Absurdistan

lounging on the tartan couch by the window while the bartender served them luscious pink lobster rolls and thick, oily American potato chips. The men were raucous and drunk. One of the Scotsmen was apparently trying to have a literary conversation with his Houston counterpart. “Evelyn Whuh?” the Texan was shouting. “Get outta here, mister! That ain’t a real name!”

The train moved slowly to make sure our protectors would not fall off the roof. Outside the window, the country people had gathered by the tracks to try to interest us in their remaining possessions—the leftovers of their mules, their wives’ silver brocade work, plumbing fixtures that looked like mud-caked saxophones, gilt-edged portraits of Georgi Kanuk in happier times presenting a drooling Leonid Brezhnev with a fist-sized diamond.

In the background, the Caspian Sea was fighting an encroaching salt bed, while in the foreground, a lake of slurry and waste butted up against a dehydrated stretch of grass; between the two, the remains of the oil industry were being minutely disassembled, sections of old nodding donkey pumps now offered for sale by the men lining the railroad tracks.

The smell of fresh excrement penetrated the bulletproof walls of our wagon, and we could hear members of the AmEx Rapid Reaction Force stomping about on the roof, threatening the dying men outside with the laser scopes of their rifles or else picking off the rare Daewoo steam iron in exchange for packets of contraband saltines and warm cans of Fresca. As the sun set, the impromptu trading lessened in tempo, and the men lining the railroad tracks began to decompose into clay shards and clumps of sand mixed with grass. Their humanity ended so swiftly that one moment I could discern the subtle glow of the whites of their eyes against the blue and black of the fading desert and sea, and in the next instant I saw only yellow on black, gray on black, black on black—nothing.

My mobilnik rang. The St. Petersburg telephone code appeared on the screen. Apparently international calls were possible this far out of the capital; we had outdistanced the Absurdi censors.

The familiar number blinked impatiently on my phone. It was Alyosha-Bob. I wanted to tell him that I was safe and leaving the country, but I was too embarrassed to go into the particulars of what had transpired—how the Nanabragovs had taken my honor and how one of them—granted, the most gentle and sympathetic—was now snoring away in my train compartment. Instead, I picked up one of the Russian papers and tried to distract myself with the news. The death toll from the Absurdi conflict was approaching three thousand, the American electorate still couldn’t find the Caspian Sea on a map, while the Russian president Putin was promising both to bomb the warring parties and to mediate between them. I put the paper down. My stomach and mouth were suddenly hurting from the beating Tafa and Rafa had given me. Or perhaps I had merely channeled the suffering of the nation around me.

I pictured my life in Brussels. The days passing slowly in that quiet European indeterminacy. The price of living amid civilization, away from the bustle and treachery of America and Absurdistan both.

The older Scots were trying to teach the Texans the chorus to one of their bagpipe songs, soused with melancholy cheer and the impossibility of ever really saying farewell. Potato chips flew out of mouths and beer steins clanked together as the Tatar barman tried to keep the beat with a pair of coasters.

So whenever friendly friens may meet
Wherever Scots foregather,
We’ll raise our gless, we’ll shout
Hurroo,
It’s Carnwath Mill forever.

The sun had set entirely, and the AmEx men were shining their flashlights at a yellow corpse stumbling alongside the tracks, its hands waving madly for a moment’s notice. We pulled down the shades before the gunshots began.

43 The Faith of My Fathers

I was rightfully hungover the next day, whiskey being one of my more problematic tipples. Something was blocking the busy neural pathway where my neck had set up a Customs post with my head. “Oh, dear,” I moaned, kissing Rouenna’s face, or, as it turned out, the doughy pillow where she had left her scents. Did I say Rouenna? I meant Nana, of course. And then I realized I had been dreaming of Rouenna all night long, about the time she and I, along with her little cousin Mercedes, had taken a tour of Hunter College. As we passed through the library, the lively ten-year-old Mercedes had said, “Ai, mami, look at all them fucken books!” And Rouenna, who had misguidedly dressed herself in a business suit for the informal college tour, very solemnly replied, “Why you cursin’ in an educated place, Mercedes?”

Was it the word “educated” that was scraping away at my heart? The respect for book learning from a woman who, up till that point, had thought Dickens was a porn star? Was it the cheap business suit that could barely contain Ro’s figure? Why did I miss her so much all of a sudden, my traitorous Bronx girl with the tough hands and the bleeding gums?

“Breakfast is here, bobo,” Nana said. “Get it while it’s hot.” The train crew had set up a small table for us upon which a heap of croissants and muffins exuded the nauseating smells of butter and cranberries. I propelled myself to the table, nearly knocking over a silver tray bearing a notecard with the AmEx logo. A train happily chugged past an indifferent sun; below, a message written in a woman’s dainty, practiced hand:

Good morning, respected passenger!

Today is Monday, September 10, 2001

We are passing through northern Absurdsvani, where today’s temperature will be a maximum of 28 degrees Celsius, with sunny conditions prevailing along the Staraushanski Valley and into the Griboedov mountain range.

Lunch in the bar car will be a caviar sampler with blini and just-picked country leeks followed by elderberry- cured roast beef (a northern Absurdi specialty) with fingerling potatoes and cavalo nero.

We will be arriving at the Red Bridge border checkpoint at 15:00 o’clock. Please have your passports ready.

My name is Oksana Petrovna, I am proud to work on this train, and I am here only just for you!

“Such a nice girl, this Oksana,” I said to Nana. “She’s even more professional than that poor Larry Zartarian.” I winced at the thought of the Hyatt manager and his mother, still trapped beneath my bed at the Intourist Hotel.

“She’s a slut,” Nana corrected me, pouring three creams into my coffee, which is how I took it.

I raised the shades. What a difference a night made! The oily sea-desert had been replaced by a near-alpine vista. Fields of yellow late-summer grass (or was it really hay in disguise?) rolled down the hills. Rills fed brooks, which nurtured distant lakes, which in turn drank from the whitecapped mountains straddling the horizon. A bird that might have been an eagle or a pigeon (my eyesight is not so strong) circled above the distant skyline of these promontories. And something was mercifully absent from this unfurling of nature’s green, blue, and white tricolor, something beaten and raw, scorched and unkempt, vulgar and blackened with rot. “Where are the people?” I asked Nana. “Why don’t they come eat all these eagles and hay instead of dying in the desert?”

“The people have been moving off the mountain for decades,” Nana said. “They follow the oil.”

“But there’s no oil left,” I said. “Right, Nana? The whole war was cooked up by your papa and Golly Burton because they ran out of oil. Isn’t that true?”

Nana shrugged. “What do I know?” she said. “I’m just a senior at NYU. You gotta try this excellent honey!