Gary Shteyngart - The Russian Debutante's Handbook

“No,” Vladimir said. “It has to be now. Tell me, František… How much money do I have?”

František shook his head sadly. “That fool Kostya has frozen your DeutscheBank account. As a preventative measure, I was told.”

“I thought as much,” Vladimir said. “So what’s left for me here? Nothing.”

It was clear that his two friends had never expected to hear those words from Vladimir Girshkin, for immediately they came together and put their arms around his body, as gently as two men without children can do.

“Wait!” Cohen said. “What do you mean ‘nothing’? There must be something we can do! We can press charges. We can alert the media. We can…”

“Your girlfriend,” František whispered into Vladimir’s unbandaged ear. “She says they’re going to blow up the Foot this Friday at three o’clock precisely. The explosion will serve as a decoy.” František allowed himself a slight squeeze of the fractured former King of Prava.

“Be prepared to run,” he said.

VLADIMIR HAD ANinteresting dream. In this dream he ate dinner with a normal American family that took up an enormous dining table over which hung three well-spaced chandeliers—that’s how big this normal family was.

During the meal in the dream they ate St. Peter’s fish, which was chosen for its low caloric content and not for any religious reasons. This was explained to Vladimir by a man named Gramps, who, quite normally, sat at the head of the table. Gramps had lived a long time and was knowledgeable about many topics, especially about great, big wars. He was also the only person at the table to have a face, although it wasn’t the kind of face that, by itself, could imprint itself on the collective memory of a nation, in the manner of Khrushchev or the Quaker Oats Man.

It was an old man’s beetle-browed, double-chinned, wine-reddened face, a face that had clearly seen more good than bad through the years, even when you factored in the great, big wars— especially when you factored in the great, big ones. Yes, Vladimir never thought he would enjoy hearing about duty and courage and biting the bullet so much. And he was very polite to Gramps: When the old guy spilled gravy over the sleeve of Vladimir’s cuffed white shirt, Vladimir made a very appropriate joke, which was not in the least offensive to anyone present and seemed to put Gramps at ease. The dream ended right after Gramps had been put at ease.

Vladimir woke up pleased with his pleasantness at dinner, his stomach still purring under the gentle weight of the imaginary goy-fish. Sunlight flooded the room while a playful wind knocked at the windows. His nurse was wheeling in the breakfast cart. She was very animated, constantly pointing out the window and evidently saying a lot of nice things about the day outside. “ Petak!” she said. Friday!

Vladimir nodded and said “Dobry den’” to her, which besides being a form of greeting also happened to mean “good day” in Stolovan.

She took out his breakfast—a single boiled egg, a piece of rye bread, and black coffee. Then, without ceremony and still gesticulating about the bountiful weather, she took out of the tray’s bottom compartment a briefcase, which she placed next to Vladimir’s good arm. “Dobry den’,” she cheered and, smiling like a dark, Indo-European angel, wheeled the breakfast tray out of Vladimir’s life.

At first Vladimir admired the briefcase itself. It was a handsome affair of taupe patent leather monogrammed with Vladimir’s initials. He even thought of Mother and wondered if the first letter of the monogram could be changed in her favor.

Inside, there was an amusement-park-for-the-adult set. The first item Vladimir noticed was, of course, the revolver. It was the only gun he had ever seen that was not attached to a cop or to one of Gusev’s men, and the idea that it was in his possession proved more hilarious than frightening. Still-life of V. Girshkin with Sidearm. The gun came with a diagrammed set of instructions, scribbled in hasty pencil: “Gun already loaded with six bullets. Release safety. Aim. Hold gun steady. Press trigger (but only after you have aimed directly at target).” Hey now, thought Vladimir. Accent or not, I am a child of America. I should know how to blow someone away instinctively.

Next to the pretty gun were stacks of hundred-dollar bills, a hundred to a stack, ten stacks in all; his U.S. passport; a plane ticket for that day’s 5:00 P.M. nonstop to New York; and a brief note: “When the nurse knocks twice, the guard outside your room has been distracted. The Foot will explode two minutes later. Run for the nearest taxi (two blocks down is Prospekt Narodna, the closest thoroughfare). Your friend will be waiting for you at the airport. Do not waste time explaining yourself to the hospital staff—they have been taken care of.”

Vladimir clasped the briefcase shut and moved one foot off the bed, aiming for his tasseled loafer from Harrods.

Just then there were two knocks at the door.

…Out the door Vladimir went, galloping madly, good hand around his body, a body which seemed ready to fold up like an army cot at any minute. He was rounding corner after corner, through miserable green corridors that seemed no more than an extension of his room, past innumerable older nurses with breakfast carts paying him no heed, all the while following the magic red sign bounded by an arrow and an exclamation point that surely must have meant EXIT!

Outside! into the Prava spring! a street curling away hopefully toward Prospekt Narodna, lined with ancient, bloated Fiat ambulances… A familiar BMW stood directly across the way from the hospital steps; two associates of the Groundhog’s, Shurik and Log, were being entertained by a trio of elephantine nurses, whose hair—three bales of loose blond straw—was lifted behind them by the wind, potentially obscuring Vladimir’s escape. It would seem the gang was clowning around with a hypodermic needle.

Three o’clock on his watch. The second hand moved five seconds forward. An orange ball overhead. A displacement in the sky. The Old Town shook. The New Town shook. The earthquake had begun.

Morgan!

Vladimir knew he had to move quickly but he could not take his eyes off the burning Foot. It was oddly reminiscent of the torch held aloft by the Statue of Liberty, except this torch was far grander, blowing beautiful swirls of gray smoke over the Tavlata and into the open courtyards of the castle above. Toward the back of the Foot, where the elevator and power cables ran alongside the Heel, electrical sparks blazed into blue-white spirals of lightning, which lashed out—harmlessly, one would hope—at the Baroque forms of the Stolovan Wine Archive and Hugo Boss outlet below. Alpha had been right in his calculations: the Foot imploded, its top two-thirds collapsing into the hollow of the bottom third. This truncated, smoking Foot was truly a landmark, the proverbial “ash heap of history” around which former Cold Warriors and the economics faculty of the University of Chicago would soon gather to warm their fleshy hands.

She had done it, Morgie! She had set the skyline on fire!

But there was no time to feel pride for his strange beloved. Caught in the aftershocks of the explosion, the city continued to rumble beneath his feet, as if an endless metro train was winding its way underground. Vladimir looked to the BMW. The Groundhog’s men were crouched on the ground alongside the Stolovan nurses, looking up to the giant flaming limb. Vladimir briskly walked away from the scene, swinging his briefcase resolutely. In his pressed trousers and Prava-dence T-shirt, having shed his hospital gown, he was the consummate American businessman shunning taxi rides in favor of exercise, even if his left hand was bandaged into a fuzzy white ball, while a thick strip of gauze adorned his forehead. He breathed evenly at restful intervals in order to build energy for the next exertion, just the way Kostya had once instructed.