Kidnapped by Ludmilla Petrushevskaya

Author:Ludmilla Petrushevskaya
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Deep Vellum Publishing

32

Baby Seryozha-Vasya

SERGEI AND ALINA took a car to the maternity hospital.

“Right. Grab the suitcase. That suitcase of Masha’s. The layette’s in it now.”

“I can’t. You take it.”

“I’m carrying the cake and wine.”

“I won’t take it.”

He had to lug it all.

They sat in the waiting room and waited for them to bring out the dressed baby.

They didn’t talk.

Finally, the swaddled treasure emerged in the arms of the tipsy aide, Sofia Stanislavovna.

She mumbled, looking at the bottle in Sergei’s hand.

“He looks so much like his father, the spitting image!”

Sergei stuck the money in her pocket and the cake in her hands.

She grabbed the main thing from him, the bottle, and read the label:

“May your life be a success, as sweet and strong as this beverage!”

They went out the front door, Sergei carrying the baby. A smooth-tongued voice wafted after them: “I hope it’s a three-star!”

Alina lingered in the doorway, let Sergei go ahead, and heard something else:

“Doesn’t take after the mother or father.”

And the nurse’s reply:

“That happens.”

Riding in the car. Sergei holding his treasure on his half-bent knees. Alina could barely see the baby. He was already two weeks old. He must have grown.

Sergei put the baby in his crib and dashed off to work.

In the fridge, though, there was milk, two boxes, and kefir, and there were apples in a bowl on the table.

When did Sergei have time to buy all this?

Since that time Alina brought home that kilo and a half of frankfurters and nothing else (but she didn’t bring the receipt either, said a girlfriend bought them for her and hadn’t taken the receipt, Alina hadn’t warned her to so as not to raise suspicions), and she’d looked unhappy and sick, and gone straight to bed without eating anything, Sergei had suddenly started taking on the groceries himself. He’d picked up something somewhere. During his lunch break? He arrived home like clockwork, at eight thirty.

Alina unwrapped the baby and looked at him.

Lord! He’d grown so thin! She barely recognized the little man! Just his little nose poking out. He’d changed.

Or was this not he?

Skinny and translucent. A few curls plastered to his head.

Both of them had had that.

He’d grown.

She washed his chest and his little face, wiped everything carefully with cotton wool, everything.

Brought him to her breast.

He wasn’t suckling. What was going on! He was smacking his lips but not making suckling movements. He’d forgotten how!

This was him. MINE.

Weak, no appetite.

She didn’t know what to do.

“Eat, little one! You have to eat, Vasya!”

For some reason he was already Vasya. First he was “my own” and then he was “Vasya.”

She rubbed her nipple against his lips and stuck it in deeper.

He didn’t know how, he’d forgotten how.

How was he going to survive? How had they fed him there, at the maternity hospital? From a bottle. So it all flowed freely, and he didn’t have to work for it.

She’d have to pump and bottle-feed him, too. Oh, the misery.

All that milk that had come in had nowhere to go, jostling, eager to get out.

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