Page 85 of What Blooms in Barren Lands

“Oh, like Einar never do to you ...” She looked back at me pointedly with a mildly accusing expression.

“Never!” I said emphatically, but shrank away, disturbed by her expression, which conveyed her doubts clearly even though she said nothing.

She merely pulled Ella closer, rearranging the baby in her arms, and looked back at me pointedly over her lightly freckled, narrow nose.

Could she have ever overheard something that she misinterpreted, perhaps? Or seen a stray contusion somewhere on my body and mistaken the mark of passion for something sinister? The very thought made me want to disappear on the spot. And yet, careful as Einar and I had been, it was not completely impossible for her to have unwittingly breached our privacy only to take things wildly out of context.

An uncomfortable silence ensued, during which even our soft breathing sounded loud. I fidgeted with the strings of my sweatshirt, trying to think of anything to say that would allow me to extricate myself from the situation and leave. My mind was blank, however.

“Can Einar talk to Albert?” Monika asked after a few minutes had passed.

I exhaled deeply with relief.

“He already has, dear. I asked him to do more than just talk, but he said he wasn’t willing to interfere more forcefully.” I smiled at her apologetically. “Then I spoke to others, too. Fin when he was still with us, Russ, and Dave ... but it’s Albert we’re talking about. No one wants to go against him.”

Monika nodded, and a few strands of mousy hair escaped the constraints of her clip.

“Oh, vhat to do? I don’t vant that Ella grow up like me, parents always fighting. Vorse than me. My dad never hitted my mum.”

“We’ll think of something. We have to.”

Ella stretched luxuriously and opened her eyes, emitting a noise much like a little duckling’s quack. Hot wire cut into my heart at the sight.

“Dzien dobry moja ksiezniczko.”Monika’s face lit up, the harried expression gone entirely at the sight of her baby.

Immediately after her face crumpled, though, and tears rolled down her cheeks.

“Darling, what’s wrong?” I asked, mildly panicked, engaged as I was in a furious battle with tears of my own.

“I vish she can have a normal, safe life. Like before. Toys and school and friends. Vhat if she hates me? For bringing her to this hell?”

I laid my hand on hers. It was clammy, and the bundle of clothes in which the baby was swathed squirmed. The infernal wire in my chest tightened like a noose. Outside, the sun hid behind a cloud, and the modern whiteness of the room suddenly seemed bleak and dull, rather like a hospital room. But hospital rooms were the last place I needed my mind to wander into.

“She won’t,” I tried to say encouragingly, but my voice was brittle like shards of shattered glass. “We will keep her safe and bring her toys whenever possible. And there are and will be other children. And in time, the world may actually return to what we were used to. Or close enough.”

Monika looked up at me hopefully, lighting up.

“You think?”

“I do. And so does Einar. But if it doesn’t, then this world will be normal for her. There is happiness to be had even now. I am myself much happier than I was before the pandemic. Perhaps she, too, will be more content this way than she would have been in the pre-pandemic times.”

“I miss before life so much all the time. You really don’t?”

“Hell no.” I shook my head vigorously. “Of course, I do miss what family I had, my friends, and even Petr. And hot showers and the comforts. But I don’t miss all the ... nonsense. The ads, the social media narcissism, mortgages, and job contracts, and societal expectations, and man-made conflicts over money. It never made sense to me, everyone talking as if we lived in the best times in history, as if human life was at the peak of what it could be. And yet, an increasing number of people had to be on pills for anxiety or depression just to cope. Everything used to feel like a competition in who gets to live the most perfect-looking life.”

I paused to take an agitated breath. Monika’s brown eyes were very round as she looked at me with something akin to concern. That didn’t deter me from carrying on breathlessly,

“The Outbreak ended all that. And god, isn’t it liberating!”

“You hate your life, and so you’re happy that now everybody hates their life too?”

I blushed. But before I could come up with a sensible reply, Ella started crying, and Monika looked as though she wanted to do the same. She said nothing while nursing the baby.

“You vant to hold her?” she asked me just as I readied myself to leave.

And I was a hollow stone once more, a pillar of salt. My practice of normal human reactions would not come amiss after all.

“Of course, I would love to,” I lied with a wide, brilliant smile as the hot wire inside of me sliced my heart into a dozen bleeding pieces.