Free The Suitcase by Sergei Dovlatov

“Please excuse us, the nurse is here.”
    I didn’t understand at first. I thought one of Andrei’s parents was ill. I even thought they wanted us to leave.
    They explained to us, “Gena Lavrentyev brought a nurse with him. It’s horrible. A girl in a Soviet Persian lamb coat. She’s already asked four times when the dancing starts. She just drank a whole bottle of cold beer… Please, don’t be angry…”
    “It’s all right,” I said, “we’re used to it.”
    I had once worked for a factory newsletter. My wife had been a hairdresser. There was very little that could still shock us.
    Later I took a good look at the nurse. She had pretty hands, thin ankles, green eyes and a shiny forehead. I liked her. She ate a lot and bounced around in a dance rhythm even at the table.
    Her date, Lavrentyev, looked a lot worse. He had bushy hair and small features – a vile combination. Besides
which, I was sick and tired of him. He talked too long about his trip to Romania. I think I told him that I hated Romania…
    The years passed. Andrei and I saw each other pretty rarely. More rarely each year. We did not have a fight. We did not suffer mutual disappointment. We simply went our own ways. By this time I was writing. Andrei was finishing up his Ph.D. dissertation.
    He was surrounded by merry, smart and good-natured physicists. I was surrounded by crazy, dirty and pretentious poets. His friends occasionally drank cognac and champagne. Mine systematically put away cheap rotgut. In company, his friends recited the poetry of Nikolai Gumilyov* and Joseph Brodsky. Mine read only their own works.
    Soon Nikolai Konstantinovich Cherkasov died. A memorial meeting was held near the Pushkin Theatre. So many people came they had to divert traffic.
    Cherkasov had been a People’s Artist. And not in name only. He was beloved by professors and peasants, generals and criminals. Yesenin, Zoshchenko and Vysotsky* had the same kind of fame.
    A year later Nina Cherkasova was fired from the theatre. Then they took away her husband’s prizes. They made her return the international awards Cherkasov had received in Europe, among them some valuable gold items. The authorities made the widow turn them over to the theatre museum.
    The widow, of course, was not in financial trouble. She had a dacha, a car and an apartment. Besides which, she had savings. Dasha and Andrei had jobs.
    My mother sometimes visited the widow. She spent hours on the phone with her. The widow complained
about her son. She said that he was inconsiderate and egotistical.
    My mother would sigh, “At least yours doesn’t drink…”
    In short, our mothers turned into similarly sad and touching old women, and we into similarly hard-hearted and inconsiderate sons. Even though Andryusha was a successful physicist and I a pseudo-dissident poet.
    Our mothers came to resemble each other. But not completely. Mine almost never left the house. Nina Cherkasova attended all the premieres. Besides which, she was planning a trip to Paris.
    She had travelled abroad before. And now she wanted to see her old friends.
    Something strange was happening. While Cherkasov was alive, they had guests every day. Famous, talented people – Mravinsky, Raykin,* Shostakovich. They had seemed to be family friends. After Nikolai Konstantinovich’s death, it turned out that they had been his personal friends.
    For the most part, the Soviet celebrities disappeared. That left the foreign ones – Sartre, Yves Montand,* the widow of the artist Léger. And Nina Cherkasova decided to visit France again.
    A week before her departure I ran into her. I was in the library of the House of Journalists, editing the memoirs of some conqueror of the tundra. Nine out of fourteen chapters began the same way: “False modesty aside…” Besides which, I was supposed to verify the Lenin quotes.
    And suddenly Nina Cherkasova came in. I hadn’t known we used the same library.
    She had aged. She was dressed, as usual, with