Freedom

The final story in the collection of four short pieces about relationships, written in 2008 in Russia.

Freedom

She has to get out. This room, this house, this relationship – they’re all wrong and she wants something different, more nourishing. The baby-blue walls reflect the sadness she feels daily as she goes about her business as housewife and tends to his needs. She looks at the cot, which she could never bring herself to dismantle and give away, and sitting down beside it in the cold blue room, tears fall down her cheeks for the life she will never have.

They got married some years ago: he was a soldier in the Army who was yet to see action; she was a young woman with a head full of ideals. Looking back, she supposes she was too young for marriage, but at the time it felt right. All of her friends were married or at least planning a marriage and everyone she knew made her match seem so romantic. A soldier in the Army – what could be better than that?

Two years before, she had thought that she was pregnant, which came as no big surprise as they had been trying for several months. Her father made the couple a brand new cot for the baby to sleep in and his parents helped them to paint the walls of the smallest bedroom in their little house a shade of baby blue. Three months went by, four. They were both very happy.
In the sixth month of the pregnancy, she began to experience sharp, stabbing pains in her stomach. The baby had stopped kicking a week or so before. He phoned an ambulance and followed the phone operator’s instructions. Before the ambulance had arrived, she began to bleed copiously from the vagina. By the time the paramedics appeared on the scene, the foetus had died.

Eight months ago he was called away to serve his country in Iraq and he went with no great sense of foreboding or unease; these were the requirements of his job, and he was only going to serve six months out there before he was brought home. It was nothing to worry about.
After five months, her young husband came home from the war. She wept when she saw him being wheeled out of the aeroplane. The village he had been stationed in had suffered a suicide bombing; his left leg and two fingers on his left hand had been severed in the attack. She felt herself repulsed by him, this man whom she had so loved. She didn’t want him to touch her; she couldn’t bear to be alone in a room with him and the situation in their shared bedroom, their shared bed, was desperate. How could she want his children? She didn’t even want him anymore.

Sighing, she stands up and gazes sadly at the cot, which her father made. Her husband is downstairs now, eating his lunch which he insisted on making for himself. She takes a deep breath and closes her eyes; a teardrop inches its way down her right cheek. This marriage has imprisoned her; she is only twenty-nine and can never have children because she can’t stand the thought of making love to her crippled husband; the thought of his incomplete hands on her skin make her shiver violently. She can’t leave him though; she loves him too much.
The small mirror on the wall shows her sad reflection; a reflection of her life. In a fit of grief and rage, she takes the mirror down from its hook and throws it against the opposite wall, the glass shattering into a thousand tiny, glittering shards. Then she sinks to the floor and lowers her head into her hands.
He calls her name from downstairs. Sighing once more, she draws a shaky breath and wipes her eyes on her shirt sleeve, stands and makes her way down the stairs to him, a forced smile appearing on her tear-stained face.