All this happened seventeen years ago for the sole reason that I am a woman. And as long as there are people who do not regard this as a suitable subject for discussion it will happen each day to other women, because being a woman in this world is not something worthy of respect, even when you are doing the only thing that men cannot do.
NINA GORLANOVA
HOW LAKE JOLLY CAME ABOUT
Translated by Jane Chamberlain.
Phew, this place smelled like the barracks.
«Let's go on over to the third ward, Golubova,» the midwife called in a peremptory bass. «Your blood pressure's up. You need to sleep, and the windows in the even wards open on the highway.»
Catching up her abdomen in her arms, Masha left the reception area and made her way toward the first floor. There the midwife disappeared into parts unknown. Now, aside from the smell of the barracks, essences of bleach and urine were vying for dominance. Suddenly from nowhere came a waft of watermelon. Masha decided this was her blood pressure playing tricks (objects abruptly shifting position, specks before her eyes, and various other manifestations). Have to lie down. She found the third ward and opened the door. Four pregnant cows looked up at her gloomily. To be on the safe side she asked, «May I come in?»
«Wish you would,» replied one of the women.
«We have forty-five mosquitoes on the ceiling,» another explained, «and with you here that makes fewer per capita.»
Masha raised her eyes: plaster hung in shreds from the ceiling, swaying back and forth (again that mobility of objects, specks and all). Masha counted the beds and divided forty-five by five. It came out to nine drifters apiece. Before that, it had been eleven-point-something.
A woman whose face was all covered with red blotches fastidiously caught a mosquito in flight with her thumb and index finger. She squashed it and grabbed another. It's like a circus, Masha marveled and sat down on the unoccupied bed by the window. The man-eaters began to circle her face in a cloud, looking for something to bite. «I should swat a few,» she decided, but her efforts brought no success. The mosquitoes slowly but invariably flew away and hid in the scales of the peeling whitewash on the wall.
«Don't jump around, you'll have premature birth,» warned the woman with the blotches and caught another mosquito with her two fingers. It seemed to Masha that there was something superhuman in such adroitness. Are all these oddities because of my blood pressure? she wondered and quickly lay down.
«Alena,» someone called from the street.
«I won't go to him.» She waved a greeting through the window glass. «When my face is a blight, I keep out of sight.»
«Is the skin problem because of your pregnancy?» Masha asked.
«No, it's the mosquitoes.»
At that moment the door cracked open and a teapot appeared.
«Nobody here wants milk,» commanded the bass voice of the midwife.
«Oh, yes, we do,» the women chorused.
«But you'd better watch out: it's cold, you'll take a chill, you'll get sick,» the midwife warned loudly, coming onto the ward.
«Nonsense… who cares?» The women held out their glasses and the youngest, barely more than a girl, explained to Masha: «This is what they give us for afternoon tea.»
Masha also took a glass from the bedside table and held it out to the midwife. The latter poured far less than a glassful for each, repeating, «I had a little taste — boy, is it cold!» From under her smock peeped a printed cotton dress on which a triple repetition of the Ministry of Health logo erupted in black among green leaves.
«After an intensive struggle, milk was nevertheless received,» Alena said as she began sipping it, but suddenly she bellowed, holding her abdomen. «They come visiting, but after that the contractions start up — ooowff — again!»
«How long between?» asked Masha.
«Not for two weeks yet. They say such things happen at this stage. False labor.»
«But what's the interval between your contractions?»
Alena picked up her watch, grumbled that it was always stopping, and began to shake it ruthlessly as one might shake a thermometer. Masha was unable to sit calmly by and witness such abuse relating to her own area of expertise. She asked Alena for the watch and moved it rhythmically several times from left to right. The watch had stopped.
«Time to clean it with some alcohol.»
«See, all your watch wants is a drinkie-poo,» said one of the women, who had gulped her milk and was obviously warming to a favorite topic.
But Alena turned to Masha. «Do you work at the watch factory? In which section?»
«On the assembly line.»
«My husband's an engineer in the third section,» Alena began, but she was interrupted by another contraction.
Outside the window an earth-moving machine let out a roar: Drrra-bub-bub-bub.
«Our friend has returned a teensy bit late from his lunch break, hmmm?» remarked a woman with a braid whom Masha had privately christened Schoolmarm.
«Golubova!» The head of the maternity division energetically entered the ward and tried to outshout the noise of the earth-mover: «You're new here, so I'd better explain something. We haven't any water in the lavatory. Well, that's how it is. Some women have written to complain, but you see, we won't be in this building much longer — any day now we'll be moving into the new one.»
To confirm her words, the earth-mover began vigorously devouring the rocky earth to prepare it for the foundation of the new hospital.
«Strictly speaking, this building hasn't existed on paper for five years now. But one of the women wrote Moscow to complain. The commission is going to check on it one of these days,» the head doctor spread her hands helplessly. The lapel of her lab coat also bore the Ministry of Health logo. «Well, getting back to the present, ladies, how did we pass the night?» she asked.
«Just like the Kremlin Congress: applause swelling to ovation,» said Alena and clapped her hands, trying to dispatch some mosquitoes.
Drrra-bub-bub-bub, the earth-mover roared.
The head doctor seemed not to hear Alena, but she also made reference to the mosquitoes. «We sprayed the basement yesterday.»
«Do more good if they stretched some cheesecloth over the window,» Alena said.
«Anna Lvovna, still no sign of my test results, hmm?» asked the Schoolmarm with exaggerated pique.
«I got back results from two Nichiporenko tests, even though they only did one general,» the Girl-woman chimed in.
Masha stepped into the conversation, egged on by Alena's determination. «Your test results probably went to the new hospital, since this one no longer exists on paper.»
Drrra-bub-bub-bub.
The head doctor pranced out of the ward.