Absurdistan (24 page)

“We’ve already filed a protest,” I heard him say.

“The people they’re going to shoot…they’re not rebels. They’re all democrats!”

“Did you hear what I just said, Vainberg?” Weiner grated through his teeth. “We’ve filed a protest.”

I turned around and made for the sunlight. “Misha, no!” Alyosha-Bob shouted, throwing himself upon me, but I knocked him out of my way with one enormous squishy fist.

I emerged onto the driveway to the sound of angry male voices. “On the ground!” the soldiers were yelling to Sakha and his cohorts. I
felt
them. I felt the soldiers with their warm ethnic blood and clan loyalties, their adolescent swagger and inbred psychoses, their made-up heraldry of lamb pie, plum brandy, and a hairy virgin for the wedding feast.

“On your knees!” the soldiers shouted.

The men, some of them heavy, others bestowed with an academic’s lack of physical grace, found it difficult to arrange themselves in this tenuous position. Several were tipping over and had to be dragged up by their collars. The soldiers had fallen in line behind them, one soldier to a man, a ratio that did not bode well.

Sakha’s eyes fixed on me. There were tears on his face; I couldn’t see them, but I knew they were there. “Misha,” he shouted to me. “Mishen’ka, please. Tell them to stop. They will listen to a man like you. Please. Say something.”

I felt Alyosha-Bob’s hand tugging on my sleeve, his little body pressing into mine. “Golly Burton!” I yelled. “KBR!”

The soldiers looked to Colonel Svyokla, who nodded. They shot the men through the back of the head, the bodies of their victims jerking up in unison with the discharge, then hitting the driveway with tremendous speed, a cloud of loose gravel swirling around them.

The spent bullet casings rolled down the driveway to my feet. A dozen bodies lay on the ground.

19

My Gray Reptile Heart

Forty stories above the war, civilization à la Hyatt enclosed us.

Generators hummed deeply within the skyscraper, allowing the illusion that we were on an American spaceship floating past the tanks and armored personnel carriers, the fake Irish bars and Royal Dutch Shell oil platforms, toward some remarkable and disingenuous Hollywood conclusion. “Everybody into the pool! It’s party time!”

I dialed, and misdialed, and dialed again Dr. Levine’s number. Finally the good doctor came on the line, coughed, sneezed (seasonal allergies again), hacked, and wished me a good day. “Dr. Levine, emergency,” I said. “I’m in Absurdsvanï Republic. I’m in great danger. Terrible things. Please advise me—”

With great patience and analytic equipoise, Dr. Levine beseeched me to calm the fuck down. “Now, where is this place?” he asked.

“Have you been watching the news?”

“I saw the news last night.”

“So you heard about the civil war.”

“What civil war?”

“In Absurdsvanï. In the capital. They’ve sealed off the airport. And they shot my friend in the back of the head.”

“Okay, let’s start from the beginning.” Dr. Levine sighed. “What is this Absurdsvanï?”

“Absurdsvanï is on the Caspian Sea.”

“Which is where, exactly? My geography’s a little off.”

“The Caspian Sea? It’s, you know, south of Russia, near Turkmenistan—”

“Where?”

“Near Iran.”

“Near Iran? I thought you were still in Moscow last time you called.”

“St. Petersburg.”

“Still, Iran must be a great deal farther off than Moscow. What are you doing there?”

I explained in so many words that I had traveled to Absurdistan to buy European citizenship off a crooked Belgian consular official after nailing my dead father’s young wife. A reproachful silence followed. “Is this a legal way to get citizenship?” Dr. Levine asked.

“Well,” I said. “ ‘Legal’ is a relative word…”

You son of a bitch,
I thought.
How dare you suggest that I shouldn’t avail myself of every last chance to get out of Russia when your own great-grandparents probably bribed half the czar’s men in the Pale of Settlement and then sneaked out in a mail bag, just to make sure their descendants could lounge on a fine walnut-trimmed Eames chair on the corner of Park Avenue and Eighty-fifth Street, issuing half-baked censorious statements to the insulted and injured and collecting US$350 an hour for the privilege?
But instead of saying this, I started to cry.

“Let’s go through the important questions first,” Dr. Levine said. “There seem to be a lot of people being shot to death or blown up by land mines in your recent past. So let me ask you: Are you in a safe place? Is your life in any immediate danger? And, given the possibility that you may now experience symptoms of post-traumatic stress such as feelings of detachment, anger, and helplessness, do you think you can make rational decisions that will keep you safe in the future?”

“I’m not sure,” I said, choking off my sobs to concentrate. “My friend Alyosha-Bob is trying to get us out of here. He’s very smart, you know.”

“Well, that’s positive,” Dr. Levine said. “In the meantime, you should spend your time constructively. Try to occupy yourself as you did in Moscow. If it’s safe to do so, go for a walk or do some exercise. This type of activity, combined with three milligrams of Ativan a day, should lower your anxiety level.”

“Do you think I can really—”

“Look, why don’t you just try to relax?” Dr. Levine said. I could hear him slurping on his beloved citrus shake with vitamin boost, the modern equivalent of the analyst’s cigar. “Just don’t get so worked up,” he said.

“
Try
to relax? How do I do that? That’s like trying to drink my way to sobriety.”

“You know what helps another patient of mine when he gets all worked up? He goes out and buys a suit. Why don’t you go out and buy a suit, Misha?”

“I’m too sad to buy a suit,” I whispered.

“What else comes to mind about that? About your sadness.”

“No one cares about me, not even you, Doctor,” I said. “I saw a nice democrat killed in front of me, and I try to grieve the best I can for him, but I can’t. And I try to grieve for my papa, but nothing, as you say, ‘comes to mind about that.’ And I try to be good, I try to help people, but there’s no way to be good here, or if there is, I don’t know it. And I’m scared, and I’m lonely, and I’m unhappy, and I’m chastising myself for being scared, and lonely, and unhappy, and for being alive for thirty years and having nobody, not one soul save for Alyosha, who would care for me. I know there are people in New York and Paris and London who have the same problems, and that I shouldn’t feel exceptional by comparison, but everything I do and everywhere I go, it’s all wrong, wrong, wrong. And it can’t just be me. I need to know that it’s not just me. I need to hear that I’m better than this. I wake up in an empty bed and I look at my heart and it’s gray. Literally. I take off my shirt, I pick up my breast, and my heart’s all leathery and gray like a reptile’s.”

I heard several bouts of strained nasal breathing. I grasped the receiver, waiting to hear that it wasn’t just me, that I was better than this, and that there was no such thing as a gray reptilian heart. “Say it!” I whispered, barely audibly, and in Russian. “Do your job! Make it work! Give me some happiness!”

More analytic silence followed.

“It is true,” Dr. Levine grudgingly allowed, “that the circumstances in which you live present a unique set of problems.”

“Yes,” I said. It was true. Bad circumstances made for unique problems. I waited for more. I waited for one minute, then for another, but in vain.
Oh, come on, Doctor. Throw a dog a bone. Tell me I’m better than this. Talk about my heart.
I put my face in one of my big, squishy hands and I cried, exaggerating my wails in the hope that the doctor would take pity and absolve me of my sins.

But he wouldn’t do it. Not for US$350 an hour. Not for all the money on the Cayman Islands. Not for all the money in this gray-hearted world of mine.

As depressed and immobile as a twenty-first-century Oblomov, I lay on my bed scrolling through the darkest corners of the Internet, the laptop whizzing and bleating atop the mound of my stomach. I watched all kinds of unfortunate women being degraded and humiliated, tied up, spat upon, forced to swallow gigantic penises, and I wished I could wipe off their dripping faces, whisk them away to some Minneapolis or Toronto, and teach them to take pleasure in a simple linear life far from their big-dicked tormentors.

I decided to write Rouenna an electronic letter.

Dear Rouenna,

I am in a small country called Absurdsvanï, to the south of Russia, near Iran. A civil war has broken out and innocent democrats are being shot in the street. I am trying to save as many people as I can. The Belgian government has awarded me citizenship in recognition of my services, but it may be too late to save my own life. Pray for me, Rouenna. Go to mass with your
abuela
Maria and pray for my soul.

I don’t know if your new boyfriend has taught you to read Freud yet, but I want to tell you about a dream I had in which you sold me an apple for eight dollars. My analyst says it means that everything you ever did for me was conditional upon my money. From the very beginning when you saw my loft and said, “Dang, jumbo, I think I finally made it,” you were using me. (See, I don’t forget a thing!) My analyst, who is a medical doctor, says you better change, Rouenna, because what you’re doing to me is going to destroy you inside. You’re
the one who’s going to be hurt by your actions and that’s a medical opinion. Think about it!

If I make it out of here alive I’ll still be yours forever, because you’re the only thing that makes my life worth living.

Your Loving Russian Bear, Misha

Actually, I hadn’t gotten around to mentioning the apple dream to Dr. Levine, but it was always useful to bring up an authority figure with Rouenna. As soon as I sent the message, an auto response popped up on my screen.

Hey there cowboys and cowgirls! I cant answer your message right now because me and my man are going up to CAPE COD for a week just to chill out from all the stress thats been killing us!!!! While y’all steaming like chinese dumplings in NYC we’ll be staying at a famous film director’s house in hiyanissport (cant say who it is or Proffessor Shteynfarb will kill me!). Ha ha. Just kidding. I’ll be back next Wednesday so dont miss me too much. Kisses, R.

Thought of the Day: “The earth swarms with people who are not worth talking to.”—Voltaire, French Philospher. Totally true!!!!!

I reread the message, the laptop pneumatically rising and falling on my belly with each breath. There was a phrase that had stuck in my mind. It wasn’t the Voltaire. I reread Rouenna’s message. “Film director.” That was it. Not a movie director, but a
film
director. Christ. I tapped at the keyboard with a numb forefinger, winding my computer back to the stream of pornography, the clean-shaven vaginas confronted with twirling batons. I fell asleep in a whirlpool of rage, a woman’s false moaning registering thinly on the laptop’s speakers.

A hand was rubbing my shoulder, but I couldn’t connect it to the familiar voice telling me to “Wake up, Misha.” The hand continued to massage me, infusing my shoulder with the smell of alcohol and man sweat.

“Don’t touch me!” I cried, jolting awake and smacking hard at the hand on my shoulder. For an odd second, I was surprised to find Alyosha-Bob standing beside me and not my father.

“What the fuck, Misha?” Alyosha-Bob said, rubbing at his hurt. “What’s wrong with you?”

“I don’t know,” I whispered. “I’m sorry.”

The globe of Alyosha-Bob’s head hovered over me, blue veins forming rivers of concern, his nose a living, breathing subcontinent. He was wearing nothing but sweatpants, his naked chest sporting a standard Orthodox cross and a Jewish c’hai. Recently my friend had been flapping his fish lips about adding some religious meaning to his life. I wanted to ask him: why are Americans always searching for something when clearly there is nothing to be found?

He picked up the laptop from my belly. “Oh, that’s nice, Snack,” he said. “Stuffherass.com. Is that your new girlfriend in the dog collar?”

“I’m sorry I hit you,” I said. “I just don’t want to be touched right now.”

“What did your analyst say?”

“Post-traumatic stress. Blah, blah, blah.”

“What else did he say?”

“He told me to go for a walk. You know, get some exercise. Buy a suit.”

“Brilliant as ever.” Alyosha-Bob laughed. “I ordered buffalo wings from room service. They’re in the living room. There’s Black Label in the minibar.”

The buffalo wings were dry and inauthentic, and it took four buckets, or forty-eight wings, to satisfy me. I sucked on the brittle bones as if I were a pornographic understudy myself, savoring the mild tomato-based “hot sauce” dribbling past my chin and onto my Hyatt bathrobe. I let the invisible central-air currents stroke my stubbly face. Hot sauce and air-conditioning: when I put them together, I almost felt safe.