It was ever more difficult to read to Ustina. Her attention was scattered. It was hard for her to sit and hard to lie. She had to lie on her side, not on her back. She asked Arseny to read to her ever more frequently now, and of course he did.
And then it happened that Alexander the Great came to the swampy places. And Alexander became ill but there was not even a place in those swamps for him to lie down. Snow fell from heavens unknown to him. And Alexander took off his armor and ordered his warriors to place all their armor together. Thus they assembled a bed for him in a boggy place. He laid on it, exhausted, and they covered him with shields to keep the snow from him. And Alexander suddenly realized he was lying on the iron earth under a sky of ivory...
Stop. Ustina turned heavily onto her other side and was now lying with her back to Arseny. Snow fell here today, too. Why are you reading all this to me...?
I’ll find something else for you, my love.
Ustina turned toward him again.
Find me a midwife. That is what I will need soon.
Why do you need some ignorant midwife? Arseny was surprised. You have me, after all.
Have you really ever delivered a baby?
No, but Christofer told me about it in detail. And he wrote everything down, too. Arseny rummaged around in the basket and took out a manuscript. Here.
Is it possible to deliver a baby by what is written? Ustina asked. And beyond all that, you know, I do not want you to see me that way. I do not want it, O Arseny.
But are we not one whole?
Of course we are one. But I still do not want it.
Arseny did not argue. But he did not look for anyone.
Ustina’s water broke during the twilight hour on November 27. She did not realize this immediately, only when her bed had become soaked. Arseny remade the bed with some linen while she sat over the chamber pot. He began shaking. When Ustina laid down again, he lit their two oil lamps and one splinter lamp. Ustina took him by the hand and sat him down alongside herself. Do not worry, sweetheart, everything will be fine. Arseny pressed his lips against her forehead and began crying. He felt a fear the likes of which he had never felt in his whole life. Ustina stroked the back of his head. Her contractions began an hour later. Her face glistened frightfully in the duskiness and he did not recognize that face, with its beads of sweat the size of peas. Other facial features were now showing through the usual ones. They were unsightly, puffy, and tragic. And the former Ustina was no longer there. It was if she had gone and another had come. Or not even come: this was the former Ustina, and she was continuing to leave. She was losing her perfection, drop by drop, becoming less and less perfect. As if she were becoming more embryonic. The thought that she might leave forever took Arseny’s breath away. He had never considered that. The gravity of that thought turned out to be great. It dragged him down and he slipped from the bench onto the floor. It was as if he heard the faraway knock of a head on wood. He saw how awkwardly Ustina was rising from the bench and bending toward him. He saw everything. He was conscious but could not move. If he had known the gravity of that same thought before, his fear of speaking about Ustina in the quarter would have seemed laughable to him. Arseny slowly sat: I will run to the quarter for a midwife, in the blink of an eye. It is already too late (Ustina was still stroking him), I cannot be left alone now, we will somehow figure this out, the only thing that disturbs me… I did not want to say, said Ustina, I was not sure… Arseny sat Ustina down on the bench. He covered her hand in kisses and her speech was still all separated into diffuse words that would not join up in his head. He knew that this horror had not seized him for no reason. Ustina touched her belly: I have not heard him since yesterday… The boy. I do not think he is moving. Arseny extended his palm toward her belly and cautiously ran it from top to bottom. His palm froze at the bottom of her belly. Arseny looked at Ustina, unblinking. He no longer felt life in her womb. The heart he had heard there all those months was no longer beating. The child was dead. Arseny helped her lie on her side and said, the boy is moving, calmly give birth. He sat on the edge of the bench and held Ustina by the hand. He changed the splinter lamp time after time. Poured more oil into the lamps. Ustina sat up in the middle of the night: the boy died, so why are you silent, you have been silent for several hours already. I am not silent, Arseny said (did he not?), from somewhere in the distance. How can I be silent? He darted to Christofer’s shelves, knocking over the chamber pot. He turned and saw the pot slowly rolling under the bench. How could I be silent? But I also cannot speak. Arseny got a tisane of the herb chernobyl, or wormwood. Drink some of this. What is it? Drink it. He raised her head and placed a mug to her lips. He heard loud—for the whole room to hear—swallows. This is the herb wormwood. It expels… What does it expel? Ustina choked and the tisane ran from her nose. The herb wormwood expels a dead fetus. Ustina began soundlessly weeping. Arseny took a small box down from the shelf and sprinkled the contents on the coals. A sharp, unpleasant smell spread through the room. What is that? Ustina asked. Sulfur. Its smell speeds up labor. A minute later, Ustina vomited. She had not eaten anything in a long time and vomited the tisane she had drunk. Ustina laid down again. And Arseny stroked her again. She felt the contractions start up again. Pain overcame her. What she felt was first a pain in her belly, then it spread to her entire body. It felt to her as if the pain from all the surrounding hamlets had gathered in one spot and entered her body. Because her—Ustina’s—sins had exceeded the sins of the entire area and eventually that had to be answered for. And Ustina began shrieking. And that shriek was a snarl. It frightened Arseny, and Arseny grabbed onto her wrist. He frightened even Ustina, but she could no longer not shriek. She shifted her leg, even as she continued lying on her side, and Arseny began holding her leg down. That leg bent and straightened: it was like an independent, vicious being that wanted to have nothing to do with the motionless Ustina. Arseny held her leg with both hands but still could not restrain it. Ustina turned abruptly and he saw, in a streak of falling light, feces glistening on her inner thigh. Ustina continued shrieking. Arseny could not understand if the baby was moving or not. He remembered other touching as he felt the hair around her female place under his hand, and he prayed to God to transfer Ustina’s pain to him, even to transfer only half the pain. In her moments of lucidity, Ustina thanked God that she had been granted to suffer for herself and for Arseny, so great was her love for him. Arseny most likely felt rather than saw when the baby’s head appeared in Ustina’s female place. By touch, the head was huge, and the despairing Arseny thought it would not be able to come out. The head was not coming out. The crown of the head appeared, again and again, for a short while, but then disappeared again. Arseny tried to work his fingers under it but his fingers could not get through. He even thought he had pushed the head in deeper as he tried to pull it out. He broke into a fever. The fever was unbearable and he stood up straight, throwing his shirt off in one tug. As before, the baby’s head was not visible. Ustina’s shrieks grew quieter but they were more frightening, since they had not lost their strength because she felt better. Ustina was falling into unconsciousness. Arseny saw she was leaving and began shrieking at her, to hold her back. He slapped her on her cheeks but Ustina’s head flopped lifelessly from side to side. Arseny threw her leg onto his shoulder and tried to enter her female place with his right hand. His hand did not really seem to be getting through, but his fingers sensed the baby. Top of the head. Neck. Shoulders. His fingers closed up at the place where the neck becomes the head. They moved toward the exit. There was a cracking sound. Arseny was no longer thinking about the baby. That the baby might be alive after all. He was thinking only of Ustina. He continued pulling the child by the head as he fought his rising nausea. He saw the lips of Ustina’s female place had ruptured and he heard her ghastly shriek. The baby was in Arseny’s hands. He did not begin crying when he came into the world. Arseny cut the umbilical cord with the knife he had readied. He slapped the baby. He heard that was what midwives do to induce the first breath. He slapped again. The baby was silent, as before. Arseny carefully laid him on a swaddling cloth and bent over Ustina. The contractions were continuing. Arseny knew this was the afterbirth coming out. He cleaned off the bloody mucus that came from Ustina, putting it into the chamber pot. An entire piece of linen was drenched in blood and he thought there was more blood than there should be at birth. He did not know how much there should be. He only saw that the bleeding had not stopped. He was frightened because the blood was flowing from the womb and he could not stanch it. He took some finely grated cinnabar in his fingers and went as deeply into Ustina’s female place as he could. He had heard from Christofer that grated cinnabar stops bleeding from wounds. But he did not see the wound and did not know the exact place from which the blood flowed. And the bleeding did not stop. More and more was soaking the bedding. Ustina lay, her eyes closed, and Arseny felt life abandoning her. Ustina, do not leave, Arseny shouted with such might that Elder Nikandr heard him at the monastery. The elder was standing in his cell, in prayer. I am afraid it is already useless to shout, said the elder (he was watching as the first snowflakes of the year floated in through the open door and, just as a draft blew out the candle, the moon broke out from behind ragged clouds and illuminated the doorway), which is why I will pray for your life to be preserved, O Arseny. I will pray for nothing else in the coming days, said the elder, latching the door. Utter silence settled into the house for a minute and Ustina opened her eyes in the midst of that silence: it is a shame, O Arseny, that I am leaving in this gloom and stench. And the wind once again began whistling outside the window. Ustina, do not go, Arseny shouted, my life ceases with your life. But Ustina could no longer hear him because her life had ceased. She was lying on her back and the leg that was bent at the knee was turned to the side. Her arm dangled from the bench. It was squeezing a corner of the linen. Her face was turned in Arseny’s direction and her open eyes looked at nothing. Arseny was lying on the floor alongside Ustina’s bench. His life was continuing, though that was not obvious. Arseny lay there for the rest of the night and the next day. Sometimes he would open his eyes, and he had strange dreams. Ustina and Christofer were leading him, as a little boy, by the hands through the forest. He thought he was flying when they lifted him over the hillocks. Ustina and Christofer laughed, for his sensations were not mysterious to them. Christofer kept bending for plants and placing them in a canvas bag. Ustina was not gathering anything, she simply slowed her pace and observed Christofer’s actions. Ustina was wearing a red men’s shirt that she was planning to give to Arseny at the appropriate time. And that is what she said: This shirt will be yours, you need only change your name. Since you have no objective possibility of being Ustina, name yourself Ustin. Is that a deal? Arseny looked up at Ustina. It’s a deal. He thought Ustina’s seriousness was ludicrous, but he did not show it. Of course it’s a deal. Christofer’s bag was already full. He still continued gathering plants, though, and they fell from his bag onto the path in time with his steps. The entire path, as far as the eye could see, was strewn with Christofer’s plants. But he kept gathering more. There was, in that activity, which looked pointless at first glance, a unique beauty and expansiveness. And a generosity that was indifferent to whether it was necessary or not: it came about only through the favor of the giver. When morning came, Arseny noticed the light but he did all he could not to wake. Even in his sleep, he was afraid to discover Ustina had died. A special morning horror seized him: the coming of a new day, without Ustina, was intolerable for him. He once again nourished himself with sleep until he was unconscious. Sleep streamed through Arseny’s veins and beat in his heart. With each minute, his sleep became deeper, because he feared waking up. Arseny’s sleep was so deep that his soul abandoned his body at times and floated under the ceiling. From that moderate height, it contemplated Arseny and Ustina, both of them lying there, and was surprised that Ustina’s soul, so beloved, was absent from the house. Upon seeing Death, Arseny’s soul said: I cannot abide your glory and I see your beauty is not of this world. Right then, Arseny’s soul noticed Ustina’s soul. Ustina’s soul was almost translucent and thus inconspicuous. Can it be that I also look like that? thought Arseny’s soul, wanting to touch Ustina’s soul. But a gesture of warning from Death stopped Arseny’s soul. Death already held Ustina’s soul by the hand and intended to lead her away. Leave her here, wept Arseny’s soul, she and I have become entwined. Get used to separation, said Death, it is painful, even if it is only temporary. Will we recognize each other in eternity? asked Arseny’s soul. That depends in large part on you, said Death: souls often harden during the course of life, and then they barely recognize anyone after death. If your love, O Arseny, is not false and does not fade with the passage of time, one might ask, why would you not recognize each other there, where there be not illness, nor sorrow, nor groaning, but where there shall be everlasting life? Death patted Ustina’s soul on the cheek. Ustina’s soul was small, almost childlike. Her response to the affectionate gesture was more likely fear than gratitude. This is how children respond to those who take them from their kin for an indefinite period: life (death) for them will, perhaps, not be bad, but it will be completely different from what they are used to, lacking the former structure, familiar events, and turns of speech. As they leave, they keep looking back and seeing their frightened reflections in the teary eyes of their kin.