Absurdistan: A Novel

by Gary Shteyngart

  That wasn't too bright, Misha.

  The curtains of consciousness were being lowered around me, gray and gold-sequined like a fading summer day here in our crappy Venice of the North.

  Not too bright, you stepmother-fucking, father-hating joke of a man. 12

  Everything Has Its Limits

  Two hours later, outside her bedroom door, Lyuba's servants had fallen asleep, much like their mistress. Their ears were pressed to the door; even in their evening stupor, they were listening for sounds of our bed creaking. "Scoundrels," I hissed at the mess of bleary-eyed bodies. "You like to hear your mistress fucking hard, eh? May the devil take you! Well, enough! Everything has its limits, don't you know!"

  Out on the English Embankment, Timofey and my driver, Mamudov, were sitting on the hood of the Land Rover drinking shots of vodka, blasting the Spartak-Zenit football match on the speakers, and hugging each other in a warm drunken embrace. "Hullo, gendemen!" I shouted to them in English. "Do you want to hear something? I'll tell you, then! Everything has its limits!" And I walked off down the embankment like a supercilious transvestite bitch, swinging my hands in the air and my hips below. I passed by the Bronze Horseman, the statue of the curly-haired asshole Peter the Great charging up a steep rock, galloping northward, abandoning the ruined city he founded for the fair shores of Finland, leaving those of us without an EU visa nothing but the tail end of his fat bronze mare.

  "Everything has its limits!" I shouted to a wedding party posing beneath Peter, skinny-ass twenty-year-olds who could not grasp the empty terror of the rest of their lives.

  "Hurrah, strange one!" they shouted at me, vodka botdes raised, drunk as all get-out.

  One of their grandmothers stood guard over their wedding car, a crushed Lada micro-sedan festooned with blue and white ribbons.

  "That's what I thought, too," she happily told me through her two teeth. "That everything has its limits. But each year I'm proven wrong!"

  "Rejoice, habushkaV I shouted. "Soon things will change. There will be limits! To everything!"

  "Yes, limits or labor camps," the grandmother said. "Either way, I'm happy."

  By this point Timofey and Mamudov were following behind me in the Land Rover, Timofey leaning out his window, yelling, "Come back, young master! All will be well! We'll go to the American Clinic. Dr. Yegorov, your favorite, has walk-in appointments today. A new supply of Celexa just came in."

  I turned around, one hand on my hip, one giant fist in the air.

  "Won't you acknowledge, dear Timofey, that everything has its limits?" I shouted. "That I am not just some educated, Westernized animal you can kick in the mug?"

  "I acknowledge!" Timofey yelled. "I acknowledge! What more do you want?"

  But I wanted more. Oh, did I ever want more. I took off down the embankment, my buttery thighs slapping against each other, until I hit the green confectionery of the Winter Palace, one of its lesser buildings draped with the sign THIS YEAR'S WHITE NIGHTS BROUGHT

  TO YOU BY DAEWOO. I stopped and breathed in the cheap diesel fuel and burning tar, the heavy air of a third-world metropolis misplaced five thousand kilometers to the north, but lacking the rich scent of burning goat and honey cakes.

  Even the evocative stench of poverty we couldn't get right. Turning on the Palace Bridge, I counted three of the cast-iron lampposts, until I reached the stretch of asphalt where my father was executed. There was nothing there. Just a traffic jam of old Ladas, with one lone Land Rover bringing up the rear. " Batyushka, come back," I could hear Timofey screaming in the distance. "There's no need to panic! We have Ativan in the car. Ativan!"

  I sat down by the third lamppost. The city's horizons were crowd-ing me in; the fortresses and domes and spires were meant for either a smaller person than me or a greater one. But understand me: I was looking for something in the middle. I was looking for a normal life.

  "Everything has its limits," I said to the crush of passing Ladas and their haggard occupants. "Everything has its limits," I whispered to a teenage boy writhing in a Polish hatchback rigged up as a municipal ambulance, its broken siren emitting the wrong squawk, more a dirge than a warning.

  Timofey had quit the Land Rover and was running toward me with two botdes of meds in each hand. I took out my mobilnik and dialed Alyosha-Bob. It was Monday evening, and I knew I would hear the motley sounds of Club 69 on the other end.

  "Yo!" Alyosha shouted past the din.

  Club 69 is a gay club, but anyone who can afford the three-dollar cover charge—in other words, the richest 1 percent of our city—

  shows up there at some point during the week. Homosexuality aside, this is without a doubt the most normal place in Russia, no low-level thugs in leather parkas, no skinheads in jackboots, just friendly gay guys and the rich housewives who love them. It brings to mind that popular phrase bandied about by expatriate Americans over their bagels and cream cheese: civil society.

  Alyosha-Bob and his Svetiana were sitting beneath a statue of Adonis, watching a submarine captain trying to sell his young crew to a gay German tour group. The seventeen-year-old boys were awkwardly trying to cover their nakedness, while their drunken captain barked at them to let go of their precious goods and "shake them around like a wet dog." I suppose civil society has its limits, too.

  "I've got to get out of Russia," I said to Alyosha-Bob. "Everything has its limits."

  "Yes, fine," Alyosha-Bob said. "But why now, exactiy?" I saw my future with Lyuba. Picking out paisley furniture in Moscow's IKEA. Being called litde father as I mounted her. Supper beneath the meter-long oil painting of Maimonides; dinner next to Papa's censorious black-and-white gaze. Eventually two rich, unhappy children: a five-year-old boy in a Dolce & Gabbana gangster suit, his younger sister lost beneath an alligator's worth of leather accessories. Everywhere around us snickering servants, collapsed infrastructure, sniveling grandmothers . . . Russia, Russia, Russia . . . But how could I explain all this to Alyosha-Bob? St. Leninsburg was his playground. His drunken dream come true.

  "Are you running away because you fucked Lyuba today?" Svetlana asked.

  "Is it true?" Alyosha-Bob asked. "You gave it to Boris Vainberg's old lady?"

  "Do you see what kind of a city we live in?" I said. "I gave it to her just three hours ago. We should never hand out mobilniki to the servants. It's probably the talk of the Internet by now."

  "I agree with you, Misha," Svedana said. "You should leave. I keep telling this idiot"—she pointed to Alyosha-Bob—"that we have to get out of here, too. There's a one-year master's in public relations program at Boston University. They have this practice lab where you can work as an account executive for local nonprofits. I could work for the Boston Ballet! I could be cultured and clever and earn a respectable living. I'd show the Americans that not every Russian woman is a whore."

  "Listen to her," Alyosha-Bob said. "The Boston Ballet. And what's wrong with our Kirov? It was good enough for Baryshnikov, no?"

  "You just want to spend your whole life here, Alyosha," Sveta said,

  "because back in America you're a nothing man."

  "Shh! Look who's here," Alyosha-Bob said. "The murderer." Captain Belugin, wiping his hoary face with the sleeve of his green Armani shirt, ambled over to our table. He looked older than when I'd seen him at Papa's funeral, his ears drooping down like cabbage leaves. "Alio, brothers," he said, crashing down on a stool. "Sveta. How are you, pretty one? Nu, we're all aficionados of Club 69,1 see. And what of it? It's a good business to be queer. Sometimes I like a litde boy beside me. They're more hairless than my wife. More feminine, too. Hey, Seryozha." He waved to a cherubic young fellow in a thong, dishing out vodka from a slop pail. "Give it here, good lad."

  "Well, my Alyosha's not a pederast," Svetlana said. "He merely comes to Club 69 for the atmosphere. And to make connections."

  "Hi, Seryozha," I said to the friendly boy. "How's life, cucumber?"

  "Seryozha number one, true love forever, I am only just for you," Seryozha s
aid in English, blowing me a professional kiss.

  "Seryozha's going to Thailand with a rich Swede," Captain Belugin announced as Seryozha smiled at us like a shy albino marmoset. He scooped the vodka out with a beaker, pouring us a hundred grams a head. "Better watch out for the cockroaches there," said Belugin. "They're like this . . . " He spread out his arms, favoring us with his briny armpits.

  "Cirrus, Europay, ATM, one-stop banking . . . Super Dollar, why you lonely?" Seryozha said. He wiggled his tush for us and left.

  "Good boy," Belugin said. "We could use him on the force. They're so clean here. Hygiene. Morality starts with hygiene. Just look at the Germans." We glanced over to the middle-aged members of the German tour group throwing deutsche marks at our teenage countrymen, bringing us tidings of an advanced civilization. We heard an enormous cheer from downstairs. The floor show was about to start—

  the pioneer songs of our youth bellowed out by muscular drag queens in full Soviet regalia. I found it very nostalgic.

  "I wish I could leave this stupid country just like Seryozha," I said.

  "And why can't you?" Belugin asked.

  "The Americans won't give me a visa because they say my papa killed that Oklahoman fellow. And the European Union won't let any Vainbergs in, either."

  "Ach," Belugin said to me. "Why do you want to move to the West, young man? Things will improve for our people, just you wait. In a mere fifty years, I predict, life here will be brighter than even in Yugoslavia. You know, Misha, I've been to Europe. The streets are cleaner, but there's no Russian soul Do you know what I'm talking about here? You can't just sit down with a man in Copenhagen and look him in the eye over a shot glass and then— boofl—you are brothers forever."

  "Please . . . " I said. "I want to . . . I want—"

  "Well, of course you want" said the captain. "What kind of a young man would you be if you didn't want} I understand you implicitly. We old men were once young, too, don't forget!"

  "Yes," I said, following his logic. "I'm young. So I want."

  "Then let me help you, Misha. You see, I am originally from the Republic of Absurdsvan'i, land of oil and grapes. Absurdistan, as we like to call it. I'm a Russian by blood, but I also know the way of the infamous Svani' people, those lusty Southern black-asses, those Cretins of the Caucasus. Now, one of my friends in Svani City is a counselor at the Belgian embassy. A European of great learning and propriety. I wonder if, for a small sum, he could arrange for your citizenship in the Flemish kingdom . . . "

  "That sounds like a sensible idea," Alyosha-Bob said. "What about it, Misha? If you get a Belgian passport, you can travel all over the continent."

  "Maybe Rouenna will come live with me," I said. "Maybe I can tempt her away from Jerry Shteynfarb. Belgium is full of chocolate and fries, right?"

  "We could fly down to Absurdistan next week," Alyosha-Bob said.

  "I own a branch of ExcessHollywood there. There's a direct Aeroflot flight on Monday."

  "I'm not flying Aeroflot," I told my friend. "I don't want to die just yet. We'll take Austrian Airlines through Vienna. I'll pay for everything."

  I pictured myself sitting at a zippy Belgian cafe watching a multicultural woman in a thong eating a frankfurter. Did such things happen in Brussels? In New York they happened all the time.

  "So, Belugin," Alyosha-Bob said to the captain. "What's it going to cost for Misha to get his Belgian passport?"

  "What will it cost? Nothing, nothing." Captain Belugin waved it off. "Well, almost nothing. A hundred thousand U.S. for my Belgian friend, and a hundred thousand for me as an introduction fee."

  "I want my manservant to come with me," I said. "I need a Belgian work visa for my Timofey."

  "You're bringing your manservant?" Alyosha-Bob said. "You're quite a Westerner, Count Vainberg."

  "Go to the khui I said. "I'd like to see you wash your own socks the way I once washed mine with my working-class girlfriend in New York."

  "Boys." Captain Belugin put a hand between us. "A work visa is the height of simplicity. Another twenty thousand for me, and twenty thousand for Monsieur Lefevre of the Belgian embassy. You'll be fast friends with Jean-Michel. He likes to run over the locals with his Peugeot."

  "Has Oleg the Moose's money been moved to Misha's offshore accounts?" Alyosha-Bob asked.

  "Misha's got about thirty-five million dollars in Cyprus," Belugin said, looking over his yellow fingernails, obviously not too impressed by the remainder of Beloved Papa's carefully hoarded fortune, a long trail of wrecked factories, misappropriated natural gas concessions, the much-talked-about VainBergAir (an airline without any airplanes but with plenty of stewardesses), and, of course, the infamous graveyard for New Russian Jews. It didn't sound like much money to me, either, to be honest. Let's do the math. I was thirty, and the official life expectancy for a Russian male is fifty-six, so I probably had another twenty-six or so years to live. Thirty-five million divided by twenty-six years equals about US$1,350,000 a year. That wasn't much for Europe, but I could survive. Hell, I got by on a mere US$200,000 a year in New York when I was young, though I didn't have a manservant to support, and I often denied myself certain pleasures (never have I owned a hot-air balloon or a Long Island bungalow).

  But who cares about my poverty! For the first time in an eternity, I felt a current of pure pleasure wend itself around my beleaguered liver and up my bloated lungs. Freedom was upon me.

  I remembered my childhood escapes from Leningrad, the annual summer train trip to the Crimea. Blessed memories of little Misha leaning out the carriage window, the Russian countryside crawling up to the train tracks, an occasional aspen whipping Misha's curious face. I always knew that summer was drawing near when my mother came over with my crumpled Panama hat and sang an improvised tune for me:

  Misha the Bear

  Is leaving his lair

  He's had enough

  Of winter's despair

  Yes, I've had enough of it, mamochka I smiled and hiccuped into my shot glass. There was something oddly fetching about the prospect of being alive today, knowing that next week I would follow Peter the Great's bronze steed. I would fulfill every educated young Russian's dream. I would go beyond the cordon.

  "Here's what I want you to do," Captain Belugin said. "As soon as you land in Absurdistan, go to the Park Hyatt Svani City and talk to Larry Zartarian, the manager. He'll make all the necessary arrangements. You'll be a Belgian in no time."

  "Belgium," Sveta said wistfully. "You're a very lucky man."

  "You're a great big cosmopolitan whore," Alyosha-Bob said, "but I love you."

  "You're a traitor to your country, but what can be done?" Captain Belugin said.

  I reflected upon their words and raised a toast to myself. "Yes, what can be done?" I said. "Everything has its limits." The glasses clinked. My future was set. I drank vodka and felt ennobled. Of course, with the benefit of hindsight, I can tell you now: I was wrong about everything. Family, friendship, coitus, the future, the past, even the present, my mainstay . . . even that I managed to get wrong.

  13

  Misha the Bear Takes to the Air

  I assembled my household staff and told them they were free of my service. They immediately started crying into their aprons and tearing at their hair. "Don't you have some province you can go to?" I asked them. "Aren't you tired of city life? Be free!" The problem, it turned out, was that they had no money, and their provincial relatives had all but forsaken them; soon enough they would face homelessness and starvation, then the onset of the terrible Russian winter. So I gave each US$5,000, and they all threw themselves around my neck and wept.

  Moved by my own largesse, I summoned Svetlana and the artist Valentin, who was still camped out in my library along with his Naomi and Ruth. "I'm starting a charity called Misha's Children," I said. "I have allocated US$2,000,000 to benefit the children of the city I was born in."

  They looked at me sideways.

  "That's St. Petersburg," I clarified.
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  Still no reaction.

  "Sveta," I said, "you've mentioned how you want to work for a nonprofit agency. This is your chance. You will be the executive director. You will airlift twenty progressive social workers from Park Slope, Brooklyn, and set them to work on the most incorrigible of our children. Valentin, you will be the artistic director, teaching the young ones that redemption lies in Web design as well as clinical social work. Your salaries will be US$80,000 per annum." (To give the reader a sense of scale, the average Petersburg annual salary is US$1,800.)

  Sveta asked to see me in private. "I am most honored," she said,

  "but I think it is foolish to entrust Valentin with such responsibility. I know he works for Alyosha and is designing a website for him, but he's also quite a superfluous man, wouldn't you say?"

  "We're all fairly superfluous men," I said, pace Turgenev. I shook her hand, kissed the weeping Valentin three times on the cheeks, bade farewell to his whores, then summoned my driver for the last time. It was early Monday morning, the population still working through a collective hangover, but Petersburg, when free of the human element, looks especially fine. The palaces on Nevsky Prospekt, wishing to properly say goodbye to me, dusted themselves off and bowed their chipped baldachinos in my direction; the canals flowed most romantically, hoping to outdo one another; the moon fell and the sun rose to demonstrate the nocturnal and diurnal lay of the land; but I would not be moved. "Forward, not a step backward," I said, washing my hands clean of Peter the Great's creation. We pulled into the ridiculous airport, a monstrous beige fort where Western tourists were abused in a hundred different ways, a tiny shat-upon redoubt more suited to Montgomery, Alabama, than a city of five million souls. At Customs there was a sad scene as Timofey's son, Slava, wept on his father's neck. "I'll send for you, sonny," my manservant said, patting the young man's balding head. "You'll join me in Brussels, and we'll be merry together. Take my Daewoo steam iron."