Russian Debutante's Handbook by Gary Shteyngart Read Free Book Online Page B

“It’s clean,” he said.
    “You’re a clean boy,” she said, blowing her nose ferociously.
    “I’m glad we had this talk,” he said. “I think it’s time for me to go home now.” He walked over to the largest oak door in Scarsdale, New York, beheld its lucent door knob carved from Bohemian crystal, which he had always been too scared to smudge when he was a teenager; come to think of it, was scared still.
    “Bye-bye,” he said in English.
    There was no answer. He turned around to take one last look. Mother was staring at his feet. “Dosvedanya,” Vladimir said.
    Mother continued to appraise his feet. “I’m leaving,” Vladimir announced. “I’m going to go kiss Grandmother good-bye, then catch the 4:51 train.” The thought of this train cheered him immediately. Express train to Manhattan now departing Scarsdale station. All aboard!
    He was almost out of the woods. He was turning the knob, smudging the Bohemian crystal with all five fingers and a soft, sooty palm, when Mother issued a directive: “Vladimir, walk over to the window,” she said.
    “What’s there?”
    “Quickly, please. Without your father’s trademark hesitation.”
    Vladimir did as he was told. He looked out the window. “What am I looking for?” he asked. “Grandma’s by the oak trees again. She’s throwing branches at the Indian.”
    “Forget your grandma, Vladimir. Walk back to the door. Just as I said, back to the door . . . Left foot, then the right foot . . . Now stop. Turn around. Back to the window once again. Walk naturally, the way you usually walk. Don’t try to control your feet, let them fall where they may . . .” She paused. She cocked her head to one side. She got down on one knee and looked at his feet from a new angle. She got up slowly, wordlessly sizing up her son.
    “So it is true,” she said in a voice of complete exhaustion, a voice Vladimir remembered from their early American days, when she would run home from her English and typing lessons to make him his favorite Salad Olivier—potatoes, canned peas, pickles, and diced ham tossed with a half-jar of mayonnaise. Sometimes she’d fall asleep at the table of their tiny Queens flat, a long knife in one hand, an English-Russian dictionary in the other, a row of pickles lined up on the chopping block, their fate uncertain.
    “What do you mean?” Vladimir said presently. “What is true?”
    “Vladimir, how can I say this? Please don’t be cross with me. I know you’ll be cross with me, you’re such a soft young man. But if I don’t tell you the truth, will I be fulfilling my motherly duties? No, I will not. The truth then . . .” She sighed deeply, an alarming sigh, the sigh of exhaling the last doubt, the sigh of preparing for battle. “Vladimir,” she said, “you walk like a Jew.”
    “What?”
    “ What? The anger in his voice. What? he says. What? Walk back to the window now. Just walk back to the window. Look at your feet. Look carefully. Look at how your feet are spread apart. Look at how you walk from side to side. Like an old Jew from the shtetl. Little Rebbe Girshkin. Oh, now he’s going to scream at me! Or maybe he’s going to cry. Either way, he’s going to hurt his mother. That’s how he repays his lifelong debt to her, by tearing her to shreds like a wolf.
    “Oh, poor, poor Challah. Do you know how sorry I feel for your girlfriend, Vladimir . . . Think about it, how can a man love a woman when he despises his own mother? It can’t be done. And how can a woman love a man who walks like a Jew? I honestly don’t see what keeps you two together.”
    “I think many people walk the way I do,” Vladimir whispered.
    “Maybe in Amatevka,” Mother said. “In the Vilnius ghetto, maybe. You know, I’ve been keeping an eye on you for years, but it just hit me today, your little Jew-walk. Come here, I’ll teach you to walk like a normal person. Come here! No? He’s shaking his head like a little