Potboiler

A clanking started up from inside the wall, near the headboard. It was a noise he was unfortunately well acquainted with: hot water pipes coming to life. In his old apartment building it had sometimes sounded as though his neighbors were having shootouts. Why a hotel guest would possibly want hot water on a day like today, he could not venture to guess. Then it occurred to him that all the hotel’s water was likely hot, whether guests wanted it that way or not. The clanking was loud and rhythmic. It made the picture of Zhulk vibrate and jump on the wall. To drown it out, Pfefferkorn aimed the remote control at the television. The screen filled with a stern young woman in an unflattering uniform, her tight hair topped with a majorette hat. She was standing in front of a paper weather map, barking the five-day forecast as she tacked up little paper suns. Her voice was even worse than the clanking, so Pfefferkorn muted her and lived with it.

In the top drawer of the nightstand he found the government-mandated copy of the West Zlabian edition of Vassily Nabochka. He sat down on the bed and leafed through it while he waited for his fan. The poem was familiar to him, having played a major role in his fictive life, as it did for every Zlabian. It told of the heroic quest of the disinherited Prince Vassily to find a magical root vegetable with the power to cure his ailing father, the king. The masterwork of itinerant bard Zthanizlabh of Thzazhkst, it reminded Pfefferkorn of the Odyssey crossed with Lear crossed with Hamlet crossed with Oedipus Rex, plus tundra and goats. The first two volumes of Hurwitz centered on a discussion of its history and symbolism, information essential for understanding the present state of affairs, as the Zlabian conflict traced its origins to a blood feud over the fictional protagonist’s final resting place. The East Zlabians claimed Prince Vassily was “buried” in the East. The West Zlabians claimed he was “buried” in the West. Because the poem was unfinished, there was little hope of resolving the dispute. Each side staged its own parade on the day it marked as the prince’s day of death. Often shots were fired or Molotov cocktails thrown across the Gyeznyuiy. And that was in times of peace. At its worst the conflict had pitted brother against brother, goat against goat. According to Hurwitz, an estimated one hundred twenty-one thousand lives had been lost over the years—an incredible number, given the size of the population as a whole.

Pfefferkorn glanced at the clock. It had been fifteen minutes and he still hadn’t gotten his fan. He called the front desk again. The clerk apologized and promised it would be there shortly. Pfefferkorn hung up, picked up the poem again, and began flipping to random pages. He admired and pitied a people so fiercely devoted to their cultural heritage that they would spend four centuries slaughtering themselves over fictional burial places. Such a thing could never happen in America, because Americans lacked a sense of investment in their own history. The entire American enterprise was based on jettisoning the past in favor of the Next Big Thing. He wondered if this might make an interesting premise for a novel. The clanking died down, leaving Zhulk’s picture askew. He didn’t bother to fix it. It was nearing eleven a.m., time for his first appointment. He turned off the television, got dressed, and hurried downstairs.

69.

As part of Pfefferkorn’s cover, meetings had been arranged with the government officials he would have needed to see had he truly been interested in exporting fertilizer. He stood among his fellow petitioners in the moldering hallway, waiting to be summoned by a squat woman more fit to guard the mouth of a cave. A one-armed Slav, his stinking greatcoat pinned at the shoulder and jangling with military decorations, whistled and smiled at the ceiling. The mewlings of a bundled child went untended by its vacant-eyed mother, eliciting clucks from a pair of babushkas fondling prayer ropes. Pfefferkorn wondered what business these folks could have with the second assistant to the deputy subminister in charge of animal waste. He had his answer when the troll lady appeared to crook a finger at him, and he gestured to the old soldier: You first. The Slav smiled, whistled, did not move. Nor did anyone else, and Pfefferkorn realized that he was the only one with an appointment. The rest had come inside to escape the heat.