I grunt.
“I make her banana milk,” Grigorij says, looking up at me from below. “With an electric mixer. It’s cold and nutritious, and she can drink it. She complains, though — she’s had it with milk. But I can’t just wave a magic wand and make the swelling go away.”
“It sounds awful,” I say. “I hadn’t heard.”
Grigorij shrugs his shoulders and shuffles toward the door. Maria follows him to the entryway. They don’t say a word to each other. Maria keeps her eyes fixed on his slumped back. She closes the door behind him. Maybe they had a chance to exchange glances as she did.
Then she walks past me back into the kitchen. I stand in the hall for a while and then go into the kitchen.
Maria’s sitting at the table stirring the jam with a spoon.
“How come you didn’t say goodbye to each other properly?” I snap. Though given the situation it’s not what I really want to know. “Is that how they do it in your generation? No goodbye kisses and not so much as a see-you-later?”
Maria doesn’t answer.
“How long has it been going on?” I ask.
She looks up at me. Her little blue eyes are welling up.
“Don’t cry,” I warn. “And where are my siblings?”
“Alissa is at Katja’s,” Maria answers immediately.
“Who is that?”
“A friend of hers. Lives on the third floor. They play together a lot.”
“I had no idea they played with each other a lot these days.”
“And Anton has soccer practice at school.”
I look at her.
“Sascha,” she says, “I look after those kids as if they were my own. In fact, I consider them my own.”
“But they’re not,” I say curtly.
“I’ve never once left them unattended. They are always my first priority. I would never do anything to harm them.”
“You send them away and fuck around!” I scream. “Thank god I didn’t get home any earlier. If I had caught you in the act — if I’d seen that old wrinkle bag with not just his shoes off but his ugly-assed pants off, too, I would have puked.”
“It’s not right, acting this way,” Maria says glumly. It occurs to me that I’ve already heard this sentence once in here today. I turn around and go into my room. I throw myself on the bed and press my face into the pillow. I feel sick.
The door I just slammed closed begins to quietly open.
“Get out,” I shout.
“Sascha,” Maria says quietly, “what have I done wrong?”
I sit up. Maria comes in slowly, gingerly, as if she’s entering a lion’s den. Then she sits on the corner of the bed, close enough that I can smell her perfume. It makes me feel even sicker.
“He so nice, Sascha. He’s a good man.”
“I don’t want to hear that,” I say. “I don’t care.”
“It’s not as if it’s just. . it’s not just about. . the bedroom,” Maria says, blushing. “But you’re a big girl. So I can say that’s not totally unimportant.”
“Maria,” I say wearily, “get out of my room. Spare me the details. I have a weak stomach.”
“Do you know what it’s like to be alone?” she asks.
I stare at her. “Who is alone?”
“Me,” Maria says, surprised — as if I’ve asked her something so obvious. “I love living here with you and taking care of the place, and I love the children. But I’m a grown woman, Sascha.”
All of a sudden I remember she’s not 50, she’s 37.
“Et tu, Brute,” I say bitterly. “What is it you all find so great about it? Why can’t you live your lives in peace, without wrinkly old cocks. . anyway, you know what I mean. I trusted you. I thought we were your family.”
“You are,” says Maria.
“I should have known,” I say. “You didn’t come here for us. You wanted to find a man here, a better one than you could find in Novosibirsk. And all you managed to find was Grigorij. What now? Are you going to marry him and move out? Or is he going to move in here? Or will he just stop by for a quick fuck now and then and make you wash his laundry?”
“That’s awful,” Maria says. “It’s just awful, what you’re saying.”
“The truth is always ugly,” I say. “Around here they say the truth hurts worse than a punch in the face.” She’ll never figure out that I just made this up.
“Listen to me, Sascha,” she says, trying desperately to lock eyes with me. “Grigorij is a nice man. He can’t do anything about the fact that he’s been a widower for so long. And he doesn’t have it easy with that fat brat of his. He washes his own laundry, by the way — and even irons Angela’s skirts. And he’s always been so helpful when I run into him on the street or at the supermarket. He’s explained so much to me.”
“What didn’t I explain to you?”
“And now for three months he’s been coming here. I never go to his place. I don’t like his daughter and she likes me even less. And anyway, I prefer to be here. I feel safer than I would someplace else. I’ve also told him he can only come when the little ones aren’t here. And he’s sticking to that. I call him when I can. I have so much time.”
“That’s the least you can do — make sure the kids aren’t around for it,” I say and am horrified to see Maria’s crying. “What’s the problem?” I say with malice. “What grounds could you possibly have to cry?”
Maria shakes her head and wipes her tears away with the sleeve of her shirt. Then she pulls out a big, floral-pattern handkerchief from the waistband of her tights and blows her nose. It sounds like a clap of thunder.
“I’m so lonely here,” she sniffles into her handkerchief. “I never thought it would be so awful here. I don’t understand anything here. Not even the TV shows. And the Russians here in the neighborhood all look at me funny. Grigorij’s the only one who is always nice to me.”
“Why does everyone look at you funny?” I ask, surprised. “Half the people around here are from Kazakhstan or wherever. Haven’t you been able to make any friends?”
Maria shakes her head like a wet horse. “I think it might have something to do with the whole history.”
“What history?”
“They all know I’m related to him. And, you know, when something like that happens to a family they are shunned. It’s like a disease, and nobody wants to get infected. It was like that even in Novosibirsk.”
“I don’t give a shit what happened in Novosibirsk,” I say and drop myself down onto my pillows.
“Don’t be mad at me, Sascha. You have your hell and I have mine,” Maria says. Then, with surprising grandiosity, she adds: “It’s my burden and I’m going to bear it. I am not the type of person who would abandon children.”
After she leaves I hear her call from the hallway: “Grigorij is a real sweetheart.”
It sucks that you can’t suffocate yourself with your own pillow, I think to myself. Could I ask Maria to help me?
I lie there for a long time with the covers pulled up over my head. I can see Grigorij’s face in my mind, but it begins to blur and is replaced with Vadim’s. Now there’s a new one, I think. Jesus, girls, can’t you get by without it? Why can’t you be self-sufficient? Why do you want to be groped by someone like Grigorij or Vadim? Is there a gene for masochism on the X chromosome?
I hear the doorbell ring and Anton’s bright voice breaks the silence of the apartment. Half an hour later Alissa’s squeals join in.
I pull the covers down off my head and look at the telephone on my desk.