Yelena Akhtiorskaya - Panic in a Suitcase

No longer bound by the 120-by-70-centimeter wooden board full of obscene and graphic carvings, the boys would’ve drifted apart in one of a million ways. Instead Misha’s father was tipped off to a very likely arrest — he was the director of the vodka plant, a position that rarely ended in leisurely retirement — and they scrammed. The friendship was embalmed. That they lived in different countries and continued to correspond was seen as a testament to their bond; in fact, it was the only reason for its survival. Minimal maintenance required. A seasonal phone call, a rare letter of personal updates peppered with unavoidable literary pretensions, a warm sentiment or two about one day living in the same city or at least on the same continent.

Misha had arrived in America at an odd age, too young for the usual immigrant dance step of struggle and settle, sweat blood for two years, then fall into a respectable career with decent pay and a retirement plan, fueled by the hope that your progeny will have a better go of it but too old to attempt camouflage, hoping only that the seams don’t show. His father belonged to the businessman species, one of those hastily assembled men with an electric stride, a plethora of tics, and an inability to sit at dinner tables. They abridged the struggle and settled for nothing short of the full American-dream package, which included a certificate of struggle completion, Park Avenue penthouse, tasteful collection of automobiles, new face for the wife even before the old one went to shit, and a downtown apartment for their artistic son. Artist was preferable to writer — why set limits, and didn’t he also have an interest in film? They provided the best platform for success that money could buy, enrolling him in non-degree programs, financing interactive projects, and passing along relevant phone numbers, which he used unabashedly, because timidity was the quickest route to nowhere. With an accent he thought to be his only hindrance but was actually his edge, Misha asked the local literati out to dinner and to drink the fine champagne (cognac) at his loft. In return he expected to be taught the ropes, the implicit request being that a cushy spot in the front row of the American Parnassus be freed, dusted, and prepared for his soft, pasty, not overly demanding tukhes. Meanwhile he’d be following in the steps of Conrad and Nabokov and transmuting his literary output to the only language now acknowledged.

Nobody protested when Misha offered his loft for Saturday soirees, sampling of his liquor cabinet, laughing at sloppily told tales of backward life in the old country — they distill their own moonshine on the job! drink their mother’s perfume! pay doctors in sour cream whose quality is tested by sticking in a fork! — but upon being handed a manuscript of his novel-in-progress they became unreachable. Though there were those, too, who prioritized a good time and would wiggle endlessly to get it. I haven’t had time yet; first chance I get; my mother’s sick; so much potential. As these wigglers assumed, Misha tired of asking or finally noticed the darting gaze of a friend yet again being inconvenienced to lie.

If Misha couldn’t be great, he’d be contemporary — he returned to composing in Russian, making “shocking” use of its wealth of profanity and thereby alienating the friends of his parents, a not-insignificant demographic when it came to sales. But Russian friendship, unlike American, was burdened by loyalty — a chapbook came out in Moscow and was translated into Turkish. He tried to live as if his life were a success, which inevitably led to discrepancies and incongruities. Reality was a bad choice of enemy — it had no need for disguise, didn’t respect the rules, and hit below the belt. Every new and/or unknown situation (in which reality festered in its most virulent strain) had to be met with all available shields and methods of defense at the ready. A reality-twisting muscle developed, which converted raw contradictory information into what should have been, bridging every inconsistency, manually returning everything to the shelter of sense; with time the muscle’s power grew, and by now it worked almost at the speed of reality. The “almost” was tragic. It revealed the muscle’s existence to those who were either very intimate with Misha or very perceptive. Pasha, who was both, posed a significant threat.

A reunion on his turf made Misha nervous. He’d been using his letters to Pasha as opportunities to flesh out fantasies. So he forgot about Pasha’s visit until one night when he was flossing his teeth after an insipid evening organized by the elusive, mentally disturbed Plinsk and the phone rang. Of all people it was Robert Grigorievich, Pasha’s father, inquiring in a voice throaty and hoarse whether Pasha didn’t happen to be in Misha’s company at the moment.

No, said Misha tentatively.

Did you see him earlier today?

I don’t think so, said Misha, leaving room for possibility as he rushed to the calendar where he jotted everything from Mama’s Birthday to Buy New Toothbrush so that each month became a solid ink-black block of accomplishment. The date of Pasha’s arrival was nowhere to be found. He’s not here, said Misha. I’m not sure where he is.

The line went dead.

Misha didn’t finish flossing his sculpted popcorn molars, though the upkeep of his teeth was the closest he had to a sacred rite. He dropped into a regal velvet-cushioned chair at the head of his oval endangered-wood dining table, which as a bachelor’s dining table was strictly ornamental and somewhat forbidding. It was sterile, strange, a place he never sat. The apartment looked different from here, longer, the ceiling lower. Why did he feel so unsettled? Pasha was in the city, out wandering the streets, catching up with someone more important. Misha had held back from asking Robert when Pasha had arrived — the question would only prove that he didn’t know, implanting doubts in Robert’s mind as to their friendship. Misha was proud to be the one called for information on Pasha’s whereabouts. He didn’t want cracks in Robert’s perception of their bond. It was suddenly very important that Robert consider him Pasha’s dearest New York friend. But after he dug around in his brain, he seemed to recall that Pasha had been scheduled to arrive on the eighth. Today was July 6, which meant that Pasha had been in the city for a month with no word. A month! Misha sat with perfect posture at the dining table (his mother had picked it out, and it demanded perfect posture), overtaken by a vaporous distress, which was replaced by anger at Pasha, because who did he think he was, a hypocrite surely, but this accusation stuck to Pasha like paper snow, since Pasha was unhypocritical to a fault. The anger petered out, and Misha was returned to nipping sadness, or had he just forgotten to turn on the air conditioner?

• • •

MARINA, juggling bags, arms, appointments, swooped into the living room to peck her grounded brother good-bye. Overscheduling led to domino-effect lateness, threadbare excuses that no one demanded or believed. Pasha tugged an appendage, toppling bags, plopping her into his lap. Why has Mama never had any patience with me? he asked.

What are you talking about?

Everything I’ve ever done has been met with disapproval. When I stayed in bed, reading, she’d yell that I needed fresh air, but when I took up soccer, she mocked me for days. Who are you fooling? she said. Her reaction was never to the activities but to me, like that time with the stamps.

An undeniable thrill in being confided to. Pasha had never spoken to her this way before, his fingers locked around her wrist, the immediacy of his hushed voice and strained mouth — Marina couldn’t help feeling deemed worthy. From the youngest age, Pasha had given the impression that the family was a nuisance, their clannish mentality a constraint; their affairs didn’t merit a second thought in his globally scaled brain. Evidently this impression couldn’t have been more false. Deep-seated grievances and injustices had been eating away at him all these years. He mentioned minor events from adolescence the way he’d refer to a passage from the Old Testament. He put on the professor face. Switched into lecture mode. Let’s look at the incident of May 18, 1972, when Mama took my entire collection of literary journals and…. Having exhausted the list, he asked Marina to provide some insight.