Widows by Ariel Dorfman

Author:Ariel Dorfman [Dorfman, Ariel]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-60980-322-3
Publisher: Seven Stories Press
Published: 2011-01-03T16:00:00+00:00

chapter five

viii

Grandma didn’t want anyone else to go and wait for Serguei, nobody else, not even his twin sister Cristina. Only Yanina and the baby, and he should be prettied up to meet his papa, these things happen only once in a lifetime. We didn’t protest. It was right that the two of them, the three of them, should be alone before meeting with the whole family.

Grandma had gone directly up to Yanina when she returned, not responding to our greetings or questions. “Take off those widow’s clothes, child, and dress up the baby nicely.”

Yanina was next to me. I could feel the trembling passing through my own body, a shaking that started in her hips and rose to her eyes. They seemed to shine, a light flaring up in her, and we saw her get up, we saw her go over to Grandma and take her hand.

“Serguei? Is it Serguei, Mama?”

Grandma smiled and said yes, yes indeed, girl. Her husband was fully alive, in good health. She’d wanted to bring him to her right away, as soon as he’d come in through the door of the school, but the captain had said he was still the one giving the orders and first the reporter had to do an interview with him and only then would he be set free. Conditionally free, the lieutenant had added, looking at each woman and at her especially.

“Cristina,” Yanina said, “it’s Serguei, Serguei’s coming, you told me so, you told me he was alive, you told me so, bless you.”

And the captain had also advised Grandma that it was likely the same reporter would want to ask her a few questions, so would she and the rest please be kind enough to remain where they were until the prisoner returned. But she had answered that her family did not discuss their problems in public and did not give interviews, much less to strangers, and as far as she was concerned she was going, in order to let her daughter-in-law and grandchild know, in the light of the fact that the army hadn’t had the decency to tell them that her son was on the way and preferred to put on a big spectacle instead of granting them a relieved and peaceful night. Then Grandma had approached Serguei. We imagined her drawing closer to him step by step to hug him or kiss him or caress him or simply touch him to prove he was real, and the captain had barked an order, and they took him away. So Yanina should hurry. They were letting him go any minute, the interview was taking place in the captain’s office.

Yanina went right into the house and we heard her speaking in a shaky voice to the sleeping baby, waking him up gently. I followed her to the door and saw her beside his crib, singing to him with that beautiful voice of hers, something like wake up my little walnut, my little almond, wake up my ripe

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