Yelena Akhtiorskaya - Panic in a Suitcase

They’re waiting for us, said Frida.

Don’t be egocentric. Nobody’s thinking about us. They’re probably swimming by now.

I want to swim!

It’s good to hold off on pleasures.

Why?

Do you want to get into a lengthy discussion, or do you want to see something and go?

A groan propelled her. She stood over the lower of Pasha’s uneven shoulders but kept a distance — it was hard not to consider him a stranger.

Grandpa already showed me, she said triumphantly. It’s Japanese.

Grandpa doesn’t have this one.

Despair! Once more the exit obscured, Frida dragged to the floor, to a clean white mountain taking up most of the page. Caucasus, she said. But in the lower right corner were little blue squiggles. She knelt, and her head eclipsed the scene. Three little people in blue robes with white plates on their heads. They’d taste sour. But the mountain was of milk. A jagged edge as if the top had been bitten off. On the opposite page was something different — a man with a blue face, black wash of hair, deformed hands. Like Max’s father down the hall. His wide mouth filled with ink — or he had no mouth, no teeth or tongue, only spilled ink. I don’t like this, she said, and pushed it away. The book jacket snagged on a loose nail to the distinct rip of paper. Something welled up within Frida that made her repeat herself but more venomously and look at Pasha as if he were a monster, and the welling intensified, constricting her throat.

• • •

IT WASN’T ANOTHER MIRAGE to which Esther enthusiastically waved but Pasha and Frida in the flesh. The family was barricaded on one side by water and on the other by cherry pits like tiny bullets that had perforated a flock of seagulls. They’re organic, said Levik, implying that they weren’t litter, though he would never say that as the family had a complicated relationship to litter. But the trouble with cherry pits was their clotted bloodiness and that they carried the ugly secret of mouths.

What took so long? You had to wait until the sun was strongest! Put on a hat. Take a dip. Come here. Don’t get sand on that. Want a sandwich, a drink, oh, I know, an apricot? The pinprick sun reigned triumphantly, but the corners of the sky were thick, curdled, darkening. Frida sat between her mother’s slack legs, staring up.

Soon there’ll be no more sun, she said.

It’s out now, isn’t it?

But the black clouds—

Go swim with Grandpa.

Frida ran until the water lopped off her knees. Grandpa! she yelled. Twenty men turned around, but Robert kept floating half the ocean away.

Flies attacked Marina’s legs. She decided to ignore them. Not a minute later, bewildered by how painfully they bit, she began to swat. A plastic bag was blown into her hair, sand into her eyelashes. A neighboring family’s feral kids were shrieking, Esther chewed a never-ending apple. Helicopters, fading sirens, lifeguard whistles. Marina wiped the perspiration from her hairline, pulled up her straps, raised her head into the breeze. All around, tan, muscular specimens were running, digging, stretching, throwing balls, and then there was Pasha, folded crookedly into a low chair, his face contorted against the sunshine. Since they were no longer around, who fed him, who ironed his pants? Who reminded him to shower, to tuck in that shirt? Certainly not his wife. His visit, they’d decided, would be a chance for rehabilitation. They would pamper him, cram in a year’s worth of nutrition, hygiene, care. But then he emerged (last, of course) from the baggage claim, and his belly looked fostered, cheeks buoyant. His clothes were wrinkled, but twenty hours in transit might do that. Esther reassessed with lightning speed. Look at you! she cried. A haircut first thing tomorrow!

Marina peeled her brother off the canvas chair, and they began to tread. This excruciating pace was Pasha’s only mode of moving, and to walk alongside you had to adjust yours. Pasha’s pace wasn’t a deliberate saunter — he had bad lungs and motor difficulties (such was the official statement), an unmanageable thought chorus, and no need to be anywhere, at least not in a timely manner. Not very long ago, Marina herself had been queen of the promenade, most qualified in a city of inveterate lingerers and loiterers to demonstrate how to stretch a quarter mile for hours, how to ping-pong gracefully between the Opera House and the Steps in four-inch heels. She still had trouble disassociating punctuality from the height of desperation.

With her silence she was prompting her brother to say what he intended to say, which was that he’d given the matter due consideration and the answer was yes. Then the real work could begin — compiling a list of people to call, speculating about elements bound to remain uncertain for a while, and the paperwork, my God, the paperwork. She’d actually been expecting the announcement last night, imagining that it might accompany the first toast. A nice thought. Last night Pasha stumbled through the door at ten P.M. (five A.M. in Odessa) and protested, No food, not tonight, a preposterous request that only went to show how long they’d been parted. He began to fade at the dining table while Esther microwaved maniacally, suffusing the air with Chinese take-out smells and plastic. Pasha hated to fly, but more than that he hated interruptions. Packing, relocating, resisting the pull of his daily rituals, all this amounted to a profound psychological stress. So yesterday they’d kept to superficial topics. Today the big issues would be resolved.

She looks good, said Pasha.

She’s gotten fat.

She was never a ballerina.

They’re operating the day after you leave.

Pasha turned sharply. I specifically asked her to schedule the surgery for while I’m here.

God forbid anything interfere with Pashinka’s visit! Marina felt the heat double, the sun’s warmth amplified by rising temperatures within. Throttled by her own steps, as if she weren’t on her feet but riding in the dim backseat of a Soviet automobile.

I was truly surprised by how vital she looks, Pasha resumed.

It’s not the flu.

But if she’s strong and in good shape—

Mama, our mama, in good shape?

If she’s strong, her body will take the chemo well.

No chemo. They said surgery and a bit of radiation should be enough.

Her body can definitely take the radiation.

And I’ll have to take care of everything myself! A whimper escaped as a wave rolled over Marina’s sturdy ankles.

That’s not true. Papa will help, Levik— Oh, my God! cried Pasha.

What! yelled Marina, clutching her chest.

That seagull — it’s monstrous!

Pasha paused. He pointed.

Marina appraised the seagull. It’s a bit on the large side, she admitted.

A bit ? That thing’s a dinosaur. Pasha took off, as if some amateur had picked up his marionette strings, in the seagull’s direction. In no hurry, it began to pump its white-trimmed wings, dragging its body across the sky.

Allowing her brother to catch his breath, Marina asked, What changed?

Nothing changed, he said. I just haven’t made up my mind, one way or the other. It’s not like deciding what to have for breakfast.

Though you’ve never had an easy time of that either. Marina wasn’t sure for how long she’d been looking straight ahead with painful intensity. She turned and let herself look at her brother. Don’t you think we should get the bureaucratic wheels in motion? By the time you’re actually called in for an interview—

Better we wait, he said, until I’ve decided.

And why haven’t you?

What could he say? He couldn’t admit that though he’d hardly seen a square inch of Brooklyn, it was enough to sour him on it. Anyway, that wasn’t the truth — that had nothing to do with his inability to make a decision, it was just what was currently on his mind. Last night, as the car turned onto Brighton Beach Avenue, Marina had exclaimed gleefully, We’re here! Eyes glued to the window, Pasha’s first impression had been horror. Filth, dreariness, and pigeon shit didn’t bother him, but five gastronoms in a row called Odessa did. His fellow countrymen hadn’t ventured bravely into a new land, they’d borrowed a tiny nook at the very rear of someone else’s crumbling estate to make a tidy replication of the messy, imperfect original they’d gone through so many hurdles to escape, imprisoning themselves in their own lack of imagination, forgetting that the original had come about organically and proceeded to evolve, already markedly different from their poor-quality photocopy. Such a bubble, no matter how enthusiastically blown, would begin to deflate in no time. Hold it, Pasha said to himself. Inner truth police! He had to admit that he’d come ready to discover just such a bubble. And the strong reaction had been at least partly the result of an overtaxed system.