A picture of the late Dragomir Zhulk hung over the bed.
Pfefferkorn unpacked. Because the United States and West Zlabia had no formal diplomatic relations, he was traveling as a Canadian expatriate residing in the Solomon Islands. “Arthur S. Kowalczyk” was vice president of a small-time fertilizer distributor seeking bulk suppliers. His wheelie bag contained an assortment of business attire, pressed white shirts and pilled black socks. He hung up his blazer, arranged his shoes at the foot of the bed, and stowed his passport in the safe, which was a cigar box with a flimsy padlock. He stared edgily into the empty suitcase. Beneath its false bottom was a secret compartment containing two additional moustache kits. There was also a supplementary disguise: a traditional Zlabian goatherd’s costume of baggy pants, a peasant shirt, and brightly painted boots with curly pointed toes and six-inch heels. These items were not illegal, per se, but they were suspicious enough to merit concealment. The illegal items were in a second secret compartment, hidden beneath a second false bottom. There he had a roll of cash the size of a soda can and an untraceable cellular phone. Possessing either of these was grounds for immediate arrest and/or expulsion. But the truly risky stuff, the stuff that would get him killed outright, no questions asked, was hidden in a third secret compartment, located underneath a third false panel. Extra precautions had been taken. What looked like a bar of lavender-scented soap was an X-ray-impervious high-density dubnium polymer surrounding a flash drive with the dummied Workbench. What looked like a bottle of designer eau de cologne was an industrial-strength solvent powerful enough to strip the polymer away. What looked like a toothbrush was a toothbrush switchblade. What looked like a stick of deodorant was a stun gun, and what looked like a tin of breath mints held fast-acting poison pills for use in the event he was captured and facing the prospect of torture.
After ensuring that everything had survived the journey, he replaced the false panels and went to take a cooling shower. The water was foul and hot, the towels abrasive. Another picture of Zhulk hung over the toilet, scowling at Pfefferkorn as he stood before the cracked bathroom mirror, pressing the moisture out of his false moustache. It was medium brown, the color of his hair in his youth. In point of fact, it closely resembled the moustache he had kept in college. There was a reason he had shaved it off: it wasn’t a good look for him. Bill had the right amount of manly jowl to justify facial hair. Not him. He ran his fingers over it. It was dense, bristly, both of him and not. He appreciated the restraint Blueblood had shown in creating it.
While he waited to stop sweating, he surveyed the room’s remaining amenities. There was a lamp, a bedside clock, an oscillating fan, and a painted radiator gone piebald—the last of which would be useless for the next three months, minimum. If he was still here then, God help him. He made sure it was screwed tightly off, then switched on the fan. It was dead. He picked up the rotary phone and dialed zero. The desk clerk answered with a smarmy “Monsieur?” Pfefferkorn asked for a replacement fan and was told one would be brought without delay.
A clanking started up from inside the wall, near the headboard. It was a noise he was unfortunately well acquainted with: hot water pipes coming to life. In his old apartment building it had sometimes sounded as though his neighbors were having shootouts. Why a hotel guest would possibly want hot water on a day like today, he could not venture to guess. Then it occurred to him that all the hotel’s water was likely hot, whether guests wanted it that way or not. The clanking was loud and rhythmic. It made the picture of Zhulk vibrate and jump on the wall. To drown it out, Pfefferkorn aimed the remote control at the television. The screen filled with a stern young woman in an unflattering uniform, her tight hair topped with a majorette hat. She was standing in front of a paper weather map, barking the five-day forecast as she tacked up little paper suns. Her voice was even worse than the clanking, so Pfefferkorn muted her and lived with it.
In the top drawer of the nightstand he found the government-mandated copy of the West Zlabian edition of Vassily Nabochka. He sat down on the bed and leafed through it while he waited for his fan. The poem was familiar to him, having played a major role in his fictive life, as it did for every Zlabian. It told of the heroic quest of the disinherited Prince Vassily to find a magical root vegetable with the power to cure his ailing father, the king. The masterwork of itinerant bard Zthanizlabh of Thzazhkst, it reminded Pfefferkorn of the Odyssey crossed with Lear crossed with Hamlet crossed with Oedipus Rex, plus tundra and goats. The first two volumes of Hurwitz centered on a discussion of its history and symbolism, information essential for understanding the present state of affairs, as the Zlabian conflict traced its origins to a blood feud over the fictional protagonist’s final resting place. The East Zlabians claimed Prince Vassily was “buried” in the East. The West Zlabians claimed he was “buried” in the West. Because the poem was unfinished, there was little hope of resolving the dispute. Each side staged its own parade on the day it marked as the prince’s day of death. Often shots were fired or Molotov cocktails thrown across the Gyeznyuiy. And that was in times of peace. At its worst the conflict had pitted brother against brother, goat against goat. According to Hurwitz, an estimated one hundred twenty-one thousand lives had been lost over the years—an incredible number, given the size of the population as a whole.
Pfefferkorn glanced at the clock. It had been fifteen minutes and he still hadn’t gotten his fan. He called the front desk again. The clerk apologized and promised it would be there shortly. Pfefferkorn hung up, picked up the poem again, and began flipping to random pages. He admired and pitied a people so fiercely devoted to their cultural heritage that they would spend four centuries slaughtering themselves over fictional burial places. Such a thing could never happen in America, because Americans lacked a sense of investment in their own history. The entire American enterprise was based on jettisoning the past in favor of the Next Big Thing. He wondered if this might make an interesting premise for a novel. The clanking died down, leaving Zhulk’s picture askew. He didn’t bother to fix it. It was nearing eleven a.m., time for his first appointment. He turned off the television, got dressed, and hurried downstairs.
69.
As part of Pfefferkorn’s cover, meetings had been arranged with the government officials he would have needed to see had he truly been interested in exporting fertilizer. He stood among his fellow petitioners in the moldering hallway, waiting to be summoned by a squat woman more fit to guard the mouth of a cave. A one-armed Slav, his stinking greatcoat pinned at the shoulder and jangling with military decorations, whistled and smiled at the ceiling. The mewlings of a bundled child went untended by its vacant-eyed mother, eliciting clucks from a pair of babushkas fondling prayer ropes. Pfefferkorn wondered what business these folks could have with the second assistant to the deputy subminister in charge of animal waste. He had his answer when the troll lady appeared to crook a finger at him, and he gestured to the old soldier: You first. The Slav smiled, whistled, did not move. Nor did anyone else, and Pfefferkorn realized that he was the only one with an appointment. The rest had come inside to escape the heat.
“Comrade!” The second assistant to the deputy subminister in charge of animal waste greeted him with kisses that left wet trails in Pfefferkorn’s moustache. “Sit down, yes, please, sit down! I convey to you abundance wishes for prosperity and partnership between these our two nations. Yes, sit, please! No, I insist: I am standing. I sit too long, yes? It is not conducive for buttocks. What? Yes, yes. Please, enjoy. To your health. Thruynichka, ah? We say: first bottle for sick, second bottle for well, next bottle for dead, four for alive again. Ha? Ha? Ha! To your health. I am please to receive application for export of waste. To your health. Unfortunately, I must report: this application is incomplete. Yes, ten thousand apologies . . . to your health. There is lacking application fee, there is lacking documentation of statement of purpose, affidavit of disloyalty unaffiliation, many else. Process requires to initiate from top. Please
refrain from sadness. To your health. What? No. Expedite is impossible, impossible. What? No. Impossible. What? Shall I consult? It is not impossible.” He pocketed the bribe. “To your health, ah?”
Pfefferkorn stumbled drunk into the burning noonday sun, negotiating fetid streets aswarm with dogs, cats, chickens, goats, children, factory workers, farmers, pickpockets, soldiers, and peasant women on prehistoric bicycles. Their motley faces told of centuries of invasion, subjugation, and intermarriage. Their eyes were narrow or round, ice-blue or muddy. Their complexions ran the gamut from saddle brown to translucent. Their bone structure was fine, it was rough-hewn, it was hidden beneath clumps of flesh or tenting skin drawn tight as a snare drum. So many faces, alike only in their fixed expressions of distrust and resignation. So many faces, but none the one he sought.
Carlotta, he thought, I’ve come for you.
One block on, a crowd had gathered to watch three men in shirtsleeves fixing a spavined haycart, dissipating disappointedly when the jack did not fail and nobody was crushed to death. He turned down an unpaved alley that opened onto a wide, potholed boulevard festooned with posters touting the virtues of manual labor. Thatch-roofed huts with crude goat pens and wilting garden plots abutted Soviet-era concrete block monstrosities. MINISTRY OF FACTS, Pfefferkorn read. MINISTRY OF MUSICAL EDUCATION, MINISTRY OF BOOTS, MINISTRY OF LONG-CHAIN CARBON COMPOUNDS. It was easy to identify the state’s priorities. The MINISTRY OF SECURITY was shiny and imposing, as was the MINISTRY OF POETRY. The lobby of the MINISTRY OF ROOT VEGETABLES was capacious enough to house a fifteen-foot fountain. In the cracked storefront of the vacant MINISTRY OF TRAFFIC CONTROL was a poster memorializing the martyred Zhulk, with the slogan THE REVOLUTION LIVES ON!
Though it was late afternoon by the time he staggered out of his next meeting, with the auxiliary advisor to the acting chief of the standards division of the Ministry of Volatile Mineral Colloids, the sun was still high in the sky, the heat as enervating as ever. Pfefferkorn eased himself down to the curb and put his head between his knees. With respect to thruynichka consumption, the auxiliary advisor to the acting chief of the standards division of the Ministry of Volatile Mineral Colloids made the second assistant to the deputy subminister in charge of animal waste look like a lightweight. Pfefferkorn had no idea how he was going to find his way back to his hotel. He decided to sleep on the sidewalk. It was roughly the same temperature outside as it was in his room. No harm done, he thought. He curled up. Inside of a minute a pair of soldiers was hoisting him to his feet, demanding his papers. He produced his tourist pass. They ordered him to the Metropole and, when he started off in the wrong direction, took him by the elbows and dragged him there. He reeled across the lobby, scattering a klatsch of aged hookers and crashing into the front desk hard enough to jar the portrait of Zhulk on the wall.
The desk clerk readjusted it. “Monsieur has had a pleasant daytime, I am hopeful.”
“Messages for me?” Pfefferkorn asked.
“No, please.” The clerk vacuumed the money up his sleeve, handed Pfefferkorn his room key, and gestured toward the dining room. “Please, monsieur must partake of evening buffet.”
Chinese businessmen were monopolizing the samovar. Eager to put something in his roiling stomach, Pfefferkorn browsed the offerings, settling on root vegetable cake with goat’s-milk cream-cheese icing, cut into two-inch cubes and distributed by a dour woman wearing rubber gloves. She refused to give him more than one piece. He started to reach for cash.
“Ah, friend, no, no.”
The speaker was a burly man in a grimy tweed sportcoat. In one hand he held a chipped plate piled precariously with root vegetable pierogi and smothered in a yellowish sauce. The other arm encircled a briefcase. He grinned, making three new chins. “Allow me.” He spoke to the cake lady in rapid Zlabian. Pfefferkorn picked out the words for “industrious,” “generosity,” and “honor.” The cake lady looked annoyed. All the same, she snatched Pfefferkorn’s plate and added a second hunk of cake, shoving it at him as though giving up a pound of flesh.
“You must know,” the man said, guiding Pfefferkorn to a corner table, “Comrade Yelena is perhaps the most duty-conscious woman in all of West Zlabia. She has been inculcated with the strictest principles. A double portion represents a desecration of all she knows.”
“How’d you change her mind?” Pfefferkorn asked.
The man chuckled. “First, I instructed her that it is not proper to work without a smile. Then I reminded her that the cake ration for tourists is set at two per day, and because you were not at breakfast, you are entitled. Next, I provided examples of our benevolent Party leaders going without in order to feed the hungry. Finally, I informed her that I would in any case donate my ration to you, so that you might enjoy the full warmth of West Zlabian hospitality.” The man smiled. He set his briefcase on the table, opened it, and withdrew two shot glasses, cleaning them with the corner of his coat. He uncapped a flask and poured. “To your health.”
70.
Fyothor was his name, and if his clout with the cake lady and the freeness of his speech were not enough to mark him as a ranking Party member, the cell phone was. It rang continually throughout their conversation, which lasted long after the restaurant had officially closed. Pfefferkorn tried to pace himself but Fyothor kept pulling flasks from his briefcase.
“To your health. But tell me, friend, your room is acceptable to you? The Metropole is the finest our humble nation has to offer. Not up to American standards, perhaps, but comfortable enough, I hope.”
“I’m not American,” Pfefferkorn said.
“Akha, I beg forgiveness. So you said. Excuse me.” Fyothor answered his phone, spoke briefly, hung up. “My apologies. To your health.”
“You knew I wasn’t at breakfast,” Pfefferkorn said. “How.”
Fyothor smiled. “I am a man whose business it is to know such things. And besides, I was there, you were not. It is elementary logic, yes?”
“What is it you do, exactly,” Pfefferkorn said.
“You should ask instead what I do not do.”
“All right, what don’t you do.”
“Nothing!” Fyothor’s laughter rattled the silverware. “To your health, eh? This is the highest-quality thruynichka. You must be careful, friend. Most people make their own at home, it is like drinking bleach. My uncle is famous for his blend. Most of his neighbors are blind. To your health. Akha. Excuse me.”
As Fyothor took the call, Pfefferkorn downed the rest of his cake. It tasted vile but he needed to soak up some of the alcohol—to retake the reins of his mind. A man like Fyothor could have any of a hundred different motives. He might be angling for a bribe. He might be a standard-issue Party minder. He might be secret police. He might simply be a friendly fellow, although in Pfefferkorn’s estimation this was depressingly unlikely. Of greatest interest was the possibility that Fyothor was the point man Pfefferkorn was waiting for. If so, they both had to tread lightly. By law, membership in the May Twenty-sixers was illegal, making the exchange just as dangerous for them as it was for him. Should he be caught, the United States would disavow all knowledge of his existence and activities. He mentally rehearsed the identification codes.
Fyothor closed the phone. “Ten thousand apologies. This device . . . We have a word, myutridashkha. I believe in English you say ‘both a blessing and a curse.’ You understand?”
“Perfectly.”
“To your health. You know, this is a word with an interesting history. It comes from a name, Myutridiya.”
“The royal doctor,” Pfefferkorn said.
Fyothor’s mouth opened. “But yes! Friend, tell me: you know Vassily Nabochka?”
“Who doesn’t.”
“But this is wonderful! To meet a new person is rare. To meet a new person who is also a lover of poetry, this is like finding a diamond in the street. Friend, I am so
joyful. To your health. But tell me: how is it that you have come to know our national poem?”
Pfefferkorn said that he was an avid reader.
Fyothor beamed. “To your health. You must know, then, the many idioms we take from the poem. We say, ‘Sluggardly, like the dog Khlabva.’”
“‘Happy, like the midget Juriy,’” Pfefferkorn said.
“‘Redder than the fields of Rzhupsliyikh,’” Fyothor said.
“‘Drunker than the farmer Olvarnkhov,’” Pfefferkorn said, raising his shot glass.
Fyothor threw back his shaggy head and roared with laughter. “Friend, you are a true Zlabian.”
“To your health,” Pfefferkorn said.
Fyothor uncapped a fourth flask. When he next spoke his voice was tremulous. “But you see, friend, here is the essence of our tragical national fate. Our wondrous heritage, it is also the cause of abominable bloodshed. If only the great Zthanizlabh of Thzazhkst had understood the dire consequences of leaving it in a state of incompleteness—but alas, we are doomed, doomed. . . .” His phone rang. He looked at it and slid it back in his pocket. “Akha. Let us speak of happier things. Tell me, friend, you come for business, yes?”
It was a credit to the thoroughness of Pfefferkorn’s training that, despite being sloppier than he had been since the Nixon administration, he was able to describe in pitch-perfect detail the purpose of his visit to West Zlabia, starting with his twenty-two years of experience in the fertilizer industry and ending with his visit to the auxiliary advisor to the acting chief of the standards division of the Ministry of Volatile Mineral Colloids.
Fyothor shook his head. “But friend, no! I know this man. He is a worthless fool, a lazy ignoramus whose only talent is for opening his palm. No, I insist, you must allow—” His phone rang. Again he returned it to his pocket unanswered. “My wife. Excuse me. But tell me: with whom do you meet tomorrow?”
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