Gary Shteyngart - The Russian Debutante's Handbook

“You know, my girl is actually very curious about my Russian friends,” Vladimir said.

“So then we’re agreed!” The Groundhog happily slapped his shoulder. “We will toast her American beauty together!” He turned to the French doors leading to the kitchen and moved them apart with his feet, both shod in forest-green Godzilla slippers. “Have you met my Lena yet?” he asked, as more of his friend’s back became visible. “Would you like her to make you some porridge?”

BACK IN HIS Panelak flat, Vladimir paced his living room in a kind of angry stupor. Globalisms? Americanisms? What the hell was he talking about? Did he actually think he was going to introduce Gusev to the finer points of business-to-business marketing and public relations? What insanity!

The way things stood, only one man in Prava could help him. František. The happy apparatchik Vladimir had found during the Night of Men.

“Allo,” František picked up. “Vladimir? I was just about to ring you. Listen, I need to unload three hundred Perry Ellis windbreakers. Black-and-orange trim. Practically new. My cousin Stanka made some sort of an idiotic deal with a Turk… Any ideas?”

“Er, no,” Vladimir said. “Actually, I have a bit of a problem here myself.” He explained the nature of his predicament in a loud, frightened voice.

“I see,” František said. “Let me impart some advice. And remember, I’ve dealt with Moscow all of my adult life, so I know Gusev and his friends pretty well.”

“Tell me,” “Vladimir said.

“The Russians of this caliber, they only understand one thing: cruelty. Kindness is seen as a weakness; kindness is to be punished. Do you understand? You’re not dealing with Petersburg academicians here or enlightened members of the fourth estate. These are the people that brought half this continent to her knees at one point. These are murderers and thieves. Now tell me, how cruel can you be?”

“I have a lot of anger in store,” Vladimir confessed, “but I’m not very good at expressing it. Today, however, I lashed out at the Groundhog, my boss—”

“Good, that’s a good start,” František said. “Ah, Vladimir, we are not so different, you and I. We are both men of taste in a tasteless world. Do you know how many compromises I have made in my life? Do you know the things I have done…”

“Yes, I know,” Vladimir told the apparatchik. “I do not judge you.”

“Likewise,” František said. “Now, remember: cruelty, anger, vindictiveness, humiliation. These are the four cornerstones of Soviet society. Master them and you will do well. Tell these people how much you despise them and they will build you statues and mausoleums.”

“Thank you,” Vladimir said. “Thank you for the instruction. I will lash out at the Russians with my last strength, František.”

“My pleasure. Now, Vladimir… Please tell me… What the hell am I supposed to do with these goddamn windbreakers?”

THE AMERICAN LESSONSbegan the next day. The Kasino was set up school auditorium–style, with rows upon rows of plastic folding chairs. When the seats were filled, Vladimir did a double take: the Groundhog’s people numbered as many as parliamentarians of a sizable republic.

Half of them Vladimir had never met. In addition to the core groups of soldiers and crooks, there were the drivers of the BMW armada; the strippers who supplied labor to the town’s more elicit clubs; the prostitutes who worked the Kasino and, in lean times, covered the nightly beat on Stanislaus Square; the cooks for the common mess-hall who ran an international caviar-contraband operation on the side; the young men who sold enormous fur hats with the insignia of the Soviet Navy to Cold War aficionados on the Emanuel Bridge; the petty thieves who preyed upon older Germans straying from their tour groups—and that was only the personnel Vladimir could identify by their distinguishing combination of age, gender, demeanor, and gait. The majority of the congregants remained to him just so many other units of Eastern European refuse in their cheaply cut suits, their nylon parkas, their rooster haircuts, and teeth blackened by filterless Spartas, three packs per diem as life prescribed.

Forget Gusev. Forget the Groundhog. From now on they would all belong to Vladimir.

Vladimir took them by surprise. He ran out from the wings and kicked the oakwood lectern that had been stolen from the Sheraton and still bore its illustrious seal. “Devil confound it!” he shouted in Russian. “Look at you!”

The general incredulity and merriment that had pervaded the gathering stopped right there. No more giggling, no more loud slurping of the imaginary last drop out of an empty Coke can. Even old Marusya woke up from her opium nap. Gusev, seated alone in the last row, was glowering at Vladimir and fingering his holster. His troops, however, had been moved up front with the Groundhog. Yes, thought Vladimir, smiling at Gusev imperiously. Now we’ll see who whips the Groundhog in the banya…

“We’ve really done it, beloved countrymen,” Vladimir shouted, his whole body shaking from the adrenaline building up ever since the first ray of sun snuck in through the blinds and woke him, irrevocably, at 7:30 in the morning. “We’ve embarrassed ourselves in front of all of Europe, we have truly shown our simple nature… For seventy years, we have been diligently licking clean an asshole, and it turns out to have been the wrong one!” Silence except for a spurt of laughter on one side, but one quickly nipped in the bud by surrounding colleagues. “What can account for such a gaffe, I ask you? We gave the world Pushkin and Lermontov, Tchaikovsky and Chekhov. We’ve embarked thousands of gawky Western youths on the Stanislavsky Method, and if truth be told, even that damned Moscow Circus is not half bad… So how do we now find ourselves in this situation? Dressed so ludicrously, a provincial from Nebraska would have cause to laugh, spending all our money on elegant cars just so we can butcher their insides with our bad taste, our women dressed in raccoon furs strolling Stanislaus Square giving all that young girls can give—their very girlhood—to the same Germans at whose hands our fathers and grandfathers perished in defense of the Motherland…”

At this mention there was predictable patriotic fervor among the ranks: bearlike rumbles of discontent, spittle hurtling to the concrete floor, and, here and there, mutterings of “disgrace.”

Vladimir picked up on this. “Disgrace!” he shouted. His mind was still ringing with František’s lecture on the four cornerstones of Soviet society. Cruelty. Anger. Vindictiveness. Humiliation. He took out a pocket pack of Kleenex, the only item in his vest pocket, and threw it on the floor for effect. He spat on it, too, then kicked it clear across the stage. “Disgrace! What are we doing, friends? While the Stolovans, the very same Stolovans who we ran over in ’69, are out there building townhouse condominiums and modern factories that work, we’re snipping Bulgarian balls like radishes! [laughter] And what did the Bulgarians ever do to deserve this, may I ask? They’re Slavs like us…”

( Slavs Like Us: The Vladimir Girshkin Story. Thankfully the crowd was too agitated to make light of Vladimir’s lack of Slavonity.)

“Well, you’re going to learn and you’re going to learn the hard way what it means to be a Westerner. Remember Peter the Great shaving Eastern beards and disgracing the Boyars?” Here he looked, just a glance, at Gusev and his closest men, who barely had the time to react. “Yes, I suggest you review your history texts, for that is exactly how it will be done. Those who are not with us are against us! And now, my poor, simple friends, here’s what you’re going to do first…”