The Invisible Life of Ivan Isaenko (20 page)

“You know about that?”

“Of course I know. You know about that?”

“They don't even try to hide it.”

“True.”

“I'm going to play some music.”

This is when I noticed that Polina had a pile of records spread over her bed, which she was sifting through.

“Playing music is exactly what we should not be doing at this particular moment if we don't want to be quarantined.”

“I will play it low,” she said. “And like you said, she's fucking Mikhail.”

At which point, Mother arrived to say, “I'm all for setting the right mood on this date, but you need to be the voice of reason in this situation.”

“Very low,” I said.

That was the first time I didn't listen to my mother.

Eventually, Polina settled on a record, placed it delicately on the turntable, and set the needle. Someone started singing, but I couldn't tell if it was a boy or a girl.

“Is this Floyd Pink?” I asked because it was the only name of a singer that I could recall in my head at that particular moment.

To which Polina seized, rolling off her bed, heaving in a manner that was consistent with both a grand mal seizure and a full-bodied cackle. I couldn't decide which until she started talking.

“Ivan, what is
wrong
with you?”

“Why would you ask that?”

“For a thousand reasons.”

“For example?”

“Well, first, it's Pink Floyd.”

She overemphasized the order of the words, which felt condescending.

“Second,” she said, “this is Janis Joplin, who couldn't be more different from Pink Floyd. Third, I feel like you are a baby boy who was raised by wolves and for whom I bear the sole responsibility of providing a basic musical education.”

I think Polina expected me to smile, and when I didn't, I think that she realized that I had, in fact, grown up with wolves, and maybe that had been an approximately traumatizing event.

“Janis Joplin died from choking on her own vomit,” she said, presumably to change the subject.

“Natalya got all these records for you?”

“Yes. I love records the way you love books.”

“But not the one in Miss Kristina's desk. Natalya didn't give that one to you?”

“No, you got that one for me.”

“Then how did you know it would be there?”

“You already know how I knew.”

“Because you're a
tat
?”
*

“I prefer
vor v zakonye
.”
*

“I thought you quit.”

“I did after walking in on my mother flagellating herself in front of a statue of Saint Francis because she thought it was her fault.”

“Was it her fault?”

“Freud would suggest my father. But you should be all caught up on that topic after your own pilfering stunt.”

“Why the relapse?”

“I'm not sure it qualifies as a relapse. When I die, they will come clean out my room and find the stash, and then everyone gets everything back.”

Polina pondered for a moment, then continued:

“Also, it's fun.”

Freud would also call this rationalization, though I had to admit it was persuasive.

“What's in your stash so far?” I asked.

“Just the record, which technically
you
stole. And this, which I found in Mikhail's top drawer.”

She tossed me a condom, which I immediately threw to some corner of the room.

“And
Dead Souls
.”

“You can have that too.”

Polina produced my copy of
Dead Souls
from beneath her mattress and pitched it at me.

“
Merci,
” I said.

“There is another perk to my filching.”

“What?”

“I know what's inside of every drawer, corner, crack, shelf, cupboard, locker, and closet in this hospital.”

“For example?”

“There's a small marijuana plant hidden inside of the utility closet. I think Nurse Elena is a closet botanist. Literally. There is a colorful assortment of blindfolds and nipple clamps inside Mikhail's desk, third drawer down from the top on the left. There are at least three keys hidden under three different rugs, though I'm not sure what (if any) locks they open, though if I start to feel better, I intend to try them on every lock I can find.”

“Could be fun.”

“There is one bottle of vodka taped to the inside of the laundry chute, and there are two more hidden behind the wall of cabbage cans in the food closet. There are about six unscratched lottery tickets hidden behind the cheap Van Gogh in the Main Room and a framed picture of a family hidden beneath the toy crate, which I believe features the ginger twins as infants.”

“They have a family?”

“
Had
a family. Should I keep going?”

“Sure.”

“There are about fifty chocolate bars hidden inside of Alex's bottom drawer, presumably put there by Nurse Natalya because Alex loves chocolate bars like you love books and I love records. There are a bunch of old pictures of Dennis and his mom when Dennis was a baby, underneath his pillowcase, presumably put there by Nurse Natalya, because Dennis loves his mom like Alex loves chocolate and you love books. There are also about twenty signed baseballs inside your top drawer. But I haven't figured those out. Where did you get them?”

“When were you in my room?”

“When you were in your bed.”

“Sleeping?”

“What else?”

“I would have woken up.”

“But you didn't.”

I felt excited in my pelvic region knowing that Polina was in my room while I slept, despite the fact that I should have felt invaded.

“I think the music is too loud,” I said.

Polina responded by turning the music up by approximately one to two clicks on her turntable.

“You're going to ruin this.”

Take it, take another little piece of …
*

“Enja, the heart-hole girl, has a note in her bottom drawer from her mother, which says that when she comes home, she will be Little Miss Mazyr. Vlad has a toy car with the initials of his great-grandfather on it. Natalya keeps a cuff link of her dead husband in the side pocket of her uniform at all times. I know this because I can pick pockets too. I gave it back, though.”

“It's entirely possible you will die alone if you don't turn down the Janet Joplin.”

“You're being dramatic.”

Her pale face was being danced on by the shadows of my one flailing hand. Something about the dancing light made her jaw and her cheekbones and her temples cut right through her skin, and for the first time, I realized that Polina had probably dropped below the thirty-kilo threshold, which was diagnostic criterion #117 for a leukemia three-monther.

“Let's talk some more about Mikhail,” she said.

“Only if you turn down the music.”

“The list of his buxom whores runs deep, if you didn't know.”

She paused, presumably to wait for me to react, and I took her bait out of uncontrollable curiosity, while slowly wheeling myself to the record player.

“How deep?”

“He has pictures that go all the way back to sepia,” she said.

“Sepia?”

“The orange pictures from the '70s.”

“I'm not surprised.”

I was close enough to the record player to reach out and turn it down, but Polina jumped across the room and slapped my hand, which, to me, was like severing my testicles.

“Relax your tense little face, Ivan,” she said. “We don't have anything to worry about. I'm sure Lyudmila is currently riding Mikhail on that fake leather couch. Or possibly on the desk? Which—sidebar—disgusts me, since I've touched all his drawers.”

“Then maybe you shouldn't be going through his drawers.”

“What sort of filthy shit is she whispering in his ear right now?”

I was thoroughly uncomfortable with the content of Polina's verbiage, and yet I still answered.

“I don't know.”

“Mickey, Mickey, Mick, Mick. Mmmmmm. Do you think he ever accidentally calls her by his wife's name? Or, even worse, confuses her with another nurse from his slutty past?”

I was becoming disgusted with Polina, and also this was a rhetorical question, so I stayed silent. Furthermore, it was clear that Polina was entertaining her dying self. It had nothing to do with me.

“Don't you love this song? Find me someone else who sings every word like she's crying,” Polina said.

“It's good.”

“Fifty-three pictures of fourteen nurses. That's how many I found. I could never be that slutty. Not even now with nothing to lose.”

It was exactly when Polina said “slutty” that two other things happened simultaneously (which really just means I'm not sure which came first). The first thing is that it occurred to me that I had been unconsciously clenching my nubs ever since I left my room twenty-three minutes earlier. The second thing is that the metallic doorknob rattled and, just as quickly, swung wide open revealing a figure in a white uniform who happened to be the person who was supposed to be fucking the Director at that particular moment. Six or seven unbearable seconds passed before any of us said a word. This is because it was obvious that Nurse Lyudmila had three things on her mind that were competing for airtime. The first, and most obvious, sounded something like:
Back to your room, Ivan, and wait for the consequences to be revealed in the morning once the afterglow of the Director's recent orgasm has worn off
. The second, and slightly less obvious, sounded like:
Ivan, what is a comatose reject such as yourself doing in a sexy dead girl's room after lights-out?
And the third appeared to be directed at Polina, and surely said:
That desperate, hon?
But I acknowledge I could have invented thoughts two and three. Finally, it was Polina, empowered by her recent manic trip, who decided to speak first:

“Nurse Lyudmila, your left stocking is inside out.”

To which Lyudmila, apparently unable to choose from any of the bitchy retorts running through her head, didn't say a word and instead grabbed the handles of my chair and pulled me out of the room after several collisions with various pieces of furniture and doorframes.

Reader, I fought her with a respectable mutant chivalry. As she aggressively maneuvered me across the linoleum path that separated my room from Polina's, I grabbed the rim of my left wheel and made a brake pad out of my palm. I may have also made retaliatory comments like
Stop infecting my only chair with your slut germs
and
You know you're going to bitch hell, right?
In response, Lyudmila continued to be speechless (except for her face, which said a gamut of hateful speech) and responded by ramming the wheels of my chair through the friction of my palm, resulting in the topmost layer of my skin being left on the wheel, rendering it impossible for me to resist anymore. This was approximately when Polina's frail little figure emerged in front of us and then sat down in the doorframe leading into the boys' wing. Her pale, wigless head reflected the limited light in the hallway, which made her look like a slightly imposing but beautiful monster.

“Move,” Lyudmila said.

“I'll be in the ground in a month,” she said. “Are you really going to hurt me just to spite an invalid?”

To which Lyudmila let go of the handles of my chair, walked over to Polina, and backhanded her across the face, which resulted in her thin, angular body collapsing into a pile of skin and bones in the doorframe. Nurse Lyudmila dragged the pile of limbs out of the way, which I used as an opportunity to ram her shins repeatedly with my chair, while cursing obscenities that I've since blacked out. Lyudmila easily regained control of the situation and forcibly wheeled me into the boys' wing, while I looked back at Polina and watched the purple bruise spread over her tiny unconscious face.

When we arrived at my door, Nurse Lyudmila offered me one last generous shove into my room, which I attempted to resist at the expense of my already bloody hand. The wheelchair stopped, but my body didn't, and I lurched through the air onto the linoleum. And before I could slither my way back out the door, she slammed it tight and locked it from the outside, which is a privilege every nurse has but almost never uses. From that point on, all I could hear were the clicks and clacks of her nurse shoes fading as she walked down the hall, and my vocal cords producing things like:

`Tchyo za ga`lima?
*

Piz`da.
†

Eto piz`dets.
‡

Then I stopped hearing the clicks or the clacks, and I took the opportunity to cry. I cried until I was thoroughly numb and there was no more emotional energy to be found anywhere in my physical structure. When I finished, I wiped my puffy cheeks, leaving behind a thin film of bloody residue throughout my face because I had already forgotten about how the skin had been rubbed off my palm. Then I checked the doorknob to see if anything had magically changed but found that I was still locked in my room. I was acutely aware that that tiny bit of energy was the last that I had in me, and it occurred to me that people cry because it is blissful when it's over. My eyes couldn't hold themselves open anymore, nor did they desire to, and my bony back slid down the surface of my door as I fell asleep on the cold linoleum.

 

DAY 13

The Day I Conversed with the Director

(One day until lab results)

I awoke when I heard something that had the sibilance of a whisper yet was too abrupt to be a whisper. Instinctually, I whispered back at it:

“Polina?”

But there was no response.