Leibe places his hand in the warm and slippery opening, first two fingers, then his entire hand. The woman moans. He’s putting her on his hand as if she were a puppet. He extends his hand inside the uterus, groping at something delicate, taut, and filled: the amniotic sac. It’s good luck that it’s intact, because that means the fetus is still in the water and still moving around. And now I need…
He feels something poking, demanding and hard, at the base of his neck, between his shoulder blades, along his spine. He casts a sidelong glance over his shoulder: it’s the egg, blast it. He abruptly pushes it away with his shoulder: I told you, later! I need to lance the sac now. He bends his index finger and scratches the surface with a piercing motion. Warm fluid immediately surrounds his hand. It’s thick to the touch, the amniotic water. The sac has burst. Leibe’s fingers touch something velvety, slippery, and moving. The child. It’s time to take it out. So, my dear, where’s your little leg?
Something envelops Volf Karlovich from behind, softly yet strongly. He turns around. The egg, which has lifted its dome over the ground and turned its base toward Leibe, has attached itself to his back like a huge pulsating sucker that wants to imbibe. His hands are occupied so he can’t pick it off himself and toss it further away. He jerks his back and shoulders heavily, as if he’s shaking off a predatory wild animal that’s grasped the nape of his neck. A faint, low-pitched humming floats from the egg; something inside it is shouting, whistling, and whimpering. I have time, thinks Leibe. I have time.
So, where do we have that little foot? His fingers grope at a tiny paw with little splayed digits, four facing in one direction, the fifth facing in the other: it’s a small hand. Your foot, little one, give me your foot!
Leibe feels the egg pulling him in, harder with every second. Its warm, slippery edges envelop his shoulders and neck, settling on the back of his head. All he has to do is manage to pull out the child. When the baby is fully liberated from the mother’s womb, even the most muddle-headed nurses can finish the job by cutting the umbilical cord and seeing that the placenta has been expelled. He needs only to succeed in pulling the child out.
Another paw. All five little digits on this one are facing in the same direction. Bravo, little one! Thank you. Now let’s verify if this is the upper or lower leg. I certainly need the upper one, so you don’t catch your chin on the pubic symphysis when I pull you outside.
The edge of the egg is settling on Leibe’s forehead, creeping toward his eyes, and reaching his brows. He squeezes his eyes shut and works by feel after sensing the egg’s slippery mass engulf his eyes, forcing them shut. You stupid egg, you think my eyes are smarter than my hands?
Leibe’s fingers creep up along the baby’s tiny leg and reach a rounded little belly. Meaning this leg’s the lower one after all. Give me the other leg, little one.
The egg has now fully possessed Leibe’s head, after slipping itself on like a thick stocking. The professor feels warm slime in his mouth and a heavy, rotten smell in his nose; there’s an even chomping sound in his ears coming from the egg’s vibrating walls. He senses its edges creeping toward his neck. It’s decided to suffocate me, he belatedly understands, for betrayal.
His hand has already found the second leg, though. This is the one we need, the upper one. This is the one we’ll pull. Leibe places his thumb along the baby’s thigh and his four fingers around it. And now we’ll pull and pull. Come on, little one, work, turn around so the back of your head faces up. Come out…
The edges of the egg extend to the professor’s Adam’s apple and suddenly tense, filling with strength, and hardening as if they want to rip Leibe’s head from his body. Just a few seconds more…
One baby leg is already outside, tightly clasped in Leibe’s hand. The second is coming out on its own, right into the professor’s other hand. A sharp turn and a downward motion, pulling the baby out to the corners of the shoulder blades. One arm, a second arm. And a small head.
His throat feels tight, his eyes go dark, and some kind of light bulbs flare and extinguish in his brain, one after another. And that’s that, thinks Volf Karlovich, squeezing the baby’s slippery little body in his hands. I made it.
The newborn opens its mouth and screams for the first time, at the very moment the edges of the egg begin quickly and implacably tightening. The baby screams so hard that even the professor can hear it in the egg’s innards, though he’s weakened and half-choked. The scream swells, resounding and filling with strength, and then the egg suddenly bursts on Leibe’s head like an overfilled balloon. Shards of the shell, scraps of membrane, pieces of slime, and heavy spray fly everywhere. Volf Karlovich coughs and wheezes, inhaling air with a whistle. His lungs are breathing again, his eyes see, and his ears hear. After recovering his breath, he looks around, seeking out the remnants of the exploded egg, but there aren’t any.
A bright-pink baby is bellowing in his arms.
Later, Leibe goes down to the Angara. The inky sky to the east is tinged a delicate blue and pale pink. Dawn is near. A black wave splashes as quietly as a whisper. It’s delightfully empty and clear inside his head, and his body is light and young. His ears are like a wild animal’s, discerning the slightest sounds: the murmur of stones under his feet, a fish tail hitting somewhere in the middle of the river, the noise of spruces in the forest, and the high squeak of a bat. And all kinds of smells – a large body of water, wet grass, earth – swarm in his nostrils.
Leibe sits down by the water and bathes his hands. Either his sharpened vision is noticing or he’s imagining thick, dark blood washing from his fingers and going into the opaque water. He rubs his hands hard until they’re icy-white, until the joints crack. There’s a rustling close by, and it’s the commandant, sitting on the rocks next to him.
“So what happened there?” he asks.
“It turned out to be a boy!” Leibe says emphatically, raising a sharp, long finger.
Ignatov exhales with a gasp and pulls his peaked cap over his face.
“Imagine,” says Leibe, speaking cheerfully, quickly, and freely. “Baby Yuzuf! Just think about that, here, in this damned backwood – Zuleikha and Yuzuf. How about that, eh!”
He looks at the commandant’s hat-covered face and grunts, flustered.
“Tell me,” Ignatov says, taking off the hat and pointing his face into the faintest breath of a breeze. “Without you, would she have…? I mean, she wouldn’t…”
A wolverine yelps, muted, on the other shore.
“Do you often think about the ‘what ifs’?” Leibe shakes off his hands and an unseen sprinkle flies from his fingers into water as black as tar.
“No.”
“And that’s the right thing.” Leibe stands and looks at his own hands, so white in the darkness. “There’s only what there is. Only what there is.”
He walks back to the camp. He stops on the slope and turns to say, “We left you some soup. Eat.”