The Suitcase (12 page)

“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?”

I
FIRST MET YURA SCHLIPPENBACH in Tauride Palace in Leningrad, at a conference of newspaper editors. I represented
Turbobuilder
, and Schlippenbach was there from a film-industry magazine called
Close-Up.

Second Secretary of the Regional Party Committee Bolotnikov had the floor. At the end of his speech, he said, “We have model newspapers like
Banner of Progress
. We have average ones, like
Admiralty
, and bad ones, like
Turbobuilder
. And then we have
Close-Up
, which is in a class of its own – it is spectacular in its mediocrity and tedium…”

I hunched down a bit in my seat. Schlippenbach, on the contrary, proudly straightened up – apparently he felt like a persecuted dissident. Then he called out, “Lenin said that any criticism has to be substantiated!”

“Your paper, Yura, is beneath all criticism,” the secretary replied.

 

In the intermission, Schlippenbach stopped me and asked, “Excuse me, how tall are you?”

I wasn’t surprised; I was used to it. I knew I should expect the usual stupid exchange: “How tall are you?” “Six four.” “Too bad you don’t play basketball.” “I do play.” “That’s what I thought.”

“How tall are you?” Schlippenbach asked.

“Six four. Why?”

“You see, I’m doing an underground film. I want you to play the lead.”

“I can’t act.”

“That’s not important. You have the right look.”

We agreed to meet the next day.

 

I had known Schlippenbach from seeing him around the central newspaper offices. We had never met personally. He was a thin, edgy man with long, dirty hair.

He claimed that his Swedish ancestors are mentioned in historical documents. In addition, he carried a single volume of Pushkin verses in his carryall. ‘Poltava’ was bookmarked with a candy wrapper.

“Read,” Schlippenbach would say nervously. And without waiting for a reaction, he’d bark out:

People were wary of him at the news headquarters. He was very bold. Perhaps the ardour inherited from the Swedish general was coming through. Schlippenbach refused to give up or give in. Once, when the old journalist Maryushin died, someone took up a collection for the funeral and approached Schlippenbach. He exclaimed, “I wouldn’t give a rouble for Maryushin alive. I certainly wouldn’t give a copeck for him dead. Let the KGB bury its informers.”

Meanwhile, Schlippenbach was constantly borrowing money from his co-workers, and he was reluctant about returning it. The list of creditors took pages in his
notebook. When he was reminded of a debt, he would threaten, “You keep nagging me and I’ll cross you off my list!”

That evening after the meeting he called me twice, for no real reason. His offhand tone bespoke our closer relationship: you can call a friend for no reason. “I’m bored,” he complained. “And there’s nothing to drink. I’m lying here on the couch all alone, with my wife…” At the end of the conversation, he reminded me, “We’ll discuss everything tomorrow.”

 

We spent the morning in the newspaper offices. I was going over proofs, and Schlippenbach was laying out his issue. He kept shouting things like, “Where’s the scissors? … Who took my ruler?… How do you write South African Republic – with or without a hyphen?”

Then we went to lunch.

Back in the Sixties, the canteen of the Press Centre was a closed club with access to hard-to-find foods: it sold veal hot dogs, canned goods, caviar, marmalade, tongue and smoked sturgeon. Theoretically, the canteen served only people who worked at the Press Centre, including writers from the industry papers; in practice, you would find people off the street in there – freelancers, for instance. That is, it gradually became less and less exclusive. And that meant fewer and fewer hard-to-get things. By this time, all that was left of its former glory was the Zhiguli beer.

The canteen took up the northern part of the sixth floor. The windows opened onto the Fontanka River. The three rooms could hold over a hundred people. Schlippenbach dragged me into an alcove, to a table
for two. Apparently we were going to have a highly confidential conversation.

We got beer and sandwiches. Schlippenbach lowered his voice a bit and began.

“I turned to you because I value cultured people. I’m a cultured person. There aren’t many of us. To tell the truth, I’m surprised there are as many as there are – aristocrats are a dying breed, like prehistoric animals. But let’s talk business. I’ve decided to do an underground film on my own. I’m tired of giving the best years of my life to run-of-the-mill journalism – I want to do real creative work. Anyhow, I start shooting tomorrow. It will be a ten-minute film, a satire. Here’s the plot: a mysterious stranger appears in Leningrad. We see right off that he’s Tsar Peter the Great, the man who founded this city two hundred and sixty years ago. Now the great sovereign finds himself smack in the middle of vulgar Soviet reality. A policeman threatens to run him in. Two winos ask him to chip in for a bottle. Whores take him for a rich foreigner. KGB agents think he’s a spy, and so on. In short, it’s a drunken whorehouse of a city. The Tsar cries, ‘What have I done?… Why did I ever build this whorish city?’”

Schlippenbach laughed so hard that the paper napkins flew up in the air. Then he added, “The film will be politically touchy, to put it mildly. It will have to be shown in private apartments. I’m hoping Western journalists will see it – that will guarantee worldwide resonance. The consequences may be most unexpected. So, you think it over, weigh the facts. Do you accept?”

“You said to think it over…”

“How long can you think? Just agree!”

“Where will you get equipment?”

“No need to worry about that. Don’t forget, I work at Lenfilm studios. Everyone there is a friend, from the top directors down to the lighting crew. The equipment is mine to use. I’ve been running a camera since I was a child. So think about it and decide. You suit me. This is a role I can trust only to a like-minded individual. We’ll go to the studios tomorrow, get the necessary props, talk to make-up. And we’ll start.”

I said, “I have to think about it…”

“I’ll call you.”

We paid and went back to the office.

I really didn’t have any acting talent, even though my parents were theatre people – my father was a director and my mother an actress. Although my parents didn’t leave any deep mark on theatre, which may be a good thing.

As for me, I had been on the stage twice. The first time, back in school, we put on a stage version of the story
Chuk and Gek
.* As the tallest, I got to play the polar-explorer father. I had to come out of the tundra on skis and then give the final monologue. The tundra was played backstage by a straight “F” student Prokopovich. He cawed, howled, and roared like a bear. I appeared onstage shuffling my feet and waving my arms – my impression of a man on skis. That was my own idea, my contribution to stage conventions.

Unfortunately, the spectators did not appreciate my formalist invention. Hearing Prokopovich’s howls and seeing my mysterious movements, they decided I was supposed to be a hooligan. There were plenty of hooligans in the post-war schools.

The girls were outraged and the boys applauded. The school principal ran onstage and dragged me off. The literature teacher had to give the final monologue.

The second time I acted was four years ago. I was working on the regional Party newspaper and was assigned to play Grandfather Frost. I was promised three days off and fifteen roubles. The editorial staff was giving a New Year’s show for an affiliated state school. Once again I was the tallest. They glued on a beard, gave me a white hat and jacket and a basket of gifts, and let me out on the stage.

The jacket was tight. The hat smelt of fish. I almost burnt the beard lighting a cigarette. I waited for silence and said, “Hello, kids! Do you know who I am?”

“Lenin! Lenin!” they cried from the first rows. I laughed, and my beard came unglued…

And now Schlippenbach was offering me a leading role.

Of course, I could have refused. But for some reason I accepted. I always responded to the wildest proposals; no wonder my wife says, “You’re interested in everything except conjugal obligations.” By “conjugal obligations” my wife means sobriety, first and foremost.

 

So, we went down to Lenfilm. Schlippenbach called some guy named Chipa, in the props department, and got a pass.

The room we came to was jammed with cupboards and crates. I smelt mildew and mothballs. Fluorescent lights blinked and crackled overhead. A stuffed bear reared up in the corner. A cat strolled down the long table.

Chipa came out from behind a curtain. He was a middle-aged man in a striped T-shirt and top hat. He stared at
me a long time and then asked, “Did you use to serve in the guards?”

“Why?”

“Remember the isolation cell in Ropcha?”

“Yeah.”

“Remember the convict who strung himself up on his belt?”

“Vaguely.”

“That was me. They pumped me for two hours, the bastards.”

Chipa treated us to some watered grain alcohol and was generally complaisant. He said, “Here you go, Chief!” and laid out a pile of junk on the table: tall black boots, a brocade waistcoat, a frock coat, a broad-brimmed hat and a sword. Then he got out a pair of gauntlets, like the ones early car enthusiasts used to wear.

“What about trousers?” Schlippenbach reminded him.

Chipa opened a crate and lifted out a pair of velvet breeches with gold braid. I pulled them on with great difficulty. They wouldn’t fasten. “They’ll do,” Chipa said. “Use twine.”

As we were leaving, he suddenly said, “When I was inside, I wanted out. But now, if I have a few drinks, I start missing the camp. What people! Lefty, One-Eye, Diesel!”

We put the stuff in a suitcase and took the elevator down to make-up.

By the way, this was my first visit to Lenfilm. I thought I’d see lots of interesting things – creative bustle, famous actors, maybe Chursina trying on a French bikini and Tenyakova standing next to her, dying of envy.* In reality, Lenfilm was like a gigantic government office: plain women carrying papers through the corridors, the rattle
of typewriters from everywhere. We never did run into any colourful individuals, except maybe Chipa with his striped T-shirt and top hat.

The make-up woman, Lyudmila Alexandrovna, sat me down at a mirror and gazed into it from over my shoulder for a while.

“Well?” Schlippenbach demanded.

“The head’s not great – C-plus – but the overall look is fantastic.”

Lyudmila Alexandrovna touched my lip, pulled at my nose, brushed her fingers over my ear. Then she put a black wig on me. She glued on a moustache. With light strokes of a pencil, she rounded my cheeks.

“Amazing!” Schlippenbach was delighted. “A typical tsar!”

Then I suited up and we called for a taxi. I walked through the studios dressed as the great emperor. A couple of people turned to look – not many.

Schlippenbach dropped by to see one other pal. This one gave us two black boxes of equipment – for money this time.

“How much?” Schlippenbach asked.

“Four roubles and twelve copecks,” was the answer. The price of a bottle.