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

interactions with us bring it to the surface.
    Seventeen and a half years ago I dialed Irina’s German phone number, which with the country code and area code was very long. She hadn’t been reachable by phone for a few months prior to that. She hadn’t written me anything either. I had a feeling that it meant something, but I didn’t know exactly what. I still lived in Malyschi then, regularly bought five-minute phone cards, stood in line at the international phone booth, waited to be connected, and listened to the outgoing message in German on her answering machine. I always hung up immediately in the firm belief that Irina would pick up the phone at some stage. If something truly awful had happened I would have heard about it already. She would have made sure of that.
    And one day she did in fact pick up the phone and said, “Mother, it’s good that you called. I wanted to tell you something. You have a grandchild. She is eleven days old and healthy. Her name is Laura.”
    And I asked: “Are you sure?”
    â€œOf course I’m sure, I named her.”
    â€œI don’t mean the name.”
    â€œYou can never be sure. But I did count the fingers and toes.” She laughed.
    A cry rang out in the background. It sounded like a kitten whose tail had gotten pinched.
    â€œIt’s a great joy,” I said. “Go to your daughter. I’ll call you another time.”
    I didn’t call for a while. I knew what it was like when you first had a baby, you don’t have a lot of time to talk. I sent Irina a letter in which I remembered what she herself had been like as a baby, and I began to save money. Irina wrote back:
Forgive me, Mother, for not telling you about the pregnancy beforehand. I wanted to wait for the birth
.
    She included a photo of a suckling baby with a giant pacifier in its mouth.
    I knew exactly what she meant.
    When Laura was three, Irina came for the first time to take sick children to Germany. She didn’t have Laura with her.
    I didn’t ask her a single time when I could see my grandchild. I didn’t ask why she never brought Laura with her to see her old homeland. I know the answer. I wouldn’t want Irina to feel bad about it. She invited me several times to come to Germany, she suggested she could pick me up and take me back. It sounded so easy when she said it. But I don’t have any experience with travel. In my entire life I never made it beyond Malyschi.
    I regret not taking Irina up on her invitation. When Laura was younger I didn’t have the heart to do it. I didn’t want to impose on Irina’s family. Now I’m too old. The walk to the bus station, the bus ride, and then another bus to the airport, the airplane, the drive to Irina’s, I couldn’t make it anymore.
    And besides, I know that I give off radiation just like the ground and everything that comes out of it. Shortly after the reactor I, like many others, took part in studies—I went to the hospital in Malyschi, sat on a chair, told them my name and birthday while the meter next to me clattered and a nurse’s assistant recorded the readings in a notebook. A biologist explained to me later that the stuff was stuck in my bones and gave off radiation around me so that I was myself like a little reactor.
    The strawberries and huckleberries in our woods give off radiation, too, as do the porcinis and the birch bolete mushrooms that we gather in autumn, and the meat of the rabbits and deer that Gavrilow sometimes shoots. No outsiders will touch any of it, the most they will do is take samples for their research, but it seems like such a shame to us to put it to that purpose.
    Sometimes I think that I owe my long life to the good air and the freshly tapped birch sap I drink early each year. I go into the woods with pickling jars and take the time to find birch trees that seem strong and willing to give me a bit of their sap. I find it barbaric to injure