Panic in a Suitcase: A Novel

by Yelena Akhtiorskaya

  We should all go, said Frida.

  Obligations, work, money, protested her mother.

  But you’re always going on about how you walked him in the baby carriage and his first time saying Mama was directed at you, how everything would be different if we stayed together as a unit, poor Sanya this, poor Sanya that, practically an orphan.

  You’ve certainly changed your tune, said Marina. What happened to not another wedding ever again? You barely survived the last one. This is vulgar, that trashy, the other pathetic. My friends will never let me live down your lovely toast. Marriage—an obsolete institution, remember?

  That’s here in America, where people spend a decade orchestrating an apocalyptic celebration with registries and flower arrangements and twenty-piece bands. By no means am I opposed to weddings on principle. In fact, I wouldn’t mind one of my own. And to be honest, I like the way this sounds. Engaged in May, married in August. That’s a proper duration.

  She’s obviously knocked up, said Marina.

  He didn’t marry the other two!

  This time the girl is high-maintenance.

  If Frida wasn’t fighting off the accusation that she was singing the same old tune, it was that her tune had changed, and which was the worse offense not even Marina could say. To top it off, Frida was tone-deaf—the intractable pronouncement of her piano teacher, the wife of Rostislav Dubinsky, first violinist of the Borodin Quartet, made after spending two lessons with Frida in 1994. Heartbroken, Esther had demanded a second opinion. Perfect pitch runs in the family, she’d insisted. For the second opinion, Marina had wanted to know, Should we get Shostakovich’s widow or Prokofiev’s?

  The computer made a sound and went black. Marina swiveled her chair around. Though I’m not saying it wouldn’t be nice to go. Who knows what’s going on over there? Slumped down, arms hanging lifelessly, Oioioi! she cried. Even if we don’t go, we’ll have to send at least a thousand dollars. That’s what’s expected of the Americantsi! And if we go, don’t even think about it. It’ll be a ten-grand affair. Of course, I do want to go, she said. She got up and went to the window. Who says I don’t want to? Believe me I do. Only it’s absolutely a hundred percent out of the question. Papa would kill me if he found out I even told you about this. Though of course it would be good, even necessary, to go. Not that Pasha said anything the last time we spoke. That he was nominated for another prize, he didn’t forget to mention, or that he’s being translated into Finnish. But about his son’s wedding not a word. Either way, we should’ve gone back for a visit years ago. It’s shameful that we haven’t made the time.

  Frida’s face contorted as she ventured to ask, How come he never came here?

  He did, twice—you know that!

  It wasn’t easy to stir cement. No, she said, what I mean is—why didn’t he come for real?

  Oh, that. It wasn’t even something we considered, not in any serious way.

  Now who’s changing their tune? Baba Esther didn’t want her son nearby?

  You can’t want something from the grave. Pasha did get his visa once upon a time, but there was no longer anyone to nag and yell. The visa went to waste.

  And—that’s it? That’s all there is to it?

  There was this, there was that, and the other.

  The other?

  Sveta.

  Frida blinked. How do you mean?

  Marina answered helplessly, He wasn’t about to leave without her.

  Why couldn’t they come together? said Frida, in that exuberant way of people with sudden strokes of genius. Her mother’s gaze was withering. Oh, said Frida slowly, he was still with—

  Lay off, Frida! How many times?

  Frida raised her palms, signaling that she had no difficulty laying off, in fact she didn’t much care one way or the other, was just making conversation. In heated moments eyes also needed a breather, and in such cramped surroundings this was accomplished by staring with great longing at the foggy windowpane. On the windowsill, lined in cattle-car fashion, were all of Frida’s stuffed toys, eye buttons missing, ears torn, fur flat and faded. Here’s an idea, said Frida much to her own surprise, how about I just go?

  The option struck her mother as highly comical.

  Am I missing the joke? said Frida.

  Well, it’s a little preposterous, you must admit. After all these years, the one to go back is you. You barely have any connection to the place.

  And here I thought it’s where I was from!

  Seeing the look of pained defiance on her daughter’s face, Marina bit her lip but proved unable to stop herself. Do you even remember anything? she said.

  I’ll make more memories now, said Frida.

  You better get a move on it, then.

  Are you trying to scare me?

  I don’t have energy to do anything of the kind. All I’m saying is, Don’t make me regret telling you about this. Your father will say all this foolishness is my fault and he’ll be right. Besides, you can’t go. You have school.

  Classes start the week after.

  Marina glanced at her watch. Oh, my God. We had to be there half an hour ago at the latest. Levik, she yelled, up!

  They were off to Irina Tabak’s fiftieth-birthday extravaganza at the overpriced Mediterranean restaurant on the bay, or was that next week? Tonight was the Brukhmans’ anniversary at an opera restaurant in midtown, only first they had to stop by Lera’s to drop off a present for her son whose party they’d missed last week because of Vova’s backyard fete. They could forget about that! Mascara crumbs were permanently sprinkled under Marina’s large, tired eyes. She woke up with a fancy earring tangled in her spray-hardened hair and the necklace Levik had gotten her turned around, the pendant stuck to her perimenopausally damp back. She had more dresses than T-shirts, more gowns than slacks, more absurd open-toed heels and only one pair of brown loafers, the rubber soles superglued. The funny thing was that Marina was enjoying none of it—backyard fetes were tiring, nightclub parties pathetic, no one dancing or letting loose like in the old days, endless dinners at whole-fish-on-a-plate restaurants were taxing on the digestion, and the conversations didn’t help the chunks of eel—always so much eel—go down. Momentum kept the gears spinning. Everything had to be celebrated: their birthdays, their parents’ birthdays, their grown-up children’s birthdays, and now their grandchildren’s birthdays, anniversaries, promotions, departures and arrivals, holidays both Russian and American, both Jewish and American. This took care of most weekends, but if one rolled around occasionless, it would be spared such a dire fate by anyone with an aboveground pool or leftovers.

  • • •

  LEVIK WAS NO LONGER in any mood for a party. He stared straight ahead into the infinity of segmented boredom that was Ocean Parkway. When the light turned yellow, he didn’t sail past but slammed down on the brakes, solely to spite Marina.

  You weren’t in the mood long before you overheard a thing, she said, so don’t you even try.

  Whether he’d been in the mood before was irrelevant. He’d certainly been more in the mood, but to address this point would be to fall for an ingeniously, if too commonly, laid trap. His jaw clenched so tight his ear canals ached, as he persistently drove and stopped, drove and stopped, while the cars in the other lanes drove and drove and drove.

  Marina felt as if she would catch fire at any second. What was I supposed to do? Not show her the message?

  Bingo!

  She bit her lip. Having moved two blocks in ten minutes, she was growing attached to the people on the benches, the young couples, the geezers, and if given a sack of pebbles, she knew just which heads to fling them at first.

  He’s her cousin! Anyway, you’re taking it far too seriously.

  Tell me one thing, said Levik, just one. What did you think her reaction would be? What did you want to happen? Did you expect her to just let it go? Were you even thinking? And how—

  You know how she is. By next week it’ll be ancient history.

  A Hasid
ic family crossed the street in front of them, four men in tall white socks and sleek black coats, followed by two women of venerable bosom, then three girls pushing baby carriages, bony legs scissoring, and finally a wild tail of children, which, like all tails, relayed the secret message of the beast. The light turned green.

  I am in no mood, said Levik.

  Why are we in the car, then? You had to wait until Avenue N to tell me?

  Only at Avenue H did Levik deign to speak. With utter serenity he explained that he was dropping her off at the restaurant. She could get a ride back with the Plyazhskys, and if they wanted to leave before she was ready to wrap up, Vitalik surely wouldn’t mind giving her a lift. She shouldn’t worry; he wouldn’t be waiting up.

  Once again with the Vitalik! Would it never end? Miron, just for example, was far more touchy-feely, yet never a word about him.

  Miron’s that way with all the girls. Vitalik just with you.

  Oh, please. Are you kidding? What are we talking about here? I’m an old lady! Marina flipped down the mirror and began contorting her neck, able to appraise herself only from the oddest of angles. Look, she said, wrinkles, brown spots, splotches . . . But I do have nice lips.

  In no mood, repeated Levik.

  Where are we going, then? For a little ride?

  I’m dropping you off at the restaurant.

  Not a chance. If I were you, I’d turn the car around right this second. Your job here is done, my dear.

  Levik appeared to suffer a small seizure, then regained control. They kept driving in the direction of the skyscrapers and lights. The highway opened out underneath them, smoothing away the last hour of staccato torture. Soon they were rubbing shoulders with the Hudson, so behaved and placid on the surface, obviously full of its own thoughts in the depths. The great thing about the skyline was that you could say it was beautiful in ideal visibility, everything so strict, intimidating, and contrasted, and you could say it was just as beautiful in fog, such as lay over the city right then, with the Chrysler Building creating eerie patterns of smudged light. If Marina were for some reason forbidden to comment on the view from that one spot on the highway, below the overpass, about four minutes at sixty-seven miles per hour from the Brooklyn Bridge, she almost certainly would’ve either had to leave the city or go insane. Even now, when they rode past, Marina muttered in amazement. And Levik, by reflex, glanced to the left at the glowing island of Manhattan.

  Breath held at the entrance onto the bridge, which their Honda Accord took swimmingly. Silence was maintained for the rest of the drive. At one point, after making a few unhappy circles, Levik pulled over in front of a garage entrance, was honked at, drove a little ways, and pulled over again. Reaching for the glove compartment, he accidentally brushed Marina’s knee and recoiled. A second attempt was maneuvered with caution. The GPS was installed in a few spasmodic motions. Suzanna guided the rest of the way to the opera restaurant. A crowd had already gathered. Levik slumped as if he were sitting in his office chair and said, Davai.

  Marina didn’t respond. She sat in dire fear of being spotted by one of her friends.

  Please go, said Levik, receiving no reply, which, after a few seconds, became a reply. An increasingly desperate barrage of appeals followed. Get out of the car, he beseeched. Just go! Marina maintained the silence on her end. Levik’s back rounded like a tire. Propping his elbow on his thigh, he gently tipped his cheek into his hand and shut his eyes. Through heavy lids, in a whisper, he said, Marina, are you going in there or not?

  Take me home, she said.

  Why are you being such a—a stubborn! he screamed. His foot slammed on the gas, and the Honda nearly missed a passing car. An explosion of honks almost kept Marina from noticing that Asya Brukhman, whose anniversary it was, was fast approaching with a giant smile, a hand raised in greeting.

  The ride back to Brooklyn was calm. A resigned air set in, Levik’s preferred atmosphere. They were going home—was that such a terrible thing? He became so relaxed that after recrossing the Brooklyn Bridge he began to whistle softly, not quite noticing it himself. The truth was that he hadn’t wanted to go to the anniversary party, sitting for hours on end in a restaurant, making tired conversation while his wife pranced about, getting progressively drunker and more unruly. Now they could go home, he could go back to part three of the Nostradamus docudrama. He let himself believe that Marina’s anger was mild and fleeting, that she, too, was enjoying the languor of the drive.

  The situation became delicate as Brighton neared. Levik slowed to a crawl when it came time to contemplate parking. It wasn’t in his interest that they vacate the vehicle. Only then would he learn the extent of the damage. A performance, he knew, was unavoidable. What he expected: a quickened pace, more ignoring, perhaps taking different elevators and forgoing inquiries as to tea/coffee preference. What he didn’t expect: Marina dashing off in her strappy heels in the direction of the beach, over which an impenetrable fog had settled, the kind of raw, curdled air that made fiery Saturns out of streetlamps, a field day for slugs, a density of atmosphere that in the past few years had become synonymous with late springtime in Brooklyn and which was portrayed far too romantically in Italian cinema classics.

  Either Marina was deliberately not responding to frantic shouts of her own name or she was outside hearing range, having dashed farther than Levik could imagine anyone dashing in those shoes on a night like this. Though, knowing his wife, she’d already kicked them off. The ocean became fantastically loud when you were deprived of the sense of sight. Levik heard its roar to every side of him, which meant he was already disoriented. He realized that he wasn’t moving but standing in one spot, shouting Marina, Marina! and at the same time holding out his arm, not entirely convinced it was his. There was an echo, Marina, Marina! And then he was no longer shouting her name, his throat refusing to project a voice. He pushed, but the voice got snagged on something in his chest. He held out his arm and let it drop and hang limply, hoping his legs didn’t cave. It was funny when you thought about it: fog. That’s all it was, soft, harmless fog. And yet Levik couldn’t force his feet to move or chest to steady or throat to produce a sound. This was what they called terror, and it was seizing him for no identifiable reason within several blocks of his home, where he would’ve killed to be right then, stirring two spoons of instant coffee into Marina’s cat mug and pouring freely the nonfat milk. Reminded of Camus’s The Stranger, a book he’d read as a foolish young man with lots of brown curls and the inclination to like things he didn’t fully understand, and even so he hadn’t liked that book. Why, then, was it so often on his mind? The accompanying image was Munch’s The Scream.

  Suddenly his arm came into view, as if someone had blown the dust off. It was thin and smooth, with a cold, even shine. Someone kept blowing, and the arm kept extending, growing longer and thinner while remaining defiantly rooted in murk. Levik shut his eyes and heard the chaotic ocean, opened them and saw a railing, an empty trash can, slanted boards intersecting his feet, a bench, then two, then three. . . . The fourth bench had knees and a messy blond bun. He was able to gradually reduce the distance between himself and that bench.

  She just lay there. Her hair had exploded, now taking up ten times the usual space. It reached through the cracks, as if growing in the damp darkness between planks. If she sensed a presence over her, she didn’t stir. He came around, pushed her bare feet in to make some space, and sat. She made a few adjustments, found a more comfortable position, and was motionless again. For a moment Levik felt insane, as if something horrible were happening, but if he didn’t move everything could seem like the height of normalcy, as if he were a child wandering a department store after getting separated from his mother, attaching himself to any serviceable hem. Then he realized everything was fine, no one had died, he was still very close to home, even closer than before by approximately thirteen meters. The night was warm, and he could take this moment to breathe, maybe even contemplate something peaceful while directing h
is gaze into the distance, though there still wasn’t much of it.

  He clapped Marina’s knee. Time to go, he said.

  Don’t touch me, she said. Her voice was inviting, supple. Yet again she demonstrated mastery of the contradictory tone/content maneuver, which was spiderlike and had a paralyzing effect on the victim. She inhaled deeply. You know what I’d like to be? she said.

  How could he know?

  Homeless.

  Maybe one day, said Levik. Not tonight.

  This is so much better than being inside, so much more serene, don’t you think? And such a sense of freedom. I’d do well as a street lady—I think I’d have a knack for it. For one thing, I’ve never had trouble obtaining free food. I have enough imagination. You know that I never register temperature change. Hot, cold, it’s all the same to me. And it’s not like I’m particularly hygienic. In fact, there must be homeless people out there more hygienic than me. Forget the street. I’d stay on this very bench. Lie under the stars. Listen to the ocean. Do you think it’s saying something? Do you think it’s communicating?

  No.

  Listen, she said.

  The ocean isn’t saying anything.

  Marina’s head popped up, her mouth already twisted by an idea. Here goes, thought Levik, wincing in preparation.

  We never decided—Paris or Rome?