Potboiler

“Comrade!” The second assistant to the deputy subminister in charge of animal waste greeted him with kisses that left wet trails in Pfefferkorn’s moustache. “Sit down, yes, please, sit down! I convey to you abundance wishes for prosperity and partnership between these our two nations. Yes, sit, please! No, I insist: I am standing. I sit too long, yes? It is not conducive for buttocks. What? Yes, yes. Please, enjoy. To your health. Thruynichka, ah? We say: first bottle for sick, second bottle for well, next bottle for dead, four for alive again. Ha? Ha? Ha! To your health. I am please to receive application for export of waste. To your health. Unfortunately, I must report: this application is incomplete. Yes, ten thousand apologies . . . to your health. There is lacking application fee, there is lacking documentation of statement of purpose, affidavit of disloyalty unaffiliation, many else. Process requires to initiate from top. Please refrain from sadness. To your health. What? No. Expedite is impossible, impossible. What? No. Impossible. What? Shall I consult? It is not impossible.” He pocketed the bribe. “To your health, ah?”

Pfefferkorn stumbled drunk into the burning noonday sun, negotiating fetid streets aswarm with dogs, cats, chickens, goats, children, factory workers, farmers, pickpockets, soldiers, and peasant women on prehistoric bicycles. Their motley faces told of centuries of invasion, subjugation, and intermarriage. Their eyes were narrow or round, ice-blue or muddy. Their complexions ran the gamut from saddle brown to translucent. Their bone structure was fine, it was rough-hewn, it was hidden beneath clumps of flesh or tenting skin drawn tight as a snare drum. So many faces, alike only in their fixed expressions of distrust and resignation. So many faces, but none the one he sought.

Carlotta, he thought, I’ve come for you.

One block on, a crowd had gathered to watch three men in shirtsleeves fixing a spavined haycart, dissipating disappointedly when the jack did not fail and nobody was crushed to death. He turned down an unpaved alley that opened onto a wide, potholed boulevard festooned with posters touting the virtues of manual labor. Thatch-roofed huts with crude goat pens and wilting garden plots abutted Soviet-era concrete block monstrosities. MINISTRY OF FACTS, Pfefferkorn read. MINISTRY OF MUSICAL EDUCATION, MINISTRY OF BOOTS, MINISTRY OF LONG-CHAIN CARBON COMPOUNDS. It was easy to identify the state’s priorities. The MINISTRY OF SECURITY was shiny and imposing, as was the MINISTRY OF POETRY. The lobby of the MINISTRY OF ROOT VEGETABLES was capacious enough to house a fifteen-foot fountain. In the cracked storefront of the vacant MINISTRY OF TRAFFIC CONTROL was a poster memorializing the martyred Zhulk, with the slogan THE REVOLUTION LIVES ON!

Though it was late afternoon by the time he staggered out of his next meeting, with the auxiliary advisor to the acting chief of the standards division of the Ministry of Volatile Mineral Colloids, the sun was still high in the sky, the heat as enervating as ever. Pfefferkorn eased himself down to the curb and put his head between his knees. With respect to thruynichka consumption, the auxiliary advisor to the acting chief of the standards division of the Ministry of Volatile Mineral Colloids made the second assistant to the deputy subminister in charge of animal waste look like a lightweight. Pfefferkorn had no idea how he was going to find his way back to his hotel. He decided to sleep on the sidewalk. It was roughly the same temperature outside as it was in his room. No harm done, he thought. He curled up. Inside of a minute a pair of soldiers was hoisting him to his feet, demanding his papers. He produced his tourist pass. They ordered him to the Metropole and, when he started off in the wrong direction, took him by the elbows and dragged him there. He reeled across the lobby, scattering a klatsch of aged hookers and crashing into the front desk hard enough to jar the portrait of Zhulk on the wall.

The desk clerk readjusted it. “Monsieur has had a pleasant daytime, I am hopeful.”

“Messages for me?” Pfefferkorn asked.

“No, please.” The clerk vacuumed the money up his sleeve, handed Pfefferkorn his room key, and gestured toward the dining room. “Please, monsieur must partake of evening buffet.”

Chinese businessmen were monopolizing the samovar. Eager to put something in his roiling stomach, Pfefferkorn browsed the offerings, settling on root vegetable cake with goat’s-milk cream-cheese icing, cut into two-inch cubes and distributed by a dour woman wearing rubber gloves. She refused to give him more than one piece. He started to reach for cash.

“Ah, friend, no, no.”