Page 84 of What Blooms in Barren Lands

“Thanks ever so much. Did anything happen to Monika? Is she alright?”

I could hardly keep still. Dave looked tired, like he hadn’t slept all night, but a Cheshire grin true to its name spread across his face.

“She gave birth to a healthy little girl. They’re both well.”

Not a day had gone by since Monika shared the news of her pregnancy with me that I hadn’t pictured that very moment. In fact, I had spent countless hours silently practising an appropriate way to respond, the way a normal human being would. Because I knew that I was nothing but a shadowy shell. I had been turned into a hollow stone, nothing in the void within but grief and jealousy.

The toppling wave of joyous relief that flooded me was the one and only thing I had not prepared for.

I leaned forward with a choked groan, my hands gripping my knees to keep me from crumbling to the ground.

“She’s alright? She did it?” I asked in a trembling voice as I straightened up.

A shadow flickered across Dave’s face, and I searched it anxiously for a sign of anything having gone wrong despite his assurances. And there certainly was something, burrowed in the shallow lines of his rounded brow.

“Yes. It was very quick for a first-time birth,” he said, nevertheless, reassuringly.

“She didn’t need the C-section?”

“No, Ren.” He put both hands on my shoulders, steadying me. “It was a natural birth, and it went as well as it could have, truly.”

“And the baby’s completely healthy too?”

“Absolutely. Screaming her lungs out. She’s the perfect weight, started breathing immediately, and has already nursed. Oh, and shat all over her mum shortly after.”

I snorted, but the rising laughter froze in my throat with the crawling suspicion that there was something off after all.

“Why do I get the sense you’re not telling me something?” I narrowed my eyes at Dave questioningly.

“Because ... Monika has bruises all over her arms and thighs.”

There was a swampy smell in the bedroom, the air moist and heavy with a tang of blood and faeces. Monika sat perched in her bed, propped on pillows, with her hair up in a messy bun. She barely took her eyes off her newborn daughter, Ella, resting in her arms. After she told me in graphic detail what the birth was like, we fully exhausted the topic of just how perfect Ella was. After a momentary silence, I finally broached the subject of Albert’s treatment of her.

“Even if I vant to leave him,” Monika said, “vhere I go and how? There is nowhere. He will find me on Corsica. I can’t sail to Europe just like that vith a new baby.”

Her face was pinched and sallow, with a slightly yellow tinge that made her freckles stand out.

“And do you? Want to leave him, I mean?” I asked gravely.

“I’m not stupid. I know vhat is going to happen now that I’m not pregnant.” She shook her head. “He tell me all the time that only my pregnancy stops him.”

“Stops him from what?” I could already feel the anger bubbling up inside me, but I kept my voice low not to wake Ella up.

“From beat me the vay I’d deserve.” For a split second she raised her eyes, meeting mine. “He say my parents didn’t taught me how behave.”

I scoffed disgustedly and got up to walk around the room because the outrage I felt at her words wouldn’t permit me to sit still.

“I don’t know, maybe he’s right. Before him, I only have boyfriends at school. Maybe I don’t know to do this, this adult relationship. I make him angry all the time, vhat I say or do.”

“Monika, stop.” I paused in my tracks by the window, turning to face her again. “He’s not right!”

“Not before, no. Before he go to jail for this. But now no jail. It’s different.”

I turned away and looked outside. Monika and Albert resided in a two-storey house with a thatched roof and a spacious balcony. The bedroom was on the second floor and allowed for a magnificent view of the village, nestled comfortably in the last remnants of snow.

“No, Monika, it’s not. Most men, most decent men, don’t want to treat their partners this way even if there’s no law stopping them anymore.”

I said this without looking at her to resist the urge to grab her shoulders and shake her. It wouldn’t do to wake the baby, after all. But then I did glare at her as intently as I could have, trying to make her understand, to make her realise.