Someone Else's Granny

There’s a bus that runs from our village to the nearest town. Not often, though – only when it feels like going and when there’s gas, so that means the village folk are always helping each other out. If somebody’s going to Toropets, they’ll bring back a batch of bread and pick up medicines from the pharmacy and drop off a TV for repair.

Well, so our neighbor Vitalik – who’s famous for having taken his car apart a couple of years ago but would never buy parts for it, on account of he’s lazy and he’s got no money – called my husband to tell him that this one granny was needing a ride to Toropets. The husband’s face fell, but he agreed anyway. “She’s not a chatterbox, is she?” he asks.

“Not a bit of it,” Vitalik replies. “She’s such a quiet old thing. Tight-lipped, even, seeing as how she’s stone deaf.”

“Where’s the pickup?” the husband asks. “At the cemetery,” Vitalik answers. The husband went all glum. “Isn’t there special equipment for that?” he asks. “I mean to say, I’m scared of dead people, and besides, we’re going for groceries. It’s just awkward.”

“Don’t you fret,” says Vitalik soothingly. “Granny’s a sprightly one, being that she’s alive and kicking and so what if she’s 94. We’ve got a bench at the cemetery, right? And she’ll be sitting on that bench from early in the morning, on the dot.”

“Where do we drop her off?” the husband asked.

“In Toropets…” Vitalik began, then the call cut off. Our phones aren’t like in the city. Here, the way it goes is the cell system works when there’s no clouds. Or snow. Or rain.

“We’ll take her there, and as for where – it’s not Moscow, is it? We’ll figure it out.” And the husband went to roust the dog out of the car. It sleeps there to keep from being disturbed.

In the morning the dust was still down, and the granny showed up nice and clear. There she sat, wearing a headscarf and woolen stockings, striped ones, with warm booties on her feet and a cat in her lap. So the husband asks, “Are we taking the cat too?” Granny says nothing. “It’s probably a job lot – granny plus cat,” I say. “That’s how grannies are, either knitting socks or stroking cats. And the cat doesn’t weigh a ton, now, does it? The car can handle it.” The husband hitches the granny up and sits her in the back, so she won’t be bumped too badly over the ruts. But the cat wasn’t up for a road trip. What would she be doing in Toropets anyway? The mice are tiny there. And then the police might ask to see her passport and where’s a cat going to get one of those? There you have it! So off we went.

It’s a really bumpy trip, and I keep looking back to see how gran’s doing. But she’s curled up and fast asleep. The only thing is, she’s snoring, and hard too. “What’s it matter?” the husband says, trying to calm me down. “It’s even good that she’s snoring. That means she’s sending out a signal that she’s alive and breathing through her nose.”

We arrived in Toropets, and the town was wheeling and dealing like mad, because of it being a market day. There’s a jaw-dropping amount of trading going on. It’s one big shopping mall, a superstore in the run-up to the holiday season. “Where to, gramma?” the husband asks. She keeps mum. But she’s wide awake now, because the jolting has stopped. So we give her a good looking-over: maybe there’s a note pinned to her somewhere? Like on a parcel. From… To… Nope. The husband puts a call in to Vitalik, but he’s out of range. Must be in the forest. But where’s the old lady going?

“Well,” the husband says, “Toropets isn’t Moscow. Let’s just drive her around, and maybe there’ll be the glimmering of an ancient memory. Or maybe somebody’s looking for her with a sign, like at the airport.”

“And just when did they close the airport?” I ask. “We’ve never had one, have we? Let’s drive her to the train station. Six of one, half a dozen of the other – that’s a transport hub too.” So we did.

All sorts of old gals were hanging out at the station too, sitting there in clusters. “Perhaps we should sit her with them, and someone’ll recognize her,” the husband says. He’s upset because there’s no one to look after our grandma and it’s getting toward lunchtime. He got out of the car, opened the door, and mimed at her, something like: “Come on gran, toddle off to the train station and take a seat. Out with you, your pals are sitting over there, waiting for you.” This is apparently where they keep all the grannies. But ours wants nothing to do with that. She glowered, puffed out her cheeks, gabbles something. Damned if we can understand it.

“This must be a prerevolutionary old lass,” the husband says. “She’s using the dialect from back then. They’d have done well to package her with a dictionary. Kinda like a phrase book.”

But the grannies from the train station are selling all sorts of veggies, and they aren’t happy about this granny of ours. They’re not big on competition, so they’re gabbling too, and one even tossed a cucumber at us. “This is a clear and present danger,” the husband says. “We could get beat up. Let’s drive on.” Which we do – for an hour, two hours… Granny’s starting to have a fine old time, looking through the window and smiling. She must be recognizing these places.

When we’re going past All Saints Church, the service is letting out, and our gran is poking a finger at the church. The husband thinks he’s got it. “That’s it!” he says. “She needed to be brought here on Trinity Sunday.” “Now when’s Trinity Sunday?” I ask, trying to make him see sense. “It’s two days away…” Then a little old man catches sight of our granny and starts making a fast beeline for us, waving his arms and yelling “Lidochka! Lidochka!” The husband cheers up. “See, now we know her name,” he says. But the old man has run up to us and no, he says, it’s not Lidochka, it’s some other granny.

So where are we going to drop this one off? The husband’s upset again. And then Vitalik calls. “What’s your deal, driving off with someone else’s granny?” he wants to know. “There’s this family that came for Trinity Parents’ Saturday, to commemorate the old folks. They bought their granny from Daugavpils so she can plunk herself down on her home turf and shed a tear or two. And you drove right past my granny. She hadn’t got to the bench yet, on account of her being crippled in the small of the back.”

The husband came unglued. “Are you kidding me?” he says. “So, do we return her? Or get her to Daugavpils?” Now granny’s just beaming. But Vitalik says: “Fetch that one here or the government’s going to be weighing in, because this is a kidnapping. And for me, you can pick up my niece, Natashka. She’s by that plane that never flies and just stands there on the square. She’ll be waiting for you. And get her ma too. She’ll find a spot by the side of the road, where they sell pies.”

So we brought that one granny back to where we’d got her from. The cat had been waiting for her on the bench all that time. But there was no mamma and no niece, because they’d taken the bus. More room to spread out there.