Panic in a Suitcase: A Novel

by Yelena Akhtiorskaya

  Two guards stared her away from a synagogue freshly painted or long untouched. Walking away was like cutting short an encounter with a prissy friend, an only child who’d been pampered from a young age, but probably for good reason. Cobblestones carved breath. Past the cream-puff-pastry Opera House and the gardened-off Literary Museum, down the quaint urine-dribbled steps to a narrow street at the tapered end of which was a cliff.

  Nearby, construction workers were taking a lunch break. She yearned to feel disgusted at their ogling, if only they weren’t so engrossed in their sandwiches. She went up to them and asked a question. A gaunt boy gave no-nonsense directions while twisting the cap off a two-liter plastic bottle of beer. A couple of empty bottles lay at his feet, still frothy around the edges. His eyes were eerily striking, like toxic sunsets over polluted waters.

  • • •

  SHE FAILED TO NOTICE the proper things. Was everything smaller than she remembered—or was it supposed to be larger? Less daunting and serpentine or only more so? By the time she remembered the duty to make such observations, the window for them had closed—size was no longer relative or meaningful but an inarguable fact to be accepted at face value. The skyline was in disarray, everything in halted construction. An engine revved, releasing the smell of shashlik. The rusted gate wore a shaggy coat of ivy. Frida got down on all fours on the narrow dirt path and pressed her cheek to the ground, trying to get a peek through the crevice under the gate. There was no sign of life from within. As she was spitting out dirt, the ridiculousness of the enterprise dawned on her. It was as if she were taking orders from some behind-the-scenes charlatan who regularly guided foolish young people through these kinds of missions, from which they left empty-handed and only more spiritually bereft than before but convinced that their arduous floundering and grasping meant that something had been accomplished too great for their own comprehending. Frida collapsed and curled up in a ball. Think, she implored herself. Make a plan! But she was tired, tired in a new way. There was no end to discovering the subtleties of exhaustion. Or did they all fall under the rubric of self-pity? Relief came in the form of some shade. The sun had been taking a vicious afternoon angle.

  The shade had voice—deep, resonant, husky. Get away from my dacha, it said. Find someone else’s gate to sleep on! That’s right, young lady. Shoo!

  Frida looked up and was instantly recognized. It was a much-needed affirmation. Not only was she recognized, her presence induced an uplift of mood, a heightening of tonus, a surge of joy—it was treated as a stupendous surprise. The bloated yet mousy, yellowish gray woman overhead gasped and cried, Frida, it’s you! I don’t believe it! My God, let me get a look at you! and a succession of many more delicious exclamatory platitudes that occasionally were the only satisfactory response. The bloated lady was Nadia, but by the time that thunderbolt struck, Frida was already experiencing great surges in return, overcome by the desire to burrow her nose into the dark, glistening pocket of Nadia’s neck.

  Bozhe moi, bozhe moi (My God, my God), Nadia repeated. It was as if Frida belonged to the top tier of guest, was the most special visitor. Any visitor would likely fall into this rank. The loneliness on Nadia’s face was glaring. The spools of golden sunshine would’ve freshened a corpse but did nothing to Nadia’s sewer-lady pallor. An entirely new face would be needed if she ever stopped living in a state of unvarying solitude. Bending down, she picked Frida up off the ground. Frida’s spiritual flailing felt proportional to Nadia’s physical effort. Come in, said Nadia, rummaging in her bag for keys. Her stooped figure labored over the giant rusted lock. She let out an exasperated groan. It wouldn’t give, defying her fitful attempts. She paused for a few gulps of air, pulled a crumpled handkerchief from the pocket of her frock, and blotted her forehead. With renewed vigor she attacked the lock.

  Frida said, Do you want me to—

  Talk when inside, barked Nadia, jiggling violently.

  I can come back another time.

  Nonsense! The grimy metal cracked. The lock popped open and was tugged out. Nadia gave Frida a nudge inside and shut the gate behind her.

  Frida had been worried that she would feel nothing at the sight of the dacha, no connection, no recognition, but she wasn’t prepared for the fact that there would actually be nothing. The dacha was demolished. The entirety was in ruins, as if leveled by a tornado. It struck the eye no longer as a single entity—a house—but simply a mound of rubble.

  Hungry? Thirsty? After determining, with relief, that Frida was neither, Nadia explained that her legs weren’t what they used to be.

  I’ll leave you to rest, said Frida, backing away.

  Stop with this utter horseshit! Nadia screamed. Noticing that Frida blanched, she softened and said, An old lady could use some company every once in a while. And it has been a while, hasn’t it? This is your dacha after all. I apologize if it’s a bit dark inside. There’s no circuitry, as of the moment.

  A lack of circuitry was no surprise, but the existence of an inside was. How could this heap of boards and debris have an interior? But one of the more upright boards served as a door, through which Nadia’s stocky frame just barely squeezed. Inside, it was narrow, bare, dark indeed. Several mattresses were distributed along the floor, stripped of bedding, iodine-stained. The last mattress was propped by a cot, and Nadia threw herself across it.

  I’m sorry it’s not all that tidy, she said quietly. As it happens, I have no help from anybody on this earth. My cousins, who are very sickly from Chernobyl, come and go as they please. Nadia laughed. You probably don’t have a clue what I’m talking about. Chernobyl was—

  I know what Chernobyl was, said Frida with irritation, though while she said it, a fear shot though her that she’d be tested on the subject and fail horribly, like in a dream, mixing up Chernobyl with the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire or the Titanic.

  A free sanatorium is what they take this for. They’re sensitive to light, to heat, to moisture in the air, to feathers, citrus fruit, drafts, the least echo of music. I’m not the picture of health myself, but to compare . . . I manage the best I can. But I wasn’t expecting you so soon. Otherwise I would’ve been prepared. I intended to have the renovations done by your arrival—you’ll just have to take my word on that. Nadia lay as if the sea had washed up her body, as if she didn’t have access to the biological pathways to wiggle a finger, and her voice was the result of some stirring and rustling deep within this senseless flesh. Now, tell me, she said, how are your parents?

  Frida was suspended in the air by some highly delicate balance of forces, which could be thrown into disproportion by the least insensitivity on her part. The tiniest wrong move and she’d drop onto one of the iodine-stained mattresses, where for all she knew the cousins lay napping or telepathically chatting in irradiated invisibility. What to do? She took a breath. Her palms were planted in the burnt-orange stains, and her bare feet (she must’ve removed her shoes in an uncharacteristic display of politeness) were ankle-deep in dust. Ragged strips of sunlight divided the floor, serving as the gelatinous substance in which dust particles became lodged.

  My parents are fine. They say privet.

  Your mother was like a sister, whispered Nadia. And how is Robert Grigorievich?

  Fine, said Frida. Getting older.

  Aren’t we all! Robert Grigorievich is an exceptional man in every sense, but time makes no exceptions. Not even Pasha is spared, though I do believe he still isn’t convinced of that himself. But none of this unpleasantness. I remember you as a little fat dumpling, a little nasty fat dumpling resolved to not make life easier for anybody. And now am I to believe that the dumpling I remember so well has transformed into a young woman with an American accent and such an interesting top? And I must say, you really do resemble your uncle. But just look what Pasha did to me! Who could’ve known? Who would’ve predicted in a million years? Yet nobody on this earth feels a shred of sympathy for me.

  Don’t stir the darkness, thought Frida. Keep perfectly still.<
br />
  Except you, said Nadia. You feel sympathy for your poor aunt, don’t you?

  Frida nodded.

  As for the renovation, said Nadia, dropping an octave to the universal business baritone, I’m currently in the process of dividing the dacha in two. The part we’re in right now will be yours, and the other part will be mine. It’ll be exactly as it should.

  Oh, thought Frida, so it’s a betterment process. She should’ve known that this was the case—in her own neck of the woods people acted impulsively, with little or no foresight, the result being fits and starts on every block. If they came upon the means to accomplish the first step of their Grand Plan, they didn’t hesitate to do so, trusting momentum to carry the rest to fruition. When the funds ran out, no one bothered to clean up the mess. In Brooklyn the guiding force, however disguised, was creation, whereas here it wasn’t so obvious.

  I wanted to have the renovation done by the time you got here, continued Nadia, but who knew you’d be so quick? I was expecting the opposite problem. I figured I had another eighteen months at the least. But it’s all for the best. Truth is, I’m weak. There’s not a soul to help me.

  What about Sanya?

  If I can give you a piece of advice: Think twice before having a son. It may seem like a good idea at the time, but it never pans out. If you’re looking for affection, a bit of understanding, support in your old age, a son isn’t the way to go. Do you think Sanya would take an hour out of his day to visit his ailing mother all alone in the world? A helping hand he is not, never was. But the fact of the matter is, who needs him? You look sturdy enough. I can tell when someone eats her spinach. As you can see, there’s no shortage of beds. Just pick the one you want, and I’ll get some fresh linen.

  That’s very kind of you, muttered Frida, but I don’t want to be any trouble.

  Pooh! What kind of trouble could you possibly be?

  The mattress nearest the entrance had almost no iodine stains; it was the most sunken in the center, as if a meteorite had landed there a few million years ago, but one couldn’t expect to have it all. The offer was, in many ways, a godsend. Spending another day in that apartment with Volk and his family was unimaginable. So was the idea of going back to Brooklyn and, in two weeks’ time, packing her bags to return to school for another year of somnambulating around a space-alien campus, snoring through amphitheater lectures, wallowing over the toilet seat, overhearing snippets of conversation about the awesome things her peers did with their preceptors, such as handing a needle during a paracentesis, how one person studied for forty hours straight but the other was already prepping for her Step 1, and shrugging it all off until finding herself alone at daybreak in her cell with the Krebs cycle and a bunch of amino acids or cranial nerves and anterior compartments of the leg. Another year couldn’t be endured. Yet staying on with Pasha and Sveta wasn’t an option—even if she wanted to, they wouldn’t have it. Then she remembered about the veranda, which was no longer a veranda—you couldn’t do such an injustice to the word. Because however highfalutin the word was, what good would it do to let the hot air out of it? The area of space in front of the dacha heap was no longer a veranda but a tattered cot under a chipped concrete awning with a tilt. Torrents of rain would enclose whoever lay there within transparent walls. She’d sleep out in the fresh air, with the porcupines at her feet.

  Then you’ll probably need an extra blanket. Because—don’t let the daylight fool you—at night it gets quite chilly. The bedding was in an outdoor closet near the outhouse right around back and sort of diagonal. Be a dear, said Nadia.

  Gray muffled light was like a sticky net out of which it was impossible to break free. It was sobering, neutralizing light. The gate through which they’d passed already looked like a different gate. How had she even recognized this dacha as her own? Looking around, she recognized nothing and couldn’t even say for sure from which direction she’d come. But she knew where she had to go: the closet. There was patchy shrubbery and twigs, powdery piles of dry leaves, a partially duct-taped hose spitting up bile, some wild berries trying to establish secret niches. Things were either dying off or scheming for diabolical proliferation. This was a real plot of land, instantly invigorating. Getting sheets and a pillow, when it involved stepping over malicious plants, shaking open the rotted door of a death closet, and watching slinky spiders and billowing centipedes scurry creviceward, wasn’t a chore but an ultimate test of will and character, and by succeeding, by making it back to shelter with sheets and a pillow, a victory of no measly significance was secured. No challenge was beyond her. Only she’d forgotten the blanket and towels, and a pillowcase wouldn’t hurt.

  By the time Frida made it back with every unfitted scrap of starchy cotton a person could desire, Nadia had drifted off. Breaths were being sucked in and held captive in that ossified chamber for disconcertingly prolonged stretches. In the dank, medicinal room ripe with a scent of old saliva stood Frida, holding everything, unable to move. Should she put the linen down, where, and then what?

  She reminded herself that just a moment ago she’d felt great success and certainty. Now her arms ached and she was coughing into the linen. All of a sudden, it came into perspective: She’d gone to be disappointed. This must’ve been her actual reason all along. Disappointment had become necessary in order to forge ahead. Several times in one’s life, a good sobering was required, and that’s what this trip was—a blatant disappointment that would serve as an electric charge to zap the elements back into motion, realigning the facets of her life that had been allowed to slacken into disrepair and stagnation. It was like her mother’s favorite anekdot about the lady who goes to see the rabbi and complains that life is so terrible with her slob of a husband and the crying children in a tiny apartment with such neighbors you start to think it might be better to be homeless, and the rabbi advises the lady to get a goat, so the lady does as told and not a week later is back to see the rabbi in a far worse state, complaining that the goat makes a mess and eats their food and stinks up their place and bleats all night long, to which the rabbi says, My dear Rivkele, as I see it, the solution to your dilemma is only too clear—you must get rid of the goat!

  Frida returned the linen to the closet and decided to forgo the not yet urgently needed services of the outhouse (one test of will and character a day being plenty), then tiptoed past a tree stump bearing the strangulated markings from their old mesh hammock, to the gate, where she found her prayers answered—the lock had indeed been broken by Nadia’s metal-bending fingers. It dangled, sad and limp, scary no more. Escape was imminent, which made it infinitely less desirable. A mental photograph was in order (her parents’ camera, memory stick, and charger remained lodged in the sock-cushioned core of the bloated suitcase, through which Volk’s wife was currently digging). Frida turned to take in the dacha one last time, but the scene was already jumbling, blurring, rearranging. Her mental photo would end up atrociously underexposed, a photo foremost of darkness, of a gritty, inexact darkness that could roll over vivid three-dimensional worlds and crush them. Luckily, her parents, who boasted a fine medley of hobbies, would never get to see the result and criticize her retina for being set on the wrong shutter speed or her laziness for not moving a few feet left to catch better natural light.

  Frida was out of there and fast. No choice but to trust her feet to deliver her to the spot where the tram had dropped her off. Cicadas transmitted a dangerous electrical current to either side of the narrow path down which she was hurtling in an attempt to outrun, not least of all, their panicky buzz. She turned a corner into what she kept fingers crossed would be the wide, dusty alley tenderly called No Name Alley that opened out to the road with the tram tracks, but ended up deeper in the maze on a still-narrower, craggier path. In the distance a dog’s bark was put out like a fire. Helicopter sounds drew her gaze upward. Overhead weren’t the black, barbell-shaped things that carried presidents over the waters of Brighton Beach but nothingness, the sky a groovy blue-white tie-dye gen
erator, building to something and collapsing, self-consuming, spinning, and dissolving. Orient her it did not. Through a gash in a fence, she saw wet laundry on a clothesline, flapping wildly. Was there a breeze? Gravel crunched under her feet, sending shooting pain because those broad, veiny feet were bare—oh, no, how had she forgotten? Nadia would wake to Frida’s beat-up Keds but no Frida. Such a misstep was hard not to read as a bad omen. Leaving behind something so personal was unwise; Nadia was sure to have a rich knowledge of black magic.

  No longer was it gravel, concrete, or cool, looping weeds being driven between Frida’s toes but sand, and the green shards from smashed bottles that went with it. She had bumped into the Black Sea. It was nice. Either today was Saturday or the stories were true and every day was Saturday by the sea. The crowds were thick and boisterous, shuttlecocks shared the airways with dragonflies and bright yellow wasps, beer cans sweated into swarthy clutches, prepubescent boys with punched-in chests ran around recruiting people for a ride in their hydrobikes. This is the life was written in smug ink on every aired face. A girl in a cobalt bikini held a glistening ear of corn-on-the-cob while an old woman with a cart hobbled away a few hryvnia wealthier. The girl’s pinkie jutted, an antenna straining to transmit a weak signal of femininity. Gripping both ends, she leaned forward so that the lost kernels would land in the triangle of sand between her splayed legs and began a very methodical process of rotating the cob while clamping and unhinging her jaw.

  Frida’s feet hurt. She stuck them into the frazzled end of a milky wave and tried to feel something, quickly realizing she should’ve made use of the outhouse. What was largely speculative twenty minutes ago was now an emergency. She could go into one of the indistinguishable cafés lining the beach, but her pants were off and she was running. The water was up to her neck, and relief was not to be measured in milliliters.