"No, Galina said. It cannot be. I don't believe you."
The bird cawed once and hopped off the window ledge. It fell like a stone until it almost hit the dead asphalt below; then it took wing and soared higher, obscuring the sun in the pale September sky.
The sounds intruded back, and Galina winced and pressed her fingers-blistered on her left hand but untouched on the right-to her ears, and turned around.
Her mother sat on the floor, the wailing baby cradled in the sagging folds of her housecoat, and cried. Her voice rose to a high-pitched scream, oddly matching that of the newborn infant, as the realization of her loss enveloped her. Masha, Masha! she cried, and the birds outside answered in angry shouts and caws.
"She's gone, Mom, Galina said. She never mentioned the jackdaw. She didn't want to go back to the hospital.
They called it the golden autumn, and that Monday morning Galina could see why. The poplars lining the road on her way to the bus station turned yellow overnight, shining like the gilded onions of the churches in the old city in the slanted rays of the morning sun. The air had just a hint of the autumnal bitter taste to it, and Galina smiled, squinting at the bright colors of the trees and the sky until she remembered.
She did not want to go to work today, not with the misery back home; she felt like a traitor this morning, leaving her mother, who looked startlingly frail, with the bundled baby, among the diapers that needed washing and bottles of formula.
"Just go, her mother had said, her ire visible. If you lose your job, what am I going to do with you then?"
Galina realized then that her mother was angry that it was Masha who disappeared-the youngest one, the normal one. She got ready for work.
She worked in the center of the city, in the old part of it, where everything was historical and beautiful. Even there, though, new life in the shape of kiosks had sprung up on every corner-they sold magazines, cigarettes, books, Tampax, pins, film, booze, eyeglasses, school supplies, handbags and T-shirts, and were manned by loud people who wouldn't leave the passersby alone.
To get to her place of employment, a small science publisher, she had to navigate the underground crossing that used to be so wide and free but was now crammed with endless kiosks and beggars. In all her life Galina hadn't seen beggars until recently; she wondered where they came from, and left whatever money was in her pockets in paper cups extended to her by thin hands, on the homemade trolleys-board and four wheels taken off a child's abandoned toy truck-that carted about old men with no legs, dressed in torn, disintegrating army fatigues, as if they had existed like this since 1945. Some of the cripples were younger, and she guessed them for Afghan vets; she avoided meeting their eyes, as if the things they'd seen could pour into hers somehow, travel to her heart, and freeze it forever. She averted her face and tossed the loose change blindly, in a vain effort to assuage her guilt.
She emerged on the other side of Tverskaya and ran to the two-storied old building in the Gazetniy Pereulok. The trees turned yellow and orange, and the first fallen leaves rustled under her sneakers. She could've made this trek with her eyes closed-she had worked for this publisher for the last three years, translating medical articles from English and German. She congratulated herself on having a job. Nowadays, there was simply no certainty in finding gainful employment. She frowned when she perused help-wanted ads in the newspapers-every time anyone mentioned foreign language skills, they also required that the owner of said skills doubled as a secretary and looked good in a miniskirt. It seemed that every day hundreds of new businesses sprang out of nowhere, like the beggars in the subways, and none of them were interested in a translator, just a good-looking entertainer for the eventual foreign investors. Yes, she was lucky to have a job; it didn't pay much, but she enjoyed it and, as a bonus, kept her dignity-a hard thing to find nowadays.
The cool entrance greeted her, the old stone breathing with the conserved cold of winters long past.
"Galka! the voice of the senior editor named Velikanov, a man of gigantic stature matching his name, boomed. Do you know what time it is?"
"Yes, she said. My sister gave birth last night, and now she's missing."
"Wrong order, huh? Velikanov grinned through his beard. He noticed her face and the grin faded back into the tangles of his facial vegetation. God, you're serious. I'm so sorry. What are you doing at work then?"
She shrugged. There's nothing else to do. I notified the police. My mom is taking care of the baby. I get to earn the money, I guess."
Velikanov patted her shoulder, careful not to crush it in his meaty paw. I'm sorry. I know you were close. How much younger was-I mean, is she now?"
"Ten years, Galina said.
Velikanov nodded and ushered her through the office to the kitchenette, where the kettle boiled perpetually. Have some tea. Three sugars?"
She nodded and blew on the hot surface of the cup Velikanov handed to her. Thanks. Anything urgent today?"
"Just a couple of news items from Lancet, he said. Nothing urgent. You can take the afternoon off if you want."
"Thank you, Galina said. She wanted to add something else, to say that she was lucky to have Velikanov as her boss, but thought better of it. The giant man always looked at her with such helpless eyes that she worried that any kind word would make it worse. What was that story she used to love as a kid?
She sat at her desk and riffled the papers in a feeble ritual. She spotted the Lancet articles-two pages each, no big deal-and put them on top of her pile. She opened her notebook and thought of the story.
A children's book, large format, thin, with pictures on every page. Pictures of two children-a boy and a girl-cowering before an old, deformed woman with a large nose and a cruel cane in her hand. Then there were talking rabbits and fairies, and for the life of her she could not remember the plot; but she remembered the ending. On the last page, the old ugly woman stood transformed to her former youth and beauty, smiling at the eager children, as she explained that there had been a curse on her. She had been transmogrified into an ugly misshapen creature, and if she as much as breathed a kind word to them or offered the barest of comforts, the children would have turned to stone.
Galina raised the pages to her face to hide her tears from her coworkers-their desks crowded close together in this old room; Galina was the nearest to a large radiator by the window, so she would always be warm. Another one of Ve-likanov's many kindnesses that she could not return-she was afraid that if she did, his heart would be eventually turned to stone and be shattered by a false hope.
The picture stood in her mind and refused to be chased away by a valiant attempt to concentrate on the English words in front of her. When she was little, that story made so much sense-she was the only child, but the rest fit perfectly. Her haggard, angry mother who wanted to love her but was prohibited to do so by a curse, a mortal fear of expressing her love because it could kill.
When Masha was born, the curse theory went out of the window-their mother doted on the newborn, and nobody turned into stone, not even Galina. As Masha grew, Galina also learned to appreciate the affection her sister showed and that she missed so badly now. She swallowed her tears again, as she thought of her mother with Masha's baby in her lap, crying and rocking, and no radiant Masha around to comfort all of them.