Free Baba Dunja's Last Love by Alina Bronsky, Tim Mohr Page A

her ears perked up I can’t risk Marja elaborating on her thoughts to me. I shush her admonishingly.
    â€œI think it was Gavrilow,” says Marja, not wishing to understand my warning.
    â€œStupid woman, a boil on your tongue, what motive would he have?”
    â€œHe was afraid that he was going to get robbed.”
    â€œYou spent too long in the sun, Marja.”
    â€œOr it was you. You hunted him down.”
    I spring out of my chair in shock. But I get dizzy and nearly fall over. Marja doesn’t notice, she is working on her fingernails with a file Irina sent me.
    â€œWhy would I have done it, Marja?”
    â€œBecause he was evil.”
    â€œI can’t kill everyone who is evil.”
    â€œNot everyone, naturally.” Marja yawns. “Don’t get so upset, I’m not going to snitch on you.”
    â€œNeither am I,” says Glascha.
    If I were ten years younger I would now be very scared. But as it is I’m just tired. I’m waiting for everyone else to hole up in their houses so I can sit undisturbed on the bench outside. I dream of winter: everyone cowering inside and the wind blowing snow against the window. I’m even looking forward to Glascha no longer being here. She’s constantly hungry and I won’t let her eat vegetables from my garden. I make her gruel with UHT milk I fetched from Sidorow, and mix in the last of my sugar because she won’t eat the mush otherwise.
    â€œYour mama will surely be here soon.”
    â€œMy mama is coming as fast as she can.” Glascha presses into my hip and buries her snub nose in the folds of my skirt. “My mama cried on the phone.”
    â€œAnd did you really hear her voice? On that broken phone?”
    â€œIt wasn’t broken. It just crackled a lot.”
    I sit on the bench and wait. The others are back in their houses, though noses are pressed against windows and eyes peek through the holes in fences. Only Petrow sways in his hammock as if even the end of the world wouldn’t disturb him. I would like to tell him not to worry. Nobody will incriminate him.
    Â 

    Â 
    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.
    â€œWhere is she?” she calls heartbreakingly. “Where have you hidden her, you vulture?”
    â€œGlascha,” I whisper. “She’s crazy, don’t look.”
    â€œThat’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.
    â€œWhat have they done to you?” Glascha’s mama begins to rip away the foil.
    â€œDooooon’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