The Russian Debutante’s Handbook

by Gary Shteyngart

  “Maybe you could write for the Prava-dence,” suggested Cohen.

  “Oh, but it’s such crap,” František said. (Thankfully Cohen was too pickled to take umbrage.)

  “What I really want to do is open a nightclub,” he said.

  “That’s a wonderful idea,” cried Plank. “Sometimes the night life here really rubs me the wrong way.” He stopped. “Excuse me,” he said. “I don’t feel good.”

  They let him pass by without much concern. “Yes,” František said. “Your weak-stomached friend is right. Right now there’s only ABBA here. ABBA and some very poor attempts at modernity. When I was . . .” Again he looked wistfully in some unspecified direction, perhaps this time of the airport. “When I was traveling around, you know, I always got taken to the latest discos with the most attractive men and women, such as yourselves, of course. Now my mouth waters for a good, what is it now? . . .”

  “Rave,” Cohen said helpfully.

  “A good rave. Ah, I even know a terrific Finnish disk jockey. MC Paavo. Have you heard of him? No? He’s successful in Helsinki, but not very happy there. Too clean, he says, although I don’t know, I’ve never been.”

  “He should come here!” Cohen said, smashing his shot glass against the bar. Vladimir quickly dropped a hundred-crown note for the damage.

  “I think he’d like to, but he needs a sure thing, a contract. He’s got the needy former wives and then also the little MCs running around in the Laplands. The Finns are very familial, which is why perhaps they enjoy the world’s highest rate of suicide.” He chuckled and signaled for another round, pointing to Plank’s empty stool and shaking his finger as if to say, “minus one.”

  “Well, did you know that Vladimir is the vice president of PravaInvest?”

  “Um,” Vladimir said.

  “There’s actually something called PravaInvest?” The Stolovan contained his mischievous smile, but clearly with effort and a lot of blinking. “Do post me a prospectus immediately, gentlemen.”

  “Oh yes!” Cohen said, oblivious to the apparatchik’s sarcastic tone. “PravaInvest is gargantuan. I understand it’s capitalized with over 35 billion dollars.”

  František looked at Vladimir long and straight as if to say, “One of those, eh?”

  “Um,” Vladimir said again. “It’s no big deal, really.”

  “Well, don’t you see?” Cohen was exasperated. “He’ll fund your nightclub! Just bring over the Finn and we’re set.”

  Vladimir sighed at the rashness of his young associate. “Of course, nothing’s that easy,” he said. “In the real world there are impediments. The skyrocketing price of real estate in central Prava, for example.”

  “That I wouldn’t count as a problem,” František said. “See, if you opened it up in the town center you would get basically the rich German tourists. But if you operate on the city outskirts and at the same time you’re convenient to public transportation or a short taxi ride from the center, then you get a more exclusive, sophisticated clientele. I mean, how many truly trendy clubs are there on the Champs-Élysées? Or on Fifth Avenue in Midtown? It’s just not done.”

  “He’s right! He’s right!” said the irrepressible Cohen. “Why don’t you just invest in this thing, hmm? Come on, do us all a favor. You know there’s no fun left at the Nouveau or the Joy on a Saturday with all those fucking papa’s girls and mama’s boys and that shit they play . . . That shit! How can they play that shit and still charge you fifteen crowns for admission?”

  “That’s fifty cents,” Vladimir reminded him.

  “Well, be that as it may,” Cohen said, now talking almost exclusively to František, the way a child turns to one parent after being refused by the other, “but that’s still no reason not to start this thing, especially with MC Pavel on board.”

  Vladimir lifted his beer up to his twitching face. “Yes, but you see, Mr. František, PravaInvest is a very concerned, socially aware multinational. Its philosophy is to concentrate on essential needs based on a country’s conditions on the ground, in a Cartesian sense, of course, at what we call ‘point of entry.’ And, believe me, this country needs a good locally produced fax modem more than it needs another dance club or casino.”

  “I don’t know about that,” František said. “Maybe not casinos, which are, on the whole, quite desperate places, but a nice, new dance club could be, how is it they say in America . . . A ‘morale booster’?”

  Perhaps it was František’s accent returning after so much alcohol, the way Vladimir’s was prone to do, but when their new Stolovan friend said “casino,” Vladimir could picture it only with a K, which led him naturally to the Kasino in his panelak, and, by extension, to the friendly Russian women who entertained there, and by the furthest of extensions, to the tremendous waste of potential space therein. A nightclub.

  He accepted yet another shot from the barmaid who, in the poor light and the long-settled darkness, wore an expression that couldn’t be gauged; it could only be surmised that she spoke with expressiveness about something. “This round is free,” František translated, smiling with pride at the generosity of his countrywoman.

  “Morale booster,” Vladimir said after the vodka had gone down and burned his insides with the compressed fury of the thousand Polish potato fields that had been depotatoed to produce this vintage. “So how good is this MC Paavo when compared to what they have in London and New York?”

  “He’s better than Tokyo,” František said with the surety of a connoisseur and tipped his bar stool toward Vladimir so that their eyes, red and moist from the festivities, were as close as etiquette allowed. “I like the way you talk, Mr. Conditions-on-the-Ground,” he said. “And I know about your little business with Harry Green. Perhaps we should meet and discuss further possibilities.”

  Meanwhile, the stereo was running out of Michael Jackson. Outside, in the frigid air and by the light of the moon, the soldiers were singing some sort of a local song with an oom-pah-pah beat that clearly could have benefited from the deployment of an actual band. Plank could be heard producing unsettling sounds in the bathroom. “Ah,” František said, moving away from Vladimir slightly, as he knew that Westerners did not like to share breath. “Speaking of peasant choruses, there’s one. It’s about a little mare who is very upset at her master because he sent her to the smith to get cobbled. And now she refuses to give him a kiss.”

  Cohen nodded to Vladimir, his eyes narrow with understanding, as if there was a lesson in there for everyone. They heard Plank struggling with the lock of the bathroom and cursing himself, but they sat drunk and motionless, until the barmaid came to his rescue.

  30. A LITTLE

  NIGHT MUSIC

  HOW IT HAPPENED that they missesd Jan and the car was for Vladimir a bitter lesson in the downside of alcoholism. Apparently he and Cohen had stumbled into the beer garden and there took the wrong pathway out; that is, instead of walking into Jan and the car they walked into a silent, charcoal-stained street whose silence was broken by the jangle of a tram bell and the screech of rails. “Ah!” they cried, mistaking the passing tram for some kind of heavenly sign, and they staggered after it, waving their arms as if they were bidding adieu to an ocean liner. Soon enough, the yellow-lighted warmth drew closer, and they climbed aboard on all fours, shouting “Dobry den’!” to the dusty factory workers snoozing in the back.

  It was only after they had gone several neighborhoods down toward somewhere or other that Vladimir remembered Jan and the BMW. “Oh,” he said, butting Cohen in the side, in response to which Cohen took out a sparkling bottle of vodka. This was a gift František had given them along with his phone and fax numbers before he departed the beer garden, dragging the incapacitated Plank along to a nearby pad for a refresher course in sobriety. Vladimir had been unsure about the last part. He held a tainted view of visiting older men and their sleeping quarters, especially when the whole scene had been stirred with alcohol. But what to do?

  “Ve drink,” Cohen said, failing at
a Russian accent.

  “We’re drunk,” Vladimir said, uncapping the bottle nonetheless. “Where are we?” he said, pressing his nose to the cool window pane, watching the drooping lindens, the small apartment houses peeking out from behind manicured hedges. “What the hell are we doing here?”

  They turned to look at one another. It was a serious question at three in the morning and they tussled for the bottle in exasperation, a struggle which, for the sake of clarification, was not conducted with the energy of, say, two farm boys just coming into their pubescent strength.

  The tram had crossed the river and had started mountain-climbing. They had barely reached the middle plateau of Repin Hill, where the Austrians were building a family entertainment complex around a cartoon character named Günter Goose, when the tram suddenly shuddered to a halt.

  Outside the tram window, two heads bobbed in the night, their scalps as white as the moon, the few randomly sprouting hairs passable for the outlines of craters and other such lunar geography. Two skinheads, their relative height and size forming approximately the ratio between Abbott and Costello, got on board, their many chains jangling against their belt buckles, which were replicas of Confederate flags. They were laughing and pretending to punch each other, managing in the interim of their playfulness to swig from bottles of Becherovka liquor, so that Vladimir first assumed they were Stolovan gays who had mistaken the Confederate flag for just another symbol of Americana. After all, the bald look had long become de rigueur on Christopher Street.

  But when they saw Vladimir and then turned to Cohen, the laughter stopped. Two pairs of fists appeared, and in the overabundant light of the tram their naked scalps, acne, battle scars, and twitching sneers formed a distinct roadmap of adolescent hatred.

  There was a crash against the window to Vladimir’s right and immediately there was alcohol in his eyes, shards of glass stinging against his skin like so many little shaving accidents, and the unmistakable smell of the pumpkin liquor; the short, fat one must have thrown his bottle. Vladimir couldn’t open his eyes. When he tried, there was only the muddled indistinction of eyedrops just applied and, anyway, he really didn’t want to see. In the darkness, an amorphous series of thoughts were coalescing around the concepts of pain, injustice, and revenge but what it all came down to was the therapeutic qualities of his grandmother’s coarse, old Russian pillow—hard, but yielding—on which he had first practiced his amorous ways. That was the thought of the moment. With the instinctual, life-affirming panic submerged in vodka and Unesko beer, only the sadness concerning the impending loss of life and limb—this sadness that should have emerged only as an afterthought—rose to the surface. It had to have been so, because Vladimir said only one word in response to the bottle attack. “Morgan,” he said, and he said it too quietly for anyone to hear. He could see her, for some reason, carrying her fugitive cat across the courtyard, cradling the rebellious animal like a mother all too ready to forgive.

  “Auslander raus!” screamed the short one. “Raus! Raus!”

  Cohen had Vladimir by the hand, his own palm cold and wet. Vladimir was dragged up to his feet and then he hit what must have been the sharp edge of a tram seat, but he tried hard not to lose his balance, for, at that moment, the reality that he was his parents’ only child, and that his mother and father could not possibly go on with him dead dawned on Vladimir. And so, finally, he panicked—an eye-opening panic that showed him quite clearly the tram steps, the still-open door, and the black asphalt beyond.

  “Foreigner out!” shouted the other skinhead in English; between them they had clearly mastered the right words in the right European languages. “Back to Turk-land!”

  The wind gusting off the river slammed into their backs like a concerned friend leading the way. Behind them they could hear the laughter of their assailants as well as that of the newly awakened factory workers, and the fading, patient voice of the tram recording: “Please desist entering and exiting, the doors are about to close.”

  They ran broken-field past the parked Fiats and randomly lit street lamps, toward the familiar darkened hulk of the castle in the far distance. They ran without looking at one another. Several blocks later, Vladimir’s sense of panic gave out, and the sadness returned and physically manifested itself in the shape of a giant ball of mucus rising up through his stomach and lungs, past his racing heart. His feet folded beneath him, rather gracefully, and he wound up first on his knees, then on his palms, and then twisted over on his back.

  VLADIMIR RECOVERED TO the sound of a great automotive roar. Two police cars beaming electric-blue and red against the valley of pink Baroque where Cohen and Vladimir had come to rest had pulled up to within inches of Vladimir’s snout, and the boys were immediately surrounded by sweaty giants. They could see the outlines of night sticks bouncing against trousers, smell the beer and pork-loin breath overpowering the street’s coal-and-diesel reek, and hear the laughter, the great rumbling free-for-all of the Slav policeman at three in the morning.

  Yes, they were a merry lot, prancing atop of our fallen heroes while the strobe lights of their cars reinforced the carnivalesque atmosphere—it seemed as if a rave, the very one František had been hoping to conjure up a few hours earlier, was really underfoot.

  Vladimir lay crumpled in a nest he had instinctively made out of his parka and heavy sweater. “Budu Jasem Americanko,” he halfheartedly pleaded in the only Stolovan he knew. “I am an American.”

  This only contributed to the general merriment. An additional squadron of police Trabants pulled out from the converging side streets and a dozen more officers joined the ranks. In no time at all, the latecomers were chanting the expatriate mantra: “Budu Jasem Americanko! Budu Jasem Americanko!”

  A few had taken off their caps and had started humming the opening bars of “The Star-Spangled Banner,” picked up from years of watching the Olympics.

  “American businessman,” Vladimir clarified, but even that did not raise his estimation in the eyes of the law. The policemen’s ball continued with reinforcements arriving by the minute until it appeared that every member of the municipal forces assigned to night duty was involved. Some even brought cameras and Vladimir and Cohen soon found themselves under a barrage of photo flashes; a bottle of Stoli was thrust into Cohen’s limp hands and he modeled it half-consciously while muttering all the Stolovan he had ever learned: “I’m an American . . . I write poetry . . . I like it here . . . Two beers, please, and we’ll split the trout . . .”

  And then very quickly there was the screech of walkie-talkies, superiors shouting orders, and car doors being slammed. Something was happening somewhere else and the boulevard began to clear. The last to go, a young recruit in an oversized red-and-gold cap initialed with the fearsome Stolovan lion, came by to ruffle Cohen’s hair and yanked the bottle out of his arms. “Sorry, American friend,” he said. “Stoli cost money.” He also did something nice: he picked up the boys, one in each arm, and moved them off the tram rails (ah, so that had been the sharp pain in Vladimir’s back) and onto the sidewalk. “Bye, businessman,” he said to Vladimir, his sincere little mustache twitching as he spoke, then got into his Trabant and took off, siren blaring into the terminally disturbed night.

  IF THE NIGHT had ended right there, that would have been one thing. But no sooner had the Politzia left and Vladimir and Cohen started breathing again than an additional convoy of automobiles appeared to take their space, this time a trail of BMWs flanked on both ends by American Jeeps.

  Gusev.

  He scrambled out from the flagship car, overbundled for the weather in his shiny full-length nutria coat, looking like a deposed king fleeing an onrush of peasants with guns, or like a bald disco promoter past his prime. “Disgrace!” he shouted.

  Behind him were several men, all former Interior Ministry troops, dressed the part in fatigues and night goggles. It must have been that kind of night for them.

  “Psh, psh,” the soldiers were saying in the background, their heads
raised to the sky, as if they were too embarrassed to look down at Vladimir and Cohen, the latter with his head folded fetally into his stomach, looking like a half-rolled sleeping bag.

  “We heard it!” Gusev shouted. “The talk on the radio scanner! Two Americans crawling across Ujezd Street, one of them dark-haired and hook-nosed . . . We knew immediately who it was!”

  “Look at them . . . How drunk!” one of the soldiers said, shaking his head as if it was something fantastic to behold.

  Vladimir, a young gentleman in many ways, and one raised to appreciate proper bearing and the importance of seeming sober, genuinely considered becoming embarrassed. His associate Cohen, in particular, cut a pretty poor figure at this point, all balled up and moaning something about “hating it, absolutely hating it.” But then for Gusev and his men to castigate Vladimir after they probably just got back from neutering some Bulgarians or the like struck Vladimir as something of an injustice. “Gusev!” he said, struggling to achieve in his voice both control and condescension. “Enough of this. Get me a taxi immediately!”

  “You’re in no position to dictate orders,” Gusev said. He flicked his wrist dismissively; it would seem his advance staff had never informed him that this particular expression of absolute power had become passé about a century ago. “Get inside my car immediately, Girshkin,” he said, shaking the collars of his coat so that the indistinguishable remains of dead nutrias shimmered in the street light. It was clear that in a different world, under a different regime but with the same armed men at his disposal, Mikhail Gusev would have been a very important man.

  “My American associate and I refuse!” Vladimir said in Russian. He felt a swirl in his stomach, the undulation of his daily intake of gulash, potato dumplings, and booze, and hoped to God that he wouldn’t throw up right then and there, for that would certainly mean losing the argument. “You have embarrassed me enough. My American associate and I were on our way to a late-night meeting. Who knows what he thinks of us Russians now.”