The food is alright. In the hall by the cafeteria there’s a display case where every afternoon they put a sample portion of the soup or gruel so nobody grumbles they got too little. An old woman doesn’t need much, I can usually give some of mine to Marja.
I don’t want to think about the state of my garden while I’m in here. I hope you are doing well, and that you are getting good grades in school.
Your loving Baba Dunja.
My dear granddaughter Laura,
Baba Dunja writing again. You are probably wondering why I am writing so often now.
It’s not just that one has more time in prison. One also has more to write about.
In two days there will be a court hearing. It will take a long time according to Arkadij Sergejewitsch, the little boy with the briefcase. The charges will be read and witnesses will be questioned, and there will be so many of us in the dock, the entire village. There will probably be people in the gallery, too, because the case is so unusual and because some people out there seem to think they know me even though I don’t know them. I asked myself whether I should be ashamed and then decided: No, I have no need to be ashamed because I didn’t do anything wrong.
I have to think about a few things that I’m going to say in court. I’m not used to speaking in front of a lot of people. But if Arkadij Sergejewitsch reads a statement from me it’s possible that some people won’t believe the words are really mine. So I have to do it myself.
Whatever you hear about me, never forget: your Baba Dunja holds no one more dear than you, regardless of the fact that we’ve never seen each other.
During the night I’m awakened by Marja, who is sitting on my cot, crying. I can see the trembling outline of her body. She is trying to be quiet because Tamara, who killed her husband with an electric iron, doesn’t like it when anyone makes noise during bedtime hours.
“What is it?” I whisper. Marja just breathes haltingly.
“I don’t understand, Maschenka.”
I press myself against the wall as she tries to stretch out beside me. It’s an awkward undertaking: either Marja is going to crash to the floor or she is going to lie on top of me and suffocate me with her bosom. I suck in my stomach and try to make myself as narrow as possible.
She puts her arm around my neck and presses her lips to my ear.
“I’m so afraid, Dunja,” warm tears trickle into my ear canal, “I’m afraid they’re going to convict us all and shoot us.”
“They’re hardly going to shoot us, Marja. Maybe fifty years ago they did that.”
“You have it good, nothing ever rattles you.”
I don’t say anything.
“Obviously it’s true that we buried him together, but only one person killed him!”
Marja’s tears burn in my ear. I free up a hand and pat her shoulder. She’s worse off than I am, her lawyer didn’t show up. I asked Arkadij whether he could defend her, too, but he said it was prohibited. I’m getting the impression that a particular chaos prevails here in prison. And then add to that the camera teams outside which disturb everyone as they are working.
“Surely you know who it was, Dunja!” Marja is less and less able to control herself, she is working herself into a hysterical fit. “Please do something so I can go home. I want to go back to Tschernowo. Nobody can bother me there. That’s why I moved there, because I thought I’d have peace and quiet, but they found me anyway and locked me up.”
My heart begins to palpitate. I press my lips together. She doesn’t know that she calls her Alexander’s name during the night sometimes.
“Do something! You’re the boss!” she sniffles.
“I was never the boss.”
But she isn’t listening to me. She is trembling and I am trembling with her. “I can’t take it anymore, I’m losing my mind in here.”
“Calm down,” I say. “You have to keep it together, my girl. I’ll make sure that you get home. I promise you.”
She cries really loudly now, at full volume, until a boot thrown by Tamara silences her.
“Arkadij Sergejewitsch,” I say, “how can you find out what language something is?”
“I’m sorry?” he says.
We always meet in the same room. It’s square and so small that only a table and two chairs fit in it. The door stays open and now and again a guard sticks a nose in to bark at us or secretly take a photo. Sometimes Arkadij gets up then and goes out and yells. It surprised me that he could be so loud.
He’s slight of build, wears a white shirt and a suit, the briefcase sits between us on the table, next to it a portable phone with a big screen that constantly lights up. The dark rings beneath Arkadijs’s eyes reach all the way down to his sunken cheeks. He has a wedding ring on his ring finger. Instead of being with his wife, he is squatting here with me, asking me questions that are always the same, leaving me ever less inclined to put in the effort to answer them.
He opens his briefcase and pulls out a bar of chocolate.
The wrapper is printed with golden letters in a foreign script. It’s the same alphabet that Laura’s letter is written in.
“This is for you,” he says.
“Thank you, but it’s really not necessary.”
“I’ve been racking my brain trying to think of a way I could make you happy.”
“I have everything and am content. Thank you for the kiwi the other day, I hadn’t had one in a long time.”
“Baba Dunja! I’m at my wit’s end.”
“What would happen if someone were to confess?” I ask. “Would all the rest be allowed to go home?”
“It would depend.”
“On what?”
“On who confessed.”
This is the way our talks always go. It’s exhausting.
“I’m going back to my cell, Arkadij.”
“Wait, please!”
The constant standing up and sitting back down gets to my knees.
“It’s impossible to answer your question about finding out what language something is in. There are too many languages on earth,” he says.
“And what if it is written on paper?”
He leans back and closes his eyes. For a few seconds he wobbles in his chair like a little boy who is bored in class.
“If the word the appears frequently, then it is English. If there is a lot of der, die, or das then it’s German. And if you see un or une then it’s French. And with il it could be Italian. Or it could also still be French.”
I look at him respectfully. “You are so young and already so knowledgeable,” I say. “Go home to your wife and get a good night’s rest.”
Petrow and the other men I see for the first time again on the first day of the court proceedings. We are taken one by one into the holding pen inside the courtroom and sit on a bench inside it. Sidorow’s knees are stiff, he remains standing and braces himself on Petrow’s shoulder. You didn’t have to be a former nurse’s assistant to see it: he wasn’t going to last long. Though actually I expected everyone to be in worse shape than they are.
I see my Arkadij Sergejewitsch with red spots on his chalk-white face. He is sitting opposite the holding pen. The courtroom is bursting with people, though I expected the room to be bigger. Photographers and camera teams are shuffled past us at short intervals. They call to us but we just stare blankly into their lenses.