They’re always hungry.
They’re eating me from the inside out. My life is food for those I once was. They’re gnawing at my flesh—and every month blood flows out, attesting that the feast continues, the ghosts are not sated, they are still unhappy.
Every month, following the phases of the moon, plus or minus a day, I receive the same letter: You aren’t going to have a child.
Dozing off, we hold hands. My Kolya, Kolya-Nikolai. I want to sleep facing you, but every month that gets harder. You might even say we’re sleeping for three, right? Only two months to go—and our bunny will be born. I wonder whether it’ll be a boy or a girl. The old women in the countryside always guessed—based on your walk, the shape of your belly, and other signs.
Just think, it’s been five years and I still can’t get used to the idea that my Berezovka’s gone. True, old Georgich’s great nephew wrote last month saying they were planning to build a state farm in its place. I don’t even know… I guess that’s good. The cows will moo again and the chickens will run around, as if there’d been no war. You just look at it and it’s all so horrible what happened; how are people supposed to live there?
I told Kolya about it, and he said, So the fact that we’re living in a dead soldier’s apartment doesn’t bother you? That’s the way it should be. New people come to take the place of dead fighters.
Except that we didn’t have any fighters in Berezovka. Foolish Lushka hid two partisans—and that was it.
Nina looks at the street, lined with two-story wooden houses; an invalid on a bench is talking to two old women. The sound from a gramophone reaches her from a neighbor’s window.
This is Moscow, the capital of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, the first worker and peasant state in the world. Marina Roshcha.
Nina gazes at her round belly and tries to persuade the boy or girl to hold on a little longer and not kick but lie quietly. The doctor said she could talk to him already. Or her?
Nina’s waiting for her husband. She sits home for days on end, afraid to go out. Even in the daytime they could attack her on the street, take her money away, or just strip her. They could jam a knife into her, or a bullet. There are an awful lot of thieves.
Kolya says it all started after the war. Before, Moscow was different. But now that people have been taught to kill, they just can’t stop.
Nina doesn’t know how to kill. She only knows how to hide so she won’t die.
For two months she hid in the forests, surviving on berries and occasionally digging up potatoes in Berezovka’s charred gardens. At the sound of an engine she would fall to the ground, perfectly still.
Nina loved walking in the forest before. Her mama would laugh and call her my little forest girl.
Her mother burned up along with the rest of the village.
Nina survived because that morning she’d gone out for mushrooms when the punitive expedition showed up. She hid out in the woods and didn’t emerge until it was all over.
Until everyone was dead.
Kolya says he wouldn’t have lasted a day in the forest. I’m afraid of wolves, he says. She laughs; he’s probably not afraid of anything.
Nina is afraid for him.
Afraid they’ll slit Kolya’s throat to take away his gun.
Afraid Kolya will stop someone to check his documents—and the person will start shooting.
Afraid Kolya will go after a thieves’ den—and be killed in a shootout.
Afraid Kolya will walk into a building—and into an ambush.
Nina says, Take care of yourself, for god’s sake. If only you could wait until the child is born!
But Kolya replies, I took an oath. If I don’t stop them they’re going to keep on killing. Pretty recently they butchered a whole family in Marina Roshcha. Even a tiny baby. Got away with 25,000 rubles.
A huge amount. Kolya’s salary is just 550. How long do you have to work to make that kind of money?
How old was the baby? Nina asks.
Still in its cradle, absolutely tiny, Kolya answers. They killed him so he wouldn’t cry.
Why is he telling her this? Nina wants to hear one more time how after she gives birth Kolya is going to take time off. No, Kolya doesn’t want to talk about leaving work, he answers Nina. Wait for us to catch them all, and then we’ll start living well and happily!
Nina doesn’t believe it. She remembers how people used to say, We’ll drive Fritz out and then we’ll start living well and happily. Where is that happiness now? Now it’s like seeing her husband off to the front line every single day.
Actually, it’s her own fault. She knew who she was marrying. From the very first second. Only Kolya was so handsome in his new uniform, blue with red trim. His cap with its sky-blue band. His boots. The moment she saw him at the dance, she fell in love. Kolya later admitted he’d gone into the police force because of the uniform; they issued it for free and he liked wearing it.
There was a star on the cap, and in the center a soldier with a rifle at the ready. Nina liked that a lot too.
At the time Nina had only just arrived and she was afraid of Moscow. It was awful! Everyone cutting in and out, sideways, down the streets—and the locals pushing their way past, swaggering, spitting at their feet, not afraid of anything. You could spot them right away: soft eight-panel caps, boxcalf boots, and white mufflers.
Later Kolya told her those were the thieves. Crooks.
Why can they walk down the street like that with no one arresting them? Nina asked.
Well, you can’t arrest someone for an eight-panel cap, Kolya laughed. Don’t worry, they won’t be walking around for long. Too bad they’ve abolished the vyshka . But that’s all right, if need be we’ll take matters into our own hands—and he winked.
Vyshka was short for capital punishment. Execution. It was abolished a year ago. Kolya says there’s no one to chop timber in Siberia.
Nina thinks, We’re going to have a child—and how are we going to live? It’s good the war’s over. But still, are we really going to spend our whole life in the city? No forest, no real river. You can go to the big park, people dive and swim from the pier—but Nina feels shy. She swims like a country girl, after all, and in Moscow everyone must have some special style.
Nina sits home waiting for her husband. Sits and waits, worried, troubled, and afraid. She can’t make heads or tails of what she reads, and they don’t have a gramophone, or even a radio speaker; it’s an old building. I don’t know whether there were any televisions back then, but Nina and Kolya definitely didn’t have one.
I’m sitting home too, and I’m waiting for Nikita too. I’m worried for him—even though I have no cause for worry. Nikita’s business is peaceful and he drives carefully. I’m still worried, though.
I’d like to say, I don’t know if I could deal with being in Nina’s place, but I can’t. She and I are one and the same, which means at some point I was sitting there like that, waiting for my husband to come home from work, bored, looking out the window, stroking my pregnant belly, afraid to go outside.
It’s weird to feel other people’s lives inside you. Snatches of other people’s thoughts and irrelevant facts suddenly surface in my memory. Edible berries. The best place to gather mushrooms. How to climb a tree and get settled so you don’t fall out at night.
And sometimes a tune gets stuck in my head and keeps ringing in my mind hour after hour. Sometimes I can even make out the words.