Oleg nodded, laughed bitterly, but in his thoughts he was nowhere near Martin’s story. He was thinking about how to look after himself amid the chaos, seeing that his Uncle Martin, even though he had a reputation and knew the right people in the new regime, had privatized nothing, and he even bragged about this. Had the old man slowed down a bit and supported the new authorities, who had been, after all, elected by the people, we could have, thought Oleg, arranged for a loan at the club to buy out the film company that had produced his movies and pay off the loan by converting its office space.
He understood his Uncle Martin, but his uncle received a regular pension. Oleg had nothing, he was a proletarian, and he realized there were no proletarians with whom to unite anymore. No, he would not be making movies about social issues, that’s for sure, nor would he feel disappointed while attempting to do so. He had to survive. He was sick of everything. Oleg sat there drinking with his uncle and listened to the damned paradoxes.
• • •
At some point after he’d lost his job, Oleg, like his uncle, stopped going to the club, but then, after a bout of depression, worried about his mental health, he shook off his reluctance and started playing tennis with Nikola again. Physical activity did him good; he sweated out the misery and rage. After the match he read the International Herald Tribune in the club café—unlike the local papers it was usually free.
He realized that, by some miracle, the fact that he played tennis and read the Herald helped him feel a little less miserable.
Since he held only temporary jobs—he occasionally translated something from the English or Russian for pocket money—he had time to play tennis, and Mrok soon became his daily haunt. Many things in his life hadn’t worked out, but at least he was still a member there. He could easily beat most of the new members, and those who played the worst tennis readily invited him for a drink, probably because Oleg could hold up his end of a conversation with anybody. The old chief physicians, Nikola’s friends from the city, tech managers, people from the sticks, new money, half-assimilated rednecks, thick dolts who always seemed cheery—Oleg could talk to anyone.
Although he could walk there, Oleg would drive to the club in his uncle’s old but classy Volvo. He was good at tennis and drank coffee while reading the Herald, so the new members thought him one of the old guard, maybe even the old-old, the bourgeois elite—in this context his Ukrainian surname, noble-sounding to some, had altogether different connotations, so when the matter arose, Oleg spoke only vaguely about his origins, and that gave others the impression that his was a long, complicated, slightly decadent Mitteleuropa story.
He made sure not to give the impression of being penniless, because Mrok was no place to mope. Whatever they talked about at Mrok, be it old champagne or a new BMW—which could be armor-plated for a little extra—you never had to say that something was “expensive.” Instead, you pretended you were seriously considering whether to buy the thing and were only trying to decide whether you’d get value for your money. Once, after a game he’d won with ease, Oleg eyed a contraption Vili had hauled to the table. It was, as Vili explained, a Motorola. A portable phone.
“Not actually very portable,” said Oleg with a smile.
“Seven and a half pounds. But it’s fantastic.”
“How much?”
“Twelve thousand.”
“Twelve thousand whats?”
“Whats? Deutsche Marks, of course.”
“Yes, yes,” Oleg grimaced, “very nice.”
Vili, who obviously really needed the phone, was a muscular guy from the sticks, and sometimes he was ill at ease at Mrok. It was easy to tell he was new to the whole tennis thing. So he liked to sit at Oleg’s table, as if they were old friends.
When a friend of Vili’s showed up at the table, dressed all in black, and put down an identical Motorola, the waiter, who was just bringing another round of drinks, said, “Gentlemen, make some room. There’s nowhere to put the drinks!”
Some of these new members, who were a bit uncomfortable at first, would sometimes dub Oleg Legend when they sat together at the table. He countered by saying, “A friend was telling me about his grandfather who jumbled words. The friend was saying his grandfather leafed through the newspapers, becoming increasingly irate as he read about the thefts and embezzlements, the con men and scammers, so he put down the paper and, referring to these men, said, ‘Common legends, every one!’”
They thought of Oleg as having a good sense of humor. A longtime member, never a Communist, well-educated, multilingual, reads the Herald, drinks coffee, observes the world.
“You’re different from that cousin of yours,” said Vili to him once; Nikola usually hung out with his old gang. That’s because I don’t have an old gang, thought Oleg, but he didn’t say so to Vili.
The guy, Vili, whom he’d beat at tennis many times, once asked, begged really, for Oleg to join him at a dinner with some foreigners as Vili was not used to hanging out with world-class people, and he wasn’t handy with languages.
The dinner was with two men from Switzerland who actually looked Latino and spoke good English. The dinner proceeded with no business talk, and four women joined their little group. They were obviously paid escorts, and cocaine showed up from somewhere, so Oleg tried the powder for the first time and livened right up, entertained the guests by speaking English, soothed nervous Vili, translated, entertained the women, who were at first awkwardly quiet, and everything went beautifully for him, so in the end the atmosphere was not as grim as it had been at the beginning of the evening.
A couple of days after that, Vili asked, in private, his tone serious, whether Oleg would like to work for him; he said there’d be good money in it. Oleg said he was interested. Vili said that before starting he’d have to go through a detailed background check, a security clearance, which Oleg did. He didn’t even leave out his origins: he mentioned his great-grandfather’s anti-communism, his grandfather’s pro-German stance and shady war history, and also his father’s membership in the Communist Party because he figured that Vili and his crew were not people one should lie to.
A few days later, Nikola told Oleg that some men, who did not look altogether harmless, were asking around about him. They were definitely asking around elsewhere, too, and Oleg was ultimately surprised when Vili informed him he’d passed the security check. “I vouched for you,” said Vili.
And so began his international career; Vili’s job was obtaining weapons during the international embargo. Weapons for the war that was just beginning.
Oleg was paid handsomely and he was also given bonuses, but he never reached the level of making deals independently. They didn’t trust him that far; he worked for Vili, shadowed him, handled correspondence, and did what Vili didn’t know how to do or could not do.
People were killed, cities fell, news began coming in about massacres; there were not enough weapons for their defense while the other side was well-stocked, and part of Oleg’s job was dealing with that. He worked on extremely important, top-secret tasks, enjoying all the privileges high-level security brings. Sometimes what he was involved in and who he interacted with seemed strange even to him. But he felt, at the same time, that he was a full-fledged member of society. Men at the bar clapped him on the shoulders, he was given war commendations and felt like a member of the majority—sometimes even a nationalist—cursing the enemy, their morals and culture. At the time that was normal so somehow it just entered his vocabulary.
“Don’t get too comfortable with this,” Uncle Martin told him in a conversation that would later haunt him. “Just recently you were whining about your family history and now you’re a nationalist? Ridiculous. Your father and grandfather were just like that—whatever it took to fit in. You’re like a son to me, you know you are, so this is something I have to say to you.”
“But it’s how I feel!”
“Like an arms
smuggler?”
He flinched. “You think that’s easy?” He hated it that he wasn’t more eloquent, but he sometimes felt like a little kid in front of Uncle Martin.
“No, I don’t. You’re part of this because life has pushed you here. The world mobilized you, see? Acting like this was your choice, but you had no choice, and I know that. If you’d stayed in your small town you might be fighting for the other side; you’re a bare-assed pauper and proletarian—there’s no shame in that—but imagine if you’d had to survive there. You’d adapt, because you’d have no choice, and you are the type who adapts. If you were there, you’d also be saying the same sort of thing: That’s how you feel. Try to imagine this and you’ll realize you lie to yourself quite a lot.”
“I’m no longer a bare-assed pauper and proletarian. What makes you think I’d adapt if I were still there? I would not, this is where I belong.”
“If it were the other way around you’d belong there.”
“I wouldn’t. They’re the aggressor.”
“I know. But I’m saying something else. About who you are. You’d adapt to the aggressor, too, because that’s who you are. You don’t care about the truth, that’s the problem. The problem is you’d buy their story, too, and you’d talk shit over there, too, like an actor who’s forgotten he’s an actor. See, without concern for the truth, personality can’t exist. Be a criminal for all I care, but don’t lie to yourself, because in that case I have nobody to talk to.”
“What’s that supposed to mean? That I don’t exist?”
“Wherever you end up, you have to know you’re not there of your own free will. That’s all there is to it. You were meant to become something completely different, and you know that. In peacetime, in a different situation, you’d have been something else. You wouldn’t be drinking with lowlifes who are out to profit on bloodshed. You need to be thinking about what brought you to this, not simply to embrace the role the film directors handed you. You’re talking to an old filmmaker. I’ve seen it all before. Don’t be swept up and don’t be full of shit.”
This hit Oleg like a cold shower; he wasn’t about to take it lying down despite everything he owed his uncle. Too many things were said questioning his character. Too many things he didn’t want to hear. In fact, he felt the urge to talk back to his uncle, show him he no longer depended on him. He didn’t have to take this, he was his own person.
“You don’t acknowledge me or what I’ve accomplished! People respect me. You . . . You don’t understand the times! I am more agile than others, successful . . .”
“Successful? What a stupid word.”
“Well, your time has passed! You . . . you really are from the . . .” he struggled for words. “You . . . you . . . you really are an old Commie!” As soon as he said this he stopped. He couldn’t believe what he’d said.
His uncle looked at him blankly and started in a quiet tone: “Your father was in the Party, not me. And you’re neck deep in the system now, not me. The two of you would nominally be on opposite sides, but in fact you’re the same. As for me, it’s true that I was more interested in social justice than your father was, just like I’m more interested in freedom than you are. Now go! And be careful not to make your fortune on bloodshed.”
Oleg left, slamming the door behind him, overwhelmed by the urge to smash something. Eventually he did just that in a café after he got drunk, and everyone eyed him in fear because he let them know what sort of business he’d been involved in. He ended up drinking alone with the bartender, cursing old Commies, and the waiter nodded. In the early morning Oleg paid his tab and left, walking out on the broken glass, still in a bleak mood and—or so he felt—not nearly drunk enough. In the shower he relived the conversation and the cold shower took a long time to take effect. He was furious at Uncle Martin for everything, at times he really hated him, because people were respecting him and Uncle Martin ignored all that. He made Oleg feel like a bare-assed pauper and proletarian all over again and this made him hurl the stupid insults he regretted. But his rage would not go away because he was offended deeper down than he could admit to himself. Who knows when this rage would have left him—maybe never—if his uncle had lived longer and if their quarrel had reached the boiling point of open hostility. But Uncle Martin died of a stroke fifteen days later, while he was at his summer cottage.
That’s when his rage toward his uncle evaporated and sadness set in. He even feared that their argument might have helped to bring on Uncle Martin’s death and he never told Nikola about the conversation; he realized his uncle hadn’t, either. Oleg inferred that the old man thought they’d soon sort things out, so he hadn’t bothered to mention it. But they didn’t, and Oleg regretted this with a regret he couldn’t fix.
Still, the haunting conversation no longer angered him; it helped him calm down and start to see himself differently. It didn’t change his personality, but he forever remembered not to lie to himself—only to others.
Yes, arms smuggler, how disturbing that must sound to someone living in a more fortunate country, he thought. Even worse would have been to leave all that behind and then find himself at the front, poorly armed in the chaos and hysteria of the war. He was not short on information about what was happening at the front. At first he was shocked, and then he got used to it. He saw the enemy was pushing hard to the end, but he’d heard enough to realize that there was no lack of revenge on his side, either, most of which harmed those who were vulnerable, isolated families and individuals. He knew he was no superman. He would not be championing order and justice.
By the time the war spilled over into the third country after a year, Oleg, like everyone else, was already inured to the gruesome news. Horror had become part of his world, and he was one of the lucky ones who was part of the horror at a high level. People he met had predatory looks in their eyes, the cynical humor of professionals. He worked with mob bosses, international piranhas, local warlords—the kind of people with whom others didn’t dare make eye contact. Oleg needed to present himself as if he were one of them so they wouldn’t smell weakness. Cocaine helped. Cocaine became a tool of his trade, and without it he surely could not have ignored all the fear that the people he worked with brought with them. He knew that he, too, had the predatory look and the cynical humor of a professional; he knew he’d crossed his Rubicon, and he’d never be able to return to an unknowing civilian life.
He saw the invoices, bills, and discrepancies.
Actually, no, he didn’t see them.
He did not skimp on the cocaine or anything else, he did not rein in his expenses, he did not smuggle on the side, and he did not come out of the war a tycoon as did a few of the people he rubbed elbows with. He was not sorry, because property acquired that way had to be protected from witnesses who blackmailed you unless you destroyed them. So he didn’t envy Vili what was ahead of him. Recently he’d seen a story in the paper about Vili’s car blowing up and he’d been lucky because he was late, so only his driver was killed.
Oleg smiled grudgingly. Vili was always late. If he hadn’t been, he’d never have come to rely on Oleg.
He remembered one of their first business meetings, when Vili clapped him on the shoulder, laughing, and said, “You’re okay, we’re both forty-five minutes late and we’re right on time.”
“Yes?”
“We’re in sync. Just don’t be later than me. Actually, when I’m paying bills you can be even an hour late,” he said, still laughing.
No-Signal Area Page 8