Russian Debutante's Handbook (22 page)

Then the passport check, where his first Stolovan native appeared, light-haired and beefy, with a beautiful golden mustache. “No,” he said to Vladimir, pointing first to the passport photo of the college-era Vladimir with his goatee in full bloom and his dark, wispy hair extended to his behind, and then to the newly shaved, short-haired Vladimir before him. “No.”

“Yes,” Vladimir said. He tried to assume the same tired smile as in the passport, then pulled on his emerging chin hairs to indicate the forest to come.

“No,” the passport agent said meekly, but stamped Vladimir’s passport anyway. Clearly, socialism had fallen.

He picked up his valise at the luggage carousel and was ushered along with the Americans into the arrival lounge where a gleaming American Express cash machine lay in wait for them. The visiting moms and dads were picking their offspring out of a line-up of slick, young urban types, dressed as if they had just burgled New York’s famed Screaming Mimi’s boutique. Vladimir made his way through the maternal hugs and paternal shoulder-slapping to the doors, which, through a cryptic red arrow, promised escape. But he also took note of the situation: young Americans being visited by their moneyed elders. Moneyed? At least middle-class, these fiftysomethings in rumpled cords and goofy oversized sweaters. And nowadays the upper class looked down to the middle for tips on casual dressing, so anything was possible.

And then, as instantaneously as a plane falling out of the sky, the scene was russified.

Small-arms fire exploded outside.

A dozen car alarms engaged.

A detachment of men, each with a small Kalashnikov at hip level, swiftly parted the Americans into two screaming herds.

The requisite red carpet was rolled out between them.

A convoy of BMWs and armor-plated Range Rovers was assembled in protective formation.

A crepe banner bearing the curious legend
PRAVAINVEST
#1
FINANCIAL CONCERN WELCOME THE GIRSHKIN
was unfurled.

And only then did our man finally catch sight of his new benefactor.

Flanked by three associates, all aglow in their nylon sports jackets and matching space-age trousers made out of alpaca or maybe silicon, the Groundhog solemnly approached. He was a burly, pocked little man with his eyes slightly crossed and his hair parted to make the least of a disappearing hairline.

The Groundhog placed one paw on Vladimir’s shoulder,
holding him in place (as if he would dare move), then stuck out his other hand and, in his best Ukrainian accent, said rhetorically: “You are Girshkin.”

Yes, Girshkin he was.

“So, then,” the Groundhog said, “I am Tolya Rybakov, the president of PravaInvest, also called . . .” He looked around to his two immediate associates—one Groundhog-sized, the other closer to Vladimir’s physique—both too busy staring closely at Vladimir to pay their boss any mind. “As my father might have told you, I am also called . . . the Groundhog.”

Vladimir continued to shake his hand, trying to make up for his own hand’s small size with vigor and motion, while muttering, “Yes, yes, I have heard. Very pleased to meet you, Mister Groundhog.”

“Just Groundhog,” the Groundhog said tersely. “We don’t use titles in this company. Everyone knows who they are. This—” he pointed to the enormous man with small Tatar eyes and a bald dome encircled by rings of wrinkles like the cross-section of a sequoia, “This is our chief operations officer, Misha Gusev.”

“Are you called the Goose?” Vladimir asked, seizing on the name’s Russian meaning and the Groundhog’s penchant for animal names.

“No,” Gusev said. “Are you called the Jew?”

The Groundhog laughed and waved an accusatory finger at Gusev, while the third man—small but solid, with blond hair as fine as a baby’s, his eyes cobalt blue the way Lake Baikal’s waters had been some centuries ago—shook his head and said, “Forgive Gusev, he is a serious anti-Semite.”

“Yes, right,” Vladimir said. “We all have our . . .”

“Konstantin Bakutin,” the third man said, offering his hand. “Call me Kostya. I am the Chief Financial Officer. Congratulations on your exploits with the Immigration and Naturalization Service. That’s a tough nut to crack, and it’s not like we haven’t tried.”

Vladimir began to thank his conational in his most weighty, elaborate Russian, but the Groundhog pulled them outside, where between clusters of tour buses and forlorn Polish-made taxis stood a caravan of BMWs, each sporting a yellow “PravaInvest” logo across the bow, each surrounded by tall men in purple jackets of an unusual cut, loosely bridging the gap between business suit and smoking jacket. “These are mostly Stolovans,” explained the Groundhog. “We hire a lot of local labor.” He waved to his people as Gusev stuck two thumbs into his mouth and whistled.

In an impressive piece of postmodern choreography, twelve car doors were opened simultaneously by twelve lanky Stolovans. An associate relieved Vladimir of his luggage. Inside, the sober German interiors were violated beyond comprehension with Jersey-style zebra-striped seats and woolly cupholders.

“Very pleasant decor,” Vladimir said. “Very, as they say in American computer circles, user-friendly.”

“Oh, Esterhazy does these for us,” the Groundhog said, whistling to a hairy little man sulking about in the shadows of a Range Rover. Esterhazy, bare-chested in his black leather jacket, his leather pants capped off by suede Capezios, waved a pack of Camel cigarettes at Vladimir and gave the Hog a thumbs-up. “Yes, the Hungarians have always been ahead of the times,” said the Groundhog, almost sighing with jealousy.

With this international discussion at an end, the procession took off for the highway, Vladimir watching out for the first telltale signs—the flora and fauna, the brick and mortar—of his new country. Within minutes, the brick and mortar appeared on both sides of the road, like a signpost signaling
VLADIMIR
’
S CHILDHOOD
,
NEXT HUNDRED EXITS
: an endless stretch of rickety plaster Soviet-era apartment houses, each edifice peeling and waterlogged so that the inadvertent shapes of animals and constellations could be recognized by an imaginative child. And in the spaces between these
behemoths were the tiny grazing spaces where Vladimir sometimes played, spaces adorned with a fistful of sand and some rusty swings. True, this was Prava and not Leningrad, but then these houses formed one long demented line from Tajikistan to Berlin. There was no stopping them.

“First lesson in the Stolovan language,” Kostya said. “These housing complexes the Stolovans call
panelak
s. It is evident why, no?” When nobody answered, Kostya said, “Because they look like they’re made out of panels.”

“But we don’t bother learning Stolovan,” the Groundhog said. “The bastards can all speak Russian.”

“If they give you any problems,” Gusev said, “give me a ring, and we’ll run them over like we did in ’69. I was there, you know.”

The blocks of flats continued for at least another ten minutes, interrupted occasionally by the grimy sarcophagus of an overused power station or the Orwellian skyline of factory smokestacks barely visible from within the billowing clouds of their own emissions. At times, Vladimir would point to a rising office tower marked as the future site of an Austrian bank, or an old warehouse being spruced up to accommodate a German car dealership, at which point his hosts would say as a chorus: “Everywhere you turn, money for the taking.”

Just as the
panelaks
seemed ready to run out and the Prava of travel brochures about to redeem her promise of cobblestone streets bisected by the silver indentations of tram lines, the procession lurched to the right along a winding sandy path that on occasion would break out into asphalt, as if to show the motorcade just how civilized life could sometimes be. In the distance, perched against the bluff of an eroded hill, the Groundhog’s own
panelak
compound awaited, its balconies like the parapets of a vast socialist fortress. “Four buildings, two constructed in ’81, two in ’83,” the Groundhog rattled off.

“We got the whole thing in ’89 for less than 300,000 dollars U.S.,” added Kostya, and Vladimir wondered whether he should commit these figures to memory in the event of a quiz. Instantly, he felt tired.

They pulled into the compound’s quadrangle where several American jeeps stood at attention alongside a tank with a gaping hole for a barrel. “Very good,” said the well-disposed Groundhog. “Gusev and I have to take off for town, so Kostya will show you your apartment. Tomorrow we have what I call the
biznesmenski
lunch. That’s a weekly event, by the way, so bring some ideas, write something down.”

Gusev sneered good-bye and the motorcade began the complicated task of making their way around the tank and heading onward to golden Prava, while Kostya, whistling a Russian folk tune concerning boysenberries, waved Vladimir toward the entrance of a building unceremoniously labeled #2.

The lobby was cramped with two dozen men and their rifles, sweating away beneath a bare light bulb; loose playing cards and empty liquor bottles covered the floor, and several flies, thick and dazed with overfulfillment, lethargically scuttled about the landscape. “This is Vladimir, an important young man,” Kostya announced.

Vladimir bowed slightly in the manner of an important young man. He turned around to make sure he wasn’t leaving anybody out.
“Dobry den’,”
he said.

A man of indeterminate age, his face covered with red beard and glow-in-the-dark children’s Band-Aids, lifted his Kalashnikov and mumbled back the greeting. Evidently he was speaking for everyone.

“Gusev’s top men,” Kostya said as they turned into a corridor. “All former Soviet Interior Ministry troops, so I wouldn’t step on their toes. Don’t ask me what exactly we need them for. Certainly don’t ask Gusev.”

The corridor ended with a door slightly ajar, the word
KASINO
written upon it with industrial grease, and Dire Straits’ “Money for Nothing” audible within. “In need of renovation,” said Kostya as a forewarning, “but still a money-maker.”

The Kasino was the size of Vladimir’s math-and-science high school gymnasium, and seemed to have as much to do with gambling as the other facility did with sports. Clusters of folding tables and chairs were filled with young blond women smoking and trying to look dangerous in the brief light of several halogen lamps.

“Dobry den’,”
the gentlemanly Vladimir said, although by then the
den’
might have very well turned into evening outside the Kasino’s windowless gloom. A frontal mass of unfiltered smoke floated his way from the lungs of a woman whose skin was the greenish color of raw onion, and whose tiny body was seemingly held in place by the weight of her shoulder pads.

“This is Vladimir,” Kostya said. “He’s here to do things with the Americans.”

The trance was broken: the women pulled themselves up and crossed their legs. There was giggling and the word
“Amerikanets”
was said many times. The vixen with the shoulder pads struggled to her feet, leaning against her folding table for support, and said in English, “I am Lydia. I am driving Ford Escort.”

The others thought that tremendously witty and applauded. Vladimir was about to say a few encouraging words on their behalf, but Kostya took his arm and escorted him out of the Kasino, saying, “Ah, but you must be tired from travel.”

They went up two flights, the staircase redolent of beef stew and the starchy smells of Russian family life, and emerged onto a brightly lit corridor of flats. “Number twenty-three,” said Kostya, swinging about a key chain like a bed-and-breakfast proprietor.

They went in. “Main room,” Kostya said with an epic sweep of
the arm. The space was filled entirely by an olive-colored Swedish couch, a bulky television set, and Vladimir’s opened and searched-through valise. The magazine articles he had photocopied on Prava’s expatriate scene were scattered about; his punctured shampoo bottle was gurgling under the couch, a river of green trailing away from it. Ah, those curious Russians. It was nice to be back in a land of transparency.

“Next stop, bedroom with a nice big bed,” Kostya said. There was also a simple oakwood dresser and a window overlooking the smokestacks defining the horizon. “Here is a kitchen with good equipment, and there is a small room for working and thinking important thoughts.” Vladimir peeked into a walk-in closet occupied by a school-sized desk and a Cyrillic typewriter on top of it. He nodded.

“In Moscow this apartment would be for two families,” Kostya said. “Hungry?”

“No, thank you,” Vladimir said. “On the plane, I—”

“A drink, maybe?”

“No, I feel rather—”

“Then to bed.” Kostya put his hands on Vladimir’s shoulders and guided him into the bedroom, reminding Vladimir of how freely Russians touched one another; such a change from his adopted homeland across the ocean, where even his father, the once-earthy friend of the collective farmer, had been keeping a proper American distance as of late. “This is my card,” Kostya said. “Call at any time. I am here to protect you.”

Protect? “But aren’t we all comrades together?” said travel-weary, sleepy-eyed Vladimir, as if he were auditioning for Soviet
Sesame Street.

No answer to that question was forthcoming. “After the
biznesmenski
lunch,” Kostya said, “the two of us will go see Prava. I have a
feeling you will have an appreciation for the city’s beauty, which the rest of our cadre . . . Well, what can I say? I’ll get you tomorrow.”

AFTER HE LEFT
,
Vladimir went through his luggage looking for a bottle of minoxidil. Per Francesca’s admonitions against premature baldness, he was becoming something of a hair-tonic addict. He went into the toilet, which was a drab affair, distinguished by a shower curtain with a larger-than-life peacock, its plumage blazing, its drooling beak ready to make love to anything remotely feathered and egg-bearing.

Vladimir moved the hair aside from his temples, found the areas in need, and rubbed down a prolific amount of the minoxidil to make up for the round missed on the plane. He watched his eyes narrow in the bathroom mirror while a single wayward drop of the drug descended his forehead to pollinate his goatee.