Super Sad True Love Story

by Gary Shteyngart

  On page eight, I read a part I had underlined as a moody, unlaid teenager. “What happens but once … might as well not have happened at all. If we have only one life to live, we might as well not have lived at all.” Next to this I had written in shaded block letters: “EUROPEAN CYNICISM or VERY SCARY TRUTH???” I re-read the lines again, slowly, with emphasis, directly into Eunice’s pert, wax-free ear, and as I did so I wondered if perhaps it was this book that had launched my search for immortality. Joshie himself had once said to a very important client, “Eternal life is the only life that matters. All else is just a moth circling the light.” He had not noticed my standing by the door to his office. I returned to my cubicle in tears, feeling abandoned to nothingness, moth-like, yet stunned by Joshie’s unusual lyricism. The part about the moth, I mean. He never talked like that with me. He always underlined the positive things about my brief existence, the fact, for example, that I had friends and could afford good restaurants and was never completely alone for very long.

  I read on, feeling Eunice’s solemn breath against my chest. The main character, Tomas, started having sex with many attractive Czech ladies. I re-read several times a passage about Tomas’s mistress standing in front of him, in panties and bra and a black bowler hat. I pointed to the black bowler hat on the cover. Eunice nodded, but I felt that Kundera had put too many words around the fetish for her to gain what her generation required from any form of content: a ready surge of excitement, a temporary lease on satisfaction.

  By page sixty-four, Tomas’s girlfriend Tereza and his mistress Sabina are taking photographs of each other naked, dressed only in that recurring black bowler hat. “She was completely at the mercy of Tomas’s mistress,” I read two pages later, winking at Eunice. “This beautiful submission intoxicated Tereza.” I repeated the words “beautiful submission.” Eunice stirred. She took off her TotalSurrenders with a snap of her finger and moved up to straddle my face between her legs. With the book still partly open in one hand, I cupped her behind with the other while using my tongue in the familiar motions against her opening. She pulled back for a while and let me look into her face. I mistook her expression for a smile. It was something else, a slight opening of the mouth, with the lower lip leaning rightward. It was astonishment: the astonishment of being fully loved. The miracle of not being hit. She returned to her position on top of me and let out a volley of grunts of a pitch and treble I had never heard. It was as if she were speaking a foreign language, one that had not kept up with history, one that was stuck on the primal sound “guh.” I lifted her up, not sure she was enjoying herself. “Should we stop?” I asked. “Am I hurting you?” She forced herself down on my face and rocked her body faster.

  Afterward, she returned to her perch on my collarbone, sniffing critically at the trail she had left on my chin. I read once more. I read loudly about the exploits of the fictional Tomas and his many lovers. I skipped around, looking for juicier bits to feed Eunice. The story moved from Prague to Zurich and then back to Prague. The little nation of Czechoslovakia was torn to shreds by the imperialist Soviets (who, the author had no way of knowing at the time of writing, would themselves be torn to shreds a negligible twenty-three years later). In the book, characters had to make political decisions that, in the end, meant nothing. The concept of kitsch was rightfully, if somewhat ruthlessly, attacked. Kundera forced me to ponder my mortality some more.

  Eunice’s gaze had weakened, and the light had gone out of her eyes, those twin black orbs usually charged with an irrepressible mandate of anger and desire.

  “Are you following all this?” I said. “Maybe we should stop.”

  “I’m listening,” she half-whispered.

  “But are you understanding?” I said.

  “I’ve never really learned how to read texts,” she said. “Just to scan them for info.”

  I let out a small, stupid laugh.

  She started to cry.

  “Oh, baby,” I said. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to laugh. Oh, baby.”

  “Lenny,” she said.

  “Even I’m having trouble following this. It’s not just you. Reading is difficult. People just aren’t meant to read anymore. We’re in a post-literate age. You know, a visual age. How many years after the fall of Rome did it take for a Dante to appear? Many, many years.”

  I blubbered on like this for a few minutes. She went to the living room. Alone, I threw The Unbearable Lightness of Being across the room. I wanted to tear it to pieces. I touched my chin, still wet with her. I wanted to run out of the apartment, into the impoverished Manhattan night. I missed my parents. In times of trouble, the weak seek the strong.

  In the living room, Eunice had opened up her äppärät and was concentrating on the last shopping page stored in its memory before communications collapsed. I could see she had instinctively opened a LandOLakes Credit Payment stream, but every time she tried to input her account info, she ended up throwing her head back as if stung. “I can’t buy anything,” she said.

  “Eunice,” I said. “You don’t have to buy anything. Go to bed. We don’t have to read anymore. We don’t have to ever read again. I promise. How can we read when people need our help? It’s a luxury. A stupid luxury.”

  When the morning light was at full blast, Eunice finally curled up next to me, covered in sweat, defeated. We ignored the morning and we ignored the day. We ignored the following day as well. But when I woke up on the third day, the heat raking its way through the opened window, she was gone. I ran into the living room; no Eunice. I ran to the lobby. I asked the loitering old people about her whereabouts. I could feel my heart stopping and the blood draining from my feet and hands.

  When she finally showed up, twenty hours later (“I went for a walk. I needed to get out of here. It’s not that dangerous, Lenny. I’m sorry if you were worried”), I found myself on my knees in my usual position, begging her to forgive me for some ill-defined sin, praying for her real smile and her companionship, pleading for her never to leave me again.

  Aican, aican, aican.

  OH MY GOD, I’M SUCH A BAD GIRLFRIEND

  FROM THE GLOBALTEENS ACCOUNT OF EUNICE PARK

  SEPTEMBER 10

  WAPACHUNG CONTINGENCY EMERGENCY MESSAGE:

  Sender: Joshie Goldmann, Post-Human Services, Administrative

  Recipient: Eunice Park

  Hello there, my darling Ms. Eunice. How’s tricks? Okay, I’ve got to admit, I can’t stop thinking about our little time together last week. I am so totally HOOKED on you. Those twenty-four hours we spent drawing with Monsieur Cohen (ho ho ho, color theory, here we come!), rifling through what’s left of Barneys, oysters at the Staatling canteen, a little, um, fun in bed, and then doing those stretches together, holy moly, that was like the perfect date. You were so cute when you walked into my apartment. I can’t believe how your hands were shaking. I’m still picking up the glass shards off the floor (how did you manage to break TWO glasses?), but that’s okay, because it just shows how real you are. Thank you, Eunice, for making me feel FINE and limber and ready to hit the ground running. And thanks for picking out all those clothes. You’re right, there was something a little hippie-ish about the way I used to dress, and my mustache HAD to go. Over and done with. My only prob is that I miss you sooo much already. Can we do this again soon? Can we do this again like permanently? I can’t seriously see my life go on without the little patter of your feet by my bedside. And I’ve got a lot of living to do, ha ha.

  Well, it IS a big relief to know that your parents and sis are alive and doing as well as anyone else under the circumstances. I’ve passed on the relocation request to Headquarters, but the problem is that, even if they do get your family out of Ft. Lee, where are we going to put them? We’re working out future arrangements with the IMF and I think the idea is to rebuild New York as a kind of “Lifestyle Hub” where wealthy people can do their thang, spend their money, live forever, blah blah blabbity BLAH. So every inch of space is going to be accounted for, and
the prices are going to be absolutely PREMIUM. And the rest of the country’s going to be carved up between a bunch of foreign sovereign wealth funds, with Wapachung Contingency taking over what’s left of the National Guards and the army and doing security support (yay for us!). I’m not sure if the Chinese are going to be “in charge” of New Jersey, or if that’s going to go to Norway or to the Saudi Arabian Monetary Agency, but in either case I’m sure things are going to be a lot better and safer than they are now. Tho maybe your sis can learn to wear a burka. Totally kidding. It’s not going to be like that. They just want returns on investment.

  Sigh. I miss you. I miss the very SCENT of you. I miss your sweet smiling face and your tight embrace. God, listen to me. Anyway, I might send Lenny on a weekend trip to visit his parents on Long Island (don’t tell him yet, but according to Wap Contingency they survived), which means more quality time for us!!! Mwah! as you like to say. Mwah, my dear, dear Eunice, my brave young love. Isn’t it exciting to be ALIVE these days?

  SEPTEMBER 12

  WAPACHUNG CONTINGENCY EMERGENCY MESSAGE:

  Sender: Eunice Park

  Recipient: Joshie Goldmann, Post-Human Services, Administrative

  Joshua,

  I got your message. Thanks. Yes, Monsieur Cohen is very interesting. Is he gay, or just French? I’m sorry if I seem to be holding us back in class, I’m such a perfectionist and I really don’t think I’m very good. And if I’m as good as you and M. Cohen say then it’s just a fluke and I’ll come shattering back down to earth pretty soon, you can bet your bottom yuan. My father always said my hands were too weak to be an artist anyway.

  I know we spent some good times together and I will remember those hours, but I also feel like a very bad girlfriend to Lenny. And that’s what I am, I’m Lenny’s girlfriend and I love him, and I’m really not able to explore anything more than friendship with you right now.

  Thanks for finding out about my parents and sister. I miss my family very much and I wish there was some way to get them to Manhattan or even back to Korea. That’s what I’m concentrating on right now. I’ve been reading some of the old messages from my friend Jenny Kang, the one who disappeared and who you can’t seem to be able to find in Hermosa Beach, and one of the last things she wrote me was “I’m sorry I’m a bad friend and can’t help you with your problems right now. You have to be strong and do whatever you have to do for your family.” See, you don’t have a family. And you never really wanted one from what I can gather. But throughout this whole Rupture thing I guess that’s what I found out about myself, that my family matters the most to me and it always will.

  Yours,

  Eunice

  WAPACHUNG CONTINGENCY EMERGENCY MESSAGE:

  Sender: Joshie Goldmann, Post-Human Services, Administrative

  Recipient: Eunice Park

  I have to say I was a little hurt by your last message. If you didn’t want to pursue a relationship, then why did you go home with me? I think you don’t fully comprehend how I feel about you, Eunice. I’ve been trying to put my finger on it, and I think I’ve sort of come to some conclusions. You’re very beautiful, but that doesn’t really matter to me in the long run. Everything about you is so perfect, so squared away (from the way you dress to the minimum amount of words you use to express yourself), but that doesn’t matter either. What matters to me is that I KNOW you are capable of love, that you cannot hide forever from the truth of being a full emotional human being with a need to connect, with a need to be with someone who can understand you and where you come from, respect you, and take care of you. And that’s what I want to do, Eunice, to take care of you, forever and ever. I want to help you become a full-fledged artist, even if that means you have to spend time away from me, studying Art & Finance at HSBC-Goldsmiths in London. I want to get you a job in Retail, if that’s what you want, once New York becomes a full Lifestyle Hub and we start to get back on our feet. And yes, I want to help your family to resettle in the city, but please just give me some time to see what I can do. The situation is still very fluid.

  You say Lenny is your boyfriend. I’ve known Lenny since he was a young adult like you. He’s not a bad person, but he’s also very conflicted, impotent, and depressive. Those are not the qualities you want to look for in a serious partner, not today, not with the world in the shape it’s in. I want you to consider all these things, Eunice, and to know that, whatever you decide, I will always love you.

  Joshie (never Joshua) G.

  P.S. Just a heads-up, but there is going to be some activity in your area in a month or so, what the ARA used to call “Harm Reduction,” in the Vladeck Houses. Nothing I have any control over, believe me, but there might be violence. I want you and Lenny to be safe. I’m thinking maybe that’s when I’ll send him to Long Island to see his folks and you and I can have a slumber party.

  DEAF CHILD AREA

  FROM THE DIARIES OF LENNY ABRAMOV

  OCTOBER 12

  Dear Diary,

  Please forgive another month-long absence, but today I have to write in you with the greatest of news. My parents are alive. I found out five days ago, at 5:54 p.m. EST, the precise time Telenor, the Norwegian telecommunications giant, restored our communications and our äppäräti started whirring with data, prices, Images, and calumny; 5:54 p.m. EST, a time no one of my generation will ever forget. My parents’ voices filled my ears immediately, the baritone insanity of my father’s happy booms, the titter and laughter of my mother as they shouted: “Malen’kii, malen’kii! Zhiv, zdorov? Zhiv, zdorov!” (“Little one, little one! Alive and well? Alive and well!”). I hollered in such a way (“Urá!”) that Eunice became scared. She moved to the bathroom, where I could hear her verballing into her äppärät in a monotone English mixed together with an endless procession of passionate Korean honks directed at her mother: “Neh, neh, umma, neh.” And so the two of us celebrated with our parents, reconnected to them so strongly that when Eunice came into the bedroom and we faced each other, there was almost nothing to say in our common tongue. We found ourselves laughing at our stunned, merry silence, me wiping my tears, her with her hands pressed to the hardness of her chest.

  The Abramovs. Surviving, scavenging, setting up their own roadblocks with Mr. Vida and the other neighbors while the world came undone around them, being hard-boiled working-class immigrants, designed by an angry God for a calamity of precisely this magnitude. How could I have doubted their tenacious hold on life? According to the stressful GlobalTeens messages they sent me right after we finished verballing, the security situation in Westbury was relatively normal, but the pharmacy had been ransacked and the heavily guarded Waldbaum’s supermarket was out of Tagamet, my father’s remedy against heartburn and his chronic peptic ulcers. So it was a happy surprise when I got a note, a handwritten note, from Joshie:

  Rhesus Monkey! Be a good son and go visit your parents. I’m reserving some crack Wapachung security people for you on Monday. They’ll escort you out to Long Island. Stay away from those boiled Russian meats! And don’t get too excited, okay? I’m looking out for your epinephrine levels like a hawk.

  I was met outside the Post-Human Services synagogue by two armored Hyundai Persimmon jeeps sporting enormous hood-mounted weaponry, probably leftovers from our ill-fated Venezuelan adventure. Our expedition leader seemed to be of Venezuela vintage as well, one Major J. M. Palatino of Wapachung Contingency, a small but powerfully put-together man smelling of middle-class cologne and horses. He surveyed me with professional eyes, quickly concluded that I was soft and in need of protection, slapped his sides militarily, and introduced his team of two young armed guys, both remnants of the Nebraskan National Guard, one missing the better half of his hand.

  “Here’s the game plan,” Palatino said. “We follow the major arteries and hope there haven’t been any flare-ups along the way. We’re talking about I-495 here, the old Long Island Expressway. Don’t expect much trouble there. Then we swing over to the Northern and Wantagh Parkways. That could b
e trickier, depending on who’s in charge at this point in the day.”

  “I thought that would be us,” I said.

  “There’s still sporadic enemy-combatant activity after Little Neck. Nassau warlords fighting Suffolk warlords. Ethnic stuff. Salvadorans. Guatemalans. Nigerians. Got to tread lightly. Anyway, we’re armed to the teeth here, so no worries. We’ve got a heavy .50-caliber M2 Browning machine gun on the lead vehicle and AT4 anti-armor on both. Nothing even comes close out there. Expect we’ll be in Westbury at 1400 hours.”

  “Three hours to drive thirty miles?”

  “I didn’t create this world, sir,” Palatino said. “I’m just along for the ride. We’ve got Oslo Delight sandwiches for you in the back. You cool with lingonberry jam? Enjoy.”

  At the entrance to the expressway, Wapachung troops were screening cars for weapons and contraband, throwing unlucky five-jiao men on the ground, and prodding them with weapons, the whole scene oddly quiet and methodical and reminiscent of the near-distant past. “It’s like the American Restoration Authority out here,” I said to the major. “Nothing’s changed but the uniforms.”

  “You don’t just disband a force overnight,” Palatino said. “We’d have a situation like out in Missouri.”

  “What’s in Missouri?” I asked.

  He waved his hand at me as if to say: It’s better not to know. We turned our backs on Manhattan and rolled past the ugly gigantism of LeFrak City, a collection of buildings that, with their rows of balconies on both ends, resembled soot-covered accordions. These housing projects were riddled with Russian immigrants, and my parents had always thought that one more step down on the economic ladder would bring us directly to LeFrak, where, according to my mother, we would all be killed. She was something of a seer, Galya Abramov.