PSALM 44 Read Online Free PDF Page A

prospect of her legs completely freezing up and turning into some icy, inert mass.
    Thus it was necessary to undertake something, above all to push those damp diapers lower and to return the sheet to Polja. But then, on the very cusp of the movement with which she wanted to raise the infant off of herself and to position him so she could stretch her limbs and give Polja back the sheet, she stopped, restrained the movement that was almost finished being born, feeling the way its mild charge crept across her body (a charge that should have set her hand into motion) and sagged from the tips of her fingers: Polja is going to die , and she sensed with bitterness that it was precisely this thought that stayed her limbs, not because she now at long last comprehended that Polja was really not coming with them (she was conscious of that: though Polja would remain alive until two, she would nevertheless not be able to come with them), but rather because she realized that she herself had acquiesced to the fact that Polja would not be going with them.
    “ Ž ana, ” she said, and when she noticed the other woman had moved: “ Help me pull Polja ’ s sheet out from under the baby. ”
    “ He has more need of it, the baby, ” Ž ana said unexpectedly. “ And you do too . . . Do you understand . . . ? ” — and before Marija could gather her thoughts and say anything, she heard the rustling of the straw and the quiet knocking of the tin can.
    “ You see, it ’ s too late for that, ” said Ž ana. “ For Polja, it ’ s too late already. ”
    “ What time is it? ” Marija asked, at the same time as a narrow blade of light scraped over Ž ana ’ s face and she saw her lips moving:
    “ It ’ s not yet midnight. I don ’ t think it ’ s midnight yet. ”
    Marija was just then shifting her frozen legs.
    “ I got my period, ” she said. “ Or so it seems. ”
    “ That ’ s from the fear, ” Ž ana said; then she corrected herself: “ From the excitement. ”
    “ No, ” Marija said. “ From the wet diapers. I didn ’ t dare go to sleep (it was just some kind of half-dozing state). I should have changed position ” — then she sensed once more Polja ’ s mute presence in the room (she felt it from the silence) and she remembered that she was supposed to make more diapers out of her sheet. But she didn ’ t get up. She couldn ’ t begin tearing Polja ’ s sheet right away and making diapers. And sanitary pads. Then she asked, “ How old was she? ” but she already knew that she wasn ’ t going to be able to stand it another second in that position and that her stomach and legs were about to disintegrate abruptly like in Poe ’ s story about the corpse of M. Valdemar, which has been artificially kept alive by means of hypnotism and which then suddenly dissolves into gooey, slimy rot. And even before she could hear Ž ana ’ s answer, “ Seventeen, I think, ” she had already pushed her hand under the child to extract Polja ’ s sheet, which she then laid next to her on the straw and she laid the child across it and wrapped it up with the other hand. Then she turned to the side for a moment, felt for the edge of the diaper, arched her back, and started unwrapping the wet, blood-covered rags around her legs. “ She seemed older to me, ” she said so that her rubbing the dry edge of a diaper on her benumbed skin to wipe away the blood couldn ’ t be heard.
    “ Corpses don ’ t have an age, ” Ž ana said, and then Marija felt the blood beginning to circulate slowly beneath her skin, rising up through the capillaries to the surface, all over her buttocks and her thighs, and then she stretched out her legs and sat up in the straw, leaning her shoulder blades against the cold wall of the barracks. She wiped her fingers on a damp rag and began groping about in the dark for a dry piece of linen to make a pad.
    “ You met her before I did, ” she said, locating her underwear in the gloom beneath the fingers