A New Yorker story story that tells much - though not enough - by allusion

A writer named Sam Allingham - I know nothing about him - has an intriguing story, The Intermediate Class, in the current New Yorker; I can't say I loved the story, but it drew me along right to the end, which says something. Roughly, the story is about a young man, Kyril, who attends an adult-learning class in intermediate or second-year German, and we follow him through a semester of the class, with most of the narrative consisting of conversations among the classmates, guided by the teacher. The conversations are in "German," that is, the students are told to converse in German only, though they conversations appear in accurately translated English, that is, broken English - pretty much the way students might converse in an "intermediate" class in English. I'm drawn to the story from my own experiences learning a language while living in another culture, and it's interesting to see relationships develop or hint at developing among the classmates and between some of the classmates and the teacher. That said, there is so much about this story that we don't know and don't learn. For example, Allingham never states where this story takes place, though it does not appear to be in Germany. We know nothing about Kyril aside from what takes place in class or among the students; he could be a Russian immigrant, judging from his name, but we don't really know why he or any of the others in the small class are interested in learning German. One of the classmates becomes perturbed about some of the teaching methods and indicates he's feeling ripped off re the $300 enrollment fee - this would suggest that he has to take the course to learn German, though again it's not clear why. Another classmate disappears for some time but returns for the final class, looking disheveled and perhaps a victim of an assault - no explanation given. I like stories that have some mystery and allusion, but I think Allingham pushes his luck too far in this one. I finished feeling that I didn't know enough about the characters to make the journey worth the candle (it's pretty long for a NYer fiction piece), and as w/ so many NYer pieces I wondered if this might be part of a longer narrative - if not, perhaps it should be.