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.
XVI
My Hui
No record of Polina’s life could be complete without first mentioning my Hui. I had my first erection at the age of ten. Since then, I have had an extremely complicated relationship with my govyadiniy svistok.* There are several reasons for our knotty love affair:
Reason #1: I had no idea what to do with it for the longest time. Suddenly it was there, without warning, and with no books to explain it away. In my isolation, I lacked any rout
ine sources for information regarding my genitals. Most of the programming on the TV in the Main Room is filled with shows suitable for His Holiness Patriarch of Moskow and all Rus,† so there wasn’t much chance of me figuring out what I was supposed to do with my pee pole from these programs. My only source of sexual information came out of what I could eavesdrop, from which I learned that the size of a Hui is important, as is the frequency with which it is used. At the Mazyr Hospital for Gravely Ill Children, the nurses appeared to be split between those who wished to see their husbands’ Hui more and those who wanted to see their husbands’ Hui less. None of them appeared to be content with the amount in which they were currently experiencing their husbands’ Hui. Nevertheless, even after these conversations I still was not able to determine what I should be doing with my own Hui.
My first instinct was to ask my mother the next time that she showed up in my head. When she finally arrived a few days later, we exchanged some small talk before I said:
“Mother, can I ask you something personal?”
“Of course. Anything, Ivan,” she replied.
“Could you please tell me more about my Hui?”
“Oh, Ivan, in the name of Saint Peter above, is that a question for a mother?” she said before scurrying off in my mind’s eye. This is when I realized the limitations of fabricating your own mother—she can only help you with the stuff you already know the answer to. This left me with two options: I could beg the God-fearing Nurse Natalya for a book, or I could approach the Director, who seemed to have no shortage of experience with his genitals. As much as I dreaded it in every cell of my incomplete being, I decided that asking him was my best gambit. My decision may also have had something to do with the fact that he was the only other male at the hospital who didn’t live with a stream of drool flowing down his chin.
Finding a moment when the Director was not in a wretched mood, or on the phone, or behind a closed door, or advancing inappropriately with one (or more) of the nurses was approximately impossible. I waited three insufferable weeks until conditions were right, at which point I wheeled myself up to his room and knocked on the door.
“Yes, Isaak, please come in,” he said without lifting his eyes from the papers on his desk.
“It’s Ivan.”
“Of course. What can I help you with that the nurses can’t?”
“Yes, sir. I’ve experienced swelling. Here,” I said, pointing between my legs. Even at ten, I remember seeing how uncomfortable this made the Director.
“That’s an erection, Ivan. It happens naturally to boys your age.”
“What am I supposed to do with it?”
“Nothing, Ivan. Nothing. Don’t touch it. There could be consequences.”
“What consequences?” I asked.
“Well, possibly difficulties with vision. It has also been correlated with mental illness and psychosis. Addiction and dependency too. Not to mention you may lose the ability to achieve orgasm during ordinary sex.”
“How do you know? Do you touch your Hui?” I asked.
“No, of course not. And that’s not what you call it, Ivan. It’s a…”
I stopped listening at that point. I was not too young to see that the Director couldn’t be trusted.
One week (and three erections) later, I gave in and went to Nurse Natalya. I found her in the Main Room changing an IV attached to Dennis and asked:
“Could you meet me in my room when you’re done?”
She looked back at me with her maternally concerned eyes and said, “Of course, Ivan. I’ll be there in two minutes.”
One minute later, she showed up in my room.
“What is it, Ivan?” she asked, approximately concerned. “Is everything okay?”
“No, everything is not okay,” I said. “I’ve been having erections, and I don’t know what to do with them.”
She was silent for a few seconds and then made a face that said, You’re choosing to approach me on this topic, Ivan? I’m almost your mother, for the love of God in all of heaven. Isn’t there anyone else you could ask around this place for a sex lesson? Oh, wait, there is no one else. I am the only one who can help you out. Well, Ivan, the words sure as hell won’t be leaving my lips. That is a promise.
After she thought all those things, this is what she said in real words:
“Well, Ivan, I can understand your concern. Let me get you a book.”
The next day she returned with two books. One was called руководство по сексу* and the other искусство мастурбации.† They were carefully placed on my bed when I wasn’t in my room, which was unusual protocol for Nurse Natalya (she usually wanted to share her opinion of the current shipment, but not this time).
Clearly, the exploration of these books led me to the how-tos of sexual intercourse (which I simply found frustrating because I would never have the opportunity to put my Hui inside of another person) and also masturbation. Which brings me to the second reason for the complicated relationship with my Hui: after exploring The Art of Masturbation, I was immediately convinced that my physical body was not at all prepared for the challenges of self-pleasure. While I conduct all my daily activities with my left hand, I’m fairly certain I would have been right-handed if I had been born with both hands. I come to this conclusion because everything I do with my left hand is clumsy and requires exhausting effort. And, from what I understood about masturbation through my research, it is not supposed to be exhausting.
That did not keep me from trying. It took me exactly one hour and thirty-seven minutes to burn through искусство мастурбации. One of the few things I do fast is read—this fact mixed with my unique motivation regarding the topic meant that I conquered the 216-page book in less time than it would take to sit through Swan Lake. I put the book down at exactly 11:18 in the A.M. I know this because I was haunted by the realization that there would be another ten hours and forty-eight minutes required to get me to 10:00 in the P.M., which is lights-out, or more specifically the time that I could be convinced that I would not be bothered by any nurse for the rest of the night so that I could engage in uninterrupted experimentation. As you can imagine, Reader, the prospect of getting caught in the act of masturbation was horrifying, partly due to the inevitable embarrassment and partly because of the leverage that the nurse would have over me.
Thus, the day passed by in excruciating increments of tiny time. I would wait as long as I could to check the clock, only to find that what felt like an hour was eleven minutes. I’ve often wondered if the countdown to everyone’s first orgasm is fraught with so much anticipatory anxiety. Regardless, the comforting truth about time is that no matter how slow it seems to move, it still passes nevertheless, and, eventually, I found myself alone in my room with a clock that read 10:03 in the P.M.
The next predicament was coming up with the proper stimulation for my first experience. The искусство мастурбации talks at length about using pornographic images to assist in the masturbation process. With that said, Reader, I’m sure you would not be surprised to find out that there is a limited supply of pornographic material at the Mazyr Hospital for Gravely Ill Children (and by limited supply, I mean I’ve searched every cupboard, drawer, and office—including the Director’s—in this building and have found nothing except a catalogue for a Finnish company that sells everything from recording equipment to beach apparel). Though it was not ideal, especially considering my desire to educate myself on the female form, I decided to use the images promoting the sale of summer bathing suits for my first attempt. Of course, they needed to remain undiscoverable, so I hid them inside of a small cut I made in the corner of my mattress. By the time I pulled them out, they were wrinkled and already starting to fade, but even in this condition, I could feel my Hui begin to move heavenward. This was my cue to pull down my shorts and begin to follow the techniques enumerated in the искусство мастурбации, which turned into frustration upon discovering t
hat three fingers are entirely insufficient for proper self-pleasure. This added to the fact that I have the strength and coordination of an infant meant that my first attempt was a two-hour collection of false alarms. I don’t need to go into detail about my specific movements (I’m sure you’re well aware of how ridiculous it looks). I can only say that every time I reached the point at which it felt like something truly transcendent was about to occur, my hand could not quite arrive at the proper rhythm and intensity to finish. Eventually, my arm would simply stop working out of fatigue, and I would need to start all over again. So I gave up in a fit of self-loathing on that first night.
The next night, I was at it again. This time, however, I made a sacred promise to myself that I would get there no matter how long it took. Apparently, my previous two hours of practice had enough impact on my strength and coordination that after ten minutes a sensation built up at the base of my Hui that was so powerful that I released all eleven years of my accumulated malofya* onto my sheets, my floor, and three of my walls. During the eight or nine seconds in which it was happening, I could only think about how familiar the feeling was, and before the whole explosion ended, I realized that I had felt the same sensation several times before in dreams. This time, however, the sensation was so overwhelming that I almost aborted the mission by the third second. Admittedly disappointed with my first orgasm, I fell asleep debating whether the whole experience was worth the time, energy, and strategic planning that I invested in it. But despite this sentiment, I found myself tugging away at myself all the same the next night, and then the night after that. According to my current count, I haven’t missed a night in the past six years. My daily practice has the added benefit of increased coordination, and my left arm now has twice the muscle mass that it had a few years ago. Still, the conflict between my lust and my physical limitations continues to result in masturbatory sessions that can run anywhere from thirty minutes to six hours. Conveniently, there is no shortage of time at the Mazyr Hospital for Gravely Ill Children.
The Invisible Life of Ivan Isaenko Page 8