The Russian Debutante’s Handbook

by Gary Shteyngart

  “You have a point,” Vladimir said. He was unsure of what to say next. Or what she had just said to him. He felt a gurgle in his stomach and tasted something gastric on his tongue. “Very well, then,” he said. “No problem.” He pecked her farewell. “Ciao, ciao,” he croaked. “Good luck with the toothbrush. Remember: medium-soft bristles . . .”

  But as he made his way home, the intestinal ill-feeling, the nervousness tickling his insides continued, as if the tired faces of the shish-kebob-sellers and art-book-hawkers of Lower Broadway, the honored citizens of the midsummer city, were assaying him with open disgust, as if the braggadocio of rap issuing out of boom boxes was actually as threatening as it sounded. What was it, this strange stirring?

  Back at the Ruoccos’, Fran’s bedroom was its usual mess of samizdat-like books published by failing presses; heaps of dirty underwear; here and there loose dots of birth control and anxiety medication; the big cat, Kropotkin, prowling about, tasting a little bit of everything, depositing tufts of gray-black fur on panties and literature alike. And the chill in the room . . . The mausoleum effect . . . The windows shut, curtains drawn, the air-conditioner always on, a tiny desk lamp the only illumination. Here was the long winter of Oslo or Fairbanks or Murmansk: the New York summer had no business in this twilight place, this temple to Fran’s strange ambitions, the desiccation of early-twentieth-century literature, the education and repackaging of one Warsaw Pact immigrant.

  His stomach growled once more. Another wave of nausea . . .

  Kvo-kvotidian, said the Vladimir-bird.

  Sometimes you seem so happy to have a girlfriend.

  Shadowing her around town . . .

  Was this what you dreamed it would be like?

  And then he realized what it was, this rumbling in his gullet, this internal displacement: He had been unmasked! She knew! She knew everything! How much he needed her, wanted her, could never have her . . . All of it. The foreigner. The exchange student. The 1979 Soviet “Grain Jew” poster boy. Good enough for bed, but not for the organic-toothbrush store.

  Toothbrush? Don’t mind if I do!

  Ah, so that’s how it was. She had humiliated him on the sly, while he, the diligent note-taker, had failed his mandate once again. And he had tried so hard this time, had gone to such lengths to please all of them under the rubric “Parents & Daughter: How to Love an American Family.” He was the dutiful son the Ruoccos never had. Worshiping Dad’s Humor Studies. “Yes, sir, the serious novel has no future in this country . . . We must turn to the comic.” Worshiping Mom’s fruits de mer. “World’s best geoduck clam, Miss Vincie. Maybe just a sprinkle more of vinegar.” And, God knows, worshiping Daughter. Worshiping, shadowing, soaking up through osmosis.

  And still coming up short . . .

  Why?

  How?

  Because he was all alone in this, this being Vladimir Girshkin business, this being neither here nor there, neither Leningrad nor SoHo. Sure, his problems might seem minuscule to a contemporary statistician of race, class, and gender in America. And yes, people in this country suffered left and right, were marginalized and disenfranchised the moment they stepped out of the house for coffee and a doughnut. But at least they suffered as part of a unit. They were in this together. They were bound by ties Vladimir could barely comprehend: New Jersey Indians loading a giant toothbrush into a station wagon, Avenue B Dominicans playing stoop-side dominoes, even the native-born Judeo-Americans sharing easy laughs at the office.

  Where was Vladimir’s social unit? His American friends had always consisted of one man—Baobab—and, upon Fran’s unspoken orders, Baobab was completely off limits. He had no Russian friends. For all his years at the Emma Lazarus Society, the Russian community was just a dark, perspiring mass that regularly washed up on his shore, complaining, threatening, cajoling, bribing him with bizarre lacquered tea sets and bottles of Soviet champagne . . . What could he do? Go to Brighton Beach and eat mutton plov with some off-the-boat Uzbeks? Call Mr. Rybakov to see if he could attend the baptismal of his youngest fan? Arrange for a date with some Yelena Kupchernovskaya of Rego Park, Queens, soon-to-be graduate of the accounting department at Baruch College, a woman who, if she actually existed, would want to settle down at the fantastic age of twenty-one and bear him two children in quick succession—“Oh, Volodya, my dream is for one boy and one girl.”

  And what of his parents? Beyond the Maginot Line of the Westchester suburbs, were they faring any better? Dr. and Mrs. Girshkin had arrived in the States in their early forties; their lives had effectively been split into two, leaving only fading memories of the sunny Yalta vacations, the homemade marzipan cookies and condensed milk, the tiny private parties at some artist’s flat suffused with moonshine vodka and whispered Brezhnev jokes. They had left their rarefied Petersburg friends, their few relatives, everyone they had ever known, traded it all in for a lifetime of solitary confinement in a Scarsdale mini-mansion.

  There they were, driving down to Brighton Beach once a month to pick up contraband caviar and tangy kielbasa, all around them the strange new Russians in cheap leather jackets, women wearing wedding cakes of permed blond hair on their heads, an utterly alien race that just happened to cluck away in the mother tongue and, at least in theory, shared the Girshkins’ religion.

  Were Vladimir and his parents Petersburg snobs? Perhaps. Bad Russians? Likely. Bad Jews? Most certainly. Normal Americans? Not even close.

  ALONE IN THE dark foreign bedroom, a bedroom he had just recently mistaken for his own, Vladimir picked up Kropotkin, the Ruoccos’ beloved family cat, and soon found himself crying into the hypoallergenic designer fur. It was soothing. The mischievous fellow, an anarchist like his Russian namesake, felt incredibly warm and tender amid the climate-controlled hell of Fran’s room. Sometimes, when he and Fran were in bed, Vladimir spied Kropotkin looking at them with such feline amazement, as if the cat alone understood the magnitude of what was going on—Vladimir’s right hand cupping, squeezing, plying, poking, kneading the pale American flesh of his mistress.

  There were nights, after Fran had done her reading for the day, after the desk light had been turned off, when she would end up on top of him, her face contorted into the most difficult grimace, grinding down on him with such force that he was lost in her, that the pejorative term “to screw” came to mind—she was literally screwing Vladimir inside of her, as if otherwise he would somehow manage to fall out, as if this is what held them together. And after she was through with him, after the long tremors of her silent orgasm, she would grab his head and press it into the bony ridge between her little breasts, each nipple alert and pointing to the side, and there they would remain for a long time, locked in a postcoital huddle, rocking back and forth.

  This was his favorite part of their intimacy: when she was silent and satiated, when he was blissfully unsure of what had just happened between them, when they were holding on to each other as if letting go would mean for each a quick, dry death. Inside the huddle, he would sniff and lick her; her chest would be covered with sweat, not the gamy Russian sweat Vladimir remembered from his childhood, rather American sweat, sweat denatured by deodorant, sweat that smelled purely metallic, like blood. And only when they woke up the next day, only in the first weak light of the morning, would she actually look his way and mutter “thank you” or “sorry,” in either case leaving him to wonder “What for?”

  Thank you for putting up with me, Vladimir thought as he wept into the softly mewing Kropotkin. Sorry I have to use you and humiliate you. That’s what for.

  THAT NIGHT, AFTER Vincie’s lovely squid had been eaten and two bottles of Crozes-Hermitage swilled, Vladimir took Fran into their bedroom and managed to shock both of them by actually speaking his mind. “Fran, you insulted me today,” he told her. “You made light of my feelings for you. Then you laughed at my accent, as if I had a choice in where I was born. It was shocking. You were so unlike yourself, so completely immature. I want . . .” He stopped for a moment. “I
would like . . .” he said. “Please, I would like an apology.”

  Frannie was flushed. Even her lips, purple with wine, were somehow turning red. Against the backdrop of her dark hair and ashen face, they were quite beautiful. “An apology?” she shouted. “Did you just call me immature? What are you, some kind of an idiot?”

  “I’m . . . You . . . I cannot believe what you say . . .”

  “I do apologize. It wasn’t a question. What I meant to say was, and I hope it’s not a sign of my immaturity: you are some kind of an idiot. Jesus, what did they do to you at that Midwestern college, that finishing school for Westchester’s tender sons?”

  “Please . . .” he muttered. “Please don’t try to play the class card with me. Your parents are substantially wealthier than mine . . .”

  “Oh, you poor immigrant,” she said, a touch of spittle crowning her lower lip. “Someone get this guy a grant. A Guggenheim Fellowship for Soviet Refugees Who Love Too Much. It’s a midcareer prize, Vladimir. You have to present a substantial body of love. Should I get you an application?”

  Vladimir looked down at his feet, brought them closer together, as if Mother had been hovering over the scene all along. “I think maybe I should go now,” he said.

  “Well, that’s just ridiculous.” She shook her head, dismissing the idea. But she also walked over and put her freckled arms around him. He smelled paprika and garlic. He felt his knees buckle under her weight, what little of it there was. “Honey, here, sit down . . .” she said. “What’s happening here? Where are you going? I’m sorry. Please sit down. No, not on my notebook. Over there. Scoot over. Now tell me what’s wrong . . .” She lifted up his downcast chin. She pulled lightly on his goatee.

  “You don’t love me,” he said.

  “Love,” she said. “What does that even mean? Do you know what that means? I don’t know what that means.”

  “It means you have no regard for my feelings.”

  “Ah, so that’s what love means. What a tricky definition. Oh, Vladimir, why are we fighting? You’re scaring me to death. Why are you scaring me to death, sweetie? Do I love you? Who cares? We’re together. We enjoy one another. I’m twenty-one.”

  “I know,” he said sadly. “I know we’re young and we shouldn’t throw around words like ‘love’ or ‘relationship’ or ‘future.’ Russians settle down so early, it’s absolutely stupid. They’re never ready for it, and then they raise these cretinous kids. My mother was twenty-four when she had me. So I don’t disagree with you. But, on the other hand, what you said . . .”

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m sorry I was so caustic earlier today. I just don’t know what to make of you at times. Here is this man, reasonably socialized and sophisticated, who wants to spend a day toothbrush-shopping with me. What does it mean?”

  Vladimir sighed. “What does it mean?” he said. “I’m lonely. It means that I’m lonely.”

  “Well, whatever for? You spend every single evening with me, you’ve got all these new friends who, by the way, think you’re the urban experience nonpareil, and I don’t even mean that in a patronizing way . . . And my parents. Talk about settling down, bub. My parents love you. My father loves you . . . Lookee here.” She jumped on the bed and started banging the wall separating her bedroom from her parents’. “Mom, Dad, get in here! Vladimir’s having a crisis!”

  “What are you doing?” Vladimir shouted. “Stop! I accept your apology!”

  But after a minute of commotion on both sides of the wall, the parents trooped right into Fran’s mausoleum, both professori dressed in matching silk pajamas, Joseph Ruocco still clutching a bedside tumbler of liquor in his hand. “What is it?” Vincie shrieked, blindly trying to survey the scene through her reading glasses. “What happened?”

  “Vladimir thinks I don’t care for him,” Fran announced, “and that he’s all alone in the world.”

  “What nonsense!” Joseph bellowed. “Who told you that? Here, Vladimir, have a shot of Armagnac. It steadies the nerves. You both look so . . . agog.”

  “What did you do to him, Frannie?” Vincie wanted to know. “Are you having a case of the tempers again? She has these little episodes sometimes.”

  “A case of the tempers again?” Frannie said. “Mom, are you becoming unhinged again?”

  Joseph Ruocco sat down on the bed, on the other side of Vladimir, and put an arm around the mortified fellow. Smelling entirely of alcohol and fermented grape, he nonetheless remained quite steady and assured. “Tell me what happened, Vladimir,” he said, “and I will try to adjudicate. Young folks need guidance. Tell me.”

  “It’s nothing,” Vladimir whispered. “It’s all better now . . .”

  “Tell him you love him, Dad,” Fran said.

  “Frannie!” Vladimir shouted.

  “I love you, Vladimir,” said Professor Joseph Ruocco, drunkenly but earnestly elucidating each word.

  “I love you, too,” Vincie said. She made space for herself on the bed, then reached over to touch Vladimir’s cheek, pale, entirely drained of blood. The three of them turned to Frannie.

  Fran smiled weakly. She picked up the passing Kropotkin and rubbed his fat stomach. The cat looked up to her expectantly. Indeed, they were all waiting for her to render a verdict. “I care about you a lot,” she told Vladimir.

  “You see!” Joseph cried. “We all love Vladimir, or care about him a lot as the case may be . . . Listen, Vlad, you’re very important to this family. I got a daughter here, my only daughter, I’m sure your parents must know exactly what that feels like, to have an only daughter . . . And she’s a brilliant daughter . . . Don’t blush, Frannie, don’t shoo me away, I know when I speak the truth.”

  “Daddy, please,” she whispered, not entirely in reproach.

  “ . . . But brilliance carries a price, I don’t have to cite precedent for Vladimir, he’s marinated in our culture long enough to know where the American intelligentsia stands on the totem pole. He knows that people marked for greater things are often the least happy of all. And God knows where the hell I’d be today if it wasn’t for Vincie. I love you, Vincie. I might as well say it. Before I found Vincie, well . . . I could be abrasive, let’s just say. There weren’t many takers. And Frannie . . .”

  “Dad!”

  “Let’s be truthful, honey. You’re not the easiest person to be with. I’m sure whatever you said to Vladimir today was wildly inappropriate.”

  “Wildly,” Vincie said. “That’s exactly the right word to use.”

  “Thank you, Vincie. My point is: There aren’t too many people who can handle our Frannie. But you, Vladimir, you’re imbued with this patience, this superhuman ability to abide . . . Maybe it’s a Russian trait, queuing for sausages all day long. Ha ha. I’m kidding. But I’m also serious. We know you can live with Frannie’s genius, Vladimir, maybe even stoke the embers now and then. I’m not saying get married. I’m saying . . . What am I saying?”

  “We love you,” Vincie said. She reached over and kissed him on the lips allowing Vladimir a taste of many things. Medicine. Balm. Squid. Booze.

  BUT THE RUOCCOS had said it all. The kissing was almost superfluous. They had been honest with him.

  He finally understood the dynamic.

  It had involved some singular foresight on their part, but after six weeks of living with Vladimir, here’s what they had in mind.

  They would be a family. Not terribly different from a traditional Russian family, really. Living in the same communal apartment, two generations separated by one flimsy wall, the sound of the young ones’ lovemaking reassuring the old ones of their continuity. He would accept his place by Fran’s side. Their life would be uneven and strange, but not much stranger, and certainly not as awful, as the life that preceded this one. At least, with the Ruoccos, his lack of ambition was a virtue, not a vice. At least he could Jew-walk to his heart’s content. He could spread his feet left and right, he could wear clown’s shoes if he so desired, flip-flopping his way to their marita
l bed, sipping from a glass of nocturnal Armagnac, and nobody would care.

  To quote Vincie’s kitchen wisdom, they all had bigger fish to fry.

  And that would be the compromise, not bad as compromises go. He would never be lonely in America. He would never need turn to the Girshkins for their dubious parental comforts, never have to spend another day as Mother’s Little Failure. At the age of twenty-five, he would be born into another family.

  He would have reached, all by himself, the final destination of every immigrant’s journey: a better home in which to be unhappy.

  THAT NIGHT, AFTER the professors had gone back to their bedroom, after calm had been restored, after the organic toothbrush had been removed from its hand-stitched pouch and its gentle fibers brushed against their gums, Fran wrapped him up in a blanket, tucked his favorite extra-fluffed pillow beneath his head, and kissed him good night. “Just relax,” she said. “We’re going to be okay. Dream of something nice. Dream of our trip to Sardinia next year.”

  “I will,” he said. He hadn’t heard of their trip to Sardinia, but that was all right. He had to accept these things on faith.

  “Promise?” she said. “Promise you don’t hate me.”

  “I don’t,” he said. He didn’t.

  “Promise you won’t leave me . . . Just promise.”

  “I won’t,” he said.

  “And we’ll go have a drink with Frank tomorrow. Now there’s one person who loves you like crazy.”

  “Okay,” Vladimir whispered. He closed his eyes and lapsed into a dream immediately. They were on a beach in the very south of Sardinia, the skies so cloudless he could almost see the belfries of Caligari in the distance. They were lying naked on a beach blanket and he was erect, wildly erect, to use Joseph’s parlance, wildly erect and entering Fran discreetly from the back, amazed at how dry she was inside, how she made no sounds of either protest or passion. He spread the dimpled white cheeks of her tiny ass with two hands and slowly, with great difficulty, maneuvered himself inside her brittle womb. As he was doing so, she licked her index finger, turned a page of the nameless journal she was reading, and, yawning, scribbled her lengthy comments at the margins. Flamingos watched them with Sardinian disinterest, while, nearby, beneath a beach umbrella stenciled with the name of their pensione, Vincie Ruocco was fellating her husband.