Read Online Little Failure by Gary Shteyngart - Free Book Online
Authors: Gary Shteyngart
Lenin above him, and this is my family and this is my country. Am I feeling this or am I thinking it? Both, I am sure. I already understand how easily a feeling can become a thought and the other way around.
“I’ve lost him, I’ve lost my son,” my father is wailing. “I’ve lost my little Igor. Where is he? I simply cannot find him.”
Is he kidding or is he seriously worried?
And I want to jump out and say, “Here I am! You haven’t lost me at all!” But this is against the rules of the game. Isn’t all the fun in
staying hidden
? You’re supposed to feel scared when the papa who’s looking for you gets closer, is about to find you, but instead I feel sadder when he seems to lose my scent. And then when he approaches I feel scared again. Sad, scared. Scared, sad. Is that what I’ve been looking forward to for so long in my sickbed? No, it is this: Suddenly Papa jumps out from behind an adjoining spruce, screams “Found you!” and I scream with joy and try to escape. He scoops me up in one easy gesture, hoists me onto his shoulders, and we walk past the Lenin, who is also happy that I’ve been found, toward our apartment one gigantic Stalinist block away where Mother is making cabbage soup, hot and tasteless.
We live on Tipanov Street, House 5, Apartment 10. A sign at the mouth of the street informs us that ALEXANDER FYODOROVITCH
TIPANOV (1924–1944) WAS A BRAVE DEFENDER OF THE CITY OF LENIN. IN 1944, HE SHIELDED HIS TROOPS WITH HIS BREAST AGAINST ADVANCING FIRE, ALLOWING HIS COMRADES A SUCCESSFUL CHARGE FORWARD. THE FEARLESS WARRIOR WAS POSTHUMOUSLY AWARDED THE TITLE HERO OF THE SOVIET UNION . I like to think that my grandfather Isaac, my father’s father, who also died in the war at a ridiculously young age, performed a similar feat, even if he wasn’t a Hero of the Soviet Union. Oh, how I would love to put my own breast in front of some artillery fire so that my comrades could charge forward and kill Germans. But first I will have to make a friend or two my own age, and that equally heroic feat is still years away.
As my father carries me from the hide-and-seek spruces by the Lenin statue to Tipanov Street, House 5, Apartment 10, we pass by the other important institution in my life, the pharmacy.
One of the most frightening words in the Russian language is
banki
, which nominally refers to the plural of a glass or ajar but which the Oxford Russian-English dictionary also helpfully describes as “(
med
.) cupping glass.” I’m not sure about the
med
. part, because I’ve yet to meet any sufferer of asthma, pneumonia, or any other bronchial disaster that this insane form of peasant remedy has ever cured. The local pharmacy carries few useful medicines, but the least useful of them is
banki
. The application of said “cupping glass” to the soft white back of a wheezing Leningrad boy in 1976 represents the culmination of three thousand years of not-so-great medical intervention beginning with the traditional practices of the Greeks and the Chinese and ending here at the pharmacy on Tipanov Street.
This is what I remember all too well. I’m lying on my stomach. The
banki
are produced; they are little glass jars, greenish in tint, each probably the size of my child-foot. My entire back is rubbed with Vaseline by my mother’s strong hand. What follows is frightening beyond words for any sane adult, let alone an anxious child. A pair of tweezers wrapped in cotton is soaked in vodka or rubbing alcohol and set on fire. The flaming pincers are stuck into each glass cup, suckingout the air to create suction between the cup and the skin. The cups are then clamped along the length of the patient’s back, supposedly to pull the mucus away from the lungs but in reality to scare the little boy into thinking his parents are raving pyromaniacs with serious intent to hurt.
Let me close my eyes now. I’m hearing now a long match struck against the matchbox by my mother—
ptch—
then the flames of
“I’ve lost him, I’ve lost my son,” my father is wailing. “I’ve lost my little Igor. Where is he? I simply cannot find him.”
Is he kidding or is he seriously worried?
And I want to jump out and say, “Here I am! You haven’t lost me at all!” But this is against the rules of the game. Isn’t all the fun in
staying hidden
? You’re supposed to feel scared when the papa who’s looking for you gets closer, is about to find you, but instead I feel sadder when he seems to lose my scent. And then when he approaches I feel scared again. Sad, scared. Scared, sad. Is that what I’ve been looking forward to for so long in my sickbed? No, it is this: Suddenly Papa jumps out from behind an adjoining spruce, screams “Found you!” and I scream with joy and try to escape. He scoops me up in one easy gesture, hoists me onto his shoulders, and we walk past the Lenin, who is also happy that I’ve been found, toward our apartment one gigantic Stalinist block away where Mother is making cabbage soup, hot and tasteless.
We live on Tipanov Street, House 5, Apartment 10. A sign at the mouth of the street informs us that ALEXANDER FYODOROVITCH
TIPANOV (1924–1944) WAS A BRAVE DEFENDER OF THE CITY OF LENIN. IN 1944, HE SHIELDED HIS TROOPS WITH HIS BREAST AGAINST ADVANCING FIRE, ALLOWING HIS COMRADES A SUCCESSFUL CHARGE FORWARD. THE FEARLESS WARRIOR WAS POSTHUMOUSLY AWARDED THE TITLE HERO OF THE SOVIET UNION . I like to think that my grandfather Isaac, my father’s father, who also died in the war at a ridiculously young age, performed a similar feat, even if he wasn’t a Hero of the Soviet Union. Oh, how I would love to put my own breast in front of some artillery fire so that my comrades could charge forward and kill Germans. But first I will have to make a friend or two my own age, and that equally heroic feat is still years away.
As my father carries me from the hide-and-seek spruces by the Lenin statue to Tipanov Street, House 5, Apartment 10, we pass by the other important institution in my life, the pharmacy.
One of the most frightening words in the Russian language is
banki
, which nominally refers to the plural of a glass or ajar but which the Oxford Russian-English dictionary also helpfully describes as “(
med
.) cupping glass.” I’m not sure about the
med
. part, because I’ve yet to meet any sufferer of asthma, pneumonia, or any other bronchial disaster that this insane form of peasant remedy has ever cured. The local pharmacy carries few useful medicines, but the least useful of them is
banki
. The application of said “cupping glass” to the soft white back of a wheezing Leningrad boy in 1976 represents the culmination of three thousand years of not-so-great medical intervention beginning with the traditional practices of the Greeks and the Chinese and ending here at the pharmacy on Tipanov Street.
This is what I remember all too well. I’m lying on my stomach. The
banki
are produced; they are little glass jars, greenish in tint, each probably the size of my child-foot. My entire back is rubbed with Vaseline by my mother’s strong hand. What follows is frightening beyond words for any sane adult, let alone an anxious child. A pair of tweezers wrapped in cotton is soaked in vodka or rubbing alcohol and set on fire. The flaming pincers are stuck into each glass cup, suckingout the air to create suction between the cup and the skin. The cups are then clamped along the length of the patient’s back, supposedly to pull the mucus away from the lungs but in reality to scare the little boy into thinking his parents are raving pyromaniacs with serious intent to hurt.
Let me close my eyes now. I’m hearing now a long match struck against the matchbox by my mother—
ptch—
then the flames of
Similar Books
Jillian Hart
Lissa's Cowboy
Futile Efforts
Tom Piccirilli
The Last English Poachers
Bob and Brian Tovey
Back to Madeline Island
Jay Gilbertson
Portobello
Ruth Rendell
Nicole Helm - Too Much to Handle
Virginia
Spring Frost
Kailin Gow
Dandelion Dead
Chrystle Fiedler
Letter from my Father
Dasia Black
Strange Affair
Peter Robinson