s actually something inside me as his fists land on my ribs. It hurts, but I have no fear of pain. My only fear is of helplessness. But even that can’t keep me from saying things that are important to me.
“What do you know anyway?” he grunts as he jabs roughly at my shoulder. Now I really do fall over. I’m lying on the ground, above us the Big Dipper illuminated in the cloudless sky. He kicks me in the side with all his weight, his face looks distorted. His fingers close around my throat. I hear myself wheezing. How quiet two people can be when one is in the process of killing the other.
Jegor stands behind him, crying.
What happens next I don’t understand at first. A dry snap out of nowhere. The man, who never introduced himself by name, stands up straight and lurches. For a second he stands there in a contorted, unnatural position. Then he falls to the ground right next to me.
Against my will I suddenly start to moan. When a strong man just falls over like that it’s always a fright. My first imperative is to stand up. I roll onto my left side and then onto my stomach. Next I get to my knees and brace myself with my hands. I crawl over to the fallen man.