The Boy in the Suitcase - Lene Kaaberbol [50]
Sigita had fled to Vilnius to escape Tauragė’s judgment. To be free of prying and gossip, of moralizing parochial prejudice. Of everything provincial. Since she was nine or ten, she had been a highly secret admirer of Jolita’s courage; she imagined that her aunt had done everything she herself dreamed of: that she had broken free and made a life for herself on her own terms, up there in the impossibly distant big city. This was why Sigita had sought her out. Jolita would understand. She would be able to see they had kindred souls, rebellious and free. And when Jolita had embraced her and let her move in with no questions asked, it had seemed an affirmation of everything she had dreamed.
But on Mondays and Thursdays, Jolita became anxious. She cleaned the flat. She bought wine. She awkwardly told Sigita she couldn’t stay in the flat, but must keep away from five in the afternoon until midnight at the earliest. Highly embarrassing, it would seem, if the Professor were to meet Jolita’s uncouth country niece, who had been so stupid as to get herself knocked up at age fifteen. If Sigita didn’t leave quickly enough, Jolita’s gestures became increasingly jerky and hectic. She would press money on Sigita, so she could buy herself a meal somewhere, go out on the town, see a film, that would be nice, darling, wouldn’t it? Damp, crumpled notes would be pushed into Sigita’s hands as Jolita damn near forced her out the door. Sigita saw a lot of films that winter.
It occurred to her that Jolita was not free or independent at all. She hadn’t acquired her job by sleeping with the Professor—the job came first, and the Professor later—but that was seventeen years ago, and no one remembered that now. If the Professor were to lose his position, Jolita would be sacked as a matter of course. For the university, as for many others, the Independence hadn’t been all sweetness and light and patriotic hymns. Funds were at a minimum, and everyone fought like hyenas for the pitiful scraps and jobs that there were. Jolita’s whole life dangled by the thinnest of cobweb threads. Her position, her salary, her flat, her entire way of life … everything depended on him. Mondays and Thursdays.
Jolita didn’t think Sigita should go to school.
“You can do that next year, darling, when this is all over and done with,” she said, jiggling the coffee pot to try to gauge its contents. “Another cup?”
“No, thank you,” said Sigita distractedly. She was seated on one of the ramshackle wooden chairs in the kitchen; she had to sit with her legs apart to accomodate her belly. “But Jolita. There will be a baby, then.”
Jolita froze for a minute, with the coffee pot raised in front of her as though it was an offensive weapon. She looked at Sigita seriously.
“Little darling,” she said. “You’re an intelligent girl. Surely you don’t imagine that you’ll be able to keep it?”
THE CLINIC HAD recently been established in a big old villa in the Žvėrynas Quarter. There was a smell of fresh paint and new linoleum, and the chairs in the waiting room were so new that some of them still sported their plastic covers. Sigita sat heavily on one of them, squatting like a constipated cow. Sweat trickled down her back, soaking into the awful, bright yellow maternity dress Jolita had acquired through a friend at the University. For the past four weeks, this had been the only garment that would fit Sigita’s bloated body, and she hated it with a will.
At least it will soon be over, thought Sigita. And clung to that thought as the next spasm gripped her. A deep grunting sound escaped her, and she felt like an animal. A cow, a whale, an elephant. How the hell had it come to this? She gripped the edge of the table and tried to inhale and exhale, all the way, all the way, as she had been taught, but it made not the slightest bit of difference.
“Aaaaah. Aaaaaah. Aaaaaah.”
I don’t want to be an animal, she thought. I want to be Sigita again!
Jolita came back, accompanied by a slight, redhaired woman in a pale