Yelena Akhtiorskaya - Panic in a Suitcase

Bozhe moi, bozhe moi (My God, my God), Nadia repeated. It was as if Frida belonged to the top tier of guest, was the most special visitor. Any visitor would likely fall into this rank. The loneliness on Nadia’s face was glaring. The spools of golden sunshine would’ve freshened a corpse but did nothing to Nadia’s sewer-lady pallor. An entirely new face would be needed if she ever stopped living in a state of unvarying solitude. Bending down, she picked Frida up off the ground. Frida’s spiritual flailing felt proportional to Nadia’s physical effort. Come in, said Nadia, rummaging in her bag for keys. Her stooped figure labored over the giant rusted lock. She let out an exasperated groan. It wouldn’t give, defying her fitful attempts. She paused for a few gulps of air, pulled a crumpled handkerchief from the pocket of her frock, and blotted her forehead. With renewed vigor she attacked the lock.

Frida said, Do you want me to—

Talk when inside, barked Nadia, jiggling violently.

I can come back another time.

Nonsense! The grimy metal cracked. The lock popped open and was tugged out. Nadia gave Frida a nudge inside and shut the gate behind her.

Frida had been worried that she would feel nothing at the sight of the dacha, no connection, no recognition, but she wasn’t prepared for the fact that there would actually be nothing. The dacha was demolished. The entirety was in ruins, as if leveled by a tornado. It struck the eye no longer as a single entity — a house — but simply a mound of rubble.

Hungry? Thirsty? After determining, with relief, that Frida was neither, Nadia explained that her legs weren’t what they used to be.

I’ll leave you to rest, said Frida, backing away.

Stop with this utter horseshit! Nadia screamed. Noticing that Frida blanched, she softened and said, An old lady could use some company every once in a while. And it has been a while, hasn’t it? This is your dacha after all. I apologize if it’s a bit dark inside. There’s no circuitry, as of the moment.

A lack of circuitry was no surprise, but the existence of an inside was. How could this heap of boards and debris have an interior? But one of the more upright boards served as a door, through which Nadia’s stocky frame just barely squeezed. Inside, it was narrow, bare, dark indeed. Several mattresses were distributed along the floor, stripped of bedding, iodine-stained. The last mattress was propped by a cot, and Nadia threw herself across it.

I’m sorry it’s not all that tidy, she said quietly. As it happens, I have no help from anybody on this earth. My cousins, who are very sickly from Chernobyl, come and go as they please. Nadia laughed. You probably don’t have a clue what I’m talking about. Chernobyl was—

I know what Chernobyl was, said Frida with irritation, though while she said it, a fear shot though her that she’d be tested on the subject and fail horribly, like in a dream, mixing up Chernobyl with the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire or the Titanic .

A free sanatorium is what they take this for. They’re sensitive to light, to heat, to moisture in the air, to feathers, citrus fruit, drafts, the least echo of music. I’m not the picture of health myself, but to compare… I manage the best I can. But I wasn’t expecting you so soon. Otherwise I would’ve been prepared. I intended to have the renovations done by your arrival — you’ll just have to take my word on that. Nadia lay as if the sea had washed up her body, as if she didn’t have access to the biological pathways to wiggle a finger, and her voice was the result of some stirring and rustling deep within this senseless flesh. Now, tell me, she said, how are your parents?

Frida was suspended in the air by some highly delicate balance of forces, which could be thrown into disproportion by the least insensitivity on her part. The tiniest wrong move and she’d drop onto one of the iodine-stained mattresses, where for all she knew the cousins lay napping or telepathically chatting in irradiated invisibility. What to do? She took a breath. Her palms were planted in the burnt-orange stains, and her bare feet (she must’ve removed her shoes in an uncharacteristic display of politeness) were ankle-deep in dust. Ragged strips of sunlight divided the floor, serving as the gelatinous substance in which dust particles became lodged.

My parents are fine. They say privet.

Your mother was like a sister, whispered Nadia. And how is Robert Grigorievich?

Fine, said Frida. Getting older.

Aren’t we all! Robert Grigorievich is an exceptional man in every sense, but time makes no exceptions. Not even Pasha is spared, though I do believe he still isn’t convinced of that himself. But none of this unpleasantness. I remember you as a little fat dumpling, a little nasty fat dumpling resolved to not make life easier for anybody. And now am I to believe that the dumpling I remember so well has transformed into a young woman with an American accent and such an interesting top? And I must say, you really do resemble your uncle. But just look what Pasha did to me! Who could’ve known? Who would’ve predicted in a million years? Yet nobody on this earth feels a shred of sympathy for me.

Don’t stir the darkness, thought Frida. Keep perfectly still.

Except you, said Nadia. You feel sympathy for your poor aunt, don’t you?

Frida nodded.

As for the renovation, said Nadia, dropping an octave to the universal business baritone, I’m currently in the process of dividing the dacha in two. The part we’re in right now will be yours, and the other part will be mine. It’ll be exactly as it should.

Oh, thought Frida, so it’s a betterment process. She should’ve known that this was the case — in her own neck of the woods people acted impulsively, with little or no foresight, the result being fits and starts on every block. If they came upon the means to accomplish the first step of their Grand Plan, they didn’t hesitate to do so, trusting momentum to carry the rest to fruition. When the funds ran out, no one bothered to clean up the mess. In Brooklyn the guiding force, however disguised, was creation, whereas here it wasn’t so obvious.

I wanted to have the renovation done by the time you got here, continued Nadia, but who knew you’d be so quick? I was expecting the opposite problem. I figured I had another eighteen months at the least. But it’s all for the best. Truth is, I’m weak. There’s not a soul to help me.

What about Sanya?

If I can give you a piece of advice: Think twice before having a son. It may seem like a good idea at the time, but it never pans out. If you’re looking for affection, a bit of understanding, support in your old age, a son isn’t the way to go. Do you think Sanya would take an hour out of his day to visit his ailing mother all alone in the world? A helping hand he is not, never was. But the fact of the matter is, who needs him? You look sturdy enough. I can tell when someone eats her spinach. As you can see, there’s no shortage of beds. Just pick the one you want, and I’ll get some fresh linen.

That’s very kind of you, muttered Frida, but I don’t want to be any trouble.

Pooh! What kind of trouble could you possibly be?

The mattress nearest the entrance had almost no iodine stains; it was the most sunken in the center, as if a meteorite had landed there a few million years ago, but one couldn’t expect to have it all. The offer was, in many ways, a godsend. Spending another day in that apartment with Volk and his family was unimaginable. So was the idea of going back to Brooklyn and, in two weeks’ time, packing her bags to return to school for another year of somnambulating around a space-alien campus, snoring through amphitheater lectures, wallowing over the toilet seat, overhearing snippets of conversation about the awesome things her peers did with their preceptors, such as handing a needle during a paracentesis, how one person studied for forty hours straight but the other was already prepping for her Step 1, and shrugging it all off until finding herself alone at daybreak in her cell with the Krebs cycle and a bunch of amino acids or cranial nerves and anterior compartments of the leg. Another year couldn’t be endured. Yet staying on with Pasha and Sveta wasn’t an option — even if she wanted to, they wouldn’t have it. Then she remembered about the veranda, which was no longer a veranda — you couldn’t do such an injustice to the word. Because however highfalutin the word was, what good would it do to let the hot air out of it? The area of space in front of the dacha heap was no longer a veranda but a tattered cot under a chipped concrete awning with a tilt. Torrents of rain would enclose whoever lay there within transparent walls. She’d sleep out in the fresh air, with the porcupines at her feet.