Russian Debutante's Handbook (23 page)

In the bedroom, he felt the thick down comforter, its outer casing embroidered with flowers just the way they had made them in Leningrad. Vladimir was ready to crawl under it, but something happened—his knees must have weakened and he found himself on the carpet, which was as scraggly as his chin. Several things occurred to him. Fran, Challah, Mother, home. He was trying to keep his eyes open and focused on the perfectly white ceiling above him, yet, in the end, even the promise of the comforter and its mothering qualities failed to keep him awake, and he fell asleep on the floor.

THE
BIZNESMENSKI
LUNCH
was in full roar. A red-nosed, pot-bellied cretin who had been introduced to Vladimir as the junior deputy assistant to the associate director for financial oversight had said some questionable things about the Groundhog’s Ukrainian girlfriend and was in the process of being ejected by a pair of enormous men in purple jackets. His screams grew even louder after the doors were closed behind him, but Vladimir’s tablemates hardly seemed to care—additional cartons of Jack Daniel’s were being wheeled into the dining room by the Kasino crew, undressed to the hilt for the occasion.

Across the table a dozen chicken Kievs had been laid waste to, and now formed a poultry Borodino of twisted bones and splattered butter. There was much argument about whether the sausages in the center of town were best inside American-style buns or on a traditional piece of rye bread, and every statement was punctuated by the sharp exhale of cigarette smoke and a leisurely reach for the bottle.

Vladimir coughed and wiped his eyes. At one end of the table Kostya was quietly putting away a side of mutton; at the other end, an elk of a Slav—one of the several that formed the heavily boozed
cortege around Gusev—shouted praise of rye bread and vodka, and cucumbers so fresh from his garden, they still smelled like shit.

Then the Groundhog’s fist came down on the table hard and there was silence. “Okay,” said the Groundhog.
“Bizness.”

The silence continued. The bushy-browed gentleman next to Vladimir turned to face him for the first time throughout the meal, eyeing him like a second helping of chicken. Eventually the others followed suit, until Vladimir poured himself a shot with shaking hands. He had been abstaining from food and drink all afternoon out of nervousness, but now that seemed less than a good idea. “Hi,” Vladimir said to the assembled. He looked down to his whiskey as if to a TelePromp Ter, but the clear liquid had nothing to impart except courage. He drank.
Oofa!
On an empty stomach it was quite a depth charge.

“Don’t be scared, have some more,” the Groundhog said. There was polite laughter led by Kostya who was trying to put a friendly spin on the hilarity.

“Yes,” Vladimir said, and drank again. The second whiskey made such an impression on his empty gullet that Vladimir jumped to his feet. The Russians leaned back; there was the rustle of hands locating holsters underneath the table.

He looked to his notes, which were written in huge block letters and littered with exclamation points, like agit-prop slogans in a May Day parade. “Gentlemen,” Vladimir announced. But then he paused just as quickly as he had started . . . He had to take a breath. It was happening! This nebulous plan he had patched together during his last days in New York was coalescing into something as tangible as an Austrian bank or a German car dealership. “They say Uncle Shurik specialized in pyramid schemes,” his father had told him, standing in the fertile backyard of the Girshkin estate, feeding his son flounder. “Know what those are, Volodya . . . ?”

Aha. He knew. Pyramid schemes. Also known as Ponzi schemes, after one Carlo Ponzi, Vladimir’s new patron saint, the alpha immigrant from Parma, the little
gonif
that could.

Vladimir looked to the Russians sitting before him. Those dear elks. They smoked too much, drank too much, killed too much. They spoke a dying language and, to be honest, were themselves not too long for this world.
They were his people.
Yes, after thirteen years in the American desert, Vladimir Girshkin had stumbled upon a different kind of tragedy. A better place to be unhappy. He had finally found his way home.

“Gentlemen,” Vladmir said once again. “I want to do a pyramid scheme!”

“Oh, I like pyramid schemes, brothers,” said one of the more amiable elks who wore the airbrushed image of his bloated, mangy-haired toddler on his lapel. But in other quarters the grumbling and eye-rolling had already started. Pyramid scheme? Not again.

“Perhaps it doesn’t sound like the most original idea,” Vladimir continued. “But I’ve done some research and discovered the perfect population for just this sort of thing. Right here in Prava.”

Gasps and muttered confusion around the table. The
biznesmeni
looked to one another as if this mysterious population might be somehow personified by Grisha the Kasino manager, or Fedya the director of sales and promotions. Whom else did they know in this town?

“Are you speaking of the Stolovans?” the Groundhog said. “Because we’ve already taken the Stolovans for a ride. We’re under investigation by the ministries of finance and public health, and by the department of fishing and hatcheries, too.”

“Yes, no more Stolovans,” his associates muttered.

“Gentlemen, how many Americans do you know?” Vladimir said.

The muttering stopped, and all eyes turned to a thin, shaky young man named Mishka who had spent much of the meal in the bathroom. “Hey, Mishka, how about that little girl of yours?” Gusev said. There was laughter and enough male horsing around for Vladimir to get a few friendly kicks in the shins and an elbow to the ribs.

Mishka was trying to sink his great big head into his tiny shoulders. “Stop it. Shut up,” he said. “I didn’t know it was that kind of bar. Groundhog, please tell them . . .”

“Mishka met an American girl with a penis,” several people eagerly explained to Vladimir. More bottles were uncorked and toasts made to the hapless Mishka who scurried out of the room.

“No, no, I don’t mean that segment of the population,” Vladimir said. “I mean the whole English-speaking expatriate community in Prava. We’re talking roughly fifty thousand people here.” Well, give or take thirty thousand.

“And do you know how much money they have on average?” He looked each man in the eye before answering, although, truthfully, he had no idea. “Ten times as much as the average Stolovan. This is roughly speaking again. Now, the beauty of this project is essentially this: turnover. Americans come, Americans go. They stay for a few years, then they go back to Detroit and get lousy jobs in the service industry or at their father’s firm. While they’re here, we milk them for all they’re worth. We promise to send them dividends across the ocean. And when we don’t, what are they going to do? Come back and prosecute? Meanwhile, we’ve got fresh blood arriving by the planeload.”

The men twirled their drinks and tapped their chicken bones against the china in contemplation. “All right. My question is this,” Gusev said. He stabbed out his cigarette with one brusque jab—a nice statement of purpose in itself. “How do we get the Americans to invest in the first place? These are, to my knowledge, mostly
young people and so they’re gullible, but they’re not exactly everyday investors.”

“A good question,” Vladimir said. His eyes traveled the room as if he were a substitute teacher trying to conquer a new domain. “Did everyone hear the question? How do we get the Americans to invest in the first place? Here is the answer: self-esteem. Most of these young men and women are trying desperately to justify their presence in Prava and the interruption of their education, their careers, and so on . . . We make them feel like they’re taking part in the resurgence of Eastern Europe. There’s an American saying, spoken by a famous black man: ‘If you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem.’ This saying has deep resonance in the American psyche, particularly among the liberal kind of American this city attracts. Now, we’ve got them not only becoming part of the solution but making money in the process. Or so they’ll think.”

“And you believe this can actually be accomplished?” the Groundhog said quietly but directly.

“Yes, and I’ll tell you what it takes!” Vladimir cried to his disciples, throwing his arms in the air with Pentecostal fervor, the zeal of the born-again. “It takes glossy brochures. We’ll have to have them professionally made, not here, perhaps in Vienna. Oh, and we’ll need artists’ renderings of the five-star resort on Lake Boloto that we’re never going to build, and then an annual report featuring the smoky factories knocked down to make way for pleasant little corporate parks with recycling bins for glass and newspapers . . . Sure, plenty of environmental stuff. That will sell. I see holistic centers and Reiki clinics, too.”

He was on a roll. There was no more grumbling. Gusev was scribbling on his napkin. Kostya was whispering to the Groundhog. The Groundhog first seemed agreeable to Kostya’s counsel, but a minute later the mercurial Hog slammed the table once
again. “Wait one minute,” the Groundhog said. “We don’t know any Americans.” Kostya had set him up well.

“That, friends,” Vladimir said, “is why I’m here with you today. I propose that I single-handedly infiltrate the American community in Prava. Despite my fluent Russian and my tolerance of drink, I can easily double as a first-rate American. My credentials are impeccable. I have attended one of the premier liberal-minded colleges in the States and have a profound appreciation for the dress, manners, and outlook of the disaffected young American set. I have lived many years in New York, the capital of the disaffected movement, have had many angry, disenfranchised friends of the artistic persuasion, and have just completed a romantic liaison with a woman who in both looks and temperament personifies the vanguard of this unique social group. Gentlemen, with no intention of conceit, I assure you—I am the best there is. And that’s that.”

Kostya, that dear man, began to applaud. This was a lonely sound at first, but then the Groundhog picked up one hand, looked it over as if instructions were written on the back, sighed, picked up the other hand, sighed again, and finally brought his hands together. Immediately, dozens of fat, sweaty palms began smacking one another, there were shouts of
“Ura!”
and Vladimir turned crimson.

This time it was Gusev who put his fist down and silenced the table. “What do you want?” he said. “For yourself, that is.”

“Not much, actually,” Vladimir said. “I need a certain amount per week for drinks, drugs, taxis, whatever it takes to ingratiate myself in the community. Based on experience, I know that it is best to be seen in as many clubs, bars, cafés as possible, thereby creating a self-perpetuating aura of notoriety. What this costs in Prava, I don’t know. In New York, with housing taken care of, I would wager three, four thousand dollars a week. Here, I believe,
two thousand would suffice. Plus an initial six, seven thousand in relocation costs.” That would take care of his little debt to Laszlo and Roberta.

“I think Gusev means what do you want in terms of profit-sharing,” said the Groundhog, looking to Gusev for confirmation.

Vladimir held his breath. Did they mean
on top
of his ludicrous two-thousand-a-week request? Did they have any idea . . . But, wait a second, could he have betrayed his ignorance of
bizness
etiquette by not asking for profit sharing . . . There seemed enough money to go around; the dining hall looked like a Versace showroom. There was nothing left to do but shrug and declare nonchalantly: “Whatever you think reasonable. Ten percent?”

There was consensus throughout the room. It certainly seemed reasonable. When these men thought percentages it was usually in increments of fifty. “Comrades,” Vladimir said. “Fellow
biznesmeni,
I want you to be convinced—I’m not out to fleece you. I am what in America is called a ‘team player.’ So . . .”

So? He tried to come up with an appropriate segue. “So let’s drink to success!”

After this there were many toasts in favor of the team player. A queue was forming to shake his hand. Several boisterous entrepreneurs had to be ejected from the room after stepping out of turn.

THEY PULLED AWAY
from the compound. It was a breezy, beautiful day; even the chemical haze seemed agreeable to Vladimir: its job was to correct the eternally smiling, self-satisfied sun with a measure of historical accuracy. Kostya sat in front, playing with the fuzzy dice. Their driver, a Chechen resplendent in the mammoth-woolly Chechen national hat, had eyes the color of tomato puree and looked ready to mash the tail end of any
cardboard Polish Fiat that was traveling at less than the speed of sound. “Look,” Kostya said.

A series of broad, neoclassical facades, seamlessly attached one to the next, stretched to the right, cream-colored and placid despite a belligerent pair of watchtowers peeking out from behind. And in the center of the mélange, flying buttresses and spires spanned a sooty Gothic church that quite easily eclipsed the surrounding complex in presence and scale. “Jesus,” Vladimir said, his face pressed to the window. “What a beautiful mess.”

“Prava Castle,” said Kostya modestly.

To celebrate this unabashedly tourist moment, Vladimir lit one of the moldy local cigarettes that were presented to him by the Groundhog at the conclusion of lunch. He rolled down a window just as a pair of smiling M&M’s waved their white-gloved hands at him—the personable candies were welded to the side of a streetcar. “Ah!” Vladimir said as the old beast rumbled by. He looked back to the castle still scrolling on the right then back to the waving M&M’s disappearing on the left. He felt unconditionally happy. “Driver, play some music!” he said.

“ABBA’s greatest hits?” the fellow asked. It was a rhetorical question.

“Play ‘Super Trooper,’ ” Kostya said.

“Oh yes. I like that one,” Vladimir said. A sycamore-scented breeze blew through the car, as the Nordic cuties crooned off the tape deck and the three ex-Soviets bopped along in accents of varying quality. They began to descend, looping around the hill upon which the castle was perched, just as a tram swung the other way, missing them by centimeters. “Fucking Stolovans!” shouted the Chechen.