I went to Malyschi this week and retrieved the new letters and packages. Much gratitude to you all. I particularly appreciate the vanilla sugar, which I use sparingly, and the reading lens. Though actually I’m still quite satisfied with my eyes. When I was your age, Irina, I thought I would soon go blind. It still hasn’t happened.
The weather is summery, early in the morning it’s 60 degrees or so, and by noontime the thermometer pushes toward 90. It’s not always easy to bear, especially when evening temperatures only cool down to the mid-70s and, as I mentioned, don’t reach the 60s, which I find most comfortable, until the early morning.
The mood here in Tschernowo is very good. I often have my neighbor Marja over for coffee, which you, Irina, sent. I’ve told you about her. She’s not too clever but she’s good-natured. She’s younger than I am.
I lean back and think. I feel obligated to tell Irina something about yesterday, but carefully, so she doesn’t get upset.
This week something unusual took place. We gained two new residents, but they were unable to stay. Life in Tschernowo is very nice, but it’s not suitable for everyone.
I want to say something to Robert, too. I’ve never seen Irina’s husband, but I want to demonstrate my respect for him.
I know that you have a lot to do as a family. Laura will graduate soon and will turn eighteen, and you, Irina and Robert, work so much at the hospital. I am sure that you do a lot for people through your work and that they are thankful to have you.
Irina has never told me much about Robert. The last time she sent me a photo with him in it was probably ten years ago. He was balding and had a big nose. But a husband needn’t be handsome. Jegor was, but what good was it to me?
Irina, I think often about your father. He had his failings, but he was a good man.
I know that you sometimes worry about me. You needn’t. I am getting by very well, and I feel very much at ease. I hope that you are taking good care of yourselves.
I turn the page over. My pen marks have pressed through the back of the paper. I’ve already written a lot. Irina will be comforted.
I’ve written so much already. Please forgive me for taking so much of your time.
Fond greetings from Tschernowo, your Baba Dunja.
The letter needs to be mailed. But I won’t make it to Malyschi in the next few days. I need to rest, for at least two weeks. If it were me, I wouldn’t return to Malyschi for the rest of the summer. I’d like to sit on the bench and stare at the clouds and once in a while exchange a word with Marja.
In reality I rarely sit on the bench. And most times when I do I get up almost immediately to go sweep the floor, beat the rugs, clean the pots with sand, or scrape the rust off the teakettle. Weeds are sprouting green and luscious, I rip them out, and when I straighten up again I see black. It doesn’t make me afraid, I just wait for my vision to clear.
The haze before my eyes dissipates, and I see the face of a serious little girl with pale blonde hair. My beloved granddaughter Laura, whom I have never met and who has written me a letter that I can’t read.
For a moment I feel a sense of horror. I think that Laura has come to Tschernowo as a ghost. But it’s just the heat and my old veins. Laura is at home in Germany. She is safe. I didn’t mention in my letter to Irina that Laura wrote me. I don’t actually know anything about Laura. The things that Irina writes about her don’t give a clue about what Laura is like as a person. Laura is in first grade, Laura transferred into fifth grade, Laura will graduate this year. It doesn’t tell you anything.
I don’t even know what language she wrote her letter in and why. Maybe she needs help and I can’t do anything for her. It breaks my heart.
Her reality, which I know nothing about, now stands alongside Irina’s, which I can really only guess at.
That Irina is a good woman I believe deeply and firmly. She wears a white lab coat. On her chest pocket, her name is embroidered, a German one. The name of her husband. I have a photo of her in a lab coat like that, it’s hanging next to the photos of Laura.
Irina competes with men, men who have a lot more muscle than she. Unlike me, she is a doctor. I know what that means. My superiors were doctors. They ruled over me, or acted like they did, though often they left me to my own devices because it saved them a lot of work. Some insisted on meddling in everything and dictating your every move. Some thought they knew everything. A few drank liquor in the examination room or locked themselves in the supply closet with one of the female medics. I knew about it but I never said anything; when it happened I did my own work and that of the doctor and medic, and I did it well. And through it all I had to be sure not to damage the men’s egos.
Irina told me that she doesn’t have the same problem. But I don’t believe her.
When Irina comes to visit me, it’s never just about me. An old woman is not sufficient justification for a trip like that. She leads groups of sick children from our region back to Germany, farms them out to families, and lets them have three weeks of vacation with fresh air and no radiation. She examines them in her hospital and sends them to the zoo and the pool accompanied by volunteers. That’s my daughter. After three weeks the children are sent back, sunburned and with a little more flesh on their bones.
I pull out Laura’s letter and look at the words, but I can’t even guess at what it says.
Later I take a stroll through the village to look in on Petrow. I have two cucumbers and three peaches along with me. The cucumbers are from my garden, the peaches I plucked from an abandoned property. The peach tree stands buckled over and knotted, straining under the weight of the fruit. It has been a bountiful year: apricots, cherries, apples — all the trees are bearing more fruit than ever before.
I think of the lab technicians who marched into our village and wanted to take samples of our crops. Sidorow proudly gave them his monster zucchini, Lenotschka handed them eggs over her fence, Marja yelled derisively, “Of course, I’ll get up right away and milk my goat for you, anything else?” and I shrugged my shoulders and left the masked figures, saying they could gather up whatever they wanted. They needed to do their work, after all. The first time they came I opened a jar of pickled mushrooms for them because I wanted to treat them like guests. They forked a mushroom and stuck it into a container with a screw-top. They handled my tomatoes with rubber gloves. During their next visit I left my preserves on my shelf.
From the squeak of the hammock I can tell that Petrow is still in the land of the living. He is lying there like a giant grasshopper, his dark, bulging eyes looking at me. I approach him and put the fruit in his lap.
He waves a book he has in his hand. “Have you ever read Castaneda, Baba Dunja?”
“No.” I sit down on a chair with a sawed-off back that he keeps in the yard and fold my hands.
“You’re not much of a reader, isn’t that right?”
“I’m sorry?”
“You have never read much, I asked,” he yells, even though I can hear him very well.
“We didn’t have any books at home. Magazines maybe. And reference books, for work. Textbooks during my training. I sent them all to Irina when she began to study medicine.”
“All of them? Don’t you have any left?”
“No, they’re all gone.”
“And what if you have to look something up here?”
“I don’t need to look anything up. Whatever I need I already know.”
“Funny. For me it’s the other way around.” He tosses the book carelessly to the ground. “And don’t you get bored without any books?”