Psalm 44

Then she had to wrap the baby back up in the diaper that she had dried out on herself. And she tore off a small piece from Polja’s sheet and wiped the moisture from her skin. She bundled the child up in a blanket and wrapped it around several times with a narrow strip of linen. Once again she sat down in the straw and leaned her back against the cold barracks wall. The distant thundering of cannon and the rustling of straw from Žana’s bed were still all she could hear. And she thought: I should count. Thirty was half a minute. Sixty — one minute. Five times sixty. . How much was five times sixty? Doesn’t matter. Maks will be giving the signal in a few moments. The baby is still asleep. She felt the warmth of his soft lips and his hot, slippery tongue on her nipple. In the gloom she could almost make out the elemental mechanism of her own heart pumping the white foamy liquid to the rhythm of her blood into that warm little ring tight around her nipple like a knot. And even before Žana touched her, although she could hear no sound, Marija sensed her proximity. “Now they’re going to short out the lights,” Žana said. Then Marija let Žana help her get to her feet, although it seemed to her that she was only interested in taking the child. “No,” she said, “I can do that myself,” but Marija nonetheless felt faint when she stood up and leaned the weight of her whole body, though without letting go of the child, onto Žana: “I think I can do it myself.” They had already reached the door when she heard Žana’s barely audible whisper: “Take off your shoes,” and then: “give me Jan,” and she groped in the darkness for Žana’s hands reaching out for her and for the child, and after that she handed Žana the bundle and pulled back her hands as soon as she felt the full weight of the child slide out of her embrace. Her shoulder propped against the wall, she removed one of her shoes and then shifted her weight onto her other leg and took off the other. Without letting go of the heavy boots in her left hand, she stuck out her right through the darkness toward Žana and touched the rough blanket and under it the bound strips of half-wet linen. Then she felt Žana’s hand searching for something in the gloom and right after that she felt the weight of the boots vanish as well.

Then Marija noticed a cool draft blowing in from the corridor when the door opened slightly. The hinges on the door creaked a bit like when a board pops from cold in the dead of night. She felt Žana’s hand on hers. Žana moved forward. Along the wall. In one hand Žana was holding Marija’s boots, while her own, tied together, she carried draped across her other arm at the elbow: the same arm with which she felt Marija’s hand draped over the child like a mooring line.