I was travelling in Russia to make an interview with a local politician in a smaller town in the industrial region. I was driving through an area which was seriously damaged from pollution; the trees were dead, the ground was almost brown because of chemical and other industries in the area. Near some small village, I suddenly got the idea of seing what these smaller places looked like, so I stopped the car and got out. The air smelled and it was almost hard to breathe, I wondered how anyone could live out here.
A woman came out from the nearest house and looked at me, curiously. She first looked like around 50 to me, but a closer look told me she probably was at my own age, around 37. She was breathing through a handkerchief when she approached me. When she came closer, I could hear that her breath was raspy and heavy. She said hello in Russian, and I replied in her language. It was if like that single word was too much for her lungs, because it started off the most wheezing and raspy coughing fit I'd ever heard. She turned around and bent her body forward, coughing in her handkerchief. She the looked back at me and tried to smile. Her face was too tired to manage to smile properly, but her brown eyes smiled even more. Her raspy and weak voice was full of mucus or something when she asked me to step in for a cup of tea. It was of course fantastic to be invited to a local citizen's own house for a cup of their local tea, so I thanked her politely and accepted. She smiled happily and released her handkerchief a bit from her lips. It had a dark, almost black spot, right where she had been coughing in it. I understood that her lungs must be full of the dust, cole and whatever it could be in the air. While we walked towards the door, her breath got more and more rattling, and she often coughed with two wet and raspy hacks in her handkerchief.
Immediately when we came in, she pointed at a chair at the same time
as she took a tea pot with her left hand and with her right hand placed a
mouthpiece in her mouth. It was connected to a plastic pipe, which in turn
was connected to some sort of machine.
- What's that?, I asked in my stumbling Russian.
She smiled, eager to explain, but started to speak too fast for me,
so I couldn't catch every word. However, I understood it helped her to breathe.
She released the mouthpiece and shouted something towards a door, which soon was opened
and a beautiful girl which obviously was her daughter appeared. She had the same
tired look in her face, but when she saw me and her mother explained who I was
in her fast Russian, the girl smiled and said hello in Russian. Her voice was
much more clear than her mother's but it was too dark for a girl, I thought.
She was tall and slim, had dark brown, half-long hair and brown, kind eyes.
She sat down besides me and started to chat. I could hardly understand half of it
and was about to ask her to slow down a bit, when I heard that her voice
suddenly got weaker. Her smile disappeared and she quickly put a handkerchief over
her mouth before she let a coughing fit start. She coughed with long hacks all the
time, that is, each hack was followed by a prolonged wheezing and she repeated it
time after time after time. After a while, the wheezings turned into a hard, sharp
sound and her mother brought her up from the chair and made her put the mouthpiece
in her mouth. She took a number of deep breathes and suddenly she could relax.
She sat down again, but she was breathing heavily and looked sad. She
massaged herself over her chest.
- My lungs... the air... , she said. She was too tired to talk properly so
she had to use as few words as possible. - Look, she said and showed me her
handkerchief. The same dark brown spot in it.
- From your lungs?, I asked.
- From my lungs, she replied.
The tea was ready, and it was really good. I tried to get some information
from the older woman about the place, and I understood it was one of these places
with an average life length of 45. The woman's cough often interrupted her, and
she coughed with either two dark hacks or with longer coughing fits. At one time,
she sounded like her chest was going to break into several parts. After each long
coughing fit, she had to use her machine for a while.
For more than an hour, I sat between the two women and heard their wheezing,
sometimes almost lathering breaths. The daughter got quite bad coughing fits
at least three times, all the time with those long wheezings and her soft, sweet
hand pressed the handkerchief over her mouth harder and harder.
- How are her lungs, I once asked the mother while the beautiful young woman
had to have the mouthpiece in her mouth for a while.
- Not good, the woman wheezed. Again, I didn't quite understand what she
said, but I heard the words "cough" , "phlegma" , "choke" several times.
She used some fairly complicated terms and a quick look in my dictionary told
me that it was something about lung diseases like emphysemia. She repeated
some other strange word a few times which I failed to translate, so I asked
her to explain it.
- She says that I will cough my lungs up soon, the daughter filled in,
suddenly in English. - Last week, I coughed until I fainted, she added.
- And, my best friend, Tatjana, broke a ribb last month because of a coughing fit.
She had coughed the whole day, almost without interruption, the girl said sadly
before suddenly taking a pack of cigarettes out from her pocket. She used the
candle to light a cigarette and I saw her take a triple drag and inhale deeply in her
damaged lungs, which probably were filled with the dust. She closed her eyes
before exhaling through her mouth.
- We need this to go on with our lives, she sighed and nose exhaled.
I inhaled some of the smoke coming from her black, rattling lungs, knowing that
the mix of smoke, phlegma, cole and dust must be in it.
- This and vodka, her mother nodded. - No smoke, only vodka, she said to me,
also suddenly in English and laughed a little. Her laughter didn't really sound
like one, it sounded more like a prolonged rattling and she immediately had to
rush to her lung machine.
She then excused herself, put a coat on and left the house.
- Mother is going to look after her sister for an hour, the daughter explained
and put a bottle of Russian vodka on the table together with two glasses. She let
the cigarette dangle from her lips.
- Her sister's lungs are killing her, the young woman went on while
filling our glasses with the strong drink. Her cigarette was still dangling
between her lips, and when she finally removed it, she immediately coughed
out the smoke she had pulled down into her lungs and she got a long coughing fit,
entirely made up of those prolonged wheezings, but they were now accompanied
by deep rattlings and she got a worried expression in her eyes. She covered
her mouth with her handkerchief and rushed out of the room. It seriously
sounded like parts of her rattling, stinking lungs were coming up. I heard
her cough for over a minute like that before it subsided and she came back,
breathing heavily and with rattlings. She sat down beside me and looked sad.
She took a gulp of the vodka before taking the cigarette from the ash tray.
- My lungs, she wheezed and sounded like she was going to weep. - Look,
she said and showed me her handkerchief. The spot in the middle of it was
almost black now.
- My lungs, my throat, my nostrils look like that inside, she whispered.
- My 25 year old lungs are probably filled with cole, soot and everything
that's in the air here. Me and my friends, we're coughing our lungs into pieces
the whole days. Our lungs are heavy because of all the metallic dust
in the air at the steelworks where we work.
Just listen to my breath!
She put her mouth to my ear and just breathed for a while. I could feel
the warm air on my ear, and her rattlings were so loud so I could hear every
little piece moving inside her chest. She then took a larger gulp of the vodka
and moved closer to me and put her arms around me. I did the same to her and
we kissed. She took another large gulp of the strong vodka and started to
undress without a word. When she was only in her underwear, she got another
bad coughing fit and she quickly took her bra off to cough in one of the cups.
She then handed the bra over to me and I saw a dark brown spot in the cup.
I wondered what her lungs looked like. She got quite dizzy after more drinking
and we made love in the sofa, with her rattlings getting deeper and deeper.
When the climax was reached, her chest sounded like it was full of all that
stuff and just as I was going to get my clothes on again, she got a
coughing fit. She reached for something to cover her mouth with but before
she could find anything, I cupped my hand over her mouth, and she coughed
until her chest sounded like it was going to explode. After her coughing fit,
I looked in my hand. The palm was humid and I was quite sure she had coughed
up some of that mix of dust, soot and so on in it.
She fell asleep on the sofa, and I got into my car and left this sick place. I hoped her mother wouldn't be to upset when she returned to find her daughter there on the sofa, naked and drunk. If they would start to quarrel, they would probably cough their black lungs up at each other after a few minutes.