He put on a pair of baggy denims and a hoodie, a prescient evocation of the gangsta-rap phenomenon that was just starting to spill out of South Central, while Shteynfarb fixed him with his snide authorial gaze. I wondered if Shteynfarb had taken the acid at all; possibly he was here only to observe Alyosha-Bob, to gather material for his unfunny short stories chronicling the differences between Russians and Americans. "Your coat?" Shteynfarb said. "What the h.e.l.l for?"

"I want to go for a walk with Misha."

"But we're throwing all your stuff out!" Girshkin shouted. "You promised us."

"Carry on without us, boys," Alyosha-Bob said. "We'll be back before sunup. And then we'll all go to the Pen and Pencil for breakfast. How 'bout that?"

Before the disappointed Russians could answer, Alyosha-Bob had escorted me out onto the quadrangle, which was now covered with a pile of his shredded books and broken records, forming a collage around the twisted form of his rowing machine and the dark remains of his stereo. Girshkin and Shteynfarb were still following orders, dutifully tossing out the smashed carca.s.s of an Apple Macintosh computer and a lovingly slashed beanbag.

Alyosha-Bob and I trundled rhythmically through the snow, walking in no prescribed direction but stealing occasional happy looks at each other. "Queasy Bob," I said. "Why, if I may ask, are you dispensing with all of your personal effects? Are you indeed a Buddhist?"

"I'm not anything," he said, breathing hard against the cold. "But I want to be a Russian. A real Russian. Not like Shteynfarb or Girshkin."

I sighed with pleasure at the unspoken compliment. "But real Russians love all the things you have thrown out," I said. "For example, I am now asking my father to send money so that I may buy an Apple Macintosh computer. Also I would like Bose speakers and a Harman Kardon subwoofer."

"You really want all that s.h.i.t?" Alyosha-Bob asked. He stopped walking and looked at me. In the wintry light, I could see his chilled face, slightly cratered with the aftereffects of late chicken pox, so that his physiognomy mirrored the moon that hung above us, the rich, industrialized American moon.

"Oh, yes," I said.

"That's interesting," he said. "I've been a.s.sociating Russian life with spirituality."

"Well, some of us are believers," I said. "But mostly we just want things."

"Oh," he said. "Wow. I think Girshkin and Shteynfarb have really led me astray."

We walked on, compacting the snow beneath us into tiny abstract monuments to our future friendship, following in the wake of the lamp-lit beacons of our own breath. "Let's talk in Russian from now on," he said. "I know only a few words. Shto eto? Shto eto?" He pointed at a contorted insect of a building, its chimney pumping effluent into the night. What is it?

"Waste incineration plant," I said in Russian.

"Hmm." I noticed his boots were untied but decided not to say anything, to preserve the sanct.i.ty of the moment. The landscape of the empty campus unfolded before us, as ominously still as a desert ruin. On most days I felt that the imposing neo-Gothic collegiate architecture was challenging me to excellence, but that night I felt the deep wooden hollowness of an Accidental College education, as if everything I had needed to know lay in some puddle of blood on a street in Vilnius or Tbilisi. Perhaps the most important part of my college days would consist of instructing Alyosha-Bob, of forging his peculiar Russian-bound destiny. "A shto eto?" "A shto eto?" Alyosha-Bob asked, pointing at what looked like a broken s.p.a.ceship. Alyosha-Bob asked, pointing at what looked like a broken s.p.a.ceship.

"Student psychiatric clinic," I said in Russian.

"A shto eto?"

"Gay and Lesbian Liberation Center."

"A shto eto?"

"Nicaraguan Sister Co-op."

"A shto eto?"

"The Amazon Rain Forest Experience." The words in Russian were becoming progressively harder and inane-sounding, so I was particularly happy when the college campus exhausted itself and we found ourselves deep in the impoverished countryside that ringed Accidental. "Cornfield," I said. "Cow barn. Mechanized tractor. Grain depository. Poultry shed. Pig corral."

We wandered through several kilometers of agriculture, onto the highway that led into the nearest big city. The sun was rising over a nearby strip mall when we decided to stop and turn back. A phalanx of local police cars, sirens ablaze, streamed past us on the way to campus. We a.s.sumed, correctly, that the officers were heading for Alyosha-Bob's dormitory to arrest Girshkin and Shtenyfarb for vandalism and defilement of college property. Excited by this knowledge, we laughed and shouted into the subzero morning air until our frozen throats failed us. I hugged Alyosha-Bob's shivering body, wedging him within my folds to show him what real friendship meant in Russian.

I thought we would never be apart.

22.

My Nana.

I was wrong.

Back in Absurdistan, scared and all alone, I crawled under my bed and wept.

When Beloved Papa found out that his own father had been killed fighting the Germans in a battlefield near Leningrad, he reportedly hid under his bed and cried for four days, refusing bread and kasha, nourished only by his own tears and the memories of his dead father's caress. I resolved to do the same, although there were some obvious differences between our situations. Papa had been three years old, while I was thirty. Papa had been staying out the war with distant relatives in some awful village in the Ural Mountains, while I was the sole occupant of a penthouse in a Western hotel in Absurdistan. Papa had only his tears, while I had my Ativan. But I felt a kinship with him nonetheless. I had lost a mother, a father, and now, with Alyosha-Bob gone, a brother. I had been orphaned one more time. Thrown helter-skelter into a world that had no use for me.

Worse yet, something was wrong with my mobilnik. mobilnik. The Absurdis must have shut down telephone coverage in some misguided move to control information coming out of the country. Every time I dialed Alyosha-Bob's number, I got a recorded announcement: "Respected mobile phone user," a hoa.r.s.e Russian woman said, "your attempt to make a connection has failed. There is nothing more to be done. Please hang up." The Absurdis must have shut down telephone coverage in some misguided move to control information coming out of the country. Every time I dialed Alyosha-Bob's number, I got a recorded announcement: "Respected mobile phone user," a hoa.r.s.e Russian woman said, "your attempt to make a connection has failed. There is nothing more to be done. Please hang up."

My attempt at connection had failed. What more could be said, really?

I didn't last for four days under my bed, as Beloved Papa had in 1943. In a matter of hours, hunger got the best of me, and I crawled out to order buffalo wings and a bottle of Laphroaig from room service. The world felt empty and silent around me. I turned on my laptop, but apparently the authorities had shut down the Internet as well. I was left with nothing more than television. The foreign news channels, having decided that the plight of the Absurdsvani Republic seemed to the average viewer quite smelly and unp.r.o.nounceable, had moved on to the warm Mediterranean waters off Genoa, where the G8 summit was under way, and s.e.xy Italian protesters hurtling Molotov c.o.c.ktails at the abusive carabinieri proved a great deal more photogenic. Even the Russian networks had decided to give Absurdistan a rest. The correspondents for the three main government channels could be seen half asleep by the Hyatt swimming pool, slumped over rows of Turkish beer bottles as early as ten in the morning. They, too, wanted to go to Genoa to swim with the dolphins and admire President Putin's compact, sportsmanlike physique and the happy impertinence of his American counterpart, Bush.

I looked down at the terraces beneath me. The morning glare of foam and pollution rising off the remains of the sea had coated the city in the bruised pink color of corned beef. With the cease-fire in effect, citizens, Sevo and Svani, went about their lives, burrowing into the ready maw of the 718 Perfumery or gathering around taxis and failed minibuses to spontaneously drink Turkish coffee and spit sesame seeds at the sun. Armored personnel carriers bristling with armaments and antennae idled listlessly next to cafes, looking like the empty sh.e.l.ls of dead insects.

I found a notecard from Larry Zartarian:

Dear the Guest, Please Your Attention. Federal and SCROD forces are seiging the city. Airport is closed. Whilst the political Situation in our country is resolving ourselves, You may enjoy the historical beauty of Svani City (which Frenchman Alexander Dumas calls "Pearl of Caspian"-Ooh la la!). Adjacent to Hotel is American Express Tour Company. It is only just for You.

I once asked Zartarian about the funny English he used in his letters to the hotel guests, and he confessed he was trying to represent himself as a wily local and not some middle-cla.s.s brat from the San Fernando Valley. Poor Zartarian. When I closed my eyes, I could almost see his corpse laid out next to his mother's, ready for repatriation to Glendale.

I looked over the note and asked myself: What would Alyosha-Bob do in this situation? He would always do What would Alyosha-Bob do in this situation? He would always do something. I put on a pair of gigantic square sungla.s.ses and slipped into my roomiest vintage tracksuit, the one that prodded my stomach forward and held it prominently in place, so that altogether I resembled the infamous North Korean playboy Kim Jong Il. something. I put on a pair of gigantic square sungla.s.ses and slipped into my roomiest vintage tracksuit, the one that prodded my stomach forward and held it prominently in place, so that altogether I resembled the infamous North Korean playboy Kim Jong Il.

It was time, as Dr. Levine would say, to go for a walk.

At the American Express office, two girls, one white and blond, the other sweetly brown and local, were lolling about their desks, applying nail polish and speaking quietly in English and Russian, their tongues clicking and clacking over all the right terms ("chick lit," "chill-out room," "Charing Cross station").

I warmed to them immediately, these sweet Western-minded creatures. I even managed to forget Alyosha-Bob's absence for a moment. "Hey," I said to the girls en anglais. en anglais. "Wha.s.sup?" "Wha.s.sup?"

"Good afternoon," the blonde chirped. "Bienvenue. Welcome to the American Express." She smiled genuinely, and the other-the dark one-cast her eyes down and grinned with her very full red mouth. The blonde was clearly an ethnic Russian; her name tag read Anna Ivanovna or something similar. I couldn't tell if I liked her or not. The way she huddled herself over her full bosom, she was neither particularly alluring nor entirely ignorant of the art of making young men suffer. Welcome to the American Express." She smiled genuinely, and the other-the dark one-cast her eyes down and grinned with her very full red mouth. The blonde was clearly an ethnic Russian; her name tag read Anna Ivanovna or something similar. I couldn't tell if I liked her or not. The way she huddled herself over her full bosom, she was neither particularly alluring nor entirely ignorant of the art of making young men suffer.

When I looked at the dark one, however, my thoughts immediately started to wander down below. She was dressed in a tan T-shirt and denims much too tight for her Southern hips. Often when I am compelled by a woman, my fantasies begin not with the brilliance of her smile, or the way she brushes back tendrils of her own curly hair, but rather, with the "great unknowable"-the way her reproductive complex looks when white workaday underwear is pulled over it in the morning, and whether or not certain hairs stray from the fold. For all this I can blame the collected works of Henry Miller, which I read during my internment at Accidental College and which coincided with my induction into hairy American multiculturalism.

"I'm a Belgian interested in the history of your country," I said, words that would have rung especially true if "Belgian" had been subst.i.tuted with "Russian" and "country" with "v.a.g.i.n.a."

The blond girl started squealing about the different kinds of tours they had. Arts, crafts, churches, mosques, beaches, volcanoes, caves, stork habitats, oil fields, fire temples, "the world-famous Museum of Applied Carpet Making"-few cities could rival the Absurdi capital for the range of nonsensical c.r.a.p on offer.

"The only problem with making a tour," said the blond one, "is that my grandmother is Svani, so I cannot go to the Sevo Terrace, and Nana is Sevo, so she cannot go to the Svani Terrace."

"What?" I said.

"As part of the cease-fire, there are restrictions on travel for Sevo and Svani citizens," the blonde said. "As a foreigner, of course, you are completely exempt."

I noticed a large cutout of a locomotive bearing the American Express logo, upon which somebody had written, All American Express luxury trains out of Republika Absurdsvani are canceled by order of federal government and SCROD. All American Express luxury trains out of Republika Absurdsvani are canceled by order of federal government and SCROD. It seemed that I was left with nothing but stork habitats and the graces of two pretty women. It seemed that I was left with nothing but stork habitats and the graces of two pretty women.

I turned to the dark Nana Nanabragovna (plucking her name from the pewter tag on her bosom), who was a.s.sessing me with her chestnut eyes and wry little mouth. I guessed that she had a robust sense of humor, or at least liked to laugh, and that once we were in bed I could provoke some ticklish giggles out of her. I could see myself kissing the warm, flat bulb of her nose and saying, "Funny girl! Who's my funny girl now?" This is what I used to do to Rouenna when the mood struck me.

Having been put in the position of choosing between the two American Express ladies, or at least between their ethnicities, I had to proceed diplomatically, lest feelings be hurt. "Where is the church that looks like an octopus?" I said, knowing full well that it was on the Sevo Terrace.

"That's the Cathedral of Saint Sevo the Liberator," Nana said. Her English, I noted, was authoritative and fully American, with a hint of consonant-free Brooklynese. Sain' Sevah duh Lih-buh-rai-tah, Sain' Sevah duh Lih-buh-rai-tah, accent on the penultimate syllable. accent on the penultimate syllable.

I gave my regrets and a roll of cash to the blonde. Nana got her car keys.

Once she was in motion, it became clear to me that my new friend was a big girl. Not Misha Vainberg big, of course, but in the 70-kilogram (150-pound) range, factored into a height of about sixty-six inches. Despite the healthy country girl's body, urban fashion had not pa.s.sed her by. She wore her denims lower than a Lower East Side mami mami and to the same devastating effect. Her tight tan-colored T-shirt canoodled her b.r.e.a.s.t.s. The s.p.a.ce between her low-slung denims and high-slung T-shirt was taken up with a band of glossy sun-stroked flesh p.r.i.c.kled here and there with dark hairs that stood on end, reminding me of the imported cypresses lining the Boulevard of National Unity. Remarkably, the transition from spine to posterior showed few color gradations-her entire dorsal area approximate to the hue of her upper arms, a solid gold tone. Her denims bifurcated a nice big a.s.s. Her face was wide and emotive enough to accommodate the loves and losses of a dozen aristocratic Persian women, the particular nationality she most resembled. She had the barest of feminine mustaches, which, when covered with cream or froth, would remind me of myself as a twelve-year-old boy. The heat, which smothered me and made a sour borscht of my genitals, kept its distance from her, seemingly angling for a quick pa.s.sing rub against her bosom. She drove a shiny black Lincoln Navigator decorated with a white-and-blue American Express flag, which, from a distance, resembled the less powerful standard of the United Nations. and to the same devastating effect. Her tight tan-colored T-shirt canoodled her b.r.e.a.s.t.s. The s.p.a.ce between her low-slung denims and high-slung T-shirt was taken up with a band of glossy sun-stroked flesh p.r.i.c.kled here and there with dark hairs that stood on end, reminding me of the imported cypresses lining the Boulevard of National Unity. Remarkably, the transition from spine to posterior showed few color gradations-her entire dorsal area approximate to the hue of her upper arms, a solid gold tone. Her denims bifurcated a nice big a.s.s. Her face was wide and emotive enough to accommodate the loves and losses of a dozen aristocratic Persian women, the particular nationality she most resembled. She had the barest of feminine mustaches, which, when covered with cream or froth, would remind me of myself as a twelve-year-old boy. The heat, which smothered me and made a sour borscht of my genitals, kept its distance from her, seemingly angling for a quick pa.s.sing rub against her bosom. She drove a shiny black Lincoln Navigator decorated with a white-and-blue American Express flag, which, from a distance, resembled the less powerful standard of the United Nations.

When we were both locked into her truck, we turned to each other and smiled. There we were, two people, one a continent of flesh, the other a mere Madagascar, maneuvering onto leather, sliding our seats forward and back, folding ourselves into the car while mumbling things in Middle-Atlantic English, grunting and sighing like an old couple. We seemed, at least to me, inevitable. inevitable.

I recited by heart the last e-mail Rouenna had sent me before the Internet was shut off:

Dear Misha, I am sorry you are in a dangerous place and people are dying but 1) your email was once again all about you, you, you (how about asking me about MY life for a change?) and 2) when are you NOT in a dangerous place where people are dying? Anyway, I'm sure you'll get out of your predigament just fine, because your a survivor.

P.S. You really should'nt hate Proffessor Shteynfarb who likes you a lot and has lots of wity and interesting things to say about you.

P.S.S. I should have told you earlier but I think your shrink is a real idiot.

In other words, I thought I was ready for a new love. I was ready to feel safe again in someone else's arms. I was ready to forget my Rouenna, at least for a while.

Nana and I drove down the Boulevard of National Unity, eyeing the commerce around us and sneaking looks at each other. A half-dozen empty KBR flatbed trucks idled in the middle of the thoroughfare, charged with some mysterious purpose we could only guess at.

"I thought the road between the terraces was impa.s.sable," I said.

"You are an important person, Mr. Vainberg," Nana said, smiling and showing off her lipstick-stained incisors, "and we are a hospitable people. My mother will be your mother, and there's plenty of water in my well for you to drink."

"If you say so, Miss Nanabragovna," I said. But as we approached a roadblock of jeeps and armored personnel carriers, I reached for the familiar plumpness of my wallet and felt up several US$100 bills, ready to be doled out to any teenager with a gun.

The soldiers manning the roadblock were taking an afternoon siesta beneath a tarp they had rigged between two of the APCs. I expected my tour guide to reach between her b.r.e.a.s.t.s and produce a Sevo cross for the soldiers to inspect, a prospect that made me dizzy with excitement, but instead Nana honked her powerful Navigator horn until a few rumpled youths languidly emerged from beneath the tarp.

Nana opened her window and leaned out as far as she could, in the meantime letting me look deep into the beginning of her a.s.s crease and the tightness of denim against her caramel thighs. MISS SIXTY MISS SIXTY, read the label on her jeans, a new brand I was sure would catch on with the middle cla.s.s.

"Boys, let me through," Nana shouted in Russian, the word "boys" sounding both coquettish and imperious.

"Yes, mistress!" The soldiers saluted and stood at attention. They ran back and started moving aside the tarp and their vehicles, cursing at one another to hurry along.

The salutes and ceremony were repeated at the Svani Terrace checkpoint. I wondered aloud as to why Svani soldiers would so honor a Sevo woman. "It is because we are flying the American Express flag," Nana said, although her ripe young voice sounded uncharacteristically false as she said it. She turned away from me, then put on her sungla.s.ses, cursing as one of its hinges caught in the tangle of her arm hairs.

"We're almost there," she said, waving away the pain.

Our Navigator plunged down the winding road, and I soon found myself at the bottom of the world.

23.

The Sevo Vatican.

If the Svani were made whole by their remote-control market and their a.s.sociation with Alexandre Dumas, the Sevo boasted a stranglehold on the sea. It loitered close by, gray and muted, peeking out from behind the faded mansions of the oil aristocracy that had decamped here a century ago, when the Caspian had first announced itself as a source of seemingly endless fuel and antagonism.

Instead of looking for a place to park, Nana simply abandoned her vehicle at a busy intersection. An elderly policeman crisply saluted her and rushed over to stand at attention beside it. He whistled to a pa.s.sing soldier, who took off his shirt, dipped it into a nearby fountain, and began washing down the Navigator's sandy windshield. "You seem to be very popular," I said to my new friend, who merely shrugged. What the h.e.l.l was going on here? I wished Alyosha-Bob would appear and explain things to me in his pedantic way. I felt vulnerable-susceptible-to anything without him.

Nana walked ahead of me, relating the peculiarities of the local architecture commissioned by late-nineteenth-century oil barons. "Really?" I said when told of the original owner of a ma.s.sive neo-Gothic pile. "This was built by Lord Rothschild? The Jew?"

"Are there many Jews in Belgium, Mr. Vainberg?" my tour guide asked.

"Yes, quite a few," I said. "Personally I live in Brussels, but if you ever find yourself in Antwerp, you will see a funny sight sometimes-the local Hasids riding around on their bicycles, with their dark coats flapping along. We Belgians have quite an open society, you see."

"So you are a balloon?" she said.

I was hurt to the stomach by her frankness, by the idea that such a sweet woman could be a fat-baiter. "I do have a fondness for food," I admitted, "which may indeed make me in your eyes a balloon-"

"No!" She laughed. "Not a balloon. Oh, you poor man. A Walloon. A French Belgian."

"Ah, oui," I said. I said. "Un Wallon. C'est moi." "Un Wallon. C'est moi."

"Parce que nous parlons francais."

"Mm, no," I stammered, for I had never bothered to learn that complicated tongue. "No French, please. Right now I am trying to practice my English. Sadly, it is the language of the world."

Nana stopped and allowed me a nice look at her glistening body and face. If she trimmed herself just a little, she could be a chesty athlete; a swimmer, say, for I have heard that female swimmers rely on their ma.s.sive bosoms for buoyancy.

"As you may have heard," Nana coyly told me, "the Jewish people have a long and peaceful history in our land."

"It is my understanding," I said in my most flirtatious and least reprehensible voice, "that they are your brothers, and whoever is their their enemy is enemy is your your enemy also." enemy also."