Márk was still asleep. He had traveled all night on the cold train, slowly, at a snail's pace, heading home. Fortunately, there was a direct line. He didn't have to change trains in the middle of the night.
Eva stood at the bedroom door, watching her sleeping husband.
She was glad he was home.
A lucky woman. Márk was college-educated, intelligent, didn't drink, didn't argue.
And he didn't particularly try to control Eva's time either. He trusted her.
They trusted each other.
It was only the foundation of the peaceful coexistence of sensible people—but with them, it worked flawlessly.
Eva considered herself fortunate to have Márk by her side.
A sure point. A stable point. Predictable. She didn't have to worry about him. She felt safe with him.
At university, she had dreamed of a peaceful small-town job and longed for a calm family life.
Not for some obscenity like the one that…
She shoved the thought away the same way she had shoved away the dictator's son on that disgusting evening during her university years in the capital.
The dictator's drunk son.
The party makes you great. All it takes is spreading your legs for the dictator's son. And then for respectable married men too, who later pose innocently with their wives and their legitimate, socially acceptable children in the columns of The Voice of Truth. Model citizens. Good comrades. Model husbands. Model fathers.
They pose with their legitimate children. The illegitimate ones—fathered by party rags, used collectively for sex—worthless as shit. Socially unacceptable. You spread your legs for one good comrade and for the other as well. A rag for communal use. Then you give birth to an illegitimate child. Another one. For married men—and you watch how the model comrade poses with his wife and his socially acceptable legitimate children in the pages of The Voice of Truth.
The party makes you great.
Eva didn't want to think about it.
She looked at her husband sleeping peacefully.
This was what Eva had wanted, and now she had achieved everything she desired.
Maybe now it was time to expand the family.
She would only be out of work for half a year. Roza would manage. There was the state daycare.
They had discussed this topic two years earlier. Both of them had been reluctant.
The silence of the apartment.
Domestic peace.
She watched her sleeping husband and imagined him as a father.
They would talk about it over the weekend. Far from the bug. Calmly, when they visited Eva's parents.
She carefully closed the door. She placed the phone next to the receiver. If the ill-mannered brats started their senseless amusement again, they wouldn't wake Márk.
She went into the living room. On the table lay the fabric she had received as a gift from Olga. Beside it was the book she had bought in duplicate. One of them was meant to surprise Olga on her birthday.
Olga.
They whispered that she had slipped across to the other side of the Iron Curtain.
She could take care of herself.
Eva sat down to sew. Soon she would finish the decorative pillow.
She didn't count how many times the cuckoo chimed.
Then she heard some rustling. Márk had woken up. He put water on the gas stove to boil tea.
Then he appeared in the doorway, sleepy, stretching.
Eva imagined him as a father.
A good husband. He would be a good father.
She looked at him with such affection that Márk didn't let it go unremarked.
"I'm glad you missed me."
He browsed among the records. Soon a pleasant, soft melody filled the room.
Outside, the fog settled.
Márk pulled a chair right up close to Eva.
He wrapped his arms around her. Their lips met for a hot moment.