Eduard's suitcase

Eduard Limonov’s suitcase is both a battered companion to his successive departures and a measure of how little of his life has been settled. Stolen from Steven Gray when Limonov left New York City for Paris, it followed him through war, the Altai, and one prison after another. On the eve of his release, its return brings that long itinerary into the immediate, practical question of what he will wear; years later, the possibility of finally putting it down becomes an image of the settled old age the narrator wishes for him.

Identity and Provenance

The suitcase is one of Limonov’s prized possessions. He took it from Steven Gray when he left New York City for Paris, and it remained with him across sharply different settings: war, the Altai, and successive prisons. Its importance is not described through luxury or appearance, but through its persistence. As his circumstances repeatedly changed, the suitcase carried on as a personal possession linking one departure to the next.

By the day before his release, it had been kept in storage at the prison. Limonov was authorized to retrieve it, and its contents were spare: two shirts, one black and one white. The object thus returns not as a packed archive of his travels but as a practical piece of baggage containing the immediate choices of release.

The Eve of Release

That night, inmates gathered for a farewell party in the bunkhouse. Their goodbyes included hugs and slaps on the back, but the discussion turned at length to which shirt Limonov should wear the following day. His release was to be filmed for television: a station had requested it, Limonov hesitated, and the camp director insisted. The inmates greeted the prospect of the filming with the excitement of children promised a trip to the circus.

Anton, a boy sentenced to thirty years for torturing and then murdering someone, urged Limonov to choose the white shirt because it was more stylish. Limonov objected that he was leaving prison, not going to a nightclub. The suitcase makes this exchange concrete: after an itinerary of war and imprisonment, the immediate question is which of its two shirts belongs at the threshold of freedom, while that threshold is being turned into a televised occasion.

The Prospect of Putting It Down

In September 2007, the narrator accompanied Limonov into the countryside to see a property his wife had bought a couple of hours outside Moscow. The abandoned and vandalized wooden house stood on an estate with a pond, meadows, and birch forest. Watching Limonov talk with a local craftsman, the narrator imagined that, at sixty-five, with a wife and an eight-month-old child, he might have had enough of war, bivouacs, the knife in his boot, police breaking down his door at dawn, and prison bunks. Perhaps, the narrator hoped, he wanted at last to put down his suitcase and settle in the countryside.

That hope belongs to the narrator, not to a confirmed decision by Limonov. The narrator imagines a quiet future of bookshelves, deep couches, grandchildren, berry jam, and long conversations, and later asks whether Limonov can see himself growing old in the house. In this final image, the suitcase’s long movement gives force to the idea of setting it down: it represents a possible end to repeated displacement, but the book leaves that ending uncertain.