Absurdistan: A Novel by Gary Shteyngart

Author:Gary Shteyngart [Shteyngart, Gary]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Russians, Humorous, Russians - Middle East, General, Fiction - General, American Contemporary Fiction - Individual Authors +, Middle East, Humorous fiction, Fiction
ISBN: 9780812971675
Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks
Published: 2007-04-03T04:00:00+00:00

"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 AlyoshaBob 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-andresponse. 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.x

"Shake a limb, Snack. We're gonna make a run for the embassy." The U.S. ARMY had arrived in Svani 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 PROS- TITUTKA, HAVE STUDENT VISA TO CALIFORNIAN UNIVERSITY AT THE

NORTHBRIDGE + MINE FAMILY HAS GAS.

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