11. VLADIMIR GIRSHKIN’S
DEBUTANTE BALL
IN THE MEANTIME, Frannie was right. Slavophile Frank did love him like crazy. And he wasn’t alone.
Beyond the walls of his new family’s bastion, its terraced loggia surveying the Gotham plain, Vladimir had attracted a loyal cadre of downtown libertines, louche, mostly white folk with improbable names like Hisham and Banjana, and the occasional expatriate from the working class, some poor Tammi Jones. These round-the-clock hipsters, basting in their own suavity and the heady funk of extreme youth, had such a terrific demand for him that Vladimir soon found that his workday was now only an extension of his sleeping hours; real life began as soon as the last refugee was promptly thrown out of the Emma Lazarus Immigrant Absorption Society at 4:59.
HE REGULARLY SAW Slavophile Frank. They would take walks from Frank’s apartment, the house that St. Cyril built, along windswept (even in late summer) Riverside Drive, conversing only in the great and mighty mother tongue. Sometimes they made it as far down as the Algonquin, where Fran awaited them. The Algonquin was a part of the Old New York that Fran so adored, a nostalgia that Vladimir gamely understood, given his own for the sepia-toned Russia of his parents—a sooty and uncomfortable universe, but one with charms of its own. They sat where Dorothy Parker’s round table used to be, and Vladimir would buy Frank a seven-dollar martini. “Seven dollars,” Frank would cry. “Merciful heavens! People do care about me.”
“Seven dollars!” Fran said. “You spoil Frank more than you spoil me. It’s . . . homoerotic.”
“Perhaps,” Frank said, “but don’t forget that Vladimir has an expansive Russian soul. Money is not his concern. Camaraderie and salvation, that’s his game.”
“He’s a Jew,” Fran reminded them.
“But a Russian Jew,” Frank said triumphantly, slurping at his free drink.
“All things to all people,” Vladimir whispered. Yet upon sight of the bill his expansive Russian soul shuddered within his body’s hairy cage. Truth was that in the thirty-one days of August, Vladimir had expended nearly U.S.$3,000.00, a money trail that blazed across Manhattan as follows:
BAR TABS: $875.00
TRADE PAPERBACKS & ACADEMIC JOURNALS: $450.00
WARDROBE OVERHAUL: $650.00
RETRO LUNCHES, ETHNIC BRUNCHES, SQUID & SAKE SUPPERS: $400.00
TAXI TARIFFS: $350.00
MISCELLANEOUS (Eyebrow waxing fees, aged balsamic vinegar for the Ruoccos, bottles of Calvados brought to parties): $275.00
By August’s end, he was broke. A shameful credit card (the first card ever to bear the Girshkin family name) was winging its way north from the usury capital of Wilmington, Delaware. A depressing thought had flitted through Vladimir’s mind. Perhaps he could ask Frannie’s father for a little handout . . .Say U.S.$10,000. But then wasn’t he already imposing on the Ruoccos for room and board? Not to mention the family’s lavish hugs and open-mouthed kisses? To ask for pocket money besides . . . ? What hubris.
Yet it was still a mystery to Vladimir how his new friends—theoretically all were starving students—never worried about picking up a round of drinks at the Monkey Bar or buying a Mobutu-style leopard hat on a whim. The Ruoccos, of course, had inherited a half dozen turn-of-the-century cast-iron fortresses around the city, while Frank’s family owned several states tucked away in America’s vast interior. And yet they all looked at Vladimir as the rich working man—the grant-toting, philanthropic professional.
But why shouldn’t Vladimir spend money for the first time in his life?
Just look at him! There he is at some Williamsburg art opening, sneering, scoffing, sniping, pretending to suffer, subtly insulting the gallery owner (a failed conceptualist), while across the room a radiant Francesca is waving for him to come over, and the drunk Adonis Tyson is urgently bleating his name from beneath a wine cart, trying to confirm Bulgakov’s exact patronymic.
It’s been thirteen years since the Leningrad sickbed, since that lifetime of reading Tolstoy’s descriptions of Winter Palace balls while spitting snot into a handkerchief. Finally, it would seem, Vladimir has found his way out into the world. Finally, our debutant is playing Count Vronsky for the downtown nobility in their checkered bowling pants and burnished nylon finery. The reports from the New World were true: In America the streets are paved with gold lamé.
BUT HE COULDN’T abandon Challah completely. Namely, he couldn’t abandon his share of the rent, else Challah would be homeless. It wasn’t as if she could crash with friends, after all. She had none. Meanwhile, two months had passed since he had stayed at his legal address on Avenue B. Alphabet City was becoming something of a memory now that its romantic poverty no longer warmed the heart.
The next day Vladimir found himself on Avenue B, sitting at the kitchen table filling out an application for a second credit card. Somewhere outside a piece of chicken was being barbecued, and when he closed his eyes and cleared his ears of the urban cacophony Vladimir could almost imagine that he was nine commuter railstops into Westchester, grilling weenies with the Girshkins.
And then Challah came in.
She might as well have bubbled up from Atlantis, this strange outsized woman with the dark makeup and the exposed midriff showing yet another self-mutilation: a navel piercing, from which a heavy silver crucifix dangled on its way to her crotch. Leave it to Challah not to realize that, while small nasal piercings were sanctioned, a crotch-to-navel crucifix absolutely screamed “Connecticut.”
Vladimir was so shocked to see her, he rose automatically from his credit card application, noticing now the full effect of his surroundings: the harness, the leash, the K-Y, the den-o’-vice motif which would have given Dorian Gray a prompt heart attack. So this had been his home! Perhaps Mother had been right about some things.
Challah, on the other hand, did not appear shocked. “Where’s the money?” she said. She stepped over a mysterious jumble of faux fur that blocked the way to the kitchen and then turned on the faucet to wash her hands.
“What money?” Vladimir said. Money, money, he was thinking.
“The rent money,” came the answer from the kitchen.
That money. “I have two hundred,” he said.
Immediately she was back from the kitchen, her arms akimbo. “Where’s the other two hundred?” He had never seen this posture (which was such a crucial part of her job) projected at his person before. Who did she think he was? A client?
“Give me a few days,” he said. “I’m having a cash-flow problem.”
She took a step toward him, and he took a step back to the fire escape, the place he distinctly remembered as their prime cuddling ground, now more plausible as an actual escape route. Fire escape. Yes, it made sense.
“No few days,” she said. “If I don’t pay by the fifth of the month, Ionescu’s going to charge an extra thirty dollars.”
“That bastard,” Vladimir said, hoping for solidarity.
“Bastard?” she said. And then paused as if weighing the heft of that word. Vladimir put his hands out in front of him. He was getting ready to deflect the full force of a comparison between himself and the bastard. Challah spoke instead. “I should be looking for a new roommate, shouldn’t I?” she said.
So he had been downgraded to roommate status. When did all this happen? “Sweetheart,” he said, rather unexpectedly.
“You bastard,” she said finally, but the emotion had clearly been exhausted from that sentiment over the past weeks. Now it was but a statement of fact. “Don’t speak to me until you have the rest of the money.” She stepped aside to indicate that Vladimir could leave.
As he went past her, he felt a change in temperature; her body was always in deep negotiation with the atmosphere around it, and it made him want to reach out with a comforting arm, the arm he had cultivated for the past month with Francesca. Instead he said: “I’ll have the money by tomorrow. I promise you that.”
Outside, it was Sunday, the first of September. He was homeless
in a certain way, but the heat clothed him in several layers, and, of course, Francesca and his new family were only six avenues to the west. Ah, humiliation. It always left him with a vaguely vinegary taste in his mouth, and, when dispensed by a woman, made him long to see his father, who had a singular appreciation for the ego’s lacerations.
Challah had become proficient at her craft.
And he needed money.
PART III
MR. RYBAKOV’S
AMERICAN PAGEANT
12. THE SEARCH
FOR MONEY
PRESENTLY, THE TRUTH became obvious: state-sponsored socialism had been a good thing. Vladimir spent his waking hours daydreaming of the simple life of his parents. A walk along the Neva River with your intended: no charge. Box of stale chocolates and one wilted rose: fifty kopeks. Tickets for two to the Worker’s Allegorical Puppet Theater: one ruble, ten kopeks (student rate). Now that was courtship! Empty wallets, empty stores, hearts filled with overflowing . . . If only he and Frannie could travel back in time, away from the crude avarice of this uncultured metropolis, back to those tender Khrushchev nights.
Vladimir woke up with a start. Oh? And what the hell was this? A daredevil roach was making her way up the death blades of the paper shredder. An enterprising couple in ethnic garb was wrestling with an acculturation facilitator over a set of fingerprints. Dah! He was at work! The Emma Lazarus Immigrant Absorption Society, that nonprofit gulag, was open for business!
Yes, all the signs pointed to his somnolent weekday money-making, every hour bringing with it another U.S.$8.00. He had been asleep from nine to noon. Three hours. Twenty-four dollars. Two dry martinis and a tapa of jamon serrano. A Bombay silk handkerchief for Fran.
“Not enough,” he said aloud. A recent tête-à-tête with his calculator had pinpointed the need for an additional $32,280 per year to meet Challah’s rent and the most basic Fran-based expenditures. With needy eyes he surveyed his little precinct. A junior clerk at the adjacent desk was effortlessly inhaling her homemade noodles and octopus, glancing impatiently at her faux Cartier watch with every breath of food.
“Mmph,” the junior clerk said.
This mindless grunt set Vladimir off on a trail of thoughts which brought him, in a roundabout way, back to the money-centered dreams he had been dreaming for the past three hours, and there, in the middle distance, suspended in the air, there floated . . .an Idea. A turbo-prop flying over a deserted landing strip, its pilot a certain Soviet sailor-invalid.
It took eight rings for Mr. Rybakov to hop over to his phone. “Allo! Allo!” the breathless Fan Man said. There was splashing in the background. The grind of machinery. A kind of improvised yodeling. Well, someone was starting his afternoon on a high note.
“Allo, Mr. Rybakov. Vladimir Girshkin, your resettlement specialist and faithful servant.”
“And it’s about time,” Rybakov shouted. “The Fan and I were wondering . . .”
“My apologies. Work, work. The business of America is business, as they say. Listen, I was just inquiring about your case in Washington—”
Vladimir stopped. Okay. That was a lie. Not so hard. Just like lying to Mother. Or pretending with Challah. Now what?
“Washington,” said the Fan Man. “Columbia District. That’s our nation’s capital! Oh, you crafty little fuck . . . Well done!”
Vladimir took a deep breath. He tugged on his polyester tie. It was time for the pitch. It was time for the money. “I was wondering,” he said, “if you could reimburse me for the plane fare.”
“Of course. Plane fare. Such trifles. How much?”
Vladimir tried on a few sums. “Five hundred dollars,” he said.
“Flying first-class, I see. Only the best for my Girshkin. Say, let’s meet around five. I’ll give you the money and we’ll take the SS Brezhnev for a harbor run.”
“SS Brezhnev?” Had Mr. Rybakov peeked into Vladimir’s socialist dreams?
“My new speedboat.”
“Capital,” Vladimir said.
AT THE APPOINTED time Vladimir squeezed into an elevator. At ground level he found his own tattered compatriots from the office (their loafers scuffed and unpolished, their dresses acrylic blends from bargain basements) flushed out onto Broadway: a single nonprofit ray amid the gleaming masses of the surrounding law offices and investment firms. He quickly crossed the high-rise graveyard of Battery Park City, and arrived, red-cheeked and winded, at the marina.
The SS Brezhnev was a cigarette boat—long, thin, and sleek, a veritable Francesca of the seas—bobbing playfully between two gargantuan yachts, both under the blue flag of Hong Kong, both looking bloated and unwieldy in comparison to their neighbor.
“Ahoy,” Mr. Rybakov cried in English, waving his captain’s hat.
Vladimir clambered onto the boat and hugged the happy Rybakov. He noticed that both he and his host were wearing vintage trousers, plaid shirts, and shiny ties. Throw in the guyabera and janitor pants, and the two of them could start their own clothing line.
“Welcome aboard, friend,” Rybakov said. “A pleasant day for a sail, no? The air is clear, the water placid. And here I have prepared a parcel with your reimbursement and a complimentary sailing cap.”
“Thank you, Admiral. Why, it fits just perfectly.” Now the look was complete.
“I’ve had Brezhnev’s likeness imprinted on the back. And allow me to introduce you to Vladko, my maritime Serb and first mate. Vladko! Come meet Vladimir Girshkin.”
A hatch opened, and from the lower deck there emerged a preternaturally tall, round-chested, pink-eyed, near-naked young man, as substantial as anything Serbian myth ever produced. He blinked repeatedly and covered his eyes. Behind him, a large striped cat (or maybe a small tiger) roamed a devastated landscape of crushed tomato-soup cans, empty gas canisters, deflated soccer balls, and all kinds of time-worn Balkan paraphernalia: coats-of-arms, tricolors, blown-up photographs of fatigue-clad men with guns standing solemnly around makeshift graves.
“Ah, I believe we share practically the same name,” Vladimir told Vladko.
“Ne, ne,” the Serb protested, his expression still that of a man emerging from a bomb shelter. “I am Vladko.” Perhaps his Russian was limited.
“And this,” said Rybakov, pointing to a miniature fan mounted on the dashboard, “is the Fan’s little niece, Fanya.”
“I have had the pleasure of meeting your esteemed uncle,” Vladimir started to say.
“But she’s too young to talk!” Rybakov laughed. “Oh, you romantic cad.” He turned to the Serb: “Vladko, hey there! First mate on the bridge! Start the engines! Away we go!”
With a postindustrial hum like that of a desktop computer powering up, the Brezhnev’s engines were engaged. Vladko expertly navigated her past the hefty sloops of the marina, setting course around the southern tip of Manhattan Isle. A boat ride! Vladimir thought with childish glee. It was one of the million things he’d never done. Oh, the stench of the open sea!
“What did you see in Washington?” Mr. Rybakov shouted over the gnashing wind and roiling waters, both easily separated by the Brezhnev’s aerodynamic prow.
“Your case remains highly contentious,” Vladimir cheerfully lied. Yes, the key was to remain cheerful. Big smile. They were playing Ducking Reality, a delightful little game expressly designed for Russian émigrés. Why, Vladimir’s own grandmother was a national champion. “I have met with several members of the House Judiciary Committee . . .”
“So, I take it, you visited the president at his White House.”
“It was closed,” Vladimir said. And why was it closed? Easy enough. “The air-conditioning broke.”
“And they couldn’t turn on a few fans?” Rybakov shook his head and his fist in protest to the White House staff. “All these Americans are pigs. Air-conditioning. Hypermalls. Trash, these people. I ought to write another letter to the Times on the theme of ‘Where Is This Country Going?’ Except as a citizen I would have more clout.”
�
�Any day now,” Vladimir reassured him. It was good to keep these things open-ended.
“And did you see the president’s developing young daughter? That delightful creature!”
“I caught a glimpse of her at the Kennedy Center. She’s coming along nicely.” Now, this wasn’t even lying anymore. This was storytelling for invalids. This was social work. This was outreach to the elderly.
Rybakov rubbed his hands together and winked at Vladimir. Then he sighed and fingered the insignia on his cap. He wiped the water spray off his sunglasses. Leaning against the bow of his speedboat in his sunglasses and cap, this was as close as Mr. Rybakov had ever come to looking like a New World person—rich, American, in control. Vladimir was reminded of his own adolescent daydreams: young Vladimir, the simple-minded son of a local factory owner, running triumphantly down the field of his Hebrew school’s opulent Recreation Centrum, the eyes of the local Benetton-clad maidens following intently the brown oblong ball encased in his burly arms as he scored the “home goal” or “home run” or whatever it was he had to score. All in all, Vladimir’s American dreams formed a curious arc. During adolescence he dreamed of acceptance. In his brief days at college he dreamed of love. After college, he dreamed of a rather improbable dialectic of both love and acceptance. And now, with love and acceptance finally in the bag, he dreamed of money. What fresh tortures would await him next?
“Maybe next time you’re in Washington,” Mr. Rybakov was saying, “you could introduce me to the first daughter. We could go out for ice cream. A young lady like her could be very interested in my tales of the sea.”
The Russian Debutante’s Handbook Page 10
