Super Sad True Love Story: A Novel by Gary Shteyngart

York. They were slow and unwieldy, tired-looking, as if someone had poked them in their pupils and then circled their eyes. “Your äppärät,” one of them said to the fat man.
    “I left it at home,” the man whispered loudly, and we all knew he had lied. As the soldiers finally pulled him to his feet, the cabin filled with the sound of a grown-up’s out-of-practice whimpering. I looked back to see his baggy, ill-fitting pants, too big for his oddly tiny legs. And that’s all I saw or heard of the criminal passenger on UnitedContinentalDeltamerican Flight 023 to New York, because somehow the soldiers had made his crying stop, and all we could hear was the slap of his loafers among the steady thump of their man-boots.
    It wasn’t over yet. While the Italians had begun their angry crowing about the state of our troubled nation, murmuring the name of “
il macellaio
” or “the butcher” Rubenstein, whose blood-smeared, cleaver-wielding visage could be seen in poster form on every Roman street corner, a second group of soldiers had returned to our cabin. “U.S. citizens, raise your hands,” we were told.
    My Ohio-shaped bald spot felt cold against the headrest of the seat. What had I done? Should I have kept my mouth shut when the otter had asked for Fabrizia’s name? Should I have said, “I don’t want to answer this question,” as he had told me was my right? Had I been
too
compliant? Was there time to reach into my äppärät for Nettie Fine’s info, so that I could present it to the Guardsmen? Would they drag me off the plane too? My parents were born in what used to be the Soviet Union, and my grandmother had survived the last years of Stalin, although barely, but I lack the genetic instinct to deal with unbridled authority. Before a greater force, I crumble. And so, as my hand began the long journey from my lap into the fear-saturated cabin air, I wanted my parents near me. I wanted my mother’s hand on the back of my neck, the cool touch that always calmed me down as a child. I wanted to hear my parents’ Russian spoken aloud, because I always thought of it as the language of cunning acquiescence. I wanted us to face this together, because what if they shot me as a traitor and my parents would have to hear the news from a neighbor, from a police report, from a potato-faced anchor on their favorite FoxLiberty-Ultra? “I love you,” I whispered in the direction of Long Island, where my parents live. Deploying the satellite powers of my mind, I zoomed in on the undulating green roof of their humble Cape Cod house, the tinyyuan valuation floating over the equally minuscule green blot of their working-class backyard.
    And then I wanted Eunice next to me, sharing these last moments. I wanted to feel her young powerlessness, my hand on her bony knees stroking the fear out of her, letting her know I was the only one who could keep her safe.
    Nine of us had raised our hands. The Americans. “Take out your äppäräti.” We did as we were told. No questions asked. I held out my device in a particularly supplicating gesture, like a shamed young cub showing the mess he had made in his cage. My äppärät data were sampled and scanned to a military äppärät by a young man who seemed to be missing a face beneath his cap’s long green visor. All I could make out were his arms, ropy with lawnmower strength. He cocked his head at me, sighed, then looked at his watch. “All right, people, let’s go!” he shouted.
    The first-class cabin disembarked with great haste. We ran down the stairs and onto the cracked JFK runway, which shuddered beneath the armadas of armored personnel carriers and roving packs of luggage carts. The summer heat stroked my wet back and made me feel as if a fire had just been put out all over my body. I took out my U.S. passport and held it in my hand, fingering its embossed golden eagle, still hoping it meant something. I remember how my parents would talk about the
luck
of their having