On the occasions Svetlana had delivered Daumantas’ washing to him, she had handed it through the door, staying only long enough to receive her money. With the bag and the papers, she felt she would perhaps get beyond that door. She imagined so, anyway, as she dressed.
She was nervous. She did not want to confess to having watched him get drunk. Watched him closely enough to notice the bag he had left. In the end, with the washed clothes blowing in the sharp gusts that swirled around the courtyard, she tucked the package beneath her arm and left.
In the ghetto she stopped at a bar to have a drink. She drank slowly, making it last. Pumpetiene had called earlier with clothes and given her ten Litas, up front, to keep her going. Five had gone immediately on food; a quarter loaf of coarse dark bread and a little milk, a handful of potatoes and a small paper bag of flour. That would not last long, she had to be careful. Sipping the beer, she imagined conversations with Daumantas. Half an hour later she bought another small beer. She clutched the blue plastic bag close to her, afraid to lose it.
In the toilet of the café there was no mirror. The dirty hole in the floor stank. Svetlana walked down to the Three Friends. The waiters, knowing her, frowned. In the toilets she leaned close to the mirror and examined her face. Fine wrinkles spread from her eyes and worked around her cheeks. The bruise had almost disappeared, little more than a faint darkness beneath her eye. She applied the cheap lipstick she had bought at the market, working carefully, trying to calm the shaking of her hand. She examined the job. A slight sweat had formed in the thin hair above her lip, threatening to ruin the sharp edge she had managed to achieve. She smiled at herself; it was a tight, nervous smile, more a grimace.
Hello, she said.
She straightened the dress. It was the black-and-white dress decorated with sequins that Pumpetiene had given her. He had commented on it. The sequins ran across and beneath her breasts, accentuating them. She smoothed the glittering slivers over her breasts.
Nice dress, he had said.
I found this bag.
The dark roots of her hair were showing. Her hair grew faster than she could earn money for dye. She scrunched it, slightly, to hide the unsightly, dirty roots.
I think you lost this bag.
The door opened and a uniformed girl came in, a waitress. She looked at Svetlana, stony faced, keeping the door open behind her.
‘What are you doing?’ she asked sharply, in Lithuanian.
‘Pissing,’ Svetlana said in Russian.
‘Piss somewhere else.’
Svetlana pushed past, deliberately catching the girl’s shapely shoulder, knocking her back against the door. The girl’s pretty face creased with anger.
‘Whore.’
Walking across Ghetto Square and into the narrow lanes, Svetlana paused to gaze into the window of a new boutique. The clasps on the Gucci bags sparkled under the brilliant display lights. Leather Italian shoes shone like mirrors. Neat, petite price tags dangled like decorations. She drew the plastic bag close to her body, cradling it, like a baby. Passing the new café on Zydu Street, she emerged into the car park, shrouded already in early evening gloom. Pigeons had settled on the branches of the trees, cooing softly.
Entering Daumantas’ block, she climbed the stairs slowly to his floor. At each landing she paused, reworking her dialogue. Outside Daumantas’ apartment she breathed in deeply, held her breath for a moment then pressed the bell.
Hello.
I found this; I think it is yours. You left it in the café…
Nice dress.
She pressed the bell again.
I think this is your bag. I found it. I was drinking in the café…
The light in the stairwell clicked off, leaving her in sudden darkness. She groped about the wall to find the switch. She pressed the bell a third time, her heart sinking, knowing that if he had been in, he would have opened the door by now. Yet she felt she could stand there for the whole evening, pressing the bell, simply for the slight feeling of hope each press gave her.
A shoe scuffed on the stairs behind her. She turned, but it was not him. An old woman appeared, face stern, hair caught up in a net. As she approached, the time ran out and the stairs were plunged once more into darkness. Svetlana hesitated a moment, then hit the switch.
‘You won’t find him,’ the old woman said. ‘He’s out.’
‘Will he be back soon?’
The woman shrugged and arched her pencilled eyebrows, ironically. ‘God only knows. I told him he shouldn’t be going out, the state he was in. He listens? I told him it’s his fault if he drops down dead.’ She shook her head and sucked her teeth. ‘Nah, a right carry-on.’
‘What is wrong with him?’
The old woman stood still, some steps below her. She lifted an imaginary bottle to her lips and gulped it back. ‘Just about drank enough to kill him,’ she added. ‘What a fuss he caused and then we all thought he’d gone and done himself in at last. Didn’t appear the whole day. Grey as anything this morning, when I saw him. I went to get him a few things from the market.’ She stared at the sequins, glistening across Svetlana’s breasts. ‘What did you want him for?’
Svetlana hesitated. She saw the beady old eyes moving from her glistening breasts to the parcel under her arm. She saw her take in the dark roots in her hair, the cheap lipstick, the wrinkles.
‘Could you tell him I called,’ she said at last.
The old woman clicked her tongue. ‘I’m not chasing around after him,’ she said.
Then, ‘What’s your name?’
‘Svetlana.’
‘And you have a message you want passing on?’ Grigalaviciene’s eyes gleamed.
‘No, just Svetlana called.’
‘Phuhh!’ Grigalaviciene exclaimed angrily. ‘I’m not running messages for him. Enough that I have to go looking after him, like I do.’ Seeing that she would get no more from Svetlana, she turned and stalked back down the stairs. Svetlana followed. She saw the old woman’s door close as she passed, then creak open, a crack, as she descended.
The wind had cleared away the clouds. The moon clung to the roof-tiles. The pigeons were quiet. Svetlana stood beneath the trees staring up at the darkened windows of Daumantas’ apartment. She could leave the bag, of course, leave it with the old woman, leave it by the door for Daumantas to find. She hugged the papers to her.
One thousand dollars. The price of a clutch of leather handbags and Italian shoes. The price of work, of freedom.