The Invisible Life of Ivan Isaenko (10 page)

Nurse Natalya:
I promise you it's not all that exciting.

Me:
Just show me how to call you, and I will call you tonight. We will talk for a minute, and then we will hang up.

(A distrustful pause.)

Nurse Natalya:
Fine.

I knew she would put up some token resistance. I also knew that in the end she would give in and take out the old 1952 model rotary phone from behind the front desk and show me how to dial a number. Moreover, she somehow managed to get Nurse Katya (who worked the evening shift that night) to act as an accomplice. At 9:00 in the
P.M.
, a customarily humorless Katya came into my room and said:

“Don't you have a phone call to make, Ivan?”

So I wheeled myself out to the front desk and began turning Nurse Natalya's numbers into the rotary dial. When I was finished, it started to ring, and after one and a half rings, a voice that sounded only marginally like Nurse Natalya's came through the earpiece.

Voice:
Hi, Ivan.

Me:
Hello. Is this Natalya?

Voice:
Who else would it be?

Me:
How are you?

Voice:
I'm fine. Quite tired, actually.

Me:
Yeah, it was a long day.

Voice:
How is everything over there tonight?

Me:
Quiet. No one is howling tonight.

Voice:
Well, you should probably get to bed.

Me:
I know.

Voice:
Good night, Ivan.

Me:
Good night.

When I hung up the phone, I noticed the three-kilo phonebook sitting on a shelf below the counter. This helped resolve the question of where I was going to get the numbers for every Isaenko in Belarus. The next issue of what to be done about the night nurse was also quickly resolved when I remembered that Nurse Elena was on nights in three days, and she typically passed out in the Main Room by midnight, due to her lust for vodka.

So, 12:02 in the
A.M.
, three nights later, I wheeled myself behind the front counter and pulled out the phonebook. Before I ever turned the rotary dial, I made a list of the name, address, and phone number of every Isaenko in Belarus, including a small space to write in any notes that might be relevant to my investigation. There were 869 Isaenkos listed, and for the next seven days, from 12:01 in the
A.M.
until 5:59 in the
A.M.
, I called all of them.

After dialing the first number, I panicked because I didn't have any idea what I would say, and because I forgot it was the middle of the night. But before I could end the call, the voice of Ivanna Isaenko said, “You'd better be the prime minister or the Holy Ghost to be calling at this hour.”

“No, it's Ivan,” I responded.

Then I hung up.

This sequence of events happened three more times before I decided that I would need a script to establish some legitimacy. After a bit of trial and error, I found something that worked:

Me:
Hello. May I speak with Mr. or Ms. Isaenko?

Mr./Ms. Isaenko:
This is him/her.

Me:
Oh, hello, Mr./Ms. Isaenko. It appears that I have some good news and some bad news. What would you like first?

Mr./Ms. Isaenko:
The bad news, please.

Me:
It seems your son Ivan has passed away at the Mazyr Hospital for Gravely Ill Children. The good news is that Ivan was a genius. Before he died, he developed several computer patents that are currently worth over three million rubles. He had expressed a desire to leave the money to his biological parents in the event that he should pass away.

This script was far more effective at initiating a serious dialogue. Here are the results of my 869 phone calls:

• 506 Isaenkos expressed sympathy but stated that they did not have a son named Ivan.

• 68 of those 506 Isaenkos stated that they wished Ivan was their son.

• 59 Isaenkos said I sounded drunk, but I assured them it was just my voice.

• 196 Isaenkos hung up.

• 212 Isaenkos said they weren't actually Isaenkos.

• 27 Isaenkos told me to fuck off.

• 45 Isaenkos' phones just rang and rang.

• 38 Isaenkos' phones were disconnected.

• 7 Isaenkos were dead.

• 13 Isaenkos had a son named Ivan but said that he was sleeping peacefully in bed.

• 8 Isaenkos had a son named Ivan who was alive and well with a wife and
x
children somewhere in the suburbs of Mazyr.

• 5 Isaenkos claimed they had a son at the Mazyr Hospital for Gravely Ill children, but upon deeper questioning admitted that they were lying because they needed money.

• 0 Isaenkos were actually related to me.

Additionally, seventeen Isaenkos were long-distance phone numbers, which, altogether, cost the hospital 470 rubles, apparently enough to get the attention of the Director, who first blamed Nurse Elena, who then did some investigating, which revealed that the common thread to the calls was my last name. Consequently, I was never again allowed near a telephone.

This experiment made my options clear—I would need to invent my mother. I needed to write her into existence if only in my own head. Her hair would be dark and not yet grayed. This was because I've always felt dark-haired women are stronger than light-haired women, and with the freedom to dream my mother as I desired, I could adorn her with all the characteristics I deemed strong in a woman.

She had a fierce Polissian accent because, if I'm to be honest, she sounded a bit like Nurse Natalya, only without her rasp.

She had crow's-feet that wrapped around her eyes, but not deep enough to make her old, just enough to season her face.

She smelled like lilacs.

She was strong yet soft at the same time.

When I first began to assemble her image, I noticed it was hard to remain objective. At first, the hair flowing from her head was perpetually blowing back in some imaginary wind, an obvious side effect of watching too much Russian television. Eventually, the long hair remained, but I reduced the special effects.

Her physical features created a sense of comfort and safety, but it was the personality I carved into her that helped me to feel loved and seen in a way that no real person has ever made me feel. She was warm and maternal. She could hold me through anything. But she could discipline me too. She could tell me, without hesitation, what thoughts were toxic and which would make me float on.

Most importantly, she knew
me
. I concede she had an unfair advantage—she could see and hear every single thought that bubbled up and out of my head. This meant that no one in the world could understand the complex mess going on between my two ears the way that she could.

An example. There was a time when I decided to take Nurse Natalya's advice and keep a journal. Only it rapidly became an anti-journal, a written attempt to document the life that I would be living had I been born a normal human being who never stepped into the halls of the Mazyr Hospital for Gravely Ill Children. I was a teenager living in Prague. I had just graduated from secondary school and was about to leave for university in Berlin. I invented the more traditional dilemmas of having to leave my high school sweetheart for the excitement of a new life in a new city. I carefully articulated all the anxieties that I would have had in this parallel universe. And I deeply enjoyed all the problems that showed up there (if people only knew how pleasant their problems could be).

Of course, I would need a confidant, someone whom I could approach for counsel, so it only seemed fitting that I should write my mother into this world. I filled pages that brought her to life, carving out all her details, building a vital living creature with the wisdom to see me off to Berlin with the appropriate tools to handle life and lost love.

The only problem was that she knew the both of us too well. She knew the me in my story, but she also knew the me who was writing it. Suddenly, there was a sick feeling in my stomach when I realized that two handwritten pages had been inadvertently filled with a tirade of tough love.

Ivan,
she ranted to me in my parallel universe,
what are you doing? What if the nurses read this? They may already have, those nosy
sstaryye ved'my
.
*
Life is unbearable, but it has the benefit of being real.

I accepted her advice and burned the book by baking it in the kitchen oven. Since then, she's always been with me, mostly in the heaviest or in the lightest moments of my life. And when I begin to wonder if there was any point to my being alive at all, she whispers into my ear all the celestial reasons why I'm full of shit. Unfortunately, I haven't seen her since Polina died.

 

XIV

The Early Days

Like me, Polina was a pathological-type loner. Throughout our photocopied days, we occasionally wove in and out of each other's moments, in the cafeteria, in the Main Room, through the hallways, a few meters from each other in front of the TV, but we never once spoke. She, at least, attempted to maintain the basic rules of social courtesy. For example, if our eyes accidentally crossed paths, she would smile and nod as if to acknowledge that I existed. Rather than reciprocate her etiquette, I dribbled some urine into my shorts and wheeled away.

When she wasn't in the stairwell, Polina lived gracefully. One day, I calculated that during 60 percent of the day, she had some fraction of a smile on her face. When she walked into the cafeteria in the morning to receive cold cabbage and stale bread, she had a quarter smile. When she lay in the hammock in the Main Room and watched a movie, she had half a smile. Even when she sat in her chemo chair while turning the pages of some British tabloid, she had an eighth of a smile. She clearly had something that I did not, something that pushed a smile through her lips under all circumstances, and I used every bit of my intellect to explain her away:

 

Explanation #1: Polina had lived the life of a beautiful, carefree child. Of course it is easier for her to smile than it is for me.

 

Explanation #2: Polina had parents. Even though she'd lost them, they had the chance to program a levity into her that I'd never had. Of course it is easier for her to smile than it is for me.

 

Explanation #3: Polina had just started living in hell. I've been here for seventeen years. Of course it is easier for her to smile than it is for me.

But soon I realized that for every explanation I came up with for why she could smile easily, I could think of another for why she should be miserable:

Anti-Explanation #1: Yes, Polina was a beautiful, carefree child, but she must be stunned by how easily it could all go away.

 

Anti-Explanation #2: Yes, Polina had parents, but now they were absurdly dead just when she needed them most.

 

Anti-Explanation #3: Yes, Polina had started living in hell, but I've had seventeen years to get used to it.

In the end, all my rationalizing failed to make me feel any better, which made me wonder why it was such a popular defense mechanism.

 

XV

Polina's Chemo Hair

It only took the poison three weeks to chisel the first cracks in her perfect brown mane, revealing flashes of pale-white scalp. It was, not coincidentally, the same day I saw the first crack in her graceful poise.

I'm guessing that she could feel my eyes from across the room absorbing every detail of her hair loss, because she spontaneously combed her frantic fingers through it, which resulted in a mounting ball of fur in her right hand. She immediately called for the nearest nurse, who unfortunately was Nurse Lyudmila. Polina showed her the ball of hair and whispered something into her ear. Nurse Lyudmila took the hair ball and walked away, which is when Polina's eyes released streams of liquid anguish down her face. I wanted to tell her that she should only share catastrophic health developments with Nurse Natalya, but I still couldn't move my mouth around her. I wanted to tell her it would be okay, but there were a thousand reasons I couldn't make those particular words happen. First, I sound stupid when I talk, but I'm not stupid, and I didn't want her to think I was. Second, I had never said anything to console a human being before and didn't know which words consoled. The third and biggest reason was that everything was most definitely
not
going to be okay, and I'm a horrendous liar. So for the next two hours, she read while wiping away tears before they had a chance to form, while I, for the next two hours, waited for Nurse Natalya and awkwardly stared at Polina while pretending I wasn't.

Eventually, Nurse Natalya arrived for her shift. Before she could get her coat off, I said:

“I dropped my pen behind the bed, and I can't reach it. Help me.”

“I know you're Belarusian, Ivan, but does that mean you can't say please.”

“Please,” I said.

“I'm on my way.”

A few minutes later, Nurse Natalya came into my room and started moving my bed. I told her to stop and that Polina was losing her hair and would need a wig.

“Ivan, since when have you been this concerned about an Interloper losing hair?” she asked.

“Polina is not an Interloper. Don't you understand my system by now? And why does it matter? She needs a wig.”

“I'll have her pick one out today.”

At any given time, the hospital has three to four wigs to choose from in the Green Room, which holds most of the hospital's linens and gowns, and also hair for cancer patients. The next day Polina's hair had thinned a bit more, but there was no wig on her head. The day after that, patches of her white scalp were obvious to anyone. Still no wig. The day after that, I could see that Polina had taken matters into her own hands and had given herself a short cut to minimize the obviousness of her hair loss, but it hardly made a difference. The day after that, Polina's hair was once again long, shiny, and luxurious, in spite of another day's worth of chemicals oozing along into her bloodstream. And for a moment, the grace and poise and confidence that made me feel so broken returned to her face again. She looked happy in the most fragile of ways. And somehow I was glad for her despite the familiar feeling of thick molasses in my blood.