The Suitcase by Sergei Dovlatov

Author:Sergei Dovlatov
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Counterpoint
Published: 2011-04-25T16:00:00+00:00

A Poplin Shirt

MY WIFE SAYS, “It’s madness, living with a man who sticks around simply because he’s too lazy…”

My wife always exaggerates. Although it’s true, I do try to avoid unnecessary trouble. I eat whatever’s within reach. Get my hair cut when my appearance becomes less than human. But when I do, I have it shaved. Then I don’t have to get another cut for three months.

In short, I’m reluctant to leave the house. I want to be left alone.

When I was a child, my nanny, Luiza Genrikhovna, did everything distractedly, living in fear of arrest. Once she dressed me in shorts and shoved both legs into one opening. I walked around like that all day. I was four, but I remember that day well. I knew that I had been dressed wrong, but I kept quiet. I didn’t want to change. I still don’t.

I remember many stories like that. Even as a child I was prepared to put up with all sorts of things in order to avoid hassles.

I used to drink a fair amount; consequently, I hung out in some strange places. That made many people think that I was sociable, whereas all you had to do was sober me up to see my sociability vanish.

For all that, I cannot live alone. I don’t remember where the electric bill is. I don’t know how to iron or do laundry. And above all, I don’t earn a lot. Ideally, I’d love to live alone, but with someone nearby.

My wife always exaggerates. “I know why you’re still living with me. Shall I tell you why?”

“Well, then, why?”

“You’re just too lazy to buy a folding bed.”

I could answer, “How about you? Why didn’t you buy the bed? Why didn’t you abandon me in our most difficult years? You, who can mend, wash, put up with people you barely know, and most importantly, earn money!”

We met twenty years ago in Leningrad. I even remember that it was a Sunday. February 18. Election day.

Block captains were going from house to house, urging residents to vote as early as possible. I was in no hurry. I’d skipped voting about three times already. And not out of dissident considerations, either, but rather out of an abhorrence for meaningless acts.

Then the bell rang. On the doorstep stood a young woman in a fall jacket. She looked like a schoolteacher, meaning a bit of an old maid. True, she didn’t have glasses on, but she was holding a notebook in her hand. She looked into the notebook and said my surname.

I said, “Come in, warm up. Have some tea.” I was mortified by my legs sticking out from beneath my robe. Legs are the least expressive part of the body in our family. And my robe was stained, too.

“Elena Borisovna,” the girl said, introducing herself, “your canvasser. You haven’t voted yet.” It was less a question than a restrained rebuke.

I repeated, “Would you like some tea?” I added, for propriety’s sake, “My mother’s inside.”

Mother had a headache,

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