My Life as a Silent Movie: A Novel

18

, 18 I put Ilya to bed and covered him. He was shivering, though the hotel room was overheated and stuffy. I laid next to him and wrapped my arms around him to warm him. He was on his side, trying to catch his breath, trying not to start coughing. How could I have not known he was so ill? How had he kept going? I’d seen him fencing, damn it. I could feel his heart beating, feel the energy there, the will, the fierce control that I’d felt during my visit with Mosjoukine in the monastery. It was what kept them both alive. Another trait of our father’s I didn’t share. His eyes closed, drifting into sleep. I stayed awake. I thought about Mosjoukine. Where was he now? If he had known I was coming, would he have asked me, not some younger sibling, to take him away? Would he have asked me to take him back to Paris? “Too old,” Ilya said, without opening his eyes, and I realized I must have said what I was thinking aloud. I poked him. “He was a young 102,” I said, joking. Even at 102, Mosjoukine was not too frail for life in Paris. “Not him,” Ilya said. “You. He always goes for the younger woman. It’s the movie star in him.” I said, “Forty-two is young to a man over 100.” Ilya started to laugh, then cough, and I had to get him a wet towel and hold his head. When he was done coughing, I could feel his heart beating in his chest, as if it were a bomb ticking, as if his life were a clock running down. Ilyawokeupatdusk.Themorphinehe’dgottenfromPavel’sfriendwaswearing off, and his eyes were bright and wet with the pain. His breathing was fast 175 and shallow. “You’ll have to go to the pharmacy for me,” he said. “You can take Pavel’s note.” So I went out into a new snow, because I couldn’t say I wouldn’t, even though the idea of buying drugs in this illegal way in a city I did not know, in a country in which, as Mosjoukine had told me, there were prisons inside of prisons, scared me so much my hands shook. The pharmacist let me charge the drugs to my credit card. He gave me three vials. He spoke perfect English. He told me he’d studied one year at the Mayo Clinic. Did I know the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota? Yes, I said, I certainly did. It was near my house in America, or at least only a few states away. He liked Minnesota, he said, except that the winter was so bitterly cold. Colder, he insisted, than in Moscow. Then he counted out three disposable syringes with needles, still sealed and sterile. “These are harder to get than the morphine,” he told me. “So don’t lose one.” Then he gave me instructions. I could give my brother no more than two injections in six hours. “What would happen if I did?” I asked. I was pretty sure Ilya had been taking them nearly that often. What if it wasn’t enough? “An overdose will suppress his heart rate,” the pharmacist said. “He’ll stop breathing.” Back at the hotel, Ilya sat dressed on the couch with a fresh bottle of vodka, trying to work on the pain shot by shot. He took the bag from the pharmacy into the bathroom. I had the strong sense it wasn’t good to mix the two, but we had moved beyond that, really. We were way out to sea in the fog of what-thehell -difference-does-it-make. He looked better when he came out. It was past dinner time, but neither of us mentioned food. “I should show you how to do that,” he said to me. “Are you squeamish about needles?” “No,” I said. “I don’t think so. Not about getting shots anyway.” “You might have to do it for me, sooner or later.” Later seemed overly optimistic. “No problem,” I lied just a little. “I can do it. I do tougher things every day.” He kissed me on top of my head. “Take me back to Paris,” he said. “I want to sleep in my own bed.” “Now?” “Now,”hesaid,handingmethecellphoneoffthecouch.IrangPavel,andthis time he answered. I handed the phone to Ilya. Whatever Ilya said, he managed 176 it in Russian. I looked...