Jegor was angry at me. During my second pregnancy he was rarely at home, and he made no attempt to explain away the absences as work trips. When he showed up back at home he smelled of cheap perfume. I’ve hated perfume ever since. I hadn’t planned to let Jegor back into the house at all. But then my water broke a few weeks early and somebody had to stay with little Irina while I gave birth to her brother. The fact that it was a boy filled Jegor with pride; the fact that it was a premature birth, with feelings of guilt. Jegor kissed my hands and cried in my lap.
I open my eyes again.
This is the second time in my life that I’ve seen Irina crying. She is sitting on a plastic chair beside my bed, a stack of photocopies in her hands.
I don’t understand the reason for her tears, since I’m doing well, after all, and I want to get out of here. I certainly must have missed time at my sewing machine. I didn’t come to prison to end up lying in bed.
I tell Irina exactly that.
“Do you want to look in the mirror, Mother?” Irina asks. I can feel that the corner of my mouth is sagging. But that never stopped anyone from sewing straight seams. And anyway, she is the last person who should be criticizing my outward appearance. Since the last time I’ve seen her she has aged decades.
“You didn’t need to come,” I say. “You’ll be in trouble at work.”
Irina startles me with the news that she has already been in the country for more than two weeks. She must have taken unpaid leave, German doctors couldn’t possibly take so much time off. Don’t want her to lose her job on top of it. Instead of cutting open German soldiers and stitching them up again, she has flown here. I learn that she has spent days together with my lawyer fighting for me to be transferred to a decent hospital. Even now her phone rings, and she says Amnesty is on the line. But I’ve never heard of that woman.
“And nobody is watering my tomatoes in Tschernowo,” I think out loud.
“Forget the tomatoes, Mother. In Germany we will lease a garden plot for you.”
“What is there for me in Germany? I don’t know anyone there except you.”
“But everyone knows you,” says Irina, holding up a photocopy of a magazine.
Seeing the photo frightens me. I wasn’t even photographed much as a young girl, and with good reason. The fact that I’m on the cover of a German magazine with my headscarf, my wrinkles, and my still fairly good teeth is proof that the outside world has gone crazy.
I look at more photos. Photos of Tschernowo in black and white. I remember the photographer who spoke a language we didn’t understand. He had a high-strung interpreter with him and took pictures of everything, Marja and her goat, Lenotschka and her apple trees, Sidorow and his telephone.
These are the photos that came out of that.
Even Konstantin is captured here. And I am standing in front of my house with the cats skulking at my feet.
There is a lot of writing. The photos are old, but the magazine is new. She copied the pages out of the latest issue. Irina reads the piece to me, a bit haltingly since she has to translate it as she goes.
“Baba Dunja is one of those women you envy because they can smile like children. She has a small, wrinkled face and narrow, dark-brown eyes. She is tiny and as round as a ball — she’s not even five feet tall. An iconic figure. An invention of the international press. A modern myth.”
I look at my hands. On the back of one, the faded O between the liver spots, which really does look a little like an eye. I didn’t want to live when Oleg took up with another girl, and now I can’t even picture his face anymore.
“I’m not an invention. I actually exist, right, Irina?”
And once again Irina starts to cry like a small child.
I would like peace to return. I would like to go back to work. Right now I’m still too weak on my feet, but I’ll get there. I would like to dress myself like a human being. I would like Irina to go home. And I would like to find out what is distressing her so much. She doesn’t want to tell me. She wants to talk about what is in the papers, what the world thinks of me, but what do I care about the world?
“Did Laura read my letters?”
“Laura?” Something in her face scares me.
“Yes. Laura. Did the letters arrive?”
“We haven’t received any letters from you in ages, Mother.”
“But I wrote to her.”
“Maybe you didn’t put on the right postage.”
“But I explained everything in them.”
She shrugs her shoulders. She doesn’t need my explanation. Nobody needs explanations. People need peace and perhaps a little money.
“How is Laura?” I ask.
“Laura?” she repeats again. And the way she says it sends a shiver down my spine. Because I realize I am about to learn something terrible.
“Laura is ill?” My lips go numb with anxiety.
Irina shakes her head. And then I think I should have known. Should have figured it out long ago, because all the signs point to it. “There is no Laura, right? You made her up. You are unable to have children. Or you don’t want to. Like Lenotschka.”
Irina looks at me. Her eyes are open wide and very blue. If she didn’t have such a severe face she would be beautiful. But I didn’t bring her up to be a beautiful woman. I tried to get her through it. That at least I managed.
And in my head is just one thought: What is the point of it all if Laura doesn’t exist?
“Of course she exists,” says Irina. “But she is very different than you think.”
The Laura I know is blonde and has sad eyes. Her face is so pretty it almost hurts. She doesn’t wear hair clips and never smiles. She is a marvel because she’s perfect. That’s the way my Laura is in the photos.
The Laura Irina speaks about has shaved her head. She has stolen money from her parents, had alcohol poisoning at age thirteen, has been thrown out of two schools, and doesn’t understand much Russian, which I don’t hold against her.
“She hates me,” says Irina and looks right through me with her rubbed-red eyes.
Irina has never spoken with me like this. She has never mentioned any problems. And now one like this, all at once. She needs to be hugged but we’re not accustomed to that.
“I’ve done everything wrong, Mother.”
“No,” I say. “I have done everything wrong. It breaks my heart that you have so many problems, and then I add to them with my murder. I just hope your husband doesn’t think badly about our family.”
“No idea what he thinks. We’ve been divorced for seven years.”
She says this casually, and I nod just as casually. What can you do. Children are more important. Our child is in trouble. And given that revelation, everything else pales by comparison — the conviction, my stroke, and the pillowcases in the prison.
“I can’t even give you the money I’ve been saving for Laura. It’s in a tea caddy in Tschernowo. Maybe someone can go get it.”
“I couldn’t give it to her anyway. I don’t know where she is.”
“I don’t understand.”
“What is there to understand? Laura ran away. She has been missing for months. She doesn’t check in with me. I have no idea where she is.”
And for that reason I say something that I am sure will help Irina. “Laura wrote me a letter.”
Once again I can’t say whether what I’m doing is right or wrong. I ask Irina to give me my plastic bag, which someone has placed next to the bed. I unpack: a bar of soap in a soapbox, a sponge, a half-empty tube of hand cream, and another of toothpaste. The red lipstick that Marja lent me for my time in prison. And the small, folded-up piece of paper that I open and smooth out.