The Russian Debutante’s Handbook

by Gary Shteyngart

  Right! No matter which gender he encountered that night it certainly seemed that this whole enterprise, this date, had gotten off on the right foot, and to celebrate Vladimir bought at the concession stand a minibottle of Becherovka, the hideous Czech liqueur that tasted of burnt pumpkin. And for the lady, a little flask of the Hungarian booze called Unicom, which, despite its lingual similarity to a United Nations relief agency, was the source of innumerable atrocities to the stomach and its sensitive lining.

  “Cheers!” They clinked their drinks and, predictably, Morgan gagged and coughed as would any mortal this side of the Danube, while Vladimir comforted her with improvised manliness, even touched her sweaty hand a little, out of concern, and wanted for a brief second to live forever in such circumstances (i.e., being manly; being envied; touching her, if only at the extremities). But then the lights went down and the mating ritual, such as it was, became a bit murky for Vladimir since there was little opportunity for him to try out his witticisms and even less occasion to put on the moves. How could he, after all, with half the audience sniffling and bawling as the attractive hero on the screen became more and more emaciated with the progression of the awful disease, eventually to lose his hair then pass away by the closing credits?

  What a scene there was then! By the time the curtains went down noses were trumpeting throughout the theater as if the castle walls outside belonged to ancient Jericho. But Morgan’s face was placid, if a little glazed over, and they stumbled wordlessly to the exit sign and into the street. They stood, still silent, watching the Fiat taxis being commissioned by departing moviegoers while the first drunken processions of Italian university students loudly made their way past the ominous shadow of an adjacent powder tower to some disco wonderland beyond.

  Vladimir couldn’t wait to vent. “I hated it!” he shouted. “Hated it! Hated it!” He did a little dance in the shadows of the flickering street lamps, as if to demonstrate the primordial force of his hatred. But it was time for some kind of intellectual breakdown, so he said: “How trite. How revoltingly simple-minded. To turn AIDS into yet another courtroom drama. As if the only way Americans can express anything anymore is through legal proceedings. I’m so utterly underwhelmed.”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “I think just making this movie was a good thing. So many people have issues. Especially where I come from. My little brother and his friends can be such homophobes. They just don’t know any better. At least, this movie talks about AIDS. Don’t you think that’s important?”

  What? What the hell was she quacking about? Who gave a fuck what her brother thought about queers. The point was the movie failed as a work of art! Art! Art! Weren’t the Americans here in Prava for art? Why the hell was she here? A little reasoned rebellion before grad school? A chance to show off to the suburban losers in Shaker Heights: “That’s me and my Russian ex-boyfriend in front of the hotel where Kafka took an important crap in 1921. See that plaque by the door? Pretty nifty, huh?” He hadn’t even bothered to ask Morgan what she was doing here in Prava, but the sad alternatives—teaching American English to local businessmen or waitressing the breakfast shift at Eudora’s—were all too obvious. Oh, there was so much he needed to show her. So much she needed to know about the society in which she had landed. Yes, he would go the extra kilometer for this sweet Cleveland cutie. Those hale little cheeks. That nose.

  “Well,” he said after a little while had passed and a weak-willed burst of rain had made them a little wet. “I certainly need a drink after that turkey.”

  “How about Larry Litvak’s cocktail party?” she said.

  So she had been invited, damn it! Now the burning question of our times was: Why, earlier, had she been by herself in her panelak watching television with the cat? Perhaps she was getting ready—the shower, the bathrobe, the ointment on the forehead. Or, worse yet, she didn’t even care about Larry Litvak’s party. Devil confound it all! thought Vladimir to himself in Russian, a phrase that floated in angry and unannounced whenever his worldly disequilibrium mounted to truly Dostoyevskian proportions.

  “I also know of a little out-of-the-way club,” he ventured. “No one’s ever heard of it, and there’s plenty of actual Stolovans.” But she insisted on the cocktail party, and now there was nothing to do but go. As if to underscore the situation, Jan and the Beamer pulled up stealthily behind them and started flashing their headlights for attention. The evening was set.

  BUT ALL WAS not lost, not by a long shot. When they opened the door to Larry’s pad, the multitudes did let loose with a tumbler-shaking “VLAAAAD!” and, of course, cried out nothing to the barely known Morgan, although surely she was admired in a silent way.

  Larry Litvak lived, per his astronaut story, in the Old Town, actually on the outskirts of the Town, bordering Prava’s sprawling bus terminal, which, like all bus terminals, exuded nothing but rankness and ill-health, and was populated by a cast of characters fit for a television exposé.

  The lights were down, way down, reminding Vladimir of college parties where the less one could discern of one’s companions, the more distant beds would rumble by the early morning’s light. Still, Vladimir could see that this was a spacious flat, built in the booming interwar period when Stolovans were still expected to live in apartments larger than their dachshunds’ quarters. In fact, the ceilings were so high, the place could have been mistaken for a SoHo loft, but reality abounded in the scary, socialist furniture—the squat, utilitarian divans and easy chairs outfitted in the kind of furry, worsted material that the babushkas enjoyed wearing on cold days. As if to accentuate his furniture’s prickly quality, Larry had installed three bergamots in the center of the main room and had placed miniature floodlights beneath them so that their craggy branches spread unsettling shadows against the ceiling and walls.

  “It’s quite a place,” Vladimir shouted to Morgan over the din, with the implied knowledge of having been there many times before. Morgan looked to him in incomprehension. Things were happening too fast: there were hands being thrust at Vladimir from left and right, some already wet and reeking of gin, not to mention the frequent hugs and mouth-to-mouth kisses Vladimir received from impassioned well-wishers. Clearly, the young lady wasn’t used to a Girshkin-sized social persona. Did she have any choice now other than to love him?

  They were carried by the crush of people into a kitchen smoothly lit with candles where Larry was situated, his bong working overtime, and several of Prava’s more hippielike denizens swaying to Jerry Garcia, their expressions blank, their bodies loose and loafy like palm trees caught in the wind. “Hey, man,” said Larry, dressed in a transparent black kimono, which revealed in its entirety his sinewy but muscular frame—the show-off. He hugged Vladimir tightly until the latter could feel every part of him.

  “Hey, man,” he kept repeating, and Vladimir fondly recalled his high school days when he and Baobab and the rest of them were always stoned and would spend the day mumbling: “Hey, man . . . don’t eat that thing, man . . . that thing is for later, man . . .” Oh, the innocence of those days, that brief period in the Reagan/Bush era when the sixties had returned to American high schools in force. The stooped posture, the half-closed eyes, the hundred-word vocabulary. Oh.

  The hippies were introduced, their names sliding in and out of memory. The pièce de résistance, the bong almost a meter in length, was wheeled around for the guest of honor. Larry bent down to light it while Vladimir sucked on the rancid mouthpiece, then passed it to Morgan who tackled it like a good sport.

  SATISFIED, VLADIMIR TOOK her arm and they floated back into the main room, scarcely remembering to tell the “we’ll be right back” party lie to Larry Litvak and company. Here, there was another crush around Vladimir and his date, this one consisting entirely of tall, elegant men in chinos, wire-rims, and nose rings plying Vladimir with drinks, mentioning by name Cagliostro and (surprisingly) PravaInvest, then cheerfully prodding their women friends into the foreground for brief introductions. This whole set
up was reminiscent of a nineteenth-century ball in the Russian provinces, when the local society men had spotted the general arrived fresh from Petersburg and then closed in on him full of platitudes and talk of business, toting their beautiful wives behind them as a sign of their own rank and good breeding.

  The year 1993? Well, such anachronisms could have been a sign of the much-discussed Victorian revival. And while it was shocking for Vladimir to meet these non-Bohemians who wore their nose rings out of fashion and not rebellion, it struck an old, aristocratic chord in him (for in the early twentieth century the Girshkins had owned three hotels in the Ukraine) and he responded with a mounting sense of noblesse oblige: “Yes, pleased to meet you . . . Of course, I’ve heard of you . . . We ran into each other at the Martini Bar at the Nouveau . . . Such pleasant circumstances . . . This is Morgan, yes . . . And you are? . . . And this is? . . .”

  Of course, being under the liberating influence of a meter’s worth of dope quickly added hilarity to the proceedings, setting Vladimir’s mind at ease as he floated above the masses and their babbling and screeching and clucking. Soon his Russian accent emerged in force, lending Count Girshkin an aura of authenticity, which left the fair representatives of Houston and Boulder and Cincinnati twice enamored of the small poet and businessman around whom all of Prava’s expatriate world would now seem to revolve.

  He felt Morgan tugging at his sleeve, no longer amused at being marginalized. “Let’s find Alexandra,” she whispered and, whether she meant it or not, touched Vladimir’s ear with her balmy nose.

  “Let’s,” Vladimir said, and he put his arm around her and squeezed the broad Ohioan shoulders, so healthy and amenable to squeezing.

  They broke through the cordon of well-wishers and arrived at the bergamots which, swaying from the winds of a distant fan, scratched at Vladimir’s face until he stopped to look stupidly at his arboreal assailants as if to say: “Don’t you know who I am?”

  Behind the little trees they saw a long, satin couch flanked by similar recliners on which the Crowd had decamped along with several martini decanters and entire carafes of curaçao. They sat laughing and passing judgment without stop at those around them like some hastily assembled Style Council. Occasionally they entertained outsiders who approached with little bundles of paper bearing words or drawings, and sometimes with little computer disks. It seemed that the upcoming first issue of Cagliostro had swelled their heads nicely; a frontal assault by Mexican bees would have proved superfluous.

  Cohen spotted them amid the shrubbery: “There he is! Vladimir!”

  “Morgan!” Alexandra shouted with something like awe, determined to raise the standing of her newfound friend.

  The couple approached and a glittering sky-blue divan was rolled out for them as if by the Devil’s command. Alexandra kissed Morgan on both cheeks, while Vladimir shook hands with the boys and sweetly kissed Alexandra on one cheek, and was kissed, in turn, on both.

  The boys had outdone themselves, channeling the glam-nerd look into a formal direction: ash-brown sports jackets and shirts of mourning hues with morose little ties snaking down to their bellies. Alexandra wore a new taupe riding jacket, evidently from one of Prava’s more accomplished antique shops, beneath which was her customary black turtleneck and matching tights.

  But one was missing from the group. “And where is Maxine?” Vladimir said, biting his tongue as he remembered that the Expat Dating Committee had already slated the Girshkin-Maxine nuptials for early next spring, and here he was, playing the field with Morgan.

  Sure enough, as soon as he mentioned Maxine, a look passed over Morgan’s face, the look of a child lost in a crowded train station, and Larry’s party was, of course, infinitely stranger than any of the world’s train stations and just as crowded. “Maxine’s taken ill,” Alexandra said. “Nothing serious. She’ll be up on her feet tomorrow.”

  The “up on her feet” business was evidently meant to discourage Vladimir from attempting any change in the woman’s verticality. Clearly, Alexandra had told Morgan everything she needed to know about Vladimir’s steamy nonaffair with Maxine.

  The situation was unwittingly defused by the excited Cohen who hadn’t seen Vladimir in a couple of days and all but jumped on him. “My friend needs to step to the bar,” he shouted, roaring drunk. “You girls talk among yourselves.” Vladimir looked back at Morgan, worried about leaving her behind. Fortunately, the sight of two attractive women, Morgan and Alexandra, chatting with gusto had the effect of keeping potential suitors at bay. The predatory young men of Prava were easily confounded by the phenomenon of women making do without them.

  At the bar, a tiny affair jutting out of an oak bookshelf filled with the collected works of Papa Hemingway, the patron saint of the expatriate scene, the irrepressible Cohen attempted to fix Vladimir a gin and tonic by spilling vodka all over his new imported loafers. When informed by the laughing Vladimir that gin not vodka went into a gin and tonic, Cohen spilled that on him too.

  “So, you’ve been tying one on,” Vladimir said.

  “I’ve been tying one on for the past five years,” Cohen said. “I’m what in the liquor industry is called an alcoholic.”

  “Me too,” Vladimir said. He had never given the matter much thought, but the words certainly rang true.

  “Well, let’s drink to that!” cried Vladimir in an effort to shoo away the approaching discomfort, and they clinked their glasses.

  “Speaking of tying one on,” Cohen said, “Plank and I are ready for a major bout with the bottle tomorrow. To the finish!” He winked in the direction of the bar.

  “I see,” Vladimir said. He saw Cohen and Plank as two pugilists duking it out, slow-motion, with a sweating bottle of Stoli in some sort of performance-art piece.

  “You care to join us? None of this shit. Just the three of us. The men.” Then, without warning—and when did he ever give warning?—Cohen threw his arms around Vladimir and squeezed hard. By this time the lights had been dimmed to the degree where the two of them looked like yet another couple on the express checkout lane to bed. The frightened Vladimir peeked out from within his friend’s grasp and tried to maneuver an arm free to signal to the crowd and Morgan that this was not his idea of a good time, but he was hard-pressed to think of the appropriate signal. Anyway, Cohen soon let go and Vladimir saw to his welcome relief that a critical mass had been reached in the room and nobody gave much of a damn about anyone else, really. Even unabashed homosexual sex with the accompanying grunts broadcast over the stereo system would probably go unnoticed for several minutes.

  “Aww, we miss you, man,” Cohen said. “You’re so busy with work and . . .” He stopped, tired of sounding like a jilted lover.

  Across the room Vladimir saw Plank looking disgustedly into his drink as if he had been slipped a diuretic, while on the couch next to him Alexandra and Morgan gestured up a storm of conversation. What was it with these disconsolate young men? Was being the cornerstone of Prava’s elite not enough for them? Did they expect to lead meaningful lives as well? “All right,” Vladimir said. “We’ll go out by ourselves. We’ll have a good time. We’ll drink. We’ll get drunk. All right?”

  “All right!” shouted Cohen. Brightening, he reached for a bottle, even as Vladimir saw Morgan glancing his way, pointing discreetly at her watch. Did she want to leave already? With Vladimir in tow? Was she not having a good time? No one eloped from a Larry Litvak party before the clock struck three in the morning. It was simply good manners.

  “So how’s your writing?” Vladimir asked Cohen.

  “Pitiful,” said Cohen, his big lips quivering characteristically. “I’m too in love with Alexandra to even write about her anymore . . .”

  And there was the crux of the problem—love had come to town and Plank and Cohen had bought time shares in that ever-expanding development. Judging by Cohen’s trembling lips and wet eyes, he was already in Phase III, by the lapping pool and the Jack Nicklaus–designed golf course.

 
“So don’t write about her,” came a stern, gravelly voice, which Vladimir first imagined might belong to Cohen’s grandfather on his Jewish side, arrived in Prava for the approaching high holy days. He looked about for the source until Cohen pointed downward and said, “I’d like you to meet the poet Fish, also from New York.”

  The poet Fish was not a midget but he brushed by that category with little room to spare. He looked like an unwashed twelve-year-old, and his hair was thick and matted, an overturned bowl of ramen noodles; despite all this he had the voice of Milton Berle. “Charmed,” the poet said offering Vladimir his hand as if he expected it to be kissed. “Everyone’s talking about Vladimir Girshkin,” he said. “It was the first thing I heard at the baggage carousel.”

  “Stop it!” Vladimir said. To himself he thought: And what do they say?

  “Fish is staying with Plank for a couple of days,” Cohen said. “He’s been published by an Alaskan literary journal.” And then Cohen turned instantly pale as if he had just seen someone across the room, someone who tugged at his memory in a most inopportune way. Vladimir even followed the dim light of his eyes to see who it might be, but then Cohen simply said: “I’ve got to go and retch,” and the mystery was solved.

  “So,” Vladimir said, now that Cohen had left the dwarf on his hands (he hoped the little guy at least looked exotic to others). “A poet, huh?”

  “Listen here,” the poet said, rising on his tippy-toes to breathe into Vladimir’s chin. “I heard you got a little something going here, this PravaInvest shit.”

  “Little?” Vladimir fanned out like a peacock upon sighting his mate-to-be. “We’re capitalized with over thirty-five billion U.S. dollars . . .”