Yelena Akhtiorskaya - Panic in a Suitcase

Seeking refuge from the heat in one of the larger bookstores on Ocean Parkway, he was reminded that if Russians put in a decent effort, they could mimic German sterility. The effort was misdirected. The immaculateness of a bookstore or a couture tie shop or a faux-Italian lingerie boutique didn’t compensate for the raging chaos in other arenas of Russian life: politics, family, drink. Nevertheless, it was a comforting lie, like the kitchen of a grandmother. Though Pasha himself wasn’t neat, sterile, or orderly, and his life wasn’t cataloged or alphabetized — not even the genres were distinct — he wasn’t impervious to the effect of these qualities in a bookstore. That odor of derangement stopped right at the door. The air inside had been imported from the atmosphere over an Alaskan lake. Outside, the concrete was melting. Here, Pasha’s teeth clamored. Thoughts were like warts blasted with liquid nitrogen. The poised saleswomen, the straight-backed stacks. Just as there was a superior class of humans who didn’t perspire, there were books that didn’t accumulate dust. There was no way to tell which books the public neglected. They were all equally pristine, waiting not too eagerly to be chosen. They seemed to boast of a system of self-grooming, like cats.

As his sister had predicted, Pasha had come to fear his own name. There were creatures that resided eternally in the underworld but were able to rise to street level on the condition that they identify some poor individual by his or her full name: first, last, and patronymic. Using all possible tactics, they tried to prolong the conversation that ensued, because the moment it was over, back to the underworld they went. Pavel Robertovich Nasmertov, the voice said, and instantly grew flesh. Pasha turned to find an interesting creature indeed.

I thought it was you, she said. And where else?

Pasha looked at her quizzically. She pointed to a sign, so large and perfectly positioned that it was invisible.

I’m afraid this is misrepresentative, he said. The majority of my life is spent outside the poetry aisle.

Yet you look quite at home.

On the contrary, I’m finding it stifling. They must’ve just washed the floors.

And of course you object?

Not on principle. I like clean floors as much as anybody. But the chemicals make me light-headed.

Then you need some fresh air.

Pasha looked abstractly to the stacks. Anyway, there’s no room in my suitcase for more books, he conceded.

They nodded politely to the well-built boy guarding the door from scores of invading armies and emerged into the tightly packed heat. A train pulled into their skulls.

Are you leaving soon? she asked abruptly as passengers overhead were advised to stand away from the platform while the train was entering and leaving the station.

Tonight, said Pasha. I’m sorry, but do I know you?

She turned away in the odd chance that her pale cheeks were capable of mustering color, and said that they’d met, just briefly, at Miss Ostraya’s.

Right, said Pasha, though he thought he would’ve remembered had he met this young woman, if only because of her ear. The right one was unremarkable, but the left was tiny, shriveled, mangled; it looked like a stick of gum that had been chewed not too long, then stuck clumsily on the side of her head as if under a desk. Her copper-in-the-sunlight hair was worn shoulder length and shaggy to best shroud the deformity. A tricky operation. Though small, the ear was jagged — it had a way of poking through. And New York was a blustery city, particularly Brighton. From the direction of the Verrazano, they were being blasted night and day. Each gust defied her efforts. Under the sway of the elements, she couldn’t be sure when the ear was hidden, when on display. To check would only draw attention. The technique she’d developed was to check in with her toes, letting the choppy strands brush over her cheeks.

Her name was Sveta, and she offered to escort him home. She was a bit overgrown. She must’ve been cripplingly shy as a girl, because now that she was in what Pasha pegged to be the twilight of her twenties, she was developing a hunchback. The timidity had matured into wry coyness (or coy wryness). She was a bit spacey, which Pasha took to be an affectation, adopted in order to deflate a constitutional intensity. A very American impulse to dilute — she’d probably grown up here. Thoroughly Russian women exploited to the maximum their God-given powers of intimidation. She was trying to hide that she was fully awake and at the controls. The steering took place far behind her eyes. She spoke quietly and very quickly, as if to compensate for not being able to walk as fast as she would’ve liked (her step was light and bouncy, like those slender dogs whose paws hover over the ground). She mentioned school repeatedly and the horrid F train. Which school, the nature of her studies, her connection to Miss Ostraya, or where in this capacious borough she lived, Pasha didn’t catch. Hearing Transnistria , he asked her to repeat.

Where my family is.

There went the theory of an American upbringing — though now he realized he’d never believed that theory anyway, and this only confirmed what he had truly assumed, which was that her relatives couldn’t be here, she was too pale. A family wouldn’t stand for it. At the height of summer, in a beachside community, to be this devoid of color could only mean she was alone, no one nagging her into outdoor activity, making incessant remarks about her corpselike pallor. And how skinny she was — bones and more bones. Neglected enough to remain uncompromised. Without opposition, her disgust, or perhaps fear, of sunlight, athletics, and nutrition could grow to monstrous proportions. And how terribly lonely it must’ve been with no one to force you into doing something you refused to do — hence the talking to strangers. She’d plucked Pasha from the poetry aisle. It would be unwise to think himself the first or the last.

He asked questions to keep her voice around. Nearing his door, her enunciation improved. Pasha learned that her youngest brother had died last year in the War of Independence and she was going back to Tiraspol at the end of something to visit her ailing grand-something.

At the end of the week?

The year, she clarified.

Pasha was so lost in thought he didn’t notice that the door into the building was being held for him by his mother.

Pretty, she said, but worth missing a flight for?

• • •

THE BAGS WERE PACKED in no time, then unpacked and searched for the house keys, repacked much more sensibly by Esther, partially unpacked again in hopes of finding Pasha’s passport, because without it he was going nowhere, he’d just have to settle down for good. Pasha’s cot was stripped of bedding and folded up, ready to be returned to the downstairs neighbors. All the mugs and spoons that were missing, for which Esther had searched everywhere and gone so far as to accuse their neighbor of stealing, were found. Pasha’s precious junk was consolidated, the plastic bags crumpled together and stuffed into a drawer for future use. A living room appeared, in which the entire family sat down together for the last time. They were quiet and composed. Somber? No, serious. Perhaps solemn? No, no — serious, and a bit tired. Their collective sleep debt could’ve belonged to a class of medical students.

Robert coughed suggestively.

Davai , said Esther.

We meant to bring this up sooner, said Marina.

But then the whole incident, with the twister…

We really should’ve taken you for a checkup.

But it went so fast! You just got here!

It sure didn’t feel like a month. Though it also felt like a year.

But we did have a good full month. And as long as we have your attention.