Gary Shteyngart - The Russian Debutante's Handbook

“Half-Greek, half-Russian,” Vladimir said. It just came out that way.

“Delightful. Will you join us for a little meal now?”

“Sadly, I can’t. I’m expected with my family in Thessalonica. I was just off to the airport. But next week, definitely.”

“Delightful,” the priest said again, and then he had his turn with Kostya, who whispered something into his ear which made the priest laugh uproariously, his beard, as grand and white as his person, taking on a hairy life of its own. It was a mirth Vladimir could not understand, since God’s business was, by all means, a serious one, especially when one of your flock proved to be a Jew in Greek’s clothing.

He bowed his way past the congregants and out the door, where a steady autumn rain was gathering force and the sky appeared a tablecloth of unrelenting gray.

WELL, THAT WASall over with, thank God, and off he was in his marvel of Bavarian tinkering, speeding away on the Tavlata’s eastern embankment, thinking Faster! Faster, Jan! for the Groundhog and the most expensive restaurant in Prava awaited. Oh, he had been duplicitous with the Angel, as always, getting off at a suburban metro station to “briefly visit an American friend, a pious man of Serbian lineage…” And there, by prior arrangement, Jan and the unholy Beamer awaited their master. Taking the metro to lunch—a little too déclassé for an upscale gonif like Vladimir.

The restaurant was situated opposite the castle, with full view of the river growing full under the autumn rain, tourists galloping across the Emanuel Bridge, their umbrellas torn apart by a wind strong enough to have breathed life into a hundred Golems. It was a restaurant popular with rich Germans and American mommies and daddies visiting their drifting progeny, and, yes, a certain Russian “entrepreneur.”

The Groundhog kissed Vladimir on both cheeks and then presented his own pock-marked ones. Vladimir closed his eyes and uttered a ridiculous “Mwa!” with each kiss.

With the male Eastern European love overture complete, Vladimir was allowed to take his seat; across the table, the Groundhog squirmed like a happy little papoose in its swaddling clothes, only he was a large, corpulent mafioso in an unflatteringly tight brown suit. “Look,” he said, “your appetizer’s already here!”

True enough, there was a circle of fatty rings of squid lying atop, of all things, butternut squash, with some sort of powder dusted in the middle that smelled vaguely of parmesan and garlic. At twenty dollars a plate, the restaurant promised to serve no carp, its wine list was purged of the sickly-sweet Moravian vintages that made Prava’s head spin, and the proprietors had airlifted an actual old guy from Paris to tickle their Steinway’s ivories beneath a huge Art Nouveau spread of frolicking nymphs. Bon appétit!

The Groundhog munched, both cheeks bulging. “Beautiful job with that Canadian donkey,” he said once his squid was finally dispatched. “That’s right, why not start out big? Why not a quarter million?”

“This money is good,” Vladimir said. “The world owes us for the last seventy years. This money is very good.”

They drank bottles of Chardonnay, beaming at each other in the unspoken argot of success. By the fourth bottle, and with the braised hare in pimiento reduction well on his way, the Groundhog got sappy. “You’re the best,” he said. “I don’t care who you are, what tribe you came from. You’re just the greatest.”

“Stop it.”

“It’s true,” the Groundhog said, working fast on the complimentary bread and horseradish paste. “You’re the only one I don’t have to worry about. You’re an adult, a businessman. Do you know what trouble I have with Gusev’s men?” He flipped the Russian bird—the thumb stuck between the index and middle fingers—to a table by the kitchen where members of his bouffant-haired, pinstriped security team were slumped over their empty Jim Beam bottles.

“Oy, tell me,” Vladimir said, shaking his head.

“I’ll tell you,” the Groundhog said. “You know I got problems with the Bulgarians, right? With the whole stripping and prostitution racket on Stanislaus Square? So these men of Gusev’s, these fucking cretins, they go to the Bulgarians’ bar and the usual nonsense starts about the girlfriends, the questions of who fucked who first, and who sucked who where. And when it’s all over they got this one guy, Vladik the Dumpling, that’s the Bulgarians’ number two, actually… They got him strung up by his feet over the bar, and they cut off his dick and his balls, and they bleed him to death! That’s fucking Gusev’s men for you! No brains, no skills, nothing. They cut off a man’s dick and his balls. I said to them, ‘Where do you idiots think you are—Moscow?’ This is Prava, the waiting room to the West, and they’re going around cutting—”

“Right,” Vladimir said.

“They’re cutting—”

“Yes, the mutilation of genitals. I hear you,” Vladimir said. “Where’s the bathroom?” he asked.

After assuring himself of the wholeness of his scrotum and padding it with a layer of crispy Stolovan toilet paper (as if that would stop the revenge-minded Bulgarians!) Vladimir felt the return of good cheer swell up across his nether region. By the time he staggered back to the table he was nearly ebullient. “You’ve got to have a talk with Gusev!” he shouted across the table. “We’re businessmen!”

“You have a talk with him,” the Groundhog said, throwing up his hands. “You tell him, ‘This is how we do business in America, and this is how we do not do business in America.’ A line has to be drawn for those simpletons.”

“Correct, correct, Groundhog,” Vladimir said, quickly toasting with a glass of schnapps. “Only, trust me, you should be the one telling them. They’re not scared of me.”

“They will be scared of you,” the Groundhog said. “As scared as they are of God. Which reminds me, here’s a toast to Kostya and his mother’s health.”

“To a speedy recovery.”

The Groundhog suddenly looked serious. “Volodya, let me speak from the heart. You and Kostya are the future of this organization. I see that now. Before it was fun, sure, run around, blow up a few diners, cut off some dicks, but we got to get serious. This is the nineties. We’re in this… ‘informational age’… we need ‘Americanisms’ and ‘globalisms.’ Do you know where I’m coming from?”

“Oh, yes,” Vladimir said. “I say we call a meeting, the whole organization.”

“Whores and all,” said the Groundhog.

“We’re going to teach them America.”

“ You’re going to teach them America.”

“Me?” Vladimir said, swallowing a cognac.

“You,” the Groundhog said.

“Me?” Vladimir feigned surprise yet again.

“You’re the best.”

“No, you’re the best.”

“No, you.”

What happened next was as good an argument for temperance as any. “You’re the top,” Vladimir sang, squeezing in a shot of pear brandy between the lyrics. “You’re the Colosseum.”

He must have been louder than he thought, for the pianist instantly shifted out of his Dr. Zhivago repertoire and struck up Vladimir’s tune. The pianist was, like nearly everyone in Prava, open to suggestions.

“You’re the top,” Vladimir continued even louder, with the Germans around him smiling appreciatively, thrilled, as always, at the prospect of free foreign entertainment at tableside. “You’re the Louvre Museum.”

“Get up and sing, Tovarisch Girshkin!” The Groundhog kicked him hard under the table for encouragement.

Vladimir staggered to his feet, then fell over. A further prod from his employer brought him up again. “You’re the melody from a symphony by Strauss! You’re a Bendel bonnet, a Shakespeare sonnet, you’re Mickey Mouse!”