Gary Shteyngart - The Russian Debutante's Handbook

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.

The 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 cosmo naut.’ 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.”

FIN and BRAVO! BRAVO! The circle congregated around Litvak to pay their dues. Cohen had a turn at the wunderkind with a full frontal hug and hair ruffle, but Larry had bigger fish to fry: He was looking for pan-seared Girshkin on a bed of shallots in red wine sauce. “Remember me?” he croaked to Vladimir from within Cohen’s anaconda grip. He half-closed his eyes, managed to loosen the top button of his shirt, and rolled his head about to demonstrate his usual late-night demeanor.