Absurdistan

a jolly man in a turban stamped my passport after saying something incomprehensible. Another time a pleasant black lady nearly as large as myself looked appreciatively at the outer tube of my stomach and gave me the thumbs-up. What can I say? The INS people are just and fair. They are the true gatekeepers of America.

My problems, however, rest with the U.S. State Department and the demented personnel at their St. Petersburg consulate. Since I returned to Russia some two years ago, they’ve denied my visa application nine times, on all occasions citing my father’s recent murder of their precious Oklahoma businessman. Let me be frank: I feel sorry for the Oklahoman and his rosy-cheeked family, sorry that he got in my papa’s way, sorry that they found him at the entrance of the Dostoyevskaya metro station with a child’s amazed expression on his face and a red gurgling upside-down exclamation mark on his forehead, but after hearing of his death nine times, I am reminded of the guttural old Russian saying: “To the khui, to the khui; he’s dead, so he’s dead.”

This book, then, is my love letter to the generals in charge of the Immigration and Naturalization Service. A love letter as well as a plea: Gentlemen, let me back in! I am an American impounded in a Russian’s body. I have been educated at Accidental College, a venerable midwestern institution for young New York, Chicago, and San Francisco aristocrats where the virtues of democracy are often debated at teatime. I have lived in New York for eight years, and I have been an exemplary American, contributing to the economy by spending over US$2,000,000 on legally purchased goods and services, including the world’s most expensive dog leash (I briefly owned two poodles). I have dated my Rouenna Sales—no, “dated” is the wrong term—I have roused her from the Bronx working-class nightmare of her youth and deposited her at Hunter College, where she is studying to become an executive secretary.

Now, I am certain that everyone at the Immigration and Naturalization Service is deeply familiar with Russian literature. As you read about my life and struggles in these pages, you will see certain similarities with Oblomov, the famously large gentleman who refuses to stir from his couch in the nineteenth-century novel of the same name. I won’t try to sway you from this analogy (I haven’t the energy, for one thing), but may I suggest another possibility: Prince Myshkin from Dostoyevsky’s The Idiot. Like the prince, I am something of a holy fool. I am an innocent surrounded by schemers. I am a puppy deposited in a den of wolves (only the soft blue glint of my eyes keeps me from being torn to shreds). Like Prince Myshkin, I am not perfect. In the next 318 pages, you may occasionally see me boxing the ears of my manservant or drinking one Laphroaig too many. But you will also see me attempt to save an entire race from genocide; you will see me become a benefactor to St. Petersburg’s miserable children; and you will watch me make love to fallen women with the childlike passion of the pure.

How did I become such a holy fool? The answer lies rooted in my first American experience.

Back in 1990, Beloved Papa decided that his only child should study to become a normal prosperous American at Accidental College, located deep in the country’s interior and safe from the gay distractions of the eastern and western seaboards. Papa was merely dabbling in criminal oligarchy then—the circumstances were not yet right for the wholesale plunder of Russia—and yet he had made his first million off a Leningrad car dealership that sold many wretched things but thankfully no cars.

The two of us were living alone in a tight, humid apartment in Leningrad’s southern suburbs—Mommy had died of cancer—and were staying mostly out of each other’s way, because neither of us could understand what the other was becoming. One day I was masturbating fiercely on the sofa, my legs splayed apart so that I looked like an overweight flounder cut precisely down the middle, when Papa stumbled in from the winter cold, his dark bearded head bobbing above his silky new Western turtleneck, his hands shaking from the continual shock of handling so much green American money. “Put that thing away,” he said, scowling at my khui with red-rimmed eyes. “Come to the kitchen. Let’s talk man-to-man.”

I hated the sound of “man-to-man,” because it reminded me once more that Mommy was dead, and I had no one to wrap me up in a blanket at bedtime and tell me I was still a good son. I pocketed my khui, sadly letting go of the image that was driving me to pleasure (Olga Makarovna’s enormous ass hanging over the wooden chair in front of me, our classroom rank with the farmer’s-cheese smell of unattained sex and wet galoshes). I sat down across the kitchen table from my papa, sighing at the imposition, as would any teenager.

“Mishka,” my papa said, “soon you’ll be in America, studying interesting subjects, sleeping with the local Jewish girls, and enjoying the life of the young. And as for your papa…well, he’ll be all alone here in Russia, with no one to care if he is dead or alive.”

I nervously squeezed at my thick left breast, funneling it into a new oblong shape. I noticed a stray piece of salami peel on the table and wondered if I could eat it without Papa noticing. “It was your idea that I should go to Accidental College,” I said. “I’m only doing as you say.”

“I’m letting you go because I love you,” said my father. “Because there’s no future in this country for a little popka like you.” He grabbed the floating dirigible of my right hand, my masturbatory hand, and held it tight between his two little ones. The broken capillaries of his cheek stood out beneath his graying stubble. He was crying silently. He was drunk.

I started crying, too. It had been six years since my father had told me he loved me or wanted to hold my hand. Six years since I had ceased being a pale little angel whom adults loved to tickle and school bullies loved to punch, and turned instead into a giant florid hymie with big, squishy hands and a rather mean-looking overbite. Almost twice the size of my father, I was, which stunned us both pretty hard. Maybe there was some kind of recessive Polish gene on my miniature mother’s side. (Yasnawski was her maiden name, so nu?)

“I need you to do something for me, Mishka,” Papa said, wiping his eyes.

I sighed again, slipping the salami peel into my mouth with my free hand. I knew what was required of me. “Don’t worry, Papa, I won’t eat any more,” I said, “and I’ll do exercises with the big ball you bought for me. I’ll be thin again, I swear. And once I get to Accidental, I’ll study hard how to become an American.”

“Idiot,” Papa said, shaking his double-jointed nose at me. “You’ll never be an American. You’ll always be a Jew. How can you forget who you are? You haven’t even left yet. Jew, Jew, Jew.”

I had heard from a distant cousin in California that one could be both an American and a Jew and even a practicing homosexual in the bargain, but I didn’t argue. “I’ll try to be a rich Jew,” I said. “Like a Spielberg or a Bronfman.”

“That’s fine,” my papa said. “But there’s another reason you’re going to America.” He produced a smudged piece of graph paper scribbled with outlandish English script. “Once you land in New York, go to this address. Some Hasids will meet you there, and they will circumcise you.”

“Papa, no!” I cried, blinking rapidly, for already the pain was clouding my eyes, the pain of having the best part of me touched and handled and peeled like an orange. Since becoming gigantic, I had gotten used to a kind of physical inviolability. No longer did the classroom bullies bang my head against the board until I was covered with chalk as they shouted, “Dandruffy Yid!” (According to Russian mythology, Jews suffer from excessive flakiness.) No one dared touch me now. Or wanted to touch me, for that matter. “I’m eighteen years old,” I said. “My khui will hurt terribly if they cut it now. And I like my foreskin. It flaps.”

“Your mama wouldn’t let you get circumcised when you were a little boy,” Papa said. “She was afraid of how it would look to the district committee. ‘Too Jewish,’ they would say. ‘Zionist behavior.’ She was afraid of everyone except me, that woman. Always calling me ‘shit eater’ in public. Always hitting me over the head with that frying pan.” He looked toward the cupboard where the dreaded frying pan once lived. “Well, now you’re my responsibility, popka. And what I say, you will do. That’s what it means to be a man. To listen to your father.”

My hands were now shaking rhythmically along with Papa’s, and we were both covered in sweat, steam rising in invisible white batches from our oily heads. I tried to focus on my father’s love for me, and on my duty to him, but one question remained. “What’s a Hasid?” I said.

“That’s the best kind of Jew there is,” Papa said. “All he does is learn and pray all day.”

“Why don’t you become a Hasid, then?” I asked him.

“I have to work hard now,” Papa said. “The more money I make, the more I can be sure no one will ever hurt you. You’re my whole life, you know? Without you, I would cut my throat from one ear to the other. And all I ask