The Russian Debutante’s Handbook

by Gary Shteyngart

  Grateful for the imprimatur, Vladimir lifted his hands up to the sky, as if he could reach out across the ether of uncertain space and false memory and once again braid Mother’s hair on the long train ride to Yalta, massage the white scalp between her parted locks. If I succeed tomorrow, Vladimir told her, it will be because of you. You are the mistress of daring and perseverance. No matter how I may place my feet, I am endowed with everything you have taught me. Please do not worry for me . . .

  My whole life is worry for you, Mother replied, but at this juncture, with a great declarative thump, the living-room door nearly collapsed under the force of two rifle butts.

  22. IN THE

  STEAM ROOM

  “VLADIMIR BORISOVICH!” A duo of throaty Russian voices shouted from the hallway, interrupting Vladimir’s transatlantic séance. “Hey, you! Opa! Wake up in there!”

  Vladimir quickly waddled over to the door, losing both slippers in his haste, his ears still ringing with Mother’s godlike intonation. “What is the meaning?” he shouted. “I am an associate of the Groundhog!”

  “The Groundhog wants you, pussycat,” one of the louts shouted back. “It’s banya time!”

  Vladimir opened the door. “What banya?” he said to the two big peasants, their faces completely yellowed by a lifetime of drinking, so that in the pale glow of the hallway they appeared perfectly green. “I have already bathed this morning.”

  “The Groundhog said take Vladimir Borisovich to the banya, so put on a towel and let’s go,” they said in unison.

  “What nonsense.”

  “Do you dispute the Groundhog?”

  “I follow the Groundhog’s imperatives blindly,” Vladimir told his intruders, who both looked like adult versions of Seryozha Klimov, the hooligan from kindergarten. What if they tried to pinch him to death à la Seryozha? Mother was certainly not here to protect him, and Lionya Abramov, his former best buddy, was probably running some sleazy night club in Haifa. “Where is this banya?” Vladimir demanded.

  “Building three. There is no changing room, so put on your towel now.”

  “You expect me to walk over to building three in nothing but a towel.”

  “That is the procedure.”

  “Do you know who you’re talking to?”

  “Yes,” the two men answered without hesitation. “We answer to Gusev!” one of them added, as if that alone explained their impertinence.

  AS TOWEL-CLAD VLADIMIR walked across the courtyard to the third panelak flanked by his two armed escorts, a group of Kasino whores peeked out of their gloomy hole to whistle at the near-naked young man, who instinctively covered his breasts with both hands the way he had seen buxom girls do it in pornographic literature. So it had been a setup! Gusev angling to humiliate him, that turd. Perhaps he had forgotten that Vladimir was the son of Yelena Petrovna Girshkin, the ruthless czarina of Scarsdale and Soviet kindergarten both . . . Well, thought Vladimir, we shall see who will fuck whom, or, as they say in Russian in two simple, elegant syllables—kto kovo.

  The banya wasn’t a true Russian bathhouse with its peeling walls and charcoal-stained stoves, but rather a tiny prefab Swedish sauna (as dull and wooden as Vladimir’s furniture), which had been attached to the panelak in a makeshift manner, like a space module to the Mir. Here, the Groundhog and Gusev were slowly cooking themselves alongside a platter of dried fish and a small barrel of Unesko.

  “The King of the Americans has deigned to bathe with us,” Gusev announced upon Vladimir’s arrival, fanning himself with a large salt-encrusted perch. Without clothes, Gusev’s body matched the Groundhog’s curve for curve, a preview of what Vladimir would look like ten years hence unless he succumbed to Kostya’s exercise regimen. “And have we been sleeping ’till this late hour?” Gusev asked. “My men tell me your car and driver have been idle all day.”

  “And what business is this of yours?” Vladimir said carelessly as he picked up the traditional bundle of birch twigs with which the Russian bather flogs himself, supposedly to improve circulation. He flicked the birch through the air in what was meant to be a menacing gesture, but the wet twigs only said, “Shoo,” in a sad and lethargic way.

  “What business?” Gusev bellowed. “According to our money man, in the past two weeks alone you’ve spent five hundred U.S. dollars for drinks, a thousand for dinners, and two thousand for hashish. For hashish, mind you! And this when Marusya has her own little opium garden right here on the premises. Or perhaps our opium’s not good enough for you, eh, Volodechka? Some thrifty Jew we’ve found ourselves, Groundhog. He thinks he’s the party boss of Odessa.”

  “Groundhog—” began Vladimir.

  “Enough, the two of you!” the Groundhog shouted. “I come to the banya for relaxation, not to hear this pettiness.” He spread himself out on a bench, his stomach overhanging both sides, sweat running down the pocked immensity of his dorsal plane. “Two thousand for hashish, ten thousand for whores . . . Who cares? Melashvili just phoned from the Sovetskaya Vlast’, they’re leaving Hong Kong with nine hundred thousand worth of crap. Everything’s fine.”

  “Yes, everything’s fine,” Gusev sneered, biting off the perch’s head and spitting it onto the steaming logs in the corner. “Melashvili, that nice Georgian black-ass has to toil the world over to keep our Girshkin happy—”

  Vladimir leapt up in anger, nearly dropping the towel that covered his small manhood, a weakness he did not want exposed. “Not one more word from you!” he shouted. “In the past two weeks I’ve befriended nearly every American in Prava, I’ve started work on a new literary magazine which will take the Western element by storm, my name has appeared twice in Prava-dence, the expatriate’s journal of record, and tomorrow I will be an honored guest at an important reading of rich English-speakers. And after all the work I’ve done, most of it stupid and degrading, you dare accuse me . . .”

  “Aha! Do you hear that, Goose?” the Groundhog said. “He’s publishing magazines, making rich friends, going to readings. Good boy! Keep at it, and you’ll make me proud. Say, Gusev, remember those readings we used to go to as kids? Those poetry contests . . . Write a poem on the theme ‘The Oft-Tested Manliness of the Red Tractor Brigade.’ Such fun! I fucked a girl at one of those, I surely did. She was dark like an Armenian. Oh, yes.”

  “I do not question your authority,” Gusev began, “but I do—”

  “Oh, shut up already, Misha,” the Groundhog said. “Save your whining for the biznesmenski lunch.” He reached over to the fish platter and shoved a small specimen into his mouth. “Vladimir, my friend, come here and strike me with the twigs. Got to keep my blood going, or I’ll melt on the spot.”

  “I beg—” Vladimir started to say.

  “Hey, hey, fellow!” Gusev shouted as he leapt to his feet. “What’s the meaning? Hey! Only I am permitted to whip the Groundhog. That’s practically diktat around here. Just ask anyone in the organization. Put down those twigs, I say, or it won’t be cheerful for you.”

  “You’re being petty again, Mikhail Nikolaevich,” the Groundhog warned. “Why shouldn’t Vladimir give me a whipping? He’s a strong young buck. He’s worked hard. He’s earned it.”

  “Just look at him!” shouted Gusev. “He’s flabby and weak-wristed. He’s half my age and already his breasts are distended like a cow’s. Oh, he’ll whip you like a little pederast, that’s for certain! And you deserve so much better, Groundhog.”

  Any discomfort Vladimir may have had at the prospect of whipping his employer faded with Gusev’s words. Before he even knew it, his hand had made an angry gesture through the air and there was a clap of thunder at the Groundhog’s back. “Mwwwaaarff!” cried the Groundhog. “Uga. Hey, there. That’s the stuff!”

  “Is this the whipping of a pederast?” shouted Vladimir, shockingly unconcerned over the illogic of that sentence, as he flagellated the Hog once again.

  “Bozhe moi, that’s pain, all right,” the Groundhog grunted with pleasure. “But a little higher up next time.
I’ve got to sit on that thing.”

  “To the devil with both of you!” Gusev whispered loudly. He stepped up to Vladimir on his way out, ostensibly to give him the look of a lifetime, but Vladimir, knowing better, busied his eyes with the red topography of the Groundhog’s back, a challenge for any budding cartographer. Still, he couldn’t avoid a glimpse of Gusev’s neck, a thick and corded piece of anatomy, despite the corpulent disorder below.

  Only after Gusev had slammed the door behind him did Vladimir remember his childhood fear of saunas, the paranoid feeling that someone was going to lock the door and let him steam to death inside. He thought of himself and the Groundhog trapped together, their skin as translucent as that of a steamed dumpling, nothing inside but boiled meat: it seemed like the worst death imaginable.

  “Oh, but why have you stopped,” moaned the Groundhog.

  “No, I shall prevail over that fat-necked bastard,” Vladimir muttered to himself, and he set to task with such ferocity that upon his first strike a purple-black pimple exploded, and the Hog’s heavy blood made its way through the sauna’s fishy air, which was as thick and inviolable as Gusev himself.

  “Yes, yes,” the Groundhog shouted. “That’s the way! How quickly you learn, Vladimir Borisovich.”

  PART V

  THE KING OF PRAVA

  23. THE UNBEARABLE

  WHITENESS OF BEING

  THE JOY WAS a vegetarian restaurant but beneath it lay a meat market of a disco where the perennially hard-up regulars lured unsuspecting backpackers, many still sporting their Phi Zeta Mu T-shirts, into nights of forgetfulness and mornings of waking up on a futon in the nether reaches of Prava’s suburbs, trying to connect with an authority figure back in the States on an antiquated telephone that could barely reach out across the Tavlata. On Sundays they had readings.

  Vladimir went down the threadbare stairs, where the small pink-and-mauve dance floor was lit up by a series of overly bright halogen lights, giving the place the look of a rather impersonal womb. Presently, this arena accommodated three rings of plastic chairs and weathered couches and recliners; randomly placed coffee tables were home to bright, shapely drinks from the bar; and the artists and spectators themselves wore their Sunday best—jackets all around and hair tied or slicked back. Earrings and piercings gleamed peacefully from within their thoroughly scrubbed fleshy enclosures, gusts of rolled American Spirit tobacco emerged from fresh-colored lips, lingered in newly trimmed goatees.

  The young men and women cast to populate this postmodern Belle Epoque turned to face the new entrant and kept their gazes fixed as he walked into the inner circle of seating where a space was reserved for him between Cohen and Maxine, the mythologizer of Southern interstates.

  Vladimir walked in with his legs atremble. He had made a terrible mistake immediately upon his arrival by instructing Jan to deposit him at the front door to the Joy, where the entering hordes were treated to the spectacle of an artist alighting from a chauffeured BMW. True, he was supposed to be a wealthy artist, but this arrogant spectacle was undoubtedly a mistake, the kind of faux pas that within minutes would be circulated to Budapest and back by Marcus and his Marxish fiends.

  To Vladimir’s further chagrin, it appeared that the few readers in the group were distinguished by a spiral notebook much like his own, a fact not lost on Cohen who stared at Vladimir’s tome, mouth agape, then turned to its owner, his eyelids at half-mast with contempt.

  It was, thus far, a silent gathering. Plank was asleep on an enormous imported La-Z-Boy recliner, dreaming of last night’s bacchanal. Cohen was too angry to make a peep. Even Alexandra was uncharacteristically silent. She was too busy looking over Vladimir and Maxine, probably trying them on as a couple; the blond and sprightly Maxine had just been picked out as Vladimir’s mate by the Crowd’s informal council on dating. But, of course, it was long, trim Alexandra that Vladimir wanted. Her beauty, her unreserved enthusiasm contributed heavily to his infatuation, and yet there was more: He had found out recently that she was born of a lower-class family! Semiliterate Portuguese dock workers from a place called Elizabeth, New Jersey. The idea that she had come to Prava from this noisy, poorly lit, deeply Catholic household with its abusive men and pregnant women (what else could it have been like?) restored much of Vladimir’s lapsed faith in the world. Yes, it could be done. People could change their life chances with a few elegant strokes yet remain beautiful and at ease and kind and solicitous, too. Alexandra’s world, despite its artistic pretensions, was a world of possibilities; there was so much she could teach him, she with a stocking ripped exactly at the point where one world-class thigh began to curve into shape.

  Meanwhile, the silence continued, save for the last-minute scribbling of some of the artists. Vladimir was frightened. Were they still thinking about his BMW? Any minute now, it seemed, a Stalinist denunciation was to begin, with him the purgee.

  Artist 1, a tall dirty-haired boy in Coke-bottle glasses: “Citizen V. Girshkin is charged with antisocial activity, the promulgation of an odious persona and nonexistent literary magazine, and possession of an Automobile of the Enemy as defined in the USSR Criminal Codex 112/43.2.”

  Girshkin: “But I’m a businessman . . .”

  Artist 2, a big-eared redhead with cracked lips: “Enough said. Ten years hard labor in the People’s Limestone Extraction Facility in Phzichtcht, Slovakia. Don’t start with the ‘Russian Jew’ crap, Girshkin!”

  Instead, a sinewy, older gentleman emerged from the shadows. He had no hair save for two sets of overgrown curls rising above his head like devil’s horns, and sagging corduroys that could have accommodated a matching tail. “Hi, I’m Harold Green,” he said.

  “Hi, Harry!” This was Alexandra, of course.

  “Hi, Alex. Hi, Perry. Wake up, Plank.” Harry Green’s eyes—kind and avuncular, but also with the requisite expatriate glaze that plagued every English speaker in Prava—settled on Vladimir, where they blinked slowly and repeatedly like a skyscraper’s warning lights.

  “He owns this place,” Maxine whispered in Vladimir’s ear. “He’s the son of very rich Canadians.”

  Harold instantaneously ceased to be a mystery, one less variable in Vladimir’s co-optation formula. He imagined patting the dear fellow’s naked crown, suggesting minoxidil, a new interior decorator for his club, a new worldview for his cocktail hour, a sizable investment in Groundhog, Inc . . . .

  “So, we’ve got here a list.” Harold picked up a clipboard. “Anyone not penned their John Hancock, or Jan Hancock for those of you of the Stolovan persuasion?”

  Vladimir saw his hand rise, a small, pale creature.

  “VLADIMIR,” Harold read off the clipboard. “A Stolovan name, no? Bulgarian, no? Romanian, no? No? So who do we have to start? Lawrence Litvak. Paging Mr. Litvak. Please step right up, Larry.”

  Mr. Litvak tucked in his Warhol T-shirt; checked his zipper momentarily; brushed back a tendril of blond, dreadlocked hair, and took to the magic spot from which Harold had spoken. Vladimir recognized him from the Nouveau and likeminded places, where he always had as his sidekick an enormous blue bong, and where he was happiest when regaling passers-by with war stories culled from his brief, standard-issue life.

  “This is a story,” Larry said, “called ‘Yuri Gagarin.’ Yuri Gagarin was a Soviet astronaut who was the first man in space. Later he died in a plane crash.” He cleared his throat, a little too thoroughly, and gulped back the fruits of his besieged lung.

  Poor, dead Yuri Gagarin was conscripted into a tale about Larry’s Stolovan girlfriend, a veritable Rapunzel whose untrimmed hair and penchant for Tony Bennett played at fantastic decibels made her an outcast in her own panelak. That is, until Prince Larry came along, fresh from his proving grounds at the University of Maryland, College Park: “ ‘Prava will be good for you,’ my writing professor POSITED. ‘Just don’t fall in love,’ he said EVINCING what would happen if I did to the contrary, as had happened to him in 1945, a young G.I.,” etc.

  T
he narrator installs our heroine Tavlatka—a water nymph as her name suggests, and as the long and graphic scene in the communal swimming pool amply illustrated—in his apartment conveniently located in the Old Town. (How did Larry get the money to live in the Old Town? Vladimir made a mental note for PravaInvest purposes.) They smoke a lot of hash and have sex, “in the manner of the Stolovans.” Meaning what? Under a blanket of ham?

  Ultimately, the relationship hits a snag. At some point in the middle of the sex a conversation on the space race is launched and Tavlatka, soiled by a decade of agit-prop, insists that Yuri Gagarin was the first man on the moon. Our narrator, a leftist softy, to be sure, is still an American. And an American knows his rights: “ ‘It was Neil Armstrong,’ I hissed into the small of her back. ‘And he was no cosmonaut.’ My Tavlatka spun around, her nipples no longer erect, a tear welling in both eyes. ‘Get you out of here,’ she said, in that funny yet tragic way of hers.”

  After that things really fall apart. Tavlatka boots our hero out of his own apartment and he, with no place to go, starts sleeping on a little tatami mat by the New Town Kmart, selling nudes of himself to old German ladies on the Emanuel Bridge (go, Larry!), making just enough money for the occasional knockwurst and a Kmart pullover. There’s no mention of what Tavlatka does, but one remains hopeful that she makes good use of Larry’s Old Town pad.

  Here, Vladimir lost the narrative thread for a while, his eyes doing a Baedeker’s tour of Alexandra’s ankle, but he did manage to catch the scene where Tavlatka and the narrator seek the truth in an old Stolovan library smelling “sourly of books,” and then the grand finale in bed where both Tavlatka and Larry emerge with their bodies “drenched, satiated . . . understanding that which the mind cannot.”