Alyosha-Bob switched to another Russian government channel. Come to think of it, they were all government channels. A young Western-looking reporter stood in front of a marble slab etched with the words PARK HYATT SVANÏ CITY.
“Hey, that’s our hotel,” I said.
“So far, a modest death toll,” the reporter was saying. “Sixty-five people killed in the conflict, twelve of them armed Sevo coup plotters shot by security forces in front of the Hyatt Hotel.”
“Sevo coup plotters?” I said. “Armed? They were just democrats with expensive ties.”
The reporter continued, “As a result of the personal mediation of President Putin, a temporary cease-fire was signed today in Svanï City.”
“That’s a good sign!” Alyosha-Bob said. “They might reopen the airport.”
I made a halfhearted snort of affirmation. To be honest, the idea of moving from the Hyatt seemed fantastical to me. I wanted to go back to my room and look at the poor girls on the Internet some more. I wanted to tear their tormentors apart with both hands.
The reporter went on, “Today the new president of the republic, Debil Kanuk, son of the murdered state leader Georgi Kanuk, met with the leaders of the Sevo rebellion, who are calling themselves the State Committee for the Restoration of Order and Democracy, or SCROD, according to the English acronym.”
“That’s a fish, isn’t it?” I said. “They named themselves after a fish.”
“Not even a good fish,” Alyosha-Bob said.
The Svanï leader shook hands with his older but better-dressed Sevo counterparts. They all smiled as if they had just returned from a triumphant duck hunt.
“Who do you like more, Svanï or Sevo?” I asked my friend.
“They all suck,” Alyosha-Bob said. “Larry Zartarian said this whole war is about an oil pipeline KBR is building from the Caspian through Turkey. Everyone wants it to go through their territory so they can profit from the kickbacks.”
Watching the proud, well-tailored Sevos shake hands with the distasteful Debil Kanuk, his oily forehead dripping pancake makeup beneath the klieg lights, I decided to root firmly for the Sevo people. If only in Sakha’s memory.
And then I recognized one of the men standing next to Debil Kanuk. Crisp olive uniform, dim eyes perpetually scanning the horizon, red fists hanging like pomegranates above his hips. It seemed Colonel Svyokla was smirking directly at me, daring me to save Sakha’s life.
He spoke calmly into the microphone. After the hoglike bursts of language coming out of Debil Kanuk, the colonel seemed positively an orator. “Until the murderous Sevo plotters responsible for downing President Georgi Kanuk’s plane are apprehended,” he said, “the republic’s borders will remain sealed and closed to all air traffic. There will be justice for the Svanï people.”
“Damn!” Alyosha-Bob said. “What the hell, Misha? They’re not going to let the foreigners leave? What do they want from us? This is bullshit!” He stopped to look at me. “Are you crying, Snack?”
I touched my face. It was true. My cheeks were soaked, and my nostrils were filled with the sea breeze of my own body salt; meanwhile, in back of me, the toxic hump was hitting all the familiar bass notes: “DES-pair, DES-pair, des-PAIR.” It was all happening again. The driveway. The spent bullet casings. The rising cloud of gravel. The bodies jerking upward. Sakha’s last words to me: Mishen’ka, please. Tell them to stop. They will listen to a man like you.
Alyosha-Bob switched off the television and walked over to me. “Come on, Snacky,” he said. He made an open-armed gesture toward my body.
“Go ahead,” I sobbed, leaning toward him. He sat down and put my head on his warm, naked shoulder. The tears kept coming, easily, aimlessly, with regard for nothing but the salty streams they forged across my friend’s body, eventually pooling inside his cavernous belly button.
“Let’s rap a little,” he said. “Would you like to rap a little, Misha? Remember who we are? We’re the Gentlemen Who Like to Rap!”
“I remember,” I said. I smiled just enough to reassure Alyosha-Bob that I was still salvageable.
“Then how about some ghetto tech? How about a little ‘Dick Work’?”
“Okay,” I said, glancing shyly between my legs.
“ ‘Lemme see yoah dick work, / Lemme see yoah dick work,’” Alyosha-Bob sang into an imaginary microphone, mimicking the tone of a young promiscuous woman from the Detroit ghetto. “ ‘Lemme see yoah dick work…’”
He leaned the microphone over to me. Pretending to be this imaginary ghetto woman’s paramour, I sang in a false ghetto-pimp baritone: “ ‘Let me see dat pussy work.’”
We both laughed. “Good boy,” Alyosha-Bob said. “That’s how we do it. That’s how we hit it. Straight-up Detroit shit. Call-and-response. You’re my nigga.”
“And you are mine,” I said, kissing him on the cheek. I felt something bright and piercing at the tip of my belly. Could rap be any more empowering? Was it true that the people who had nothing were the most fortunate people of all?
Our embrace was interrupted by the dull but steadily appreciating roar of an aircraft. Alyosha-Bob sprang to the window and pulled open the blinds.
“Get over here, Misha!” he said.
“Do I have to?”
“Look!”
A Chinook helicopter, a kind of mechanized air cow, bulky and graceless beneath its two rotors, was flying over the oil fields, headed for the International Terrace. I made out the inscription on its side, white English letters on camouflage.
“Get your manservant and your laptop. And your Belgian passport, too.”
“Why?”
“Fall of Saigon, ’75.”
“Je ne comprends pas.”
“Shake a limb, Snack. We’re gonna make a run for the embassy.”
The U.S. ARMY had arrived in Svanï City.
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!”