The Russian Debutante’s Handbook

by Gary Shteyngart

  A look out the window proved that all of Florida looked exactly the same from a moving vehicle. The sign on the opposite side of the highway read: BAL HARBOUR 20. Bal Harbour was to the immediate north of Miami Beach. That was good. They were headed in the right direction and the highway was empty.

  Now what the hell was that Lion saying? Vladimir recognized the last two words from Hebrew school. “Nachon meod,” Vladimir repeated.

  “So I was right!” the Israeli said. “You are a Russian Jew. No wonder you’re in trouble. You people are always in trouble. You make the Spanish look good.”

  Hey, what did everyone have against the impoverished, yet always-yearning Russian people? “Aw, come on, hever,” Vladimir said, remembering the Hebrew word for “friend.” “You’re hurting my feelings.”

  “I’m not your hever, asshole. So what did you do back there? Kill your girlfriend?”

  Vladimir ignored his comment. He was on his way. Soon his long Floridian nightmare would be over. He would never have to look at a palm tree again, or deal with another coarse, gaudy, overweight peasant.

  “Hey, doesn’t that sign say ‘airport?’ ”

  The Lion hit his horn to warn a moped of impending disaster, then swerved right. They drove in silence for a while, the overhead roar of jet engines providing a soothing accompaniment for Vladimir, reminding him that in less than an hour it would be his turn to take to the air. Every sign they passed said “airport” now, or else “motel” or “lobster.” Eat, screw, and leave: that was the narrative of this particular highway.

  Gradually, the traffic worsened, and the Lion began moaning familiar Hebrew curses, which constituted the bulk of Vladimir’s knowledge of that language. Whoredom was a big theme with the Israelites. ‘Go fuck your mother and bring me a receipt,’ that was a popular one. Sex, family, commerce—it pushed all the right buttons.

  They were creeping along, now. The moon, low and pink, looked perfect for this setting (why was New York’s moon always so lofty and gray?).

  There were two peach Cadillacs in front of them and one on the left. He must have booked a seat on some kind of senior citizens’ special. He looked at the flight info scribbled on his hand. He checked his still-unsold Rolex. Flight 320, depart Fort Lauderdale 8:20, arrive New York La Guardia 10:35. The official dénouement of his peripatetic little southern tragedy would soon be printed out on card stock and placed in a paper folder with the airline’s logo.

  And then, a thought. Actually, more than a thought. Four thoughts. Coming together as one.

  Depart Fort Lauderdale;

  peach Cadillac;

  two in front, one on the left;

  Jordi’s trunks tight with the outline of his shaft, a single horrific spot of wetness spreading along the inseam.

  HE SLIPPED TO the floor. Half of an asthma attack was purely psychological. You had to think straight. You had to say to yourself: I’m going to keep breathing.

  “What is this?” the Lion shouted. He adjusted his rearview to get the full view of the cowering Vladimir. He turned his hundred-pound head around. “What are you doing? What shit is this?”

  Inhale, exhale, one, two, three. With a wobbly wrist, Vladimir threw two hundred-dollar bills at the Lion. “Take the next exit back,” he whispered. “There’s been a mistake . . . I don’t want to go to the airport . . . They’re going to kill me.” The Lion kept looking at him. The outline of his droopy chest stared at Vladimir from the partition of his floral shirt, reminding Vladimir, for some reason, of a heart attack. Vladimir threw another hundred-dollar bill. And then another.

  “Damn!” the Lion shouted. He hit the wheel in masculine fashion. “Damn, whore, fuck,” he said. He inched forward. He put on his turning light. Vladimir crept up and looked at the car on the left. The window was down; a young man with a mustache of no more than three hairs, sweating visibly in a silk jacket and buttoned-up shirt, was screaming something into his cell phone. His companion, a twin by the looks of him, was clicking something between his legs. He heard a language not unlike Spanish. No, French. He heard both Spanish and French. Vladimir crawled back down. He reemerged for a glimpse of the rear window. There was a peach Caddy directly behind them. And another one. And another one. There was a peach Cadillac in every lane. They were in a traffic jam of peach Cadillacs.

  The Lion kept repositioning their car rightward. “I drive a cab,” he chanted. “I know nothing. Livery driver. Dual citizenship. Eight years here and I love it.”

  Vladimir covered himself with a handy map of Georgia that was lying on the floor. He must have spent an hour like that: bathed in his own sweat, smelling the blood on his upper lip, cocooned within the furry hold of the Lion’s Crown Victoria. Each second he thought he head the clicking sound or the mention of “Girshkin” amid the international conversation next door. He found himself too exhausted to think about it. The dreamy void loomed ahead, but he could hardly permit himself to fall asleep. Stay awake! Breathe! Think of the turbo-prop skirting the runway, so close, too close . . . and yet copilot Rybakov knew exactly what he was doing, the fearless grin on that pumpkin face spoke of a history of near-misses.

  Meanwhile, back on the ground, the Lion kept turning on the right signal, which emitted a comforting mechanical chime, the belltone of American civilization as far as Vladimir was concerned. The car drifted into the rightmost lane, then inched its way onto a service road. “Agaa!” the Lion shouted.

  “What’s wrong?” Vladimir screamed.

  But it must have been a war cry, a release of tension, because at that point the Lion stepped on the gas, and the car squealed past the following: a self-proclaimed “pancake palace”; a New Souls Rising Millennial Temple & Spa; an unidentified store shaped like an igloo; two minor country roads; fifty hectares of arable land; a grove of palm trees; the vast parking lot of something called Strud’s.

  It was at Strud’s that the Lion came to a full and complete stop. The car’s suspension let out an ominous creak, which Vladimir immediately matched with a bloody exhale. “Get out!” the Lion said.

  “What?” Vladimir wheezed. “I just gave you four hundred dollars.”

  “Get out! Get out! Get out! Get out!” the Lion screamed, the first two times in Hebrew, the final two in his new language.

  “But look!” Vladimir shouted, indignity overcoming asthma. “We’re in the middle of . . .” It was hard to say where. “What am I supposed to do? At least drive me to the bus station. Or Amtrak, or, no . . . Let me think. Just drive north somewhere.”

  The Lion spun around to face the back seat and grabbed Vladimir by his shirt. His face—stubby double-jointed nose, gray bags under the eyes glistening with sweat—reminded Vladimir of Jordi’s miserable physiognomy. And this was a fellow tribesman! They spoke the same language, had the same god, and the same-shade ass. There was a moment of silence in the car, save for the sound of Vladimir’s shirt tearing further in the Israeli’s hands and the heavy breathing of the Lion, who was clearly looking for words to elucidate the finality of their driver-passenger relationship. “Okay,” Vladimir preempted him. “I know where I’m going. I have nine hundred dollars left. Take me to New York.”

  The Lion brought him closer, breathing onion and tahini all over his sweating passenger. “You,” he said. The next word could have been “little,” but the Lion chose to leave his harangue at the level of a pronoun.

  He let go of Vladimir and turned around, crossing his arms on top of the steering wheel. He snorted. He uncrossed his arms and tapped the steering wheel. He pulled a golden Star of David from the confluence of his hairy cleavage and held it between thumb and index finger. This little ritual must have given him focus. “Ten thousand,” he said. “Plus the cost of an auto-train back.”

  “But all I have is nine hundred,” Vladimir said, even as he caught his wrist sparkling in the sunlight. Success! He threw his Rolex over the Lion’s shoulder, where it made a rich and hopeful sound against his meaty lap.

  The Lion gave the wat
ch a healthy shake then held it against his ear. “No serial number on back,” he mused. “Automatic chronograph.” He consulted his Star of David once again. “Nine hundred dollars plus the Rolex plus five thousand more you get from a cash machine.”

  “My credit limit is three thousand,” Vladimir said.

  “Oofa,” the Lion said and shook his head. He opened his door and started moving his bulk outside.

  “Wait! Where are you going?”

  “I have to call my wife and explain things,” the Lion said. “She thinks I have a girlfriend.” And then, with shoulders hunched and both hands jammed into the pockets of his silk trousers, the Lion set off for the bleak discount wasteland of Strud’s.

  VLADIMIR SLEPT THROUGH the eastern seaboard.

  It wasn’t as if the drive was uneventful. The conked-out Vladimir, mumbling comforting childhood words in his sleep (kasha, Masha, baba), managed to miss a flat tire, a half-hearted chase by some inept South Carolina patrolmen, and the Lion screaming and flailing wildly as a friendly Southern critter, perhaps a chipmunk, rubbed up against him at a Virginia rest stop.

  Twenty-five hours of uninterrupted sleep, that was the legacy of Vladimir’s northward journey.

  He woke up in the Lincoln Tunnel, somehow knowing immediately where he was. “Good morning, criminal,” the Israeli grumbled up front. “Good morning and good-bye. Soon as we’re out of the tunnel, I will say shalom to you.”

  “I think for five thousand dollars you can drop me off at my home,” Vladimir said.

  “Ai! Listen to this gonif! And where is home? Riker’s Island?”

  Where was home? Vladimir actually had to think about it for a second. But when it came to him, he couldn’t help but smile. It was three P.M. according to the dashboard clock and Francesca would likely be at home, in her bedroom mausoleum, surrounded by text and counter-text. He hoped that his twenty-four-hour absence, the missing humidity of his breath against her neck at night, the lacuna in his constant considerate companionship, in his “superhuman ability to abide,” to quote Joseph Ruocco, was already taking a toll on her; that when he walked through the door, her face would register something perfectly out of character—the unalloyed happiness of dating Vladimir Girshkin.

  They turned down Fifth Avenue and Vladimir squirmed in his seat. Just a minute more. Come on, Lion! The Israeli nimbly cut through the traffic of yellow cabs, leaving raised fists and honking in his wake (just look at that upstart with the Crown Victoria and the Florida license plates). The names on the storefronts were now as familiar as family—Matsuda, Mesa Grill . . .In a previous lifetime, Vladimir had left a small fortune at each of them.

  “Gonif comes home,” the Lion said, pulling up to the beige Art Deco of the Ruoccos’ building. “Don’t forget to tip,” he said.

  Half-dazed and half-civil, Vladimir fished a final fifty-dollar bill out of the torn pocket of his torn shirt and passed it to his driver.

  “Keep it,” said the Lion, suddenly avuncular. “And try to live a clean life if you can, that’s my advice to you. You’re very young. You’ve got a Jewish brain. There’s still hope.”

  “Shalom,” Vladimir said. His strange adventures with the big Israeli were coming to an end. Closure was an elevator ride away. And there, ambling into the lobby with his unique dinosaur-like gait, was Joseph Ruocco, surviving the heat in his too-colonial-for-comfort khaki ensemble (“Conradian,” Fran had called it). Vladimir was about to surprise him with a shout of “Privyet!,” a familiar Russian greeting he had taught the Ruoccos, when he saw that the professor was accompanied by—

  WELL, THAT WOULDN’T be accurate. First he heard the voice. No, first he heard the laughter. They were laughing. No, that’s not true either. First he heard the professor’s voice then he heard the bullshit laughter, then he heard the other voice, and then he saw.

  A giant hand, gold-cuffed, Florida-brown, and smelling of baby powder was slapping the professor manfully about the shoulders.

  A peach car of a familiar make was parked along the sidewalk of 20 Fifth Avenue, its blinkers blinking.

  Jordi was making a new friend. One both funny and sad.

  “What happened to your shirt?” the young Brazilian doorman started to ask Vladimir, almost loud enough for the professor and Jordi to hear at the opposite end of the lobby.

  But before he could finish, the beat-up man before him, this little guy who accompanied the Ruoccos’ daughter every day, and who always seemed to the doorman either too sheeplike or too haughty for his own good . . .this trembling, barefaced Lothario was out the door, across the avenue, around the corner, gone from sight. He was history, thought the doorman, smiling at the phrase he had picked up from a headline in the Post.

  “I’M NOT GOING to Wichita,” Vladimir said, the word “Wichita” rendered by his accent as the most foreign word imaginable in the English language. “I’m going to live with Fran and it’s going to be all right. You’re going to make it all right.” But even as he was laying down the law, his hands were shaking to the point where it was hard to keep the shabby pay-phone receiver properly positioned between his mouth and ear. Teardrops were blurring the corners of his eyes and he felt the need to have Baobab hear him burst out in a series of long, convulsive sobs, Roberta-style. All he had wanted was twenty thousand lousy dollars. It wasn’t a million. It was how much Dr. Girshkin made on average from two of his nervous gold-toothed patients.

  “Okay,” Baobab said. “Here’s how we’re going to do it. These are the new rules. Memorize them or write them down. Do you have a pen? Hello? Okay, Rule One: you can’t visit anyone—friends, relatives, work, nothing. You can only call me from a pay phone and we can’t talk for more than three minutes.” He paused. Vladimir imagined him reading this from a little scrap of paper. Suddenly Baobab said, under his breath: “Tree, nine-thirty, tomorrow.”

  “The two of us can never meet in person,” he was saying loudly now. “We will keep in touch only by phone. If you check into a hotel, make sure you pay cash. Never pay by credit card. Once more: Tree, nine-thirty, tomorrow.”

  Tree. Their Tree? The Tree? And nine-thirty? Did he mean in the morning? It was hard to imagine Baobab up at that unholy hour.

  “Rule Five: I want you to keep moving at all times, or at least try to keep moving. Which brings us to . . .” But just as Rule Six was about to come over the transom, there was a tussle for the phone and Roberta came on the line in her favorite Bowery harlot voice, the kind that smelled like gin nine hundred miles away. “Vladimir, dear, hi!” Well, at least someone was enjoying Vladimir’s downfall. “Say, I was thinking, do you have any ties with the Russian underworld, honey?”

  Vladimir thought of hanging up, but the way things were going even Roberta’s voice was a distinctly human one. He thought of Mr. Rybakov’s son, the Groundhog. “Prava,” he muttered, unable to articulate any further. An uptown train rumbled beneath him to underscore the underlying shakiness of his life. Two blocks downtown, a screaming professional was being tossed back and forth between two joyful muggers.

  “Prava, how very now!” Roberta said. “Laszlo’s thinking of opening up an Academy of Acting and the Plastic Arts there. Did you know that there are thirty thousand Americans in Prava? At least a half dozen certified Hemingways among them, wouldn’t you agree?”

  “Thank you for your concern, Roberta. It’s touching. But right now I have other . . . There are problems. Besides, getting to Prava . . . What can I do? . . . There’s an old Russian sailor . . . An old lunatic . . . He needs to be naturalized.”

  There was a long pause at this point and Vladimir realized that in his haste he wasn’t making much sense. “It’s a long story . . .” he began, “but essentially . . . I need to . . . Oh God, what’s wrong with me?”

  “Talk to me, you big bear!” Roberta encouraged him.

  “Essentially, if I get this old lunatic his citizenship, he’ll set me up with his son in Prava.”

  “Okay, then,” Roberta said. “I definitely can�
��t get him his citizenship.”

  “No,” Vladimir concurred. “No, you can’t.” What was he doing talking to a sixteen-year-old?

  “But,” Roberta said, “I can get him the next best thing . . .”

  17. THE AMERICAN

  PAGEANT

  THE TREE WAS a rather frail and trampled-upon oak, its gnarly branches shadowing its equally beat-up cousin, the Bench. Tree and Bench existed together, now and forever, in the little park in back of the math-and-science high school where Vladimir and Baobab were issued an academic challenge and where, subsequently, they had failed to meet that challenge, and, instead, had retired to the Bench beneath the Tree. During a particularly upsetting acid trip, Baobab had carved his initials and those of Michel Foucault into the Bench, beneath which, in the style of lower-school girls, he had written, “BFF.” Best Friends Forever.

  Vladimir, pining for the simplicity of those wasted days, bent down and traced the initials with one nostalgic finger, then held himself in check: Such nonsense!

  A car horn went off behind him.

  Roberta was peeking out of a cab door, waving her big yellow boater. “Get in!” she shouted. “They’re trailing Baobab uptown. Move!”

  THEY HAD PULLED up to an old warehouse by the Holland Tunnel. The place was a low-ceilinged affair, its torn parapet floors patched up with strips of linoleum, a sign for Arrow Moving and Storage, the previous tenant, incompletely scraped off the front door. Vladimir was seated with Roberta in the rear section, which was roped off for “Guests of Naturalization Candidates.” The other “guests,” all marvelous actors and dear friends of Roberta, as was explained to Vladimir, looked dressed for a wedding, an Islamabad or Calcutta wedding—the number of turbans and saris among the attendees had reached critical mass. At any rate, gone was the dark-T-shirt-and-tight-trouser uniform germane to the ranks of young unemployed thespians.