flowerpots, wreaths, burning candles. Maruška leads me through the crowd, shouldering past anyone who won’t move for her uniform.
A chill comes from the concrete. Somebody strums a guitar. A couple of people light candles from each other. Behind them yawns the dark maw of the underpass. That’s where the cold is coming from. A draught tugs at the candle flames.
Maruška, look!
A rat flashes past through the shadows. Now I can make out words in the hum of the crowd. Somebody’s saying names, women’s names. People around us are crossing themselves and bowing at the waist.
I guess we’re not going to get very far with the underpass either.
She grabs my hand and drags me through the crowd, bumping into people.
We stop at the coffin. That’s what they were all bowing to. The coffin is surrounded by pools of red and yellow wax. A girl lies inside. In a white dress. No, silver. A princess. Long hair, headband covered with pearls and glittering stones. She looks nice. I lean over the coffin, look at her face. It’s a mannequin. A fake. Maruška’s still holding my hand. We slowly walk around the coffin. Now we’re right at the entrance.
That’s a bride, you saw a bride, Maruška whispers to me.
There are candles flickering here too.
The girls that died in here are called brides, Maruška says, in a normal voice now. There were fifty-three of them.
During the war, huh?
No. In ’99.
What?
There was a concert. Awesome line-up: Mango Mango, I love them, Maruška says. She points to the wall. Scratches in the plaster. You could see them in the candlelight.
There were claw marks all over, Maruška says. The crowd crushed them up against the walls and the bars, down there. She waves her hand, there’s a grille. They got suffocated and trampled to death. High-heel wounds all over their bodies. The girls had their nicest dresses on, for the concert, of course. And they wore really high heels back then. Stilettos, they call them. Nasty things. I never wore them. I was at the concert too.
You were there, huh?
The underpass is long and dark. I’m glad Maruška’s telling me about her life, but I’m ready to leave.
Yeah, I came too, but I ran into some guys I knew! Coincidence. They stole a keg of beer somewhere. So I went with them. Lucky me! A storm got up. The people from the concert ran to take shelter in the underpass here. The crowd squeezed up against the bars, people kept trying to push their way in. They didn’t know the grille was closed. Two or three militiamen also got trampled to death.
How did that happen?
It just did. Which proves it was really an accident. Some idiots forgot to open the grille! The government didn’t plan the massacre to disperse the youth, get it?
I don’t get it. She stares at me, I nod. Black shadows flash past on the ground. I wonder whether Maruška’s scared of mice. Probably not.
You know how much it costs to train a militiaman like that?
I just wave my hand, like it’s obvious.
They say there was blood up to their ankles, Maruška says. She waves her hand too. It soaked into the ground. Into the river that runs underneath here. The Niamiha. That’s the river Minsk was founded on.
Uh-huh!
The bloody banks of the Niamiha, as
The Song of Igor’s Campaign
says. Ever heard of it?
I take a deep breath, preparing to answer her truthfully, but just then we come out of the underpass and a blizzard swallows us up, the whooshing wind lifting heaps of snow in the air. I grope my way through the white fog, a red sign flies by, slams into the pavement. I stand, spitting snow.
Where are you? I shout.
The hum of engines drowns out the whoosh of the wind. Trucks emerge from the fog, stop, bundled figures jump out, soldiers.
Damn, these guys don’t take a moment’s rest, I swear under my breath. Maruška knows what to do and where to go, dragging me by the hand again, the wind whipping snow all around us. We walk along the wall, to the next street and the next, and
A chill comes from the concrete. Somebody strums a guitar. A couple of people light candles from each other. Behind them yawns the dark maw of the underpass. That’s where the cold is coming from. A draught tugs at the candle flames.
Maruška, look!
A rat flashes past through the shadows. Now I can make out words in the hum of the crowd. Somebody’s saying names, women’s names. People around us are crossing themselves and bowing at the waist.
I guess we’re not going to get very far with the underpass either.
She grabs my hand and drags me through the crowd, bumping into people.
We stop at the coffin. That’s what they were all bowing to. The coffin is surrounded by pools of red and yellow wax. A girl lies inside. In a white dress. No, silver. A princess. Long hair, headband covered with pearls and glittering stones. She looks nice. I lean over the coffin, look at her face. It’s a mannequin. A fake. Maruška’s still holding my hand. We slowly walk around the coffin. Now we’re right at the entrance.
That’s a bride, you saw a bride, Maruška whispers to me.
There are candles flickering here too.
The girls that died in here are called brides, Maruška says, in a normal voice now. There were fifty-three of them.
During the war, huh?
No. In ’99.
What?
There was a concert. Awesome line-up: Mango Mango, I love them, Maruška says. She points to the wall. Scratches in the plaster. You could see them in the candlelight.
There were claw marks all over, Maruška says. The crowd crushed them up against the walls and the bars, down there. She waves her hand, there’s a grille. They got suffocated and trampled to death. High-heel wounds all over their bodies. The girls had their nicest dresses on, for the concert, of course. And they wore really high heels back then. Stilettos, they call them. Nasty things. I never wore them. I was at the concert too.
You were there, huh?
The underpass is long and dark. I’m glad Maruška’s telling me about her life, but I’m ready to leave.
Yeah, I came too, but I ran into some guys I knew! Coincidence. They stole a keg of beer somewhere. So I went with them. Lucky me! A storm got up. The people from the concert ran to take shelter in the underpass here. The crowd squeezed up against the bars, people kept trying to push their way in. They didn’t know the grille was closed. Two or three militiamen also got trampled to death.
How did that happen?
It just did. Which proves it was really an accident. Some idiots forgot to open the grille! The government didn’t plan the massacre to disperse the youth, get it?
I don’t get it. She stares at me, I nod. Black shadows flash past on the ground. I wonder whether Maruška’s scared of mice. Probably not.
You know how much it costs to train a militiaman like that?
I just wave my hand, like it’s obvious.
They say there was blood up to their ankles, Maruška says. She waves her hand too. It soaked into the ground. Into the river that runs underneath here. The Niamiha. That’s the river Minsk was founded on.
Uh-huh!
The bloody banks of the Niamiha, as
The Song of Igor’s Campaign
says. Ever heard of it?
I take a deep breath, preparing to answer her truthfully, but just then we come out of the underpass and a blizzard swallows us up, the whooshing wind lifting heaps of snow in the air. I grope my way through the white fog, a red sign flies by, slams into the pavement. I stand, spitting snow.
Where are you? I shout.
The hum of engines drowns out the whoosh of the wind. Trucks emerge from the fog, stop, bundled figures jump out, soldiers.
Damn, these guys don’t take a moment’s rest, I swear under my breath. Maruška knows what to do and where to go, dragging me by the hand again, the wind whipping snow all around us. We walk along the wall, to the next street and the next, and
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