Yelena Akhtiorskaya - Panic in a Suitcase

I’ll be off to sleep, said Pasha. I’ve got an old man’s bedtime, to go with the old man’s body. His hand landed on Frida’s shoulder. The moment of truth was upon them. She twisted up her face, straining to channel her chaotic inner existence, her uncertainty, her fear, her lack of footing, which Pasha seemed at last on the brink of acknowledging and shedding light on. He gave two squeezes and said, For tomorrow. Any requests?

The low ceiling was spore-speckled, brown. Water damage: a sinister force spanning nations. She shook her head.

None at all?

She had no requests at all. At last she’d attained such a state. Requests led to anguish, a correlation anybody would recognize. Best to do away with them altogether.

But Pasha persisted. There’s absolutely nothing in particular you want to see?

Was this a test? Was the requestless existence she considered an accomplishment actually a failure? To come up empty-handed seemed as unwise as not even making an educated guess on a multiple-choice exam. The dacha, she declared.

Why don’t you sleep on it, said Pasha. It’s been a long day. Sveta put fresh sheets and a towel on the armchair. Make yourself comfortable, at least as comfortable as possible on that thing. Try experimenting with positions — I’m told there’s one in which you don’t even feel the metal bar.

• • •

JARRED AWAKE BY A RINGING phone, Frida sprang upright and rattled off, Mama, don’t worry, everything’s fine. On the other end, a man’s voice shouted in Ukrainian for a steady thirty seconds. People said it was a melodic language, and they were right.

Are you trying to sell me something? Frida asked.

The line went dead.

In her hand was the cell phone she’d so nobly refused to accept. On top of her suitcase lay the envelope full of cash.

Sleeping beauty, said Pasha when she stumbled into the kitchen. Too groggy to say for sure, but she detected sarcasm. It hadn’t exactly been a spectacular night of rest. Regardless of jet lag or a foldout sofa through which snaked a metal bar so limber it managed to jab everywhere at once, trying to repose in the room that housed Pasha’s collections was no easy feat. At least the icons — countless pairs of eyes embedded in misshapen-as-if-spilling heads, thick globs of boneless babies — could be turned off with the lights, but it was in the dark that the pendulum clocks struck out, not entirely in unison, and proceeded to spend the night in a bravura competition. Toward dawn, in a thrill of ingenuity, Frida had tied her uncle’s shoes by their laces to the pendulums, finding not long thereafter that the courtyard served as breeding grounds for livestock.

A man dressed as a pirate sat beside Pasha, directing at her an unctuous grin under an indulgent mustache with upward-tapering tips. The rapacious gleam in his eyes was studied but effective. A white ruffled shirt stretched taut over a barrel chest. He had everything short of an eye patch. And the hat was rather a sombrero. He introduced himself as the foremost painter of Odessa — the most controversial, the least liked, the most talented and underappreciated, the least reimbursed and validated, the most prolific and modern, and had he already mentioned underappreciated? An understatement! Try ostracized and shunned, admittedly not as much as Pavel Robertovich. Your uncle, said the pirate before Frida had finished pouring cold coffee into a mug, is the greatest poet not just in Odessa and not in all of Ukraine but in all of Russia, which is why people hate him. They want him to rot in the ground.

Pasha laughed — spare, dismissive, but a laugh nonetheless. He’d acquired human color overnight and seemed, on the whole, less world-historically solemn.

The coffee wasn’t doing a proper job of reviving, perhaps because it was impossible to believe in the power of Ukrainian coffee. If the coffee worked, it would’ve been a far different country. The only effect was a leaden tongue.

Where’s Sveta? she asked.

You’re not the only sleeping beauty around here, said Pasha. Thanks for the reminder. He rose and began to fuss. For somebody who moved so sluggishly, an incredible clatter was generated. Everything banged against everything else. Anything capable of clanging didn’t hesitate to do so. That Sveta didn’t run in, wondering about the earthquake, was testament to the potency of her slumber. Half an hour later, Pasha was finished. For all the noise, effort, mess, there was surprisingly little yield: a fresh brew of coffee (the batch from which Frida had just taken went down the drain) and a soggy egg mass. These were delicately placed on a silver tray with an undoubtedly rich history and majestically carried off to the master bedroom.

What a mensch, said the pirate. How many men do you know who spoil their wives like that? Women in this country are lucky not to spend half their lives with a black eye. Do you know when was the last time I made breakfast for my wife? I’m really asking, because I don’t. I’m not even entirely sure what number wife I’m on, or if she eats. And this is a literary man we’re talking about, the greatest poet — not just in Odessa, mind you, but in all of the former SSSR!

The pirate didn’t stop. While he spoke and gesticulated and let the ends of his mustache stab the air, he glanced intermittently into the corridor to see if Pasha was returning. He needed to be saved from his own performance. At some point Pasha had been gone too long. The pirate destroyed the cracker monument he’d been erecting and fell silent.

Of course, if Pasha expended even a tenth of the effort he does with Sveta to the outside world, the pirate said quietly, who knows, he might not be in this predicament.

Is it dire? asked Frida.

Yes and no — it depends on what he wants.

And what is that?

Do you think Pasha has a clue what he wants himself?

A glass of mineral water would be nice, said Pasha, finding pleasure everywhere this morning.

Treacherous heat notwithstanding, they decided to venture out for a stroll. There were too many of them, no air-conditioning. The apartment’s single window, a porthole situated over the sink, was reminiscent of a jail-cell aperture in that it served a strictly psychological function. Besides, Frida had just arrived — wasn’t she curious to take a look around? Mark Twain had been. There was the Opera House, Potemkin Steps, Vorontsov Palace, Railway Station. With every additional proper noun plucked from the air, Frida felt more jet-lagged. Odessa had more obligatory sights than London, Paris, and Rome combined. How could one miss out on seeing the building in which Ilf and Petrov were born, the synagogue that Babel may have once set foot in, the synagogue that Babel would never have set foot in, the Pushkin monument, the hidden Pushkin mementos, the black velvet drape where a Caravaggio used to hang? Luckily, there was time. If it was used wisely, Frida might be able to see a fair amount. The information was contradictory to say the least. Odessa was a backwater town, delusional province, cultural wasteland, Pasha said as much, yet Frida’s twelve-day visit wasn’t enough to cover everything. A hollow shell of a city, claimed the patron saint himself, but Frida was clearly at fault for not displaying a sufficient measure of curiosity toward it. Was her presence there not curiosity enough?

The pirate, who outside Frida’s thoughts went by Tochka, wasn’t made for the heat. He promptly began to melt. First his mustache became a viscous puddle that migrated south and poured drip by agonizing drip off his chin, staining the soaked-to-transparency dress shirt, the ruffles of which had wilted. Decomposing eyebrows obstructed vision, making it rather a challenge to ambulate. Nobody was very surprised when he muttered an unintelligible excuse and veered perpendicular on a side street. Pasha didn’t appear to notice that their party had shrunk. His heels scraped the pavement. Sveta bounced alongside. Frida craned her neck, occasionally making an affirmative throat sound or venturing an architecture-related inquiry. The answers got lost somewhere. The surroundings were blurred by exhaustion and gastric discomfort (Sveta had made lunch; report on cooking not positive). Frida was cotton-mouthed and angry with herself. The people they passed either looked at Pasha and uttered cordial hellos or looked at Pasha and whispered something to their companions. All signs pointed to the fact that Pasha’s eyes were open and functional — he heeded curbs, avoided dog poop (sometimes), paused at stop signs — but he gave no hint of noticing the people who noticed him. Those who greeted him and those who didn’t received the same treatment — namely, no response at all, not even an ear twitch. Impenetrably sullen, he scraped onward. Frida shot a pleading look at Sveta. You had to give it to her, Sveta tried her best — she pulled Pasha’s beard, tickled the mossy nape of his neck, bit his shoulder, gnawed at his elbow, none of which revived the walking corpse.