Charna’s out? said Marina, eyeing the carpets.
She had to go by the hospital, said Shmulka, relocking bolt twelve.
Everything OK, I hope?
Another tsibele in the bake, it looks like.
Enough! At this point the functionality of Charna’s oven was suspect. The tsibelach she baked in there were deteriorating in quality. The last one looked plain inedible. But what would Charna do without recourse to being out of commission? As a girl she had laughed. She had that look, as if her mind had been blasted by laughter. Her eyes were like neglected goldfish bowls, the water unchanged for months. Surrounding wrinkles were many and deep. The laughter had leaked out for the most part, but occasionally it still shook her. It hadn’t evolved—little girl’s laughter. She was squat, haggard, prematurely aged, and she was always home, whereas her sister-in-law, Shmulka, the size of a pinkie finger, was hot with ideas, always hatching up plans about opera drapes or flowerpots or skirt-length alterations and out attending to them. But here was Shmulka with her round brown eyes gleaming under a heavy, dead wig. Her entire life force battled that wig, which nevertheless remained fastened to her scalp, though not securely; she clawed at it so hard it slid onto her forehead or down one side. Although a shaved head was supposed to be underneath, Shmulka had a full head of thick chestnut curls. The layering probably caused discomfort, but Shmulka wasn’t one for shortcuts.
Though Marina arrived early and left late, the husband-brothers rarely made an appearance. Being tall, broad-shouldered, handsome, they confounded preconceptions. They were like actors playing Hasidic brothers in a Hollywood movie. Marina dreaded their entrance. Only when they were around did she suddenly transform into a cleaning lady. They could step over her abandoned ankle without a glance in the direction of her head. It was hard to maintain illusions around them, though objectively it would seem they were the ones to have strayed from reality.
You need what? said Shmulka.
Marina looked at her, not comprehending.
To go by the closet . . .
Don’t—I know where is all what I need.
She began with the basement—a windowless space filled with every gadget and contraption ever created and put on this planet. She intended to compile a list of these devices—or rather their descriptions, since aside from the few she recognized from late-night infomercials, the majority of their names and functions eluded her—and submit this list to a committee that kept track of . . . Jewish history? Hoarder mentality? Basements of the twentieth century? The problem would be figuring out which committee most deserved the list, and if no one knew what to make of it, at least they’d put it on file. The fact that she might be the only person to set eyes on this basement was disconcerting. Of course other cleaning ladies had seen it, but they didn’t count, because they were cleaning ladies. Marina was cleaning only because life reserved its most pungent humor for those special enough to get the joke.
Though the bathroom was often cited as the horrible representative of cleaning-lady duties, Marina enjoyed her time there. It was dense and fertile ground, offering plenty of opportunities to linger. The shower curtains were where the cash was. Marina took her time with every fiber and slit. Then she moved on, with less enthusiasm, to floors. Wall-to-wall carpeting was a chief discovery in terms of pure shock value. Marina had just one question: Why? The carpets were like a bib for the house, soaking up everything that never made it to the mouth. As Marina was brushing the crud out of the carpet, Shmulka burst into the room. An emergency had come up, and she needed to go out, but would be back to the house in twenty minutes max. The only emergency was that if Shmulka stayed inside five more minutes, she would spontaneously combust and pieces of her flesh, which Marina suspected would be very tough and rubbery, would have to be brushed out of the carpet fibers. In Shmulka’s eyes: guilt, apology, a plea for understanding. She and Charna obviously had an agreement that the cleaning lady should never be left unsupervised. When Charna was around, this wasn’t a problem, as she would’ve gladly spent the rest of her days without another gulp of fresh air, but Shmulka had ideas. She was addicted to the world’s possibilities.
I’m fast, said Shmulka with her emaciated neck. Watch the kiddies. Make sure they don’t . . . you know.
How many kiddies were currently in the house and to whom they belonged was irrelevant. They were runty, underdeveloped, somersaulting. Once in a while, they flew down the stairs, let out a shriek, carried on. In their crooked mouths, the true shapes of which couldn’t be determined as they were never closed for long enough, was a sprinkling of tiny teeth. Teeth everywhere. A few half-submerged molars inside their large ears would’ve been no surprise. The older kids knew who was one of them and who wasn’t better than anybody, and to them Marina was a large cockroach methodically covering their house. They couldn’t kill her (she was too large), so they ignored her. But Shmulka’s three-year-old, whom Marina called Krolik because his real name was unpronounceable, followed her around as she cleaned, rarely deviating from her path. She would’ve chosen him anyway. He was more aristocratic in the cheek. And Marina’s principle with babies was the fatter the better. She encouraged largeness, equating size with importance: A big baby mattered more than a small one. Krolik could beat up his older siblings, which was admirable. Not to mention he liked Marina and wanted to hold discussions with her. Marina’s English was roughly on a par with Krolik’s—both could use the practice.
But today he wasn’t in his usual good spirits. Still trailing Marina, but sulkily, he ignored questions and commands, resisting the minor tasks she tried to assign. A grumpy little man with descended brows, he threw her sponge back at her. Almost toppled her pail. Laughed only after she’d tripped over the vacuum cleaner’s cord. An extra burden was something she didn’t need. Her probes into his psyche were unsuccessful until turning to a subject that quickened the pulse of even the most hopeless candidates. Krolik didn’t have to think long before proclaiming his absolute favorite: kugel.
OK, said Marina, a bit mystified. But what does Krolik feel for pizza?
Pizza! cried Krolik. Pizza’s existence had slipped his mind.
Does Krolik want surprise?
Surprise! he screamed.
Her finger instructed patience. Her purse was upstairs. She managed a puff of a cigarette—from Shmulka’s secret stash—before returning with a triangle of tinfoil.
Getting wind of what was about to happen, Krolik hiccupped from joy, a sudden shift of fate. His gaze was superglued to Marina’s chafed hand as it peeled back the petals of tinfoil with agonizing slowness. The boy stopped breathing. He stopped blinking. He stopped—
But when Marina finally presented the slice, Krolik’s excitement transformed. He gawked. He seemed befuddled, stumped.
My daughter’s favorite, said Marina. You don’t like?
Krolik’s head shook, though without conviction. His jaw had fallen open. He continued to stare at the cold slice, tomato sauce on the surface like burst capillaries, neat circles of pepperoni with curled edges, little red bowls.
Try, said Marina, her own mouth filling rapidly like the bathtub on the edge of which she sat.
Krolik took a few greedy bites and ran off with the rest of the slice. Marina set off after him, but it was as if he’d vanished. She moved on from the basement to the first floor, and upward. It was slow going, rough. She was unable to summon the Cinderella sensation, the famous-actress delusions, the good-for-my-biopic mood. Her arms and legs were heavy. The house leaned on her. Neither could she work up momentum or recall why she’d thought this was funny. Where was that pungent humor? I’m an actress, she said to herself, an undercover agent, a spy, as she scrubbed around the house’s hundredth toilet bowl. I’m a Russian lady embarking on middle age. That term—middle age—never failed to lower the sluice gate of self-pity.
• • •
YOU’RE the PAVEL NASMERTOV, said a woman with eyes taking up half her face, further enhanced by dramatic, expertly drawn sha
dows. Perching on the sofa, she gave Pasha a moment to acquire that face, which she’d borrowed from one of the nocturnal animals kept in special enclosures at the zoo. Renata Ostraya, she said, as if this were the elusive title of a painting, meant to illuminate something while giving nothing away. Otherwise she was a regular plump lady, apologizing for not being there to greet him when he’d arrived, which she hoped wasn’t too long ago. Pasha confirmed that he’d walked through the door no more than ten minutes ago, fifteen at most, but Renata wasn’t paying attention and he also wasn’t sure why he was going into detail.
In any case, she said, at last we meet.
The introduction took place only on the surface level of consciousness and was performed to appease that level, so its security guard wouldn’t get suspicious. Ancestral intermingling in more formative times was possibly at the root of this feeling.
I’ve deemed you guest of honor, she said. I hope you don’t mind if we ask you to recite a few poems.
What poet would mind?
A modest one. But that’s pure speculation.
You could smell the stories. If men hadn’t spilled blood over her, they’d surely threatened to. She found in all of it a good laugh. She was an actress, her flesh involved but spirit unconvinced. As a lady poet, she fought frivolity with exaggerated expressions of seriousness—frowns, gathered brows, pursed lips. Now her face leaked into these masks and had to jostle out of them. She grew increasingly substantial, a matronly effect conjured up by a lack of shuffling. Her body was an extra fixture of the sofa, hips as sturdy and impersonal as armrests. She counterbalanced the anchoring tug of her body with an overly expressive top eighth, though her proportions in this sense, too, weren’t the Vitruvian ideal; her small head must’ve been rather a ninth of her height. Women like her seemed to always be squatting. They were reminiscent of drawers that, pulled open, released a woody, smoky, dusty odor. Not Pasha’s type, and surely Renata could tell. She knew she’d been made for particular tastes.
Though the evening’s caliber was excessive, shades of sloppiness were ubiquitous. All the elements of a superb party were there—beluga caviar, Krug champagne, a microphone. Maybe this was the problem. A checklist was in the air. People wore their best attempts, no one capable of trying harder. But the plates didn’t match, and there were volume-control issues with the speakers, which to some extent had to be the case at every party that tried for matching anything. Usually only the hostess noticed flaws, her guests remaining oblivious, but now no one was oblivious except the hostess. Were these evenings played out, or was Renata exhausted? Prior to settling beside Pasha, she’d picked up a glass of cognac someone had left behind. A hostess’s reflex: clear abandoned drinks. But after five minutes of rotating the glass in her fingers, she took it down.
A proper hostess never stayed in one spot for long, even if that spot was beside the guest of honor. A goosey girl with hypersensitivities and self-abnegating tendencies took Renata’s place, balancing a large plate on her bony knees. The food was artistically arranged. The colors, the proportions—marvelous. The creative act was still in progress as she commenced moving the food around with delicate but assured strokes of the fork. That she was coming to public events was a miracle—or a modern psychiatric marvel. Pasha found a window. A joint was being passed around. It didn’t evoke the appropriate Russian-intelligentsia-dabbling-in-dope feel but a cows-out-to-pasture one. Admittedly, he was afraid of it and looked in the other direction while remaining acutely aware of the joint’s location, particularly as it neared him. The roach was tiny and wet when he lent it his own dab of saliva. The smoke scratched an itch in his left lung, an itch he didn’t know he had. Renata Ostraya began to seem like a tragic figure. Misha circulated throughout the room, manic, a brochure of twitches. It was as if time were manipulating him more savagely. He shot glances at Pasha. His eyes were like photographed cat eyes, not glowing neon but glowing paranoid. Who was Pasha talking to? And did Pasha notice who Misha was talking to? Because Misha talked to a bouquet of interesting, accomplished people—poets, critics, the painter Dolbintsov, prose writer Bliznyats, Misha knew them all, and the young woman by the glass menagerie collection, too, the one in the black dress, a turtle in her palm.
Pasha, evidently, had been staring. Her composure captivated—amid a murmur of still-crinkly conversation, the handling of drinks and utensils, crowd maneuverings, female and male laughter (starkly different), the young lady gave the impression of perfect stillness. Which was advantageous, as it afforded an opportunity to admire her plump white arms and champagne-glass waist.
That’s Lilya, said Misha. Her father’s an experimental filmmaker, mother a Bulgarian puppeteer. She drinks coffee, translates ancient Bulgarian philosophers. I tried, most do. Her younger sister, Elza, is even more beautiful, but haunting. She lacks something human.
In another corner, an hour or so later, Ostraya’s crystalline voice: Not enough affection from your mother. A distant relation put a curse on you as a child. It hasn’t been lifted. You trust people too much. Don’t eat mushrooms. Incorporate more alkalizing fruits and vegetables. Relationships don’t grow on a foundation of humor. You need to be tickled occasionally. Watch out for unusual headpieces. Loyalty is respectable until one day you find yourself the patron saint of a Potemkin village. Look around, be tempted. She leaned in. Dewdrops stood out along her hairline. This is the center—it’s thriving.
I’ve never felt a strong pull toward the center myself, replied Pasha. Maybe I’m a provincial at heart, rather like Gorky with his Nizhniy Novgorod than Chekhov, who thrust Moscow down throats. The center is dangerous. You can visit—in fact, you must—but it’s not wise to roost. Furthermore, are such matters so easily delineated? Is Brooklyn still the center? Different languages must have different centers. How do you repudiate Moscow’s claim? We are Russian speakers after all. Not to mention that the center shifts as one gets older. Bach, Shakespeare, Pushkin. Listening to the cantatas, am I not in the center?
How much of this had Pasha said? Aloud he’d probably no more than shrugged. When he looked up, Renata was nowhere in the vicinity—or there she was, across the room, petting a young woman’s braid. Maternal, vicious. But Pasha continued responding to her . . . question? accusation? Since when was simply remaining in the city of one’s birth an act of loyalty, as if a person without will would just float off across the Atlantic?
Though Odessa wasn’t the city of his birth. Of this he often had to be reminded himself. Pasha was considered an Odessite of the first order, nobody aware that a technicality eliminated him from the running. Somehow an aura of secrecy, a stigma, had been generated around such a trivial circumstance, that Pasha’s birth certificate said Chernivtsi. This, too, the fault of his mother. Esther had chosen to wait out the last months of her pregnancy not in Odessa, where she’d been living with Robert’s parents (meaning, for the record, that’s where he was conceived), but with her own, in a house of wooden boards on a dirt road. There had been valid reasons for doing this, and she’d had to enumerate them so many times that she ended up questioning their validity herself, wondering if maybe there hadn’t been a bit of transgression to the decision after all, perhaps a response to the Nasmertovs’ city-folk pride. Her plan had been to return to Odessa a month or two after giving birth, but with the birth of a poet there were bound to be complications. Pasha first entered city limits at a shameful eighteen months. Arguably the most critical year of his life, depending which Freudian you asked, had been spent struggling for survival in Chernivtsi, a fact he could wield in response to the numerous accusations that his poetry didn’t comply in this or that way with the spirit of Odessa. The Odessa poets felt that he was making use of the city without paying the obligatory dues. He could’ve renounced his claim on the city; instead he felt the opposite pull, to out-Odessa them all.
Why don’t you sit down, said Misha. That was strong stuff.
What did you tell Ostraya about me?
Not a thing. If she knew an
ything, it was intuition.
They stood by the table picking at olive puffs and soggy crostini. Misha pounced on the trail of a pleated skirt. Others swarmed around the guest of honor. They asked questions, requested opinions, and, having tasted of the evening’s exotic fruit, went on their way. A few poets remained. Pasha was enjoying their company. They were ensconced in a fog of their own making. In reaching for a pig in a blanket, a pale lady elbowed Nurzhan Bozhko, whose poetry was passable and nose exquisite in its resemblance to Pushkin’s—long and straight, keeping neatly to the face, with an extended tip like a dagger. Startled, he picked up the entire serving plate and handed it over. She, in turn, was equally baffled and stared imploringly at Pasha, who burst into preposterous laughter, since it seemed as if this young lady were delivering the massive platter personally to him. He relieved her of the burden, finding it far heavier than expected; if not for Bozhko’s quick reflexes, there would’ve been quite a mishap, but as it was, only a few piggies tumbled to the floor.
An inexplicable charge passed through the group at the appearance of a physically unremarkable man with a pink face and small gleaming eyes. Andrei Fishman, the man said, and zapped Pasha with a handshake. Andrei clearly had many abilities, but standing in place wasn’t among them. He led the group up the building’s stairs until they arrived at a steel door that yielded when pushed hard (at least it appeared to take considerable effort) and emerged on a roof. The bottoms of their shoes scraped against a sandpapery surface as they stepped into and out of overlapping shadows, navigating incremental darkness. Finally they came to the edge and overlooked a black crater that slowly began to inflate. It grew upward at them. Central Park. The night was starless, but the stacked and staggered lights of distant skyscrapers served just as well. Pasha, a nonsmoker, partook in the collective cigarette breath and was just about to hear a thought for the first time in hours when snatched up by Andrei, whose outsize libido powered myriad undertakings that were quickly interwoven into conversation. Editor of two journals; head of an émigré reading series; poet and prose writer and Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist (for his series on the mentally ill in adult homes); presided over this and that board; psychiatrist; second residence in Moscow, third in Tuscany; about to get married to his fifth wife in Montreal; accompanied to the party by one of his ex-wives and her elderly father, who’d once spent a weekend at Pasternak’s dacha and could tell Pasha all about it. Pasha observed without attempting to keep up. To watch one of Andrei’s pale, freckled arms slice the night air was enough. He had a giant watch and healthy fingernails. Probably in response to a question, Andrei said, At night I sleep very well. None of my previous wives could sleep, and maybe that’s why they’re not my wives anymore. I can’t be kept up. Their anxieties inexorably came to a head after midnight. They preyed on my rest. So this time I chose differently—Martha’s a superior sleeper, the best I’ve met. Nothing can prevent her from it. Whenever there’s a break in stimulation, she dozes off, no matter where she is. No available seats on the subway, she naps standing up. She’s very resourceful. I think she would’ve done very well in the gulag. It’s refreshing to be with such a fine woman, especially as I embark on my hydro years.
Panic in a Suitcase: A Novel Page 8
