Absurdistan

by Gary Shteyngart

  And below that, in smaller letters: GO, FIGA-6!!! IT’S YOUR BIRTH-DAY!!!

  I tossed a well-done hamburger into my mouth, inhaled some relish, got a Hyatt girl in a hula skirt to spray a sweet burst of perfume on my hands, and asked her to point me to the toilet. Along the way, I walked past a dozen two-meter-high tiki totem poles carved with various Pacific grotesqueries and wired to produce a kind of drumbeat Hawaiian-warrior sound (Halla walla halla walla halla walla), and a live palm tree studded with parrot cages. The parrots had been trained to say, “Kwaaak! Kellogg, Brown! Kwaaak! Halliburton!” along with phrases I had difficulty understanding, such as “LOGCAP! Kwaaak! LOGCAP! Kwaaak! It’s a cost-plus contract! It’s a cost-plus contract!”

  The fact that the parrots knew more about Golly Burton’s business than I did was distressing. I resolved to make myself more knowledgeable.

  KBR had put up a fancy outhouse featuring a marble pissing trough for the men. As in grade school, cliques had formed among the pissers. In one corner, Sevo and Svanï were grunting along, trying to get their prostates to cooperate; in another corner, Scottish engineers were painting their initials on the creamy marble. But I didn’t need a bright Halliburton parrot to know that the real power rested among the Texans and their ilk, so I waited for a slot to open and positioned myself in between two hulking Americans, their mustaches the off-white color of sandwich bread.

  I shyly took out my khui and started making a puddle with it, whistling the famous American song “Dixie,” hoping that would make me look legitimate. The men were all talking at once, their English both idiomatic and idiotic. I had to concentrate.

  “Ends up we’re throwin’ Bechtel a bone,” one of the men drawled past my head.

  “I got a call from over there, askin’ when the fun’s gonna start. When those Ukrainian boys gonna start shootin’ up the inferstructure. I say, ‘Don’ worry ’bout the mule, son, just load the wagon.’ ”

  “That’s Bechtel for ya. Big hat, no cattle.”

  “You boys jes’ wait till the cavalry shows up,” someone shouted over to my pissmates. “We’re gonna come out of this finer than frog hair. Remember the L-word?”

  “You talkin’ about them lesbian hookers again, Cliffey? Keep this man away from the Radisson.”

  “I’m talkin’ L-O-G-C-A-P. What that spell?”

  The men started to laugh, the fellow next to me tinkling on my sandal. “Cost plus!” someone shouted.

  “Cost plus!” the others picked up.

  “Blank check!”

  “Indefinite delivery!”

  “Indefinite quantity!”

  “Indefinite quality!”

  “Walk around and look busy!”

  “Here come that four-hour lunch!”

  “Here come that four-dollar blow job!”

  “Here come Cliffey’s sister!”

  “Hey, sorry, big fella,” said the guy next to me, his mouth exuding bourbon and fresh mint, as if he were a man-sized mint julep. “Looks like I jes’ tumped all over yer foot.”

  “No worries,” I said, shaking off my sandal. “My manservant will clean it up.”

  “Did you hear that, y’all?” cried the one called Cliffey, a short, beleaguered man who nonetheless seemed in charge. “His manservant gonna clean it up. I think we got a Bechtel senior manager here!”

  “All them Bechtel people’s up in San Francisco. Forget the manservants, they got man lovers!”

  “I’m not from this Bechtel,” I said timidly. “And I’m not a homosexual. I’m a Belgian. I represent Mr. Nanabragov and the SCROD.”

  “Nanabragov?” said my pissmate. “You mean Twitchy? Whut’s up with that hombre? He looks like the dog been keepin’ him under the porch.”

  “Naw, he a straight shooter,” Cliffey said. “He’s all about the LOGCAP. We do good business with him. And they love him over at DoD.”

  “What’s DoD?” I asked.

  “Department of Defense. Where you been, son?”

  “Ain’t I seen you with Nanabragov’s daughter?” another pisser asked me. “That little Nana Nanny Goat of his. You were walkin’ down the Boulevard ah National Unity with yer hand in her back pocket! You two hitched?”

  I shook my head. “No, we’re not married yet, sir.”

  “Thatta boy! He’s eatin’ supper before he even say grace.”

  “What’s your name, son?” Cliffey said.

  “Misha Vainberg,” I said.

  “Iner’t yer daddy the one who sold us that two-thousand-pound screw?”

  “Um, maybe,” I said.

  “Shoot, anyone who can pull the wool over us like that deserve to be the gov’nor. Your daddy was rarer than hen’s teeth, son. You oughta be proud of him.”

  The others at the piss trough drawled their approval of my Beloved Papa.

  “I am proud of my daddy,” I said with a drawl of my own. “Excuse me, fellers. I think I’m all done pissing here.”

  I left the outhouse, relieved in every sense. The KBR people were all right with me. It was true that Halliburton in general was maligned among a certain American set, but perhaps these coastal liberals didn’t understand the cultural relativism involved in being from Texas.

  There was only one term I still didn’t understand: LOGCAP. Perhaps I could get more information out of a Halliburton parrot. I found a particularly talkative specimen, his tail plumage the murky green of American currency. “LOGCAP,” I said to the bird.

  “Cost plus! Cost plus!” he squawked back.

  “LOGCAP! LOGCAP!” I shouted at the parrot.

  He lifted up his wing and did a number with his claw. “Kwaak!” he said. “DoD!”

  “Department of Defense?” I said. “I don’t get it, birdy. There are no American troops in Absurdistan. We’re out of the news cycle. No one even knows this place exists.”

  The parrot started strutting purposefully from one end of his cage to the other. He lifted up his beak so that his profile mirrored my own. “Look busy! Look busy!” he said. “Cost overrun! Kwaak!”

  Larry Zartarian sidled up to me. The poor hotel manager looked like he had spent the last week hiding out in a Finnish bunker. I was reminded of one of Ice Cube’s lyrics: “I ain’t down with the paleface…” “It’s no good, Misha,” he said, nervously rubbing his hands against his trousers. His mother snorted assent from behind one of the totem poles.

  “What’s no good, Larry?”

  “The SCROD has instructed me to clear off the rooftop by tomorrow.”

  “So?”

  “I got a team of Ukrainian mercenaries just checked in to the hotel. And Volodya, that ex-KGB asshole, has been snooping around the roof with some kind of telescope. They’re getting ready for something big.”

  I recalled what I had just heard at the pissing trough: Ukrainian boys gonna start shootin’ up the inferstructure.

  “The parrot mentioned cost plus,” I said. “What does that mean?”

  “ ‘Cost plus’ is one of the stipulations of the LOGCAP,” Zartarian said.

  “And what’s this LOGCAP?”

  Zaratarian rummaged through his pockets until he found a crumpled piece of paper. It was a printout from a U.S. government website, evidently from the days when the Internet was still allowed in Absurdistan. He pointed to the relevant section.

  LOGCAP—the Logistics Civil Augmentation Program—is a U.S. Army initiative for peacetime planning for the use of civilian contractors in wartime and other contingencies. These contractors will perform selected services to support U.S. forces in support of Department of Defense (DoD) missions. Use of contractors in a theater of operations allows the release of military units for other missions or to fill support shortfalls. This program provides the army with additional means to adequately support the current and programmed forces.

  Peacetime planning? Theater of operations? Programmed forces? “What the hell does this mean, Larry?” I asked Zartarian. “And what does it have to do with KBR or Absurdistan?”

 
; “LOGCAP means KBR is the exclusive provider of support services for the U.S. Army in a time of war,” Larry explained. “They had the same thing in Somalia and Bosnia. ‘Cost plus’ means they get a percentage of whatever money they spend. So the more KBR spends, the more they make. They can put in marble outhouses, monogrammed towels, endless training sessions, supply trucks just sitting around doing nothing. It’s like a blank check from the Defense Department.”

  “But the U.S. Army isn’t here,” I said. “And this isn’t Somalia or Bosnia. We’ve got oil here. We’ve got Figa-6. We’ve got a Sevo minority struggling against Svanï oppression.”

  “It’s not my job to interfere in the affairs of hotel guests,” Zartarian said, glancing briefly at his mother, still hiding behind the totem pole, “but I would just stay out of this whole thing, Misha. Don’t get involved with the SCROD.”

  “Yes, you’re correct,” I said to the sweltering Hyatt manager. “It’s not your job to interfere in my affairs. Please excuse me, Larry.”

  I went to look for my Nana. I found her arm-wrestling her father at a table reserved for the SCROD. Beneath her heavy face and round bosom, Nana had quite a sizable forearm, all muscle and heft. She looked like she had a lock on Twitchy, but at the last minute, her father pulled through and overpowered her, slamming her plump brown hand against the table.

  “You’re a brute!” Nana cried, pulling away and then rubbing her injured hand.

  “Six kisses,” her father said. “You owe me six kisses. Come on, now. Be a big girl. You made a bet, now pay up.”

  Nana sighed, forced a smile, and dutifully began to apply her mouth to her father’s face. “Hello, friends,” I said to my new family.

  “Ah, it’s Misha Vainberg, the hero of our time!” Mr. Nanabragov said, wiping off his daughter’s saliva. He pulled up a big plastic chair and squeezed my neck paternally. “We’ve got some good news for you, little son. I’m about to give you as much joy as my daughter’s been giving you. Would you mind if Parka Mook and I drop by your suite tomorrow? We’ll have a nice talk.”

  “I would be honored, Mr. Nanabragov,” I said. “There’s always water in my well for you to drink.”

  “Very good,” Nanabragov said. “Oh, look! Here come the hookers!”

  Accompanied by roof-shaking applause, the Hyatt prostitutes, nearly twenty in number, were running up to a makeshift stage where microphones had been set up for them. For this occasion, the nocturnal butterflies weren’t dressed in their usually slinky odes to the midriff and the hanging underarm. Some were wearing men’s suits and cowboy hats, others U.S. Army camouflage and Oakley sunglasses, and still others appeared in blackface, holding cardboard spears, the word “Somalians” written across their tarred naked breasts. “It’s like that Japanese theater,” Mr. Nanabragov said. “Where the women play both genders.”

  The prostitutes were timidly smiling at us from the stage, brushing the hair from their full dimpled faces, and throwing kisses to their customers, who were recognizable by the loudest applause and by calls of “Fatima, over here!” and “Hey, Natasha, who’s your daddy?”

  Nana was laughing at the display of her fallen countrywomen, and I was wanting to join in the fun when I noticed a man at a nearby table solemnly staring into his bowl of chili, his hands rigid in his lap. I recognized that tanned peach head immediately. “It’s Colonel Svyokla!” I shouted over to Mr. Nanabragov. “It’s Sakha’s murderer! Who invited him? Why is he here?”

  “Shhh, sonny,” Mr. Nanabragov said with a finger pressed to his lips. “It’s a Halliburton party. We’ve got to be respectful. Let’s deal with it later.”

  “I like it when you get all riled up,” Nana said, circling one of my ears with her finger. “You’re sexy when you stand for something, Misha.”

  One of the Hyatt prostitutes, a slim pretty one with naturally blond locks and eyes the color of pewter, was trying to get our attention. “Excuse me, gentlemen and lady!” she shouted. “Excuse me, please!” She waited for the noise to die down, then looked at a notecard and blushed terribly. “On behalf of the KBR Ladies’ Auxiliary”—she pointed to her fellow sex workers—“and the various ethnic people of the Republika Absurdsvanï, I would like to say to Golly Burton, thank you for coming to our country!”

  Wild applause from every table. Mr. Nanabragov got up to twitch. Nana’s brother, Bubi, stuck his fingers in his mouth and whistled. I motioned for a passing waiter to bring me a crawfish.

  “Golly Burton is famous company,” the prostitute continued. “Everybody knows such company. And KBR is proud subsidiary of Golly Burton. We in Absurdsvanï are sometimes not deserving of KBR services. We fight among ourselves. We make violence. So stupid! Now we got Figa-6 oil field coming online, thanks be to Golly Burton. Now our children have many oils to make their future…” She looked at the notecard and tried to mouth the word. “Prosperous…”

  “Preposterous!” someone corrected her.

  “Take it all off, baby!” another shouted.

  The prostitute instinctively tugged down on her gown to show off her perfect young shoulders. “And now,” she said, “without further make do, I give you the Ladies’ Auxiliary historical tribute to KBR!”

  The girls told the story of Kellogg, Brown & Root through several clever musical numbers. The first, “We’ve Got Friends in High Places (Look at All ’Em Smiling Faces),” paid homage to Brown & Root’s notorious influence peddling, from the first prime rib bought for a Texas roads commissioner to the decades-long wooing of Lyndon B. Johnson. Later, the girls celebrated Brown & Root’s many military-service contracts overseas, from Vietnam (“Oh, me so horny!”) to Somalia (“Oh, it’s so thorny!”) to Bosnia, where they broke into a note-perfect rendition of Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody” (“I see a little silhouetto of a Serb / Golly Burt! Golly Burt! Will you do the fandango?”).

  But the most moving number of the evening was “Gonna Be Your Baby Daddy,” a slow rhythm-and-blues duet between a “KBR worker” obsessed with his productivity at the Figa-6 oil fields and his long-suffering girlfriend, an Absurdi prostitute.

  Prostitute: BP, Chevron, Texaco,

  Why you treat me like a ho?

  KBR Worker: I’m out there, drilling away.

  I come home, and here I lay.

  Prostitute: I don’t care ’bout all your regs.

  Why don’t you drill between my legs?

  KBR Worker: You got light crude on my fingers,

  All night long your oil slick lingers.

  Prostitute: I can make a dead man rise;

  There’s a gusher ’tween my thighs.

  KBR Worker: I’m too tired, I’m too spent.

  Prostitute: Buy me perfume, pay my rent.

  Finally the alleged KBR worker (an older hooker wearing a fake mustache) turned away from her beloved to address the audience in a thick baritone: “Houston, we’ve got a problem…”

  An offstage American voice: “Roger that, KBR employee. What’s your problem?”

  “I…I think I’m in love.”

  Our hero broke down and promised to marry the prostitute, make her “honorable,” and pay for her to get Microsoft-certified at a Houston community college.

  They say you’re just a passport ho,

  But they don’t know you like I know.

  Wasn’t sure, but now I’m ready.

  Gonna be your “baby daddy.”

  The finale loosened some tears from the older Absurdi ladies, deep into their dessert of cheesecake and baklava, and even Nana turned to me and said, “Aw, that’s kinda sweet.”

  The lead prostitute thanked everyone for the thunderous applause and invited the KBR men to pile into a special suite on the fortieth floor, where they could “drill us good.” With the roar of a Boeing breaking free of gravity, a hundred Texans and Scotsmen rushed the stage.

  Nana and I headed for the goody bags.

  32

  The Commissar of Multicultural Affairs

  I woke up early the next day and
started squeezing myself into a Hyatt robe. It was difficult going at first (the robe was much too small), but eventually at least half of my body was covered in its downy softness. I felt whole and powerful, like the Reichstag must have felt when it was being draped by Christo. I ordered in large plates of fruit and pastry and steaming jugs of coffee and tea.

  It was time for my sit-down with Mr. Nanabragov and Parka Mook.

  At the appointed hour (plus another hour), they marched into the living room and took their places on opposite sofas, the playwright huddled next to me, glancing uncomfortably at his clutched hands, Mr. Nanabragov spread out, twitching brightly in the morning sun.

  “We are here with excellent news,” Mr. Nanabragov said. He stuck his hand down his shirt and jerked lively. “We just returned from a plenary council of the State Committee for the Restoration of Order and Democracy. We were all so impressed by you at dinner last week. You’re every bit as cosmopolitan as your father. In some ways, you’re even more modern than him and he was a very original thinker. Also someday you may marry my daughter and make her bear your children. And so, by a unanimous vote, we have decided to offer you a position at the ministerial level. How would you like to be the SCROD Minister for Sevo-Israeli Affairs?”

  “Er,” I said. “You know, my dear friends, I’m just a Belgian trying to get by. What do I know about running a government? My business is in the hands of others.”

  “What business?” Mr. Nanabragov said. “Our business is democracy, same as yours. Are you forgetting your martyred democrat friend Sakha? This is what dead Sakha would have wanted. Don’t you think, Parka?”

  The playwright was staring at the ceiling, methodically cleaning out his ear with a pinkie. “Parka!”

  “What’s the question?” Parka Mook said, wiping earwax against the seam of his pants. “It’s early in the morning, gentlemen. I’m tired and sick.”