Motya shoved her bare feet into felt boots, threw on a shawl and an old overcoat of her mistress’s, and ran to the lift. At the bottom she ran through the large vestibule with its red carpeting, squeezed through the massive door out to the street, and ran around the corner of the house. The snow was loose and level and sparkling prettily.
“Perhaps she’s been covered over already,” she thought, and walked along, kicking through the thick snow under the windows of their apartment with her boots. The little girl wasn’t there. Then she went back up and woke the master and mistress.
Masha was out on the balustrade for a further hour and a half before she was found. She was unconscious but hadn’t a scratch on her. Pyotr Stepanovich went out to the ambulance with the girl tucked up in blankets and then came back to his apartment. Vera Ivanovna sat throughout that hour and a half on the edge of her bed, not moving an inch or saying a word. After Masha had been taken away, the general led Vera Ivanovna into his office, sat her in the cold leather armchair and, taking her firmly by the shoulders, gave her a good shake: “Tell me what happened!”
Vera Ivanovna smiled an out-of-place smile. “She was behind it all. She killed my Tanya.”
“What?” Pyotr Stepanovich demanded, guessing at last that his wife was mad.
“She’s a little murderess, she was behind it all, she . . .”
The next ambulance took Vera Ivanovna away. The general didn’t wait for morning but called it immediately. That night he went down in the lift for a second time to liaise with the emergency services. Coming back up, he vowed not to spend another day under the same roof as his wife.
In the morning he rang Alexandra Georgievna, told her very tersely what had happened, and asked her to take Masha to live with her as soon as she was discharged from the hospital. The next day the general went off on a tour of inspection to Vladivostok.
Masha saw her grandmother only once more after that, at her funeral. Pyotr Stepanovich was as good as his word: Vera Ivanovna lived out the eight years of life remaining to her in a privileged clinic far from all her antique furniture, porcelain, and crystal. Masha did not recognize the dead, wizened old woman with sparse grey hair as the fine-looking Grandma Vera with the splendid mane who used to come in a cherry-red dressing gown into her room when she was seven years old to utter whispered curses at her in the night.
A week after this disaster with a relatively happy ending, the nondescript, provincial-looking Jewish Dr. Feldman pushed Alexandra Georgievna into a lumber room under the stairs which was piled up with old hospital beds, bundles of torn laundry, and boxes, and sat her down on one rickety stool and himself on another with three legs. An old knitted shirt with a stretched collar and a badly knotted tie looked out of the opening of his hospital coat. Even his bald head seemed untidy, with irregularly sized little clumps of hair resembling fur about to molt.
He folded his Hippocratic hands professionally in front of him and began: “Alexandra Georgievna, if I’m not mistaken. It’s completely impossible to speak privately here. This is the only place we won’t be interrupted. I have something serious to say to you. I want you to understand that the mental health of this child is entirely in your hands. The girl has been so profoundly traumatized that it is difficult to foresee the remoter consequences. I am quite sure many of my colleagues would insist that she become an inpatient and be given serious drug-based treatment. That may not yet be necessary: there’s no way of establishing a clear prognosis, but I think that there is a chance of burying the whole sorry business.” He looked awkwardly aware of having used an inappropriate expression. “I mean that the mind has formidable defense mechanisms, and perhaps these will become operative here. Fortunately, Masha is not fully aware of what happened. She hadn’t consciously formulated the intention of committing suicide, and is not aware of having attempted it. What happened to her may be regarded rather as a reflex, like when someone quickly pulls back their hand when they’ve taken hold of something hot. I have spoken to Masha a lot. She is reluctant to open up, but when she does, she talks sincerely, honestly, and you know”—he abandoned his quasi-scientific discourse—“she is an enchanting little girl, so clever and bright eyed, and somehow with very good moral instincts. A delightful child.” His face lightened and he even became likable.
“Just like someone else I know,” darted through Alexandra’s mind.
“Some people are crippled by suffering, but others, you know, are somehow raised up by it. What she needs right now is a hothouse, an incubator. I would take her out of school this year in order, you know, to rule out mischance: a bad teacher, unkind children. It would be better to keep her at home until next year; and make sure she has a very, very protective environment.” He became animated. “And absolutely no further contact with that grandmother! None at all. She has instilled a guilt complex in her for the death of her parents, which is something not every adult could cope with. All of this can be squeezed out. Try to avoid reminding her about this period, and it would also be best not to remind her about her parents. Here is my telephone number. Call me.” He took out a slip of paper he had already prepared. “I am not going to abandon Masha. I shall be keeping an eye on her. Thank you, that’s all I needed to say.”
Alexandra had not expected Masha to be allowed out so soon. Her belongings, moved for the second time in half a year to a new home by the general’s chauffeur, hadn’t yet been sorted and stood there together with the no longer needed suitcase and skis. Alexandra went home immediately after her talk with the doctor to get Masha’s things, and the same day took her back to Uspensky Lane.
It was the middle of January. The New Year’s tree had not yet been taken down, the table was still moved to one side for the holiday, and they even had a visitor: Alexandra’s oldest daughter Lidia, who was pregnant. The food was nothing special, not fare for a celebration: a pickled salad, rissoles with macaroni, and some slightly burned biscuits which Nike had cooked in a rush just before Masha arrived.
But then again, as far as the love prescribed by the doctor was concerned, things could not have been better: Alexandra’s heart was simply overflowing with prayerful gratitude that Masha’s life had been spared by a miracle and that she was well and living in her home. None of her own children seemed to her at that moment as dearly loved as this fragile, grey-eyed little girl who didn’t seem at all like the rest of them.
Nike cuddled her and hugged her and did everything she could think of to keep her amused. Masha sat at the table for a time and then moved to a little child’s wicker armchair which Ivan Isaevich had brought from somewhere a few days before her arrivaclass="underline" he had spent two days mending a broken arm and fixing a piece of red material and a fringe to the seat.
Made drowsy by her pregnancy, Lidia soon left. She and her husband were living in Ivan Isaevich’s old room now.
Although the whole family had been looking forward to Masha’s arrival, her timing was unexpected, and the result was that they had nowhere for her to sleep. Nike went off to sleep in her mother’s bed, and Masha was put in Nike’s little boat, which she had almost grown out of over the summer. Masha’s eyes were drooping, but when they put her to bed, sleep departed. She lay there with her eyes open and thought about going to the winter camp with Nike next year.
Having washed the dishes and put them away, Alexandra came over and sat down beside the little girl.
“Can I hold your hand?” Masha asked her.
Alexandra took Masha’s hand, and she was soon asleep. But when Alexandra tried to carefully free her hand, Masha opened her eyes and said, “Can I hold your hand?”
Alexandra sat this way till morning beside her sleeping granddaughter. Ivan Isaevich wanted to relieve her at her silent vigil, but she just shook her head and motioned to him to go off to bed. It was the first night of many. Without someone to lead her through the night, her grandmother or Nike, Masha could not sleep, and even after falling asleep she sometimes woke with a scream, and then Alexandra or Nike would take her to their own bed and comfort her. It was as if there were two little girls: the daytime Masha, calm, loving, and outgoing, and the nighttime Masha, haunted and afraid.