"Opa, boys!" Gusev shouted to his men. "Can you see the article in the Stolovan Ekspress tomorrow? 'Two Americans Die in Suicide Pact Over Rising Price of Beer.' What do you think, brothers? Tell me I'm not a funny one tonight!"

A debate began between Gusev and a gun-toting associate over a proposal to throw the two foreigners off the Foot. Vladimir suddenly found himself strangely weary. His watery eyelids began to close . . .

With the passing minutes, the voices of the men became gradually indistinct, sounding more like the insistent honking of geese than the rapid hooligan Russian that Gusev's fellows preferred. And then . . .

THERE WAS AN unexpected sound. The make-believe sound of a Hollywood fairy tale. The sound of a getaway car squealing around a street corner and swerving into the narrow space between Gusev and his troops.

Jan got out of Vladimir's Beamer looking like a domesticated loon in an ensemble of coarse-wool winter pajamas. "I have orders," he shouted to Gusev and then to the former Interior Ministry troops. "Orders directly from the Groundhog. I'm exclusively authorized to take Girshkin home!"

Gusev calmly took out his gun.

"Move aside, sir," Jan said to Gusev. "Let me help Mr. Girshkin up. As I've said, I have orders . . ."

Gusev grabbed the young Stolovan by his shoulders. He spun him around, then took hold of his pajama collar with one arm, sandwiching the gun into the folds of his neck with the other. "What orders?" he said.

For some time then, only the churning of his stomach reminded Vladimir of the passing of time, each revolution indicating yet another temporal unit in which he remained alive while Jan remained in Gusev's grasp. Finally, his driver, not a small man but small beneath Gusev's inflated face, reached into a leather holster wound beneath his pajamas and, hand shaking only slightly, took out a mobile phone. "The Groundhog has been following your whereabouts on the scanner," Jan said to Gusev, his usually halting Russian now true and precise. "To speak truthfully, he is worried over Mr. Girshkin's safety at your hands. If you would like, I will dial the Groundhog directly."

The silence continued except for the metallic click of a weapon either being decommissioned or readied for combat. Then Gusev let go. He turned away quickly, leaving the defeat in his face to Vladimir's imagination. The next thing that registered with Vladimir was the slam of a car door. A dozen motors started up, all nearly at once. A lone babushka, her voice as frail from sleep as from age, had opened up her window from across the street and started shouting for silence or she'd send for the police one more time.

Arranged horizontally in the back seat of his car, while the propped-up Cohen rode shotgun, Vladimir willed himself to pass out, if not into eternal sleep then at least into a subset of eternity. It was not possible. His head was a Central Casting of acne-scarred skinheads, hysterical policemen, fatigue-clad Interior Ministry braves, and, of course, the odd Soviet customs agent with sturgeon breath.

"You'll be back, Yid," the customs agent had said to Mother.

PART VII.

WESTERNIZING.

THE BOYARS.

31. STARRING VLADIMIR.

AS PETER THE GREAT.

HE WAS BACK .

Sure he had given fleeing some thought. And why not? His DeutscheBank account did contain around fifty thousand dollars--his commission from the Harold Green scam--which would last him awhile in someplace Vancouverish. But, no, that would be an overreaction. Not to mention cowardly.

A knowledgeable Russian lazing around in the grass, sniffing clover and munching on boysenberries, expects that at any minute the forces of history will drop by and discreetly kick him in the ass.

A knowledgeable Jew in a similar position expects history to spare any pretense and kick him directly in the face.

A Russian Jew (knowledgeable or not), however, expects both history and a Russian to kick him in the ass, the face, and every other place where a kick can be reasonably lodged. Vladimir understood this. His take on the matter was: Victim, stop lazing about in the grass.

He woke up the next day to find himself lying beside Morgan's ethereally pale back, the sides of her breasts rounding out beneath her like little pockets of rising dough. His darling was completely unaware of her Volodechka's curious night.

His darling was completely unaware of many things. Because no matter what acts of political or romantic inanity she was performing with her Tomas (likely some impoverished young Stolovan reeking of wet shoes and garlic), no matter the winged lion or minotaur or gryphon that lived in her sealed secret room, and no matter those fashionable American panic attacks that gave her the license to misbehave--ultimately, it would be Vladimir's world, with its moral relativism, its animalistic worship of survival, that would leave Morgan short of breath.

In some ways it was a repeat of Vladimir's grand battle with Fran, a battle between the luxury of ideas and the refugee's foremost responsibility of staying alive, a battle between nebulous historical notions (Death to the Foot!) and the complicated facts on the ground--the Gusevs and their Kalashnikovs, the men with the shaved heads cruising the streets of the continent. And it was precisely Vladimir's realism that made him a better person than Morgan, that coated him with the patina of tragedy, that excused his deviations from Normalcy and condemned Morgan's deviations from the same.

Was he a good person or a bad person?

What a childish question.

HE MOVED.

Half an hour after he had awoken, five hours after he was nearly killed, Vladimir was at the Groundhog's. Didn't call, didn't knock, just came and made himself known--let the whole world know who is this Girshkin that he doesn't have to call or knock.

Visiting his boss was now a crosscultural experience. The Hog had left the "gangsta" compound, along with his latest girlfriend and secondary and tertiary consorts, for a new development hideously developing itself in a green corner of Greater Prava: the Brookline Gardens. Those familiar with the real Brookline, the one in Massachusetts, would not be disappointed. The Prava version was the apotheosis of North American upper-middle-classdom distilled in ten rows of dark brick townhouses and archways trellised with vine. An enormous sloping lawn at the entrance had been planted with pink, red, and white peonies to spell out "Welcome" in English; while in a far corner, a self-contained Food Court was already under construction, spreading out its feelers for the rest of the hypothetical mall. The only concession to local reality was the fact that the whole place would fall apart by the turn of the millennium.

Into this rarefied habitat came Vladimir with arms crossed and scowl at the ready. Peerless Jan (knighted, beatified, given a sweet bonus) dropped him off at the Groundhog's unit on the corner of Glendale Road and MacArthur Place. The entrepreneur's bodyguards were asleep in a station wagon parked in the driveway, their arms hanging out of the rolled-down windows like pinstriped tentacles. As promised, Vladimir did not knock. He walked right through the empty living room, his mobile phone at the ready, its antenna fully extended like a modern-day broadsword, to find the Groundhog breakfasting in his little breakfast nook.

The Groundhog looked up from his cornflakes. "Ah! Surprise!" he said, although that was clearly not what he meant, unless he was describing his own state of affairs. "Bozhe moi!" he said, which was closer to the truth. "What are you doing here?"

"It's got to stop," Vladimir said. He pointed his phone's antenna into the triangle of flesh and hair laid bare by the Groundhog's bathrobe. "I can be on a plane for Hong Kong tomorrow. Or Malta. I have a thousand schemes. I have a million connections."

The Groundhog tried to appear incredulous. He came closest to the expression of Mr. Rybakov's portrait directly above him. The middle-aged Fan Man, dressed in full military uniform, was trying to look dignified for the photographer, but already the lunacy of Soviet life was evident in the feral glint of his eyes, as if he was trying to say, "Put away your camera, civilian! I'll give you something to remember me by!"

"Vladimir, stop," the Groundhog said. "What is this madness?"

"Madness! Would you like to hear about madness? A convoy of armed ex-Interior Ministry troops in jeeps running around an almost-Western city, this to me is madness. Their commanding officer threatening the life of the vice president of a major investment company--this, once again, to me is madness."

The Groundhog grunted and stirred his cereal. For some reason he had been eating it with a heavy wooden ladle, the kind more suited for a bowl of thick Russian porridge than American cornflakes. Through a pair of French doors slightly ajar, a woman's rosy backside could be seen cavorting about the wood-and-chrome kitchen beyond the breakfast nook.

"Okay," the Groundhog said, presumably after his stirring had rearranged the cornflakes just so. "What do you want from me? You want these Americanisms and globalisms? You want to take control? Then do so! Gusev won't give you any problems. I can take away his jeeps and guns like that . . ." He forgot to snap his fingers. His eyes were glued to the service end of Vladimir's mobile and they looked tired and dim, as if the only thing still keeping the Groundhog awake was the possibility of the antenna poking him in the eye.

"I want training sessions on becoming an American businessman for everyone in the organization," Vladimir said. "Starting tomorrow."

"Exactly as you want it, that's how it will be."

Vladimir tapped his antenna against the dining table, a half-moon of ashwood and computer-perfected design. It seemed that something remained unresolved, and, lost as he was in the Groundhog's flurry of concessions, Vladimir couldn't quite remember what it was. "Oh," he said finally. "We're opening a nightclub."

"Wonderful," the Groundhog said. "We could all use a nice disco." He looked thoughtful for a minute. "Vladimir, please don't hate me," he said, "but if we are talking truthfully, then I must speak from the heart. Vladimir, my friend, why are you so distant from us? Why don't you ever spend time with your Russian brothers? I'm not talking about Gusev and his kind, but what about me, what about the Groundhog? For instance, they tell me you have an attractive American girlfriend. Why have I not seen her? I love to see pretty girls. And why haven't we gone out together, you and your girl and me and my Lena? There's a new restaurant with an American flavor they're opening here at the Food Court next month. It's called Road 66 or something like that. Surely your girl will feel at home in such a place, and my Lenochka loves milkshakes."

This indecent proposal floated in the air between them, finally settling on the ergonomic dining table between the corn flakes and the Air France coffee mug. A double date. With the Groundhog. And Morgan. And a creature named Lenochka. But before Vladimir could politely refuse the Groundhog's invitation, a second consideration presented itself: Morgan to the Gulag! He was thinking, of course, of revenge. Revenge for Morgan's Foot fetish, revenge for her homicidal babushkas, revenge for her slippery Tomas. Yes, the time had come to teach his pampered little agitator a few useful facts about the cruel and hollow universe around her. And so--a double date! A little sampler of Girshkin World. A proper antidote to the Shaker Heights High School prom. My Dinner with Groundhog.

"You know, my girl is actually very curious about my Russian friends," Vladimir said.

"So then we're agreed!" The Groundhog happily slapped his shoulder. "We will toast her American beauty together!" He turned to the French doors leading to the kitchen and moved them apart with his feet, both shod in forest-green Godzilla slippers. "Have you met my Lena yet?" he asked, as more of his friend's back became visible. "Would you like her to make you some porridge?"

BACK IN HIS Panelak flat, Vladimir paced his living room in a kind of angry stupor. Globalisms? Americanisms? What the hell was he talking about? Did he actually think he was going to introduce Gusev to the finer points of business-to-business marketing and public relations? What insanity!

The way things stood, only one man in Prava could help him. Frantisek. The happy apparatchik Vladimir had found during the Night of Men.

"Allo," Frantisek picked up. "Vladimir? I was just about to ring you. Listen, I need to unload three hundred Perry Ellis windbreakers. Black-and-orange trim. Practically new. My cousin Stanka made some sort of an idiotic deal with a Turk . . . Any ideas?"

"Er, no," Vladimir said. "Actually, I have a bit of a problem here myself." He explained the nature of his predicament in a loud, frightened voice.

"I see," Frantisek said. "Let me impart some advice. And remember, I've dealt with Moscow all of my adult life, so I know Gusev and his friends pretty well."

"Tell me," "Vladimir said.

"The Russians of this caliber, they only understand one thing: cruelty. Kindness is seen as a weakness; kindness is to be punished. Do you understand? You're not dealing with Petersburg academicians here or enlightened members of the fourth estate. These are the people that brought half this continent to her knees at one point. These are murderers and thieves. Now tell me, how cruel can you be?"

"I have a lot of anger in store," Vladimir confessed, "but I'm not very good at expressing it. Today, however, I lashed out at the Groundhog, my boss--"

"Good, that's a good start," Frantisek said. "Ah, Vladimir, we are not so different, you and I. We are both men of taste in a tasteless world. Do you know how many compromises I have made in my life? Do you know the things I have done . . ."

"Yes, I know," Vladimir told the apparatchik. "I do not judge you."

"Likewise," Frantisek said. "Now, remember: cruelty, anger, vindictiveness, humiliation. These are the four cornerstones of Soviet society. Master them and you will do well. Tell these people how much you despise them and they will build you statues and mausoleums."

"Thank you," Vladimir said. "Thank you for the instruction. I will lash out at the Russians with my last strength, Frantisek."

"My pleasure. Now, Vladimir . . . Please tell me . . . What the hell am I supposed to do with these goddamn windbreakers?"

THE AMERICAN LESSONS began the next day. The Kasino was set up school auditorium-style, with rows upon rows of plastic folding chairs. When the seats were filled, Vladimir did a double take: the Groundhog's people numbered as many as parliamentarians of a sizable republic.

Half of them Vladimir had never met. In addition to the core groups of soldiers and crooks, there were the drivers of the BMW armada; the strippers who supplied labor to the town's more elicit clubs; the prostitutes who worked the Kasino and, in lean times, covered the nightly beat on Stanislaus Square; the cooks for the common mess-hall who ran an international caviar-contraband operation on the side; the young men who sold enormous fur hats with the insignia of the Soviet Navy to Cold War aficionados on the Emanuel Bridge; the petty thieves who preyed upon older Germans straying from their tour groups--and that was only the personnel Vladimir could identify by their distinguishing combination of age, gender, demeanor, and gait. The majority of the congregants remained to him just so many other units of Eastern European refuse in their cheaply cut suits, their nylon parkas, their rooster haircuts, and teeth blackened by filterless Spartas, three packs per diem as life prescribed.

Forget Gusev. Forget the Groundhog. From now on they would all belong to Vladimir.

Vladimir took them by surprise. He ran out from the wings and kicked the oakwood lectern that had been stolen from the Sheraton and still bore its illustrious seal. "Devil confound it!" he shouted in Russian. "Look at you!"

The general incredulity and merriment that had pervaded the gathering stopped right there. No more giggling, no more loud slurping of the imaginary last drop out of an empty Coke can. Even old Marusya woke up from her opium nap. Gusev, seated alone in the last row, was glowering at Vladimir and fingering his holster. His troops, however, had been moved up front with the Groundhog. Yes, thought Vladimir, smiling at Gusev imperiously. Now we'll see who whips the Groundhog in the banya . . .

"We've really done it, beloved countrymen," Vladimir shouted, his whole body shaking from the adrenaline building up ever since the first ray of sun snuck in through the blinds and woke him, irrevocably, at 7:30 in the morning. "We've embarrassed ourselves in front of all of Europe, we have truly shown our simple nature . . . For seventy years, we have been diligently licking clean an asshole, and it turns out to have been the wrong one!" Silence except for a spurt of laughter on one side, but one quickly nipped in the bud by surrounding colleagues. "What can account for such a gaffe, I ask you? We gave the world Pushkin and Lermontov, Tchaikovsky and Chekhov. We've embarked thousands of gawky Western youths on the Stanislavsky Method, and if truth be told, even that damned Moscow Circus is not half bad . . . So how do we now find ourselves in this situation? Dressed so ludicrously, a provincial from Nebraska would have cause to laugh, spending all our money on elegant cars just so we can butcher their insides with our bad taste, our women dressed in raccoon furs strolling Stanislaus Square giving all that young girls can give--their very girlhood--to the same Germans at whose hands our fathers and grandfathers perished in defense of the Motherland . . ."

At this mention there was predictable patriotic fervor among the ranks: bearlike rumbles of discontent, spittle hurtling to the concrete floor, and, here and there, mutterings of "disgrace."

Vladimir picked up on this. "Disgrace!" he shouted. His mind was still ringing with Frantisek's lecture on the four cornerstones of Soviet society. Cruelty. Anger. Vindictiveness. Humiliation. He took out a pocket pack of Kleenex, the only item in his vest pocket, and threw it on the floor for effect. He spat on it, too, then kicked it clear across the stage. "Disgrace! What are we doing, friends? While the Stolovans, the very same Stolovans who we ran over in '69, are out there building townhouse condominiums and modern factories that work, we're snipping Bulgarian balls like radishes! [laughter] And what did the Bulgarians ever do to deserve this, may I ask? They're Slavs like us . . ."

(Slavs Like Us: The Vladimir Girshkin Story. Thankfully the crowd was too agitated to make light of Vladimir's lack of Slavonity.) "Well, you're going to learn and you're going to learn the hard way what it means to be a Westerner. Remember Peter the Great shaving Eastern beards and disgracing the Boyars?" Here he looked, just a glance, at Gusev and his closest men, who barely had the time to react. "Yes, I suggest you review your history texts, for that is exactly how it will be done. Those who are not with us are against us! And now, my poor, simple friends, here's what you're going to do first . . ."

And he told them.

IT WAS A day commemorating the transition from November to December, with the local trees hanging on to the last of yellow, the leaden sky cut with lines of ethereal blue where the whipping winds had cleared a swath through the pollution. The Russians, dressed in the black-and-orange Perry Ellis windbreakers that Vladimir now required of all employees, were sitting around the clearing (the same clearing where Vladimir and Kostya staged their athletic drills) like a ring of dark butterflies. In the background, an armada of twenty BMWs and a dozen jeeps were being cannibalized by a team of German mechanics in smocks.

Out came the zebra-striped seats, the woolly cup holders, the shocking Electric Plum ground effects--all tossed water-brigade-style past a line of bobbing blond heads and into the circle of the clearing. There, the personal offerings to the God of Kitsch were already assembled: the nylon tracksuits, the Rod Stewart compilations, the worn Romanian sneakers, everything that had qualified the Groundhog's vast crew as Easterners, Soviets, Cold War-losers--all would be kindling for the flames.

As those lowest on the totem pole splashed gasoline across this burial ground of rosy-cheeked nesting dolls and giant lacquered soup ladles, some of the older women--Marusya, the opium lady, and her clique, in particular--began to whimper and make soft clicking sounds of regret. They wiped their eyes and adjusted each other's head scarves, often collapsing into mournful embraces.

In a matter of seconds, the fire began its crackling susurrations. Then something unstable (perhaps it was the giant can of brilliantine with which Gusev's men slicked back their thinning hair) exploded with a trace of orange into the darkening sky, and the crowd gaped at the pyrotechnics, the more adventurous young men bringing their hands forward for warmth.

The Groundhog, sighing with the entirety of his soft chest, took an impressive swig out of his vodka flask, then reached into the pocket of his windbreaker and took out the two fuzzy dice that had previously bounced one against the other from the rearview mirror of his BMW, like two puppies with just each other for amusement. He rubbed them together as if to create another fire, then sunk his nose inside one of them. After a few minutes of this melancholia, the Hog leaned back, smiled, closed his eyes, and cast both dice into the flames.

THROUGHOUT THE PROCEEDINGS in the auditorium and in the woods, those of an inquiring nature could turn around to see an attractive middle-aged gentleman with a PravaInvest visitor's tag sitting apart from the herd and doodling in his little memo pad. In a white shirt and corduroy vest, with a gentle, bemused expression on his face, he appeared rather harmless. And yet despite the organization's closely followed axiom that harmless people should always be sent to the hospital, no one dared approach this strange professorial man who chewed on his pen and smiled for no reason. He was more than harmless. He was Frantisek.

And he was impressed. "Brilliant!" he said to Vladimir, leading him away from the clearing and toward a wrecked suburban highway where Jan and the car were waiting. "You really are Postmodern Man, my friend. The bonfire and the self-denunciation contest . . . I must say, you are clown and ringmaster all at once! And thank you for helping me get rid of those infernal windbreakers."

"Ah," Vladimir said, clasping his hands to his bosom. "You don't know how happy you're making me, Frantisek. I can't tell you how incomplete I was without you. I've been working on this stupid pyramid scheme for four months, and all I could get was a paltry quarter million out of some daft Canadian."

Jan opened the car door and the two slipped onto the warm back seat. "Well, that will soon change, young man," Frantisek said. "I have only one curious problem . . ."

"You have a problem?"

"Yes, my problem is that I am a sufferer of visions."

"You suffer from visions," Vladimir repeated. "I can recommend a doctor in the States . . ."

"No, no, no," Frantisek laughed. "I am a sufferer of good visions! For instance, last night I had this dream . . . I saw a local congress hall being rented out for a caviar brunch . . . I saw a promotional film about PravaInvest broadcast on a screen of enormous proportions . . . By morning, I dreamed of twenty such brunches at five hundred persons per brunch. Ten thousand English-speakers, roughly one-third of the present expatriate population. All the children of mamas and papas from happier lands. All potential investors."

"Aha," Vladimir said. "I see such wonders as well, but I don't quite understand how this film will be financed."

"Now, it is fortunate for you," said Frantisek, "that I have friends in this nation's vast and underemployed film industry. Furthermore, my chum Jitomir manages a gargantuan conference center in the Goragrad district. As for the caviar, well, I'm afraid you're on your own regarding the caviar."

"No problems there!" Vladimir said and he acquainted Frantisek with the international caviar-contraband venture the Groundhog's men had put together. As he divulged the dark and grainy details, the weather outside the car turned fickle, playing first with a palette of loose baby-pink clouds, then clearing the canvas to sear the approaching Golden City with brilliant sunshine. Each brightening and darkening made Vladimir all the more excited, for it confirmed that change was on the way. "Dear God!" he cried. "I believe we are ready to proceed!"

"No, wait," Frantisek said. "That was hardly the sum of my visions," he said. "I see more. I see us buying an industrial plant. A failed one, of course."

"There's one I've seen on the outskirts of town," Vladimir said. "The Future Tek 2000. That one looked like it failed a century ago."

"Yes, yes. My cousin Stanka bought a piece of the Future Tek. It's a chemical plant that not only failed a century ago but actually exploded last year. Perfect. I must have supper with Stanka. But I see still more. I see that night club we talked about . . ."

"I see that, too," Vladimir said. "We'll call it the Metamorphosis Lounge in deference to Kafka and his mighty grip on the expatriate imagination. 'Lounge' is also a popular word these days."