"Hi, Seryozha," I said to the friendly boy. "How's life, cuc.u.mber?"

"Seryozha number one, true love forever, I am only just for you," Seryozha said in English, blowing me a professional kiss.

"Seryozha's going to Thailand with a rich Swede," Captain Belugin announced as Seryozha smiled at us like a shy albino marmoset. He scooped the vodka out with a beaker, pouring us a hundred grams a head. "Better watch out for the c.o.c.kroaches there," said Belugin. "They're like this..." He spread out his arms, favoring us with his briny armpits.

"Cirrus, Europay, ATM, one-stop banking...Super Dollar, why you lonely?" Seryozha said. He wiggled his tush for us and left.

"Good boy," Belugin said. "We could use him on the force. They're so clean here. Hygiene. Morality starts with hygiene. Just look at the Germans." We glanced over to the middle-aged members of the German tour group throwing deutsche marks at our teenage countrymen, bringing us tidings of an advanced civilization. We heard an enormous cheer from downstairs. The floor show was about to start-the pioneer songs of our youth bellowed out by muscular drag queens in full Soviet regalia. I found it very nostalgic.

"I wish I could leave this stupid country just like Seryozha," I said.

"And why can't you?" Belugin asked.

"The Americans won't give me a visa because they say my papa killed that Oklahoman fellow. And the European Union won't let any Vainbergs in, either."

"Ach," Belugin said to me. "Why do you want to move to the West, young man? Things will improve for our people, just you wait. In a mere fifty years, I predict, life here will be brighter than even in Yugoslavia. You know, Misha, I've been to Europe. The streets are cleaner, but there's no Russian soul. soul. Do you know what I'm talking about here? You can't just sit down with a man in Copenhagen and look him in the eye over a shot gla.s.s and then- Do you know what I'm talking about here? You can't just sit down with a man in Copenhagen and look him in the eye over a shot gla.s.s and then-boof!-you are brothers forever."

"Please..." I said. "I want to...I want-"

"Well, of course you want, want," said the captain. "What kind of a young man would you be if you didn't want want? I understand you implicitly. We old men were once young, too, don't forget!"

"Yes," I said, following his logic. "I'm young. So I want."

"Then let me help you, Misha. You see, I am originally from the Republic of Absurdsvani, land of oil and grapes. Absurdistan, as we like to call it. I'm a Russian by blood, but I also know the way of the infamous Svani people, those l.u.s.ty Southern black-a.s.ses, those Cretins of the Caucasus. Now, one of my friends in Svani City is a counselor at the Belgian emba.s.sy. A European of great learning and propriety. I wonder if, for a small sum, he could arrange for your citizenship in the Flemish kingdom..."

"That sounds like a sensible idea," Alyosha-Bob said. "What about it, Misha? If you get a Belgian pa.s.sport, you can travel all over the continent."

"Maybe Rouenna will come live with me," I said. "Maybe I can tempt her away from Jerry Shteynfarb. Belgium is full of chocolate and fries, right?"

"We could fly down to Absurdistan next week," Alyosha-Bob said. "I own a branch of ExcessHollywood there. There's a direct Aeroflot flight on Monday."

"I'm not not flying Aeroflot," I told my friend. "I don't want to die just yet. We'll take Austrian Airlines through Vienna. I'll pay for everything." flying Aeroflot," I told my friend. "I don't want to die just yet. We'll take Austrian Airlines through Vienna. I'll pay for everything."

I pictured myself sitting at a zippy Belgian cafe watching a multicultural woman in a thong eating a frankfurter. Did such things happen in Brussels? In New York they happened all the time.

"So, Belugin," Alyosha-Bob said to the captain. "What's it going to cost for Misha to get his Belgian pa.s.sport?"

"What will it cost? Nothing, nothing." Captain Belugin waved it off. "Well, almost nothing. A hundred thousand U.S. for my Belgian friend, and a hundred thousand for me as an introduction fee."

"I want my manservant to come with me," I said. "I need a Belgian work visa for my Timofey."

"You're bringing your manservant?" Alyosha-Bob said. "You're quite a Westerner, Count Vainberg."

"Go to the khui, khui," I said. "I'd like to see you wash your own socks the way I once washed mine with my working-cla.s.s girlfriend in New York."

"Boys." Captain Belugin put a hand between us. "A work visa is the height of simplicity. Another twenty thousand for me, and twenty thousand for Monsieur Lefevre of the Belgian emba.s.sy. You'll be fast friends with Jean-Michel. He likes to run over the locals with his Peugeot."

"Has Oleg the Moose's money been moved to Misha's offsh.o.r.e accounts?" Alyosha-Bob asked.

"Misha's got about thirty-five million dollars in Cyprus," Belugin said, looking over his yellow fingernails, obviously not too impressed by the remainder of Beloved Papa's carefully h.o.a.rded fortune, a long trail of wrecked factories, misappropriated natural gas concessions, the much-talked-about VainBergAir (an airline without any airplanes but with plenty of stewardesses), and, of course, the infamous graveyard for New Russian Jews.

It didn't sound like much money to me, either, to be honest. Let's do the math. I was thirty, and the official life expectancy for a Russian male is fifty-six, so I probably had another twenty-six or so years to live. Thirty-five million divided by twenty-six years equals about US$1,350,000 a year. That wasn't much for Europe, but I could survive. h.e.l.l, I got by on a mere US$200,000 a year in New York when I was young, though I didn't have a manservant to support, and I often denied myself certain pleasures (never have I owned a hot-air balloon or a Long Island bungalow).

But who cares about my poverty! For the first time in an eternity, I felt a current of pure pleasure wend itself around my beleaguered liver and up my bloated lungs. Freedom was upon me.

I remembered my childhood escapes from Leningrad, the annual summer train trip to the Crimea. Blessed memories of little Misha leaning out the carriage window, the Russian countryside crawling up to the train tracks, an occasional aspen whipping Misha's curious face. I always knew that summer was drawing near when my mother came over with my crumpled Panama hat and sang an improvised tune for me:

Misha the Bear Is leaving his lair He's had enough Of winter's despair

Yes, I've had enough of it, mamochka mamochka! I smiled and hiccuped into my shot gla.s.s. There was something oddly fetching about the prospect of being alive today, knowing that next week I would follow Peter the Great's bronze steed. I would fulfill every educated young Russian's dream. I would go beyond the cordon. beyond the cordon.

"Here's what I want you to do," Captain Belugin said. "As soon as you land in Absurdistan, go to the Park Hyatt Svani City and talk to Larry Zartarian, the manager. He'll make all the necessary arrangements. You'll be a Belgian in no time."

"Belgium," Sveta said wistfully. "You're a very lucky man."

"You're a great big cosmopolitan wh.o.r.e," Alyosha-Bob said, "but I love you."

"You're a traitor to your country, but what can be done?" Captain Belugin said.

I reflected upon their words and raised a toast to myself. "Yes, what can be done?" I said. "Everything has its limits."

The gla.s.ses clinked. My future was set. I drank vodka and felt enn.o.bled. Of course, with the benefit of hindsight, I can tell you now: I was wrong about everything. Family, friendship, coitus, the future, the past, even the present, my mainstay...even that I managed to get wrong.

13.

Misha the Bear Takes to the Air.

I a.s.sembled my household staff and told them they were free of my service. They immediately started crying into their ap.r.o.ns and tearing at their hair. "Don't you have some province you can go to?" I asked them. "Aren't you tired of city life? Be free!" The problem, it turned out, was that they had no money, and their provincial relatives had all but forsaken them; soon enough they would face homelessness and starvation, then the onset of the terrible Russian winter. So I gave each US$5,000, and they all threw themselves around my neck and wept.

Moved by my own largesse, I summoned Svetlana and the artist Valentin, who was still camped out in my library along with his Naomi and Ruth. "I'm starting a charity called Misha's Children," I said. "I have allocated US$2,000,000 to benefit the children of the city I was born in."

They looked at me sideways.

"That's St. Petersburg," I clarified.

Still no reaction.

"Sveta," I said, "you've mentioned how you want to work for a nonprofit agency. This is your chance. You will be the executive director. You will airlift twenty progressive social workers from Park Slope, Brooklyn, and set them to work on the most incorrigible of our children. Valentin, you will be the artistic director, teaching the young ones that redemption lies in Web design as well as clinical social work. Your salaries will be US$80,000 per annum." (To give the reader a sense of scale, the average Petersburg annual salary is US$1,800.) Sveta asked to see me in private. "I am most honored," she said, "but I think it is foolish to entrust Valentin with such responsibility. I know he works for Alyosha and is designing a website for him, but he's also quite a superfluous man, wouldn't you say?"

"We're all fairly superfluous men," I said, pace Turgenev. I shook her hand, kissed the weeping Valentin three times on the cheeks, bade farewell to his wh.o.r.es, then summoned my driver for the last time. It was early Monday morning, the population still working through a collective hangover, but Petersburg, when free of the human element, looks especially fine. The palaces on Nevsky Prospekt, wishing to properly say goodbye to me, dusted themselves off and bowed their chipped baldachinos in my direction; the ca.n.a.ls flowed most romantically, hoping to outdo one another; the moon fell and the sun rose to demonstrate the nocturnal and diurnal lay of the land; but I would not be moved. "Forward, not a step backward," I said, washing my hands clean of Peter the Great's creation. We pulled into the ridiculous airport, a monstrous beige fort where Western tourists were abused in a hundred different ways, a tiny shat-upon redoubt more suited to Montgomery, Alabama, than a city of five million souls. At Customs there was a sad scene as Timofey's son, Slava, wept on his father's neck. "I'll send for you, sonny," my manservant said, patting the young man's balding head. "You'll join me in Brussels, and we'll be merry together. Take my Daewoo steam iron."

"I don't need any Brussels," Slava said, spitting into his own hand. From the way he p.r.o.nounced the name of the Belgian capital, it was clear he had never heard of it. "I need my papa."

I could commiserate with him-I needed my papa, too.

The Austrian Airlines plane timidly pulled up to the gate. By a quirk of geography, Petersburg is only a forty-minute flight from the ultra-modern city of Helsinki, Finland, the northeastern bastion of the European Union. After we'd boarded and the plane had hobbled down the rutted runway and ascended, we looked down at the country beneath us, at the strange shapes of superannuated factories squatting below. I considered composing a proper fare-thee-well to the nation that had nursed me with sour milk and a cold nipple, then held me in her thick, freckled arms for too long. But before we knew it, Russia was gone.

Timofey was sent to economy, while Alyosha-Bob and I enjoyed the first-cla.s.s cabin. It was still morning, so we limited ourselves to Irish coffees and a light snack of Scottish salmon and crepes. Grabbing my stomach in two hands, I rolled the toxic hump against the wide lumbar-supporting seat, gasping with pleasure. I don't think any man has ever been as excited to fly over Poland in an Airbus jet. I grabbed a b.u.t.ter knife and challenged Alyosha-Bob to a mock duel; we clanged utensils for a while, my friend clearly sharing in my joy, but it seemed the other first-cla.s.s pa.s.sengers were not amused by our exuberance. Even this early in the day, the multinational businessmen were clacking away on their laptops with one hand and spreading Nutella over their crepes with the other, whispering to their companions on how best to carve up Russia's dwindling industry and win favor with some American mutual fund.

Then I noticed the Hasid.

Be good, I told myself, knowing that in the end, it would not be possible to hold my tongue. He was in his thirties, scraggly-bearded and pimpled, as are they all, with red eyes round as coins. He did not wear the usual top hat, just a jaunty fedora, beneath which peeked out the half-moon of his yarmulke. I doubted he had actually bought a first-cla.s.s ticket, this citizen of the Eternal I told myself, knowing that in the end, it would not be possible to hold my tongue. He was in his thirties, scraggly-bearded and pimpled, as are they all, with red eyes round as coins. He did not wear the usual top hat, just a jaunty fedora, beneath which peeked out the half-moon of his yarmulke. I doubted he had actually bought a first-cla.s.s ticket, this citizen of the Eternal Shtetl, Shtetl, so perhaps some kind of upgrade scheme was in effect. You never know with these people. so perhaps some kind of upgrade scheme was in effect. You never know with these people.

A stewardess was bent over the Hasid, trying to coax him into accepting a kosher meal of chicken livers on toast points that they had prepared especially for him. The Hasid blinked repeatedly at the hostess's young Austrian bosom, but on the subject of the livers, he would not yield. "It has to be certified," he kept saying, nasally and dourly. "There are many ginds of gosher. Where's the certifigation?"

"No, this is kosher, sir," the stewardess insisted. "Many Jews have eaten it. I've seen them eat it."

"I need proof," the Hasid whined. "Where's my proof? Where's the certifigate? I need the rabbinigal supervision. Show me the proof and I'll eat it." Eventually the stewardess left, and when she did, the Hasidic cretin reached into a velvety black pouch to produce a can of tuna, some mayo, and a slice of matzoh. Licking his fat lips, he hunched his shoulders and, with some effort, pried the lid off the tuna can. Then, as if lost in one of his interminable Baruch, Baruch Baruch, Baruch prayers, the Hasid began to thoughtfully mix the mayonnaise and the tuna together, rocking slowly as he did so. I watched him for about four hundred kilometers of airs.p.a.ce, mixing his mayo and tuna, then spreading it carefully on the brittle matzoh. Each time the stewardess pa.s.sed, he would shield his creation from the gentile pa.s.sage of her Teutonic behind. "A firm Austrian a.s.s," he seemed to be saying to himself, "does not mix with my kosher tuna fish." prayers, the Hasid began to thoughtfully mix the mayonnaise and the tuna together, rocking slowly as he did so. I watched him for about four hundred kilometers of airs.p.a.ce, mixing his mayo and tuna, then spreading it carefully on the brittle matzoh. Each time the stewardess pa.s.sed, he would shield his creation from the gentile pa.s.sage of her Teutonic behind. "A firm Austrian a.s.s," he seemed to be saying to himself, "does not mix with my kosher tuna fish."

Would it be eliminationist of me to say that I wanted to kill him? Are there certain feelings that, as a Jew, I may safely harbor in my fat heart that a non-Jew may not? Would it really be self-hatred to despise this man with whom I shared nothing more than a squirrelly strand of DNA?

The Hasid lowered his mouth into his beard to murmur a few words of thanks to his G.o.d for this pathetic bounty, then, with a crackle, bit into his store-bought tuna and glorified cracker. Thinking about the cheap fish combined with the foul inner lining of his mouth nearly turned my stomach. Since I was four rows away, it would not have been possible to smell the pungent Hasid, but the mind creates its own scents. I could no longer keep silent.

"Fraulein," I called to the stewardess, who ambled over and gave me, at best, a business-cla.s.s smile, front teeth only. "I am horribly offended by the gentleman Hasid," I said, "and I would like you to ask him to put away his awful food. This is first cla.s.s. I expect a civilized ambience, not a trip to Galicia circa 1870."

The stewardess fully opened her mouth. She held her hands before her in some kind of protective gesture. I noticed the little poky hips stretching her uniform: s.e.xy, in a childbearing way. "Sir," she whispered, "we allow our pa.s.sengers to bring their meals on the plane. It is to accommodate their religion, yes?"

"I am a Hebrew," I said, showing her my big, squishy hands. "I share the same faith as that man. But I would never eat such a meal in first cla.s.s. This is barbarity!" I was raising my voice, and the Hasid craned his neck to look at me. He was a sweaty sight, eyes moist, as if he had just emerged from his prayer house.

"Easy, Snack Daddy," Alyosha-Bob said. "Chill."

"No, I will not chill," I said to my homey. And then to the stewardess: "I am a patron of multiculturalism more than anyone on this plane. By turning away your chicken livers, this man is practicing a most sanctimonious form of racism. He is spitting in all our faces! Chiefly mine."

"Here we go," Alyosha-Bob murmured. "Put our Misha in a Western setting, and he starts acting out."

"This is not acting out," I hissed. "You'll know when I act out. act out."

The stewardess apologized for my distress and told me she would bring around a higher authority. A tall, h.o.m.os.e.xual Austrian man soon appeared and told me he was the chief purser, or something of the sort. I explained my predicament. "This is a very awkward situation," the purser began, staring at his feet. "We are-"

"Austrian," I said. "I know. It's fine. I absolve you of your terrible guilt. But this is not about you, it's about us. It's good Jew versus bad Jew. It's mainstream versus intolerance, and by supporting the Hasid, you're perpetuating your own hate crime."

"Eggs-cuse me," the Hasid was saying as he stood on his hind legs to a tremendous Hasidic length of almost seven feet. "I goudln't help overhearing-"

"Please, sir, sit down," the purser said. "We're taking care of this."

"Yes, sure, coddle the Hasid," I said, and then rose myself, smacking the purser lightly with my stomach. "If this is how you run your first cla.s.s, then I will go to economy to sit with my manservant."

"Your seat is here, here, sir," said the stewardess. "You have paid for it." The purser, meanwhile, fluttered his dainty hands to indicate that I should keep walking right out of his gilded realm. Alyosha-Bob was laughing at my foolishness, tapping his head with his fist to indicate that I was not all well. sir," said the stewardess. "You have paid for it." The purser, meanwhile, fluttered his dainty hands to indicate that I should keep walking right out of his gilded realm. Alyosha-Bob was laughing at my foolishness, tapping his head with his fist to indicate that I was not all well.

And he was right: I wasn't all well.

"Because of you, I am not a man," I spat at the Hasid as I walked past his row. "You took the best part of me. You took what mattered." Before leaving, I turned around to address the first-cla.s.s pa.s.sengers: "Beware of their mitzvah mitzvah mobiles, fellow Jews among you. Beware of circ.u.mcisions late in life. Beware of easy faith. The Hasids are not like us. Don't even think it." With those words, I pulled back the curtain into steerage. I will not risk humanizing the first-cla.s.s Hasid by writing down in detail the medieval horror upon his pale face, the cyclical, never-ending fright that so distorts our people. mobiles, fellow Jews among you. Beware of circ.u.mcisions late in life. Beware of easy faith. The Hasids are not like us. Don't even think it." With those words, I pulled back the curtain into steerage. I will not risk humanizing the first-cla.s.s Hasid by writing down in detail the medieval horror upon his pale face, the cyclical, never-ending fright that so distorts our people.

In the cramped economical quarters, by a reeking bathroom, in the midst of a wildly discordant color scheme drawn to make poor folk feel better about their travel, I found a seat next to my Timofey. "What are you doing, batyushka? batyushka?" he whispered. "Why are you here? This place is not for you!" Indeed, it was difficult to reach a rapprochement between my girth and the Austrian concept of an economy seat; I ended up with my a.s.s where my back should have been, palms pressed into the seat in front of me.

"I am here out of principle," I told my manservant, reaching over to pat his spongy old head with its thick womanlike hairs. "I am here because a Yid tried to take my honor."

"There are Jews and there are Yids," Timofey said. "Everyone knows this."

"It's not easy to be a cultured man nowadays," I told him. "But I'll be fine. Look out the window, Tima. Those mountains could be the Alps. Would you like to see the Alps someday? You could go with your son and have a little picnic."

A look of such transcendent disbelief came over Timofey that I could only feel grief for him. And grief for me, too. There was enough grief on the plane for both of us.

Good grief, as the Americans say.

14.

The Norway of the Caspian.

We landed at the Viennese airport, taxiing past the gla.s.sed-in main terminal where the planes always ran on time, to a problematic sideshow of a building reserved for flights to the not-quite-ready-for-Europe places like Kosovo, Tirana, Belgrade, Sarajevo, and my native St. Leninsburg. There were no jetways at this diminished building; two buses came to pick us up, one for the first- and business-cla.s.s pa.s.sengers, another for the rest of us. I watched from my window as the wily Hasid maneuvered to be the first aboard the first-cla.s.s bus, clutching his velvety tuna pouch as if it contained the diamonds he surely sold for a living. Shame, shame.

Walking down the stairs, I made sure to breathe in the fine European Union air before being bused to the cigarette-smoke-filled terminal where the rest of my YugoSovietMongol brethren waited unhappily for their flights back to Tartary. I tried to make my way to the main terminal, but you had to pa.s.s an immigration counter with a normal Western pa.s.sport before you could buy cigarettes duty-free or move your bowels astride the latest model of Austrian toilet. Soon, very soon, I would have my Belgian pa.s.sport. Not soon enough, let me tell you.

Alyosha-Bob whiled away the hours before our next flight laughing at my anti-Hasid campaign, making side curls out of the s.h.a.ggier portions of my hair. He would run up and, like a child, throw himself on the loose hams hanging off my back. I tried to walk away from him, but he's the faster of the two of us. By the time they started boarding our flight to Svani City, he had curled me a nice set of payess. payess.

As the flight was announced, the most olive-skinned people in the terminal rushed the gate, and soon a jostling ma.s.s of mustached men and their pretty dark wives, each wielding bags from Century 21, the famed New York discount emporium, had laid siege to the poor Austrian Airlines personnel. This was my first introduction to the Absurdistan mob-a faithful re-creation of the Soviet line for sausages, fueled by the natural instincts of the Oriental bazaar. "Calm down, ladies and gentlemen!" I shouted as young, hairy men bounced off me, seemingly using my ma.s.s to ricochet to the front of the line. "Do you think they'll run out of seats on the plane? We're in Austria, for G.o.d's sake!"

Once aboard, the Absurdis began unwrapping their many purchases, modeling designer ties for their wives, and exchanging footwear across the aisles. Their first-cla.s.s shenanigans did not manage to offend me as much as the Hasid's had on the last flight, perhaps because the Hasid was one of my own, while the only occasion one has to meet an Absurdi in St. Petersburg is at the market, when one is searching for a gorgeous flower in the middle of winter or wants to make a pet of some exotic mongoose. I don't mean to denigrate the Absurdis, or whatever they call themselves. They are the resourceful and clever representatives of an ancient trading culture, which, along with the ma.s.sive quant.i.ties of oil lapping at their sh.o.r.es, helps explain why their country is the most successful of our formerly Soviet republics, the so-called Norway of the Caspian.

I turned to the window to watch our plane follow the curves of the Danube as the orderly Austrian houses with their peaked roofs and backyard swimming pools turned into the housing projects surrounding the stumpy castle of Bratislava, Slovakia, which in turn gave way to the melancholy buildup of Budapest (I could even make out the fin de siecle Parliament building on the Pest side and the old Austro-Hungarian seat of power on the Buda), which eventually surrendered to some sort of war-torn Balkan landscape, cities sh.e.l.led into random organic forms, gaping bridges, the jumble of wrecked orange-tiled houses cl.u.s.tered together like coral reefs. "I'm taking one step backward so that I can jump clear across the board," I consoled myself. As the West receded into another time zone, the stewardesses compensated by serving us a crispy quail salad of the first order; the drinks menu offered up some pleasant surprises as well, especially in the port category.

"I'm going to miss you, Snack," Alyosha-Bob said as he drank a gla.s.s of forty-year-old Fonseca. "You're my best friend."

"I'm sentimental already," I sighed.

"Belgium's going to be good for you," my friend said in English, the language we spoke when we were alone, our fooling-around language. "There's nothing to do there. There's no one to fight against. You won't be such a nut job. You'll cut back on the emotions. I can't believe believe you actually started that Misha's Children thing and hired Valentin and Svetlana to run it." you actually started that Misha's Children thing and hired Valentin and Svetlana to run it."

"Remember the motto of Accidental College? 'Think one person can change the world? So do we.' "

"Didn't we used to make fun of that motto, like, every single day, every single day, Snack?" Snack?"