The night made no response. Masha slid out of bed and, crouching on all fours so as not to crush the baby, crawled out of the ward through the open door. A midwife, very young, was asleep at her desk.
«Midwife, I'm giving birth,» Masha bellowed.
The midwife opened her eyes wide for a second, and then, apparently deciding she was having a dream about a person on all fours, calmed down and went back to sleep. Masha returned to the ward, struggled back onto the bed and there gave birth. At the cry of the newborn, the midwife came running at a trot and called the doctor. He came in and then ran out, quickly reappearing with his instruments.
«Blood type? Rhesus factor? All torn up. Be sewing all night…» carried darkly through Masha's confusion, then she caught the order, «Now make an effort!»
«I can't.»
«Why not?»
«I don't have the strength,» Masha grew bolder on seeing the expressions on the faces of the doctor and midwife. «Not so young anymore — I'm thirty.»
«I'm also thirty, but I certainly don't consider myself a senior citizen,» said the doctor.
«You don't have to give birth either.»
«On the contrary, I give birth fifteen times every other day,» he answered, injecting something into a vein on her right arm. «Remember, five minutes after four.»
«Who was born to me?»
«What do you mean, who? It's a girl.»
«Let me see her.»
«We'll go over to neonatal.»
They took Masha on a stretcher to the newborn ward and there pointed out her daughter, already swaddled.
«What a little terror,» Masha said with contentment.
«Spit 'n' image of her mother,» replied the midwife.
Masha was happily silent.
By seven the next morning she was lying in a ward with Alena. Both were disappointed that the births had turned out so perversely: Alena had a son, Masha a daughter. On the wall was a colorful admonition: TURN ON QUARTZ LAMP THREE TIMES DAILY TO SANITIZE WARD. Masha looked around for the quartz lamp and there it was, good. The sun was also doing its utmost to sanitize the ward for them, though September was nearing its end.
«Did I cradle my belly with my arms?» Alena asked.
«No, you just flapped them about like sails.»
«An old woman told me you shouldn't use your arms during labor, or the child will be unlucky.»
Masha remembered how she had been walking from the barracks to the hospital when she was stopped by Granny Anya and Granny Tanya, sitting on a bench: «Hey, want us to tell you what your baby's going to be?» Granny Anya had predicted a girl, while deaf Granny Tanya, not hearing a word her friend was saying, had nodded vigorously and said, yes, it would be a son.
«I've got a yen for some grapes,» Alena started up.
«Take some from my bag,» Masha said, gearing up for a detailed discussion of their birthing experiences.
But Alena was off on another tack. «I'm so hungry! If only I had some coffee and cookies or something. Boy, have I got some wonderful cookies at home, Yugoslavian. Taste just like cream. If only I had a Thermos right now, and the coffee was good and hot! My husband should be here any minute.»
«That sounds like him calling you now.»
Alena went to the window and a volley of exclamations and purring ensued. «So much for your Isolde,» she said to her husband in parting. «Now think up a name for your son.»
«Excellent, I'll think about it. Lena, where do we keep the money?»
«Where else? In the cream jug.»
«What's there won't do for a crib. Where's the rest?»
«Where it's needed, there it lies. Suppose you just go get me a care package and be sure you don't forget the cookies.»
Alena's husband, she had just been explaining, played bass guitar in a restaurant after work.
«I was having the time of my life,» Alena was saying, «but no, the doctors made me have a baby. After I went to work at the food warehouse in the grocery department, I gained forty-five pounds over the summer. Do you think I used to be like this? I weighed 103 pounds! There was no reason to start somebody. Why rent your body out to someone else for nine months, or even eight and a half — I'm not crazy! But it couldn't be helped. This extra weight landed me in pathology twice — the first time with such clods, you wouldn't believe — somebody brought them fried fish, imagine, store-bought, batter-fried fish, what a stench, you couldn't breathe — not only did it stink to high heaven, but to watch them eating it. What can be keeping my precious? He must want me to sic the dog on him today.»
Yet another new mother was brought into the ward, and she asked who it was that had given birth right in the pre-birthing area.
«I did,» Masha answered, «What of it?»
«The head doctor scolded your doctor so — he works three jobs, she says, and she got in trouble because of him — he shouldn't have fallen asleep.»
«What's your name? Rosa. You know, Rosa, many people have to work two jobs these days,» Alena said, nibbling her way through a package of Yugoslavian cookies.
When her husband arrived after dinner, Alena asked playfully: «So why are you coming empty handed? I've already gone through the provisions.»
«Lena, you've got to tell me where the money is — that guy Vaska from our band is about to leave, and I won't be able to get the crib without him.»
«Are you going to bring me a care package?»
«But what about the crib?»
«I told you.»
«But I'm telling you; I need that money.»
«Well, why are you getting ugly with me when I'm having such a tough time here?» Alena began to dab at her eyes.
Alena's husband went out to get a food package. Soon they brought two newborns into the ward to be nursed. They gave one to Alena and the other to Rosa. Masha saw the familiar specks before her eyes.
«Your baby is at risk for newborn trauma.»
«How's that?» Masha asked in a whisper.
«She's too excitable and cries too much. You know you had her in bed, after all — those are considered hazardous births. We're giving her a mixture of bromide and magnesium.»
It seemed to Masha that she was bobbing up and down, or more nearly, that she was being tossed up and down. The doctor's words returned to her: «Do objects move, or do you? It's better when it's the objects that move.»
But the lactation nurse had already brought decanters to express her milk into and had cautioned her, «Don't drink much the first two days. The milk doesn't really come in until the third day, so you can develop mastitis.»
Masha didn't know how mastitis and drinking were related but felt too shy to ask about it. And here were the pediatric nurses back again for their charges.
«Couldn't you just leave them with us until the next feeding,» said Rosa, regretfully parting with the precious bundle but, looking at Masha's face, she had second thoughts and lapsed into silence.
«Why should they leave them with us?» Alena remarked. «What if they did let us unbundle them and change their little didies, what then? Let's have some fun while we still can, huh? Masha, take less into your head and more into your stomach.»
Alena herself was constantly taking something into her stomach: a cutlet, a pie, an apple, a bunch of grapes, a chicken leg, followed by another apple. The thermos of coffee ran out along toward evening, and Alena was sadly obliged to get by on cream and juice before the last feeding at midnight. Masha put herself in Alena's place and mentally drank a mug of coffee. With a pie. She'd brought a bit of fruit with her, but that was all she'd managed to grab. Now she felt exhausted with nothing to fortify her after giving birth. It would be nice to have some chocolate, like Rosa. Rosa had been receiving an uninterrupted avalanche of relatives, and all of them had, for some reason, brought chocolates. At long last she shared them with Masha and Alena. Masha put herself in Rosa's place and did not refuse the treat. No one had come to see her on either the first day or the second. Masha's sister had taken a seasonal job on a farm, and her coworkers probably didn't even know about the birth yet. On the third day a friend from the barracks, Liza, arrived, bringing a hunk of semolina pudding and a can of pickled mushrooms. But Masha could not manage much glee over this since Liza had also brought some disturbing news: the night before, the Belyaevs had all but burned the kitchen down — they'd left a saucepan with some kasha cooking on a stove burner and gone out to party. Half the wall had burned out. Liza was sorry the whole barracks hadn't burned down, but Masha didn't know whether to be glad or distressed. The bits and pieces she had acquired over thirty years would be difficult to replace. Things were easy for the likes of Alena; that's why she could be so audacious.