The Russian Debutante’s Handbook

by Gary Shteyngart

  WHEN LOOKING BACK at the summer, which Vladimir would do microscopically in the restless years to come, it could all be said to have come together in that one evening, although that evening was not terribly different from the evenings that would follow. It was simply the first. It set the tone. First the lovely, interested parents. Then the lovely, interested daughter. Then the lovely, interested friends. And then, once again, the lovely, interested daughter à la carte, off to bed still lovely and interested.

  Lovely? Not a catalog beauty: her nose slightly hooked, her paleness might have been passing for sickly in an era where everybody seemed to have at least some color, and also there was an inelegance about the gait, the unsteady way in which the foot met the ground, as if one was shorter than the next and she kept forgetting which. That said, she was tall, her hair was long and draped her shoulders like a cape, her eyes were small and as perfectly oval as Fabergé miniatures, their gray the sobering shade of a Petersburg morning above Master Fabergé’s workshop; and, from Vladimir’s vantage point that first evening, there was that minimalist velvet dress that showed off her small, round shoulders, almost luminous under the sharp Fifth Avenue streetlamps (not to mention the smooth straight white of her back, crossed by two velvet straps).

  FINALLY, the lovely and interested friends. They were found that evening amid a spread of black light and loud jazz, the uppermost floor of a TriBeCa loft building. Before it was cleaned the place must have looked like a cattle car traveling cross-country, since now it was all but empty—a couple of couches, a stereo, uncapped bottles of booze that had to be stepped around or picked up and used.

  They were a savvy-looking bunch, clothed in the new Glamorous Nerd look that was fast becoming a part of the downtown lexicon. One specimen in a tight, square, wide-collared, polka-dotted shirt was shouting above the rest: “Did you hear? Safi got a European Community grant to study leeks in Prava.”

  “Fucking Prava again,” said another, clad in brown geek pants and penny loafers loaded with actual pennies. “Nothing but a tabula rasa of retarded post-Soviet mutants, if you ask me. I wish the Berlin Wall had never come down.”

  Vladimir looked on sadly. Not only had he spent his entire life without winning a single European Community grant, but every pathetic piece of clothing he had been trying to shed since he emigrated was now a prêt-à-porter bonanza! Penny loafers! How insufferable. And how old these glam-dorks made him feel, him with nothing but a lousy goatee and the affixed title of Immigrant to temper his protosuburban wardrobe.

  He skulked off to another room to meet Francesca’s friend Frank the Slavophile. Frank was a man as short as Vladimir, and even thinner. But from this sticklike figure there billowed a head as tumescent as poori bread—a Rudolphine red nose, bulbous chin, cheeks so slack the skin above was creased from their weight. “I’m dragooning the whole gang into reading Turgenev’s Sportsman’s Sketches this summer,” Frank informed Vladimir while pounding a Dry Sack of sherry into Dixie cups with only partial success. “No man, no woman can claim to be kulturni without having read the Sportsman’s Sketches. Tell me I am wrong! Tell me there is another way!”

  “I have read the Sketches many times,” said Vladimir, hoping his childhood excursions to the Kirov Ballet and the Hermitage had made him kulturni enough for his new friend. In truth, the one time Vladimir had skimmed the Sportsman’s Sketches had been a decade ago, and the one thing he could remember was that they were mostly set outdoors.

  “Molodets!” said Frank, meaning “good fellow,” a term often used by older men to congratulate those younger. How old was this Frank anyway? His closely cropped hair was at stage two of male-pattern baldness, the stage where two hairless half-moons are scalloped out at the temples, as opposed to the little crescents that were indented into Vladimir’s hairline. So, twenty-eight, twenty-nine then. And likely a graduate student.

  Could it be that they were all graduate students and only Francesca was still in college proper? It could be. The age bracket fit. So did the way they got their jollies—a gaggle of them crowded around a television showing an Indian movie where the romantic principals went through the motions of love but never kissed. And as they touched lightly and coquetted to the sound of sitars and bangles—this dark Romeo and Juliet of the subcontinent—the crowd shouted “more!” and “lip action!” This was in one part of the loft . . .

  In another was Tyson, a Montana Adonis, six feet tall with a leftward-pointing isosceles of blond hair, speaking to a small woman dressed in a sheer sarong and embroidered flip-flops. Speaking in Malay, of course.

  The celebrated Tyson quickly took Vladimir aside. “It’s a pleasure to finally meet you,” he said, lowering his head to Vladimir’s level—a most natural motion, like the swing of a boom. He must have had many short friends, such as that ethereal young woman from Kuala Lumpur. “And a pleasure for Frank . . . We’ve always been trying to find a nice Russian speaker for Frank.”

  “It’s good to be here,” Vladimir said out of gracious instinct.

  “Here? America?”

  “No, no. The party.”

  “Oh, the party. That. May I speak frankly, Vladimir?”

  Vladimir reached up on his toes. Tyson’s mouth, a large, jutting affair, was ready to expel something frank. What could it be? “Frank’s in a terrible state,” Tyson said. “He’s nearing nervous collapse.” They turned to the Slavicist who was actually looking pretty good there, surrounded by many attractive bespectacled women with lots of laughter and sherry between them.

  “Poor man!” said Vladimir, and he meant it. For some reason, this Turgenev business did not seem a good portent.

  “He had a disastrous relationship with a Russian woman, a young lawyer from a very predatory family. It went from bad to worse. First, she ended things. Then he was hounding her in a Brighton Beach restaurant where the waiters took him out back and attacked him with skillets.”

  “Yes, it happens,” Vladimir said, and sighed on behalf of his temperamental ilk.

  “You know how much all things Russian mean to him?”

  “I’m starting to draw a picture for myself. But I should tell you right away that I have no Russian women relatives worth noting.” Well, there was Aunt Sonya, that Siberian tigress.

  “Then perhaps you can take him out for a walk every once in a while,” Tyson said, squeezing both of Vladimir’s shoulders, in a way that reminded Vladimir of the friendly, well-bred denizens of his progressive Midwestern college; the long, stoned rides in his Chicagoan ex-girlfriend’s People’s Volvo; the nights spent drinking himself unconscious with humane scholars who cared. “You could talk in the mother tongue,” Tyson continued. “Of course, it would be better if it were winter, then you could both don those nice furry hats . . . What do you say?”

  “Ah!” Vladimir looked away, that’s how flattered he was. Half an hour into the party and already they were asking him to help a friend in need. Already he was a friend. “This is possible,” Vladimir said. “I mean, I’d love to.”

  Following those words, those right-felt, inspiring words, Vladimir was crowned with a halo. Why else would the whole party suddenly abandon the far reaches of the loft and crowd around him, asking him questions and at times gently holding on to his arm? The inquisitive wanted to know: What was his prognosis for Russia following the Soviet Union’s collapse? (“Not good.”) Was he bitter about the new unipolar world? (“Yes, very.”) Who was his favorite Communist? (“Bukharin, by a kilometer.”) Was there any way to stop creeping capitalism and globalization? (“Not in my experience.”) What about Romania and Ceauşescu? (“Mistakes were made.”) Was he going out with Francesca, and if so, how far had he gotten?

  At that point Vladimir wished he had been drunk already so that he could be charming and giddy with these pretty men and women in their Islamabad University T-shirts. Instead he managed a few shy gurgles. Oh, how he wished he had been in possession of a fur hat, a real Astrakhan shapka. For the first time in his life he was aware of the f
ollowing useful axiom: It is far better to be patronized than to be ignored. Before he could act further on that impulse, Francesca summoned him from the kitchen.

  Here, the din was glaring; a different caste of people swarmed around a tableful of shrimp cocktail, while Francesca stood beneath rows of corrugated-steel cabinets pleasantly overdressed in her royal velvet, laughing at a drunk Indian man—equally dapper in a tuxedo—pounding at her head with a pair of inflatable antlers.

  “Hi,” Vladimir said sheepishly to the antlered Indian.

  “That’s enough now, Rakhiv,” Francesca said, reaching out to grasp an antler. A dark tuft of hair looked out at Vladimir from her armpit.

  The Indian gentleman turned his long face to scowl at Vladimir, then slunk off past the shrimp eaters. So, Vladimir had competition. How exciting. He was feeling like a very competitive entry tonight, although the Indian had a classical face with that popular sad look.

  “A drink!” Francesca said. “I’ll make you a Rob Roy. My mother practically birthed me with bitters.” She opened the nearest cabinet and took out a cocktail glass etched with the image of a thoughtful-looking egret swooping down over a small crayfish-like creature bubbling out of the wetlands. She turned to another cabinet for limes and a dusty bottle of Glenlivet. “You have to meet the Libber sisters,” Francesca was saying.

  “Maybe we can go for a walk after this drink,” Vladimir suggested.

  Her cold fingers smelling of scotch, Francesca patted his cheek, as if to disabuse him of such silly thoughts. “Have you heard of Shmuel Libber, their father?” she said. “He discovered the world’s oldest dreidel.”

  On cue, the Libber sisters emerged from behind a ficus plant—two pale, identical beauties with a slightly Asiatic cast—bearing news of an ancient Jewish spinning top.

  “I have heard of your father’s work . . .” Vladimir began, just as Tyson stormed in, ahemed brusquely, and made a show of looking down at his feet.

  “Vladimir, some of your friends are here. Could you . . . please . . . greet them?”

  Vladimir found Baobab in the main room, dressed in his signature colonial khakis, his pith helmet lanced with an ostrich feather, holding on firmly to the little Malaysian student who was bowing politely while pointing with her free hand at an imaginary avenue of escape. “I wear my syphilis like a badge of honor,” Baobab was roaring to her over the television’s strum of sitars. “I picked it up in Paris, straight from the source. The writings of Nietzsche, if you care to know, are, in essence, syphilitic.”

  Roberta, resplendent in some kind of Day-Glo leopard nightie and bowler hat, had draped herself over Frank and was squeezing his big cheeks, shouting, “Wubbly, you’ve got a lot of life in you!”

  The silenced crowd was tiptoeing away, the contents of the melting pot sluicing back into the kitchen. But their traffic was slow, their gaze affixed to the cause of their eviction—the fat little man in the pith helmet, the near-naked teenager, and . . . in the corner.

  Challah was sitting in the corner, in the same tired bondage gear that Vladimir had found her in eight months ago, looking down at her drink for companionship as the young intellectuals galloped past her, their inflatable antlers shaking in consternation. She caught sight of Vladimir and waved desperately for him to come over.

  By this time Vladimir had taken hold of Baobab who was, in turn, losing his grip on the Malaysian woman. “What is this?” Vladimir whispered. “Why did you bring Challah? Why are you behaving like this?”

  “Behaving like what? I’m doing you a favor. Where’s the new woman?”

  In the kitchen, the deep-timbred sounds of twentysomething commotion were building, with Francesca’s voice an indisputable part of the outcry. Meanwhile, in one corner of the living room, Frank was succumbing to the little huntress in braces and negligee; in another corner, Challah was depositing one warm finger into her drink, watching the rusty sherry undulate.

  And Vladimir? Vladimir had maybe twenty seconds to live.

  9. GENDER AND

  IMPERIALISM

  “PLEASE UNTIE ME now,” Vladimir said.

  The handkerchief was unfastened. Vladimir removed the blindfold himself. Rich Fifth Avenue light, healthy and dappled, overwhelmed the pale curtains.

  “Sorry about the coitus last night,” Francesca said. “I was too rough. I was acting out.”

  “No, it was my fault,” Vladimir said, covering his lower quarters with sheets, rubbing his swollen wrists. “Inviting my friends was an act of aggression.” With a shaky finger, he traced the teeth marks inscribed on his upper thigh. “By physically acting out against me you became both aggrieved and perpetrator. You empowered yourself.” These strange yet familiar words, unheard of since his tenure at the progressive Midwestern college, slipped out of his mouth. He knew he was hunting for that notorious animal, subtext. That Big-foot of the literate world. So what was the subtext here?

  He wasn’t thinking, in particular, of the painful role-playing, the thoughtful humiliations she had visited upon him (for a time he was completely naked and she dressed in her father’s classroom turtleneck and tweeds), but of the entire physical package. Two people just two hundred pounds short of nonexistence burrowing into each other, a dangerous and tenuous situation; the scrape of bone and pubis; the distinct lack of odor that more viable animals regularly produce. Oh, the degenerate joy of the lightweighted.

  Fran lowered a T-shirt over her arms, and the two tiny breasts, only slightly larger than Vladimir’s soft duo, disappeared into cotton. “Your friends came to that party,” she said, “like young imperialists, like little conquerors. They totally failed to see the integrity of our indigenous academic culture and had to frame it in their own atrophied discourse. It might as well have been Leopold’s troops traveling up the Congo.”

  Vladimir felt a pressing need to pull on his underpants; to achieve some kind of parity. (He was starting to feel as if an invisible tennis announcer was constantly shouting off-court: “Advantage: Francesca.”) But he had no idea where his underpants had ended up during the drunken melee that preceded their first coupling. And something told him that his nakedness and meek silence were right. That in the face of smarter women it was best to beat a continuous retreat, to slash and burn one’s own personal convictions before their sure-footed advance.

  Yes, he was convinced now that he had misjudged her, that the easy banter of the nights before was just a beachhead for this confident American woman, and what she really wanted from him, whatever this turned out to be, he couldn’t possibly give her.

  Because sooner rather than later she would comprehend the limitations of a man who at the ripe age of twenty-five had just been taught how to walk by his mother. What do you do with a man like that? thought Vladimir. You needed the patience of a Challah, or, perhaps, the pathos, and it was rather doubtful that this sleek young woman would have either.

  “That fat misogynist fool . . .” Fran was saying. “Using syphilis as a come-on line. Poor Chandra. And that . . . The large woman with the Weehawken outfit. What the hell was she about?”

  Vladimir shook his head then buried it in one of Fran’s elephantine pillows with their etched scenes of Venetian life. “My friends and I, we’re a pretty open-minded bunch,” Fran was saying, “but we have our limits. Those people were just inexcusable.”

  “They grew up watching television,” Vladimir mumbled into the comforting pillow. “They looked for prizes in cereal boxes. They’re a product of the culture, and American culture in the twentieth century is, by definition, imperialist.” But he was apportioning too much blame to his friends, when self-flagellation was the order of the day. He made a note of this.

  “And to tell you the truth, it’s not really them I’m upset about,” Fran said. “They were only there for one night. I’ll never see them again. But what does it say about you? About the kind of life you’ve been living? You’re a very smart and unusual man. Well-read, educated, from a different country. How the hell did you end up
with that crowd?”

  Vladimir sighed. “How do I put it?” he said. He thought of literature. He thought of subtext. In the end his education did not fail him. “You know the Hemingway story ‘The Killers’?” he said. “When the killers are coming to get the boxer, what does the boxer say?”

  “ ‘I got in wrong.’ ”

  “There you go.”

  “Now, by quoting Hemingway we’re not actually sanctioning the misogyny and racial condescension that defines his body of work.”

  “Of course not,” he said. “Never.”

  She ruffled the back of his head with its soft bumps and bony ridges. The warm touch was welcome after the night they had had. It bordered on affection, and as much as he did enjoy the roughhousing, he wanted the sweet stuff as well. “So what are you going to do about it?” she said.

  “The misogyny?”

  “No, the ‘getting in wrong’ business. Are you just going to settle for this lifestyle?”

  “ ‘Life’ and ‘style’ really fail to describe it,” Vladimir said.

  “I’d say.”

  She laid down on top of him and put her nose into his neck. Despite its sharp outline, her honker felt sloppy and warm. She whispered into his ear: “Do you know why I like you, Vladimir? Have you figured it out yet? I don’t like you because you’re sweet or kind-hearted, or because you’re somehow going to change my world, since I’ve already decided that no man is ever going to change my world. I like you because you’re a small, embarrassed Jew. I like you because you’re a foreigner with an accent. I like you, in other words, because you’re my ‘signifier.’ ”

  “Ah, thank you,” Vladimir said. Bozhe moi! he thought to himself. She knows me down to the very last. Small, embarrassed, Jewish, foreigner, accent. What more was there to him? This was what it meant to be Vladimir. He pressed himself to her, thinking he was going to die of happiness. Happiness and the dull pain of being somehow insufficient. Of being half-formed.