Absurdistan

20 The American Gambit

The American embassy was situated in the shadows of the ExxonMobil skyscraper, a freshly built rectangle of salmon-hued glass with art deco bands of chrome meant to evoke permanence and easy history. The embassy itself was housed in an old pastel academy once used to educate the sons of local czarist nobility. In the wake of the attacks on American embassies in Africa, a moat of trenches and razor wire surrounded the American outpost in Absurdistan. The gathering crowds, however, were well equipped with wire cutters and the like, and they charged the compound with bravado, as if the incoming helicopters had convinced them they were extras in a Hollywood historical drama.

Some were older, but the majority seemed to be of college age, dressed to look as nonthreatening and American as possible. They carried signs that listed the reasons for being accepted aboard the hovering Chinooks, among other things: 21 YR. OLD GIRL, NOT PROSTITUTKA, HAVE STUDENT VISA TO CALIFORNIAN UNIVERSITY AT THE NORTHBRIDGE + MINE FAMILY HAS GAS. And: PLEASE LET ME GO WITH YOU—SECRET POLICE WILL DIE ME, BECAUSE I POLITICAL AGAINST DEBIL KANUK DICTATOR. And: WE ♥ HALLIBURTON, KBR #1, GO HOUSTON ROCKETS! And: AMERICA: IF YOU DON’T CARE ANYTHING ABOUT US, $AVE OUR OIL. My favorite, hoisted by a grizzly old pensioner, a simple retired laborer by the looks of him, whose sign was nonetheless written in perfectly correct English: WE ARE NO WORSE THAN YOU ARE. WE ARE ONLY POORER.

“American and EU citizens coming through,” Alyosha-Bob shouted, pushing aside the little brown Absurdis around us. I picked up his war cry, and even Timofey started shouting: “American and yoo-yoo, commie fru!”

Our U.S. and Belgian passports held aloft, we were quickly diverted toward a VIP line, where the potential aspirants were taller and whiter and fatter—more my speed all around. The only dark standout was Larry Zartarian, the Hyatt manager, who was trying to shove his mother into the arms of a consular officer, shouting, “Cysts! Deadly cysts! She needs emergency medical care at Cedars-Sinai. My mother will be your mother! Take her away from me!” The black-clad mama (a near-double of her son, only with her whiskers more expertly cropped) shouted back, “No, no, I won’t go! He won’t live without me! He doesn’t know how to live. He’s an idiot.”

We spotted Josh Weiner scurrying around behind several marine guards, dribbling saliva into his cellular phone and waving around a clipboard. “Weiner!” Alyosha-Bob shouted. “Class of ’94!”

Weiner flashed us a bullshit grin and waved the clipboard, then pointed to his watch to indicate he was busy. “Oh, come on!” Alyosha-Bob shouted. “Don’t make me write to the alumni newsletter!”

The diplomat sighed, slammed shut his phone, and came over to us. “Say, what’s the deal here, Joshie?” Alyosha-Bob said, putting a friendly hand into the crook of Weiner’s arm. “Think we can get our asses on that whirlybird?”

“What kind of citizenship does he have?” Weiner said, gesturing my way but not looking me in the face. The State Department always deals with me in the third person.

“Misha’s an EU citizen,” Alyosha-Bob said. “He’s a Belgian.”

“For right now, they’re just letting Americans go up,” Weiner said.

“That’s fine,” I said. “Don’t worry about it, Joshie. I’ll just die here like your friend Sakha.”

“Take it easy, Misha,” Alyosha-Bob said.

“That’s not fair,” Weiner said.

“Hey, Joshie, did you file the protest?” I said.

“What protest?”

“You told me you were going to file a protest. Remember? Right before they shot Sakha. How’s that protest going for you? Any word yet?”

“Oh, whatever, Snack Daddy,” Weiner said. “Keep thinking it’s all my fault. I’m just a low-level State Department employee. You think I actually save people’s lives? You think I’m Oskar fucking Schindler? I did everything I could for Sakha. He ripped us off left and right, too. That Zegna tie was just the tip of it. He ‘borrowed’ baby formula from the commissary, and he used improper channels to get his niece a scholarship at Penn State. And that’s just what we know about. These people are operators. Don’t kid yourself.”

I took a step toward Weiner, an aggressive step, but Alyosha-Bob’s body was already between us. “You know something, Snack?” Weiner said, backing away from me quickly. “Go ahead. Get the fuck out of here. I really don’t care anymore. Go eat Cheetos by the ton and have your belly rubbed by freshmen. Just don’t consider me your friend, all right? Because you never were.”

He waved us through toward the line of fully accredited Americans queuing at the foot of the ExxonMobil Building, bewildered-looking embassy families toting precious duffel bags, oilmen garrulously sharing in the fun of evacuation, slapping one another on the back and fondly recalling the Hyatt’s full-tilt prostitutes.

“Hey, big boy,” one of these specimens shouted at me. “Hey, scumbag.”

Big boy? Scumbag? I put both hands between my chests to indicate having taken affront. Before me stood a bowlegged orangutan in drawstring shorts and a U.S.S. Nimitz cap.

“Roger Daltrey,” he spat at me.

“Who?” I said. The name reminded me of a band member of some famous U.S. or British rock-and-roll band, but all my musical references were modern and focused on hip-hop and multiculturalism. “Who’s Roger Daltrey?”

“You don’t even know, do you?” said my antagonist, doffing his cap so that a halo of deeply receding red hair floated above him to match his angry words. “You fucking Russians don’t even remember who you kill. Fucking animals.”

“Oh, shit,” Alyosha-Bob said, once again thrusting his small frame between me and my tormentor.

“What?” I said.

“Oh, shit,” Alyosha-Bob said again, the repetition dull yet meaningful in my ears.

“Your father killed my uncle,” the American explained. “Over nothing. Over a rat farm.”

“Huh?” I was dizzy with confusion and low blood sugar. What was he talking about? The Oklahoma businessman? The one Papa allegedly had executed in Petersburg? “But you’re not from Oklahoma,” I said. “You sound like you’re working-class New Jersey. Are you sure you’re related? The Oklahoma guy was supposed to be educated.”

“What did you say, asshole?” the putative relative of the dead Oklahoman Roger Daltrey shouted at me. “What did you say to my face? I’m uneducated?”

“Shut up, Misha,” Alyosha-Bob growled at me. “Shut up and stay calm.”

“You know, I Googled your father,” the Daltrey relative said, “and he was just a total prick. Assholes like him ruined your country and ruined this one, too. They should send all of you to the Hague, stand you up on war-crimes charges.”

A cry dislodged itself from somewhere between my sternum and my groin, from someplace wet and lonely and orphaned. I found myself lapsing into the heavily accented English of my first years in the States as I shouted, “BELOVED PAPA WAS NO TOTAL PRICK!”

And with those words, I reached past Alyosha-Bob and clipped the American on the side of the head, one ferocious squishy bear paw striking him someplace relatively soft and unbreakable, not far removed from the small clump of brain that kept his vitals going.

My antagonist collapsed immediately and started roaring with shame and pain. Momentarily, Josh Weiner and his superiors were on the scene, men in pressed shirts and sober ties who held me back from the violence that had instantaneously gone out of me. “Beloved Papa was no total prick,” I said quietly, nodding in affirmation. “He was a Jewish dissident. A man of conscience.”

“My uncle has three children,” the American groaned. “Three orphaned children, you fat useless fuck.”

“We’re sorry about all this,” Alyosha-Bob beseeched the diplomatic staff and the arriving marines. “My friend lost his temper. He’s a Belgian, that’s all.”

“Sir,” the tallest and grayest of the diplomats told me, “we have to ask you to leave the embassy grounds.”

I looked into his officious face, smooth and hard like an actor’s or a politician’s. “These are Exxon grounds,” I said miserably.

“You’re the son of Boris Vainberg,” the older diplomat said. “I know all about you. There’s no way I’m letting you board a United States aircraft.”

“He’s nothing like his father,” Alyosha-Bob said. “He’s not a killer. He studied multiculturalism at Accidental College. Weiner, tell them.” He looked around for our classmate, but Josh Weiner was nowhere to be found.

“You go on without me,” I told Alyosha-Bob. “There’s no reason for you to stay here. Go. I’ll find a way out of here myself.”

“You’ll die here,” Alyosha-Bob said. “You don’t understand anything.”

I looked at him, trying to decide if I should be angered by his remark. Did I understand anything? My understanding had limits, that was certain, but my friendship with Alyosha-Bob had none. My friend stood before me, pained and small—a thirty-one-year-old man who seemed older by twenty years, as if each year spent in Russia had cost him three years more. Why had he come here? Why had he decided to become my brother and safekeeper?

“I miss Svetlana,” Alyosha-Bob said. “You never understood just how much I love her. You think it’s all just political economy in the end, but it’s not. You think she’s a passport whore, but she loves me more than you can know, more than any woman’s ever loved you.”

“Sir.” A marine was laying his hands upon me, as if inducting me into some sacred ritual with violent overtones.

“Go,” I said. “I’m not as helpless as you think. Go to your Svetlana. You’re right in everything you say. We’ll meet up in Brussels someday.”

Alyosha-Bob stretched out his arm to embrace me, thought better of it, turned around so that I wouldn’t see his tears, and walked toward the sheets of ExxonMobil glass vibrating beneath the arrival of another mighty Chinook. I went partly limp, nearly tipping over the marine beneath me (such pretty eyelashes he had, this Latino-American trooper), as other American hands picked up the slack and guided me toward an exit, toward a hole in the razor wire big enough to fit me.