Gary Shteyngart: The Russian Debutante's Handbook

1.

The story of Vladimir Girshkin - part P.T. Barnum, part V.I. Lenin, the man who would conquer half of Europe (albeit the wrong half) - begins the way so many other things in America begin. On a Monday morning. In an office. With the first cup of instant coffee gurgling to life in the common lounge.

It was the corner of Broadway and Battery Place. The most disheveled, God-forsaken, not-for-profit corner of New York's financial district. On the tenth floor, the Emma Lazarus Immigrant Absorption Society greeted its clients with the familiar yellow water-stained walls and dying hydrangeas of a sad Third World government office. In the reception room, under the gentle but insistent prodding of trained Assimilation Facilitators, Turks and Kurds called a truce, Tutsis queued patiently behind Hutus, Serbs chatted up Croats by the demilitarized water fountain.

Meanwhile, in the cluttered back office, junior clerk Vladimir Girshkin - the immigranťs immigrant, the expatriate's expatriate, enduring victim of every practical joke the late twentieth century had to offer and an unlikely hero for our times - was going at it with the morning's first double-cured spicy soppressata and avocado sandwich. How Vladimir loved the unforgiving hardness of the soppressata and the fatty undertow of the tender avocado! The proliferation of this kind of Janus-faced sandwich, as far as he was concerned, was the best thing about Manhattan in the summer of 1993.

2.

Some time has passed and Vladimir has found himself a rich American girlfriend

named Francesca. In this scene they are about to go shopping for a toothbrush

together.

They had gone shopping for a toothbrush. At no time was he happier than when the two of them would embark on these most mundane of missions. A man and a woman can claim to love one another, they may even rent real estate in Brooklyn as a sign of their love, but when they take time out of a busy day to walk through the air-conditioned aisles of a drug mart to piek out a nail clipper together, well, this is the kind of a relationship that will perpetuate itself if only through its banality.

And she was such a thoughtful consumer. The toothbrush, for instance, had to be organic. A dealership of organic toothbrushes did exist in SoHo, but it had chosen this particular day to dissolve into bankruptcy. "Strange," Frannie said, as a person-sized toothbrush was removed from the vitrine by the bickering members of an Indian family and crammed into a station wagon with Garden State plates. "They has such a following."

"Oh, what is to be done?" Vladimir moaned on her behalf. "Where can one find an organic toothbrush in this one-horse town?"

"Chelsea," she said. "Twenty-eighth and Eight. I think the place is called T-Brush. Minimalist, but definitely organic. But you don't have to go all the way up there with me. Go home and keep my mother company. She's grilling baby squid in its own ink! You love that shit."

"No, no, no!" Vladimir said. "I promised to go toothbrush shopping with you. I'm a man of my word."

"Vlad, you're too much!" she laughed, poking him in the stomach. "Sometimes," she continued, "Sometimes you seem so happy to have a girlfriend. Was this what you dreamed it would be like? Having a New York girlfriend. Shadowing her around town.

The devoted boyfriend, so loving, so devoid of any personal interest, just this lovey-dovey, dopey, happy guy. Toothbrush? Don't mind if I do!"

"You have a point," Vladimir said. He was unsure of what to say next. He felt a gurgle in his stomach and tasted something gastric on his tongue. "Very well, then," he said. "No problem." He pecked her farewell. "Czao, c/ao," he croaked. "Good luck with the toothbrush. Remember: medium soft bristles..."

But as made his way home, the intestinal ill-feeling, the nervousness tickling his insides continued, as if the tired faces of the shishkebob-sellers and art-book-hawkers of Lower Broadway, the honored citizens of the midsummer city, were assaying him with open disgust, as if the braggadocio of rap issuing out of boom boxes was actually as threatening as it sounded. What was it, this strange stirring?

Back at her parenťs house, Fran's bedroom was its usual mess of samizdat-like books published by failing presses; heaps of dirty underwear; here and there loose dots of birth control and anxiety medication; the big cat, Kropotkin, prowling about, tasting a little bit of everything, depositing tufts of gray-black fůr on panties and literature alike. And the chill in the room...The mausoleum effect...The windows shut, curtains drawn, the air-conditioner always on, a tiny desk lamp the only illumination. Here was the long winter of Oslo or Fairbanks or Murmansk: the New York summer had no business in this twilight place, this temple to Fran's strange ambitions, the desiccation of early 20l Century literature, the education and repackaging of one Warsaw Pact immigrant.

His stomach growled once more. Another wave of nausea...

And then he realized what it was, this rumbling in his gullet, this internal displacement: He had been unmasked! She knew! She knew everything! How much he needed her, wanted her, could never have her...All of it. The foreigner. The exchange student. The 1979 Soviet 'Grain Jew' posterboy. Good enough for bed, but not for the organic toothbrush store.

Toothbrush? Don't mind if I do!

Ah, so thaťs how it was. She had humiliated him on the sly, while he, the diligent note-taker, had failed his mandate once again. And he had tried so hard this time, had gone to such lengths to please all of them under the rubric "Parents & Daughter: How to Love an American Family." He was the dutiful son her family never had. Worshiping them, shadowing them, soaking them up through osmosis.

And still coming up short...

Why?

How?

Because he was all alone in this, this being Vladimir Girshkin business, this being neither here nor there, neither Leningrad nor SoHo. Sure, his problems might seem miniscule to a contemporary statistician of race, class and gender in America. And yes, people in this country suffered left and right, were marginalized and disenfranchised the moment they stepped out of the house for coffee and a doughnut, but at least they suffered as part of a unit. They were in this together. They were bound by ties Vladimir could barely comprehend: New Jersey Indians loading a giant toothbrush into a station wagon, Avenue B Dominicans playing stoop-side dominoes, even the native-born Judeo-Americans sharing easy laughs at the office.

Where was Vladimir's social unit? He had no Russian friends. For all his years at the Emma Lazarus Immigrant Absorption Society, the Russian community was just a dark, perspiring mass that regularly washed up on his shore, complaining, threatening, cajoling, bribing him with bizarre lacquered tea sets and bottles of Soviet champagne...rF/zcrt could he do? Go to Brighton Beach and eat muttonplov with some off-the-boat Uzbeks? Arrange for a date with some Velena Kupchernovskaya of Rego Park, Queens, soon-to-be graduate of the accounting department at Baruch College, a woman who, if she actually existed, would want to settle down at the fantastic age of twenty-one and bear him two children in quick succession - "Oh, Volodya, my dream is for one boy and one girl."

The only Russian worth noting was his new friend the crazed invalid Mr. Rybakov. They would eat herring together and sing Odessa gangster songs about a girl named Můrka.

Můrka, oh, my Můrka

Oh, my darling Můrka

Hello, my Můrka, and good-bye

You screwed up our romance

Oh, my darling Můrka

And for that my Můrka you must die...

And what of his parents? Beyond the Maginot Line of the Westchester suburbs, were they faring any better? Dr. and Mrs. Girshkin had arrived in the States in their early forties; their lives had effectively been split into two, leaving only fading memories of the sunny Yalta vacations, the homemade marzipan cookies and condensed milk, the tiny private parties at some artisťs fiat suffused with moonshine vodka and whispered Brezhnev jokes. They had left their rarefied Petersburg friends, their few relatives, everyone they had ever known, traded it all in for a lifetime of solitary confmement in a Scarsdale mini-mansion.

There they were, driving down to Brighton Beach once a month to piek up contraband caviar and tangy kielbasa, all around them, the strange new Russians in cheap leather jackets, women wearing wedding cakes of permed blonde hair on their heads, an utterly alien race that just happened to cluck away in the mother tongue and, at least in theory, shared the Girshkins' religion.

Were Vladimir and his parents Petersburg snobs? Perhaps. Bad Russians? Likely. Bad Jews? Most certainly. Normal Americans? Not even close.

3.

This final scene take place almost a year later, Vladimir has had to chose between working as a consultant for the American firm Arthur Anderson or a career with the Russian mafiya. Wisely, he has chosen the Russian mafiya. He now finds himself in the Eastern European city of Prava, known as the Paris of the 90s, where he works for a Russian gangster named the Groundhog. Vladimir's job is to create a Ponzi scheme to defraud the 30,000 young Americans who have flocked to the city believing they are the next Ernest Hemingway or Gertrude Stein. In this scene, Vladimir and his American girlfriend Morgan have gone on a double-date with the Groundhog and his girlfriend Lena at an American-themed restaurant called "Road 66."

"So how did you two meet?" Morgan asked.

"Mmm..."The Groundhog smiled nostalgically. "Eh, is big story," he said. "I teli it? Okay. So one day Groundhog is in Dnepropetrovsk, so he is in Eastern Ukraina, and many people are doing to him bad thing and so Groundhog is doing to them also very bad thing and, eh, time goes tick tick tick tick on the clock, and after two revolvement of clock needle, after forty-eight hours passing away, it is Groundhog who is alive and it is enemies of him who are...eh...dead."

"Wait," said Morgan. "Do you mean..."

"Metaphorically speaking they're dead," Vladimir said.

"So," the Groundhog continued, "is finished bad business, but Groundhog still very lonely and very sad. He has nobody in Dnepropetrovsk. His cousin kill himself last year and Dyadya Lyosha, distant relative, he die from drink. So is finish! No family, no friend, nothing."

"Bedny moi surok" said Lena. "How do you say in English...My poor Groundhog..."

"You know I can totally understand you," Morgan said, "iťs so difficult to go to a strange town, even in America. I went to Dayton once, I was in a basketball camp..."

"Anyway," the Hog interrupted, "So Groundhog is alone in Dnepropetrovsk and his bed is very cold and there is no girl for him to lie down on, and so he is going to, how do you say, publichni dóm? The House of the Public? You know what this is...?"

Lena dipped a lone curly fry into a pool of hot sauce. "House of Girl, maybe?" she suggested.

"Yes, yes. Exactly such house. And so he is sitting down and Madame is coming in and she is introducing Hog to such and such girl and Groundhog is like Tphoo! Tphoo! He is spitting on the ground, because is so ugly. One, maybe, has face black like gypsy, another having big nose, another speaking some Pygmy language, not Russian...And Groundhog is looking for, you know, special girl."

"He is very cultured," Lena said, patting his enormous hand. "Tolya, you should declaim for Morgan famous poema by Alexander Sergeyevitch Pushkin, called eh..." She looked at Vladimir.

"The Bronze Horseman?" Vladimir guessed.

"Yes, correct. Bronze Horseman. Very beautiful poema. Everybody knows such poema. It is about famous statue of man on horse."

"Lena! Please! I am telling interesting story!" the Hog shouted. "So Groundhog is leaving House of Girl, but then he hearing beautiful sound from room of love. 'Okh! Ohk! Okh!' It is like wonderful Slavic angel. 'Okh! Okh! Okh!' Voice tender like young girl. 'Okh! Okh! Okh!' He is asking Madame: 'teli me, who is making Okh?' Madame is saying, oh, is our Lenotchka making such Okh, but she is only for valuta, for you know, hard currency. Groundhog is like: 'I have dollar, deutsche mark, Finnish Markka, nu, what you want?' So Madame is saying, okay sit down on divan for twenty minutes and soon you will have this Lena.' So Groundhog sitting and sitting and he is hearing this beautiful 'okh' sound like bird singing to another bird, and he is suddenly becoming, eh.. .How do you say, Vladimir?"

He whispered a word in Russian. "Well..." Vladimir looked to Morgan, her face was ashen and she was nervously twisting a drinking straw around one white finger as if applying a tourniquet. "Engorged, I guess," Vladimir translated.

"Yes! Groundhog is becoming engorge in the foyer and he shouting 'Lena! Lena! Lenotchka!' And in the room of love she is shouting 'Okh! Okh! Okh!' And it is like duet. It is like Bolshoi opera. Shit! And so he get up, still gorged, and he run down quickly to local laryok and he is buying beautiful flowers..."

"Yes!" Lena said. "He is buying crimson roses, just like in my favorite song, 'A Million Crimson Roses' by Alla Pugacheva. So I know God is watching us!"

"And also I am buying expensive chocolate candy in shape of bali!"

"Yes," Lena said, "I remember, from Austria, with each bali having picture of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. I once study music in Kiev conservatory."

They looked at each other and briefly smiled, mumbling a few words in Russian. Vladimir might have heard the endearment 'lastochka ti moya' which meant roughly 'you're my little swallow.' The Hog quickly smooched Lena and then looked back at his tablemates, a little embarrassed.

"Aaa..." the Groundhog said, losing the thread of his tale for a moment. "Yes. Lovely story. So I run up to House of Girl and Lena is already fmish with her bad business, and she is washing up, but I don't care, I open door to her room, and she is standing there, wiping with towel, and I have never seen this...Oh! Skin white! Hair red! Bozhe moi! Bozhe moi! Oh, my God! Russian beauty! I am getting down on my foot and I give her flower and Mozart bali, and, and..." He looked to Lena and then to Vladimir and then back to his beloved. He put his hand to his heart. "And..." he whispered.

"And so four months later, we are here with you at table," the practical Lena summed up for him. "So tell me," she asked the near-catatonic Morgan, "How did you meet Vladimir?"