made me wistful for my pastel-hued St. Leninsburg, the city I had fled only two months ago, hoping never to return.
But I couldn’t bring myself to eat. To do so would have required the eventual use of the toilet, a greenish husk rising out of the cracked bathroom floor, the seat of which was home to enterprising mosslike bacteria that were trying to survive the attack of hungry roaches and the daily slap of a hundred round Absurdi bottoms. Like the toilet bacteria, I, too, had my natural enemies. My former Volvo drivers, Tafa and Rafa, had discovered my presence at the Intourist, and one bloody Sunday, when all my roommates had gone to forage for food, they woke me up to a volley of kicks aimed at my stomach and face. “
I grunted, more from being roused out of a rare slumber than from any actual pain. My stomach had been receding of late but could still take an assault by a pair of skinny brown feet in cheap flip-flops. “Polite,” I lowed. “You should always use the polite form of address with your betters.”
Predictably, the next kick worked its way right into my mouth, which quickly filled with the taste of metal and nutrients. “Baargh,” I spat. “Not the mouth! Oh, you ruffians.”
I would have come to a bad end if Timofey hadn’t shown up with a Daewoo ink-jet printer he had stolen somewhere. Centimeter for centimeter, the device was a perfect match for Tafa’s (or Rafa’s) head, which cracked (informally, I should say) beneath it. After his companion fled, Timofey sat down to nurse my poor mouth.
While he ministered to me, I stroked my manservant’s balding head, the kindest thing I had ever done for him. “You stiw wike me, don’t you?” I said to Timofey through a slightly remodeled row of front teeth.
“When my master is down, I only love him more,” Timofey said, dabbing and bandaging.
“What a kind Wussian soul you have,” I said. I thought of Faik, the Nanabragovs’ Moslem manservant. “These Southern types are weally woothless,” I said. “You awen’t woothless at all, huh, Tima?”
“I try to live like it says in the Bible,” my manservant told me. “Other than that, I don’t really know.”
“Intwesting,” I said. I realized I knew next to nothing about my manservant, despite two years of having him clothe and feed me every day. (He had been a homecoming present from Beloved Papa.) What was wrong with me? Suddenly I was overcome by a surge of universal man-love. “Why don’t you tell me ewything about yo wife fwom the beginning,” I said. “Fwom when you wuh just a wittle wad.”
Timofey reddened. “There’s nothing to tell, really,” he said. His Polish polyester sport jacket was missing half a lapel and had been stained by a bowl of tomato soup. I resolved to buy him a brilliant suit at the earliest possible date.
“Oh, pwease,” I said. “I’m cuwious.”
“What’s to say?” Timofey said. “I was born in Bryansk Province, village of Zakabyakino, in 1943. My father, Matvei Petrovich, died in a tank battle with the fascists under Kursk in the same year. In 1945 my mother, Aleluya Sergeyevna, contracted tuberculosis and soon met her end. I was moved to my aunt Anya’s house. She was nice to me, but she died of an untreatable case of shingles in 1949, and my uncle Seryozha beat me until 1954. Then he died from drink, and I was sent to an orphanage in the city of Bryansk, province of Bryansk. I was beaten there, too. In 1960 I sinned terribly and murdered a man with my bare hands after drinking. I was sent to a labor camp in the Solovki Islands from 1960 to 1972. There a warden was kind to me and found me a job in a town in Karelia in the cafeteria of the executive committee of the local Communist Party. My life was happy until 1991. I had my son, Slava, and we played soccer and
Timofey had clearly become tired after giving the longest speech of his life. I, too, felt woozy from the mouth pain and from the sharp pangs of incredulous love. He leaned his head on the pillow, while I leaned mine against the hard, bitter-smelling half-lapel of his Polish sport jacket, and in this way we went to sleep.
40
September came, and with it my Nana bearing apologies. “Where the hell have you been?” I scolded her. “I was frightened to death for you.”
According to Nana, the Nanabragov manse was filled top to bottom with relatives and fellow clansmen fleeing the countryside, leaving no room for me and my manservant. Mr. Nanabragov had told her that once we were married, I would be entitled to take up residence with them, but at this stage the actual Nanabragov family took precedence. “Oh, my poor Misha,” she cried, throwing her hands around my neck. “Yew,” she said. “You smell like you work at the enamel factory.”
“There is no hot water, and roaches live in the showerhead,” I explained to her, working my wounded mouth around the r’s and the single l.
“And you’ve lost so much weight,” Nana said, feeling up my new fat-free pouches and the nascent outlines of actual body parts—one stomach, individualized compartments for lungs and a heart, the ironwork of ribs coming to the foreground. Despite the escalation of hostilities, Nana herself was as thick and glossy as an otter.
“Do you like my new skinny look?” I asked, rubbing my hands all over her booming chest, my toes curling from excitement, as I made a mental note to commence masturbation the moment she left. “I’m like that famous actor. Something-von-something.”
“To be honest, I liked you better when you were a big prime rib,” Nana said. “Fat is the new look for guys.”
“No limits,” I said.
“Uh-huh.” She reached over and cupped my genitals. I cried out in happiness, but an elderly snort brought me short.
“We mustn’t,” I said. “The Hyatt manager and his mother are under my bed.”
“Oh,” Nana whispered. “How disgusting. Listen, Misha, my father would like to talk to you. He eats a long lunch at the Lady with Lapdog every single day. My mother says he no longer loves us.”
“Is it safe for him to be out there?” I asked. “What about the war?”
“He’s got a whole new posse to protect him,” Nana said, tapping at my privates with an index finger while I impotently flared my hips at her. “But listen, Misha. No matter what he says to you, remember—we have to get out of this place. I’m already missing a whole semester at NYU. How’s that going to look on my transcript?” She leaned in closer to make sure the somnolent Zartarians couldn’t overhear. She had eaten mutton kebabs for lunch, mutton kebabs with the gristle still on, dunked into a dish of dill yogurt sauce. “I know a way out of Absurdistan,” she whispered. “American Express is gonna start running that luxury train to the border again. Now go to the Lady with Lapdog and talk to my father. Tell him ‘Goodbye, already.’ Tell him ‘We’re out of here.’”
From a chink in the cardboard blocking my hotel window, I watched her squeeze in behind the wheel of her American Express–flagged Navigator (the passenger seat had been taken up by a man in a fine V-neck, hunched over a Kalashnikov) and speed off toward the part of the Sevo Terrace that best resembled Santa Monica. She was so beautiful when in motion, tough and bejeweled like a poor Mediterranean woman just come into money. I had been angry at her for neglecting me, yet every time I saw her, I fell in love again. The air around me was light and feminine, filled with the promise of mango-scented moisturizers and duty-free.
I sat on the living room divan, letting a mysterious male baby-child crawl over my legs, farting profusely and making a desperate hacking sound out the other end. Better him than the roaches that used my body like a caravanserai all night. I poured myself a glass of somebody’s contraband Hennessy and lit up a contraband cheroot. My hands trembled, and not only from the hunger.
I had a problem. I wanted to do right by Nana, but I didn’t want to go to the pier to see Mr. Nanabragov. Don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t the gunfire and the mortar shelling but the prospect of seeing that little girl whose mother I had clocked, that little Yulia. Did I do right by leaving her with her momma? Should I have taken her with me? Are we best off with abusive parents or no parents at all? Some days, I tell you, I just want to break this world
