Yelena Akhtiorskaya - Panic in a Suitcase

Insight? she said. I’m sorry, Pasha, I don’t have it.

How about more memories in the same vein? It took hundreds of hours of psychoanalytic toil just to unearth these. There must be more. My tendency is to bury traumatic episodes. Your memory should be terrific for the stuff. That’s why I thought you might provide—

Some insight, yes, I get it. But I’ve got nothing. She kneaded the dough of her knees. It’s a hot soup, she said, and time is like cornstarch. Last week I locked my keys in the car, poured milk into the washing machine. Though on second thought, she said, is it possible that the psychic work didn’t retrieve memories but invented them? Take your literary-magazine episode. I remember it differently. You found out the KGB was on its way, but it was Rema who called to tell you. And Mama didn’t burn your magazines. Mama wasn’t even home at the time. You dumped your magazines into the fireplace yourself, forgetting, though you later denied having been told, that all of Mama’s valuables — her jewels and heirlooms, gold coins and cash — were hidden in a little sack under the grate.

Pasha’s arm slackened, allowing her to disengage. That can’t be, he said softly.

Marina gathered her bags. It’s incredible that you don’t remember. I’d bet all of Odessa remembers Mama’s screams.

Robert came to Pasha’s rescue. He brewed a pot of Earl Grey, spooned some syrupy quince jam onto a saucer, and snuck into the living room, where the desquamating inmate lay under a massive heap of art books. Flaps of skin hung off his nose and ears, his chin finding a new shape with each scratch. It looked like a root vegetable that had been partially grated, then thrown away because of pervading rottenness.

I don’t want, said Pasha.

I come with an offer, Robert said, setting the ruse on the floor. We say we’re going for a walk on the boardwalk but really sneak off to Manhattan!

Pasha reached for the jam. No way, he said, licking the tiny spoon.

You mentioned the Frick.

It’s two hours just on the subway.

We’ll take a cab.

The last thing I need is another scolding.

Pasha’s refusal only restored his father’s ease. Here’s the phone, then. Call Misha.

I’d rather hold off. He doesn’t even know I’m here.

Don’t be so sure. Robert shuffled out, a sad sight. Though America filled people out (with such tasteless food that you had to keep on the search for flavor), Robert proved the exception: America shrank him. Over the last year, he’d been dragged to doctors, had his organs inspected, put on a strict diet of lard, red caviar, and French fries. Nothing was wrong, and nothing worked. The admirably, reassuringly plump Robert, a stern doctor with a double chin so perfect it served as a guiding credential, whose paunch pulled taut his striped gray vest and made any neurosurgery seem hopeful, was no more. He was gaunt — every surface that had been convex had concaved, as if a vacuum cleaner had turned on at his core. He became wholly implausible as a physician. Luckily, most of his remaining patients lived in other cities, consulting by phone. His clothes hadn’t changed, the same two charcoal suits that now looked like bunkers in which Robert was hiding. The curse of shabbiness — when a barber cut Robert’s bristle-thick gray hair, the result was that it stuck out more sharply in every direction; shaving with these disposable razors, he bled; his shirttails went untucked; there was always a button to miss, a zipper to overlook. What had Esther done to deserve this? The shabbiness was innate, but how well it had been hidden under layers of respect and busy living. They’d been so involved. A stethoscope and a reflex mallet had done wonders for Robert’s image. With the layers peeled away, the shabbiness was profound. In fighting this impossible battle (Pasha had inherited the gene, and Marina and Levik were inveterate slobs), Esther forgot herself. She lived as if the Master Photographer would arrive at any moment to snap the one photograph that counted, to be filed away into the Permanent Records, yet she never took into account that as part of the family she’d also be expected to pose.

Pasha found her duct-taping the split slits of the yellowed blinds clattering with the breeze. Art project? he asked.

It’s not even a project. I’m not even here. I’m actually where I need to be, which is in the oven. Come, take this. She handed him the duct tape, clamped his fingers over the cracked slit she’d been holding perfectly aligned.

By the way, Nadia called while you were out. She’s not very happy.

Is she ever?

She’s particularly unhappy, then.

Her moods aren’t my responsibility.

Calling your family is.

I’ve hardly been here a day!

It’s been a few.

Well, you know what they say, time flies…

Don’t you care how Sanya’s doing?

He’s grown. Takes care of himself.

He’s sixteen! Do you need me to remind you of yourself at his age? Nadia claims you don’t make any effort with him.

Since when do you listen to Nadia?

Since she’s allowed by law to call me Mama.

Mama, she’s unhinged!

That much was clear the moment you brought her through the door.

That happened on the same day she started calling Esther Mama. In that time, in that place, everyone had been in a rush to the altar. For good reason — a walk down the aisle with nothing but butterflies or buckwheat in the bride’s stomach was unheard of. But marriage was by no means a life sentence. The babies matured quickly, becoming adults by their sixth or seventh birthday, and the guys, however decent, often returned to the streets, though never for long. Nets were ubiquitous, vision blurry. All of this was understood, not necessarily openly talked about. Adolescent Pasha had been ahead of his peers in his grasp of certain subjects (those that came with a textbook) and equivalently behind in what Esther called the Life Subject. Of course it was the only subject at which he wished to excel. When at the age of eighteen he introduced his new wife, Nadia, Esther asked with resignation, When’s she due? He laughed. We’re not expecting! Esther spit on the floor and reddened. You married her just to marry her? What a romantic! You could’ve at least had the decency to knock her up. Now how am I supposed to explain this to everybody?

By twenty-one Pasha was a father. No longer ahead or behind but, along with the rest, somewhere in the thick of it, he felt sorry for himself — while Esther felt obliged to side with her daughter-in-law, who had the valid complaint that not long after they exchanged gold bands, Pasha stopped paying attention. Esther sided with Nadia, partly for revenge. Much heartache could’ve been avoided had he taken to Dora: sensible, warm, from a nice Jewish family, a good cook, not too homely (a beauty in comparison to Nadia). She would’ve treated Pasha like a king. Instead he chose the cold, insane, pasty, pear-shaped, droopy-haired Northern Nadia, who didn’t even give off the good-in-bed aura.

Pasha was handed the phone well into the second ring. Sanya picked up. Mama’s catatonic, he said. Half an hour later — that’s half an hour of international-calling minutes — Sanya managed to coax his mother to the phone.

We miss you, she said in an evaporated residue of a voice. We want you back.

Pull yourself together. I’ll be back in no time.

When?

You know when.

But that’s so long from now, Pashinka….

During her lethargic slumps, lasting about a week, Nadia became as pitiful as possible. A burst of household activity ensued. Hopping out of bed before dawn, she’d mop floors without sweeping or use a wad of wet toilet paper to smear window grime. The fervor amounting to nothing, she’d yell, This is why we never have company! You should be ashamed! How do you stand to live in such filth? These scenes took place in front of Nadia’s toothless mother, who barely reached Pasha’s hip bones and wore a kerchief wrapped twice around her shrunken face. She slept in the kitchen. She used to share her thoughts, then began to think better of it, and by now had reached the ideal state of not having a thought to hold back. She didn’t speak, so it was hard to tell to what extent dementia had eaten her brain. When there were shouts — and when weren’t there? — she sat by the window with eyes shut, smacking her lips. This deactivated mode had its disadvantages: She stopped helping around the house. The apartment suffered, but dust balls and vermin were easier to ignore than Olga Ivanovna’s screech. At one time he’d been afraid for her life — the woman’s histrionics could’ve made a strangler even out of her angelic Lenin. And she probably wasn’t even that old. At her pace she could easily persist for another half century. But why think of such horrors when they existed in a different time zone?