The Suitcase

The Winter Hat

FROST 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.”

If I poured myself some vodka, Rita would worry: “Drink the Moskovskaya. Borya says the Stolichnaya is better.”

Even the restrained Galina Pavlovna got into the act: “Smoke the Auroras. Borya likes the imported cigarettes.”

“So do I,” I said. “I like the imported cigarettes.”

“Typical snobbery,” Galina exclaimed.

All my brother had to do was say something inane for all the women to fall down in peals of laughter. For instance, he said, munching on a squash spread, “It looks like something that’s been eaten already.”

And they all laughed.

But when I began telling them that our typist had killed herself, they all cried, “Stop it!”

About two hours passed this way. I kept waiting for the women to get into a fight over my brother. It did not happen. On the contrary, they became friendlier and friendlier, like the wives of an elderly Muslim.

Borya told them gossip about movie stars. Sang prison songs. Drunk, he unbuttoned Galina Pavlovna’s blouse. I was so down by then that I opened yesterday’s paper.

Then Rita said, “I’m going to the airport. I have to meet our director. Sergei, escort me.”

A fine thing, I thought. Borya eats the sprats. Borya smokes the Jebels. Borya drinks the Stolichnaya. And I’m the one who has to accompany that old bag?

My brother said, “Go on. You’re just reading the paper anyway.”

“All right,” I said. “Let’s go. If I’m going to be humiliated, it might as well be all the way.”

I pulled on my ski cap and Rita donned a sheepskin jacket. We went down in the elevator and over to the taxi stand. It was getting dark. The snow had a blue tinge. Neon lights melted in the twilight.

We were first in the taxi line. Rita had said nothing during the entire walk, except for one sentence: “You dress like a tramp!”

I replied, “Nothing to worry about. Just imagine that I’m a plumber or mechanic. An aristocratic lady hurrying home escorted by an electrician. All as it should be.”

A taxi came. I reached for the door handle. Two big guys appeared out of nowhere. One said, “We’re in a rush, fuzz face!” and tried to push me aside. The other squeezed into the backseat.

That was too much. I’d had nothing but negative feedback all day, and this was out-and-out street obnoxiousness. All my suppressed anger erupted. I took out my humiliation on these men. It all came out – Raisa, the newspaper scum, the ugly ski cap, even my brother’s amorous success.

I took a swing, remembering the lessons of Sharafutdinov, the heavyweight champ. I took a swing and fell on my back.

I don’t remember what happened. Either it was slippery or my centre of gravity was too high… In any case, I fell. I saw the sky, enormous, pale and mysterious. So far away from my problems and disappointments. So pure.

I gazed at it in admiration until a shoe kicked me in the eye. And everything went dark…

I regained consciousness to the sound of police whistles. I was sitting up, leaning against a garbage can. To my right was a crowd of people. The left side of reality was covered in darkness.

Rita was explaining something to a police sergeant. She could have been taken for the wife of an executive. And I – for her personal chauffeur. So the policeman listened attentively.

I pushed my fists into the snow. Floundering, I tried to stand up. I swayed. Luckily, Rita ran over to me.

Then we were back in the elevator. My clothes were muddy. The ski cap was missing. My cheek was bleeding.

Rita had her arm around my waist. I tried to move away: this time I really was compromising her. But Rita held on to me and whispered, “Damn, you’re a handsome devil!”

The elevator, with a quiet groan, stopped at the top floor. We were back in the same room. My brother was kissing Galina Pavlovna. Sofa was tugging at his shirt, repeating, “Silly, she’s old enough to be your mother…”

Seeing me, my brother raised a terrible hue and cry. He even wanted to rush off and do something somewhere, but changed his mind and stayed. I was surrounded by the women.

Something strange was happening. When I was a normal man, they disdained me. Now, when I was practically an invalid, the women smothered me with their attentions. They were literally fighting for the right to treat my eye.

Rita was wiping my face with a wet cloth. Galina Pavlovna was untying my shoelaces. Sofa went further than the rest – she was unbuttoning my trousers.

My brother was trying to say something, to give advice, but they shut him up. Whenever he made a suggestion, the women reacted stormily.

“Shut up! Drink your stupid vodka! Eat your crummy canned food! We’ll manage without you!”

I waited for a pause, and finally got to tell about our typist’s suicide. This time I was heard with great interest. And Galina Pavlovna practically burst into tears.

“Look at that! Seryozha only has one eye! But with that one eye he sees so much more than other people do with two!”

After which Rita said, “I won’t go to the airport. We’re going to the emergency room. Borya will go meet our director.”

“I don’t know him,” my brother said.

“It doesn’t matter. Have him paged.”

“But I’m drunk.”

“What do you think, he’s going to arrive sober?” Rita and I went off to the emergency room on Gogol Street. The waiting room was filled with people with smashed-in faces. Some were groaning.

Rita, not waiting her turn, went to see the doctor. Her luxurious sheepskin jacket had the desired effect here, too. I heard her ask loudly, “Who do I see if my lover boy’s got his face punched in?”

They waved me in immediately.

I spent twenty minutes with the doctor. The doctor said I got off easy – there was no concussion, the eye was intact, and the bruise would go away in a week. Then he asked, “What did they hit you with – a brick?”

“A shoe,” I said.

“A real clodhopper, I’ll bet,” the doctor commented. And added, “When will we learn to manufacture elegant shoes in the Soviet Union?”

So basically it wasn’t too bad. The only loss was my ski cap.

I got home at around one in the morning. Lena said drily, “Congratulations.”

I told her about my day. Her response was, “Fantastic things always happen to you…”

Early the next morning my brother called. I was in a lousy mood. I didn’t feel like going to the office. I didn’t have any money. My future was murky.

And besides, there was something heraldic about my face. The left side was dark. The bruise shimmered with all the colours of the rainbow. The thought of going out into the street was horrible.

But my brother said, “I have something important I need you for. We have to perform a financial transaction. I’m buying a colour TV on credit, then selling it for cash to this guy. I’m losing about fifty roubles on the deal, but I’m getting over three hundred to pay back in instalments over a year’s time. Got it?”

“Not quite.”

“It’s all very simple. I get the three hundred like a loan. I pay off my minor creditors. Get out of my financial dead end. Get my second wind. And the debt for the television I pay off slowly and steadily over the year. See? Speaking philosophically, one big debt is better than a hundred small ones. Borrowing for a year is more respectable than begging with a promise to pay it back the day after tomorrow. And besides, it’s more noble to be in debt to the state than to borrow from friends.”

“You’ve convinced me,” I said. “But what do I have to do with it?”

“You have to come with me.”

“That’s all I need!”

“I need you. You have a more practical mind. You’ll make sure I don’t blow the money.”

“But my face is all bashed in.”

“Big deal! Who cares about that? I’ll bring you a pair of sunglasses.”

“It’s February.”

“Doesn’t matter. You could have flown in from Abyssinia. And anyway, people don’t know why your face is bashed in. What if you were defending a lady’s honour?”

“That’s what happened, more or less.”

“All the more reason…”

I got ready to go out. I told my wife that I was going to the clinic. Lena said, “Here’s a rouble, buy a bottle of sunflower oil.”

I met my brother on Konyushennaya Square. He was wearing a worn sealskin hat. He took a pair of sunglasses from his pocket. I said, “The glasses won’t help. Give me the hat instead.”

“But the hat’s supposed to help?”

“At least my ears won’t freeze.”

“That’s true. We’ll take turns wearing it.”

We went to the trolleybus stop. My brother said, “Let’s take a taxi. If we arrive by trolley, it’ll be unnatural. Our pockets are bursting with money now, so to speak. Do you have a rouble?”

“I do. But I have to buy a bottle of sunflower oil.”

“I’m telling you, we’ll have money. If you want, I’ll buy you a bucket of sunflower oil.”

“A bucket’s too much. But if you would return the rouble.”

“Consider that lousy rouble already in your pocket…”

My brother flagged down a car. We went to Gostiny Dvor,* into the audio department. Borya disappeared behind the counter, looking for some guy named Mishan. As he left, he handed me the hat.

“It’s your turn. Put it on.”

I waited around twenty minutes for him, examining radios and television sets. I held the hat in my hand. I had the feeling that everyone was interested in my left eye. If a pretty woman appeared, I turned my right side to her.

My brother, agitated and joyous, appeared for a second. He said, “Everything’s going fine. I’ve signed the credit papers. The buyer just showed up. They’ll give him the TV in a minute. Wait here…”

I waited. I moved from the audio department to the children’s section. I recognized the salesman as my former classmate Lyova Girshovich. Lyova began examining my eye.

“What’d they hit you with?”

I thought, “Everybody’s interested in what they hit me with.” I wished just one person would want to know why.

“A shoe,” I said.

“Were you sleeping on the pavement or something?”

“And why not?”

Lyova told me a wild tale. They’d discovered major embezzlement at a toy factory. Wind-up bears, tanks and walking excavators were disappearing in enormous quantities. The police worked on the case for a year, without any success.

Quite recently the crime was solved. Two workmen at the factory had dug a short tunnel, leading from the plant to Kotovsky Street. The workers took the toys, wound them up, and set them down. And then the bears, tanks and excavators went off on their own. In an endless flow, they left the factory.

At that moment I saw my brother through the glass partition. I went over to him.

Borya had changed visibly. There was something aristocratic in his manner now, a satiety and an indolent lordliness. In a wan, capricious voice he said, “Where did you disappear to?”

I thought, “So that’s how money changes us. Even if it’s someone else’s.”

We went out on the street. My brother slapped his pocket.

“Let’s go out and eat!”

“You said you had to pay off your debts.”

“Yes, I said I had to pay off my debts. But I didn’t say we had to starve. We have three hundred twenty roubles and sixty-four copecks. If we don’t eat, it will be unnatural. Drinking isn’t obligatory. We won’t drink.” Then he added, “Have you warmed up? Give me my hat.”

Along the way, my brother began daydreaming.

“We’ll order something crunchy. Have you noticed how I like crunchy things?”

“Yes,” I said. “Like Stolichnaya vodka.”

Borya chided me. “Don’t be a cynic. Vodka is sacred.” Sorrowfully he added, “You have to treat things like that seriously…”

We crossed the street and found ourselves in a shashlik place. I had wanted to go to a milk bar, but my brother said, “A shashlik joint is the only place where a smashed face goes unnoticed.”

There weren’t many customers. Winter coats hung darkly on the coat rack. Pretty girls in lacy aprons ran around the room. The jukebox was blaring.

Rows of bottles glimmered by the bar at the entrance. Beyond that, on a platform, were the tables.

My brother immediately took an interest in the spirits.

I tried to stop him. “Remember what you said.”

“What did I say? I said we wouldn’t drink. In the sense of getting drunk. We don’t have to drink by the glassful. We’re cultured people. We’ll have a shot glass each just for the mood. If we don’t drink at all, it’ll be unnatural.”

And my brother ordered half a litre of Armenian cognac.

I said, “Give me my rouble. I’ll buy a bottle of sunflower oil.”

He grew angry.

“You’re so petty! I don’t have a rouble, it’s all tens. When I break a ten I’ll buy you a cistern of sunflower oil.”

As we took off our coats, my brother handed me the hat.

“It’s your turn, take it.”

We sat down at a corner table. I turned my right side to the room.

Everything that followed went by in a flash. From the shashlik place we went to the Astoria Hotel. From there, to see friends from the ice ballet. From their place, to the bar at the Journalists’ Union Club.

And everywhere my brother said, “If we stop now, it’ll be unnatural. We used to drink when we didn’t have money. It’d be stupid not to drink now, when we have it.”

Whenever we walked into a restaurant, Borya handed me his hat. When we went back out on the street, I would return the hat to him with thanks.

Then we went into the theatrical store on Ryleyev Street. He bought a rather ugly Pinocchio mask. I had spent an hour in that mask at the Yunost bar. By that time my eye had turned purple.

By evening my brother had developed an obsession. He wanted to fight. Rather, he wanted to find the bullies who had beaten me up the night before. Borya thought he could recognize them in a crowd.

“You haven’t even seen them,” I said.

“What do you think intuition is for then?”

He began pestering strangers. Luckily, everyone was afraid of him – until he picked on a Hercules near a clothing store. That one wasn’t frightened. He said, “I’ve never seen an alcoholic Jew before!”

My brother grew incredibly animated, as if he had been waiting all his life for someone to insult his national dignity. Especially since he wasn’t a Jew at all. It was I who was Jewish, to some degree. That’s how it was. A complicated family history. Too long to go into…

Incidentally, Borya’s wife, whose maiden name was Feinzimmer, liked to say, “Borya has drunk so much of my blood, he’s half Jewish now!”

I had never noticed any Caucasian patriotism in Borya before. But now he was even talking with a Georgian accent.

“I – a Jew? You mean, you think I’m a Jew?! You’re insulting me, my friend!”

They headed for an alleyway. I said, “Stop it. Leave the man alone. Let’s get out of here.”

But my brother was already turning the corner, shouting, “Don’t leave. If the police show up, give a whistle.”

I don’t know what happened in that alley. I only saw passers-by recoil.

My brother returned in a few moments. His lower lip was split. He held a brand-new sealskin hat in his hand. We quickly strode towards Vladimirskaya Square.

Borya caught his breath and said, “I punched him in the face. And he punched me in the face. His hat fell off. And my hat fell off. I looked and saw his hat was newer. I bent over and picked it up. And naturally, he picked up mine. I cursed him out. And he cursed me. And we went our separate ways. And I’m giving this hat to you. Take it.”

I said, “I’d rather you bought me a bottle of sunflower oil.”

“Naturally,” my brother said. “But first let’s have a drink. It’s necessary, as disinfection.”

And he stuck out his lower lip as proof.

I got home late that night. Lena didn’t even ask where I had been. She did ask, “Where’s the sunflower oil?”

I mumbled something unintelligible.

Her answer was, “Your friends are always drinking at your expense!”

“But at least,” I said, “I have a new sealskin hat.”

What else could I say?

From the bathroom, I heard her repeating, “My God, how will all this end? How will it all end?”