Hands shake me. I sleepwalk up the stairs and crawl into bed and drop into a dreamless void. It seems like no time has passed when my burning bladder wakes me. The clock on Pavlik’s desk shows five minutes after eight. Is it eight in the evening? No, it’s morning. The darkness behind the window is too thin and the glowing orbs of the streetlights are dimming. Snow falls softly. I have slept all day and all night. I step into slippers and rub my face. The teakettle whistles faintly, chokes, and peters out.
I go to the toilet, then head for the kitchen.
Anton and Yulia drink tea. They look at me with irritation, as if I’m late and they’ve been waiting for me for hours.
I halt, puzzled. Where is Pavlik?
“Pavlik is with Margarita Petrovna, Irina. Please, sit down,” says Yulia. “We’re going to have a little talk.”
My spine turns to ice.
The notebook I’ve been writing in sits next to Anton’s teacup. He picks it up and smacks it down in front of me. Its fake leather cover meets the oilcloth with a gluey sticky noise. “Explain.” He holds out a pen.
I take it, terrified, thinking that they have read my answers to Pavlik’s questions and know who the father of the baby is, but then I remember that to them it would’ve looked like nonsense.
“Go ahead.” Droplets of sweat prickle Anton’s forehead. He takes his glasses off, polishes them with the hem of his shirt, and props them back on.
Did you understand what I meant?
“You’re a jokester, aren’t you?”
No, you didn’t. I exhale in relief.
He shakes his head in dismay. “Start from the very beginning, and none of this drivel about any fish or jackals or any animals at all. Is that clear?” He slaps the table with the flat of his palm.
I flinch.
“I want you to explain to me why you stopped talking when you were two—”
So you called them.
“—what was the exact cause, and if there are any genetic deviations in your family, any terminal diseases, health problems, that sort of thing. Write everything you know.” He measures me with a shrewd look.
I glare. Is this an interrogation? Did you send Pavlik off so that you two could harass me without him?
“Here is what I think. I think you’re fooling us. I think you’re pulling our noses. Either that, or you are, indeed, a bit soft upstairs.” He knocks on his head. “That’s what I think. Wouldn’t you agree, Yulechka?”
“Absolutely.” Yulia stings me with an acid stare.
I seethe. This automatic assumption that if you’re mute, you’re an imbecile, is really getting on my nerves. I thought you were educated people.
Anton sips his tea. “Irina, if you are a smart girl, you will understand where we’re coming from. We’re simply trying to rule out any pathologies. You must agree that your behavior, the unexplainable things you have done in the two months that we’ve known you, have planted certain doubts in our minds as to the state of your mental health. Whatever it is, it doesn’t concern you alone anymore, it concerns Pavlusha’s child, our grandchild. Right, Yulechka?”
“Right.”
I grip the pen so hard I think it will break. You must be what, in your fifties? Well-read, I assume. Yet you believe that I’m crazy because I’m mute, I refer to people as animals, and I kicked a dead man. More, you believe my child will be predisposed to the same, as you call them, pathologies. Just because I did what I did doesn’t mean I’m nuts and it doesn’t mean that my child will be crazy, either. I see you know jack-shit about life, which at your age is, frankly, quite amusing.
YOU ARE READING
Irkadura
Fantasy"My mama became a catfish when I was two, on the day I stopped talking." Neglected since birth by her mother, Irina Myshko hasn't spoken a word for most of her short Soviet life. Outcast as a mute idiot and abused by her mother's boyfriends, she esc...
