He used his mighty figure to block their view of the bed and the miserable woman who was no longer.
“Go, go. We’ll do what needs to be done . . .”
The children left.
“Well, we’ve gotten ourselves into a mess . . . She has to be taken to the morgue . . . ,” the assistant half-implored.
“No, Vitya. We can’t take her to the morgue. I’m going to send Vasilisa Gavrilovna down here. She’ll be the one to call the ambulance and the militia . . . We were never here . . .” Pavel frowned. “You know yourself I’d take her if she were still alive . . .”
Vitya knew it all too well. Actually, all doctors knew how close this came to the criminal code.
Liza the janitor’s death sent shock waves up and down the baptized population of the odd-numbered side of Novoslobodskaya Street all the way down to Savelovsky Station, raising a storm of passions and arguments that shattered friendships forever. After Vasilisa Gavrilovna called the ambulance and the militia, and the dead woman’s contorted body was taken to the forensics morgue for an autopsy, scandal arose on two fronts—one having to do with housing, the other with medicine.
There were three significant contenders for the “partment.” The first—Kostikov, the house manager—dreamed of getting the place for his own sister and her daughter, who had been living in his quarters for more than two years while she waited to get an apartment through the factory where she worked, but with little hope. The day of the death Kostikov took advantage of the opportunity to sign his sister up for the late Liza’s job, and now he was sure the living space would not get away from them. The second contender was the electrician from the house management office, Kostya Sichkin, who was tired of living in a seven-by-four-foot room with three children and a fourth already on the way. There was one more contender, also not an outsider, a militiaman from the local beat, Kurennoy, who had the largest room in the dormitory, but was planning to get married, and waited in combat readiness. Other minor folk from the nearby barracks also would not have objected to an upgrade, but they had no chances whatsoever.
On the medical front things were more serious. The autopsy showed that Liza the janitor had died of hemorrhaging induced when the wall of her uterus had been perforated and some arm of ill-fated underground medicine, using an unidentified instrument, had pulled half of her intestine through the unintended puncture . . .
According to the criminal code this unsuccessful intervention was worth three to ten years, depending on the qualifications of the person performing the abortion: in the case of a lethal outcome doctors were given ten years, twice as many as an amateur. Which had a certain justice.
The whole neighborhood knew the names of the two women who practiced this impious trade: Granny Shura Zudina and the Moldavian woman Dora Gergel. The former was simpler and cheaper. She gave an injection and inserted a catheter. Usually it worked. Sometimes, with particularly muscular women or those who had never given birth, it did not. In which case Granny Shura shrugged and did not take any money.
Dora was a trained medic, and did everything by the book, with no misfires. She had moved to Moscow from Kishinev after the war. A swarthy beauty with fiery eyes—her suspicious but undiscerning neighbors took her for a Jew. She had a knack for anything she tried: although already pregnant at the time, she managed to marry a major; she was a crafty housekeeper—in Moscow, a new place for her, she quickly figured out what was to be had where, even when food was still being rationed. She got a job as a nurse in a hospital, although her nursing diploma was counterfeit, not even written in Russian. She performed real abortions at the patient’s home, with painkillers even, but she was expensive. Richer people went to her, and Liza could hardly have afforded her. So the neighborhood concluded with no uncertainty that the whole mess was Zudina’s doing.
The next day, an investigator showed up in the courtyard. The “partment” was searched, but no instruments or medications were found.
“Yeah, right, like the idiots are going to leave a trail of evidence,” the yard joked. The inspector, a young kid with a thin neck, interrogated the neighbor women and blushed. No one said anything. But, as always, an informer turned up. Zudina’s neighbor from the other side of the partition, Nastya-the-Rake, did not hold out, because she was a born champion of the truth.
“I won’t say what I don’t know. In Liza’s case I didn’t myself see her do it, but she’s stuck it in others, and it works real good,” she whispered directly in the investigator’s ear.
“Did you yourself ever use her?” the inspector inquired.
“God forbid, I haven’t had the need for a long time,” the Rake pleaded.
“So how do you know?”
Here the Rake led him over to the plywood partition, tapped it with her nail, and immediately heard a reply.
“Whattcha need, Nastya?”
“Nothin’,” the Rake answered zestily, then whispered directly into the investigator’s ear: “You can hear everything, down to the last kopeck. Around here you can’t sigh or fart without your neighbors knowing . . .”
The inspector wrote it all down in his notebook and left: now he had a lead.
The atmosphere of investigation, bickering, and hostility was so strong it penetrated even Pavel Alekseevich’s peaceful abode. It all started the evening of the day Lizaveta was taken away. The Polosukhin children were put to bed in Tanya’s room, and she moved to her parents’ bedroom.
Only the adults gathered for a late dinner—Pavel Alekseevich, Elena, and Vasilisa Gavrilovna, who, though reluctantly, occasionally sat down at the table with them. For this to happen the occasion had to be special—a holiday or some event, like today’s. She preferred to eat in her room, in peace and with her prayers.
Having finished his food, Pavel Alekseevich pushed aside his plate, turned to Elena, and said: “Now do you understand why I’ve spent so many years trying to legalize this?”
“Legalize what?” Elena, sunk in her own thoughts, asked. Polosukhina’s children gave her no peace.
“Legalize abortions.”
Vasilisa almost dropped the teapot: her world was shattered. Pavel Alekseevich, whom she so esteemed, was, it turns out, on the side of criminals and murderers, working on their behalf, on behalf of their shameless freedom. And he was a murderer himself . . . But that was impossible to imagine . . . How could it be?
Pavel Alekseevich confirmed it and started to explain. He was good at that.
Vasilisa clenched her dark lips and said nothing. She did not drink her tea, and pushed her cup aside, but she did not go to her room. She just sat there, silent, not raising her eyes.
“It’s horrible, horrible!” Elena lowered her head to her hands.
“What’s horrible?” Pavel Alekseevich was irritated.
“It’s all horrible. That Lizaveta died. And what you’re saying. No, no, I’ll never go along with it. It’s legalized infanticide. It’s a crime worse than murdering an adult. A defenseless little . . . How can they make that legal?”
“Here we go: Tolstoyism, vegetarianism, temperance . . .”
She unexpectedly took offense on behalf of Tolstoyism.
“What does vegetarianism have to do with it? That’s not what Tolstoy meant. Three of those creatures are sleeping in Tanya’s room. If abortions were legal, they too would have been murdered. Lizaveta didn’t have much need for them.”
“Are you feeble minded, Elena? Perhaps they wouldn’t exist. Then there wouldn’t be three unfortunate orphans doomed to poverty, hunger, and prison.”
For the first time in ten years a serious quarrel was setting in between them.
“Pasha, what are you saying?” Elena was horrified. “How can you say such things? Maybe I am feeble minded, but the mind has nothing to do with this. They’re killing their own children. How can that be allowed?”