Then she suddenly turned to me and said, «But you will start at the fifth. Remember that, the fifth.»
«What would I start at the fifth? Gobbledygook. I forgot it immediately. But I was to remember it again when the time came.»
Irene cupped her chin in her hand again. She was lost in reverie. Her eyes had a slight animal sheen, like a cat's, suggestive of cosiness, tenderness, and a veiled anxiety.
Zhenya had friends she had been to University with, friends with whom she discussed large, important matters, like art and literature, or the meaning of life. She had written her degree dissertation on the Russian modernist poets of the 1910s. Her topic had been very rarefied for those times — about the poetic resonances between the poets of the modernist tendencies and the symbolists of the 1910s. Zhenya had been unusually fortunate — her supervisor was a lady professor of advancing years who knew her way around Russian literature much as she knew her way around her own kitchen. Professor Anna Veniaminovna was idolised by her students, especially the girls, and knew all these poets not from hearsay but from personal acquaintance. She had been almost a friend of Anna Akhmatova, had drunk tea with Mayakovsky and Lily Brik, had heard Mandelshtam recite, and even remembered the living, breathing Mikhail Kuzmin. Through her proximity to Anna Veniaminovna, Zhenya herself had acquired important friends, moving among the intellectuals of the arts and having pretensions to becoming important herself with time. And, to tell the truth, never in her life had she heard such banal prattling as she had that evening. Oddly, however, these banalities had contained something important, substantial, and very much alive. Perhaps even the elusive meaning of life itself?
Revelling in the sweet port-induced intoxication, the stillness and the darkness outside her window in which the light from a streetlamp reflected like a quivering mark on the leaves of a great fig tree, Zhenya was also enjoying what she suspected was only a temporary respite from the stubbornly unresolved state of some important (if they were important) questions regarding what she wanted to do with her life.
Irene swept the cards off the table — some of them fell to the floor, others landed on a chair.
«Susie would be lying on the sofa with a book from morning till evening, sucking a caramel. I understand now: she was clinically depressed, but all I saw at the time was that she was turning into my baby. Don't forget, this was long before her stroke. I wasn't actually spoon-feeding her, but if I didn't pour the soup into her bowl she could go three days without eating. I decided I urgently needed to have a baby of my own, a real baby, because turning into the mother of my own mother was something I most certainly did not want. This way she might at least become a grandmother and have a pram to push. I got married in a rush to the first man I set eyes on. The boy next door, good looking but a complete moron. I got pregnant and walked around for nine months flaunting my belly like an award for gallantry. They talk about toxicosis, how you feel, blood pressure. What else do pregnant women get? Well, I had none of it. I went straight from my typewriter to the delivery ward. I didn't even have time to finish the typing and hand the work in. Right, I thought, I'll just quickly have the baby and finish the typing after I'm a mother. There was two days' work still left to do. Things did not turn out that way, though. The umbilical cord became entangled. My baby was dying. The delivery nurse was young, the doctor was a total prat. Between the two of them they killed my baby. All I needed was a good old-fashioned midwife. I was eighteen and a complete fool. Count it on your fingers: my firstborn was dead. David, I was going to call him, in memory of my father. I was gushing milk, and tears were pouring from my eyes.»
Irene looked at Zhenya with intent, narrowed eyes as if assessing whether it was worthwhile to continue.
«Sasha had a looped umbilical cord,» Zhenya said in a quiet, shocked voice. She knew it was very dangerous for a baby, but this was the first time she had seen a mother who had actually lost her child because of this ridiculous noose, which had faithfully served the infant for a full nine months only to suddenly strangle it.
«Two months later I was pregnant again. You don't know what I'm like. If I want something I'll dig it out of the ground if need be. I'm walking around again. Not so perky this time. Sometimes I feel sick, sometimes I get colic, sometimes I have numbness. But never mind, I'm fine. My husband, a prize dickhead, worked as a car mechanic. I told you, I leapt into marriage with the first thing in pants that I saw. Whatever he earned he drank. He was a complete Alain Delon look-alike, only more solidly built. I sat busily banging away at my typewriter, bringing in a fair amount of money. Enough for Susie's caramels.
The first time, I had known for sure it was a boy, but this time I decided on a girl. My bulge grew, but I was just enjoying being a woman: the minute I had two rubles to rub together I would skip off to the Children's World department store. Baby socks, little cardigans, romper suits. It was all rough old Soviet stuff, of course. But I had grown up as a tomboy, swinging on fences. My parents had been sent to live in Volzhsk at first, under a false name. I only discovered my real name when I was ten. After my parents were 'declassified' my mother's sister sent our first parcel. It included a doll for me, but I couldn't bear dolls. I didn't want to be a girl. I bawled whenever I was forced to wear a frock. And when my breasts started to grow, I almost hanged myself.» Irene straightened her shoulders, and her great womanly breasts wobbled from her neck to her waist.
Zhenya looked at her with a tinge of jealousy: this woman had some biography. And you could tell that she was well aware of the fact.
«My baby girl was so pretty from the minute she arrived. There was nothing newborn about her, no mucus, no redness or roughness. Her eyes were blue, her hair was black and long. She got that from the car mechanic. Her facial features were exactly like mine. My nose, chin, the oval of my face.»
Zhenya seemed to see Irene for the first time: the vivid redhead looks made it easy not to see just how beautiful she was. Yes, the oval of her face, her nose, her chin. Even her teeth, which in someone else might have seemed horsy, in her were just English: long, white, slightly prominent, but just enough to make her lips part in welcome, in anticipation.
«I took one look at her and immediately knew that she was a Diana. No two ways about it. She was small, very well proportioned, with long legs and a shapely body. And pert buttocks. She was the prettiest little girl in the world. No, that wasn't just my prejudice as her mother. Everybody admired her. I dumped the car mechanic three days later, just as soon as I was discharged from the maternity hospital. I simply couldn't bear to look at him. The first time he held her I saw quite clearly that Diana should have a different father. It wasn't anything to do with me. I wasn't yet a woman. Things hadn't worked out with the car mechanic, but I didn't even realise that yet. He took her in his arms and I saw him for the slob he was. My daughter showed it to me. She was clever and calm and collected. In my life I've never met another, don't laugh, woman like her. She knew just how to treat different people, and what she could expect from them. Can you imagine, she was really thoughtful towards Susie. She didn't cry if I left her with her grandmother. She understood that was pointless. She was just four months old when I started reading books to her. If she liked them, she said 'ye-ye-ye'. If she didn't, she said 'na-na-na'. By six months she understood literally everything, and she started talking at ten months. She talked baby talk for a month, and then said, 'Mama, fly flying'. And sure enough, there was a fly.»
«I breast-fed her for a long time. My milk didn't dry up, and she so loved being breast-fed. She would snuggle up, suck, then stroke my breast and say, 'Thank you'. And then I caught 'flu. My temperature soared to over forty. I was poleaxed. I couldn't feed her. My friends came running to help. They fed Diana on yoghurt and porridge. She was almost a year old. She wanted to come to me but they couldn't let her in case she caught my infection. She cried out of her little room, 'Mama, I don't understand'. Susie went down with it too. And what a powerful infection it proved to be. All my friends, one after the other, caught it from me. I don't remember anything.»