Free The Invisible Life of Ivan Isaenko by Scott Stambach Page B

the Submissive Servant, though I prefer the Pincushion. In seventeen years at the asylum, I’ve only ever seen her follow orders. The Director and the nurses bark, and she moves. Jung would say that early experiences with an emotionally absent father and an unpleasable mother conditioned her to believe her only value was service. I know this because her mother is Nurse Elena.
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    Currently the clock reads 2:08 in the P.M.
    I’ve been writing for more than fourteen hours.
    It is the third day of December.
    The year is 2005.
    I hadn’t even known I was asleep until I felt Nurse Natalya shaking a nub.
    â€œIvan,” she whisper-yelled.
    â€œWhat?”
    She sniffed my breath and shook her head disapprovingly.
    â€œYou gave it to me.”
    â€œI have some news.”
    â€œWhat news?”
    â€œThere will be a funeral.”
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œA religious one?”
    â€œYes, Orthodox.”
    â€œI thought there wasn’t any money.”
    â€œThe city will pay for it.”
    â€œThe city has never paid for someone to be buried.”
    â€œThey want to make an exception in this case given the circumstances.”
    â€œWhat circumstances?”
    â€œHer youth. And her dead parents.”
    â€œYou’re paying for it, aren’t you?”
    A silence that answered the question for me.
    â€œYou don’t have money.”
    â€œIf I didn’t have money, there wouldn’t be a funeral, would there? But there is a funeral, so I must have money.”
    â€œYou’re doing this for me.”
    â€œAnd her.”
    â€œWe all deserve to be buried.”
    â€œSince when are you moved by moral arguments?”
    â€œSince now.”
    â€œI’m taking you with me.”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œI won’t go.”
    â€œI thought I couldn’t either when he died. But I did.”
    â€œWhy?”
    â€œBecause if I didn’t, it would be like dropping a big turd on his grave.”
    â€œI’m not going.”
    â€œStop making this about you.”
    â€œShe’s dead, so by definition nothing is for her ever again.”
    Then I rolled over.
    She got up to leave.
    â€œThree days, Ivan. Be ready.”
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    XI
    Dr. Mikhail Kruk, the Director
    Mikhail Kruk is the perfect composite character. First, and foremost, he is the Thief. His job amounts to accepting money from the Orthodox Church earmarked for fixing kids, but in reality, he spends less than half of it fixing kids. I know this because when I’m catatonic the nurses rant on about having to make adjustments to his accounting reports.
    He also plays the part of the Casanova. Twice a week, he has secret sexual rendezvous with whoever is the youngest—and typically largest-breasted—nurse on the staff, in spite of having your standard wife and three kids.
    He is also the Most Mediocre Man in the World, which I suppose makes him the Everyman too: he is smart, but not too smart. He has charisma but only enough to run a run-down hospital. He is fat, but not preposterously so. He is mediocre in the worst possible way.
    I’ve spoken to the Director twice in seventeen years: once about my penis, and once when I was drunk on his vodka. After twelve years of watching him get drunk from behind the curtains, I just got too curious, shakingly so, and resolved to take my first sip. I snuck into his office on his next scheduled late-night rendezvous with Nurse Nika, the youngest largest-breasted nurse of that year, and opened the desk drawer he always pulled his bottle from. I removed the bottle, and underneath, I noticed a picture of his family standing outside by a lake, with rolling hills covered in evergreen trees in the background. For the most part, they looked happy, and Mikhail smiled innocently. Incidentally, I could see why Mikhail copulated with women who were not his wife. Objectively speaking, she resembled a proboscis monkey I had once