A Constellation of Vital Phenomena - By Anthony Marra Page 0,8
felt as buoyantly patriotic as her Chechen classmates who could trace their family trees back to the acorns. That sense of electric optimism was evident in the designs that had been solicited from architects in Riyadh, Melbourne, and Minsk. City officials had made a show of the blueprints, displaying them on billboards and distributing them as leaflets at the bazaar. She’d never seen anything like it. The sketches had suggested that the pinnacle of design no longer consisted of cramming the greatest amount of reinforced concrete into the ugliest rectangle possible. Once she had held a leaflet against the horizon and as the red sun bled through the paper the towers had become part of the skyline.
“Did they really want the girl?” she asked, turning her attention back to Akhmed. It didn’t surprise her, but she asked anyway. Disappearances touched down as randomly as lightning. Only those actually guilty of abetting the insurgency—an infinitesimal fraction of those abducted—had the benefit of understanding their fate.
“It doesn’t make sense,” Akhmed said. Whether he meant the floorless room, the crushed city beyond, or the girl, Sonja didn’t know. In the distance, a faint stream of tracers streaked skyward, disappearing into the clouds.
“Payday must be coming,” Akhmed said.
She nodded. The Feds were only paid if they used a certain percentage of their ammo. If the soldiers tired of firing blindly into the sky, they might bury their excess rounds, then dig them up a few hours later to claim the bonus given for discovering a rebel arms cache. “Let’s go,” Sonja said.
They passed the original maternity ward, unused since Maali’s death, and descended the stairwell to the new maternity ward. Deshi set down her knitting needles and eyed Akhmed suspiciously as she crossed the room to meet them. After twelve love affairs over the course of her seventy-three years, each beginning with a grander gesture, each ending with a more spectacular heartache, Deshi had learned to distrust men of every size and age, from newborns to great-grandfathers, knowing they all had it in them to break a decent woman’s heart. “Will he be joining us?” she asked.
“Provisionally,” Sonja said.
“And the girl?”
“Provisionally.”
“You’re the nurse,” Akhmed said, curtly. “We met earlier.”
“He speaks out of turn, without being addressed,” Deshi observed.
“I just wanted to say hello.”
“He continues to speak without being spoken to. And he has an ugly nose.”
“I’m standing right here,” Akhmed said, frowning.
“He tells us he is standing right here. As if we have been made blind and idiotic.”
“What am I doing wrong?” he asked Sonja. “I’m just standing here.”
“He seems to believe that his presence might somehow transform the ugliness of his nose, but seeing that nose, right here in front of me, provides irrefutable evidence.”
“What am I supposed to say?” He looked desperately to Sonja. She smiled and turned to Deshi.
“Do you see the way he looks at me?” Deshi asked, her voice trembling with indignation. “He is trying to seduce me.”
“I’m doing nothing of the sort. I’m just standing here!”
“Denial is the first impulse of a traitor.”
“You’re quoting Stalin,” Akhmed said.
“You see? He’s a lecher and a Stalinist.”
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
“He must be an oncologist.”
“There are few fields of medicine more important than oncology.”
Deshi appeared flabbergasted. “You see!” she shouted. “A lecher, a Stalinist, and an oncologist? It is too much. It can’t be.”
“With respect, I’m thirty-nine and you’re old enough to be my mother. I have no desire to have anything but a professional relationship with you.”
“No desire? First he leers, then he insults. Mocking an old woman like me, has he no shame?”
“I’m sorry, okay? I’m sorry. I’m just trying to get along with you.”
Deshi’s lips sharpened into a scowl. “Only a weak man apologizes to a woman.”
His eyes were watery by the time Sonja interrupted the exchange. He looked more shocked than he had when she opened the door to the fourth-floor storage room, and through her laughter, she couldn’t help feeling guilty for exposing the man to Deshi without warning. “Enough,” she said. “Akhmed, this is Deshi. Deshi, Akhmed. Let’s work.”
“It’s a pleasure,” Deshi said, and returned to the desk beside the incubator.
“What’s wrong with her?” Akhmed asked when the nurse was safely out of earshot.
“And now he thinks there’s something wrong with Deshi,” Sonja said. A look of horror sank into his face. She assured him she was joking. “She once fell in love with an oncologist. It didn’t work out.”
A woman with dark greasy hair lay in the first bed with a child suckling her left breast.