Gary Shteyngart - The Russian Debutante's Handbook

Not that Vladimir lacked Soviet residue among his traveling companions: He was accompanied by the Groundhog, Gusev, and two fellows who routinely passed out before the meat course was served at the biznesmenski lunches and were rumored to be the Groundhog’s best friends from his Odessa days. One was a small hairless fellow who kept badgering Vladimir about the efficacy of minoxidil. His name was Shurik. The other one was called the Log, and looking at his withered, combative face—nine-tenths scowl, one-tenth eyebrow—one could easily see him floating lifeless down a river, belly up, blood trailing from the nail-thin indenture in the back of the head.

Perhaps better company can be had if one knows where to find it, but Vladimir, newly happy and secure, was as excited as the first-time hostess of a slumber party. Why, even Gusev, who had once almost killed him, seemed a lion tamed as of late. On the ride in, for example, he had bought Vladimir a pastry from a roadside restaurant. Then, with all the grandness and civility befitting the Hapsburg Court, he had let Vladimir cut in front of him on the line for the pissoir.

And so, with the world once again revolving in his direction, Vladimir was seen running about the hallways as if on spring break, shouting in a sparkling Russian: “Come see, gentlemen… A Coke machine that also dispenses rum!”

His room came with a pair of twin beds and Vladimir half hoped the Groundhog would split it with him so they could stay up late, smoking noxious Mars-20 cigarettes, drinking from the same bottle, shooting the breeze about NATO expansion and loves lost. And indeed, with collegiate bravado, the Groundhog soon stuck his head into the doorway and said: “Hey, wash up, you little Yid, and we’ll hit the bar across the square. We’ll rape and pillage, eh?”

“I’m there!” cried Vladimir.

THIS WAS SOMEbar. It was run by the local union in the basement of the former Palace of Culture and was habituated by the workers who were laboring on the nuclear power plant, and had probably been doing so since around the time Vladimir was born. Seven o’clock and already mad, hallucinatory inebriation had set in across the board. And then, as if the limits of human endurance were not yet pronounced exhausted, the whores were sent in.

The prostitutki in this part of the world formed a stylized labor brigade. Every one around five feet, nine inches in height, as if that particular span had been adjudged most convenient for the local boys; hair hennaed till it had the consistency of a well-worn mop; breasts and bellies, stretched by births bulging corsets a dirty mauve in color. They shimmied up to the dance floor without much enthusiasm and then, in a tradition that has become diktat in the eight formerly Soviet time zones—Lights! Disco ball! ABBA!

Vladimir’s crew had only uncapped their first beer when the whores arrived and disco fever struck. The Groundhog and his boys immediately got giggly on the scene, fingering the Polo insignia on their shirts, mumbling, “Oh, the country folk,” as if they were having a Chekhov moment of their own.

“These women have thighs that can squeeze the life out of you,” noted little Shurik, not without appreciation.

“But this beer,” Vladimir said. “It tastes like they keep a rusty nail in the bottle. This is the brewery that will export to the West?”

“Pour some vodka into it,” the Groundhog said. “Look, it even suggests it on the bottle.”

Vladimir looked over the label. Part of it did seem to read: “For best results add vodka, 6 ml.” Or maybe this was the complex name of the brewery, one could never tell with the Stolovans. “Fine,” Vladimir said and went to get a bottle of Kristal from the bar.

An hour later he was dancing to “Dancing Queen” with the prettiest fille de nuit in the house. She was the only one that did not tower above Vladimir, and that wasn’t all that set her apart from her colleagues: She was young (although not “only seventeen,” like the dancing queen of the title), she was lanky and especially lean in the chest, and, most significantly, her eyes did not have that staged good-humored look of the other whores. No, these were the clear, disinterested eyes of a New York debutante with poor grades sent to a college in West Virginia, or else a teenager in a contemporary advertisement for jeans. Even through his considerable inebriation—for do not think that vodka, when deposited in beer, creates a neutralizing reaction—Vladimir felt an affinity with this young, damaged apprentice to the trade. “What’s your name?” he shouted.

“Teresa,” she said in a mean, hoarse whisper, as if she was spitting the name out of her mouth forever.

“Vladimir,” he said and bent down to kiss her speckled neck, aiming for a slot between the carefully spaced hickeys left by others.

But he didn’t get a chance to pounce. The Groundhog had swept him aside with one apelike swoop, and attached him to the dancing triad of Groundhog, Gusev, and the Log. They had left their three prostitutes behind (all substantial middle-aged ladies drowning in blush) and were asserting their Russianness with a kind of abbreviated Cossack dance. Crouch together, rise together, kick out one foot, kick out the other… “Opa!” shouted the prostitutes, their faces as red-and-white as the Polish flag. “Faster, little dove!” they encouraged Vladimir.

But it was out of Vladimir’s hands. The force of the drunken Groundhog, pulling, pushing, swinging, squatting, was entirely responsible for Vladimir’s own sorry movements. The Groundhog was a florid mass with a coherence all its own, giving generously to the reverie around him, shouting, “One more time, brothers! For the Motherland!”

At his first opportunity, Vladimir yelled, “Bathroom!” and ran for cover.

In the piss house, the union had just installed automatic flushers from Germany and mirrors over the urinals. Taking advantage of this march of progress, Vladimir groomed himself: He pushed down his wild hair and tried to string the most wayward locks into loops behind his ears; he opened his mouth and examined his slick, ivory teeth; he pulled back his hairline and promised to himself to sacrifice a goat to the makers of the hair tonic minoxidil. He said to himself: Of course, I’m not going to fall in love with a prostitute, and headed out.

By this time the ABBA selection had settled on “Chiquitita,” which, drunk or not, is a terribly difficult song to dance to. Consequently, the ranks of dancers were decaying; the picniclike tables around the dance floor began filling up with the prostitutki and their men. But nowhere could Vladimir spot the Groundhog and his crew, not to mention his young whore. Feeling abandoned and with no place to invest his excitement, Vladimir went to refill his bladder at the bar. “Dobry den’,” he told the tanned young bartender dressed in a tank top depicting an alligator playing with an American football.

“Hi, friend,” said the barkeep in near-perfect English, as if the waves of the Pacific were stroking the sands of Malibu outside. “What can I do for you?”

Vladimir enumerated a lengthy list of booze while the bartender carefully looked him over. “Tell me, where did you come from?” he finally asked.

Vladimir told him.

“I have been there,” the barkeep said and shrugged, obviously not impressed by the City on the Hudson. He moved on to another customer, a worker wearing nothing but a desperate grin and a cap of a striking blue color.

When he returned with the beer portion of Vladimir’s request, Vladimir asked about his friends. “Went for a smoke outside,” said the globetrotting mixologist. He bent down to Vladimir’s level and now a most non-Californian scent could be detected from beneath his lanky arms. He said: “I have a note for you. But it’s not from me, you understand?” He said this in a tone grave enough to indicate that Vladimir’s response was necessary before the note was given.