The Invisible Life of Ivan Isaenko (23 page)

“
Lolita
.”

“
Lolita
is less depressing?”

“
Lolita
is sexual. And dark. But not depressing.”

“
Lolita
is acceptable.”

“Of course it is. It's my last book.”

“I propose we read it straight through. No sleep until the last page.”

“Do you turn
everything
into a game?” she asked.

“Everything.”

“Ivan?”

“Yes?”

“How do you even start a book you know is going to be your last?”

“You lie and say it's not.”

“Lying is impossible at the moment. Dying is like truth serum.”

I writhed out of my bed and wormed my way into the pseudocloseted region of my room, where I had not two but three different copies of
Lolita
. I knew this because it was my favorite book from 1998 to 1999, and I lied and told Natalya I'd lost it twice, only to make sure I had extra copies in case of some apocalyptic event. I rummaged through a miniature avalanche, which spread over my floor, until I found one, and then two,
Lolita
s; the latter I tossed to Polina. She looked at the book from every angle and caressed all six surfaces.

“When do we start?” she asked.

“After breakfast, or Natalya will worry.”

“You love her,” she said declaratively.

“You can close your eyes again. I will make sure we wake up in time.”

She looked at me with unimaginably blue eyes for a few more seconds, and then she let them fall closed, where they stayed hidden until breakfast hour.

*   *   *

We sipped
cabbage juice like normal. In the middle, Nurse Natalya approached her with a clipboard and a pen, and whispered a few somethings into her ear, at which point Polina scribbled her name down. Natalya's eyes couldn't help jerking over to me a few times in the process, which provided an opportunity to catch her attention during one of them, at which point she walked back over to me and whispered a few somethings in my ear as well.

“Why are you whispering?” I asked. “No one knows, and no one cares.”

*   *   *

I said:
“One, two…”

“No, when the clock says eight,” she said. It was 7:59 so …

Fair enough, Polina
.

When the red matchsticks shifted, we both entered a trancelike state of absorption, where the only thing that evolved was our physical configuration, which morphed from parallel (with a holy ghost between us), to perpendicular (with her legs draped over my trunk), to antiparallel (with her feet in my face).

The only interruptions came when Nurse Natalya would knock twice, open the door, and drop off two pieces of baklava, or two boiled pierogi, or two pastillas, all nonstandard menu cuisine. She spoke to us only once: “Are you sure you wouldn't rather be in the Main Room with the gingers?”

Translation: “There is only so long I can make excuses for your disappearances.”

We both slowly rotated our heads from our books, to each other, then to her and shook them categorically
no
.

“I see,” she said, then left.

Other interruptions came in the form of our favorite lines bursting out of our mouths like Tourette's tics.

Polina (33 minutes in):
Human life is but a series of footnotes to a vast obscure unfinished masterpiece …

Ivan's response:
And the rest is rust and stardust.

Ivan (339 minutes in):
I need you, the reader, to imagine us, for we don't really exist if you don't.

Polina's response:
Imagine being stuck inside of a story?

Polina (608 minutes in):
He broke my heart. You merely broke my life.

Ivan's response:
Do not be angry with the rain; it simply does not know how to fall upwards.

We were interrupted again much later on, somewhere around the eighteenth hour, by Polina herself. Spontaneously, she stopped reading and set the book over her chest, which was now flat and taut enough to serve as an adequate surface. Her eyes locked onto the ceiling as if she were looking through to the clouds on the other side. Potential diagnoses included absence seizure, Ivan-like coma, or rapturous daydreaming.

“Polina?”

“Is any of this happening?”

I wondered if this was a rhetorical question in disguise so I said:

“I think so.”

“It doesn't feel real.”

“What?”

“Any of it.”

“The book?”

“This book, all books, my thoughts, all my dreams, the dreams of my parents. It doesn't feel like it should be over.”

“It doesn't feel real because it's not over.”

It was almost too obvious to me. To her too, because her eyes came back to life and rolled over to me, while her body remained still.

“Don't die before you're dead. And if you do, let it be the good kind,” I said.

“What's the good kind?”

“When the only part that dies is who you were supposed to be.”

“Ah, the good kind.”

“Yes.”

“Good kind, good kind, good kind.” Her words became weaker and more whimsical with every iteration as her eyes wobbled on the edge of some invisible fulcrum until gravity had its way, and they fell shut. Polina slept, and I was the first to finish
Lolita
.

 

DAY 9

Blood Brothers

I awoke to the simultaneously welcoming and shrill voice of Polina, along with the feeling of her shaking my body like I was a bath towel.

“You shit,” she said.

“What?”

“You weren't supposed to let me sleep.”

“That was not a stipulation of our parley.”

“I expected more from you. Also, I'm heading to my room. I haven't changed my clothes in three days. Plus my cheeks are salty.”

Polina
had
developed a smell that was sweet like a soiled baby, only with a hint of death. I quickly gathered the two remaining pastillas from our literary marathon along with all associated crumbs and said, “Take these.” I knew that at this stage the thought of food in general turned her stomach inside out, and nothing less than sugar would overwhelm the disgust response. She thanked me and left. I, however, was obligated to show up at the breakfast table due to previous contractual commitments I had made with Nurse Natalya.

Most of the mutants were assembled in their seats by the time I arrived, and just like always, I took my seat unnoticed. But somehow, everyone, the entire ensemble, the scene, and the setting all looked different. Pinker maybe, or more innocent (maybe pink is the color of innocence) or less caustic, or a fraction less dreadful. I've inquired to the authority inside if something in the breakfast-hour routine had truly changed (possibilities include a new brand of lightbulb, some trimmed trees outside the barred windows, or some mass hygiene initiative for the less-abled patients). I only know that for a few seconds while I sipped a tolerable bowl of cabbage juice, I felt as though I was coexisting and not merely tolerating the other bodies at the Mazyr Hospital for Gravely Ill Children.

After my fill of cabbage juice, I wheeled my way around the asylum with no agenda but to count the number of objects that seemed different. When I'd had enough of this, I returned to my bedroom to read a few pages, but I only made it through a noun and two adverbs before Nurse Natalya burst into room without knocking, holding a stack of linens.

“What is it?” I asked.

“I need to change your sheets,” she said.

“No, you don't need to change my sheets. It's not a Tuesday, and it's not the third week of the month.”

Nurse Natalya dropped the linen and sat her plump ass on the edge of my bed.

“We have a favor to ask of you,” she said.

“No promises.”

“I think you will want to do this favor.”

“Okay.”

“She needs transfusions. They might give her a few days.”

“Are you looking for permission?”

“We're looking for help.”

“With the transfusion?”

“With your blood.”

“You want me to give her my blood?”

“She is AB negative, and the banks are dry.”

Which, I'm regularly told, has been the case since Ronald Reagan. Furthermore, AB negative is the rarest blood type in the universe. I, however, am O negative, which means my blood mixes with the entire human race. I know this because the city of Mazyr (under the auspices of Mikhail Kruk) has approached me every month for eleven years to donate blood, and I've categorically refused. This is because no individual human life in the abstract has ever been important enough to face my pathological fear of blood.

“Yes,” I said.

“I thought so,” she said.

And with that, Nurse Natalya dove inside her stack of linens. Tucked inside were an empty pint bag, a syringe, and a few feet of tubing. She dropped the linens and instantly stabbed the needle into my vein, before there was any chance for me to (A) change my mind, or (B) have any psychophysical reaction that would hijack the process.

Clever, Natalya.

Blood that touches the atmosphere has always been worse than blood that runs through a plastic tube. This offered me just enough space to approximately enjoy the way the blood spiraled and spurted up through the translucent tubing and pooled into the plastic bag, while my nubs trembled and my forehead obtained a glossy sheen.

“Just ten seconds, Ivan,” she said. “That's all it takes.”

This was true, except that time lives in the mind, and seconds stop being seconds when your heart is on fire.

“Eight … seven … six…,” she said, as entire masturbatory episodes flashed through my head.

“There's nothing wrong with it?” I asked, just to clarify.

“Your blood?”

“Yes.”

“It can't be worse than hers,” she answered with a demonic smile. “Three … two … one … and we're done. You kind soul.”

“She won't know?”

“Only if she asks. Belarusian law.”

“In the Red Room?”

“Where else? But I'm sure you don't want to watch.”

She closed the door with her bag of blood in tow as I turned to the clock and waited for the minute to be up and then one more before wheeling my way over to the edge of the Red Room. I leaned in as unnoticeably as possible. Nurse Natalya, Nurse Katya, and a doctor from the city, whom I had seen several times before but whose name I never knew, were all surrounding Polina. I watched as Katya made a pincushion out of Polina's forearm by repeatedly missing her vein. When she finally found the vein, I watched several heartbeats worth of hot blood spurt (which also was not supposed to happen) while Polina winced and moaned.

“No worries. It's bad blood anyhow, kid,” Katya said.

Just shy of the fourth spurt, Natalya managed to connect the tube coming out of Polina's arm into the plump purplish bag dangling from the mobile IV stand. A few seconds later, I watched the level in that bag begin to drop as my blood mixed with Polina's.

*   *   *

I rolled
back into the Main Room, found a tennis ball inside the toy box, and started bouncing it off the wall repeatedly while the universe around me fell away. Then I dropped the ball and fell into a coma, recognizing I was due one. Unfortunately, it was short-lived, because seven minutes later, I opened my eyes to find Nurse Natalya shaking me awake.

“She's asleep. We'll have to monitor her in the Red Room for most of the day. We need to make sure she doesn't have a reaction to the blood,” she said.

“Why are you telling me?”

“I figured you would want to know.”

“I do and I don't.”

“You do.”

“What if she reacts?”

“We suppress her immune system.”

“It's already weak.”

“I know.”

“She will die.”

“Yes,” she said. “She will. Either today or tomorrow or next week. Or in a hundred years.”

She turned around and started walking away, and as she did she said, “I will help with the pieces.”

I went back to comaland but realized that my standard feigned comas were haunted by ghosts and ghouls when bad things were happening. It occurred to me that I should make my coma legitimate. So I wheeled myself into the Red Room, kissed Polina's sweaty forehead, pulled a syringe of morphine out from the morphine drawer, rolled beside her, and injected the needle into my vein.

 

DAY 8

The Organic Wonderland (and Other Conversations)

I awoke on the eighth day in my bed to Polina combing the shaggy hair off my sweaty forehead with her fingers. Her eyes were yellow, and the skin on her face was starting to crack. I could also feel her fever radiating through the molecules between her face and mine. But in spite of all the decay, her irises continued to be heartbreakingly blue.

“Don't go away like that again,” she said.

“Where did I go?”

“Apparently into a morphine syringe.”

“I did?”

“They said you could've died. It's the dose they use to sedate Dennis, and three of you fit into him.”

“I was just trying to pass the time.”

“You almost beat me to death.”

That's when the door swung open revealing a frenzied Nurse Natalya. She walked over to my face, propped my eyelids open with her fingers, shined a bright penlight into my retina, let the lids snap back closed, slapped me in the face, and then exited the room.

“How do you feel?” I asked.

“A bit better. Thanks to you.”