Russian Debutante's Handbook (53 page)

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.

This was wise. As he approached the street’s curve, which would definitively take him out of the Russians’ line of sight, the twin banks of sooty buildings echoed Shurik’s unhappy voice: “HALT!”

Exert!

And he was gone, the architecture scrolling around him, an engine swiftly firing up a dozen meters behind. Now he could only feel his head and his two feet—one, two, one, two—carrying aloft the rest of his ridiculous body, like Kostya bearing his cross. And the wind! The damn wind blew the wrong way down the never-ending street like a reprimand, slamming into Vladimir’s unfortunate chest, knocking out his air supply.

A reprisal! Like a nesting doll, the side street bore a side street. Following the rules of escape, Vladimir ducked into it. But the alley must have harbored some obscure museum, for it was chock-full of melancholy school children being siphoned through, like a slow-motion running of the bulls.

Vladimir stopped, regained a single breath, and shouted: “The
Russians are coming! Run!” This warning proved especially legitimate since it was shouted in Russian and against the background of a steadily exploding hundred-meter statue of Stalin’s Foot. Pandemonium broke out, with the kiddies bleating, school bags flying through the air, teachers pushing their plumpness forward into children, children squeezed into the gray plaster of buildings, falling like toy soldiers into the vestibule of a new subterranean pizza parlor. Waving his hand in the air like a flag of national resistance, Vladimir charged through, still screaming his warning; he managed to knock down only one kid—a slow, sad-looking little Kafka who reminded Vladimir very much of himself as a child. He was sorry to see him go.

Forward! Ahead, a great light spilled into the side street, a light born of uncluttered space, of an enormous boulevard, of Prospekt Narodna—the Avenue of the Nation! Still screaming his dated warning, Vladimir careened into a crowd of peace-loving lunchtime strollers, all craning their necks to see the carnage of the Foot, caught up in the universal mood of astonishment and joy.

Behind him, his pursuers let loose the klaxon to clear the side street of third-graders. Not an easy task, since the alleyway was about as big as the BMW itself, and the sidewalks could accommodate only so many little Stolovans.

Feeling time was on his side, Vladimir pushed through the knots of businessmen in purple suits and white socks and leapt into the middle of the street. Once again, he ran. Only now there was no duality of smashed torso and Olympian legs. There was only pain and speed! Now, the happy wind was on the right side of history, and it spoke louder than the clang of the long-beaked tram heading in his direction: VLADIMIR VICTORIOUS!

He altered his course by a hair and brushed past the cream-and-orange streetcar, catching sight of the terrified
babushka
s clutching their Kmart bags within, for up ahead was the storied store itself. But Vladimir couldn’t even contemplate escaping into
men’s casuals, just as in his frenzy he had lost sight of his original goal: finding a taxi, of which surely a dozen green exemplars by now had passed, alongside a procession of police cars, lights ablaze, rushing toward the burning Foot.

One! two! one! two! with the legs, not stopping even for a breath until the counting became a singular onetwooo, when suddenly the Prospekt Narodna concluded itself and he had to apply the brakes.

Ahead, the hazy blue of the Tavlata and a bridge spanning its length. The thought of being trapped on the bridge with nothing but the murky river below did not appeal; Vladimir turned right on the embankment, but at this point suffered a brief convulsion. His ribs scraped against each other with the imagined sound of cutlery and an immense ball of blood anchored in phlegm rose up to coat his mouth with metal. Bent over with pain, his former speed unthinkable, Vladimir made slow progress up the embankment toward the castle in the distance.

He passed the famed restaurant where he had eaten with the Groundhog, and briefly considered taking refuge in its international quarters. Any place with nymphs on the walls and Cole Porter on the piano could not possibly play host to an afternoon assassination. But the building next to it was by far more intriguing. An enormous Stolovan tricolor hung from the ground-level window; it was distinguished by the socialist star, long since banished from similar flags. Indeed, if one strained one’s ears against the hum of the city, the “Internationale,” shrill and raspy, could be heard from within like a painful birth. Of course! The Great Hall of People’s Friendship! This was where František delivered his well-paid speeches to the old communist faithful.

In the distance, where the Prospekt Narodna lapsed into the river, the auto of Shurik and Log ground itself to a full and complete stop with smoking tires and all the appropriate sounds.
Vladimir turned to the other direction, the direction of further escape, to catch the monstrous, sloping hood of the Groundhog’s customized Beamer easing its way onto the embankment. And so his fate was sealed.

Past a thick velvet curtain lay the bottom floor of a spacious villa converted into an auditorium. A marble Lenin towered over an empty podium. The podium itself looked out over rows of folding chairs occupied by the Sons and Daughters of the Radiant Future—those crisp octogenarians—the grandmas still dressed in blue work dresses, their revolutionary spouses now sporting significant bosoms to which their many insignia were pinned.

Toward the front of the room, by Lenin’s left toe, to be exact, Vladimir caught sight of the youngest person in the joint save himself. His question mark of a cowlick had always been a dead giveaway in a crowded bar. František, with the benefit of his height, noticed Vladimir as well and quickly started making his way back, managing to shake every single hand that was offered him, like a rabbi during a break in the minyan services. “What the hell?” he said, pushing Vladimir back toward the velvet curtain and the street outside.

“I couldn’t get a cab!” Vladimir shouted.

“
Jesusmaria!
How did you find this place?”

“The flag . . . You told me . . .” Vladimir closed his eyes and remembered to breathe at any cost. He breathed. “Look, they’ve surrounded the two streets, this way and that way. They’re going to start going into buildings. Do you see what I mean?” He looked around to see if any Guardians of the Foot were present, fearful they might recognize him from Morgan’s showdown at Big Toe . . . But all the
babushka
s looked the same to him.

“What about the Foot?” František said. “I felt the ground shaking. I thought—”

“It’s gone,” Vladimir said. “Finished.”

His voice carried all too well. Gray heads were turning, chairs squeaking backward, and the hall was soon suffused with amazed whispers of “Trotsky!”

At first, František did not pay these rumors any notice, probably figuring that anything at all could have stirred up the waves of senility fiercely undulating through the room. Instead, he was trying to calm Vladimir, reminding him that they were in this together, that they were both fellow travelers, “men of taste in a tasteless world,” and that he would do anything to save Vladimir. But by then the disparate whispers of “Trotsky!” were united into a single proletarian chant, and the two could no longer ignore the gathering momentum. With embarrassed smiles they turned to face the People and affected a little wave of the hand.

“Interesting,” František said, as he energetically massaged his bare temples. “How very Menshevik of them. I would never have imagined . . .But all right . . .Never mind. Shall we try for Plan Z, then? I take it you still know your Marxism-Leninism,
Tovarishch
Trotsky?”

“It was my major in the Midwestern col—”

“Then please follow me.”

“But, of course, whatever you’re thinking is madness . . .” Vladimir started to say, but in the meantime he followed the madman faithfully to the front of the room. A flawless hush settled over the congregation, well-trained after forty years of marching happily into the future and never bowing to facts.

With arms swinging in martial fashion and chin set firm, František mounted the podium. “Dear friends of Glorious October,” he said in perfect Russian. “We have a guest today the caliber of which we have not seen since that Bulgarian with the funny parrot last year . . . Yezdinsky, was it? Only thirty years old, but already thrice a Hero of Socialist Labor, not to mention the youngest person ever to receive the Order of Andropov for
Heroic Operation of a Wheat Combine . . . Comrades, please welcome the General Secretary of the Central Presidium of the Liberal Democratic Worker-Peasant Alliance of Unrepentant Communists and a serious contender for Russia’s presidency in the next election . . . Comrade Yasha Oslov!”

The geezers rose to their feet in an enormous polyester wave, cheering “Hurrah, Trotsky!” even though Vladimir’s alias had by now been established. Noticing his injuries, some of the grandmas were shouting: “What ails you, Trotsky? We’ll fix you up!”

Vladimir waved to them solicitously as he climbed the stairs, nearly losing his fragile balance in the act. He set his briefcase full of greenbacks on top of the lectern and adjusted the microphone with his working hand, waiting for the applause to subside. “Stalwart comrades,” he shouted and immediately stopped. Stalwart comrades . . . Um, and then what? “First let me ask you, is it acceptable that I speak in Russian?”

“But of course! Speak, Russian eagle!” the audience said as one.

My kind of audience, Vladimir thought. He breathed in all his doubts once, felt the pain of breathing, then dispelled them into the air, thick with the smell of groceries going bad and cheap suits worn on a warm day. “Stalwart comrades!” he shouted into the silence. “Outside it is a warm April day, the sky is clear. But over the mausoleum of Vladimir Ilych,” he turned for emphasis to the statue of Lenin, “the sky is a perpetual gray!”

“Woe, poor Lenin!” moaned the crowd. “Poor are his heirs.”

“Poor, indeed,” Vladimir said. “Just look what has happened to your beautiful Red Prava. Americans everywhere you turn! (The crowd roared its opposition!) Performing lewd sexual acts on the Emanuel Bridge as if to laugh at the sanctity of the Socialist Family and to spread their AIDS! (Roar!) Shooting up their marijuana with dirty needles in the Old Town Square, where once a hundred thousand comrades thrilled to the words of Jan Zhopka, your first
working-class president. (Roar! Roar!) Is this why for forty years you have toiled in the fields and melted all that metal . . . melted all that metal into steel, built those wonderful trams, a subway system that is the envy of the Paris Métro, public toilets everywhere . . . And let’s not forget the human element! How many faithful, energetic young comrades have we produced, like Comrade František here . . .”

He waved to František in the front row and presented the crowd with both an upturned thumb and a victory sign (he wasn’t about to skimp on them). “Franti!” cheered the crowd.

“Yes, Comrade Franti has been dispensing
Red Justice
since he was in diapers! Keep beating up that counter-revolutionary element with your mighty pen, dear friend!” Oh, he was starting to like this! He paced before the lectern like an agitated Bolshevik, even touching the cool marble of the Big Daddy of the Revolution for support. “Look at my hand!” he shouted, waving the bandaged package in the air with his other hand. “Look what they’ve done to it, the industrialists! I spoke my mind at a rally of Negro workers in Washington, and the CIA put it through a meat grinder!”

At the mention of the meat grinder, a comrade in a frumpy mink and floral headscarf could no longer contain herself. She sprang to her feet and waved a segmented string of sausages around her head, lasso-style. “I paid forty crowns for these!” she shouted. “What do you think of that?”

“Yes,” the crowd picked up the rallying cry. “What do you think of that?”

“What do
I
think of that?” Vladimir pointed to himself as if he were surprised that they would solicit his opinion. “I think that the store owner responsible for charging forty crowns for those sausages should be shot!”

The entire crowd was now on its feet; its ovation must have
been heard over at the restaurant next door. “I think his family should be forced to leave Prava as enemies of the people,” shouted the incorrigible Vladimir, “and his children never allowed to attend university!” Hurrah! answered the crowd.