Absurdistan: A Novel

by Gary Shteyngart

  Zartarian's tale was interrupted by the sound of breaking china outside his window, accompanied by female yelps in some local language. "Ugh, I hate the hospitality industry," he said. "The work never stops, and all the Hyatt guests are major assholes, present company excepted. They freaking pigeonholed me because my parents were from this part of the world and I took Russian in school. They made me the youngest Hyatt manager in the world. Tell me, why did all this history have to happen to me?"

  "I commiserate with you entirely," I said, popping open the Turkish beer to water my dry, filthy mouth. "I, too, am cursed by my upbringing. But at least your mother must be proud."

  "Proud?" Zartarian massaged his bare temples. "She lives in the suite below mine. She won't let me out of her sight. I'm a nervous wreck."

  I recommended psychoanalysis to the hotel manager, but we both agreed Absurdistan was not the best place to find a good Lacanian. "I really miss L.A.," Zartarian said. "I got a drop-top Z4 Beamer in the garage downstairs, but where the hell am I going to drive it? Into the Caspian?"

  I remembered a piece of unsettled business that was bothering me, an insult against my person. "Larry, why won't the hookers in your hotel sleep with Russians?"

  "They've got an unofficial service provider's contract with KBR, Misha. There's so much business on that end, my girls all got big heads now. 'No more dirty Russians,' they tell me. 'No Chinese, no Indians. Golly Burton or we go home to our villages.' "

  "Doesn't Hyatt HQ mind the prostitution? The whores are chilling right by the penthouse suites."

  "My hands are tied," Larry Zartarian said. "Look at what I'm up against. An ancient trading culture. Halliburton. It's cultural relativism, Misha. It's Chinatown."

  "I'm just a little offended, is all," I said. "I like to think of the Hyatt as a multicultural space. And then some whore calls me a dirty Russian. Where's the respect?"

  "Listen, Misha, we're becoming friends. Do you mind if I ask you something personal? Why did you sleep with Lyuba Vainberg? Everyone knows you're a sophisticate and a melancholic. But popping Boris Vainberg's wife? Why'd you do it?"

  "How do you know about that?" I shouted, grabbing an Ativan bottle out of my fanny pack. "Christ almighty!"

  "Everyone knows everything about you, Misha," Zartarian said.

  "Your father was legendary here. He sold the eight-hundred-kilogram screw to KBR, remember?"

  I uncapped the Ativan and let two pills roll down my throat, chasing them with the Efes beer. "This really isn't my year," I muttered. i

  "I hope the whole world goes to hell, to be honest." Larry reached over and stroked my hand below the elbow. "Your luck's about to change," he said. "I spoke to Captain Belugin. We'll get you your Belgian citizenship today. Maybe Rouenna will move with you to Brussels if you treat her right. Take her writing seriously, for God's sake. You know how we Americans are about selfexpression."

  "Good point," I said.

  "Go down to the Beluga Bar," Zartarian said. "Your friend AlyoshaBob will be dining with Josh Weiner from the American embassy."

  "That name sounds familiar," I said.

  "In a few minutes, this little native guy is going to show up. We call him Sakha the Democrat. He works for some local human rights agency. Buy him a turkey burger with fries, and he'll take you to meet Jean-Michel Lefevre of the Belgian consulate. Just follow him out of the hotel after lunch, and I guarantee you you'll be a Belgian by sundown." I shook Larry Zartarian's hand. "You're a nice man," I said. "I won't forget your kindness."

  "Please drop me an e-mail when you're in Brussels," Zartarian said. He swept his hands around the perimeter of his office with its bleeping computer monitors and stacks of yellowing official documents, each likely an Absurdi request for a handout.

  "You have no idea how fucking miserable I am," he said. i 6

  Gimme Freedom!

  The poolside Beluga Bar was sweltering. Hyatt boys had been conscripted to throw ice cubes into the pool, and gigantic portable fans had been brought in to tickle our sweaty bodies with rotating gusts of salvation. On one side of the pool, the hotel's male and balding guests were gorging themselves on plates of sturgeon and freshly grilled hamburgers. On the other side of the pool, the Hyatt's hookers had arranged themselves on green chaise longues and were fanning each other with abandoned copies of the Financial Times, occasionally ululating the name of their favorite American company, Golly Burton, to the oilmen dining across the pool. The oil workers, many of whom sported thick Scottish accents, shouted back incomprehensible British terms of endearment. Even with my perfect knowledge of English, I could not understand why a woman might be flattered to be called a "bird."

  Alyosha-Bob was sitting next to a young man in khakis and a striped polo shirt who was minding a large Hyatt menu with skeptical eyes, his finger running down the price column. He had a familiarlooking cold sore that reminded me for some reason of an ice age crevice that snagged across the arboretum of Accidental College. As I approached the table, I tried to remember his name but kept coming up short. There is a class of Americans, a cheap pansy upper class, whose members are utterly indistinguishable to me. "Josh?" I said.

  "JoshWeiner?"

  Weiner looked up to my encroaching shadow. "Snack Daddy?" he said. "Holy shit! Bob just told me you were down here. What's the word, Big Bird?"

  "Class of'94, right?" I said. "You had the six-foot bong on College Street. What was your house called again?"

  "Ghetto Fabulous House," Weiner said. We gave each other an urban smack of the palm, knocked our fists together, and shot an imaginary finger gun at each other.

  "Remember how the freshmen used to rub your belly for good luck before midterms?" Weiner said. "Mind if I give it a rub now, Snack?"

  Actually I remembered this belly-rubbing ceremony all too well. The humiliations of so many little white hands casually stroking my love pouch in the dining hall. How I begged all those Noahs and Joshes and Johnnys to stop. "I'd prefer it if you didn't," I said. "My analyst says it reinforces certain behavioral patterns. Child-rearing issues and such. It makes me feel violated."

  "Uh-huh," Weiner said. "Hey, Snack, I was just asking Bob if you guys still keep in touch with Jerry Shteynfarb. I'm totally into that Russian Arriviste's Hand Job. It's so funny. And full of pathos, too. Just how I like it. Homeboy made good!"

  Mention of my competitor, together with the belly rubbing, dispelled my generous mood. "I hear you're with the State Depart- ment I spat at Weiner. The young diplomat's chair practically slipped out from beneath his slender East Coast frame. The foreign service was not an acceptable career choice at Accidental College, where a surprising number of graduates went on to raise organic asparagus along the Oregonian coast. Even during his college years, Weiner had exhibited unhealthy tendencies, such as writing the sports column for the Accidental Herald, the school newspaper, the kind of job only a clueless and entirely ambitious immigrant would take.

  "Hey, easy, dog." Weiner laughed, scratching at his thinning cowlick. "If you think I sold out, like, check out my paycheck. Shit." I continued looking at him with my meanest, bluest eyes.

  "So, let's talk politics, dog," Alyosha-Bob said, changing the subject. "Word on the Absurdi street is that the Sevo are gonna go apeshit if Georgi Kanuk's idiot son takes over. What's the official U.S. position on this one?"

  "We're not really sure," Josh Weiner admitted as he pillaged a bowl of complimentary smoked almonds. "We've got a little problem. See, none of our staff actually speak any of the local languages. I mean, there's one guy who sort of speaks Russian, but he's still trying to learn the future tense. You dogs are both from this part of the world. Do you know what's gonna happen after Georgi Kanuk dies?

  More democracy? Less?"

  "Whenever there's any kind of upheaval in this country, the pistols come out," Alyosha-Bob said. "Think of the Ottoman rebellion of 1756 or the Persian succession of 1550."

  "Oh, I can't think that far back," Josh Weiner said. "That was then, and
this is now. We're in a global economy. It's in no one's interests to rock the boat. Look at the stats, homeboys. The Absurdi GNP went up by nine percent last year. The Figa-6 Chevron/BP oil fields are coming online in mid-September. That's, like, a hundred and eighty thousand barrels a day! And it's not just oil. The service sector's booming, too. Did you see the new Tuscan Steak and Bean Company on the Boulevard of National Unity? Did you try the ribol- lita soup and the crostini misti) This place has serious primary and reinvestment capital, dogs."

  "What about this Sevo-Svani thing?" I asked. "Larry Zartarian said—"

  "Oh, to hell with Christ's footrest. These people are pragmatists.

  'Fuck you, pay me,' that's their attitude. And speaking of pragmatism, here comes my democratic friend." A small, hook-nosed man was running our way. For a second I thought I was looking at an exact copy of my dead papa in his lackluster pre-oligarch days. Intelligent brown eyes, pet-goat beard, miniature yellow teeth. He was probably a poor ex-Soviet academic in his forties, married to a wife who suffered from a heart murmur, the father of two brilliant, inquisitive children with flat feet. "Gentlemen, meet Sakha the Democrat," Josh Weiner said. "He edits the glossy journal Gimme Freedom! It's one of our little projects here."

  "Forgive me for being late, Mr. Weiner," Sakha panted, clutching at a bright orange tie. "I hope you have not already eaten. I am so very hungry."

  "We're just about to order," Alyosha-Bob said. "Mr. Sakha, this is my college buddy Misha Vainberg."

  "The Jewish people have a long and peaceful history in our land," Sakha said, putting a shaking hand to his heart. "They are our brothers, and whoever is their enemy is our enemy also. When you are in Absurdsvani, my mother will be your mother, my wife your sister, and you will always find water in my well to drink."

  "Thank you," I said. "I wish I could reciprocate, but my dear mother's dead, and my girl just ran off with some schmuck."

  "That's just the way they speak here," Josh Weiner explained to me. "It doesn't really mean anything." The look I gave him indicated that he was not worthy of sharing the same planet with me. We summoned the waiter, and I ordered three sturgeon omelets and a Bloody Mary pitcher. "May I have the chicken cordon bleu on a roll with tomato, pickle, and french fries, Mr. Weiner?" Sakha the Democrat asked. He brought his menu closer to the young diplomat.

  "It's the deluxe platter . . . right here . . . under 'Fresh from the Henhouse.' "

  "Just get the chicken cordon bleu on a roll," Weiner said wearily.

  "They're cutting back our democracy budget. We can't afford deluxe platters anymore."

  "I'll pay for your french fries, Mr. Sakha," I said.

  "Oh, thank you, Mr. Vainberg!" Sakha the Democrat cried. "It's so good to see a young man interested in pluralism."

  "How can you do your important work on an empty stomach?" I said to him. I watched Josh Weiner unfurl his lower lip my way, menacing me with his active cold sore.

  "And who are you by profession?" Sakha asked me.

  "I'm a philanthropist," I said. "I run a charity in Petersburg called Misha's Children. It's my gift to the world."

  "You have an open heart," said my new friend. "That is so rare these days."

  "Sakha just came back from a democracy forum in New York," Josh Weiner said, "where he bought himself that nice orange tie. We provided airfare and five nights' accommodation in a four-star hotel. I'm assuming he paid for the tie himself. There certainly wasn't a budget line for it."

  "It is a very nice tie," Alyosha-Bob said. "What is it? A Zegna?"

  "I bought it in Century 21," Sakha said, nodding happily. "The actual color is called Dark Orange Equestrian. Some say the Svani people were originally horse cultivators. Did you know that our archaeologists found a clay pot in the Grghangxa region, dating to 850

  B.C., which shows a local man wrestling a pony? Now I can also claim to be an equestrian with my tie! Of course, I am only joking, gentlemen. Ha ha."

  "You are Svani by nationality?" I said.

  "I am Sevo," Sakha the Democrat told me. "But it makes no difference. Svani, Sevo, we are the same people. The distinctions are only useful for the ruling class . . . "

  "How so, Mr. Sakha?" I asked.

  "So that they can better oppress us!" he cried. But instead of elaborating, the democrat spent the next fifteen minutes looking expectantly in the direction of the kitchen. The food finally arrived. After putting half the fries into his briefcase "for my three little girls," Sakha dispatched the chicken cordon bleu faster than I could lay to rest the first of my three sturgeon omelets. The pickle he saved for last, savoring every wet crunch, his eyes likewise moist with pleasure.

  "The most delicious food in the world," he said. "Like in the American restaurant Arby's. It's not every day one gets to enjoy frenchfried potatoes like these." I looked triumphantly at Josh Weiner. "My pleasure," I said.

  "Tell you what, Sakha, old worm, why don't we split the New York-style cheesecake," Josh Weiner suggested. "And we'll get the pot of coffee for two."

  "I got a much better idea," I said. "Sakha, why don't you go to the sundae bar inside and help yourself to all the trimmings. Just tell them to put it on my tab. Misha Vainberg, penthouse suite."

  "If only my little girls could see me now," Sakha whispered to himself as he took off for his tasty treat.

  "Misha's Children," Josh Weiner said, looking up at the heavy atmosphere hanging above us like a dollop of clotted cream. "Un fucking-bclicvablc. You just make it up as you go along, don't you, Vainberg? You just opt out of reality every day, don't you, dog? And when it catches up with you, you just sign a check." I foraged through my last omelet, lapping up chunks of delicious hormone-free Absurdi egg, and breathing in the salty freshness of the sturgeon. "At least I'm helping people," I whispered. We sat there without uttering a word until Sakha returned with a concoction that resembled a frigate parked on top of an aircraft carrier. "The banana I skipped," he said, giving me an accounting. "I can get a banana anywhere. These here are Oreo-cookie clusters."

  "Eat, eat," I said, patting him on the sleeve. "I want you to be happy." After the sundae was finished and its various juices slurped up, our group made haste to disband. Josh Weiner and I barely looked at each other as we committed the standard urban smack of the palm ("high-five") and knock of the fist. We even failed to shoot an imaginary finger gun at each other in parting, unthinkable for a Multicultural Studies major and a former resident of Ghetto Fabulous House. All in all, it was not a proud day for Accidental College.

  "Walk behind me," Sakha the Democrat told me when my fellow alumni had gone. "I've roused your manservant from his shed behind the pool. Monsieur Lefevre is waiting for us behind the McDonald's on the Svani Terrace."

  "Where's that?" I asked, but Sakha was already headed for the lobby.

  17

  King Leopold's Belgian Congo

  We had driven off the Boulevard of National Unity, with its multinational skyscrapers and chain stores, and onto a broad natural platform overlooking the city. Sakha the Democrat, glowing with the pride of a know-it-all intellectual, had asked me to come out of the car and survey the landscape with him. As we left the American SUV

  embellished with the Hyatt logo, my manservant, Timofey, rushed up to me and unfurled a beach umbrella above my tall frame as if I were some African ruler arriving at the airport. The umbrella didn't help. Sweat fell from me in sheets of water and steam until I smelled like a hamburger.

  We looked down upon the city. "Look, Mr. Vainberg!" Sakha said.

  "Have you ever seen such loveliness? Perhaps it does not match your native Petersburg, or, being a Jew, your beloved Jerusalem, but all the same—the hills, the sea, the architectural ensemble wrought over the centuries . . . Doesn't your heart tremble?"

  But it wasn't trembling. The Absurdi capital looked like a miniature Cairo after it had crashed into a rocky mountain. There were three populated terraces jutting out from this mountain, little serving platters of humanity clingi
ng to the inhospitable rock and connected by a winding road. At the top, the International Terrace was home to the multinational skyscrapers, the embassies, and the major retailers (for example, Staples, Hugo Boss, the 718 Perfumery, Ferragamo, the Toys "R" Us superstore). Farther down, the Svani' Terrace, the traditional home of the majority Svani people, had a famous usedremote-control market, along with a part of the minaret-studded Moslem quarter snug behind an ancient fortifying wall. "I knew there were Moslems here!" I exclaimed to Sakha. "Moslems live in the Orient. It's a fact." Finally, the Sevo Terrace, the traditional home of the minority Sevo people, was composed of art nouveau mansions built for turn-of-the-century oil barons forming a precise grid around what I later learned was called the Sevo Vatican—"Oooh, that thing looks like an octopus!" I cried to Sakha—a vast white dome with an octet of arches spreading in each direction, which, at least in my mind, resembled a pale tentacled sea creature washed up on the beach. A six-meter Sevo cross gleamed from the octopus's head, its footrest facing in the wrong direction.

  Next to the Sevo Vatican, an esplanade ran toward a small container port that quickly gave way to the real business of the city. And here it became obvious that the city formed no more than a footnote to what actually had rendered these Sevos and Svanis first into a Soviet republic and then into a cantankerous modern state. Absurdi- stan was the Caspian Sea, and the Caspian was the oil it held in abun- dance. The oil derricks began as soon as the last speck of humanity ended. The oil refused to give the city even the briefest of respites; it denied its inhabitants the chance to look into the waters and see their own reflection. The humble derricks of Soviet construction, cheap s1

  yellow rust buckets in the ruined sea, quickly surrendered to behemoth Western oil platforms, their warning lights flashing from thirtystory rigs, their floating enormity forming a second skyline that rivaled the skyscrapers of the International Terrace. With its three descending terraces, Svani City rushed out to meet the Caspian, and the Caspian turned it back with an oily slap of the waves.