The Suitcase (10 page)

We didn’t raise our daughter, we merely loved her. Especially since she was sickly from the age of five months. After our daughter’s birth it became clear that we were married. Katya acted as our marriage certificate.

I remember being at the
Aurora
editorial offices one day with the baby in her carriage. I was picking up a small fee. The clerk opened a file and said, “Sign here.” She added, “We deducted sixteen roubles for childlessness.”

“But I have a daughter,” I said.

“You have to bring the appropriate document.”

“Here.” I took a pink package out of the carriage and set it carefully on the chief accountant’s desk. And saved sixteen roubles that way.

My relationship with my wife didn’t change –
almost
didn’t change. Now we had a common concern along with our common indifference.

Once Lena was at work while I was held up at home. I was looking for some necessary papers, as usual – a copy of an editorial contract, if I’m not mistaken. I dug around in the chests. Yanked drawers out of the desk. I even looked in the night table.

Then, under a pile of books, magazines and old letters, I found an album. A small, almost pocket-sized photograph album – about fifteen sheets of thick cardboard with a dove embossed on the cover.

I opened it. The early photographs were yellowed and cracked. Some were missing corners. In one, a round-faced little girl cautiously petted a shaggy dog with its ears back. In another, a girl of about six hugged a homemade doll. Both looked sad and lost.

Next was a family photo — mother, father and daughter. The father was wearing a long raincoat and a straw hat. Just the tips of his fingers showed below the sleeves. His wife wore a heavy sweater with puffed sleeves, and she had curls tucked into a sheer kerchief. The girl had turned sharply, making her short fall coat fly open. Something had caught her attention outside the frame – maybe a stray dog. Behind them, through the trees, was the façade of Pushkin’s
lycée
in Tsarskoye Selo.

Later came relatives with tense, artificial smiles: an elderly, mustachioed railroad man in uniform, a lady beside a bust of Lenin, a youth on a motorcycle. Then
came a sailor, or a cadet. Even in the picture you could see how carefully he had shaved. A girl holding a bouquet of lilies of the valley was peering into his face.

One whole page was taken up by a glossy school photo, four rows of frightened, tense, frozen faces. Not a single cheerful child. In the centre was a group of teachers, two with medals – veterans, probably – and the class matron. She was easy to spot. The old woman was embracing two schoolgirls who had forced smiles. On the left in the third row was my wife – the only one not looking at the camera.

I recognized her in every photograph. In a small picture with a fixed group of skiers. In a tiny photo taken in front of a kolkhoz library. And even in an over-exposed snapshot of a crowd, among barely discernible members of a youth choir.

I recognized the grim girl with worn shoes. The embarrassed young lady in a cheap bathing suit under a florid sign saying “City of Yevpatoriya”. The student in a scarf near the library. And everywhere my wife seemed the most unhappy.

I turned a few more pages. I saw a young man in a worker’s cap, an old woman shielding her face, an unknown ballerina.

I came across a picture of the actor Yakovlev,* a postcard. At the bottom, in a calligraphic hand, a fellow named Rafik Abdulayev had written, “Lena! Art demands the whole man, with nothing to spare.”

I turned to the last page, and I caught my breath. I don’t know why I was so surprised. I felt my cheeks turn red.

I saw a square photograph a bit larger than a postage stamp: a narrow forehead, unshaven cheeks, the face of
a seedy matador. It was a picture of me. From last year’s ID card, I think – I could make out traces of the seal on the white edge.

I sat without moving for about three minutes. The clock ticked in the foyer. A compressor clacked outside. I heard the elevator creaking. And I just sat.

Yet if you think about it, what had actually happened? Nothing much: a wife had put a picture of her husband in a photo album. That’s normal.

But I was morbidly agitated. It was hard for me to concentrate, to understand the reason. I suddenly realized the seriousness of everything. If I was only now feeling this for the first time, then how much love had been lost over the long years?

I didn’t have the strength to think it through. I never knew that love could be so strong and so sharp. I thought, “If my hands are shaking now, how will I feel in the future?”

And so I got my coat and went to work.

 

About six years passed and emigration began. Jews began talking about their historic homeland. Before, all a real man needed was a sheepskin jacket and a Ph.D. Now you had to have an Israeli visa, too. Every intellectual dreamt of one, even if he had no intention of emigrating. Just to have one, just in case.

First, real Jews left. They were followed by citizens of less certain extraction. A year after that, Russians were let out. A friend of ours, an Orthodox priest, left with Israeli papers.

And then my wife decided to emigrate. While I decided to stay.

It’s hard to say why I did. Apparently I hadn’t reached the breaking point, or there were still some vague possibilities I wanted to explore. Or maybe I had unconscious yearnings for repression. That happens: no Russian intellectual who hasn’t been in prison is worth a damn.

I was astonished by Lena’s determination. She had seemed dependent and docile, and suddenly she made such a serious, definite decision.

She acquired foreign documents with red seals. She was visited by stern, bearded refuseniks who left instructions on cigarette paper and looked at me suspiciously. I didn’t believe it until the last minute. It was all too incredible, like a trip to Mars.

I swear I didn’t believe it until the last minute. I knew but didn’t believe. That’s the way things usually are.

And that damned minute came. The documents were in order, the visa had been obtained. Katya gave away her collections of candy wrappers and stamps to her girlfriends. All that remained was to buy the plane tickets.

My mother wept. Lena was overwhelmed by worries. I kept to the background. I hadn’t exactly blocked her view of the horizon before, but now she had no time for me at all.

And Lena went for the tickets. She came back with a box. She walked up to me and said, “I had some money left over. This is for you.”

Inside the box was an imported poplin shirt. Made in Romania, if I’m not mistaken.

“Well,” I said, “thanks.” It was a decent shirt – simple, good quality. Long live Comrade Ceauşescu!

But where would I go in it? Really, where would I go?

F
ROST SET IN RIGHT AFTER the November holidays in Leningrad. Getting ready to go to the newspaper office, I pulled on an ugly ski cap, which had been left behind by one of the guests. It’ll do, I thought, particularly since I hadn’t looked in a mirror for about fifteen years.

I got to the office. As usual, I was about forty minutes late. Commensurately, I took on an insolent and determined air.

The atmosphere in the editorial office was grim. Vorobyov was smoking dramatically. Molokhovsky was staring into space. Delyukin was whispering into the telephone. Mila Doroshenko had teary eyes.

“Cheers!” I said. “Why so glum, troubadours of the regime?”

Silence. Only Molokhovsky responded gruffly. “Your cynicism, Dovlatov, knows no bounds.”

Clearly, something had happened. Maybe we’d all been denied our bonuses?

“Why the long faces?” I asked. “Where’s the corpse?”

“At the Kuybyshev Morgue,” Molokhovsky replied. “The funeral’s tomorrow.”

That didn’t help matters. Finally, Delyukin got off the phone and explained to me in the same whisper: “Raisa committed suicide. Took three packs of Nembutal.”

“So,” I said. “I see. They finally drove her to it!”

Raisa was our typist – and, incidentally, a highly qualified one. She was a touch-typist and worked
fast – which did not keep her from catching countless mistakes.

Of course, Raisa caught them only on paper. In real life, she made mistakes constantly. As a result, she never did get her degree. And, even worse, at twenty-five she became a single parent. And finally, Raisa ended up in an industrial newspaper with time-honoured, anti-Semitic traditions.

As a Jew, she never got used to it. She talked back to the editor, drank and used too much make-up. In other words, she did not stop at her Jewish background, but went even further in her vices.

They would probably have tolerated Raisa, as they did all the other Jews, but she would have had to behave more sensibly. That is – wisely, modestly and with a touch of guilt. Instead, she kept demonstrating typically Christian weaknesses.

Back in October they began badgering Raisa. In order to fire her officially, they needed formal justification. That required three or four reprimands.

Bogomolov, the editor, went into action. He provoked Raisa into being insubordinate. In the mornings he waited for her with a stopwatch. He dreamt of catching her being lax in her duties, or at least of seeing her drunk at the office.

Everyone else in the office watched in silence, even though nearly all the men were courting Raisa. She was the only unattached woman in the place.

And so Raisa poisoned herself. All day long everyone looked gloomy and serious. They spoke in quiet and solemn voices. Vorobyov, from the science desk, said to me: “I’m horrified, old man! Just horrified! We had such
a complex and complicated relationship. A thousand and one nights, and all that… You know, I’m married, and Raisa was a woman with character. That led to all kinds of hangups… I trust you understand what I’m saying?…”

Delyukin joined me in the canteen. His chin was smeared with egg yolk. He said: “What about Raisa, eh? Just think! A healthy young gal!”

“Yes,” I said. “It’s horrible.”

“Horrible… After all, Raisa and I weren’t just friends. I trust you get my drift? We had a strange and tormented relationship. I’m a positivist, a romantic, a life-lover in some sense. While Raisa had all sorts of hangups. In a way, she and I spoke different languages…”

Even Molokhovsky, our lampoonist, pulled me aside. “Understand, I’m not religious, but still, suicide is a sin! Who are we to do as we please with our lives? Raisa should not have done it! Did she give any thought to the shadow she was casting on the newspaper?”

“I’m not sure. And really, what does the newspaper have to do with it?”

“No matter how funny it might seem to you, I have my professional pride!”

“So do I. But I have a different profession.”

“You don’t have to be rude. I was planning to talk about Raisa.”

“You had a complex and complicated relationship?”

“How did you know?”

“I guessed.”

“Her deed is an insult to me. You, of course, will say that I’m being overemotional. Well, I
am
emotional. Maybe even overemotional. But I had iron principles. I hope you understand what I’m trying to say?”

“Not quite.”

“I mean to say that I have principles…”

And I got sick. So sick that my head began aching. I decided to quit – actually, not even to come back from lunch to collect my things. Just get up and go without a word. Just walk out through the courtyard and get onto the bus… And then what? What happened then did not matter, just so long as I left the office with its iron principles, false enthusiasms and frustrated dreams of creativity.

I called my older brother. We met near the deli on Tavricheskaya Street. We got all the necessities.

Borya said, “Let’s go to the Sovietskaya Hotel. My friends from Lvov are staying there.”

The “friends” turned out to be three relatively young women named Sofa, Rita and Galina Pavlovna. They were shooting a documentary called
The Mighty Chord
. It was about mixed feed for swine.

The Sovietskaya Hotel had been built six years before. At first only foreigners stayed there. Then the foreigners were abruptly moved out. It seems that from the top floors it was possible to take pictures of the Admiralteyets Shipyard. Some wags changed the hotel’s name from the Sovietskaya to the Antisovietskaya.

I liked the women from the film group. They acted quickly and decisively. They brought chairs, got out plates and glasses, cut up sausage – that is, they showed a total readiness to relax and frolic during the day. Sofa even opened up some canned goods with her manicure scissors.

My brother said, “Let’s start!”

He drank, grew flushed and took off his jacket. I wanted to take mine off, too, but Rita stopped me.

“Go down for some lemonade.”

I went to the hotel buffet. I was back in three minutes. During that time the women had managed to fall in love with my brother. All three of them. And their love was insulting to me in nature. If I reached for the sprats, Sofa would exclaim, “Why don’t you have the sardines? Borya prefers the sprats.”