So she had been invited, damn it! Now the burning question of our times was: Why, earlier, had she been by herself in her panelak watching television with the cat? Perhaps she was getting ready--the shower, the bathrobe, the ointment on the forehead. Or, worse yet, she didn't even care about Larry Litvak's party. Devil confound it all! thought Vladimir to himself in Russian, a phrase that floated in angry and unannounced whenever his worldly disequilibrium mounted to truly Dostoyevskian proportions.

"I also know of a little out-of-the-way club," he ventured. "No one's ever heard of it, and there's plenty of actual Stolovans." But she insisted on the cocktail party, and now there was nothing to do but go. As if to underscore the situation, Jan and the Beamer pulled up stealthily behind them and started flashing their headlights for attention. The evening was set.

BUT ALL WAS not lost, not by a long shot. When they opened the door to Larry's pad, the multitudes did let loose with a tumbler-shaking "VLAAAAD!" and, of course, cried out nothing to the barely known Morgan, although surely she was admired in a silent way.

Larry Litvak lived, per his astronaut story, in the Old Town, actually on the outskirts of the Town, bordering Prava's sprawling bus terminal, which, like all bus terminals, exuded nothing but rankness and ill-health, and was populated by a cast of characters fit for a television expose.

The lights were down, way down, reminding Vladimir of college parties where the less one could discern of one's companions, the more distant beds would rumble by the early morning's light. Still, Vladimir could see that this was a spacious flat, built in the booming interwar period when Stolovans were still expected to live in apartments larger than their dachshunds' quarters. In fact, the ceilings were so high, the place could have been mistaken for a SoHo loft, but reality abounded in the scary, socialist furniture--the squat, utilitarian divans and easy chairs outfitted in the kind of furry, worsted material that the babushkas enjoyed wearing on cold days. As if to accentuate his furniture's prickly quality, Larry had installed three bergamots in the center of the main room and had placed miniature floodlights beneath them so that their craggy branches spread unsettling shadows against the ceiling and walls.

"It's quite a place," Vladimir shouted to Morgan over the din, with the implied knowledge of having been there many times before. Morgan looked to him in incomprehension. Things were happening too fast: there were hands being thrust at Vladimir from left and right, some already wet and reeking of gin, not to mention the frequent hugs and mouth-to-mouth kisses Vladimir received from impassioned well-wishers. Clearly, the young lady wasn't used to a Girshkin-sized social persona. Did she have any choice now other than to love him?

They were carried by the crush of people into a kitchen smoothly lit with candles where Larry was situated, his bong working overtime, and several of Prava's more hippielike denizens swaying to Jerry Garcia, their expressions blank, their bodies loose and loafy like palm trees caught in the wind. "Hey, man," said Larry, dressed in a transparent black kimono, which revealed in its entirety his sinewy but muscular frame--the show-off. He hugged Vladimir tightly until the latter could feel every part of him.

"Hey, man," he kept repeating, and Vladimir fondly recalled his high school days when he and Baobab and the rest of them were always stoned and would spend the day mumbling: "Hey, man . . . don't eat that thing, man . . . that thing is for later, man . . ." Oh, the innocence of those days, that brief period in the Reagan/Bush era when the sixties had returned to American high schools in force. The stooped posture, the half-closed eyes, the hundred-word vocabulary. Oh.

The hippies were introduced, their names sliding in and out of memory. The piece de resistance, the bong almost a meter in length, was wheeled around for the guest of honor. Larry bent down to light it while Vladimir sucked on the rancid mouthpiece, then passed it to Morgan who tackled it like a good sport.

SATISFIED, VLADIMIR TOOK her arm and they floated back into the main room, scarcely remembering to tell the "we'll be right back" party lie to Larry Litvak and company. Here, there was another crush around Vladimir and his date, this one consisting entirely of tall, elegant men in chinos, wire-rims, and nose rings plying Vladimir with drinks, mentioning by name Cagliostro and (surprisingly) PravaInvest, then cheerfully prodding their women friends into the foreground for brief introductions. This whole setup was reminiscent of a nineteenth-century ball in the Russian provinces, when the local society men had spotted the general arrived fresh from Petersburg and then closed in on him full of platitudes and talk of business, toting their beautiful wives behind them as a sign of their own rank and good breeding.

The year 1993? Well, such anachronisms could have been a sign of the much-discussed Victorian revival. And while it was shocking for Vladimir to meet these non-Bohemians who wore their nose rings out of fashion and not rebellion, it struck an old, aristocratic chord in him (for in the early twentieth century the Girshkins had owned three hotels in the Ukraine) and he responded with a mounting sense of noblesse oblige: "Yes, pleased to meet you . . . Of course, I've heard of you . . . We ran into each other at the Martini Bar at the Nouveau . . . Such pleasant circumstances . . . This is Morgan, yes . . . And you are? . . . And this is? . . ."

Of course, being under the liberating influence of a meter's worth of dope quickly added hilarity to the proceedings, setting Vladimir's mind at ease as he floated above the masses and their babbling and screeching and clucking. Soon his Russian accent emerged in force, lending Count Girshkin an aura of authenticity, which left the fair representatives of Houston and Boulder and Cincinnati twice enamored of the small poet and businessman around whom all of Prava's expatriate world would now seem to revolve.

He felt Morgan tugging at his sleeve, no longer amused at being marginalized. "Let's find Alexandra," she whispered and, whether she meant it or not, touched Vladimir's ear with her balmy nose.

"Let's," Vladimir said, and he put his arm around her and squeezed the broad Ohioan shoulders, so healthy and amenable to squeezing.

They broke through the cordon of well-wishers and arrived at the bergamots which, swaying from the winds of a distant fan, scratched at Vladimir's face until he stopped to look stupidly at his arboreal assailants as if to say: "Don't you know who I am?"

Behind the little trees they saw a long, satin couch flanked by similar recliners on which the Crowd had decamped along with several martini decanters and entire carafes of curacao. They sat laughing and passing judgment without stop at those around them like some hastily assembled Style Council. Occasionally they entertained outsiders who approached with little bundles of paper bearing words or drawings, and sometimes with little computer disks. It seemed that the upcoming first issue of Cagliostro had swelled their heads nicely; a frontal assault by Mexican bees would have proved superfluous.

Cohen spotted them amid the shrubbery: "There he is! Vladimir!"

"Morgan!" Alexandra shouted with something like awe, determined to raise the standing of her newfound friend.

The couple approached and a glittering sky-blue divan was rolled out for them as if by the Devil's command. Alexandra kissed Morgan on both cheeks, while Vladimir shook hands with the boys and sweetly kissed Alexandra on one cheek, and was kissed, in turn, on both.

The boys had outdone themselves, channeling the glam-nerd look into a formal direction: ash-brown sports jackets and shirts of mourning hues with morose little ties snaking down to their bellies. Alexandra wore a new taupe riding jacket, evidently from one of Prava's more accomplished antique shops, beneath which was her customary black turtleneck and matching tights.

But one was missing from the group. "And where is Maxine?" Vladimir said, biting his tongue as he remembered that the Expat Dating Committee had already slated the Girshkin-Maxine nuptials for early next spring, and here he was, playing the field with Morgan.

Sure enough, as soon as he mentioned Maxine, a look passed over Morgan's face, the look of a child lost in a crowded train station, and Larry's party was, of course, infinitely stranger than any of the world's train stations and just as crowded. "Maxine's taken ill," Alexandra said. "Nothing serious. She'll be up on her feet tomorrow."

The "up on her feet" business was evidently meant to discourage Vladimir from attempting any change in the woman's verticality. Clearly, Alexandra had told Morgan everything she needed to know about Vladimir's steamy nonaffair with Maxine.

The situation was unwittingly defused by the excited Cohen who hadn't seen Vladimir in a couple of days and all but jumped on him. "My friend needs to step to the bar," he shouted, roaring drunk. "You girls talk among yourselves." Vladimir looked back at Morgan, worried about leaving her behind. Fortunately, the sight of two attractive women, Morgan and Alexandra, chatting with gusto had the effect of keeping potential suitors at bay. The predatory young men of Prava were easily confounded by the phenomenon of women making do without them.

At the bar, a tiny affair jutting out of an oak bookshelf filled with the collected works of Papa Hemingway, the patron saint of the expatriate scene, the irrepressible Cohen attempted to fix Vladimir a gin and tonic by spilling vodka all over his new imported loafers. When informed by the laughing Vladimir that gin not vodka went into a gin and tonic, Cohen spilled that on him too.

"So, you've been tying one on," Vladimir said.

"I've been tying one on for the past five years," Cohen said. "I'm what in the liquor industry is called an alcoholic."

"Me too," Vladimir said. He had never given the matter much thought, but the words certainly rang true.

"Well, let's drink to that!" cried Vladimir in an effort to shoo away the approaching discomfort, and they clinked their glasses.

"Speaking of tying one on," Cohen said, "Plank and I are ready for a major bout with the bottle tomorrow. To the finish!" He winked in the direction of the bar.

"I see," Vladimir said. He saw Cohen and Plank as two pugilists duking it out, slow-motion, with a sweating bottle of Stoli in some sort of performance-art piece.

"You care to join us? None of this shit. Just the three of us. The men." Then, without warning--and when did he ever give warning?--Cohen threw his arms around Vladimir and squeezed hard. By this time the lights had been dimmed to the degree where the two of them looked like yet another couple on the express checkout lane to bed. The frightened Vladimir peeked out from within his friend's grasp and tried to maneuver an arm free to signal to the crowd and Morgan that this was not his idea of a good time, but he was hard-pressed to think of the appropriate signal. Anyway, Cohen soon let go and Vladimir saw to his welcome relief that a critical mass had been reached in the room and nobody gave much of a damn about anyone else, really. Even unabashed homosexual sex with the accompanying grunts broadcast over the stereo system would probably go unnoticed for several minutes.

"Aww, we miss you, man," Cohen said. "You're so busy with work and . . ." He stopped, tired of sounding like a jilted lover.

Across the room Vladimir saw Plank looking disgustedly into his drink as if he had been slipped a diuretic, while on the couch next to him Alexandra and Morgan gestured up a storm of conversation. What was it with these disconsolate young men? Was being the cornerstone of Prava's elite not enough for them? Did they expect to lead meaningful lives as well? "All right," Vladimir said. "We'll go out by ourselves. We'll have a good time. We'll drink. We'll get drunk. All right?"

"All right!" shouted Cohen. Brightening, he reached for a bottle, even as Vladimir saw Morgan glancing his way, pointing discreetly at her watch. Did she want to leave already? With Vladimir in tow? Was she not having a good time? No one eloped from a Larry Litvak party before the clock struck three in the morning. It was simply good manners.

"So how's your writing?" Vladimir asked Cohen.

"Pitiful," said Cohen, his big lips quivering characteristically. "I'm too in love with Alexandra to even write about her anymore . . ."

And there was the crux of the problem--love had come to town and Plank and Cohen had bought time shares in that ever-expanding development. Judging by Cohen's trembling lips and wet eyes, he was already in Phase III, by the lapping pool and the Jack Nicklaus-designed golf course.

"So don't write about her," came a stern, gravelly voice, which Vladimir first imagined might belong to Cohen's grandfather on his Jewish side, arrived in Prava for the approaching high holy days. He looked about for the source until Cohen pointed downward and said, "I'd like you to meet the poet Fish, also from New York."

The poet Fish was not a midget but he brushed by that category with little room to spare. He looked like an unwashed twelve-year-old, and his hair was thick and matted, an overturned bowl of ramen noodles; despite all this he had the voice of Milton Berle. "Charmed," the poet said offering Vladimir his hand as if he expected it to be kissed. "Everyone's talking about Vladimir Girshkin," he said. "It was the first thing I heard at the baggage carousel."

"Stop it!" Vladimir said. To himself he thought: And what do they say?

"Fish is staying with Plank for a couple of days," Cohen said. "He's been published by an Alaskan literary journal." And then Cohen turned instantly pale as if he had just seen someone across the room, someone who tugged at his memory in a most inopportune way. Vladimir even followed the dim light of his eyes to see who it might be, but then Cohen simply said: "I've got to go and retch," and the mystery was solved.

"So," Vladimir said, now that Cohen had left the dwarf on his hands (he hoped the little guy at least looked exotic to others). "A poet, huh?"

"Listen here," the poet said, rising on his tippy-toes to breathe into Vladimir's chin. "I heard you got a little something going here, this PravaInvest shit."

"Little?" Vladimir fanned out like a peacock upon sighting his mate-to-be. "We're capitalized with over thirty-five billion U.S. dollars . . ."

"Yeah, yeah, yeah," said the poet Fish. "I've got a business proposition for you. Ever snorted horse tranquilizer?"

"I beg?"

"Horse tranquilizer. Just how long exactly have you been out of The City?"

Vladimir presumed he meant New York City and was shocked to remember that no matter what they did out here in Prava and Budapest and Cracow, The City--that long grid of blasted streets and no apologies--still remained the bull's-eye of the galaxy. "Two months," he said.

"It's everywhere," Fish said. "In all the clubs. You can't be an artist in New York and not snort the horse. Trust me, I know."

"How's that?"

"It's like a frontal lobotomy. It clears your head out when there's gridlock. You think of nothing. And here's the best part--it lasts only fifteen minutes per snort. After that you're back to doing your thing. Some even report having a renewed sense of self. Of course, that's mainly the prose writers. They'll say anything."

"Are there any side effects?" Vladimir asked.

"None. Let's go out on the balcony. I'll show you."

"Let me think--"

"That's precisely what you don't want to do. Look, I've got this veterinarian near Lyon, he's on the board of a major pharmaceutical there. We can corner the Eastern European market with your PravaInvest. And what's a more likely distribution point than Prava?"

"Yes, well," Vladimir said. "But is it legal?"

"Sure," Fish said.

"Why not?" he added, seeing that the matter was not yet put to rest.

"Well, it helps if you own a horse," he said finally. "I just bought a couple of sickly ones down in Kentucky. Come on already." And he led him out of the room, as Morgan and Alexandra stared from their couch, alarmed at the strange spectacle of PravaInvest's executive vice president following intently on the heels of a leprechaun.

The balcony overlooked the bus terminal, which, despite the majestic glint of the full moon, remained a tortured patchwork of cement and corrugated metal.

And then there were the buses: From the West came the two-story, deluxe models with television screens flickering and air-conditioners tracing their green exhaust against the asphalt. These would disgorge streams of clean, young backpackers from Frankfurt, Brussels, and Turin, who immediately set to celebrating their newfound East Bloc freedom by showering each other with roadside Uneskos, flashing peace signs to the waiting cabbies.

From the East came the appropriately named IKARUS buses: terminally ill, their low, gray frames shuddering to the finish line; the doors opening slowly and obstinately to let out the tired families from Bratislava and Kosice, or the aging professionals from Sofia and Kishinev who held their briefcases close to their sparkling polyester suits as they made their way to the nearby metro station. And Vladimir could almost smell these briefcases, which, like his father's, likely contained the leftovers of a meaty lunch packed for the road, leftovers that might now serve as dinner--Golden Prava was getting expensive for the average Bulgarian.

But Vladimir's examination of this unhappy dichotomy, a dichotomy which was in some ways the story of his life, which brought on feelings of both elation and remorse--the elation of having a special, privileged knowledge of both East and West, the remorse of fitting finally into neither--was interrupted by the stinging, crystal-edged horse powder which the poet Fish administered to him nasally and then not much happened.

Perhaps that's an exaggeration. Something, of course, happened, even while Vladimir withdrew into the upper stories of his brain where the thin mountain air was not conducive to the cognitive process. The buses kept arriving and departing but now they were just buses (buses, you know, transport, point A to point B) and Fish rolling up and down the balcony naked, howling, and waving his tiny purple penis at the moon was just a young man with his purple penis, howling. Nothing much was happening in a big way. In fact, nonexistence was no longer so unfathomable (and how many times had he, as a morose child, shut his eyes and plugged his ears with cotton, trying to imagine The Void), but rather a fairly natural progression of this goofy happiness. The floating, bottomless joy of anesthesia.

And then the fifteen minutes were up and, like clockwork, Vladimir was noiselessly airlifted into his body; Fish was putting on his clothes.

Vladimir stood up. He sat down. He got up again. Anything for sensory experience. He sliced at his fingers with his business card for a bit, before presenting it to the poet. Very enjoyable. He was ready to plunge into the Tavlata.

"I'll send you a starter kit with instructions," Fish was saying. "And also some of my poetry."

"I have fallen under the influence of John Donne," he added, buttoning up his funky elfin tunic.

"SO, ARE YOU a good person?" Morgan asked.

It was five in the morning. After the party. An island in the middle of the Tavlata, connected to the Lesser Quarter by a single footbridge of uncertain origin; an isle that seemed all but abandoned by Prava's vague municipal services; an overgrown jumble of mammoth trees and the little shrubs that clung to them the way baby elephants rub up against the feet of their mothers. They were sitting on the grass behind a tremendous oak with its boughs fully leafed despite the advance of autumn; this redoubtable old-timer welcomed in the passing seasons at his own discretion. On the other side of the footbridge, high above them, moonlight fell on the spindly buttresses of the castle's cathedral, giving St. Stanislaus the appearance of a giant spider which had somehow scampered over the castle walls and settled in for the night.

The question was whether or not he was a good person.

"I have to preface this by saying I'm drunk," he said.

"I'm drunk, too. Just tell the truth."

The truth. How did it come to this? Just a minute ago he was kissing her alcohol-soaked mouth, feeling under her armpits for the wetness he loved, rubbing himself against her thigh, getting a voyeuristic excitement from the passing beam of his car's headlights--devoted Jan was keeping an eye on them from the embankment.

"Speaking comparatively, I'm a better person than most I know." This was a lie. He had only to think of Cohen to know he was lying. "All right, I'm not a great person per se, but I want to be a good person to you. I've been good to others in the past."

What the hell kind of conversation was this? She was leaning against a rotting log next to some kind of sacrificial heap of used Fanta cans and condom wrappers; her hair was tangled with weeds; there was a lipstick smudge on the tiny, retrousse tip of her nose; and Vladimir's dribble was hanging from her chin.

Was Vladimir a good person? No. But he mistreated others only because the world had mistreated him. Modern justice for the postmorality set.

"You want to be good to me," she was saying, her voice surprisingly steady, even as she drunkenly tipped back and forth from the slightest breeze.

"Yes," Vladimir said. "And I'd like to know you better. Unquestionably."

"You really want to hear about what it was like to grow up in Cleveland? In a suburb? My family? Being the oldest child? The only girl? Um . . . Basketball camp? Can you fathom a girls' basketball camp, Vladimir? In Medina County, Ohio? What's more, do you even care? Do you want to know why sometimes I'd rather be out camping than in a cafe? How I hate reading other people's poems just because I have to? And how I hate listening to people all the time like your friend Cohen when he starts going on about his damn Paris in the twenties?"

"Yes," Vladimir said. "I want to know all of it. Absolutely."

"Why?"

It wasn't an easy question. There were no tangible answers. He would have to make something up.

While he was thinking, a brisk wind started and the clouds rolled northward, so that when he lifted his head straight up and ignored the fact that he was at the very epicenter of the city, it was possible to imagine the island afloat and traveling south, navigating the twists and bends of the Tavlata until it finally emerged in the Adriatic Sea. A little more sailing then and they could beach their island ship on the shores of Corfu; frolic amid the rustle of tiny olive trees, the harmonies of the goldfinches. Anything to survive this interrogation.

"Look," Vladimir said. "You hate it when Cohen starts talking Paris and the whole cult of the expatriate. But I have to say: There is something to it. The most beautiful three lines in literature that I've ever read are the very last lines of Tropic of Cancer. Now let me lay down the caveats first: By saying what I'm saying, I'm not sanctioning the misogynist, race-baiting Henry Miller as a human being, and continue to cast grave doubts on his abilities as a writer. I am only expressing my admiration for the last few lines of this particular novel . . . Anyway, Henry Miller is standing by the banks of the Seine, he's been through just about every kind of poverty and humiliation possible. And he writes something like (and excuse me if I'm misquoting): 'The sun is setting. I can feel this river flowing through me--its soil, its changing climate, its ancient past. The hills gently girdle it about: its course is fixed.' "

He wiggled his hand in between her two warm palms. "I don't know if I'm a good person or a bad person," Vladimir said. "Perhaps it's not possible to know. But right now I am the happiest man alive. This river--its soil, its climate, its ancient past--being with you at five in the morning in the middle of this river, in the middle of this city. It makes me feel--"

She pressed his own hand to his mouth. "Stop it," she said. "If you don't want to answer my question, then don't. But it's something I want you to think about. Oh, Vladimir! Listen to you! Not sanctioning some poor Henry Miller as a human being. I'm not even sure what you mean, but I know it's not pretty . . ." She turned away from him, and he was left to stare into the stern little bun of her hair.

"Look, I like you," she said suddenly. "I really do. You're smart and sweet and clever, and I think you want to do right by people. You've really brought the community together with Cagliostro, you know. You've given a lot of people their first chance. But I feel that . . . in the long run . . . that you'll never really let me into your life. I feel that after spending just one day with you. And I wonder if it's because you think I'm just this idiot from Shaker Heights, or whether there's something terrible you don't want me to know."

"I see," Vladimir said. His mind was racing for an answer but there was little he could say that would make her believe him. Maybe, for the first time in a long time, it was best not to say anything.

On the bank opposite the castle, the first touches of dawn were setting light to the gold dome of the National Theater that flared above the black toes of Stalin's Foot like a holy bunion; a tram full of early workers was crossing a nearby bridge with enough rumble to send tremors through their little isle. And just then the wind turned ugly, conspiring with Vladimir's plan to wrap his arms around her. Her silk blouse provided poor traction for his embrace, but he could feel her, infinitely warm and solid and smelling of sweat and spent kisses. "Shh," she whispered, guessing correctly that he was about to speak.

Why couldn't she make this easy for him? Weren't his lies and evasions valid enough? And yet, here she was, Morgan Jenson, a tender but unsettling prospect, reminding Vladimir of someone he used to be before Mr. Rybakov stumbled into his life with news of a world beyond Challah's desperate grasp. A soft and unsurefooted Vladimir, whose mornings were crowned with a double-cured-spicy-soppressata-and-avocado sandwich. Mother's Little Failure. The man on the run.

PART VI.

THE TROUBLE.