Omsk
Published in Issue #10 Translated from Hebrew by Jessica Cohen subscribe to unlock the full storyFor the heat, she was unprepared. She had packed a ski jacket, military socks, thermal undershirts. She had borrowed everything on offer from acquaintances: gloves, ear-muffs, a fur hat. Nothing seemed like it would be enough—after all, she was going to Siberia.
At the children’s clothing shop back in Israel, they gave her a derisive look when she asked for a warm coat. “Come back in six months, lady.”
Oh well, she reassured herself. She’d buy something there.
“How can this be?” she wonders, pointing at the thermometer on the wall of the jam-packed office with no air conditioning.
“That’s the way it is here,” answers Lydia. She laughs and wipes the sweat off her face with an embroidered handkerchief. “Below zero in the winter, over a hundred in the summer. That’s Siberia.”
She nods, but something has been damaged, spoiled, and the immense joy she anticipated is already tainted. She had pictured herself carrying a baby bundled up in blankets through a landscape of snowy plains.
Yes, she knows you can’t adopt newborns. That it’s almost impossible to adopt before they’re a year old. Still, she can’t give up on her dream: a baby bundled in thick blankets in the snow. Now she hears Lydia talking about a lovely, beautiful, sixteen-month-old boy. Not far from here. At an orphanage four hours from Omsk. His name is Constantine.
“Constantine?”
“Constantine.” Lydia smiles with her pink-painted lips. “Kostya,” she adds, to soften the sound.
She knows the name has no significance. Some nanny or aide stuck him with it. Once...
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