Trekhprudny Lane

Today I joined a group of volunteers visiting a baby house some way outside the city. We spent two hours in a room set aside for kids from one to four who are not developing properly, as we will every week. None of the children could walk well, and none spoke. Though the orphanage was clean and bright and well maintained, and the ladies who hustle the children through their daily routine are warm and seem devoted, it was of course disturbing. I sat on the floor of the hot play room (masking tape around all of the windows prevents even a whiff of fresh air from sneaking in, though birches wave their tambourine leaves in the garden just outside) and I just stroked the heads of the crawling ones. We were wiping noses all the time with a single cloth, and working hard to elicit a grimace-like smile or two. We fed them lunch, brown gruel in bowls or bottles, then juice. All had diapers changed, and all were put in tights into cribs in a single room, to nap. They are each so used to being alone that they do not look for attention; they inhabit separate mental worlds, they don't seem to notice even each other.