Baba Dunja's Last Love by Alina Bronsky

Author:Alina Bronsky
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Europa
Published: 2016-04-19T04:00:00+00:00

You can hear them from far off, and it’s obvious that it’s more than one vehicle. Soon we see them, and it’s three. Out front is a tall black vehicle with thick tires. Behind are two cars belonging to the military police. They stop in a cloud of dust on the main road.

Glascha placidly licks clean her bowl of mush. The driver’s-side door of the black vehicle is the first to open. It’s the type of car that a man should step out of, not a blonde woman in pants like a man and shoes with high heels. Her hair sticks to her head and her mascara is running.

“Where is she?” she calls heartbreakingly. “Where have you hidden her, you vulture?”

“Glascha,” I whisper. “She’s crazy, don’t look.”

“That’s my mama.” Glascha puts the spoon down on the bench and runs off. The woman falls to her knees, opens her arms, and whimpers like she’s been shot. The aluminum foil flutters. The girl hangs on the neck of the woman and I get tears in my eyes.

“What have they done to you?” Glascha’s mama begins to rip away the foil.

“Dooooon’t,” Glascha shrieks, sending chills down my spine. “Don’t take it off. Or else I’ll drop dead.”

Everything blends together. The air shimmers. The soldiers surround the mother and child as if they need to protect them from attack. The woman screams unintelligibly. And she pulls a protective suit out of the trunk of the car and tries to force Glascha into it. I wonder why she herself isn’t wearing one if she thinks they work. Intermittently she yells “Germann, Germann, you won’t get away with this!”

Germann is not her dog, I assume, it’s her husband, who is lying beneath Gavrilow’s tarp. And on whom the flies are gathering.

I stand up. My ribs make their presence felt again, a miserable groan sneaks out of me. Very slowly I approach the group. The soldiers look at me. The woman presses Glascha to her chest. Glascha turns and beams at me.

“Drive away, daughter,” I say to the woman in pants. “Take your child to safety.”

The madness seeps from her eyes and it becomes clear that she is a woman like any other, and you can talk to her normally.

“You mean,” she peers into my eyes as if she hopes to find the answers to all her questions there, “You mean it’s not too late?”

“It’s never too late,” I lie. Why does she have to ask me, of all people?

“You are Baba Dunja, aren’t you?”

I nod. She sniffles like a little girl, wipes her face, and pulls something small and rectangular out of her pocket. “May I?” she asks, and before I can answer she presses her cheek to mine and takes a photo of us with her portable telephone. Then she takes Glascha by the hand and goes to the car.

The soldiers call to her and ask what to do about serving the criminal complaint. She waves her hand dismissively. She doesn’t ask about her husband. If she wanted to see him I would have a problem.

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