The Last Girl by Stephan Collishaw Page A

thought, and a pain stabbed my chest. The two women looked at me with concern as I clenched my fist against the pain.
    â€˜Are you all right?’ Jolanta asked, gripping my arm, supporting me.
    I gasped, feeling the pain dig deep into my chest. ‘Tired,’ I said. Her mother clucked sympathetically and, taking my other arm, led me into the cool darkness of the kitchen. Jolanta boiled some water and made me a herbal infusion. I sipped it gratefully.
    â€˜My father died some years ago in an accident in the fields,’ Jolanta said, later, as we sat by the small river that ran along the foot of their land. ‘He was the foreman of the collective farm. He was a big man. You look a little like him.’
    â€˜A little older, I would think,’ I said.
    â€˜You don’t look so old,’ she said. ‘Anyway, Mama has been on her own since then. It’s not good,’ she added. ‘She should find somebody to keep her company. Did you see the way that she was looking at you?’
    â€˜Don’t be silly.’
    â€˜She was,’ Jolanta teased.
    â€˜You must tell me,’ I said, changing the subject, ‘what happened?’
    Jolanta brushed her hands across her bruises and her face darkened. A thin breeze swept across the river and lifted her hair. ‘Perhaps it’s not such a bad thing to live on your own,’ she said.
    â€˜It was your husband?’
    â€˜Kestutis is…’ She paused. ‘Since the army… I don’t know… Sometimes moods take him and it’s like he is somebody else. Usually he just rants and rages, he doesn’t normally hit me.’ She felt her bruises once more and I saw the tears start and glisten in her eyes. One swelled and rolled across her dark lashes. It dropped onto her cheek and sat there, fat, like a child’s tear.
    â€˜Things have been strained just recently. He has been drinking more than usual. And then his medicine… It was getting late and I had gone to bed. Kestutis was in a fury earlier because the baby was crying when he was trying to work. He was drunk. I told him to go to sleep, that the baby would stop. He began swearing at me. I knew that I would have to sit and listen to him. There is no way to stop him once he has started. He can’t be quietened or pacified, I just have to sit and listen. He began to shout and I was afraid. I tried to quieten him but that just made him angrier.’ She stopped and looked out across the river. She shivered violently and clasped her arms around her body.
    â€˜I understand,’ I said. ‘You don’t need to go on.’
    â€˜He hit me,’ she said, looking out, far across the river. ‘It seemed that once he started he could not stop. Like a dam had burst, a tap opened, something. He has never done that before. As bad as it has been, he has never done that before.’ She fell then into silence. I was sorry that I had forced the subject and I told her so.
    â€˜No,’ she said. ‘It’s better to talk about it. I had to get away. I needed to hide away. I knew that here, in the village, I would be safe. I feel safe here.’
    I need to hide away. A molina. The village. The words took wing and flew across the years, black crows against the blue sky. I heard them as she had said them, her voice tight with fear, full of the horror that we did not know, yet knew. Yes, knew. After so many years of hiding, of covering up, those words were rising from the unsacred ground in which I had buried them. The ghosts were rising; they hovered in the twilight air, by the river, where it had begun to grow cold. I shivered.
    Seeing me shiver roused Jolanta from her thoughts. She wiped her eyes and attempted a smile. ‘You’re getting cold,’ she said. ‘Let’s·go in and see what Mama has cooked for supper.’
    She offered me her hand, and I took it. We walked slowly back to the house, her hand in mine. The light faded