In late February 2022, the Russian artist Daria Serenko co-founded the Feminist Anti-War Resistance, an underground community of Russians protesting the invasion of Ukraine, publicizing Russian battle crimes towards Ukrainians, and serving to Russian males evade conscription. In March, Serenko was pressured to flee Russia for Georgia, the place she wrote this prose poem.
Yesterday a lady started giving delivery straight on the Red Square with an assault rifle pressed to her temple. The guardians of regulation and order didn’t know what to do. Was it an act of unauthorized delivery or an act of unauthorized protest? Parturition or efficiency?
Look at this lady with an unwelcome face whose waters broke on the Red Square. Here this lady is already screaming and writhing the best way individuals have been screaming and writhing on the final demonstrations; the lady is screaming the best way individuals being tortured scream on the opposite aspect of the closed door on the police station. It’s nothing new for the cops. The lady is screaming and blood seems on the burst corners of her dry mouth. The opening of her mouth measures seven centimeters.
Time stands nonetheless and there’s nobody on the sq. aside from the cops, the lady, and the daughter she is giving delivery to, who’s verbally camouflaged as a son. She informed the police she was having a son in order that they might act nicer to her. One of the cops, the great cop apparently, says: “You don’t worry, lady, you’re giving birth to a hero for us. Look at the time and place he picked to be born: in the very heart of Russia, at the very height of the war.” He is talking actually slowly for some motive, and the lady can be screaming slower and slower, and the ambulance isn’t coming. Every hour the clock strikes upon the Kremlin tower. Snowflakes soften even earlier than touching the new face of the lady in labor.
Gradually the cops settle down and even level their weapons apart. They make repeated makes an attempt to stroll away from the scene in an effort to name for assist however after a minute the street carries them again to the place they began. The Red Square is the place the Earth is at its roundest. Two policemen and a younger lady discover themselves utterly alone on this spherical Earth within the very coronary heart of Russia on the very top of the battle.
“So we’ll be taking the delivery, right?” one among them asks into the air, giving the lady in labor a plaintive look, and extends his hand out towards her as if for a handshake. The lady in labor screams at him with all her pressure, swearing foully and loudly, after which bites by his hand with an extended howl. With the identical hand he slaps her throughout the face.
“You settled down now? You keep yourself together, lady. I don’t care if you’re a woman or not. If I have to, I’ll pull the baby out of you, and then stick you in the monkey house with the rest; you’ll be lying there whimpering on a filthy mattress.” The lady closes her eyes and nods. One cop props up her again; the opposite begins fidgeting between her legs.
An limitless period of time passes and, because the hour is putting upon the stately tower, they put the infant, wrapped in a police jacket and steaming within the nippy air, into her arms. The cops congratulate each other. There are tears of their eyes. They kiss one another on the cheeks, not even noticing they extracted a daughter somewhat than a son.
The lady with the woman in her arms is wanting up on the clear, starry Kremlin sky. A reminiscence steals into her thoughts that right here, proper subsequent to her, an unburied useless man is mendacity in his Mausoleum. A rancid haze generally obscures her view: New crematoriums have sprung up throughout the nation, and the smoke from their smokestacks generally casts a heavy smog over town. The useless remind the townspeople of themselves by taking their breath away and forcing them to cough.
Time lastly involves life. Tourists and spectators begin gaping round them. The males in uniform carry the mom and the daughter of their arms and carry them away. The lady is requested to attend for the medical doctors on the police station. She and the infant are rigorously positioned right into a cage the place different girls are sitting, their heads bowed on each other’s shoulders. They present indicators of getting been there for a lot of hours: Wet stains are spreading on their shirts and blouses. It’s milk. She decides to not ask them but what they’re there for. It’s quiet within the cell, besides behind the iron lattice door, she will hear the entire bureau of cops joyfully gathering to clean down the delivery of her son.