And Mother, paranoid that her easily excitable son might spill their destination to the neighbors, only said, “Far.”
And Vladimir, jumping through the air, said, “Moscow?”
And Mother said, “Farther.”
And Vladimir, jumping still higher, said, “Tashkent?”
And she said, “Farther.”
And Vladimir, now reaching nearly the same height as his flying giraffe, said, “Siberia?” Because that’s as far as it got, and Mother said that no, it was even farther than that. Vladimir spread out his beloved maps and traced his finger farther than Siberia, but it wasn’t even the Soviet Union out there. It was something else. Another country! But nobody ever went to another country. And so Vladimir spent the night running around the flat with volumes of the Great Soviet Encyclopedia under his arm, screaming in alphabetical order, “Afghanistan, Albania, Algeria, Argentina, Austria, Bermuda . . .”
It was the next day at customs, however, that the Girshkins’ departure took a turn for the worse. The well-fed men of the Interior Ministry in their tight polyester uniforms, now completely without reason for concealing their hatred for the soon-to-be ex-Soviet family before them, obliterated their luggage, tearing apart the wide-collared Finnish shirts and the few passable business suits smuggled through the Baltics, clothes which Vladimir’s parents had hoped would last them through their first interviews in New York. This was done ostensibly to find any hidden gold or diamonds that exceeded the minuscule amount allowed to leave the country. As they tore through Mother’s address book, shredding anything with an American address, including her Newark cousin’s instructions on how to get to Macy’s, a particularly large gentleman, whom Vladimir would never forget as having had a mouth frighteningly empty of teeth (even the silver kind that were standard issue to middle-aged Warsaw Pact citizens) and a strong smell of sturgeon on his breath, said to her: “You’ll be back, Yid.”
The agent had proved to be rather prescient, for after the Soviet Union collapsed Mother did return on several occasions to buy up a few choice pieces of the former empire for her corporation, but at the time all that occurred to Vladimir was that Mother—the bulwark against the storm outside the window, the woman whose word was the law of the household, from whose hands could come either a mustard compress that would torture through the night or a glossy volume on the Battle of Stalingrad that would be moored by his bedside for a year—was a Yid. Granted he had been called a Yid before; in fact, he had been called that every time his health allowed him a foray into the gray world of Soviet education. Yet he had always thought of himself as being the most thorough of Yids—small, stooped, sickly, and with a book regularly by his side. But how could anyone say that of Mother who not only read to Vladimir about the Battle of Stalingrad but looked ready to wage it all by herself.
And to Vladimir’s surprise, as the pages of her address book scattered about her and as the customs agents roared in appreciation of Comrade Sturgeon-Breath, Mother did nothing but twist the strings of her little leather purse around her whitened hand, while Dr. Girshkin, avoiding the frightened gaze of his son, made slight and ambiguous gestures toward the departure gate and their escape.
Then, before he knew it, they were buckled in, snow-covered, gas-streaked Russia rolling beneath the airplane’s wings, and only then did Vladimir allow himself the luxury, the necessity, of crying.
Now, thirteen years hence, with the jet headed in the opposite direction, Vladimir felt the intervening years effortlessly collapsing into a meaningless interlude. He was the same little Volodechka with the Yid last name, with the eyes puffed from crying and the nose wet from running. Only this time destiny wasn’t a Hebrew school carefully landscaped into a sylvan Scarsdale lot followed by a progressive Midwestern college. This time around, destiny was a gangster named after a fuzzy marmot.
And this time there would be no room for those silly mistakes—those slips of the amateur assimilationist—that had nearly cost him his life a week ago in a fading Floridian hotel room with that loose-fleshed naked old man; those brief bouts of idiocy and self-victimization that had put him on this Lufthansa flight fleeing New York and his imperious Francesca in disgrace. They belonged to an earlier Vladimir, a sweet and transparent one for whom the world had little use.
There was a knock on the bathroom door. Vladimir wiped his face, stuffed his pockets full of emergency tissue, and headed out past the rows of grumbling retired Virginians on a group tour waiting for the facilities, some with their cameras slung around their necks as if in preparation for that wayward Kodak moment en route to the crapper. He resumed his seat next to the window. The plane was riding over a patched carpet of thin, feathery clouds, a sign, his father had taught him over one country breakfast at the dacha, of an impending change in weather.
VLADIMIR STOOD ON the ramp breathing European air, his shirtsleeves rolled down against the autumn wind. The Virginians were gasping at the lack of modern connecting gates between the plane and the tired-looking green terminal, which Vladimir nostalgically pegged as late-socialist architecture, the kind built after local architects had long given up on constructivism and just said: “Hey, here’s some greenish glass and something not unlike cement. Let’s make a terminal.” Above the building, in large white letters: PRAVA, REPUBLIKA STOLOVAYA. Oddly enough, in Russian “Republika Stolovaya” meant “the Cafeteria Republic.” Vladimir smiled. He was a big fan of the meaty Slavic languages: Polish, Slovak, and now this.
Then the passport check, where his first Stolovan native appeared, light-haired and beefy, with a beautiful golden mustache. “No,” he said to Vladimir, pointing first to the passport photo of the college-era Vladimir with his goatee in full bloom and his dark, wispy hair extended to his behind, and then to the newly shaved, short-haired Vladimir before him. “No.”
“Yes,” Vladimir said. He tried to assume the same tired smile as in the passport, then pulled on his emerging chin hairs to indicate the forest to come.
“No,” the passport agent said meekly, but stamped Vladimir’s passport anyway. Clearly, socialism had fallen.
He picked up his valise at the luggage carousel and was ushered along with the Americans into the arrival lounge where a gleaming American Express cash machine lay in wait for them. The visiting moms and dads were picking their offspring out of a line-up of slick, young urban types, dressed as if they had just burgled New York’s famed Screaming Mimi’s boutique. Vladimir made his way through the maternal hugs and paternal shoulder-slapping to the doors, which, through a cryptic red arrow, promised escape. But he also took note of the situation: young Americans being visited by their moneyed elders. Moneyed? At least middle-class, these fiftysomethings in rumpled cords and goofy oversized sweaters. And nowadays the upper class looked down to the middle for tips on casual dressing, so anything was possible.
And then, as instantaneously as a plane falling out of the sky, the scene was russified.
Small-arms fire exploded outside.
A dozen car alarms engaged.
A detachment of men, each with a small Kalashnikov at hip level, swiftly parted the Americans into two screaming herds.
The requisite red carpet was rolled out between them.
A convoy of BMWs and armor-plated Range Rovers was assembled in protective formation.
A crepe banner bearing the curious legend PRAVAINVEST #1 FINANCIAL CONCERN WELCOME THE GIRSHKIN was unfurled.
And only then did our man finally catch sight of his new benefactor.
Flanked by three associates, all aglow in their nylon sports jackets and matching space-age trousers made out of alpaca or maybe silicon, the Groundhog solemnly approached. He was a burly, pocked little man with his eyes slightly crossed and his hair parted to make the least of a disappearing hairline.
The Groundhog placed one paw on Vladimir’s shoulder, holding him in place (as if he would dare move), then stuck out his other hand and, in his best Ukrainian accent, said rhetorically: “You are Girshkin.”
> Yes, Girshkin he was.
“So, then,” the Groundhog said, “I am Tolya Rybakov, the president of PravaInvest, also called . . .” He looked around to his two immediate associates—one Groundhog-sized, the other closer to Vladimir’s physique—both too busy staring closely at Vladimir to pay their boss any mind. “As my father might have told you, I am also called . . . the Groundhog.”
Vladimir continued to shake his hand, trying to make up for his own hand’s small size with vigor and motion, while muttering, “Yes, yes, I have heard. Very pleased to meet you, Mister Groundhog.”
“Just Groundhog,” the Groundhog said tersely. “We don’t use titles in this company. Everyone knows who they are. This—” he pointed to the enormous man with small Tatar eyes and a bald dome encircled by rings of wrinkles like the cross-section of a sequoia, “This is our chief operations officer, Misha Gusev.”
“Are you called the Goose?” Vladimir asked, seizing on the name’s Russian meaning and the Groundhog’s penchant for animal names.
“No,” Gusev said. “Are you called the Jew?”
The Groundhog laughed and waved an accusatory finger at Gusev, while the third man—small but solid, with blond hair as fine as a baby’s, his eyes cobalt blue the way Lake Baikal’s waters had been some centuries ago—shook his head and said, “Forgive Gusev, he is a serious anti-Semite.”
“Yes, right,” Vladimir said. “We all have our . . .”
“Konstantin Bakutin,” the third man said, offering his hand. “Call me Kostya. I am the Chief Financial Officer. Congratulations on your exploits with the Immigration and Naturalization Service. That’s a tough nut to crack, and it’s not like we haven’t tried.”
Vladimir began to thank his conational in his most weighty, elaborate Russian, but the Groundhog pulled them outside, where between clusters of tour buses and forlorn Polish-made taxis stood a caravan of BMWs, each sporting a yellow “PravaInvest” logo across the bow, each surrounded by tall men in purple jackets of an unusual cut, loosely bridging the gap between business suit and smoking jacket. “These are mostly Stolovans,” explained the Groundhog. “We hire a lot of local labor.” He waved to his people as Gusev stuck two thumbs into his mouth and whistled.
In an impressive piece of postmodern choreography, twelve car doors were opened simultaneously by twelve lanky Stolovans. An associate relieved Vladimir of his luggage. Inside, the sober German interiors were violated beyond comprehension with Jersey-style zebra-striped seats and woolly cupholders.
“Very pleasant decor,” Vladimir said. “Very, as they say in American computer circles, user-friendly.”
“Oh, Esterhazy does these for us,” the Groundhog said, whistling to a hairy little man sulking about in the shadows of a Range Rover. Esterhazy, bare-chested in his black leather jacket, his leather pants capped off by suede Capezios, waved a pack of Camel cigarettes at Vladimir and gave the Hog a thumbs-up. “Yes, the Hungarians have always been ahead of the times,” said the Groundhog, almost sighing with jealousy.
With this international discussion at an end, the procession took off for the highway, Vladimir watching out for the first telltale signs—the flora and fauna, the brick and mortar—of his new country. Within minutes, the brick and mortar appeared on both sides of the road, like a signpost signaling VLADIMIR’S CHILDHOOD, NEXT HUNDRED EXITS: an endless stretch of rickety plaster Soviet-era apartment houses, each edifice peeling and waterlogged so that the inadvertent shapes of animals and constellations could be recognized by an imaginative child. And in the spaces between these behemoths were the tiny grazing spaces where Vladimir sometimes played, spaces adorned with a fistful of sand and some rusty swings. True, this was Prava and not Leningrad, but then these houses formed one long demented line from Tajikistan to Berlin. There was no stopping them.
“First lesson in the Stolovan language,” Kostya said. “These housing complexes the Stolovans call panelaks. It is evident why, no?” When nobody answered, Kostya said, “Because they look like they’re made out of panels.”
“But we don’t bother learning Stolovan,” the Groundhog said. “The bastards can all speak Russian.”
“If they give you any problems,” Gusev said, “give me a ring, and we’ll run them over like we did in ’69. I was there, you know.”
The blocks of flats continued for at least another ten minutes, interrupted occasionally by the grimy sarcophagus of an overused power station or the Orwellian skyline of factory smokestacks barely visible from within the billowing clouds of their own emissions. At times, Vladimir would point to a rising office tower marked as the future site of an Austrian bank, or an old warehouse being spruced up to accommodate a German car dealership, at which point his hosts would say as a chorus: “Everywhere you turn, money for the taking.”
Just as the panelaks seemed ready to run out and the Prava of travel brochures about to redeem her promise of cobblestone streets bisected by the silver indentations of tram lines, the procession lurched to the right along a winding sandy path that on occasion would break out into asphalt, as if to show the motorcade just how civilized life could sometimes be. In the distance, perched against the bluff of an eroded hill, the Groundhog’s own panelak compound awaited, its balconies like the parapets of a vast socialist fortress. “Four buildings, two constructed in ’81, two in ’83,” the Groundhog rattled off.
“We got the whole thing in ’89 for less than 300,000 dollars U.S.,” added Kostya, and Vladimir wondered whether he should commit these figures to memory in the event of a quiz. Instantly, he felt tired.
They pulled into the compound’s quadrangle where several American jeeps stood at attention alongside a tank with a gaping hole for a barrel. “Very good,” said the well-disposed Groundhog. “Gusev and I have to take off for town, so Kostya will show you your apartment. Tomorrow we have what I call the biznesmenski lunch. That’s a weekly event, by the way, so bring some ideas, write something down.”
Gusev sneered good-bye and the motorcade began the complicated task of making their way around the tank and heading onward to golden Prava, while Kostya, whistling a Russian folk tune concerning boysenberries, waved Vladimir toward the entrance of a building unceremoniously labeled #2.
The lobby was cramped with two dozen men and their rifles, sweating away beneath a bare light bulb; loose playing cards and empty liquor bottles covered the floor, and several flies, thick and dazed with overfulfillment, lethargically scuttled about the landscape. “This is Vladimir, an important young man,” Kostya announced.
Vladimir bowed slightly in the manner of an important young man. He turned around to make sure he wasn’t leaving anybody out. “Dobry den’,” he said.
A man of indeterminate age, his face covered with red beard and glow-in-the-dark children’s Band-Aids, lifted his Kalashnikov and mumbled back the greeting. Evidently he was speaking for everyone.
“Gusev’s top men,” Kostya said as they turned into a corridor. “All former Soviet Interior Ministry troops, so I wouldn’t step on their toes. Don’t ask me what exactly we need them for. Certainly don’t ask Gusev.”
The corridor ended with a door slightly ajar, the word KASINO written upon it with industrial grease, and Dire Straits’ “Money for Nothing” audible within. “In need of renovation,” said Kostya as a forewarning, “but still a money-maker.”
The Kasino was the size of Vladimir’s math-and-science high school gymnasium, and seemed to have as much to do with gambling as the other facility did with sports. Clusters of folding tables and chairs were filled with young blond women smoking and trying to look dangerous in the brief light of several halogen lamps.
“Dobry den’,” the gentlemanly Vladimir said, although by then the den’ might have very well turned into evening outside the Kasino’s windowless gloom. A frontal mass of unfiltered smoke floated his way from the lungs of a woman whose skin was the greenish color of raw onion, and whose tiny body was seemingly held in place by the weight of her shoulder pads.
“This is Vladimir,” Kostya said. “He’s here to do things with the Americans.”
The trance was broken: the women pulled themselves up and crossed their legs. There was giggling and the word “Amerikanets” was said many times. The vixen with the shoulder pads struggled to her feet, leaning against her folding table for support, and said in English, “I am Lydia. I am driving Ford Escort.”
The others thought that tremendously witty and applauded. Vladimir was about to say a few encouraging words on their behalf, but Kostya took his arm and escorted him out of the Kasino, saying, “Ah, but you must be tired from travel.”
They went up two flights, the staircase redolent of beef stew and the starchy smells of Russian family life, and emerged onto a brightly lit corridor of flats. “Number twenty-three,” said Kostya, swinging about a key chain like a bed-and-breakfast proprietor.
They went in. “Main room,” Kostya said with an epic sweep of the arm. The space was filled entirely by an olive-colored Swedish couch, a bulky television set, and Vladimir’s opened and searched-through valise. The magazine articles he had photocopied on Prava’s expatriate scene were scattered about; his punctured shampoo bottle was gurgling under the couch, a river of green trailing away from it. Ah, those curious Russians. It was nice to be back in a land of transparency.
“Next stop, bedroom with a nice big bed,” Kostya said. There was also a simple oakwood dresser and a window overlooking the smokestacks defining the horizon. “Here is a kitchen with good equipment, and there is a small room for working and thinking important thoughts.” Vladimir peeked into a walk-in closet occupied by a school-sized desk and a Cyrillic typewriter on top of it. He nodded.
The Russian Debutante’s Handbook Page 17