“We are here with excellent news,” Mr. Nanabragov said. He stuck his hand down his shirt and jerked lively. “We just returned from a plenary council of the State Committee for the Restoration of Order and Democracy. We were all so impressed by you at dinner last week. You’re every bit as cosmopolitan as your father. In some ways, you’re even more modern than him and he was a very original thinker. Also someday you may marry my daughter and make her bear your children. And so, by a unanimous vote, we have decided to offer you a position at the ministerial level. How would you like to be the SCROD Minister for Sevo-Israeli Affairs?”
“Er,” I said. “You know, my dear friends, I’m just a Belgian trying to get by. What do I know about running a government? My business is in the hands of others.”
“What business?” Mr. Nanabragov said. “Our business is democracy, same as yours. Are you forgetting your martyred democrat friend Sakha? This is what dead Sakha would have wanted. Don’t you think, Parka?”
The playwright was staring at the ceiling, methodically cleaning out his ear with a pinkie. “Parka!”
“What’s the question?” Parka Mook said, wiping earwax against the seam of his pants. “It’s early in the morning, gentlemen. I’m tired and sick.”
“His martyred friend Sakha. The democrat—”
“Truthfully, he wasn’t much of a friend,” Parka said. “I met him briefly at a wedding, and then he was shot to death by someone or other. I knew him for maybe two hours.”
“We’re going to build a statue of Sakha the Democrat,” Mr. Nanabragov said. “And use his likeness in our promotional materials. See, we’re getting plenty of marketing ideas from you, Misha. You really are an inspiration. And there’s another aspect to your becoming a SCROD minister. Everyone knows how much you love New York. Perhaps, after we have secured complete control over the country, we can appoint you our ambassador to the United Nations in New York. Then you can live there with Nana. How would you like that?”
I opened my mouth. The cold Hyatt air tickled my throat and dried out my tongue. “You’d do that for me?” I blathered.
Mr. Nanabragov smiled. Parka Mook, eyes closed, had started whistling “New York, New York.” The whistles turned to snores, and the playwright gracefully tipped to the side, resting his warm gray head on a piece of my shoulder. “He likes you,” Mr. Nanabragov whispered. “We should always honor the old.”
I tilted my head so that I wouldn’t scratch Parka Mook with my unshaven lower chin. An ambassadorship to the United Nations? Would the Sevo really take over the entire country? They seemed much more suited for leadership than those sheep-banging Svanï. Or was that just propaganda I had picked up at the dinner table? “You know the Americans have a visa moratorium against the whole Vainberg family,” I said. “They won’t let me in.”
“We can get you diplomatic immunity,” Mr. Nanabragov said. “And after you talk to Israel in your new role as Minister for Sevo-Israeli Affairs, the Americans will see you as golden. They’ll do anything for Israel.”
I was still confused by this “talking to Israel” business. How could I talk to anyone when my mobilnik couldn’t even dial out of Absurdistan?
“You know, Mr. Nanabragov,” I said, “Israel isn’t really my country. New York is. I am very proud to be a Jew, but I am a secular Jew, like Baruch Spinoza, Albert Einstein, or Sigmund Freud. Indeed, the very best of Jews have always been assimilated and free thinking. The bearded Jews you see at the Wailing Wall, rocking back and forth, cowering before their god, those are fairly second-rate Jews.”
Mr. Nanabragov accepted this fact with adult equanimity. “Fine,” he said. “You’re proud to be godless. But then tell me, Misha, who would you like to be?”
Who would I like to be when I grew up? This was a question that haunted people of my generation well into their forties. Momentarily I thought of Mr. Nanabragov’s daughter, of her mottled brown breasts tickling my nose. “What about Minister of Multicultural Affairs?” I said.
“What’s that?” he asked.
“I would be in charge of minority relations. I would unite all the different people living in Absurdsvanï. And together we would hold festivals and conferences almost every day. We’d celebrate our identities. It would look very good in the eyes of the world. I would be a uniter.”
“Hey, Parka, wake up!” Mr. Nanabragov said. “We’re talking about the future here.”
Parka stirred, wiping his mouth. He looked at the sleek gray surfaces around him and shrank farther into the sofa’s distressed leather. “Where am I?” he said.
“You’re in the land of the young and the fashionable,” Mr. Nanabragov said. “Now, listen to what our Misha’s going to be. He’s going to be the Commissar for the Nationalities Question.”
“Minister of Multicultural Affairs,” I lightly corrected him.
“Mul-ti-cul-tu-ral. What a nice word, Parka, you should add that to your new Sevo dictionary.”
“I add only real words,” Parka said, rubbing his nose.
“Shush, old man,” Mr. Nanabragov said. “Don’t outlive your usefulness. Speaking of the young and the fashionable, Misha, do you know we Sevo have our own rap group? Would rap prove helpful to your new work?”
“Rap empowers everyone it touches,” I said in English. “Tell me about this group.”
“They’re called the True Footrest Posse. Even I like their lyrics. Hey, maybe I’m multicultural, too!”
“It’s easy to be—” I started to say, but my sentence would remain unfinished. An oddly personal boom, a rifle discharged past my head, shook the penthouse, then another, another, another, another, another, another, another, another, another. The windows reverberated in their frames, the flat-screen television slapped against the wall, and the sun itself was blinded by ten successive vapor trails, followed by ten distant bolts of thunder. Our lightweight skyscraper registered a weak sigh of exasperation as a veil of heavy smoke settled over the tinted windows with the grandeur of rolling fog.
Presently a sprinkler system activated, its high-pitched alarm reassuring me with its cloying, repetitive warble. Water was flowing somewhere, possibly on top of us. A good sign. In the end, I thought, civilization would win out.
“Well, how’s that for you?” Mr. Nanabragov said, shaking his head and smiling. “The GRAD missiles work. The Ukrainian lads are bombing Gorbigrad!”
“GRAD missiles?” I said. “Those were GRAD missiles? Fired from the roof? We’re shelling our own city?”
Dazed but excited, we strolled past the neighboring penthouse, which contained a Malaysian diplomat who was now screaming gutturally in his language. We hailed the elevator and pressed the button for the roof terrace. Everything worked in proper Hyatt fashion, bell tones rang to indicate the closing door, an LCD registered our ascent from 40 to ROOF TERR.
We emerged into the humidity. The vapor trails had dissipated, leaving us with nothing but a perfect, scorching summer day to admire. The sprinklers refreshed us with steady cold showers, evoking amusement parks and cheap excitement. All signs of the rollicking Halliburton luau had been cleared away. A row of singed satellite dishes pointed accusingly toward some faraway mecca. They gave off an acrid burnt-rubber odor that I would soon learn to accept. The spent rocket fuel, on the other hand, smelled like any other fuel, sweet and sickly and masculine. The GRAD launcher was a slender container sitting on a series of jury-rigged metal surfaces evocative of a cheaply made bed frame. A half-dozen rockets were strewn about the launcher, looking like loose crayons in an American kindergarten. In the distance, we saw an F-shape of smoke rising over Gorbigrad. It was hard to distinguish the fires that surely raged across the blighted neighborhood; the sun itself painted Gorbigrad various incendiary shades of orange and red.