Keith Gessen - A Terrible Country

I considered calling Yulia to ask her if she knew anything about sinks, but it was my sense that she did not know anything about sinks. And Sergei was probably teaching a class somewhere. Not that he would know much about sinks. Of the Octobrists, Nikolai would have the best chance of knowing about sinks, but calling him now would be an implicit promise to help him again with his stupid dacha; also I had not invited him to the party. But I wiped my hands on a towel and dialed his number. He did not pick up. I went back to the sink.

The simplest thing would have been if the U was clogged. I had spilled water out of it but that didn’t mean there wasn’t a clog in there. I looked inside and saw darkness. I took the U into the bath and poured some water into it from the lower faucet—the water went into the U and very quickly started coming out the other side. The U was not clogged.

I returned to the kitchen only to find my grandmother going through her little phone book. “Andryush,” she said, “we have to call everyone and tell them not to come.”

“Why?” I said.

“Well, look!” she said, indicating the sink.

The area around the sink was terrifying—filthy rags soaked in water, a mess of cleaning products and old plastic bags, the little red doors under the sink opened to reveal that someone had torn apart the pipes. I could see why my grandmother might think we weren’t ready to receive guests.

“You said you’d give me an hour. Only twenty minutes have passed. I can fix this.”

I shooed her back to her room. Then I put our deepest saucepan under the sink, poured some water into a glass, and started pouring it down the drain. It appeared without delay on the other end of the pipe and splashed into my saucepan. So there was nothing wrong with the sink or its pipe, and there was nothing wrong with the U-pipe.

That left the pipe sticking into the wall. I took my glass with water and angled some into that pipe. In it went, but I could not see the other side. The other side was—I had no idea where. Outdoors? Under the apartment?

I mean, both. The answer had to be both. The pipes must have been in between the walls and the floors, eventually connecting to a larger pipe under the street. That was the only possibility. And the pipes from the street went—I did not know. That was beyond my pay grade. Into the river? It didn’t matter. I just had to clear this one clog.

I stuck the snake into the wall pipe and started turning the handle. At first there was no resistance and then there was a little, but I kept turning the handle and my wire went deeper. Had I cleared the clog? Or were these bends in the pipe? I suspected bends and kept going. I was shocked at the length of the wire—there was no way to know just how quickly I was uncoiling it, and I couldn’t of course measure, but it must have extended more than fifteen feet. And then it ran into something that stopped it cold, a wall of some kind, or a rock. At first I thought that this was it: the end of the pipe. If this was the end of the pipe, and I had not yet met the clog, then I was up against a mystery. Or else I had simply cleared it and not really noticed—that’s how strong the snake was. I started withdrawing the snake; I’d have to put the pipes back together and test the sink again.

Except what would it mean for the pipe to end? I stopped withdrawing the snake. The pipe couldn’t end. If the pipe ended, where would the water go? No, our pipe must have cleared into a larger pipe, which eventually cleared into an even larger pipe, out on the street, like I said. That’s the only way this thing could have kept going.

If my snake had entered a larger pipe, why would it have stopped? No. I started turning my snake again in the old, forward direction, until it returned to the rock. This time I kept going. If there was a rock in my pipe, I needed to get it out of the way. And as I turned the snake, I felt, or thought I felt, that the rock was moving. I might also have been twisting without effect. And yet it felt like something was happening.

I kept turning and by now I was convinced, although at times it seemed immovable, that this was not a rock, but a clog. My clog. A coil of hair and vegetables and shampoo and kasha. As I pressed against it I imagined what it looked like, this coil of hair and kasha; I was amazed that any water had managed to penetrate it at all, but then again water has its ways, and also, actually, the whole point was that it had stopped penetrating it. That’s why I was here.

And then suddenly it felt like my clog had fallen into space and my snake was free. I turned the handle a few more times but it was unnecessary. The clog was gone! I just knew it. Motherfucking clog! I wished I had been able to see its face as it fell into the larger pipe, to be swept into a river, and then eventually an ocean. Or whatever. Fuck you, clog! My only regret is that I didn’t look upon your ugly face.

I reassembled the pipes under the sink, turned on the water, and watched it drain. I had never been so impressed; the simple draining of water in a sink had never looked to me so elegant.

“Babushka!” I said. My grandmother was in her room and when I went in there to get her, she was looking out the window into the courtyard. “Babushka, let me show you something.” I led her back to the kitchen.

“Oh, my God!” she cried after seeing the mess on the floor, which I hadn’t yet cleaned up.

“No, look,” I said, and I turned the water on. It drained perfectly.

I was worried that she’d forgotten about the whole thing and was going to ask what I was showing her, but she hadn’t. “You fixed it?” she said.

I nodded.

“I knew you would,” she said, and went back to her room.

A little while later my phone rang. It was Nikolai.

“What’s up?” he said.

“Oh, nothing. I wanted to consult you about a plumbing issue. But I fixed it.”

“You fixed the plumbing?”

“I did.”

“Good for you,” said Nikolai. There was a pause. I sensed that he knew that there was a party, and that I hadn’t invited him. So I invited him.

“I’d be glad to come,” said Nikolai.

Soon Seraphima Mikhailovna came and cooked a monumental feast. Then the guests started arriving. Emma Abramovna came, with her caretaker; and the soldiers, plus Howard’s very nice and pretty girlfriend; and the Octobrists. My linemates Anton and Oleg represented the hockey guys; I hadn’t realized until they filled up my grandmother’s ancient apartment just how big they were. The party was not without its ticklish moments. Misha demanded of Oleg what he did for a living, and when Oleg answered that he was in real estate, Misha asked if that meant he sucked the marrow from the life of the city. “That’s right,” said Oleg happily.

Misha was momentarily flustered by Oleg’s amorality, and then just raised his glass to him: “You are my enemy and you know it.” They got along great after that. There was plenty of alcohol at the party, and plenty of food; I hadn’t realized it before but Anton and Katya were both single, and at the end of the night he asked for her number.

For dinner we set everything up in the back room and put my grandmother in a spot from which she wouldn’t be able to get up and try to fetch people things. She accepted this. I worried that she would start hinting to Emma Abramovna about her dacha, and everyone would see how her oldest friend evaded her, but she never brought it up. Periodically she would ask, when there was a quiet moment, “Whose party is this?” At first it was worrisome, but then it almost seemed like she was teasing us.

“It’s your party!” we said, and she said, “My party?” and we said yes. “All right,” she agreed. She stayed with us until the guests left, at close to midnight, and then declared, as she watched Yulia and me finish the cleanup, that we were never having guests again, it was too exhausting. But she said it in a triumphant sort of way.