The bell finally rang. Galina Ivanovna decisively closed her book. As if by magic everyone’s drowsiness dissipated; the languid, intolerable heat outside the windows instantaneously metamorphosed into fine weather—excellent weather—as they all trembled with impatience and dashed to get out into the street to hop on chalked asphalt; skip rope by themselves, in pairs, or in whole groups; or just jump and kick about, like young foals or kid goats, somersaulting, pushing and shoving, and senselessly tearing about . . .
Toma was still sniffling as she collected her dirty textbooks when Tanya went up to her. Why she went up to her she herself did not know.
“What’s wrong?” Tanya asked.
Tanya was no sparrow and no longspur; she was something rare, like a royal lily or a big transparent dragonfly. And both of them knew perfectly well who was who . . .
But that day Toma was going through something huge and awful that Tanya could never go through, and that made them equal, and even, perhaps, elevated Toma above the rest of the world, and for that reason, this little girl who had never said anything about herself and who would never be of interest to anyone said: “My mom’s dying. I’m afraid to go home . . .”
“I’ll go with you,” Tanya offered fearlessly.
Were it yesterday, Toma would have been proud and rejoiced that Tanya was going home with her, but today she almost did not care . . .
They passed through the schoolyard, which rang with girlish shouts and shimmered with greenish gold, slipped through two courtyards, squeezed through a fence, and stopped at the entrance to the “partment.” That’s what Toma’s mother called their housing, which had been assigned before the war to her husband, who had perished in 1944. It was a former garage, with a regular door cut through the garage door. Toma stopped in her tracks at the entrance; Tanya resolutely pushed the door.
It was the stench that hit first. The place reeked of sour dampness, urine, and kerosene, all of it rotten, decayed, and deathly . . . Two pieces of rope strung across the room were draped with wet linen. At the far end, under a wide low window that looked out onto a brick wall, stood the enormous bed on which the whole family—mother, Toma, and her two younger brothers—slept, as atop a Russian stove.
At first it seemed that the bed was empty, but when her eyes grew accustomed to the semidarkness, Tanya could make out a tiny head in a thick headscarf. Next to the bed stood a basin filled with brown linen. The girls approached the bed, the source of the horrible smells.
“Momma, Mom,” Toma called.
A groan could be heard coming from the scarf.
“Maybe you want something to eat or to drink?” Toma asked, her voice full of tears.
There was no answer, not even a groan.
Toma pushed the smelly blanket to the side: the woman was lying on a red sheet. Tanya did not realize immediately that this was blood. The brown linen in the basin also was bloodied, but it had darkened with exposure to the air.
“She needs an ambulance,” Tanya said firmly.
“She won’t let me call an ambulance,” Toma whispered.
“But there’s a lot of blood; she’s hemorrhaging . . .” Tanya was surprised.
“Yeah, she’s hemorrhaging. She scraped herself out,” explained Toma. Not sure that Tanya would understand, she explained: “She brings guys here, then she scrapes herself out. She scraped too far this time.”
Toma sniffled. Tanya winced: bang, screech, crash . . . The walls started to float, her depth perception inverted, and a stinking abyss gaped before her . . . Life was caving in on her, and Tanya understood that from this moment she had left her former life behind her, forever . . .
“I’ll call my dad, that’s what . . .”
“That’s what you say. He won’t come here.”
“Wait . . . I’ll be back soon.”
Within five minutes Tanya had reached the apartment. Her mother was not at home, and Vasilisa opened the door.
“You gone berserk?”
Not answering, Tanya rushed to the phone to call Pavel Alekseevich. No one picked up for a long time, then a voice told her that he was in surgery.
“What happened?” Vasilisa Gavrilovna tried to get her to answer.
“Ah, you wouldn’t understand.” Tanya waved her off.
It seemed to her that she must not reveal this awful knowledge to anyone, because no matter whom she told, their life also would collapse and fall apart, as hers had. The secret had to be kept safe . . .
“I’ll be back soon,” she shouted from the threshold and, slamming the door, dashed down the staircase.
Tanya remembered only vaguely how, not waiting for the trolleybus, she ran to the metro station, rode to the Park Kultury station, then ran once again down long Pirogov Street. It seemed like her running was infinite and went on for many hours. At the security desk of her father’s clinic they stopped her.
“I’m going to see my dad, Pavel Alekseevich . . .”
They let her through immediately. She tore up the stairs to the second floor, pushed open the glass door, and there was her father, walking toward her, in a white surgical gown and round cap. A whole brood of doctors and students milled around him, but he walked ahead of them—taller and broader than them all, with a deep-rosy face and gray-tufted bushy eyebrows. He caught sight of Tanya. It seemed as if the air parted in front of him.
“What happened?”
“Toma Polosukhina’s mother is dying. She scraped herself out!” Tanya blurted.
“What? Who let you in here?” he roared. “Go downstairs, to the reception area! Wait for me there!”
Tanya flew downstairs, gulping down her tears.
For all his bravery, he had taken fright. One denunciation would be enough to turn his life to hell . . .
Three minutes later Pavel Alekseevich came downstairs to the reception area. Tanya rushed over to him.
“Daddy!”
He stopped her again with his gaze.
“Now explain calmly what happened to you.”
“Toma Polosukhina, Dad . . . We have to hurry . . . Her mother is dying . . .”
“Whose mother? Who?” Pavel Alekseevich asked coldly.
“Our janitor, Aunt Liza. They live in the garage, behind our house. She scraped herself out, she did . . . Dad, it’s terrible there . . . Dad, there’s so much blood . . .”
He removed his glasses and rubbed the ridge of his nose. The phrase “scraped herself out” from Tanya’s lips . . .
“Okay, listen . . . Go straight home.”
“How?”
“The same way you got here.”
Tanya could not believe her ears. It was as if her father had been replaced by someone else. He had never spoken to her with such an iron voice.
Slouched, she went outside . . .
Thirty minutes later Pavel walked into the Polosukhin garage. His assistant Vitya was with him. The driver of the ambulance they had arrived in did not get out.
As soon as he set eyes on her, Pavel Alekseevich sized up what had happened: there she was, his patient, the unfortunate object of his professional concern . . . A wartime widow or single mother, probably alcoholic, and probably slept around . . . He touched the little janitor’s wide cold hand and opened an eyelid with his finger. There was nothing to be done here. Near the bed stood the three kids, two little boys and a girl, who stared at him with big eyes.
“Where’s Toma?” Pavel Alekseevich asked.
“I’m Toma.”
Pavel Alekseevich looked at her closely: he had taken her at first for a seven-year-old, but now, having got a better look at her, he understood that she was indeed Tanya’s classmate.
“Toma, take the boys upstairs to apartment number twelve. In the big gray house. You know where?”
She nodded, but did not budge.
“Go, go. Vasilisa Gavrilovna will let you in. You tell her that Pavel Alekseevich sent you. Tell her to set the table. I’ll be there in a second.”
“Are you taking Mommy to the hospital?”