The tour began—which was especially delightful—in Odessa at that same International Sailors’ Club where Tanya had first seen Sergei. Here they celebrated the theoretical third anniversary of their union. There were no performances in Kurortnoe this year, but they hired a car for a day and went out there. Nothing had changed, and everything stood in its old place: the dusty whitewashed huts and the tomato plantations. They descended the precarious staircase to the colorless sea. Over those three years it had washed away even more shore, and now a dangerous hole gaped between the lower part of the staircase and the slope of the cliff.
“Not for the tipsy,” Tanya noted. Sergei offered his hand. She took his hand, even though she felt completely sure of her footing.
They went for a swim and decided to take a look at the dunes. The driver waited for them up above. A native Odessan, he was morose and gloomy and of few words, a walking refutation of common stereotypes about Odessans. He dropped them off at the sandbar, at the same place where three years ago Garik’s car had got stuck. Tanya and Sergei headed for the sandbar. It was a weekday, there were practically no people, no one was sunbathing near their memorial ruins, and only a few empty bottles lay scattered, half-covered with sand. It wasn’t as hot, as burning sticky hot as it had been then. A breeze blew in from the sea. It fluttered Tanya’s red sundress—she had put it on especially so that everything would be as it had been. They skinny-dipped. They lay down on the sand in the half-shade of the half-ruins . . . Tanya embraced Sergei, and he immediately responded. Now everything was different. They had matured and grown careful. They feared disturbing the infant that floated inside and had already begun his first stretches, thrashing from inside with a foot or a fist, and their lovemaking—pianissimo and legato—was of an entirely different variety from their first stormy and unconscious time. But both ways were good . . .
Placing Sergei’s hands on her stomach, she whispered in his ear.
“Our little boy is going to be big, not like Zhenka, the potbellied squirt . . .”
Then Sergei took a bottle of wine, two tomatoes, some eggs, and greens from his bag. The green onion was yellowed and mature. The bread crumbled. Tanya chewed a limp stalk, salted a crust of bread, and bit off a piece. The food would not go down. She drank two gulps of wine, and, after collecting the remains, they headed back to the car. As they walked, Tanya’s nose began to bleed. Sergei dampened the red sundress in the estuary’s water, and applied a rather warm compress. The blood stopped quickly. They had to hurry, because there was a performance in the evening.
They arrived an hour before it began. Tanya was nauseated, and her head and leg muscles ached. She wanted to put on her evening dress—the green one with the thin straps, a gay little number that stretched over her stomach—but at the last minute decided to stay in the room. She lay down and fell asleep immediately. But she quickly woke up from the pain. She placed her hands on her belly and asked: “So, how are you?”
The little boy did not answer. Apparently, everything was okay with him. She should probably take an aspirin. But, first of all, there was none, and second, Tanya did not really want to take any pills. Just before Sergei returned, the nosebleed began again.
“Maybe we should call a doctor?” Sergei began to worry.
Tanya puckered her lips: she did not want medical care. During her last pregnancy she had not even bothered to register at a clinic, had not had any of the prescribed tests done, and was even a bit proud to have avoided all the ado women today make over so natural and healthy an affair as having a baby . . . A bit later Garik and Tolya—already slightly drunk—dropped by with two bottles: an open bottle of wine and a sealed bottle of vodka. Tolya did not consider wine alcohol, while Garik had an acute sense of style: he thought only a hopeless alcoholic would drink vodka in the South in the summer. Winter was a different matter . . .
“I don’t like the way you look, old girl,” Garik announced from the threshold. “You’re not jumping or hopping, just bitter-bitter sobbing . . . Think what you will, but I’m calling an ambulance . . .”
He headed resolutely for the phone. The phone was dead.
Tanya stopped Garik.
“Let’s wait until morning . . . I’d like to drink some tea with lemon. And, to hell with it, bring me some aspirin . . .”
They brought Tanya her tea, and after taking the aspirin she felt better. She fell asleep. She woke up at four o’clock in the morning, vomiting. This time Sergei did not hesitate, went down to the reception desk, and called an ambulance.
An elderly Jewess quickly examined Tanya and said that she was taking her to the hospital right away. She spoke in vexation, even threateningly, and Tanya took a deep dislike to her, but her muscles were killing her, her head was pounding, and pain was spreading along the wall of her belly.
Tanya tried to object, but the old doctor would not listen to her, as if she were a senseless child, and turned instead to Sergei.
“Her liver has descended by almost more than two inches. I refuse to accept that kind of responsibility. What did you bring me out here for? To talk? If you want to get medical help, you have to hospitalize her immediately. Explain to your wife that she could lose the child.”
For some reason she did not take a liking to Tanya either and did not even look in her direction.
Tanya was taken away, and after that all hell seemed to break loose. A pipe broke in the club, closing it for technical reasons. Their performance was canceled. They spent the whole day with only their worries, and Tolya Aleksandrov got drunk as a result, which in and of itself was nothing terrible, but he got into a fight in some beer hall and was socked hard right in the eye. Sergei shagged back and forth to the hospital three times a day: they told him nothing, and for two days straight he was unable to track down the attending physician, who had either just left or not yet arrived. Then the weekend came, and there was no physician in attendance whatsoever, only a doctor on call, whom Sergei also was unable to track down: he was either eating dinner or had been summoned to care for a critical patient. All the staff knew perfectly well that he was on a drinking binge and not coming to work.
No one was allowed in the pathology section: it was quarantined. Everything stopped and was put on hold. Even the weather deteriorated, and it started to rain.
Tanya was getting sicker and sicker, and the moment had come when she herself began to get scared. She discovered a black-and-blue mark on her left forearm, and a similar bruise on her side. The back of her head continued to throb. Her belly hurt with an unusual burning metallic pain. Nurses came and took her temperature, felt her belly, and measured her blood pressure . . . Her temperature was normal.
Tanya felt worse and worse; on the third day she decided to summon her father.
She got paper and a pencil from her neighbor and wrote a note to Sergei asking him to call her father in Moscow and tell him to come. Notes were passed by tossing them out the window. On Saturday morning Sergei picked up Tanya’s scribbled missive: it was laconic and desperate. He immediately headed for the post office and sent Pavel Alekseevich a telegram.