Yelena Akhtiorskaya - Panic in a Suitcase

She began with the basement — a windowless space filled with every gadget and contraption ever created and put on this planet. She intended to compile a list of these devices — or rather their descriptions, since aside from the few she recognized from late-night infomercials, the majority of their names and functions eluded her — and submit this list to a committee that kept track of… Jewish history? Hoarder mentality? Basements of the twentieth century? The problem would be figuring out which committee most deserved the list, and if no one knew what to make of it, at least they’d put it on file. The fact that she might be the only person to set eyes on this basement was disconcerting. Of course other cleaning ladies had seen it, but they didn’t count, because they were cleaning ladies. Marina was cleaning only because life reserved its most pungent humor for those special enough to get the joke.

Though the bathroom was often cited as the horrible representative of cleaning-lady duties, Marina enjoyed her time there. It was dense and fertile ground, offering plenty of opportunities to linger. The shower curtains were where the cash was. Marina took her time with every fiber and slit. Then she moved on, with less enthusiasm, to floors. Wall-to-wall carpeting was a chief discovery in terms of pure shock value. Marina had just one question: Why? The carpets were like a bib for the house, soaking up everything that never made it to the mouth. As Marina was brushing the crud out of the carpet, Shmulka burst into the room. An emergency had come up, and she needed to go out, but would be back to the house in twenty minutes max. The only emergency was that if Shmulka stayed inside five more minutes, she would spontaneously combust and pieces of her flesh, which Marina suspected would be very tough and rubbery, would have to be brushed out of the carpet fibers. In Shmulka’s eyes: guilt, apology, a plea for understanding. She and Charna obviously had an agreement that the cleaning lady should never be left unsupervised. When Charna was around, this wasn’t a problem, as she would’ve gladly spent the rest of her days without another gulp of fresh air, but Shmulka had ideas. She was addicted to the world’s possibilities.

I’m fast, said Shmulka with her emaciated neck. Watch the kiddies. Make sure they don’t… you know.

How many kiddies were currently in the house and to whom they belonged was irrelevant. They were runty, underdeveloped, somersaulting. Once in a while, they flew down the stairs, let out a shriek, carried on. In their crooked mouths, the true shapes of which couldn’t be determined as they were never closed for long enough, was a sprinkling of tiny teeth. Teeth everywhere. A few half-submerged molars inside their large ears would’ve been no surprise. The older kids knew who was one of them and who wasn’t better than anybody, and to them Marina was a large cockroach methodically covering their house. They couldn’t kill her (she was too large), so they ignored her. But Shmulka’s three-year-old, whom Marina called Krolik because his real name was unpronounceable, followed her around as she cleaned, rarely deviating from her path. She would’ve chosen him anyway. He was more aristocratic in the cheek. And Marina’s principle with babies was the fatter the better. She encouraged largeness, equating size with importance: A big baby mattered more than a small one. Krolik could beat up his older siblings, which was admirable. Not to mention he liked Marina and wanted to hold discussions with her. Marina’s English was roughly on a par with Krolik’s — both could use the practice.

But today he wasn’t in his usual good spirits. Still trailing Marina, but sulkily, he ignored questions and commands, resisting the minor tasks she tried to assign. A grumpy little man with descended brows, he threw her sponge back at her. Almost toppled her pail. Laughed only after she’d tripped over the vacuum cleaner’s cord. An extra burden was something she didn’t need. Her probes into his psyche were unsuccessful until turning to a subject that quickened the pulse of even the most hopeless candidates. Krolik didn’t have to think long before proclaiming his absolute favorite: kugel.

OK, said Marina, a bit mystified. But what does Krolik feel for pizza?

Pizza! cried Krolik. Pizza’s existence had slipped his mind.

Does Krolik want surprise?

Surprise! he screamed.

Her finger instructed patience. Her purse was upstairs. She managed a puff of a cigarette — from Shmulka’s secret stash — before returning with a triangle of tinfoil.

Getting wind of what was about to happen, Krolik hiccupped from joy, a sudden shift of fate. His gaze was superglued to Marina’s chafed hand as it peeled back the petals of tinfoil with agonizing slowness. The boy stopped breathing. He stopped blinking. He stopped—

But when Marina finally presented the slice, Krolik’s excitement transformed. He gawked. He seemed befuddled, stumped.

My daughter’s favorite, said Marina. You don’t like?

Krolik’s head shook, though without conviction. His jaw had fallen open. He continued to stare at the cold slice, tomato sauce on the surface like burst capillaries, neat circles of pepperoni with curled edges, little red bowls.

Try, said Marina, her own mouth filling rapidly like the bathtub on the edge of which she sat.

Krolik took a few greedy bites and ran off with the rest of the slice. Marina set off after him, but it was as if he’d vanished. She moved on from the basement to the first floor, and upward. It was slow going, rough. She was unable to summon the Cinderella sensation, the famous-actress delusions, the good-for-my-biopic mood. Her arms and legs were heavy. The house leaned on her. Neither could she work up momentum or recall why she’d thought this was funny. Where was that pungent humor? I’m an actress, she said to herself, an undercover agent, a spy, as she scrubbed around the house’s hundredth toilet bowl. I’m a Russian lady embarking on middle age. That term — middle age — never failed to lower the sluice gate of self-pity.

• • •

YOU’RE the PAVEL NASMERTOV, said a woman with eyes taking up half her face, further enhanced by dramatic, expertly drawn shadows. Perching on the sofa, she gave Pasha a moment to acquire that face, which she’d borrowed from one of the nocturnal animals kept in special enclosures at the zoo. Renata Ostraya, she said, as if this were the elusive title of a painting, meant to illuminate something while giving nothing away. Otherwise she was a regular plump lady, apologizing for not being there to greet him when he’d arrived, which she hoped wasn’t too long ago. Pasha confirmed that he’d walked through the door no more than ten minutes ago, fifteen at most, but Renata wasn’t paying attention and he also wasn’t sure why he was going into detail.

In any case, she said, at last we meet.

The introduction took place only on the surface level of consciousness and was performed to appease that level, so its security guard wouldn’t get suspicious. Ancestral intermingling in more formative times was possibly at the root of this feeling.

I’ve deemed you guest of honor, she said. I hope you don’t mind if we ask you to recite a few poems.

What poet would mind?

A modest one. But that’s pure speculation.

You could smell the stories. If men hadn’t spilled blood over her, they’d surely threatened to. She found in all of it a good laugh. She was an actress, her flesh involved but spirit unconvinced. As a lady poet, she fought frivolity with exaggerated expressions of seriousness — frowns, gathered brows, pursed lips. Now her face leaked into these masks and had to jostle out of them. She grew increasingly substantial, a matronly effect conjured up by a lack of shuffling. Her body was an extra fixture of the sofa, hips as sturdy and impersonal as armrests. She counterbalanced the anchoring tug of her body with an overly expressive top eighth, though her proportions in this sense, too, weren’t the Vitruvian ideal; her small head must’ve been rather a ninth of her height. Women like her seemed to always be squatting. They were reminiscent of drawers that, pulled open, released a woody, smoky, dusty odor. Not Pasha’s type, and surely Renata could tell. She knew she’d been made for particular tastes.