Somehow I managed to survive the hospital with the icy washes in the morning in a packed washroom full of big jars of urine tests; meals the very smell of which was enough to give you a miscarriage; the dusty windows facing the hospital morgue, and various other accessories that accompanied the emergence of a new life into the twenty-first century.
From the hospital I was sent to the Central Institute of Gynaecology, where the wives of diplomats and cosmonauts gave birth and also the string-pullers and pathological cases. I belonged to the third and fourth categories. Mother's friend who worked there warned me:
«Our place is better that an ordinary maternity home, of course, but if you feel it starting and don't call me, I can't answer for anything.»
The wards were either for six ordinary pregnant women or one diplomat-cosmonaut-general's wife. An orderly brought round a dirty trolley with some cadaver-coloured kasha for the ordinary patients and morsels of haute cuisine for the dip-cosm-gens. They were allowed to have visitors in the ward, while we had to make do with scribbled notes and hurried shouts down the phone or through the window. With his usual artistic flair my husband used to put on a white coat and make his way to the third floor, where I was waiting for him, hiding in the dark corridor. We embraced like conspiratorial revolutionaries, because towards the end of my pregnancy I became obsessed with the sense of being «insulted and humiliated», and together with the management I believed that meeting my own husband when I was about to give birth to his child was a flagrant infringement of the rules. And that if caught I deserved to be punished by immediate eviction and childbirth in an even less congenial place. So defenceless and insecure are pregnant women that they almost turn into zombies.
Tired of Russian food the black women fried bananas in sunflower oil on their little electric stoves, while the Koreans braised herring in milk. These mouth-watering smells, multiplied by a somewhat fevered imagination, produced racist moods. The only compensation was the folklore growing up in connection with the regular visits to a long-legged black woman by the three other wives of her diplomat husband.
The institute also differed from other establishments of its kind in the presence of a large number of black- and yellow-skinned students. I could be eating, sleeping or even dying when a crowd of them would burst into the ward and an energetic teacher with a bunch of case histories fished one of the latter out, waved her pointer in my direction and rattled:
«Interesting case, girl of nineteen, twins, rhesus-negative,» and twenty students felt my belly in turn, each trying to look like a hardbitten professional.
«What would happen if I gave birth in the middle of one of these demonstrations?» I asked.
«Don't worry, we're going to use you for our end-of-term practicals,» she replied.
One day lying on my back I passed out. The desk with smelling salts was at the other end of the corridor about half a bus stop away, so they revived me by slapping my pretty, as I thought, face. Coming to, I lay down on my back again and again lost consciousness. The assembled doctors cogitated for some time, before shrugging their shoulders and dispersing. I had to get through the night and was scared stiff of assuming a horizontal position again. So I just sat up until morning, clasping a pillow forlornly, and in the morning collapsed, went to sleep and lost consciousness again. This was the state in which an energetic professor brought there by a crowd of baffled doctors found me. Cursing like a trooper, she slapped me smartly on the face, sat me up in bed and addressed the assembled company:
«I can't think how you got through the institute? Who gave you your diplomas? Just take a look at her. Typical twins. Two heavy foetuses pressing on the vena cava. That's not pathology, it's the norm for anyone who calls themselves a specialist.» The doctors looked at the floor.
«And you, woman, just remember not to give birth on your back. That's not for you!»
«Then what should I give birth on?» A chill ran down my spine.
«On your side. French women always give birth on their side, and Koreans squatting on their heels.»
«But it says on my card in big red letters that I'm having a caesarian,» I said, beseechingly. «How can I have one on my side or squatting on my heels?»
«Give me your card,» the professor demanded. «Look here, woman. I'm crossing out caesarian and writing vena cava syndrome instead.»
«But the baby will never get throughmy narrow pelvis,» Iyelled.
«Who told you such rubbish? You've got a great pelvis. An ideal pelvis for twins. No caesarian! There's a fashion for them these days. Only if you're in labour for three days do you get your caesarian!» And out she went, fanning herself with my case history and clacking on her high heels. I was so confused by now that all I could do was weep and pray to the Almighty.
I would go up to the mirror and examine my heavy, naked stomach, which was moving and changing shape like Solaris, with the vague outlines of heads, knees and elbows. I could hardly grasp that these were my babies and thought of it all as a kind of abstract, intelligent mass that I talked to, complained about life to, and begged not to kick my innards when they were having their tussels. It must be said that even then my requests were not ignored. An animal instinct told me that I was no longer alone within the confines of my own skin, but intellectually I could only grasp that the responsibility for the survival of all three of us in the cogwheels of this medical machine was exclusively mine. And this made me shiver like an aspen leaf as the happy day approached, which I had been taught to regard as the day of judgement.
One night I woke up in a pool of water, the meaning of which had not been explained to me. All my experienced companions were fast asleep, and I was too embarrassed to wake them with my stupid questions. So I hobbled slowly towards the night desk. The nurse there was also fast asleep, after consuming her fair share of diluted spirit that evening. The water was still running down my legs.
«Please,» I shook her shoulder. «I need help.»
«Why can't you just settle down, woman, and go to sleep. It's night time,» the duty nurse grunted.
«I've got water running down me and I don't know what it means,» I said hesitantly.
«Always the same old thing… What time is it?»
«I don't know. I haven't got a watch.»
«Well, go and see then. It's for you, isn't it, not for me?»
Like an idiot, I hobbled to the clock at the other end of the corridor, worried about the water dripping onto the lino and about not letting the nurse get her sleep.
«Five o'clock,» I announced, when I got back.
«All right, let's go,» said the nurse, standing up lazily and setting off down the corridor.
«Where are we going?»
«To cloud cuckoo land… We're going to the pre-delivery room, woman, that's where.»
«The pre-delivery room?» My legs went all wobbly.
«Don't stand there like a post, woman. Get into the lift.»
I went into the lift on automatic pilot, but the nurse wheeled in a stretcher.
«Get on this.»
«Why?» I whispered.
«Those are the instructions. When your waters break, you must lie down.»
«Then why did you send me right up the corridor to see what time it was?»
«When you've got your baby, you can teach it what to do. But don't start teaching me. On seventy roubles a month I don't have to run around for all of you. At least the foreigners give us presents…»