Yelena Akhtiorskaya - Panic in a Suitcase

I’ll see her this Friday, said Misha. There’s this event, it’s basically a who’s who of the literary scene, a talk-of-the-town kind of thing. It’s a secret ball in the style of a Masonic meeting, but women are allowed, and it’s technically a fund-raiser, happens once a year but never on the same date or in the same place, and this year I finally got an invite. I’ve been looking forward for months.

Pasha took a long pull from his straw. So you’re saying that thing on Friday is worth going to?

If you were invited, said Misha. It’s guest-list only.

OK, said Pasha.

You mean you’ll be there?

I don’t see why not.

• • •

WE LEAVE FRIDAY AT FIVE sharp, said Marina. She stood in front of the TV, demanding attention. Images flickered behind her, commercials, which constituted their first major disenchantment with the States. How did people cope with these constant interruptions? This was no way to watch a program. They’d asked around, friends and neighbors, to see if it was possible to rewire the TV or pay somebody off so these commercials would stop. If a democracy made everyone sit through these idiotic advertisements, it wasn’t for them. You don’t have to sit through them, said friends and neighbors. You could get a sandwich or take a piss. The country’s bladder condition was clearly contagious.

Esther asked a question to which the reply was bathing suit. The commercial over, Levik yelled, with an intensity that shocked even him, for Marina to get out of the way. She disappeared. Pasha stopped leafing through Levik’s National Geographic and went to track down his sister.

Why not go on Saturday instead? he said.

And kill the entire day? Out of the question.

There may be less traffic, he offered.

Crouched over her suitcase, Marina froze, an alerted bear. You’re worried about the traffic?

It was just a thought.

You do enough thinking — leave traffic to me.

Pasha’s weight shifted. He looked at the suitcase with concern. Will we be back late? I promised I’d go to a poetry thing with Misha on Friday night. If we’re back around nine, I can still make it.

We’re going to Lake George! Yes we’ll be back late — on Monday! Do you have any idea how many times I’ve said this?

A lake? said Pasha. But, Marina, you know how I feel about nature.

Mama’s birthday is on Sunday!

Since when does she like lakes?

What’s all this about canceling your plans for me! yelled Esther, floorboards creaking as she bolted into the room. Don’t listen to her! Go with Misha!

A cigarette appeared between Marina’s lips, crackling, a second later eaten down to its filter. The lake is not optional, she said. Everybody goes.

If they didn’t feel festive yet, they would once they got there. It was Esther’s sixty-fifth birthday. If not for her, they’d be scavenging garbage dumps for carrot shavings. Prisoners in labor camps hadn’t exerted themselves at an equivalent level of intensity for such hopeless durations. No one knew when Esther awoke, because whenever they rolled out of bed, she was already at it. Shortcuts and better strategies had to exist, but this was an inkling that no one dared mention. Running an investigation into the matter would be highly dangerous for the investigators. They weren’t foolish enough to think they could stick their noses into the shit without getting mired themselves. If she wanted to pickle her own vegetables or spend an extra hour or two on homemade soap and glue in order to save pennies to be used for her exercise regimen of dropping pennies on the floor, then stooping down to pick them up one by one, what was the harm? When she complained, it was only of what she wasn’t doing: working and traveling. She wanted to make money, take trips. But the only phrases she’d been taught at the complimentary-with-immigration language lessons held at the local junior high school were Excuse me, how much does the menorah cost? and Shana Tova to you and yours and This challah tastes delicious. Until two years ago, the future of Odessa had been in her hands — all the children were under her care. Mothers had no regard for nighttime. The phone was constantly ringing in their communal apartment. For nine families there was one phone, and it had to ring loud enough to wake all nine families up. Though everyone knew that the call was for Esther (even Robert’s terminally ill patients had more restraint), they still went to the door to demonstrate that they’d been dragged out of bed. If they weren’t satisfied with how disheveled they looked, they’d mess up their hair, roughen nightgowns, moan, growl. Now the phone calls weren’t for Esther, but she answered anyway and attended to household duties as if they were children with fevers and murky urine, hoping to show how irreplaceable she was. In such a situation she’d done the worst thing imaginable — found a lump in her breast.

THEY MADE IT OUT to Lake George still on speaking terms, a not-inconsiderable feat for which the reward was being presented with a vast array of separate directions to go off into, the newfound spaciousness startling less in comparison to the car, dubbed Green Cow for a reason, than to their apartment and to the whole city they’d been so inexplicably hesitant to leave behind. Esther headed straight for the kitchen, attacking drawers and cupboards, sniffing wherever something may have been left behind claimable as theirs. There’s olive oil! she yelled. And coffee grounds! Two squares of paper towel! Not bad at all. They’d brought their own provisions, of course, and she began sorting through plastic bags, operating on a damaged eggplant, installing the meat grinder, but suddenly stopped, went to the window, ran her finger along the sill. She stared at her furry fingertip. Took a breath. The dank air was satisfying. One gulp and the entire summer lodged in your guts. She took in more and looked at the untended garden, almost crying out, We forgot the television!

Gaze refocused, there was no garden to speak of. An open field of matted grass, weeds like gray hairs, a patch of turned-up soil, two stolid motels undulating across an overheated road. She turned and was slapped by an unfamiliar kitchen.

Old habits had conjured up their dacha.

Oh, their dacha. But there was no garden, and she was in a cabin with fake wood paneling, Formica countertops, a neutral blur of smothered smells, deflated polyester comforters whose floral pattern mirrored the sensibly sized nature paintings. Esther’s hands itched to plant tomatoes and hang up the hammock; she half expected to see Robert crawling on all fours with his tool kit and overhear Levik’s under-the-breath cursing as he battled the metal shutters, then his full-fledged fit as he changed the propane tank so she could begin to cook. Two trips were necessary to haul everything from their apartment in the city to their dacha on Tenth Fountain, of utmost importance, for everyone’s sake, the television.

Pretending to be consumed by tasks, they were really just observing their arms in motion. Murky sensations nagged. After the initial ecstasy of freedom, time stalled. The vacation seemed to hover over its beginning, unable to attain liftoff. Doubts arose. They became aware of what could go wrong and how far they were from home and pleaded to be quietly (without fuss) returned to their bedrooms, where time resided effortlessly, like a mouse whose peep was heard only occasionally in the depth of night. Pasha’s CD player had a tiny knob for adjusting volume and muting murky sensations; he used it freely.

Don’t you think it’s time to wake Frida? said Esther, standing in the doorway under a stuffed moose head wearing a far pleasanter expression.