Life in a Suitcase

You must run. You knew this moment would come. You’ve read enough dystopian books, you’ve seen enough of these movies. Something would happen – a disease, a war, an asteroid, something that would collapse all your life as you knew it, and you would be forced to run. To save yourself and your family. And now it arrived. For weeks the news had been disturbing. At first it was only fragments—burning cities somewhere far away, airports closed without explanation, governments urging calm while their ministers quietly disappeared from public view. Then the shortages began. Supermarkets emptied overnight. People started buying water, batteries, anything that might help them survive a few days without order. People around me were amazed, and troubled. But I wasn’t. I knew it would happen, and I’m not saying I was in any sense ready for it physically, I had no idea what to do, but at least I was ready mentally. I don’t know how comforting that was.

I looked at my small suitcase. They said that’s all I can bring with me. A suitcase and me. I considering ignoring them, taking my car and running away wherever the road takes me, but the news reports showing gigantic traffic jams all over convinced me I should do better. I knew I wouldn’t be able to cope with street barricades on my own, cope with road barriers and people who shed their cultural and civilized norms and became savages. I saw the videos. People pushing each other in gas stations, fighting over the last bottles of water, breaking windows of stores they had passed every day for years. It didn’t take long. Civilization turned out to be thinner than I thought, even after reading all those dystopian sci-fi novels I was so fond of. Like a fragile skin people shed the moment fear took over. I’m just not made of this stuff.

So, a suitcase it is.

What shell I put inside it? A long time ago, when I thought about this kind of scenario, I thought I must save my memories – pictures, books, documents. But it’s pointless now, all this stuff is in the cloud, I don’t think I have any physical data I can take. Will the cloud and my data inside it survive? I don’t know, and it doesn’t matter. Maybe yes, maybe no, there’s nothing I can do about that now.

Unfortunately, I can’t stuff the piano inside the suitcase. I sat on the piano bench for a moment. My fingers rested on the keys, but I didn’t play. The instrument had followed me through half my life, through apartments and relationships, through good years and terrible ones and awful ones. Music had always been the place where the world made sense. Now the world itself was breaking apart, and the piano would remain behind, silent. I thought about that last piece I was struggling with, it always took me so long to play but I’ve enjoyed the process. It was the first part of Beethoven’s “Apassionata” piano sonata. This tragic, sad, emotional and demanding piece of music. The opening notes echoed in my head, even though I didn’t dare playing them right now, who knows which strange creatures my playing would draw to my apartment. I sighed loudly and sadly. Can I survive without my piano? We’ll just have to wait and see. All those score books, those I’ve collected for years, are worthless. Is the music over?

My cellular phone will be in my pocket. Who knows if it proves itself as useful but at least it won’t consume the limited space in my suitcase.

Clothes. Yeah, I should take some underwear, my mom always told me to wear new ones. Just in case, you know, I’ll be taken into a hospital or something. Well, mom, I guess you’d never have imagined this kind of scenario, but if you were here I’m sure you would advise me about the underwear. And socks, a shirt or two. I folded the clothes slowly. One shirt reminded me of a concert I had played years ago. Another still carried the faint smell of a winter evening. It felt absurd to choose which fragments of my life deserved a place in the suitcase and which ones would stay behind forever.

I don’t know if it is hot or cold where they’re taking us to. I’ll take some winter clothes. If it’s needed, I’ll shorten them. Ah, a knife. It can prove itself useful.

That’s all? All my life sums up to a few clothes and a knife?

I’ve looked around me. There are only a few minutes left until I have to be at the gathering point. If I miss it, I’m on my own, they made this one crystal clear: you’re late, you stay. And I don’t wish to be on my own now.

I took the door key, turned the lock and stepped out, looking around the familiar surroundings of my small apartment. Trying to memorize it, feeling it’s probably the last time I see it.

And then my eyes spotted this old brown notebook I once bought in an old shop and never used. It lay dusty and forgotten on a shelf in the entrance. I’ve always loved notebooks, notepads, stationery, everything that can be written on. Even long after everybody stopped writing on paper and forgot how to write, I kept buying those things, mostly not knowing what to do with them. Perhaps writing is the only way people resist disappearing. Civilizations collapse, buildings crumble, but words sometimes survive. Someone, somewhere, might find this notebook one day and know that we existed—that we were afraid, confused, and trying to understand what was happening. In an unconscious moment, I rushed to the kitchen cabinet next to the fridge, grabbed the short pencil that was lying there for ages, and another pen I’ve found. I took the notebook and shoved it into the suitcase. That’s all. If I am able to write, I’ll write. And tell. And maybe someone would read.

And maybe not.

I’ve locked the door behind me and rushed down to the gathering point.

That’s all.

A suitcase.

And whatever I remember.