Gary Shteyngart - The Russian Debutante's Handbook

For editor-in-chief Vladimir’s system of patronage telegraphed Cohen in both italics and bold print. Also for best friend, pal, buddy, that sort of thing. Cohen was indispensable. The nabobs liked him, Vladimir learned, because he stumbled and said absolutely wrong things like “faggot” and “gosh,” and he looked the part, too—this thick rural Iowan. At the same time, he was an angry and disdainful Jewish fellow, suspicious that the Midwestern mohel, short on practice, had taken a little too much of his wiener on the eighth day of his life, a crisis commensurate with being the supposedly sole Iowan Jew (not to mention one who had Hitler for a father), which proved once and for all that the world was out to get him, and so here he was in Prava, the edge of the known world.

He also was well connected up in Amsterdam and down in Istanbul, producing tiny packets par avion that were the finest in hydroponic science and Turkish know-how and led to many placid, indebted expressions on both sides of the Tavlata. Vladimir’s old friend Baobab, of course, was similarly occupied, but the fool across the ocean carried out his enterprise not out of social concern, but for crude, selfish profit (his stuff was notoriously full of seeds and twigs, too).

And let’s not forget that Cohen was Vladimir’s mentor, a position Cohen never failed to mention, as in “I’m mentoring Vladimir tomorrow,” and “We have a very satisfying mentorship.” It took place in the cramped Lesser Quarter alley where Cohen and Vladimir had first reached their literary understanding. Vladimir’s attempts to change the venue in favor of the gorgeous park that curved upward off the Lesser Quarter and apparently overlooked the castle itself, not to mention the Old and New Towns across the river, were futile. Too obvious for Cohen. “Creativity flourishes only in small, blighted spaces—janitor’s closets, cold-water flats, rabbit hutches…”

Why argue? They went over Cohen’s singular work (“And from the bedroom there’s the sound / of two lovers reading Ezra Pound”) as if they were rabbinical scholars finally granted access to the kabala, until one day Cohen said: “Vladimir, you’re in for a treat. There’s going to be a reading.”

In for a treat? Could one still say that in 1993? Vladimir, for one, wouldn’t gamble on it. “But I’m not ready to read yet,” he said.

“I know you’re not,” Cohen laughed. “I’m the one who’s reading. Oh, don’t look so sad, Grasshopper. Your time will come.”

“I see,” Vladimir said. But it was strangely disheartening to hear that he wasn’t ready to read, even though the arbiter of his worth was this mangy lion from the American interior. Vladimir knew he was no poet, but surely he wasn’t that bad.

“Three o’clock, tomorrow. Café Joy in the New Town, it’s a block from the Foot. Or we could just meet by the left toe. And Vlad…” Cohen put his arm around him, an action that frightened bashful Vladimir to this day. “There’s no dress code, of course, but I always make sure I wear something beautiful when I present myself to Joy society.”

THE JOY. VLADIMIRlay on his stomach in his little blond-wood boudoir, meditating on this fabled venue and his chance to impress the crowd with his own verse, to stamp his artistry onto the mass of wealthy English speakers, potential investors all, and to begin (finally!) Phase Two of the master plan.

Phase One had gone off without a hitch. He had introduced himself, nay, insinuated himself into this unpolished mass of Westerners on the cultural make. But now he had to clinch the deal. To prove to the likes of the dog-breeder Plank and the rugby runt Marcus, that he was not just a businessman out to buy some bohemian friends with a lit mag and a thousand free drinks. And if he could pull off a reading at the Joy, well then…On to Phase Three! The actual “take the donkeys for a ride” phase. (Hey, maybe he could even steal Alexandra from Marcus, somewhere around Phase Two-and-a-Half, say.)

In the meantime, PravaInvest stocks—engraved with all the flourishes and pomp of karate green-belt certificates for suburban tykes—had just been printed and were ready for sale at only U.S.$960 a pop. Discerning investors everywhere, take note.

And so, to work. He took out his notebook filled unimpressively with notes from Cohen’s tutelage and turned to the “Mother in Chinatown” poem that he had started that fateful day at Eudora Welty’s.

He read the first few lines of the Mother poem to himself. A small string of pearls from her birth land… Ludicrous, yes. But definitely of the moment.

On the other hand, what if…? What if Cohen and the whole Crowd saw right through him? What if they were baiting Vladimir to the Joy only to expose the international-magnate-talent-scout-poet-laureate-publisher for the shameless operator he really was? Vladimir sniffed the air around him, worried he was giving off a fraudulent odor. Sniff-sniff… Nothing but the smell of wet dust and the dizzying tang of an electrical fire next door. Furthermore, what if Cohen took umbrage at being upstaged at the reading? What if he united his minions—Marcus, Plank, that other emaciated guy, whatever his name was—and outflanked Vladimir for good? Whom could Vladimir summon on his own behalf? True, Alexandra might defend him, that nutty dear. Plus Alexandra had complete discretion over Marcus and was thoroughly worshipped by Maxine and that other blonde, the one who always wore hip-waders and carried a Chinese parasol… But that would only split the Crowd in half. What was he going to do with just half a Crowd?

If only someone competent could advise him.

If only Mother were here.

Vladimir sighed. There was no getting around it. He missed her. This was the first time that mother and son were separated by five thousand miles and the loss was palpable. For better or worse, Mother had run Vladimir like her own five-and-a-half-foot fief up to this point. Now that Vladimir had abandoned her, he was entirely on his own. Put differently, if you subtracted Mother from Vladimir, what had you? A negative number, by Vladimir’s calculations.

She had been with him from the bitter start. He remembered Mother the twenty-nine-year-old xylophone teacher dutifully preparing her asthmatic son for kindergarten, five months after school had started for the healthier children. The first day of class was a time of immeasurable anxiety for any Soviet toddler, but for half-dead Vladimir it was accompanied by the fear that his boisterous new chums would chase him around the schoolyard, push him down, sit on him, knock the last breath out of his battered chest. “Now, Seryozha Klimov is the hooligan,” Mother educated Vladimir. “He’s the tall one with the red hair. You will avoid him. He won’t sit on you, but he likes to pinch. If he tries to pinch you, tell Maria Ivanovna or Ludmila Antonovna or any other teacher, and I will run over and defend you. Your best friend will be Lionya Abramov. I think you played with him once in Yalta. He has a wind-up rooster. You can play with the rooster, but don’t get your shirtcuffs caught in the gears. You’ll ruin your shirt and the other children will think you’re a cretin.”

The next day, per Mother’s instructions, Vladimir found Lionya Abramov sitting in a corner, pale, trembling, a great green vein pulsing along his monumental Jewish forehead; in other words, a fellow sufferer. They shook hands like adults. “I have a book,” Lionya wheezed, “in which Lenin is in hiding and he builds a camouflaged tent out of nothing but grass and a horse’s tail.”

“I have one like that, too,” Vladimir said. “Let’s see yours.”

Lionya produced this particular volume. It was pretty, indeed, but, with its miniscule text, clearly meant for someone twice their age. Still Vladimir found it hard to resist coloring Lenin’s bald dome a proper shade of red. “You have to watch out for Seryozha Klimov,” Lionya informed him. “He might pinch you so hard you’ll bleed.”