Yesterday a woman began giving birth directly on the Red Square with an
assault rifle pressed to her temple. The guardians of law and order did not
know what to do. Was it an act of unauthorized birth or an act of unauthorized
protest? Parturition or performance?
Look at this woman with an unwelcome face whose waters broke on the Red
Square. Here this woman is already screaming and writhing the way people were
screaming and writhing at the last demonstrations; the woman is screaming the
way people being tortured scream on the other side of the closed door at the
police station. It’s nothing new for the cops. The woman is screaming and blood
appears at the burst corners of her dry mouth. The opening of her mouth
measures seven centimeters.
Time stands still and there’s no one on the square apart from the cops, the
woman, and the daughter she is giving birth to, who is verbally camouflaged as
a son. She told the police she was having a son so that they would act nicer to
her. One of the cops, the good cop apparently, says: “You don’t worry, lady,
you’re giving birth to a hero for us. Look at the time and place he picked to
be born: in the very heart of Russia, at the very height of the war.” He is
speaking really slowly for some reason, and the woman is also screaming slower
and slower, and the ambulance isn’t coming. Every hour the clock strikes upon
the Kremlin tower. Snowflakes melt even before touching the hot face of the
woman in labor.
Gradually the cops calm down and even point their guns aside. They make
repeated attempts to walk away from the scene in order to call for help but
after a minute the road carries them back to where they started. The Red Square
is where the Earth is at its roundest. Two policemen and a young woman find
themselves completely alone on this round Earth in the very heart of Russia at
the very height of the war.
“So we’ll be taking the delivery, right?” one of them asks into the air,
giving the woman in labor a plaintive look, and extends his hand out toward her
as if for a handshake. The woman in labor screams at him with all her force,
swearing foully and loudly, and then bites through his hand with a long howl.
With the same hand he slaps her across the face.
“You settled down now? You keep yourself together, lady. I don’t care if
you’re a woman or not. If I have to, I’ll pull the baby out of you, and then
stick you in the monkey house with the rest; you’ll be lying there whimpering
on a filthy mattress.” The woman closes her eyes and nods. One cop props up her
back; the other begins fidgeting between her legs.
An endless amount of time passes and, as the hour is striking upon the
stately tower, they put the baby, wrapped in a police jacket and steaming in
the nippy air, into her arms. The cops congratulate one another. There are
tears in their eyes. They kiss each other on the cheeks, not even noticing they
extracted a daughter rather than a son.
The woman with the girl in her arms is looking up at the clear, starry
Kremlin sky. A memory steals into her mind that here, right next to her, an
unburied dead man is lying in his Mausoleum. A rancid haze sometimes obscures
her view: New crematoriums have sprung up across the country, and the smoke
from their smokestacks sometimes casts a heavy smog over the city. The dead
remind the townspeople of themselves by taking their breath away and forcing
them to cough.
Time finally comes to life. Tourists and spectators start gaping around
them. The men in uniform lift the mother and the daughter in their arms and
carry them away. The woman is asked to wait for the doctors at the police
station. She and the baby are carefully placed into a cage where other women
are sitting, their heads bowed on one another’s shoulders. They show signs of
having been there for many hours: Wet stains are spreading on their shirts and
blouses. It’s milk. She decides not to ask them yet what they are there for.
It’s quiet in the cell, except behind the iron lattice door, she can hear the
whole bureau of police officers joyfully gathering to wash down the birth of
her son.
Alicia Tatone
CA SINH ĐẺ CỦA MỘT PHỤ NỮ
Hôm
qua,
một
phụ nữ đã bắt đầu chuyển dạ
ngay
trên Quảng trường Đỏ
có
một khẩu súng trường tấn công
dí
vào thái dương của bà.
Những
người bảo vệ luật pháp và trật tự
không biết phải làm gì.
Đó
là một hành động sinh trái phép
hay
một hành động phản loạn
Chuyển
dạ sanh hay đang diễn xuất.
