25

O God, now I have but a single request of Thee:

destroy me, shatter me utterly,

cast me into hell, do not stop me before my course is run,

but deprive me of all hope and swiftly destroy me forever and ever.

DANIIL KHARMS

In August 1942, the Wehrmacht occupied Krasnodar and crossed the Kuban. Not long afterwards, the Georgian Military Road fell into German hands. The Nazi flag fluttered at the top of Mount Elbrus.

Kitty’s child was due in September — by which time people were dying in their thousands in Leningrad while her brother worked tirelessly to try and prevent it; a few months before her lover would be transferred to the Georgian Legion, to the French front. But in August, when the eighteen-year-old Kitty had to give up her voluntary work at the hospital on account of her girth, three Red Army soldiers came one warm, late summer’s afternoon to collect her from the villa in the Old Town.

She offered no resistance and got in the car. Perhaps she hoped it was a secret sign from Andro — the news she had been waiting for for so long. A glimmer of hope. A little piece of future.

After a two-hour drive, they stopped in a village south of Tbilisi — I’m afraid I don’t know the precise location — got out, and entered an abandoned school building. Kitty’s companions had been silent throughout the journey; her enquiries about their destination had gone unanswered. They entered a bare room with an outsized, badly painted portrait of the Generalissimus on the wall. Two empty school benches, a broken chair, a carafe of water.

Kitty was left alone in this room for almost an hour, tired, her legs swollen. She kept peering round the door; she called out that she didn’t want to be left here so long, someone should come and talk to her, but no one answered. Finally, a woman in a Red Army uniform entered the room, followed by a man in civilian clothes. They sat down opposite her and offered her a glass of water. The woman gave her a friendly smile; the man tried to avoid Kitty’s eyes.

‘Comrade Jashi. We’re sorry we’ve kept you waiting so long. We know it’s not easy for you in this heat, in your condition. So we’ll quickly explain to you our concern. As you know, our Motherland is in the midst of a devastating war. The Generalissimus is attempting the impossible in order to safeguard freedom for our country and independence for our people. Our country’s best men are fighting in this murderous war, and you’ll understand, won’t you, how important loyalty, allegiance to the homeland, and belief in socialism are in times like these? And you’ll also know what a grave matter treachery is at such a time? Do you agree with us, Comrade Jashi?’

The woman spoke Russian with a Moscow accent. She had delicate features and was wearing red lipstick. The lipstick had smudged a little in the heat, giving her mouth a clownish aspect. Kitty couldn’t stop staring at this mouth. The nondescript man started walking up and down in the gathering dusk. No one turned on the light.

‘What do you want from me?’

Perhaps it was only then that Kitty understood this journey would not lead to the hoped-for message from Andro. But she still didn’t realise where it was all heading. Because she had nothing to hide. And she was heavily pregnant. She remained calm. She still didn’t know then the price she would pay for her dreams.

‘The child’s father has betrayed his Motherland. He was recruited by the fascists and is fighting against us. Against his homeland. Against his friends. I’m asking you outright, woman to woman, comrade to comrade: where exactly is your fiancé at present? You are engaged, aren’t you? Tell us his current whereabouts and we’ll drive you straight home.’

Kitty continued to stare at the woman’s lips. She had a pleasant voice, very soft, with a velvety timbre. Although her words were clear and almost brusque, her manner peremptory, her voice made it sound as if she were flattering you and giving you compliments. The words she spoke did not fit the voice.

‘I haven’t had any news from him at all since he was called up. I’m afraid I don’t know where he is at present, and also I very much doubt that Andro would betray his country,’ squeaked Kitty, clasping her belly. ‘Please could you turn the light on? I can hardly see you.’

‘Believe me, Comrade Jashi, we’d also like to go home soon, but you must cooperate with us. Otherwise we’ll be stuck here for a long time yet.’

All Kitty could see of the woman now was her silhouette. She sounded genuinely concerned, as if she found it unpleasant to have to ask these questions. Her mild tone gave Kitty hope that she might indeed soon be going home. For some reason it seemed comforting that the person interrogating her was a woman.

‘I really don’t know anything. But Andro isn’t a traitor, I can assure you of that; he would never …’ Kitty felt helpless; she didn’t know what more she could say.

‘We’re not going to leave this room until you talk.’ The woman propped her face on her right hand and leaned forward a little.

‘But I really don’t know anything.’

And so it went on: hours that felt to Kitty like days. The blonde woman’s calm, compassionate tone; always the same answers from Kitty. The silent man in the background. The darkness. The pale moonlight that crept in through the uncurtained window. Kitty’s nervous movements, teetering on the chair, shaking her head, chewing her fingernails. Sighing. The groans, and the woman’s calm, mild tone that suddenly no longer seemed reassuring, but almost eerie. Her voice had deceived Kitty. It had given her false hope. Gradually, her sense of time began to recede, and eventually dissolved altogether. When the sky began to pale, Kitty wept. A weeping that became hysterical sobbing. She was hungry, she was afraid; she felt the baby kicking in her belly, she felt its fear.

She begged and pleaded with them to let her go, to take her home, she didn’t know anything, she didn’t know anything, she didn’t know anything. When the woman ignored her pleas and just went on mechanically repeating her questions, Kitty started calling for help. At this, the woman, who had been sitting so still all this time, as if made of marble, jumped up and ran out. Two Red Army soldiers entered the classroom, grabbed Kitty by the elbows, and dragged her out into the corridor. She was taken down to the basement of the school building and locked in, in total darkness. She rattled and hammered on the door, shouted furious insults, threatened, cursed, finally begged them to let her out, appealed to their consciences, the baby was hungry, it was permanently agitated; but no one responded, and so she sank into a state of profound exhaustion, lay down on the cold floor, and fell asleep.

When she woke, she was lying on a stretcher, strapped down by two leather belts across her thighs and upper body. She was in the same classroom in which she had been interrogated the previous evening, only now the benches had been removed and the portrait of the Generalissimus taken down: it stood on the floor, turned towards the wall, leaning against it. A pale rectangle marked the spot where it had hung, wonderfully symmetrical and impressively clean.

She didn’t have the strength to scream. Nor did she make any attempt to free herself from the straps; she knew it was useless. She wriggled a little to the left, trying to find a more comfortable position, a position in which they didn’t cut into her flesh so deeply. A naked light bulb hung from the ceiling, blinding her with cold, almost white, light. Kitty blinked and tried to turn her head away from its glaring beams.

The uniformed woman was sitting in a corner. Kitty looked over at her and once again was unable to tear her eyes from those red lips. They were perfectly made up today. The woman had beautiful, harmonious features, a dainty nose that almost looked painted, and she wore her hair in a sophisticated, pinned-up style that seemed strangely incongruous here, in such a place. As if she had hurried over from an elegant party to get this bothersome and disagreeable work over with and return to the party as quickly as possible. Who was she? Where did she come from? From what sort of world? What did her world smell like? Was she loved there? Did she love? Was she sad sometimes, as well? Did she like tomatoes, or did she prefer cucumber? Was she a mountain person, or did she love the sea? Did she go to bed late, did she have children? Did she have a mother who had sung her nursery rhymes? Did her skin smell slightly sweet, as Kitty imagined?

Kitty looked at her for a moment, even though it was difficult for her to turn her head in that direction, as the strap cut into the flesh of her thighs. She was morbidly pleased to see the woman again. She was still there. She still wanted something from her. She still looked composed and compassionate, as if she wouldn’t hand Kitty over to these coarse, silent men, as if she wouldn’t push things to the limit. But what exactly was the limit? A black, dark hole, bottomless and noiseless? Would it be a cell with dripping pipes? More straps? Or just her endless repeated questions about Andro’s whereabouts? The blonde woman’s skin shimmered like porcelain in the bluish light. She didn’t belong in this deserted, dysfunctional place. No, this woman wouldn’t take things to the limit, Kitty was sure of it. She was too beautiful, too smartly dressed for the limit. And besides, she was a woman. A woman, like herself.

Beads of sweat stood out on Kitty’s forehead, she was ravenously hungry, and her lips were cracked. The woman stood, walked slowly towards her, and put a carafe to her mouth, and Kitty drank the water from it greedily. Half the liquid ran over her face, but its coolness felt good on her skin.

‘I appreciate that it’s very upsetting for you to have to endure all this, but you must cooperate with us.’

The blonde woman wiped the sweat from Kitty’s forehead with a delicate handkerchief plucked from the inside pocket of her uniform jacket. The handkerchief smelled sweetish, as Kitty had presumed the woman’s skin would smell. Sweetish, seductive; even, Kitty was shocked to discover, slightly familiar.

‘I’m hungry … I want to go home. Please. I don’t know anything.’ Kitty mumbled her words mechanically, almost apathetically, without much emphasis. Her eyes were fixed on the white rectangle on the wall. Was it midday, or was it afternoon? Was Christine already looking for her? If so, what were the prospects of her aunt finding her?

‘Tell me where he is, give me the recruiter’s name, give me an address, give me some information I can use, and I will drive you home myself. But you have to give me something, Ketevan!’

‘Do you think I would do this to my child if I knew anything? I’ve waited so long for a message from him; I don’t even know if he’s still alive, and he doesn’t know we’re expecting a baby, and in a month it’ll be born. Andro isn’t a traitor, he just wanted to go to Vienna …’

‘To Vienna — good, good, that’s a start. Who did he know in Vienna? What did he want to do there?’

‘He didn’t know anyone, he just wanted to go to Vienna because there are such beautiful coffee houses there and they do psychoanalysis there and sculpture is something you can … Andro wants to be a sculptor. Please. I don’t know anything. The baby’s frightened, I can feel it.’

‘My dear girl, you’re little more than a baby yourself. Your parents should have done a better job of protecting you.’

‘My father is with the Red Army, my brother’s serving in the Baltic Fleet. They’re serving the Motherland, they’re serving the Generalissimus, they—’

‘That is why we find it all the more regrettable that you, of all people, have chosen a traitor to be the father of your child.’

The sentence echoed in Kitty’s head. There was something sickening about the way the blonde woman said it.

She was taken back to the basement, then brought out again and strapped back onto the stretcher. Hours passed. She no longer knew what day, what time it was. Her body ached; her baby was frightened. Twice she was given a little unsalted porridge. Three times a chamber pot was shoved under her backside. She got cramps in her arms and legs. Her strength diminished; she started to hallucinate; the bright light made sleep impossible, and she squeezed her eyes shut the whole time. Whenever the baby stopped kicking against the wall of her belly she had a panic attack and started screaming for help; only when it made its presence felt again did she sink back into exhaustion.

Suddenly, the blonde woman was standing very close to the stretcher. She was holding a syringe in her hand and scrutinising its contents in the white glare of the light bulb.

‘If I don’t get any useful information from you in the next few minutes, Kitty —’ the way the woman said her nickname felt like more of a threat to Kitty than the syringe in her hand ‘— we will induce labour and you will suffer a stillbirth.’

The woman spoke deliberately, dragging out every word with artificial emphasis. But her tone remained soft, almost flattering, as if she were informing Kitty of a pleasant surprise, not putting the unthinkable into words.

Kitty started pushing against the straps with all her might, with her whole upper body; she tried to leap up, was astonished, wondered where she had suddenly found the strength to try and free herself. As she did so, she let out a scream, deafening even herself for a moment; a terrible, inhuman sound. The woman stayed at her side, impassive; she kept shaking her head regretfully. Kitty reached a hand down through the strap and grabbed at the corner of the uniform jacket. The blonde woman continued standing there; she didn’t try to remove Kitty’s hand, and went on holding the syringe upright in hers.

‘You don’t really mean it, do you? You just want to frighten me, I know it, I can see it in your eyes. You’re nice, you like me, you care what happens to me, don’t you? Isn’t that right? You don’t want to hurt me, you just want to frighten me, and the syringe is just full of water, no, you don’t mean it.’

Kitty spoke quickly, the words tumbling out breathlessly one after another. For a moment the woman seemed caught between Kitty’s hand on her jacket and her own eyes on the syringe. Between the decision to keep playing this wicked game, or to free Kitty. At least that’s what Kitty thought. Yes — she too was a woman, she was ten, perhaps fifteen years older than Kitty, she was sure to have children. Surely she would never be able to go through with what she was threatening — she just wanted to prove to her superiors that she was second to none of her male colleagues. Just then, though, the woman called someone into the room.

A young girl in a white tunic entered. She was about Kitty’s age, and she was afraid — very afraid. You could see it: her hands were trembling, although she kept them hidden in the pockets of her tunic. She didn’t dare look the blonde woman in the eye; she didn’t look directly at Kitty, either, kept her eyes on the ground, wishing that this place, this classroom, these people didn’t exist.

She was definitely a country girl. She had red cheeks and sunburned skin. Perhaps her parents or husband had a farm to run. When she stopped in front of the woman it was impossible for her not to look at Kitty, and she began quietly reciting the Lord’s Prayer, earning herself a contemptuous look from the blonde.

‘Comrade Jashi doesn’t want to help us, Mariam. Comrade Jashi is betraying her country. Comrade Jashi is shielding a traitor to his country; she even means to bring another traitor into the world. Do you think that’s right? Do you think that’s a good thing, Mariam?’

At these words, Kitty felt the urge to be sick. She started retching, but brought nothing up: the porridge was long since digested and her stomach was empty. She tried to concentrate on Mariam, the frightened girl, who had been roped into something that was beyond her imagination, that turned her knees to jelly, that made her go pale. Mariam, Mariam, Mother of God, thought Kitty to herself; and if she could, she would have laughed out loud. She had always mistrusted the saints that were still revered with such fervour in her country, even at the height of socialism. She had never understood why people allowed themselves to be tortured and tormented in the name of God — in the name of a God who had not redeemed them by his suffering, had not saved them. Mariam could have passed for a saint with her white tunic and her trembling hands, with her innocent calf’s eyes; but she couldn’t save Kitty, and she couldn’t be saved, either.

The blonde pressed the syringe into the saint’s hand, and with her other hand she grabbed Mariam’s wrist and looked her in the eye. Mariam whimpered, tried to say something, fell silent, shrank back, but the woman went on staring at her intently. Mariam’s fingers closed around the syringe. The woman took a few steps back and nodded at her. Mariam gasped for breath; her lips opened and closed like the mouth of a fish taken from the water.

‘Do it!’ Kitty heard the blonde say to Mariam, and she felt Mariam brush her elbow. Kitty narrowed her eyes. Any second now her heart would explode, she was sure of it. She tried to speak to the baby in her mind, tried to calm it. She didn’t want it to be afraid. She held on tight to the stretcher with her fingers. She felt something salty fall on her face and saw Mariam’s face bent over her, saw Mariam’s tears dropping on her face, looked directly into Mariam’s eyes for the first time: with the bright light of the bulb above her it was as if a halo had formed around Mariam’s head. Kitty licked her lips and tasted Mariam’s salty tears on her tongue.

‘God have mercy upon me, God have mercy upon her, God have mercy upon us, God have mercy!’ whispered Mariam, bending low over Kitty’s head. In the background, the blonde stepped over to Mariam and said something in her ear; Mariam’s face contorted horribly; then Kitty felt her hand on her forearm, felt it search for a vein, felt something cold and irrevocable being injected into her.

The blonde went out of the room and left Mariam alone with Kitty. Mariam undid the straps. Bruises had come up on Kitty’s arms and thighs. Mariam sniffed, allowed the tears to flow; she didn’t even attempt to wipe her face. Praying non-stop, she helped Kitty sit up. Everything hurt, every single part of her body; with every movement, Kitty groaned and stroked her belly.

‘What was in the syringe?’ She could hardly speak; she allowed her legs to dangle off the stretcher. Instead of answering, Mariam just shook her head.

‘What was in it? What?’ This time, Kitty raised her voice, reached out for Mariam, but before she could grab Mariam’s tunic and pull her towards her, she was flung back onto the stretcher by inconceivable pain in her abdomen.

‘Oh God, no, no, it can’t be, it can’t be, oh God!’ Kitty began to scream. The contractions set in with fearful violence, ripping Kitty’s body apart. She no longer believed she would survive this. In the few moments when the mind-numbing pain subsided, she tried to come to terms with death, tried to recall the face of her dead grandfather: how peaceful he had looked, his lips bluish, discoloured; perhaps she would manage that as well, slipping away peacefully and without fear, and it would feel like a deep, healthy sleep. Anything was better than this. Anything was better than this pain. Anything was better than this classroom and the white rectangle on the wall.

Again and again, Mariam squeezed her hand, encouraged Kitty to push. Again and again, she urged her to breathe. And when Kitty was no longer in any doubt that she would die that very second, she felt something large, round, slide out between her legs, felt Mariam’s hands pull the little body out, and she fell back onto the stretcher. The pain abruptly subsided. She kept her eyes closed.

‘Keep praying. I want to … with you …’ Kitty didn’t dare open her eyes. Mariam started saying the prayer, and Kitty repeated every word after her.

‘Our Father, who art in Heaven, hallowed be Thy name.’ There was no cry. No cry. Not a sound. ‘Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done.’ The child was mute. Perhaps it was just mute, it must be mute. ‘On Earth as it is in Heaven.’ A kind of rustle. Mariam was moving. Perhaps the baby had stirred. Perhaps it had taken a breath. ‘Give us this day.’ Kitty couldn’t bear it any longer: she opened her eyes, saw Mariam’s back, the splashes of blood on her apron. She saw Mariam holding her baby in her arms. ‘Our daily bread. And forgive —’ Kitty put a fist under the small of her back and propped herself up so she could see better ‘— us our trespasses, as we forgive those who —’ Mariam turned around. She didn’t finish the prayer. There was nothing left to be asked of God.

‘Go on, go on!’ Kitty yelled at her, but Mariam just shook her head, holding the tiny, bloody body pressed tight against her.

‘Strap her back down!’ they heard the blonde say through the door. But Kitty crawled off the stretcher and stumbled to the door, without taking her dead child in her arms. Before she could fling it open it was opened from outside, and a Red Army soldier, one of the three from the car, stopped in front of her, lifted her off the ground, brought her back to the stretcher, put her on it, and strapped her down.

‘The placenta hasn’t come yet, you have to let her —’ cried Mariam, horrified. ‘What kind of people are you, what are you!’ Her Russian was clumsy and broken, her voice hoarse and rasping.

Kitty heard nothing more. Total darkness filled her head.

She didn’t watch as Mariam wrapped the dead body in her tunic and carried it out of the room.

When Mariam returned and found Kitty unconscious, she started shouting for help, and the blonde returned.

‘She won’t stop bleeding, she’s going to bleed to death. So much blood — Mother of God, Jesus, Holy Child, we have to stop the bleeding, or she’ll die …’

The blonde gazed for a while at Kitty’s blood-drenched lower abdomen with an expression of resignation, then turned to Mariam.

‘You will stop the bleeding. You’ll find everything you need in the basement, in the metal cupboards. You have to operate on her. You have to remove her womb. Otherwise she’ll die a miserable death, and you don’t want that. Otherwise she may get it into her head to bring more traitors into the world. You can operate, can’t you?’

‘What? No, no, no — I can’t do that. I’ve never operated myself, I’m not a doctor, I just helped out in the outpatient department; I only watched, I can do sutures and take them out again, but I can’t do this.’

‘But I was told you were good. That’s why you’re here. So see that you complete the task. I’ll have them bring you morphine. The disinfecting agents are in the basement as well. You can start right away!’

‘I can’t. I can’t!’

Mariam was getting increasingly hysterical.

‘Well, then she’ll just have to bleed to death.’

‘Please, no, no … You can’t do this to me. Call a doctor. Please!’

‘One of my men will assist you. Don’t worry, he won’t pass out. And you know what will happen if you get any ideas.’

‘All right, all right. I’ll do it. I’ll try.’

‘If she survives, you’ll take her with you to the village afterwards, and when she can walk again you’ll send her home. And you’ll be good and keep your mouth shut, won’t you. And tell her: as soon as he makes contact with her, she should go to the nearest commissariat of her own accord, if she doesn’t want … Well, I think now she’ll understand.’

Mariam called the Red Army soldier, instructed him to clean his hands with spirit and pass her the necessary tools when she asked for them. She kept talking to Kitty all through the operation.

‘You mustn’t give up. You’re strong. We can do this, but you mustn’t stop fighting. I know it’s hard for you to trust me; it’s hard for you because I’m not a doctor. But I always wanted to be one. I assisted in the outpatient department, they had a very good doctor there, and because we don’t have a proper hospital in the village he would perform operations as well, and he was good. Everyone got well again. And of course there were births, as well; jaundice, gout, TB, I’ve treated everything. We had a miscarriage once, and that woman’s alive and healthy. I can do this. I’m good. Do you believe me? You do believe me, don’t you?’

Mariam was speaking only to Kitty now. Not to God any more. Mariam removed Kitty’s womb, in a classroom that had served as a torture chamber and was now an operating theatre. In a classroom where they had taken down the portrait of the Leader so as not to insult his eyes with the degrading sight of a stillbirth and a blood-drenched woman. Mariam kept her word. She saved Kitty’s life, and her own. She could not save Kitty’s child.

After the blonde woman and her entourage had left the village, Mariam took Kitty to an isolated barn and nursed her. She had taken the necessary medicines from the school basement; she found Kitty a clean mattress and fresh bed linen, fetched her milk and warm bread, slaughtered a chicken with her own hands and roasted it over an open fire. She treated Kitty’s inflamed stitches and stroked her head. The fever had to be brought down, Kitty had to be fed; she gave her herbal mixtures to relieve the pain, lay down beside her on the mattress, and stared with her into the nothingness on which Kitty’s eyes were fixed. It was days before Kitty turned and spoke to her for the first time.

‘Where am I?’

‘In my brother’s barn. He’s at the front, somewhere in the northern Caucasus. I didn’t want to take you home with me, to my parents. There would have been unnecessary questions. People in the village are afraid. The NKVD have been here a few times already. They use the old school building for … Well, people are suspicious, anyway; no one wants trouble. We’re safe here.’

‘Why did you take me with you?’

‘What sort of question is that? What else could I have done? You would have died. Rest now. Drink the milk. We have cows, we always have fresh milk. You had a high fever, but that’s normal.’

‘I have to go home. I have to telephone Christine. How long have I been here?’

‘Exactly a week. You can’t get up yet, and you’re not allowed to go, either.’

‘What did you do?’

‘They would have shot us. They took a girl from a neighbouring village, a nurse; she never came back, just because she refused to operate. I had to do it, otherwise they would have shot me — both of us. Last week they brought three men here, shot them, and buried them in the woods.’

Mariam covered her face with her hands. Her body was trembling. Kitty sat up and looked at her, her expression blank. She made no attempt to comfort her. Finally Mariam clasped Kitty in her arms. Kitty didn’t move.

‘I know it can’t ever be put right.’ Mariam groaned and pressed herself against Kitty’s shoulders, buried her face in her neck.

‘What exactly do you mean?’ Kitty insisted.

Mariam stuttered. ‘You … can never have … I … I … your womb …’

In the nights that followed, Mariam stayed with Kitty, lying on a simple blanket beside her mattress and falling into a deep, dreamless sleep only as dawn approached. Eventually, one day, Kitty got up and went out into the warm sunlight with Mariam supporting her. It was quiet; you could hear the crickets. The barn was next to a cornfield, at the end of a narrow path lined with tall cypresses. Green, hunchbacked hills stretched away into the distance. Kitty’s eyes were burning. Her mouth was dry; the sunlight hurt her skin. Nevertheless, she allowed the sun to warm her cold limbs. She stood there, moving her head gently from side to side, slowly raising her arms above her head, wriggling each finger cautiously, one at a time. She moved as if for the first time, as if she first had to learn how to do it: how to walk, to move, to think, to live.

That night, Mariam lit a small campfire and the two of them sat beside it. The night was clear, the sky full of stars, and the moon, white as marble, radiated a greenish light.

‘What exactly did you do?’ asked Mariam, almost inaudibly. She poked the ashes with a stick. ‘You’re so young; what can you possibly have done for them to do something like that to you?’

‘Nothing.’

‘What did your husband do?’

‘He just wanted to go to Vienna … It was a boy, wasn’t it?’ Kitty asked suddenly, concentrating on the glowing coals.

‘Yes.’

‘What was he like? Was he big, small? Did he have lovely little fists? Did he have hair on his head?’

‘He was wonderful. He didn’t suffer. He didn’t even feel it. It happened very quickly.’

‘Where did he go?’

‘He’s with the angels now.’

‘Stop that nonsense. Where did you take him?’

‘I buried him. In the garden behind the school.’

‘Please don’t start bawling again. Pull yourself together.’

‘Oh God, Kitty … It would have been better if they’d shot us.’

‘That’s enough. Stop it. Don’t cry. Not again. You had no choice. You saved my life.’

‘No, I didn’t. I destroyed everything.’

Kitty got up and started turning slowly round in circles. Head tilted back, looking up at the stars, her lips widening in something like a smile.

‘Careful, you mustn’t move around yet. Please take care — the stitches!’

Kitty took a deep breath and released it again.

‘When all this is over, it doesn’t matter how or when, I will find out who she is, and I will kill her.’

She spoke with great composure. Mariam did not reply, and they went back inside the barn.

Once Kitty had recovered her strength and could get about without help, she walked to the abandoned school building with the broken windows that looked so normal, anything but menacing, and wandered through the cold corridors and empty rooms. She looked for the room where they had cut her child out of her belly. The portrait of the Generalissimus was back on the wall. She stared for a long while at the man’s moustachioed face; for a very long while, as if seeing him for the first time. Outside again, in the open air, she sat down on the dry earth in the courtyard. A few pigeons were cooing and scratching at the ground in search of something edible. The earth was warm, the sun shining impassively. She heard a tractor drive past in the distance. Her gaze moved across the yard. Somewhere here must be the spot where Mariam had buried her boy. Somewhere here his body must lie. Beneath an oak, almost at the very end of the school grounds, she spotted a little pile of earth: small, so incredibly small. She went over, sank to her knees in front of it, and started digging up the mound with her bare hands. The earth was stubborn and rough, as if trying to thwart Kitty’s intentions. She touched something. Felt it. Felt the nausea well up inside her. Closed her eyes, kept digging. There was a smell of something definitive; she vomited, then screamed, just once, just briefly. The scream sliced the air. Then there was silence again, and the silence felt holy; it was a good day for life to begin, a day of delicate ladybirds and lazy bumblebees flying on the breeze, a day for lying in the shade eating ripe figs and soft persimmons. A day that belonged entirely to life.

She saw with her hands: the nose and the oval of the face, the tiny eyebrows, the lips. She gazed at his face as it arose in her mind’s eye. She recognised him. She would keep him in her memory all her life. His face that she had never seen, never stroked, not even once. That she would never see either crying or laughing, sleeping or awake. She would keep him forever in her dreams, in a parallel universe that existed only behind closed eyelids. She would live there with him, go to sleep and wake with him. She gave him a name. She threw the earth back over him.

Again she retched, but this time didn’t vomit. A flock of birds flew past above her head. The stitches pinched. Gently she stroked the mound of earth with her palm. ‘You can visit me in my dreams; you will, won’t you? I’ll sing you songs, I’ll sing you all the songs in the world, and that will be our sign; you’ll know then that I’m calling you. I’ll take you with me everywhere, no matter where I go. You’ll know I’m there, and I’ll know you’re there. That’ll be enough: it’ll have to be enough for a lifetime.’

She stretched out on the ground, laid her face on the earth, tasted it on her tongue. If she could swallow the bitterness, she would taste the essential thing: this love for her son, fragile, almost painful, physically present yet at the same time soft as butter — this love that eclipsed all other feelings. A love they would never have been able to cut out of her. A love that ripped her apart from inside, that pinched her with every move she made, a thousand times worse than the stitches.

Broken rays of sunlight wandered across the hills, down into the valley, to the village, to the school playground, to stroke Kitty’s ankles, light the colour of a weathered brick. Somewhere a crow was crying. Kitty forced herself to stand. A last, overripe fig fell from the tree beside her. Summer flies buzzed around.

At this moment, Kostya was carrying a heavy sack of flour and passing it on to a sailor who hoisted it onto the bed of the truck. Suddenly it was as if there were a heavy scent in his nostrils, a seductive, familiar smell. He wondered where he recognised it from. It was the smell of his grandfather’s chocolate factory. He wiped the sweat from his face, and without knowing why he suddenly thought of his younger sister, from whom he had heard nothing for such a long time. Don’t you miss your brother? Or are you always thinking of your Andro? Where is he now? Was he sent to the northern Caucasus? These thoughts passed through Kostya’s mind, but he preferred not to dwell on them, and seized the next sack of flour. Shots could be heard in the north, but he had learned to ignore them; they were far enough away.

Kitty prepared for her departure. The trains were running irregularly; there were reports of bands of robbers in the stations. It would be safer, Mariam suggested, for her to ask a farmer to take her to the city. The post office in the village had closed some time ago. There was no way of sending a telegram to Christine. Kitty was uncomfortable about taking the roubles she needed for the journey from Mariam, but she had no choice.

‘What will you do?’ Kitty asked her friend — her friend, despite everything — as they said goodbye.

‘I’ll go home, to my parents, and see whether I can be of any assistance to the doctor in the next village. They closed our outpatient clinic a few months ago.’

‘Come to Tbilisi.’

‘Is that a joke? What would I do in the city?’

‘There’s a shortage of doctors everywhere. I worked in a hospital, too.’

‘But I’m not a doctor, Kitty.’

‘You’re the best doctor I know.’

Kitty hugged her saint tightly. Mariam brushed back a lock of hair from her forehead.

‘Please forgive me, if you can,’ she whispered in her ear as they parted.

Christine’s hand flew to her mouth when she opened the door and saw Kitty standing before her at last. Kitty — without her belly. The farmer had set her down at the main market and she had walked the steep streets all the way up the hill to Vera. Christine knelt down in front of her and started kissing her hands. Kitty had never seen her aunt so beside herself. Christine stroked her face, hands, shoulders, kept running her hands through her hair; she kissed her forehead, her cheeks, her neck. She had spent days on the phone to the administrative authorities, had been to every commissariat in the city, had interrogated all her old acquaintances, to no avail. No one had been able to tell her where Kitty was.

‘What did they do, what did they do to you …?’ asked Christine, again and again.

Kitty allowed herself to be kissed and stroked, but her eyes remained glazed, and she didn’t want to talk, either.

‘I’m hungry, I’m so hungry, I’m so tired, I have to eat something and then sleep, just sleep.’

Christine quickly started opening the kitchen cupboards and putting everything she found on the table. She put a saucepan on the gas and heated the frying pan.

‘I nearly died of worry, I didn’t know what to do … What on earth happened, Kitty?’

As she sliced the bread, Christine cut her forefinger and froze at the sight of the blood running from it. She continued to stare at the red liquid in fascination. Kitty got to her feet, led Christine to the sink, and ran water over the fingertip.

‘It’s all right, it’s not that bad,’ she said, looking at her aunt. Christine’s expression was one of horror.

That night, Christine sat beside Kitty with the beautiful half of her face turned towards her, and clung to her hand. Kitty wanted to be left alone, but Christine seemed so frightened that she didn’t dare send her aunt away.

‘Where’s the baby?’

The room lay in darkness. Kitty could see Christine’s silhouette, her flawless profile, and felt an inexplicable urge to touch her face. But it wasn’t the flawless side she wanted to touch; it was the side with the scars, the burned left side she had revealed to her not all that long ago, to tell her that together they would make it, that they would get through this, whatever happened. But they hadn’t made it.

‘What are you doing?’ Christine shrank away slightly as Kitty’s hand moved across her cheek, across her nose, towards the left side, which was hidden beneath a blue veil.

‘Let me, please,’ said Kitty, gently touching the shrivelled skin that felt so hard compared to the intact half of Christine’s face. As if she were stroking a prehistoric animal, the last survivor of an extinct species. Her instinct was to withdraw her hand, but she overcame it and went on exploring Christine’s face with her fingers. Kitty began to speak. Calmly and in detail she told Christine about the hours in the school building, about the blonde woman, about the straps that had bound her, about the syringe, about Mariam, about the questions, those questions they kept asking her again and again, to which she had had no answers. She told her about the contractions, about the stillbirth, about the operation, about the days in the barn where Mariam had nursed her. And all the while she ran her hand over Christine’s scars, felt her way across the bumps and hollows in the hope that by studying Christine’s map she would be able to create her own. A map of her own that would show her how to go on living. A survival map. One that would help her to get out of the classroom with the white rectangle on the wall and cross her own desert, where there was nothing but burning sun and a little mound beneath a tree.

Her hand touched the eye socket. She touched the place where once there had been an eyebrow. The spot where Christine’s husband, perhaps, had kissed her every morning when they awoke; or where perhaps, as a child, she had contrived to cut herself and received a kiss from her mother, right there. Or perhaps from her father. A spot that had had stories to tell and that now no longer existed, that could no longer write stories on this face. A spot obliterated by the dark wing of a poisonous bird that had flapped over Christine’s head and brushed her as it passed.

‘Where is Andro?’ asked Christine, once Kitty had fallen silent and taken her hand away from her aunt’s face.

‘Please, don’t ever ask me that again. Never, never, never again, you hear?’ Kitty suddenly let out a scream, turned to face the other side of the bed and drew up her knees. ‘I don’t know where he is, and I don’t want to know any more.’