“You know all these people and you can’t get me a new hotel room?”
“Some things are beyond even my power, friend.”
In the evenings they would dine together in the restaurant, talking about literature and polishing off several bottles of thruynichka. Then Fyothor would head home to his wife and Pfefferkorn would stop by the front desk to check for messages. The clerk would say there were no messages. Pfefferkorn would ask for a new fan. The clerk would promise it immediately.
Up the ancient elevator Pfefferkorn went, down the whispering hallway, past mumbling rooms, rooms full of ghosts, rooms more men had entered than left.
Stretched out on his bed, listening to the honeymooners getting to work, he reflected on the similarities between spying and writing. Both called for stepping into an imagined world and residing there with conviction, nearly to the point of self-delusion. Both were jobs that outsiders thought of as exotic but that were in practice quite tedious. Both tested one’s ability to withstand loneliness, although Pfefferkorn decided that in this respect, spying was harder, because it demanded that the spy resist, at every moment and with all his power, the human instinct to trust. One of life’s minor consolations was the presumption that you could ask most strangers most questions and get an honest answer most of the time. Not always, of course, but often enough. Absent that, conversation became an exhausting, depressing labor, more so in the face of the sort of unflagging cheer Fyothor threw at him. Pfefferkorn felt like he was being forced to stand on one foot for hours on end. He thought of all the faceless men and women doing their duties in hotel rooms the world over. He admired them. He felt for them. He wished them well. Their loneliness was his, and his theirs.
And he thought of Bill. In reevaluating their relationship Pfefferkorn had seen himself as the survivor of a house fire, returning to pick through the ash. There might be one or two scraps of authentic friendship, but they were buried under so much falsehood that it seemed wiser and less pathetic to let them go. But perhaps Paul had been right when he said that it didn’t have to be one or the other. Now that Pfefferkorn was a spy, he understood. He remembered Bill’s copy of his novel, the dense scribblings in the margins. What else could that be but love? He was almost afraid to accept this, because if Bill truly had loved him, the pain he must have endured in deceiving Pfefferkorn all these years was unimaginable. Heroic, even.
The clanking got louder.
Pfefferkorn turned on the television and put the volume way up.
There were three channels. Channel one was the flag. Channel two aired round-the-clock footage of Party rallies and speeches. For entertainment, it was hard to beat channel three. Pfefferkorn watched a soap opera about goatherds. He watched the news, anchored by the woman in the majorette hat. Like the rest of West Zlabia, he was waiting for the game show that came on at nine. The national curriculum included poetic composition, and teachers nominated their best students to appear before a panel of celebrity judges, who would then proceed to tear the poem apart mercilessly, reducing the student to tears and bringing burning shame upon him, his family, and their entire neighborhood. To be humiliated in this way was considered a great honor, and The Poem, It Is Bad! was the second most popular show on West Zlabian TV, its ratings topped only by those of the show that followed, a live broadcast of the teacher being flogged.
76.
“Rise, citizens of Zlabia. . . .”
Pfefferkorn opened the dresser. The day’s itinerary included a visit to a goat farm on the outskirts of town, which seemed as good an occasion as any to use his one polo shirt. Still coursing with sweat, he unwrapped his towel and pressed it to his face. When he took the towel away from his face he saw that his moustache had come off in his hands.
There was no cause for panic. He had been in West Zlabia for a week, and the epoxy was supposed to last ten to twelve days. Constant perspiration had likely hastened its dissolution. He picked the old moustache out of the folds of his towel and flushed it down the toilet. He put his wheelie bag on the bed, pried up the first false bottom, removed one of the moustache kits, tore it open, and dumped its contents across the bedspread. Swatches of fake hair in a wild multitude of sizes, shapes, colors, and textures spilled out. It looked like a caterpillar pride parade. He selected two pinkie-length pieces in a medium brown and carried them into the bathroom along with the thimble-sized tube of adhesive and the instruction sheet.
Superficial identity alteration package (male)
1. Choose the part which is sorted appropriately of the hairpiece at size.
2. In order to meet to the most desirable size, carve the hairpiece
3, Solicit moisture with the surface area of the face where the hairpiece will have in application.
4. Using the cotton stick, solicit Mult-E-Bond™ in verso of the hairpiece to receive the influence which ties on with moisture.
5 Solicit the hairpiece, maintain for thrity second..
6. You look so good!
He didn’t remember the process being quite so esoteric. Then again, Blueblood had been there to help. Flummoxed, he turned the page over.
MADE IN INDONESIA
There was a knock at the front door.
“Good morning, friend!”
What was Fyothor doing here? Breakfast didn’t start for another half hour. Pfefferkorn poked his head out. “Just a minute,” he called.
He ducked back into the bathroom. He uncapped the tube of adhesive, squeezed a dollop onto his fingertip, and put his finger to his lip, instantly fusing the two surfaces together.
77.
It was ugly. His left middle finger was stuck to his upper lip midway between the left corner of his mouth and his philtrum. The angle of contact was particularly grievous. Had the finger been pressed down at twelve o’clock, he might have been able to pass off the pose as one of contemplation. As it was, the finger was between nine and ten o’clock, making it look like he was about to excavate a booger. He dashed to the bed and combed through the pieces of facial hair.
Next door the banging started up, steady as a metronome.
“Really?” he yelled. “Now?”
“What?” Fyothor called.
“Nothing.”
He found what he was looking for: the enclosed Q-tip, or what the instructions called a “cotton stick.” In his haste, he had forgotten all about it. Knowing where he had gone wrong didn’t get him any closer to fixing the problem, though. At present he was holding his own face, and Fyothor was tapping at the door, and the lovebirds were going at it like a pumpjack.
“I apologize for the rude awakening,” Fyothor called, “but today we must stick to the schedule.”
“I’ll be right there.” Pfefferkorn raced back to the bathroom, threw on the hot water, and stuck his head under the tap, without effect. Despairingly he stood up, wet all over again. There was a way to dissolve the epoxy, he knew. Blueblood had told him. The banging was driving him crazy and making it hard to concentrate.
“I recommend closed-toe shoes,” Fyothor called.
“Right-o,” Pfefferkorn called.
He remembered: a solution of saltwater, twenty-two percent by weight. Simple enough, except that he had yet to see a saltshaker (or any normal condiment, for that matter) anywhere in West Zlabia. A bit of ketchup would do wonders for root vegetable hash, he thought. Then he told himself to focus. He needed salt water. He could cry. He dug deep for the saddest memories he had. He thought of his father. He thought of all his failures. It was no use. Shortly after his life had taken a turn for the better, he had worked to put his misery behind him. Instead he imagined awful things that might yet happen. He pictured Carlotta in her cell. He pictured himself getting treated for cancer. With distaste, he pictured his daughter . . . but his brain refused to go there, and his eyes remained dry as toast.