Absurdistan

by Gary Shteyngart

  We drank to the difficult lives of impressionable poor folk and to the end of American imperialism in the guise of Jerry Shteynfarb. Valentin the artist seemed most roused by such sentiments, knocking his glass over and casting his gaze toward the heavens. He was a lean, sallow fellow with the overearnest expression of the Slavic intellectual. All the distinguishing signs were there: flaxen goatee, bloodshot eyes, porcupine hair, uneven bottom teeth, great big potato nose, thirty-ruble sunglasses from a metro kiosk. “You don’t like American imperialism, eh?” I said to him.

  “I’m a m-m-monarchist,” the fellow stammered.

  “Now, there’s a popular position for a young man these days,” I said, thinking: Oh, our poor dispossessed intelligentsia, why do we even bother to teach them literature and the plastic arts? “And who’s your favorite czar, then, young man?” I asked.

  “Alexander the First. No, wait…the Second.”

  “The great reformer. Well, that’s very nice. And who are your whorish friends?”

  “They’re a mother-daughter act,” the artist explained. “Some people derive a thrill from watching a mother and daughter touch. They’re from Kursk Province. Very cultured people. Elizaveta Ivanovna plays the accordion, and her daughter, Lyudmila Petrovna, can quote the major philosophers.”

  His use of their patronymics was strangely touching—I knew immediately what he wanted to do. After all, it is the only path our young Raskolnikovs can follow. “I will save them!” he said, and I knew immediately that he would not.

  “Presumably it is the daughter you fancy,” I said.

  “Both are like family to me,” said Valentin. “If you meet them, you see how they cannot live without each other. They are like Naomi and Ruth.”

  We drank two shots in rapid succession, one to Naomi and one to Ruth. The mood veered toward belligerence and sentimentality. I floated in and out of several conversations.

  “Fuck them all,” Ruslan the Enforcer was saying at one point, although I was unsure to whom he was referring. “Throw them all under the tram! See if I care!” The Georgian girl came with more mutton and a thick loaf of khachapuri, a homey flatbread filled with soft ricottalike cheese. We drank to Georgia, the girl’s beautiful, uncontrollable, destitute country, and she nearly threw her arms around our necks and cried out of shame and gratitude.

  A new set of vodka bottles came, one for each man.

  “It’s emasculating,” Alyosha-Bob was saying in a dramatic voice that he had started to adopt in Russia. “How can she do this to me? How much more can I give to her? I’ve given her everything that’s in my heart. Why can’t she love me for who I am? What does she think is waiting for her in Boston?”

  We drank to Alyosha-Bob’s heart. We drank to his manhood. We drank to his weak Jewish chin and billiard-ball head. We breathed out the poisonous vapors streaming down our gullets, a rainbow of alcohol floating above our heads, while the setting sun turned the spire of the nearby Peter and Paul Fortress into a flaming exclamation mark. We drank to the setting sun, our silent conspirator. We drank to the golden exclamation mark. We drank to Saints Peter and Paul.

  A new set of vodka bottles came, one for each man.

  “Why can’t my website be called www.ruslan-the-enforcer.com?” Ruslan was saying. “Why does it have to be ruslan-the-punisher.org?”

  “Because ruslan-the-enforcer.com is already taken,” Valentin gently explained.

  “But I am the Enforcer. I know Ruslan the Punisher. He lives with his mother by the Avtovo metro station. He is a nothing man. Now people will think that I am him. They won’t hire me to do the bloody work. I will be humiliated.” We drank to Ruslan’s renowned strength and his tough fists. We drank to his bad childhood. We drank to his website.

  A new set of vodka bottles came, one for each man.

  “I wish Russia were strong,” Valentin said, “and America weak. Then we could hold up our heads. Then my Ruth and Naomi could walk down Fifth Avenue and spit on whomever they wanted. No one would dare hit them or make them touch each other.” We drank to Russia being powerful again. We drank once more to Naomi and Ruth. We drank to America’s eventual comeuppance, which even Alyosha-Bob with his golden American passport thought would happen in due course.

  “Speaking of America,” Alyosha-Bob said. “Listen, Mishen’ka…” But instead of finishing, he hung his head in an alcoholic stupor.

  “What is it, Alyosha?” I said, touching his hand. But my friend had drifted off into sleep. His little body could not take as much vodka as my larger one. We waited a few minutes for him to revive, which he did with a start. “Arumph!” he said. “Listen, Mishka. I had a drink with Barry from the American consulate, and I asked the big jerk…” His head slumped again. I tickled his nose with parsley. “I asked the big jerk if you could get a visa to the States now that your papa’s dead.”

  My toxic hump throbbed with hope but also with the caveat that life could produce only disappointment. I burped quietly into my hand and prepared to wipe away the tear that would be forthcoming whether the news was good or bad. “And?” I whispered. “What did he say?”

  “No go,” Alyosha-Bob mumbled. “They won’t let in the child of a murderer. The dead Oklahoman was politically connected, too. They love Oklahomans in the new administration. They want to make an example of you.”

  The tear did not fall. But the anger found its way into my nostrils, from which it came out as a low, sonorous whistle. I picked up the fresh vodka bottle and threw it against a wall. It shattered in a brilliant show of light and clarity. The Mountain Eagle’s clientele fell silent, a dozen shaved heads glistening with midsummer sweat, the richer men looking toward their bodyguards with raised eyebrows, the bodyguards looking toward their fists. The Georgian restaurant manager peeked out from his office, took note of who I was, bowed respectfully in my direction, and motioned for the waitress to bring me another bottle.

  “Easy, Snack,” Alyosha-Bob said.

  “If you want to do something useful, throw a bottle at the Americans,” Ruslan the Enforcer said. “But make sure to light it first. Let them all burn to death. See if I care!”

  “America I want,” I said, uncapping the new bottle and, in contravention of all drinking etiquette, pouring it right down my throat. “New York. Rouenna. Take her from behind. Empire State Building. Korean grocery. Salad bar. Laundromat.” I managed to stand up. The table spun around me in a fantasia of colors and textures—mutton parts hoisted on spits, egg yolks dripping into cheese pies, stews gurgling with sunflower oil and blood. How could a late-afternoon meal turn so violent? Who were these cretinous people around me? Everywhere I looked, I saw failure and despondency. “They want an example to make?” I said. “I am the example. I am the best example for a good, loving, honest person. And I’m going to show them now!” I started staggering toward Mamudov and my Land Rover.

  “Don’t go!” Alyosha-Bob shouted after me. “Misha! You’re not capable of action!”

  “Am I not a man?” I shouted Beloved Papa’s popular refrain. And to my driver, Mamudov, I said: “Take me to the American consulate.”

  The generals in charge of the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service have surely seen it all. Migrant Mexicans chased by coyotes across the Rio Grande. Pitch-black Africans sealed into shipping containers so that they can sneak into the country, sell sunglasses by Battery Park, and then send food back to their children in Togo. Rafts full of dehydrated, starving, partially naked Hispanics washing up on the beaches of Miami to beg for asylum (I’ve always wondered why they don’t bring along an adequate supply of bottled water and snacks for such a long journey). But have they ever seen a rich and educated person impale himself upon the flagpole bearing the Stars and Stripes? Have they ever seen a person whose wallet contains the U.S. dollar equivalent of a dozen American dreams prostrate himself before them for a chance to see the Brooklyn Promenade once more? Have they ever met a cultured European who would choose the American berserk over the Belgian truffle? Forge
t the Mexicans and Africans and such. In a sense, my American story is the most compelling of all. It is the ultimate compliment to a nation known more for its belly than for its brain.

  As we drove up Furshtatskaya Street, Mamudov told me he would disgorge me at the consulate’s entrance and drive around the corner (civilian cars are not allowed to idle near the Americans’ sacred space). “You don’t look well, excellency,” Mamudov said to me. “Why not take a little nap back home? We’ll pick up an Asian girl from the brothel and some Ativan from the American clinic. Just as you fancy.”

  “To the khui with the Asian girl,” I said, kicking the door open. “Am I not a man, Mamudov?”

  Outside I found the prickled atmosphere that occurs whenever a Western consulate is forced to position itself along a dirty third-world street, whenever local neutrons and electrons are not allowed to mix with the West’s positive charge. I felt myself repelled by an invisible wind and almost fell backward. The American flag above the consulate’s portico, however, gave me a friendly wave of encouragement. I crossed the street and came upon two Russian meatheads, one in a Caesar haircut (to hide a massively receding hairline), the other a flattop, each about two thirds my size, beefed up with buckwheat and cheap sausage, each dressed in uniforms bearing the Stars and Stripes on their shoulders.

  “May we help you with something?” the flattop said as I staggered toward the announcement board where the Rules of Humiliation for Russian visa applicants were spelled out in English officialese: U.S. law places on each nonimmigrant visa applicant a presumption of immigrant intent. The burden of proof is on the applicant to overcome this presumption. In other words: You’re all whores and bandits, so why bother applying?

  “May we help you with something?” the flattop repeated. His face had a single long crack running from forehead to chin, as if he had been dropped one time too many as a child. “This place isn’t for you, fellow. The consulate is closed. Shove off.”

  “I want to see the chargé d’affaires,” I said. “I am Misha Vainberg, son of the famous Boris Vainberg who peed on the dog in front of the KGB headquarters during the Soviet times.” I leaned against the wall of the consulate building and spread my arms out, exposing the white of my stomach the way a puppy shows he’s defenseless in front of a larger dog. “My father was a very big dissident. Bigger than Sharansky! Once the Americans hear of what he’s done for freedom of religion, they’ll build a statue to him in Times Square.”

  The two security guards smiled broadly at each other. It isn’t often anymore that you can beat up a Jew in an official capacity in Russia, so when the chance comes, you have to grab it. You have to beat the Jew for church and fatherland or you’ll regret it for the rest of your life. The guy with the Caesar cut flexed the rolls of his neck in provocation. “If you don’t leave immediately,” he said, “you’re going to have some problems with us.”

  “Maybe you should go to the Israeli consulate,” the flattop suggested. “You’ll have better luck there, I’m sure.”

  “Suitcase! Train station! Israel!” Caesar chanted the familiar Russian mantra urging Jews to leave the country. Flattop took up the refrain, and they shared an enjoyable moment.

  “Just wait until I tell the chargé d’affaires that a pair of anti-Semites is guarding his consulate,” I sputtered, alcoholic drool dappling my chin. “You’ll be working at the consulate in Yekaterinburg, so dress warm, fuckers.”

  It took me a while to figure out that they were punching me. I was staring at a woman beating her carpet outside her window, thinking those were the thuds resonating along the quiet street. To be fair to my tormentors, Flattop and Caesar were good strong Russian boys in their late twenties, purposeful and furious. But beating the lard out of me is not an activity to be done casually; it takes hard work and a certain amount of smarts. One can’t just keep hitting me in the stomach and tits, hoping that I’ll crumple like a cheap pastry.

  “Ooooh,” I moaned, going through the motions of drunken incomprehension. “What’s happening to me?”

  “Let’s punch him in the liver and kidneys,” Caesar suggested, wiping his sweaty brow.

  They started aiming for those delicate organs but with few results. The elastic bands surrounding me took each bruise with equanimity. Whenever fist met fat, I merely stumbled to the side, turning to face either Flatty or Caesar. I used each brief occasion to tell them a little about my life.

  “I studied multiculturalism at Accidental College…”

  Left hook to liver.

  “My mama named me Misha, but the Hasids called me Moses…”

  Right jab to left kidney.

  “I’m starting a charity for the poorest kids, called Misha’s Children…”

  Hammer blow to liver.

  “Rouenna kissed the underside of my khui…”

  Kidneys, one-two punch.

  “I am a better American than most native-born Americans…”

  Roundabout to the spleen.

  “I went into analysis to work on my weight issues…”

  Open-fisted liver poke.

  “When I move back to New York, I think I’ll live in trendy Williamsburg…”

  There were curses and panting around me and the plebian stench of heavy exertion. I felt sad for these boys trapped in their stupid Stars and Stripes outfits, guarding the very people they should have hated the most. We would all die together in this stupid fucking city of frozen windowpanes and grotty courtyards. Our gravestones would be vandalized, our names covered with swastikas and bird shit, our mommies with their frying pans rotting away by our side. What was the point of it all? What was keeping us from the inevitable? “You should aim for the throat and spine,” I slurred to my assailants. “If you punch my hump, maybe I’ll die on the spot. What good is being alive, anyway, when it’s always at somebody’s mercy?”

  The guards slowly lowered themselves to the curb, and I slid down to join them, panting along with them out of camaraderie. They put their hands around my back, so that all three of us were linked. “Why do you want us to hurt you?” Flattop asked. “Do you take us for animals? We don’t like hurting people, no matter what you think.”

  “I have to go to America,” I said. “I’m in love with a beautiful girl from the Bronx.”

  “The famous one with the big ass?” Caesar asked.

  “No, her name is Rouenna Sales. She’s only famous on her own block. I’ve sent her a dozen electronic mails this week, and she hasn’t written back. She’s being chased by a poseur who has American citizenship. A writer.”

  “A good writer?” Caesar asked, taking out a flask and passing it to me.

  “No,” I said, taking a swig.

  “Well, then why are you worried? A smart girl wouldn’t go with a bad writer.”

  Flattop pressed me to him. “Don’t despair, brother,” he said. “We may have nothing in this country, but our women have kind, beautiful souls. They will love you even if you’re lazy or drunk or give them a thrashing now and then.”

  “Or even if you’re fat,” Caesar suggested. We took more swigs of the moonshine. As far as my new companions were concerned, I was no longer a parasitic Jew but someone to be trusted. An alcoholic.

  “I love Russia in my own way,” I blurted out. “If only I could do something for this country without looking like an asshole.”

  “You said something about Misha’s Children,” Flatty reminded me.

  “How can I mend young hearts when my own is broken? My dear papa was recently taken away from me. They blew him up on the Palace Bridge.”

  “Very sad,” Caesar said. “My father was just run over by a bread truck.”

  “Mine fell out of a window last year,” Flattop said. “It was only the second story, but he fell on his head. Kaput.” We each made a deep mourning sound with the combination of our noses, throats, and lips, as if we were tragically sucking noodles out of an iron bowl. The sound traveled slowly down the street, stopping at every door on the way and secretly ad
ding to each household’s despair.

  “We should get up,” I said. “I should leave you be. What if one of your American masters came walking down the street? They would fire you.”

  “Let them all go to the devil,” Caesar said. “We’re talking to our brother here. We would die for our brother.”

  “We’re already so ashamed of ourselves to be wearing the American flag on our sleeves,” Flattop said. “You remind us of our country’s dignity. They can punch Russia over and over again, but she will never fall. Maybe she’ll slide down to the pavement as we have…you know, for a drink…But she will never fall.”

  “Help me, brothers!” I cried, meaning no more than they should help hoist me to my feet, but they took it in a more spiritual light—they set me upright on my feet, dusted off my Puma tracksuit, rubbed the sore spots where they had hit me, and kissed me three times on my cheeks. “If you have children who need winter boots or anything else,” I said, “come by Bolshoi Prospekt on the Petrogradskaya Side, house seventy-four. Ask for Boris Vainberg’s son, they all know who I am. I’ll give you every one I have.”

  “If some mudak tries to hurt you because of your religion, or laughs at how fat you are, come to us and we will break his head open,” Caesar said.

  We toasted one last time with the flask, “To our friendship!,” and then I zigzagged my way down the street toward my waiting car. A light wind picked me up and guided me forward, cleaning the dust off my neck and wiping a spot of blood from my lower chin. The day was shifting from unbearable humidity to elusive summer pleasure, much as the violence against me had given way to pity and understanding. All I ask is the occasional reprieve.

  “Did you talk to the Americans?” Mamudov asked.

  “No,” I said, massaging the bruised flab around my kidneys. “But I spoke to some Russians, and they made me feel good again. There are wonderful countrymen around us, don’t you think so, Mamudov?” My Chechen driver said nothing. “Let’s go to the Mountain Eagle,” I said. “Maybe Alyosha-Bob and his friends are still there. I want to drink some more!”