The bustling continues within the clothing foundation. Each labors in her own spot, on her knees, straightening and flattening the trousers and shirts to increase the room area as much as possible. The three full pairs of shoes make excellent corners when placed in Chaplin position. The fourth corner is made of Shlomith’s fuzzy slippers. Polina’s orphaned boot receives a place of honor as the door. The tapered tip of the boot is the clasp that locks the door. Once it is set in its proper place, no one outside has any business coming in any more.
It feels better, Nina says repeatedly, and to the rhythm of this slogan they make themselves at home. Maimuna sits on the sable fur couch, Polina on the flying carpet. Nina, Ulrike, and Shlomith sit down in front of them. Wlibgis lies in front of the fireplace and sets her head right next to the wig. There is enough rebellious spirit in her that she uses her fingers to put the ends of the wig on her forehead. They don’t feel like anything, not on her fingers or her forehead, but she manages to prod the wig until the orange fibers fall over her field of vision.
Wlibgis closes her eyes. She sees herself in the spring on a muddy street in the center of Zwolle. She walks with determination, bright and ablaze. She feels herself walking a few centimeters above the surface of the ground, and no wonder, because she is hurrying toward her greatest love. The girl is waiting for her a few blocks away, her plump hand in her mother’s gaunt one. The girl will soon receive her first ice cream of the spring, and in the meantime her mother can get her weekly dose of buprenorphine. Vanilla, chocolate, pistachios; cherries, a paper umbrella, and whipped cream; sprinkles, chocolate chips, strawberry sauce; whatever Melinda can think of to ask her grandmother.
POLINA’S LIQUOR WINDOW
The women barely have time to get comfortable and each stray into her own thoughts when with no warning a story begins on the flying carpet. No one is prepared, and no one expected it. Well, I’m Polina, Polina suddenly says (confusing everyone, because of course they already know), and I’m an alcoholic.
No one had known this. They didn’t know what Polina had been like. Polina talked a lot but not about herself, except once. Once she had talked about herself. She had briefly related how her dying mother had refused to die right up to the end, how her mother had taken her final, suffocating breath with a look of shock on her face, and how at that moment Polina had decided to settle her accounts with life. But she had said little to broaden the fundamental impression of a woman who devoured books. She was just Polina, who had worked as chief accountant at Zlom, the Moscow Central Agency for the Dramatic Arts. Although she said her work wasn’t always pleasant. There had been a lot of gossiping behind her back that she’d had to treat with a maternal but slightly restrained attitude. So Polina had told them. She said she had to remember that this had nothing to do with her in persona, that it only had to do with her role at work. (She had lied, but the women didn’t know that either.)
Now, inside this brand-new clothing house, on a sable-fur couch that had turned into a flying carpet, but which for some is still a couch, Polina reveals something entirely new about herself. This is Polina in persona, and she is an alcoholic.
What Polina does not say is that she was uttering this statement for the first time in order to try out how the admission felt when it no longer had any consequences. She doesn’t feel like drinking here. Here there is nothing to drink and no reason to drink. In order to drink she needs certain props, which were found in the old world, in her home in fact. There it was possible to drink properly. More than the drinks, Polina misses a place to drink where she had everything she needed within reach. She had acquired an armchair for this specific purpose. A deep, soft armchair with a graceful three-legged table next to it. What was atop the table varied: a grog glass, a wine carafe, one night’s serving. There she sat, sipping and sitting, and all the bad things stopped. Day-Polina went away and Night-Polina flooded into her place with every drink.
In her own home, Polina believed she was free and independent. Someone else might have disagreed, but no other thinking beings were inside the flat (her cat, Begemot, did not count, although he must have thought in his own feline way). Polina told herself she was relaxing. “I’m relaxing, because otherwise I can’t shut off and I’ll go crazy. Otherwise I’d be doing salary calculations, shadow budgets, reports, tax plans, and bookkeeping at ten at night at Zlom. At three in the morning I’d still be sitting on the sixth floor. I might even be there when the others came to work in the morning. Before long I’d end up on sick leave, and that wouldn’t do. There has to be more in life than numbers!”
In theory, Polina’s method worked. Each week she drank enough that she could go to work in the morning without agony. Half a bottle or as much as a bottle of decent wine, a couple of
