The Last Hiccup (5 page)

The man appeared terrified of young Vladimir.

A few moments passed before Vladimir exited the café and walked back across the street. He rounded the car and took his seat in the passenger's side. In virtual disbelief, Sergei watched the child shut the car door and look up at him with those expressionless eyes.

“What did you say to that man?” he said.

Vladimir hiccupped. His hollow expression remained unchanged.

“Answer me,” Sergei said.

The boy continued to stare.

Sergei didn't know what to do. He couldn't remember a time in his adult life in which he'd been quite so confused.

“Wait here,” he said. Sergei left the vehicle running and walked briskly across the road. He pushed open the café door and a bell rang to signal his entrance. The shopkeeper was madly sweeping the floor, back and forth, over and over again on the same spot. He stopped immediately when Sergei appeared.

“My good sir,” Sergei said, “what did that boy say to you?”

The man didn't respond. He took two steps backward and shook his head, then scurried behind the counter. When Sergei had purchased coffee here less than thirty minutes earlier, the man had been in good spirits. He even chatted with Sergei about current events and jokingly baited him into banter about the extraordinary success of the local women's ice-hockey team. Now the shopkeeper's face was drenched in sweat, his eyes sodden with the beginnings of an incapacitating fear. Sergei stepped forward and, like a prisoner anticipating lashes from the whip, the man trembled, his arms clasped to his chest.

“What did Vladimir say to you?” Sergei said as gently as he could.

“I will ask you to leave my store,” the man said.

“Not until you tell me what the child said.”

The shopkeeper's yellow teeth dug into his bottom lip.

“Sir, I must insist,” Sergei said.

The man slammed his fist down on the counter. A small teacup and saucer had been sitting in the exact location on the console where his fist landed, a tiny stream of steam curling its way into the cool air. The shopkeeper's fist crashed straight into the teacup. Small shards of the fragmented cup scattered across the counter and spilled over onto the floor.

The man paused. He closed his eyes, gathered his faculties and then opened them again. His voice quavered. “Leave my store. Leave my store and never come back!”

Outside the light rain had picked up. Sergei stood in the burgeoning haze, watching the man from outside the shop. Across the street, Vladimir had crawled into the driver's seat and was leaning against the window. Sergei, who'd been observing this child day and night for well over a year now, noticed something for the first time. For an instant — and only an instant — a wicked gleam formed in young Vlad's eyes. Sergei saw in Vladimir what Markus had described. He saw not a child but a creature, an evil spirit bathed in malice. In the distance, a crackle of thunder sounded. The rain began to pour. It coated the streets and turned the snow on the ground into sopping-wet piles of slush. The storm enveloped Sergei and his gaping disbelief. He could deny it no longer.

Vladimir, his prized patient and a child not yet ten years of age, was a monster.

Sergei spent much of that evening sitting quietly in his study, deep in thought. He brought his grandfather's pipe out from its casing, dabbed some tobacco in the bowl and lit the pipe for the first time since medical school. There he sat, alone in the dim candlelight, smoking and brooding for hours. Eventually he decided he'd lingered long enough and turned in for the evening at the early hour of 8 p.m.

He knew he'd have trouble falling asleep. Ever since his divorce, Sergei found the process of drifting into unconsciousness a most frustrating experience. Lying quiet and alone in a dark room was an open invitation for sadness and rage to meander into his mind. For a fortnight now, when he placed his head on his soft satin pillow, his ears would ring with the slight laugh his ex-wife had emitted when she saw the slacks he purchased on discount from Slavov's Men's Emporium. Over and over again the laugh transformed from girlish and inadvertent to condescending and deliberate. With her cackle drilling a hole in his soul, to the front of his mind soared the evening under moonlight when she refused his embrace. He remembered the indifference in her touch, how she'd moved to avoid his hand against her back. Each night Sergei would eventually grow so frustrated — with his ex-wife, Asenka, and what she'd done to him, but more with himself for not having the fortitude to move past the aching hurt of her abandonment — that he would stand up in a huff and pace his study, knock over random objects in sudden stabs of fury and reminisce about his childhood, a time when sleep flowed like a river, the dreams liquid, the slumber a cage of ecstasis from which he dared not escape.

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.”