The Last Hiccup

by Christopher Meades

  This evening was different. Sergei couldn’t sleep, but it had little to do with Asenka. Lying awake, he stared at the ceiling, careful not to touch his ex-wife’s side of the bed, his thoughts occupied by Vladimir, the hiccups and what horrendous thoughts he could only imagine were running through his patient’s troubled mind. He tossed and turned for an hour before giving up. Briskly, Sergei climbed out of bed and walked into his study. He picked up the telephone and called Alexander. An older woman’s voice answered.

  “Hello?”

  “Is Alexander there?”

  “I’m sorry but the doctor is out for the evening. Would you like to leave a message?”

  “Who is this?” Sergei said.

  “I’m the maid. Doctor Afiniganov is out for the evening.”

  “Yes, I know. You already said that,” Sergei said. “Where is he?”

  There was silence on the other end.

  “I’m one of his colleagues from the hospital,” Sergei said. “It is imperative that I get in contact with Alexander immediately.”

  “Is this an emergency, sir?” she said.

  “Yes, of course it is. Do you think I would call for any other reason?”

  She paused. “No.”

  “Do you take me for an idiot?”

  “Of course not.”

  Sergei’s voice raised. “I am an important man. I have performed open heart surgery and devised treatments that abated a plague of leprosy,” he said, unable to contain himself. “My professional opinion is held in such high regard that heads of state come to me personally to perform their physicals. I even finished at the top of my class at Imperial Tomsk University’s medical school.” His voice built to a crescendo as he stated the year, month and day of his graduation.

  “Didn’t Doctor Afiniganov finish first in the class at Tomsk that year?” the woman said. “I was working for his father at that time and, if I correctly recall, Alexander finished with the highest accolades ever bestowed upon a graduate of the school . . .”

  “Nonetheless, I assure you . . .”

  “. . . there was even a ceremony in which he was given a plaque with his name and ‘First in Class’ on it. The plaque is on the wall in the doctor’s study . . .”

  “Listen to me . . .”

  “. . . I can get it for you if you like. It’s beautiful. And made of real gold.”

  “I don’t care about the damned plaque!” Sergei said. “Just tell me where Alexander is.”

  “He’s attending a formal function at the Isirk Ballroom. It’s a black-tie affair . . .”

  “Thank you.” Sergei slammed the phone down. In a fury, he knocked over a Romanian blajini carving, a prized heirloom from his mother’s side, and then fell to the floor. He held his head in his hands and curled up in the fetal position against the far wall. Sergei fought back tears. To the outside world, he was a powerful, successful man. The mothers of his patients swooned when he entered the room. The state paid him well. His life was filled with extravagance. He lived in an enormous house with two servants in a splendid neighborhood and could have any woman he desired. But his entire life, he’d lived in Alexander’s shadow. Were it not for Alexander, that gold plaque would be on Sergei’s wall. His divorce from Asenka had stripped him of his confidence and now he found himself a grown man, unable to cure a simple case of the hiccups, cradled in a ball on the floor wearing pajamas with a rip in the rear end while his rival dined with dignitaries at a ballroom to which Sergei had never been invited.

  Enough of this.

  Sergei rose to his feet and marched down the hall to his bedroom. He tore off his pajamas, wiped his armpits with a wet rag and pulled his best blue suit from the closet. Sergei stood in front of the full-length mirror, completely naked, his pajamas in one hand, his suit in the other. “Tatiana!” he cried at the top of his lungs. “Tatiana! Come here!”

  From two flights down, Sergei’s maid heard his cries and came running. A homely creature with modest breasts and a large backside, Tatiana had long awaited this call. At the exact moment Sergei called out her name, she had been in the kitchen, drawing an inverted heart on a pad of paper, dreaming of Sergei and how she wished he would come to her at night and take her against the cold washbasin in her room. She’d long imagined what it would feel like to have her face forced against the frigid steel while he ravaged her from behind. Oh, the rapture of it all! She bounded up the stairs with delight, each step taking her closer to the man she’d loved from afar so very long. Her loins, warm and aching from years of solitude, yearned for Sergei as she reached the top floor. “Yes, Doctor?” She opened the door to her master’s bedroom. “Aieeee!”

  Tatiana shrieked out loud. She hadn’t expected Sergei’s naked body to be standing in front of her, holding a suit in one hand, his other hand plying open the hole in the buttocks of a pair of pajamas. No, no, no, no! she screamed in her mind. This wasn’t how it was supposed to be. Sergei should be wearing a smoking jacket with a sash across his waist.

  “Dear God, child.” Sergei stepped back. Quickly he shielded his genitals with his suit.

  “I’m sorry, sir,” Tatiana said and covered her eyes.

  “Our protocol is to speak through the door.”

  “Again, I’m sorry,” she said.

  “Call Afin and have him start the car.”

  “Yes, Doctor.”

  “And please knock next time.”

  “Yes, Doctor.”

  “And if you would have these sewn for me . . .” He tossed his pajamas in the direction of the mortified girl.

  Tatiana caught the pajamas on her head, begged forgiveness, then sped a hasty retreat from the room. Alone again in his bedroom and completely nude, Sergei smiled in the corner of his mouth. He put on his suit and fashioned himself in front of the mirror. Tonight would have an upward turn after all.

  Sergei — doctor, divorcer and man-about-town — was going out for the evening.

  Sergei stepped out of his vehicle and straight into a muddy puddle of slush. His driver, Afin, an elderly Polish man with fading eyesight, a cheerful disposition and the profile of a swollen warthog, had failed him again by parking too far from the curb. At the last function Sergei attended, his driver had made a scene when he referred to the ambassador’s daughter as a “treat for the eyes.” Two functions before that, Afin had inadvertently driven home the wrong couple, infuriating Sergei’s then-wife and launching her into a hysterical tirade aimed not only at Sergei’s virility but also at the ethnicity of their hosts that evening. It had taken Sergei an hour to calm his wife down, just enough time for Afin to return and pile them into the car alongside the couple he’d mistakenly driven.

  This Afin was a curious sort. Clumsy, absent-minded and often confused, the man had revealed nothing to Sergei about his past. Five years earlier, Sergei hired Afin on the recommendation of an acquaintance without troubling to ask for further references or even insisting the old man have his vision tested. Sergei felt vaguely sorry for him. In his more befuddled moments, Afin would stumble about like a silent-movie star, unintentionally exaggerating his movements, his arms gesticulating wildly as he struggled to regain his footing after slipping on the wet stone driveway. Sergei wasn’t aware of his driver’s more contemplative moments, when Afin would sit alone in a dark and quiet room — disconnected from his affable civility and bumbling demeanor — and struggle to come to terms with the life he had led.

  Years ago while working for the state, Afin had put 249 men to their death. Some were hanged. Others were beheaded. Occasionally, the two went hand in hand as the head of a hanged man popped right off his body and landed with a bloody thud at Afin’s feet. Now long retired, Afin routinely fluctuated his perspective on his role in the executions. Some days he would bury his face in his hands, mystified as to how a sweet little Polish boy could have grown into a monster. Other days he wouldn’t give the 249 souls a second thought. It was only a job. The state killed those men, after all. His hands were simply the instruments of their
concentrated minds. Afin never intended any malice. He was much happier now, he decided, driving Sergei back and forth from work and occasionally straining his murky vision to give Tatiana a wayward glance.

  “I’m sorry, sir,” Afin said as he helped Sergei step over the slush.

  “Not to worry.” Sergei shook the water from his best pair of shoes. “Wait here, please. I’ll be right out.” Sergei walked up to the grand entrance of the Isirk Ballroom. A national treasure that through sheer luck and good fortune had escaped the destruction of the Bolshevik War, its looming arches, high ceilings and majestic artwork made the ballroom the central meeting place for Moscow’s most affluent citizens. Sergei ignored the splendor and stormed straight through the front doors on a mission to find Alexander. He was stopped at the ice sculpture in the main lobby by a maître d’ and two doormen.

  “May I see your invitation?” the maître d’ said in a thick French accent.

  “I have no invitation,” Sergei said. “I’ve come to see one of my colleagues from the hospital.”

  “Are you a doctor?”

  “Yes.” Sergei fished his medical license out from his jacket and showed it to the man.

  “Is this an emergency?”

  “Yes, it is.”

  “Is someone going to die?”

  “Well, no.”

  “Is someone in imminent danger?”

  “Imminent? No,” Sergei said.

  “Then I’m afraid I can’t permit you inside,” the man said.

  Sergei peered over the shoulders of the guards. Inside he could see Moscow’s elite hobnobbing about in front of the lavish buffet in the great hall. He couldn’t quite make out who was who, his view partially obscured by the protruding fin of a sea nymph cut into the ice.

  “I must get inside.” Sergei stepped past the man. Immediately, the two guards blocked his way. “You don’t understand —” he gasped, his sentence cut off when one of the guards thumped him hard on the chest.

  “No,” the maître d’ said. “It is you who does not understand. Invitations were sent out for this event six months ago. Each of the guests attending has made a considerable donation in support of our new indoor garden. We can’t let in just anyone off the street, let alone a man in a blue suit.”

  Sergei looked down at his suit and then up at the three men standing in front of him. Each was wearing a black tuxedo, their white shirts adorned with a black bow tie. He looked back at his suit, with his right leg soaked up to the knee, and wondered what others secretly must think when they see him walking down the street.

  “This is my finest attire,” Sergei said.

  The maître d’ fashioned an uppity sneer.

  Sergei turned to walk away. “Fine, if you’re willing to take the risk.”

  “What risk?” the maître d’ said.

  Sergei stopped at the doors. “The risk of all your patrons growing violently ill. There is a man in there, a colleague of mine from the hospital who came into contact with a very sick patient today. The patient’s symptoms include painful vomiting, spontaneous dysentery and an unexplained excretion of mucus from not one, not two, but three orifices. It’s almost certain that my colleague is contagious and I’ve come here to save these people from what could very well be the most painful, embarrassing night of their lives.”

  “You’re lying,” the maître d’ said.

  “Believe what you want to believe.” Sergei started to walk away. “Do not blame me when your patrons become sick all over your ballroom floor.”

  He was halfway out the front doors when the maître d’ came up behind him and petitioned Sergei to find the contagious man. The doctor Namestikov, his lies accepted as fact, felt a great satisfaction until the maître d’ insisted he change from his blue suit jacket into a more formal black jacket.

  “No,” Sergei said. “People will assume that I couldn’t find a matching pair of pants. These colors look ridiculous next to one another. I’ll be a laughing stock in a mismatched suit.”

  “Nonsense,” the maître d’ said. He helped Sergei off with his coat and into the formal black jacket. “You won’t be inside but for a moment anyways. If I were to allow you to wear blue, you would draw even more attention to yourself.”

  Sergei insisted again but the man was adamant. The only way Sergei would be allowed into the great hall was if he was wearing a black jacket. With extreme reluctance, Sergei slipped the jacket over his shoulders. Its sleeves carried with them the pliant odor of whiskey and Croatian perfume. Sergei pressed out the wrinkles against his chest and allowed the larger of the two guards to brush the dust off his shoulders, then he stepped past the ice sculpture and into the great hall. It was difficult for him to maintain an air of dignity, what with the mismatched clothes, the soaking-wet loafer and the undeniable suspicion that he’d forgotten to properly trim his ears of all errant hairs, but Sergei soldiered on past the women in evening gowns dipping cake into the cheese fondue and the politicians congratulating one another as they smoked cigars. He made his way past the extensive buffet table without giving a thought to pinching a snack when he stopped at the last tray of desserts.

  Before Sergei lay an extravagant safari scene with lions carved out of truffles and peacock-shaped pineapples. Everywhere Sergei looked a new treasure was to be found, from apricot trees to candy-stick villagers drowning in the chocolate mousse quicksand. The very sight of this sticky-sweet smorgasbord was overwhelming. Sergei’s eyesight, never an issue during his adult years, started to fail him the longer he stared at the dazzling whites and bright oranges. The air wavered as though it were hot inside; the skeletonized shapes of the sugars crystallized into an onslaught of garish glittering opulence and at the same time grew murky, fragmented. Suddenly the table vanished, a mass of refracted light mobilized in its place. Sergei felt dizzy. A painful swell developed in his chest as an epidemic of panic threatened to overtake him. Sergei hunched forward and placed his hands on the table, his thumb dipped into a pool of blue gelatin. Oh, how he longed for the warm, insomnious comfort of his bed. Why had he ever left home? What purpose could it serve to accost his rival here in this place where he so clearly did not belong?

  With a shudder, Sergei turned to leave and was met face-to-face by Alexander in all his black-tuxedo glory. As though a chandelier had fallen from the ceiling, Sergei’s eyesight returned in a sudden crash. Alexander gasped in surprise. The two men stared at one another in staggering astonishment, taking turns opening their mouths with nothing emerging, the air between them forming a vacuous stupor before finally Alexander spoke.

  “Your jacket doesn’t match your pants.”

  Sergei lowered his eyes in a descending arc toward his torso, his gaze focusing on each fuzzy piece of lint and microbe of bacteria left behind by the innumerable souls who, trapped by destiny or desperation, had been forced against their wills into the confines of this black prison. Sergei wanted to turn around right now and bolt from the ballroom. Only his body refused. His legs took root in the ground, his arms constrained as those of a lunatic wrapped up in an asylum. Sergei paused and stammered. He briefly considered an honorable suicide through some sort of staged accident involving perhaps an attack by an outraged animal or a tragic yet credible fall from a great height, before feeling within himself a surge of adrenaline. Deep from the kidney gland it mobilized, the first gush invigorating, the second and third sending stabbing swells to his brain. At that very moment in front of the dessert tray, he found in himself a strength he had never known. He would stand up to this torment. Out of all the moments in his life, this would be the one he would finally seize. No longer would he be forced to live under the crushing weight of Alexander’s shadow. No longer would he endure a sleepless night as his nemesis’s voice careened about his head. Sergei mobilized his courage, composed himself and then spoke plainly and clearly.

  “The coordination of my ensemble is none of your concern. I have sought you out tonight on a matter of great importance, of our young patient Vladimi
r . . .”

  “Yes, yes, the hiccups. That is fine,” Alexander said. He seemed uncharacteristically anxious. His eyes shifted around the room.

  “No, old friend, it is not fine. Our patient has hidden from us a depravity of mind, not a lunacy as I suspected, but a villainous immorality verging on pure, unbridled evil.”

  “Evil, you say?”

  “Something sinister and vile resides in his soul. He’s hidden it from us all along. In all my years, I’ve never seen anything like it . . .”

  Alexander placed his hand on the small of Sergei’s back. “We can discuss Vladimir’s case at the hospital on Monday. You should leave now.”

  “No!” Sergei pulled away. “You will not send me home. I will be heard.”

  From nearby, partygoers turned toward Sergei’s raised voice, their faces ranging from curiosity in the far corners to disapproval closer to the buffet, culminating in the outright condemnation on the face of a woman Sergei had accidentally bumped into, forcing her sausagey fingers to impale the lemon tart she’d been in the process of selecting. From the foyer, the maître d’ and his two doormen came marching through the crowd. Sergei had very little time.