*A Story Overheard at a Playground

***

An hour into the walk, Natasha got tired of making sand cakes with her own little shovel. My daughter toddled purposefully over to the bench from which I was vigilantly supervising the sandbox and entrusted me with her red-and-yellow tool of labor for safekeeping. Returning under the mushroom-shaped canopy, my two-year-old little genius silently expropriated a light-blue shovel from three-year-old Petya, who was so taken aback by such audacity that he didn’t even burst into tears loud enough to attract the attention of his mother, who was nearby in a constant state of combat readiness. Natasha businesslike packed sand into the molds, paying no attention to the boy’s face, twisted into the mournful grimace of a person who had just encountered feminine guile for the first time.

As usual, the young bandits were bustling about the playground: the jungle gyms were draped with kicking children, joyful shrieks came from the slide, and under the trees the girls had spread blankets on the grass, lying in wait for victims for their game of house. Toddlers had occupied the sandbox, periodically arranging showers of sand under the canopy and shovel fights, delighting in the hysterical screams of mothers.

She appeared out of nowhere. Settled beside me on the bench like a black shadow and stared straight ahead with an unfocused gaze. Her exhausted, sallow face expressed nothing, striking in its detachment and indifference.

At last, a bright thought of revenge came to Petya, and he ceremoniously brought his foot down on the nearest sand cake. Natasha did not let this go unanswered and, with a fierce Comanche war cry, went on the offensive, armed with shovel and bucket. Petya’s mother and I immediately suppressed the conflict in its infancy by means of pedagogical persuasion applied to the buttocks and returned to our respective benches.

The woman flinched and tugged at the tight collar of her black turtleneck as I plopped down, shaking sand out of my sandals. Her hands stood out as white patches against her mourning clothes. She turned to face me and, struggling to articulate the words, said:

“ Aunt Panya was a terrible slob… and just as antisocial. Her bloated corpse was found by the police when the neighbors began choking on the stench of decomposing flesh.”

She looked at me calmly, as if we had known each other for years.

“After the funeral we hauled an enormous pile of junk out of her apartment. One might think she deliberately rummaged through dumpsters, searching for things others were eager to get rid of. Old torn coats, moldy stacks of magazines, boxes filled with rotten rags, scorched blankets and mattresses, scrawny pillows, and faded scraps of fur. All kinds of creatures swarmed in those mountains of trash, feeling perfectly at home in that filth. Centipedes dove into the cracks beneath the baseboards; my husband flushed an entire nest of disgusting newborn rats—naked, pink, stretched tight in translucent skin—straight down the toilet. Huge brazen cockroaches didn’t even try to hide. Their bodies crunched wetly underfoot.”

She spoke quietly. It felt as though we were simply resuming a conversation that had been interrupted.

“For nearly three weeks we put the apartment back into something resembling a human state. Throwing things away, washing, scraping, sealing cracks, re-papering the walls, exterminating insects. I was already six months pregnant and happily dreamed of how our baby would live in a clean, bright room, piled with toys and books, with rustling curtains on the windows. His own room. My husband and I were happy that our endless drifting between corners and rented apartments was finally over. That now everything here was ours.”

She lowered her gaze. I remained silent, feeling awkward.

“And then Yura began having choking fits. He would wake up at night screaming, fighting off invisible enemies, leap out of bed and rush to the bathroom, tearing off his clothes and raking his fingers through his hair as he ran. I fell asleep to the sound of running water; he returned to bed, and after a while it all happened again. We stopped turning off the light at night. My husband grew gaunt, his hands began to tremble, and our life turned into a chain of nightmares. He swallowed sleeping pills by the handful, waking in the morning barely able to breathe. He never told me what he dreamed about, brushing off my questions and cautious suggestions to see a doctor. And I watched in horror as the person closest to me turned into a gloomy creature, constantly listening to himself, muttering under his breath. Yura stopped shaving and taking care of himself. He could stop right in the middle of the street and begin staring at his palms, as if seeing them for the first time and trying to discern something beneath his own skin. Once I woke up to find him pressed against me, stroking my belly rising under the blanket, feverishly whispering, ‘Don’t let them look at you.’”

She raised her eyes again; they were sunken and filled with such torment and longing that my heart clenched.

“I was so frightened… And then there was that night…” She cracked her knuckles. “At first I thought Yura was having another nightmare: he arched his body, clawing at his neck and chest with contorted fingers until they bled. In the dim light of the night lamp I saw his face turn purple, his eyes bulge from their sockets with burst vessels, and a thread of saliva appear at the corner of his mouth. I rushed to him, tangled in the sheets, shaking his shoulders, trying to wake him, but he only wheezed, rolling his eyes back so that only the whites were visible through the narrow slits of his lids. I lunged for the phone, barely hitting the buttons. I don’t remember what nonsense I babbled into the receiver, feeling something running down my legs. I stood leaning against the wall, clutching my belly, sobbing at the top of my lungs, staring at my convulsing husband. When the ambulance arrived, he was already motionless, and I was crawling in a puddle of blood and broken waters, biting my lips from the pain that came again and again with increasing force. The medics rushed about while the orderlies placed my husband’s body into a black plastic bag. And something broke inside me when one of the orderlies recoiled, muttering a curse: cockroaches began crawling out of my husband’s half-open mouth. They kept coming—through his nostrils and ears—in an endless stream, their chitinous shells rustling as they spilled onto the floor and scattered into the corners in total silence. I screamed.”

She fell silent, and I felt nausea rising in my throat. My hands went cold, and I seemed frozen to the bench, afraid to interrupt her story.

“My baby girl and I returned from the hospital three weeks later. She was my little wrinkled, bald girl with a funny tuft on the crown of her head. My little tangerine. I kissed her tiny fingers, touching the delicate folds of her skin. I bathed her in her little tub, dried her pink heels, and she smiled at me with a wide, toothless smile. Her crying sounded more like the mewling of a kitten begging for affection than a normal baby’s cry. At night I laid her beside me, listening to her steady breathing, swallowing tears of tenderness that tore my heart apart. A warm, living little bundle that helped me go on living… But then… that night… I woke up staring into the darkness, trying to calm my racing heart, not hearing her breathing. With my whole skin, my entire being, I felt someone’s gaze from the dark. Reaching out, I found the night-light switch on the wall…” The woman swallowed, and I felt sticky tentacles of fear wrap around my insides and twist them into a tight knot. “At first I simply didn’t understand anything. I just stared at her little shirt. The blood-soaked shirt… a sock lay nearby. My baby had no eyes. Two empty, bloody wounds… and her nose… her torn little cheeks… Inside her were two enormous fat rats, squealing as they tore choice morsels from each other. They gnawed her fingers… her tiny ears… her thin little bones… They ate my girl…”

The woman stretched her cracked lips into a horrific smile, and deep in the dark hollows of her eyes her pupils glittered feverishly. She slowly stood up and walked away. Children’s voices reached me as if from far away. Unable to move, I watched the black figure until it disappeared behind a building. And at the very edge of my fading consciousness, I caught sight of two gray shadows darting after her…