There Once Lived a Woman Who Tried to Kill Her Neighbor's Baby (10 page)

Once again laughter exploded behind her.

She turned and saw the drunks sitting around the table, laughing. They were paying no attention to her at all.

“I have nothing to hope for!” she suddenly blurted out. “You know that, Uncle Kornil.”

Time passed.

The stream of blood dried on the forehead of the man on the floor.

He was unshaven, filthy, skinny; a bad smell wafted up from him; he probably hadn’t stood up in days.

Empty bottles piled up in the wardrobe next to him.

Apparently this Kornil had already helped a number of people today by drinking vodka he couldn’t refuse.

He was waiting for her to pour him more.

The woman had warned that without a drink he wouldn’t say a thing.

Nadya poured out another glass of vodka.

Holding it up, she said: “You asked what I wanted: I want my son to be happy. That’s all I want.”

She stopped, imagining how this twisted Kornil would grant her wish—because happiness for her son consisted of leeching off her, drinking, partying, motorcycling.

“I want him to study. I want him to go back to school and study,” she said.

She stopped again, thinking he still had two years of school left, and in the meantime she’d have to slave away at three separate jobs to feed him. And she was tired.

“He should help me,” said Nadya. “He should get a job, earn some money, learn how to work hard.”

But then she remembered they were going to take him into the army soon, and he’d come back very quickly in a coffin, as he’d promised.

“Let him go to college,” Nadya concluded firmly. “And stay out of the army.”

Then she imagined six more years (one of school, five of college) of constant torment and sleepless nights before exams. She remembered how she got whenever Vova was late from school, how she cried and yelled at him when she got summoned to school when he failed his classes or lost his textbooks or got in a fight.

“All right,” Nadya said finally. “I want him to study, and work hard, and do what I say, and come home on time, and . . . no more of these friends of his! Especially the girls. And the drinking and partying. It’ll end in jail, that’s what. So he gets up early, leaves for work, comes back on time, cleans the house, helps me out . . .”

Then poor Nadya realized it would be best if her son were alive, healthy, a diligent student, a good worker, and never, ever at home.

When he was home it meant a racket, loud music, his stuff flung all over, phone conversations late into the night, eating standing up like a horse, accusations, demands for money followed by tears . . .

She thought of how much she’d had to endure from her one and only son, and said bitterly: “You call me a sinner, but when did I get a chance to sin? When? I don’t live for myself. I live only for him . . . only for him. All I think about is how to feed and clothe him. I saved every penny, and now there’s nothing left—he stole it all. Oh, and I’d like for him not to steal anymore, Uncle Kornil. No one in our family ever stole before. And I don’t want him drinking. His health is bad; he has allergies, chronic bronchitis. He should go to college. After that, he should get married to a nice girl. And live with her. God bless them. It’s bad enough with just him, but to have them both running around the house? And then a child? I’m tired; I’ve no strength left. The psychiatrist at the hospital said I should get treatment myself! But I’ll help them. As for me, as for me—when can I live my life? I think only of him. I cry myself to sleep every night. What kind of sinner can I be?”

She sat back down with the glass of vodka still full in her hand. So many tears streamed from her eyes that she couldn’t see anything around her.

“Work a miracle, Uncle Kornil,” she begged him. “I’m not a sinner. I have no sins on my soul. Help me. Do something. I don’t even know what anymore. I’m all confused.”

Uncle Kornil lay motionless; he was hardly breathing. Nadya raised the glass, gingerly, to his half-open mouth, figuring how best to pour it so she wouldn’t lose a single drop.

She’d have to lift his head a little—then it would work.

And it did, just as she’d planned it. With one hand she held up Uncle Kornil’s head, and with the other she began carefully moving the glass to his thin, desiccated lips.

All the while she was crying and pleading that her wishes be fulfilled, though it wasn’t clear anymore what they were.

“Now, now,” she said soothingly. “We’ll just drink this and everything will be fine.”

At that moment his eyes shot open, like a dead man’s—Nadya knew the look well, the one that stared hard into a dark corner as if all the truth of the world were there.

Nadya could see that her wishes were not coming true, that Kornil was going to die at any moment, without having done a thing.

The vodka was her last hope.

If she could just pour this last glass into him, maybe he would come alive for a moment. Then he could die if he wanted. He’d said himself that one more glass and he was done for.

But that glass: she hadn’t got it in yet!

How could this be? Uncle Kornil had promised!

He’d helped everyone else, but not her. Look at all those empty bottles in the wardrobe from all the people he’d helped.

At this point she heard the men behind her start speaking all at once.

“Ah, here’s Andreevna, Andreevna’s here. Open up for Andreevna! Kornil, look, your mom’s here. She sensed there was a bottle open, oh, she sensed it!” And they laughed.

A female profile flitted past the window outside.

Nadya froze in confusion, the glass still in her hand.

She had to finish this quickly, before Uncle Kornil’s mom appeared.

“It’s always like that,” thought Nadya bitterly. “Everyone else manages, but I can’t.”

She was still holding the heavy hand of the dying man, whose wide-open eyes continued to stare at the ceiling.

“Uncle Kornil!” Nadya called to him. “Uncle Kornil, here, drink this!”

His mouth was wide open now, his jaw hanging down loosely.

Someone was knocking at the door, and someone was already moving to open it.

“I just have to keep from spilling it,” Nadya thought hysterically, “otherwise it’s all over for me.”

She was convinced that if she could keep from spilling the vodka, all her wishes would come true. This life of torture would end. She raised Kornil’s head to a better angle.

“That’s good now,” she was saying, again bringing the glass to Kornil’s lips. “Now let’s drink. Yum.”

Just the way she’d fed her son milk when he was little.

This was in the countryside, where they’d lived when Vova was a baby, and her husband would come out on weekends.

Vovochka was always opening his mouth, with his two little teeth, so awkwardly, and the milk would spill.

Here the door slammed, and a loud drunk female voice called out, “What’re you drinking, my low-life friends?”

“It’s his mother,” Nadya thought in terror. “I didn’t make it. I’m too late.”

The glass trembled in her hand.

The mother was going to come over and put an end to this.

“Andreevna, you better start collecting for a coffin,” someone said. “Your Kornil is being fed his last one over there.”

“What’s he need a coffin for?” the woman answered heartily. “We’ll sell his body to the med school. First round’s on him!”

She was met with a roar of approving laughter.

“You, over there—Nadya, right?” said the woman without looking over. “Keep working on that bastard. Go ahead. He’ll die, oh he’ll die all right. Just open his trap and shove that last one down.”

“How does she know my name?” thought Nadya, terrified.

“Give it a good push,” the woman went on. “Finish him off. He knew you’d come, he did. He’s had enough of it here. Everyone loves him; they all bring him something to drink. He can’t refuse—there would be hurt feelings, and he just can’t hurt anyone’s feelings. He’s like that.”

The men all brayed happily. Nadya was afraid to turn around. From what she could tell, the woman had sat down at the table, and they were pouring her a glass. “He was just waiting for her,” someone said. “ ‘My cup will runneth over,’ he said.”

Nadya was no longer thinking. Both her hands shook.

“Go ahead, ask him—he’ll do everything!” yelled the mother. “He did everything for everyone. He worked miracles. He gave sight to the blind. He healed the lame. He even brought this one Jew, Lazar Moiseivich, back from the dead. This Lazar’s family had already started suing one another over the inheritance—that’s how dead he was! He was resurrected, and they all got mad at Kornil. ‘Who asked you?’ they
said. Actually, it was his second wife who asked him to do it. She’d lived with him after his first wife died, raised his children. When he died, the children sued her right away for the apartment, said she should get out or pay them off—there were two of them. So this wife found Kornil, put two bottles before him. Lazar was resurrected; he didn’t know what hit him.

“Then Kornil raised a legless man. His mother came here, said she didn’t know what to do, her son was rotting away before her eyes. So Kornil gives him legs, and what does the son do? He starts drinking just like before, chasing his mother around the apartment with a knife in his hand. She runs back here and says: Put him down again!”

The men all laughed terribly at that one.

The mother took a shot of vodka, coughed, and went on.

“Whatever you wish for, that’s what will happen, Nadya—believe me. Give him the drink—that’s what you’re here for. He chose you to do it. Remember the woman at the post office? That was me. He told me: Nadya is ready for anything. She has what it takes. She needs to resolve the Vova situation once and for all. Now, don’t you worry, Nadya. You have a tough time with your son—well, my son has a tough time, too. He really shouldn’t have come down this time—he really shouldn’t. And now he’s waiting for someone to see him off. He can’t just go back himself—that’s not allowed. He needs someone to help him.”

Nadya wasn’t listening. She looked at Uncle Kornil, whose head still lay on her arm, and nodded, carefully setting the glass of vodka down on the towel.

“No offense,” she said finally, “but we’ll manage on our own. Your son here is very sick—you should get him to a hospital. And not give him anything more to drink. Really, what’s the matter with you? You’re his mother, after all. He’s dying as we speak. My husband died on my arm—I know what I’m talking about.” And, to punctuate this speech, she gave the glass a little poke, and it tottered and fell. The vodka spilled out on the floor, and everything was suddenly enshrouded in fog.

Nadya found herself on the street, walking home. She felt a little lightheaded. Her mind was clear and free of all burdens.

She walked lightly and happily, not crying, not thinking about the future, not worrying about anything.

As though she’d passed the hardest test of her life.

ONE TIME WHILE VACATIONING BY THE SEA I RAN INTO MY friend Nina, a single mother in middle age. Nina invited me to her house, and there I saw strange things. The entrance, for example, had cathedral ceilings and a marble stairwell. Then the apartment itself—dominated by dark wood and vermilion tapestries, its floor covered with a plush gray carpet. It looked magnificent, like something you’d see photographed in the magazine
L’Art de Decoration
, and the bath especially was impressive, the floor carpeted in gray, with mirrors and a light blue china wash basin—it was simply a dream! I could hardly believe my eyes. Meanwhile, Nina, who had kept her look of eternal suffering and passivity, led me into the bedroom with its three open doors, a little dark but still very elegant, with a surprising number of unmade beds. “Did you get married? ” I asked Nina, but she just walked out one of the doors with a look of concern, like a busy housewife but somehow not touching anything. The bedroom was glorious—like in a hotel—with enormous closets, twelve feet long, filled with gowns. How did all these riches fall on poor
Nina, who’d never even had decent underwear, who had one ancient coat for every season and three dresses, all told? She got married—but here? This wild place where no one lives, where people just wait in the seaside emptiness for summer, when they can let their rooms to strangers? But how could she rent this house with its stairwells, corridors, arches . . . and what’s more, I happened to open a wrong door and found myself in a white-marble courtyard, where a teacher was leading schoolkids on a field trip.

All right, so she got married, but it turned out she’d also traded her small one-room apartment in Moscow, where she’d been getting by with her teenage son, for this glorious apartment, with all the furniture and even bedsheets! Which is to say, the owners didn’t touch anything—they just left—except in fact they hadn’t left at all, which is why Nina looked so glum, I think. The extra beds in the room were for the landlady and her son, a quiet young fisherman with puffy cheeks. The landlady still bustled around the house, and in fact we sat down to dinner under her patronage. She behaved exactly as if she were a quiet and docile mother-in-law and Nina her honored daughter, for whom she bent and toiled in the house, all the while maintaining her position as the head of the household and not allowing Nina close to anything, in fact.