The Maya Pill

by German Sadulaev

  Nils quickly sorted through his e-mail and sent a few notes to each of the company’s business partners, including a short message to Maximus, his Russian colleague at Cold Plus. Nils indulged in a moment’s silence, recalling his adventures in St. Petersburg. He’d probably told Maximus a little too much about the pills. But no matter, that was better than letting him know the real truth about what Triple F was selling.

  Nils went through his e-mail, signed some shipping documents and held a five-minute briefing for his staff. Having dispensed with his regular morning routine, Peter closed his office door, sank down on the chair in front of his monitor and entered a web address into his browser: www.i-xxx.com.

  * God save us from the fierce Normans! (Latin).

  SEX WITHOUT BORDERS

  The site’s welcome page was plastered with photographs of half-naked models and invitations to enter virtual sex video chat rooms. Uninhibited Latin American, Nigerian, Thai, even Aleut girls were available to talk to you in real time. Nils was a member; he typed in his password and clicked on the banner for the “Russian Girls” room.

  An auburn-haired girl with a clipped-on hair extension, wearing a skimpy slip, sat on a sofa in front of her computer, fanning herself with an out-of-date issue of Liza magazine. She looked bored.

  Noticing that a member had logged on, she perked up, bared a mouthful of even, white teeth, and waved seductively into her webcam. There was picture, but no sound. Smiling, she began typing her own brand of broken English into the chat box:

  Hi cowboy! What’s your name?

  Peter typed in his answer: My name is Peter. I’m from the Netherlands. Let’s talk!

  Sure Peter! With all my pleasure . . . What do you want me . . . to tell about?

  The girl cast an anxious glance at the clock displayed in the lower right corner of her screen. Every hour of commercial chat cost the “member” fifty euros. The girls got forty percent of the final tally. But her contract specified that unless she can keep the client online for at least ten minutes, she gets nothing.

  My name is Tanya. I’m 19 years old. And I like to talk with guys about desires . . . Also I like to show my body . . .

  To keep Peter’s attention, the girl somewhat abruptly lowered the left strap of her slip, exposing half of her breast.

  That’s nice. U R beautiful.

  Nils scooted his chair back slightly, loosened his belt and slipped his hand through his fly.

  I don’t have much experience in love and sex. Indeed, I’m just a little girl, you see. Do you like foolish little girls like me?

  The girl lowered the other strap and exposed the upper part of her breasts down to the edge of her bra, which, modest girl that she was, she evidently never removed, even in the tanning booth.

  Yeah, baby, go on!

  I think that you are very handsome. Oh, let me imagine, you are a big man with great gadget. And you know how to do all these nasty things with girls.

  Yessss, I do, baby.

  Can you teach me? Please, say to me, how can I give pleasure to you?

  The model hitched up her slip, and the edge of her white panties peeked out from underneath.

  Tell me about your country.

  Sorry?

  Tell me about Russia, baby.

  Oh . . . Russia, yes . . .

  The girl hesitated. She hadn’t encountered this particular perversion before. She was usually asked to spread her legs and expose herself, to get down on all fours and poke various objects into her various orifices, but no one had ever asked her to talk about Russia. But she quickly collected herself, and began searching her memory for tidbits from her school textbooks or training manuals for tour guides and translators. Yes, she had taken English in night school when she’d been planning a career as a tour guide. Her original idea had been to take foreigners on excursions around the Golden Ring . . . But offering tours around her own body had turned out to be far more profitable.

  Russia is a great country. We have many forests, lakes, rivers . . . Yeah, deep rivers. And fields with smooth grass, very smooth, just like my skin . . .

  Tanya started to improvise, running her hand up and down her breasts as she spoke. Peter’s grip on his cock tightened and he began to stroke it slowly.

  And what about people?

  People are nice and friendly. But you are better, I’m sure!

  The girl was afraid he’d get jealous of the male Russian population.

  Actually, there are not so many people in our country. Most part of territory is a virgin land.

  Virgin?

  Virgin land. Ever waiting for strong man like you.

  To fuck it?

  Yeah, to fuck it over! That is our history. In the very beginning, as it is said in ancient chronicle, people of Russia approached men from West and said “Our land is large and plentiful, but without order. Come and possess us.” So it is now. We got oil and gas, wood, furs, caviar, and also plenty of lonely girls. We got many resources. But we have lack of fuckers like you.

  U got me now, baby!

  I feel it! And I’m horny!

  Sing! Sing a Russian song, baby!

  The apple and pear trees are in bloom,

  Mists have come over the river . . .

  Oh, yeah! How about poetry? Do you know any Russian poetry?

  I think I do . . .

  Let me have it!

  Tatyana’s Letter to Onegin:

  I’m writing you this declaration—

  What more can I in candor say?

  It may be now your inclination

  To scorn me and to turn away . . .

  Ah, shit! I’m coming! Who’s your daddy?

  My daddy?

  Who is your daddy, fucking Russia?

  You. U R my daddy!!!

  Peter came into a napkin he had had the foresight to stick into his pants and immediately clicked exit. The session was over. Nine minutes and change.

  Nils tossed the napkin with his slimy unborn offspring into the trash can. Then he took a second napkin from the desk, carefully wiped his hands, and tossed it away after the first one. He sat limply at his desk for a couple of minutes, eyes closed. Visions arose into his consciousness: golden fields of wheat, oil rigs, mountains of diamonds, piles of bearskins, a castle with rows of severed heads adorning its walls, and, of course, forestfuls of graceful, supple birches. He pictured himself riding along a cobblestone road through Russian pastoral landscapes, encased in glittering steel armor and wearing a helmet with a splendid plume on top. Russian serfs, notably female, lined both sides of the roadway, all of them on their hands and knees, and one of them, a maiden of striking beauty, came out into the middle of the road to greet him, her master, with a silver tray bearing a loaf of fragrant, freshly baked bread, a salt cellar, and a small bowl filled with pure cocaine.

  Peter took a moment to savor his dream, then turned back to his work.

  He had to deal with a Russian complaint that had come in the night before concerning the quality of a shipment of frozen potatoes. The Russians had gotten picky lately. They used to accept anything, so long as the label said “Product of the Netherlands,” and never used to complain. Now they’d started spelling everything out meticulously in their contracts, and when the shipments arrived they would bring a surveyor along; they would fish around in the cartons, break the seals, and would call in some expert at the slightest suspicion; before you knew it, they’d be lodging a complaint.

  It was the oil that had spoiled them. First oil, then gas. And the throngs of beautiful girls whom the Russians themselves could screw for nothing, but who would charge foreigners just for looking. It wouldn’t last forever, though. Their own Russian expert, a member of the Academy of Sciences, said that the known oil reserves would only last five or six more years. And, in the meantime, the Russians had forgotten how to plow their land and grow their own food. The time would come, he said, when they would crawl to the Netherlands on their knees for a piece of rotten potato and would beg the Dutch to buy
their own daughters.

  But all that was just poetry. Prose required that the complaint be forwarded to the supplier, in China. Triple F actually purchased its Dutch potatoes from a different Dutch company, but they were still delivered directly from the Chinese port of Qingdao.

  Nils had long suspected that the unscrupulous Asians had been pasting fake labels on their own low-grade potatoes, substituting them for the name-brand product, licensed and monitored by a European company, that they had been contracted to supply. Nils had already written his Dutch partner about the complaint. But today he decided to speak directly with the Chinese export manager, a guy named Ni Guan. This Ni Guan dealt with direct exports to Russia, apparently through that same company, Cold Plus. The Chinese sold frozen fish straight to the Russians, but their potatoes went through European packaging plants. Russia was the ultimate purchaser, and Ni also handled the potatoes accounts. And, really, they didn’t devote sufficient attention to the quality of their deliveries, figuring—based on their previous experience with the Russian consumer—that Russians weren’t picky and would eat anything. But the times were a-changing. The Russian purchasers were bringing their European partners to heel; in their turn the Europeans would have to train the Asians.

  JASPER ROOT

  The time difference between Qingdao and St. Petersburg is five hours. Between Qingdao and Drachten, seven hours. Ni Guan was about ready to leave work when the phone on his desk rang. The secretary reported that Peter Nils from the Frozen French Fries company was on the line, and she connected them.

  His European customer had a complaint about potatoes; the official version had arrived by fax an hour before. Ni listened patiently without interrupting, taking notes on a scrap of paper, as the Dutch representative berated him. Ni promised that the problem would be solved to their satisfaction, and that in the future his company would pay special attention to the quality of goods being sent to the Netherlands.

  Ni-Eddie hung up, gathered his cell phone, apartment keys, and wallet into a plastic bag and left the office. On the way down in the elevator, all he could think about was some hot rice or noodles. It had been another busy day at work; Eddie hadn’t even had time for lunch.

  On the first floor, he was surprised to see his young colleague Tsin Chi—Cindy—waiting for him at the door to the elevator. Ni gave her a polite smile and bowed his head slightly to convey bye, see you tomorrow, poka. In addition to a couple of Chinese dialects, Ni also knew English well, could communicate tolerably in Russian, and had recently started learning German.

  But Cindy blocked his way. She stared directly into her boss’s eyes and didn’t say a word.

  “Comrade Tsin?”

  “Yes, my lord?”

  “Did . . . you have something you wanted to ask me?”

  “Yes, sir, I did. I wanted to ask why you’ve been avoiding me. Maybe I’m not pretty enough for you? Maybe you’re holding out for a supermodel off the cover of Playboy, and nothing less will do? Maybe I should sign up for a photo session and bring you a dirty magazine with my photos in it, so that you’ll notice me as a woman?”

  Tsin’s voice was a little too loud for the lobby, and Ni glanced around uneasily. The elevator doors parted and a crowd of coworkers poured out. Comrade Luan, the department head, walked by. Ni bowed to him, and his boss gave a barely detectable nod in return.

  “Let’s talk somewhere else. I’m starving—you must have seen that I didn’t have time for lunch. We can have dinner together. Follow me.”

  Eddie made for the exit. Cindy waited a moment, then followed him out.

  There were a number of restaurants around the business complex, but Eddie didn’t want to run into anyone from the company. Why fuel gossip? He crossed the street to the bus stop and boarded one headed for the entertainment district by the shore. Cindy got on after him. The bus started off and merged into the heavy traffic creeping out of town.

  A half-hour later the high-tech buildings of the business district were behind them, and they found themselves in a little Chinese version of Europe, complete with red-tile-roofed houses and neatly kept gardens.

  Qingdao, translated from Chinese, means “green island.” Indeed, this part of the city, viewed from the ocean side, looks like one big park, with German-style mansions scattered about. In 1898 China sold Qingdao to Germany, along with the right to build a railroad and develop mineral deposits within a fifteen-kilometer zone on both sides of the tracks. Coal-mining activity and the port spurred development, and the town grew and flourished. The Europeans introduced electricity and founded a university—the one where Ni Guan got his degree.

  After the Germans left, history hurled Qingdao into chaos: The Japanese occupied the city, then Chinese revolutionaries took over, then the Japanese occupied it again, and then China again, the Kuomintang, and again Chinese revolutionaries.

  With the Chinese industrial boom, Qingdao became the major shipping port of the eastern province of Shandun, with an annual turnover of over two hundred million tons. Skyscrapers rose and filled with businesses. In the free economic zone of Qingdao, capitalism began to develop at a fantastic pace, under sensitive supervision by communist warships with large-caliber weaponry: The port of Qingdao is the home base for the People’s Republic of China’s North Sea Fleet.

  The German colonists were gone, but they left behind those red-tile-roofed mansions and the best beer in all of China: Qingdao (Tsingtao). Ni was giving this beer some serious consideration.

  They got off the bus and went into a small establishment that served German food—that is to say, Bavarian sausages and Chinese beer. Ni and Tsin sat down and gave their order to a deferential young waiter, then lit up a couple of Great Wall cigarettes—made in China from Chinese tobacco at a factory licensed by a multinational corporation. Ni smoked the strong kind; Tsin’s were light, thin, menthol cigarettes, made for ladies.

  The restaurant’s radio played gently in the background, Chinese pop. The song was about a girl’s love for her fiancé, a sailor who was heading out to sea. Despite the melancholy lyrics, the melody and rhythm were fairly upbeat, as though the girl had no real intention of pacing the shore in solitude while her betrothed plowed the briny depths.

  Ni sat silently; only after he’d finished off a couple of sausages and a half liter of cold Qingdao did he finally speak:

  “Tsin, for a long time now I have been wanting to tell you what a wonderful girl you are, and how much I like you, but . . .”

  “But what? Is there someone else?”

  Tsin hadn’t touched her sausages and had just been staring at Ni the whole time, which made it a little awkward for him to eat.

  “No, I don’t have anyone else.”

  “So, what, you’re gay?”

  Ni nearly spit out his mouthful of beer. His face flushed bright red.

  “Comrade Tsin! What are you talking about?”

  “Don’t call me comrade, here. Here I’m just a girl who wants to find her way into your bed. So the question, given the circumstances, is perfectly normal.”

  Her candor shocked Eddie. Though he himself had been wanting to have this conversation, in a sense.

  “No, that’s not it. That is, it’s not that I’m gay . . . it’s something else . . . I’m not gay . . . shit!”

  Cindy brightened and slapped Eddie gently on the arm.

  “Right, boss, I get it. You’re not gay. So wouldn’t this be a good time for us to drink out of the same glass like they do in Europe, so we can officially be friends?”

  Without waiting for an answer, Tsin took her glass and entwined her arm with Ni’s. They drank and Tsin leaned across the table for a kiss.

  “No!”

  Ni put his empty glass down on the table, leaned away, and looked around to see if there was anyone nearby who might know him.

  “You see, Tsin,” he said, “there are certain things that I just can’t tell you about. It’s about my family. I couldn’t get married just now.”

  “What did y
ou say?”

  “I’m not free. For the next few years I can’t allow myself to marry and have children, I mean, a child. That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you.

  Ni’s confession made no impression on Tsin.

  “So?”

  “What do you mean, ‘so’?”

  “What do you mean, ‘what do I mean’?”

  Eddie was confused. He would have thought it would all be obvious to Cindy, who was, after all, a clever young lady.

  “I can’t marry you, so we can’t date, or be together.”

  “Who told you that?”

  Ni was utterly and sincerely baffled at this. Then Tsin’s shoulders began to quiver. She covered her mouth with her hand and laughed silently.

  When she recovered, she bent her head over the table and said, a little too loudly:

  “Eddie, I don’t want to marry you. I don’t want to marry anyone right now, if you must know. I just want someone to sleep with. That’s all, get it? Tingi-tingi, chpok-chpok, like in the movies. You watch porn, don’t you? Of course you do, everyone does. Or even better, like in Japanese anime. I want you to lay me out on your bed, spread my legs out wide, and fuck me hard. I want you to lean me up against the windowsill and screw me there. I want you to screw me on the floor, pressing my head into the tatami. I want you to flatten me up against the wall and lift up my left leg. I want . . . ”

  “Enough!”

  With trembling hands, Ni got out his wallet, counted out some bills, tossed them on the table, and stood up. But Tsin took his hand and stared into his eyes.

  Ni Guan felt his resolve weaken. He was going to have to give in.

  “I live alone.” Cindy raised her hand. The waiter appeared.

  “Call us a cab, please.”

  The Qingdao weather report came on the radio: 23.5 degrees Celsius, overcast, a north wind, four meters per second, humidity 94.1%. When Eddie and Cindy left the café, a light rain was falling. The cab arrived. Cindy tipped the waiter, who had accompanied them out, and gave the driver her address.