Gary Shteyngart - The Russian Debutante's Handbook

“Maybe I’m missing something here,” Vladimir said, “but I thought that blowing up a hundred-meter statue in the middle of the Old Town constituted a crime.”

“He knows about the Foot destruction!” Tomaš shouted. “Morgan, how you can tell? We are bound by blood!” Alpha, too, looked shaken by this news. He pressed his hand to his breast pocket, where a Stolovan–English dictionary and some computer diskettes likely resided.

“He’ll keep his mouth shut,” Morgan said in a tone so blasé it was scary. “I’m privy to some info on his PyramidInvest—”

He’ll keep his mouth shut?… Privy?… Oh, this Morgan was hardboiled! “Tell me,” Vladimir asked her, “wasn’t it a little dangerous for us to live here in this shoddy panelak, the very earth shaking from the tremors of our fucking [slight look of discomfort on Tomaš’s part] while hundreds of kilograms of Semtex were stowed in the next room?”

“Not Semtex,” Alpha said. “We prefer C4, American explosive. We trust only American. Nothing good left in our world.”

“You fellows are ready for the Young Republicans, I do believe,” said Vladimir.

“C4 is very good explosive to control,” Alpha went on, “and also strong with TNT equivalency of one hundred eighteen percent. Placed at, mmm, such and such interval within Foot and activated by external source, I think result will be that the top of Foot implodes… What I am meaning is that top of Foot will collapse inside hollow of Foot itself. Most important caveat: Nobody get hurt.”

“I take it you’re the munitions expert,” Vladimir said.

“We are both students at the Prava State University,” Tomaš explained. “I am studying at faculty of philology and Alpha studying at faculty of applied science. So I am working out theory for destruction of Foot and Alpha designing explosion materials.”

“Exactly,” Alpha said, fluttering his hands inside his coat pockets like an anxious bird. “How do you say? He is the intellectual and I am the materialist.”

“I don’t get it,” Vladimir said. “Why don’t you two just get jobs at one of those nice German multinationals on Stanislaus Square? I’m sure you’re both quite handy with computers and your English is primo. If you learn to speak a little office Deutsche and maybe pick up some new tennis shoes at the Kmart I’m sure you’ll be raking in the crowns.”

“We are not averse to working for this company you mention,” Tomaš said, as if Vladimir had just offered them a job. “We would like to live nice life and make babies too, but before we can make this future we must take care of the sad history.” He looked meaningfully to Morgan.

“I see,” Vladimir said. “And by blowing up the Foot, you’re… taking care of that… Ah, that pesky history!”

“You don’t know how their families have suffered!” Morgan suddenly said. She was staring at Vladimir with those dead gray eyes, her political eyes, or perhaps the eyes of some greater unhappiness.

“Oh, yes,” Vladimir said. “How right you are, Morgan. What do I know? You see, I was actually brought up by Rob and Wanda Henckel of San Diego, California. Yes, a healthy childhood spent watching the Pacific surf crash at my big suntanned feet, a four-year stint at UCSD, and now here I am, Bobby Henckel, senior brand manager of Flo-Ease Laxatives for the Eastern region… That’s right, Morgan, please do tell me more about what it’s like to be from this part of the world. It all sounds so damn exotic and, jeez, kinda sad, too… Stalinism, you say? Repression, eh? Show trials, huh? Wowsers.”

“It’s different for you,” Morgan muttered, glancing at Tomaš for support. “You’re from the Soviet Union. Your people invaded this country in 1969.”

“It’s different for me,” Vladimir repeated. “ My people. Is that what you’ve been telling her, Tom? Is this the world according to Alpha? Ah, my dear stupid fellows… Do you know how similar we are, the three of us? Why, we’re the same proto-Soviet model. We’re like human Ladas or Trabants. We’re ruined, folks. You can blow up all the Feet in the world, you can rant and rave through the Old Town Square, you can emigrate to sunny Brisbane or Chicago’s Gold Coast, but if you grew up under that system, that precious gray planet of our fathers and forefathers, you’re marked for life. There’s no way out, Tommy. Go ahead, make all the money you want, hatch those American babies, but thirty years later you’ll still look back at your youth and wonder: What happened? How could people have lived like that? How could they have taken advantage of the weakest among them? How could they have spoken to each other with such viciousness and spite, much as I’m speaking to you right now? And what’s that strange coal-like crust on my skin that clogs the shower drain every morning? Was I part of an experiment? Do I have a Soviet turbine instead of a heart? And why do my parents still quake every time they approach passport control? And who the hell are these children of mine in those Walt Disney World parkas running around making noise like there’s nothing to stop them?”

He got up and walked over to Morgan, who shifted her gaze away from him. “And you,” he said, recovering some of the anger he had lost during his speech to the Warsaw Pact duo. “What are you doing here? This isn’t your battle, Morgan. You have no enemies here, not even me. That pretty Cleveland suburb, that’s for you, honey. This is our land. We can’t help you here. Not any of us.”

He finished his drink, felt the surge of its lemony warmth, and, quite unsure of what he was doing, walked out of the apartment.

WIRY GUSTS OFwind were prodding frozen Vladimir forward, jabbing at his back with sharp-nailed fingers. He was wearing nothing more than a sweater, a woolen pair of winter janitor pants, and some long underwear. And yet the deadly circumstances of being caught coatless on an icy January night did not bother Vladimir. A steamy river of alcohol ran through him.

He tumbled ahead.

Morgan’s building was an isolated structure, but further in the distance, beyond a ravine that concealed an old tire factory, there decamped a regiment of condemned panelak s, which, with their rows of broken windows, looked like short, toothless soldiers guarding some long-sacked fortress. Now, there was a sight! The five-story concrete tombstones, perched on a little hill, were slouching toward the ravine, one building having shed its facade entirely so that the tiny rectangles of its rooms were exposed to the elements like a giant rat maze. Chemical flames emanating from the tire factory in the gorge below lit up the building’s ghostly recesses, reminding Vladimir of grinning holiday jack-o’-lanterns.

And once again, the undeniable feeling that he was home, that these ingredients— panelak, tire factory, the corrupted flames of industry—were, for Vladimir, primordial, essential, revelatory. The truth was that he would have ended up here anyway, whether or not Jordi had taken out his member in that Floridian hotel room; the truth was that for the last twenty years, from Soviet kindergarten to the Emma Lazarus Immigrant Absorption Society, all the signs had been pointing to this ravine, these panelaks, this sinking green moon.

He heard his name being called. Behind him, a small creature was steadily advancing, bearing in its arms what seemed to be another creature, which on closer inspection proved to be only a dead coat.

Morgan. She was wearing her ugly peacoat. He heard the crunch-crunch of her footsteps in the snow and saw clouds of her breath puffing skyward at regular intervals like the effusions of an industrious locomotive. Other than her footfalls there was complete silence, the winter silence of a forgotten Eastern European suburb. They stood facing each other. She handed him the coat and a pair of her fluffy purple earmuffs. He figured it must have been the brutal cold that was filling her eyes with steady tears, because when she spoke it was in her usual collected manner. “You should come back to the house,” she said. “Tomaš and Alpha are getting a taxi. We’ll be alone. We can talk.”