A Backpack, a Bear, and Eight Crates of Vodka: A Memoir

by Lev Golinkin

  Dad and I didn’t dance. I hated dancing, and Dad saw no point. “We’re not in America, and we’re nowhere near settled,” he stared around in disbelief. “What the hell are they celebrating?” Shortly after the music started, he collected some leftover English-language newspapers from the lobby and retired upstairs to catch up on reading comprehension. I helped myself to an extra cup of tea and was amusing myself by watching the babushki watching everyone else, when Yura approached me.

  “Why aren’t you dancing?” he asked, interrupting teatime with two of my least favorite things: talking to strangers (I was starting to get used to Yura, but anyone other than family was a stranger) and having to explain my actions to anyone, family or strangers.

  “Because there are no presents,” I said, and somewhere in his tomb, Lenin shuddered. Less than a week out of the Motherland, and another member of the proletariat, lost to decadent materialism. I was thrilled to be out of Russia, but New Year’s Eve meant presents, and dancing was for girls and people who drank too much vodka. I couldn’t justify doing something that awful unless tangible incentives were involved.

  “So if you’ll get presents, you’ll dance? Promise?”

  “Yes,” I said. Yura wasn’t about to produce gifts on command; the Zhislins lost even more at the border than we did. I started squirming for a way to end the conversation, except that Yura had vanished. My “da” still hung in the air, and he was gone.

  He reappeared five minutes later, panting and dripping with sweat, with a giant yellow marker and a slightly used coloring book. A chubby kid was diligently constructing a sand castle on the back cover. On the front, partially colored in by the book’s previous owner, was the Happiest Dog in the World. This dog looked ecstatic. It was as if it had been moments away from being euthanized when someone burst into the shelter and said that there’d been a terrible mix-up, and that it was going to a loving family with a big yard and lots of tennis balls to boot. To this day, I have no idea what Yura traded for the book and marker, or where he found them. He insisted they came from Grandfather Frost, and when I said that Grandfather Frost was stupid and only kids believed in him, Yura just laughed.

  I started flipping through the book, only to be interrupted by meaningful stares toward the dance floor. “But, Uncle Yura, I only promised you because I didn’t think you would get any gifts!” I exclaimed, even throwing in the “Uncle,” which children used to address grown-ups they were fond of. I was certain Uncle Yura would understand the situation.

  Uncle Yura did not understand the situation. Uncle Yura convulsed with laughter.

  “Well, it, it looks like someone, looks like someone learned an important lesson today,” he finally managed to get out. Unfortunately, Dad’s maxims about a real man always keeping his word, drilled into my head during strolls in the lilac park, picked the worst possible moment to kick in. I drained the teacup.

  The rest of the evening found me bouncing up and down on both legs, big yellow marker bobbing in one hand, the Happiest Dog in the World flopping around in the other, my mind analyzing the possibilities. I have yellow. Dad has pencils that can produce both regular gray, when used lightly, and blackish gray, when pressed heavily. Sometimes Austrians lose pens in the lobby couches … They’re usually snatched up by the businessmen, but if I pay attention I should be able to score blue, maybe even red. What’s the best way to steal Lina’s lipstick, which will yield a lovely shade of coral? Does Binder have anything at the front desk? It’s been ten whole minutes: Can I stop hopping around like a jackass? Happy New Year!

  Midnight came, and with it the dancing was over. Before going upstairs, the businessmen made sure to clear the lobby for the next day’s bazaar. It was a new year, and there was plenty of business to be done.

  * * *

  Dad hated business. Hard, no-cutting-corners work was the foundation of his world, and he had always shown contempt for people ferreting pennies out of life. Hearing other refugees brag about their latest sales made him smirk. “Idiot! He just sold a thirty-schilling bottle of champagne for twelve schillings and he’s crowing about it. What a schmuck!” Nevertheless, Dad still packed a suitcase of trinkets, mainly matryoshki, a few jewelry boxes, and several pairs of opera glasses, which folded into a palm-sized case. (I’m still confused as to what led Dad to believe that collapsible, low-magnitude binoculars were a hot commodity in the West, but I’m sure he had his reasons.) Dad’s original intent was to hand these out as thank-you gifts to friendly locals we might encounter along the way, but the ceaseless commotion around us finally got to Mom and one night she declared that there was no reason our family shouldn’t be doing business, “just like everyone else.”

  “Go ahead, peddle away,” Dad grumbled, so Mom grabbed a pair of binoculars and a matryoshka and walked down to the bustling marketplace. The lobby was tense as seasoned businessmen swarmed to potential clients and communally glared at incoming competition. Mom had paused by the staircase, unsure of what to do, when Binder flew up to her in a flash of white shirt and glistening baldness. He yelled something to three elderly Austrians, who seemed as taken aback by the ferocious sleeve-tugging as Mom was. Binder escorted them over, and, after a lot of hand-bargaining and “You, how much sell?” “You, how much pay?” the trio took both the dolls and the glasses. For a few moments after the transaction, the parties remained in place, Mom appraising the Austrians, the Austrians staring at Mom. Binder positioned himself off to the side, looking every bit like a UN diplomat presiding over a cultural summit. He smiled at Mom, and Mom returned to our room, proud of her sale.

  Otto Binder was a decent man. He grew up in a working-class household in post-Anschluss Vienna. Agnes, his wife, was born in Croatia. She was just a child when a squad of soldiers raided her village, looting crops and raping women. When they burst into her family cottage, Agnes and her siblings literally shielded her mother. As soon as the soldiers managed to pull off one child, another scrambled up and desperately hung on, until eventually the men gave up and moved along. Soon afterward, Agnes and her older sister escaped over the Karavanke Mountains to Vienna, where she met Otto.

  The young couple opened a small bakery on the outskirts of the city; in the winters they’d stay after hours to serve bread and soup to the homeless. Years passed; Otto and Agnes saved up a few schillings, moved to the countryside, bought a hotel. Things were better for Binder, and although he was plagued with the usual worries of a small-business owner, he was certainly far from where he started. And yet he didn’t forget. Binder understood why a former doctor was trying to peddle matryoshki just to feel like she was doing something productive. When Joint first approached him about turning his hotel into a refugee camp (obviously a deal no sane hotel owner would go for), Otto not only agreed; he offered Joint a group discount.

  Binder’s busiest time was in the dead of night, when a hushed rapping would come at his door. Years of living under a dictatorship had bred in Russians a pervasive distrust that was somehow equated with survival. No one wanted to disclose anything, especially any weaknesses, so petitioners crept up to Binder’s room past midnight, when the hallways were empty. Otto would answer and, using a mixture of gestures and rudimentary English, figure out what was the matter and how to solve it. When people fell ill (as happened to me after one of my teeth rotted through), he arranged for transportation to local doctors whom he had convinced to treat the refugees at a reduced rate. During disputes, which were frequent given the diverse mix of cultures and backgrounds, he reconciled the conflicting parties, reminding everyone that the end goal was safety in America, not detention in Europe. More than seventy families were stationed at the hotel at peak times, and the knocks kept coming. Shortly after the first refugees had arrived, Binder resigned himself to the fact that he was not going to get a full night’s sleep for the foreseeable future. He simply slept in his clothes and waited for the knock.

  Of course, my family didn’t know any of this at the time, and it was only when I returned to Nondorf s
eventeen years later that I was able to sit down with Otto and Agnes to learn about their backgrounds and their memories of our stay. In 1990, Binder was a foreign entity, a man unlike us: someone with money, and options, and a home. All we could do was rely on instincts, and instincts told us that Otto Binder was a decent man.

  * * *

  *1 Zapodentsi literally means “west folk.”

  *2 Dog Man, Hat Lady, and Comrade Diamonds aren’t nicknames I invented to protect these people’s identities—it’s how they were referred to among the refugee community at Binder’s. Many in the hotel were reluctant to disclose anything personal, and when people introduced themselves, quite a few replied, “Pleased to meet you,” and left it at that.

  THE FORESTER

  Niederösterreich (Lower Austria), January 1990

  Peter the forester had rather disproportionate tastes for a man of his occupation. Other Austrians putzed around the cheaper things at Binder’s hotel—shawls, matryoshki, Red Army watches—but not the forester. The forester would march into the lobby, black boots and long green coat caked with pine needles and mud, ignore the trinkets, and head for the costly goods. He bought handmade crystal and antique jewelry. He carted away caviar by the caseload. But his real penchant was for rugs. Peter loved fine rugs—Russian, Armenian, Persian, Turkish—and although he was a reserved man, a hungry glimmer crept into his pale blue eyes when they happened upon a quality piece.

  He did not like to linger at the hotel, opting instead to deal on the road, in the privacy of his midnight-green military-grade Mercedes jeep. The seller would hop in and Peter would circle around the local countryside until he arrived at a price he deemed satisfactory. He was a tough customer who haggled for every schilling, but he didn’t think twice about spending considerable sums of money on a worthy investment. What he did with those investments was anyone’s guess: he’d carefully load his purchases into the Mercedes and return the next day, the jeep empty, ready for more.

  The vendors quickly discovered that, unlike other customers, Peter had a profound understanding of the eras, history, norms, and art movements of our ex-homeland. Businessmen who embellished or tacked on a few extra decades to an antique learned never to try it again. Conversely, no one knew anything about Peter, and he seemed to prefer it that way. “I am a man who tends the local trees,” he’d remark, and nothing more. He didn’t interact with the other Austrians, the other Austrians didn’t approach him, and even Binder remained silent on the matter. Terseness, privacy, and an inexplicable knowledge of Russian culture swirled around the pale red-headed man, shrouding him in mystery. A favorite post-bazaar pastime at Binder’s was trying to figure out just who or what he was. “An agent of the Austrian secret service” was the leading theory. “No, that’d be too obvious; he spies for the CIA,” held a rival contention. “That’s stupid. He launders money for an international crime syndicate—why else would he buy all those rugs?” The debates ranged long into the night.

  The one gap in Peter’s formidable Russian acumen was language: the man didn’t speak a lick of Russian, which was an issue, because the peddlers didn’t have a good enough grasp of English to field Peter’s detailed inquiries. The businessmen needed to locate a single common translator, someone who not only spoke English but, more important, wouldn’t disrupt the sale by hawking his own goods or swaying Peter toward another deal. They settled on Dad because he was notoriously anti-business and didn’t charge for the translation services, merely wanting to practice his conversational skills. He was harmless, which made him the perfect translator.

  Every day after dinner, Dad climbed into the front seat of Peter’s Mercedes to join him and the sellers for a spin around the neighborhood. One sleety January evening, as business was wrapping up for the night, Dog Man (the peddler with the pregnant Maltese) requested a meeting with the forester. Once in the jeep, the trader fished a little cloth bag out of his pocket. Inside was a set of four or five diamonds of astonishing quality and size. According to Dog Man, the gems came from the personal collection of Tsar Nikolai II himself, Nikolai the Bloody, the last tsar of Russia. Peter perked up his ears. The fate of the fabled Romanov jewels has been inspiring myths and conspiracy theories since 1917, when the Communists overthrew the tsar. Lenin and the Bolsheviks may have despised the aristocratic bloodsuckers, but they had no qualms about pocketing as much tsarist treasure as they could get their hands on. The idea was to redistribute the wealth to the proletariat, of course, but somewhere in the redistribution process many of the jewels simply vanished; over the next seventy years some resurfaced in rather improbable places, places as strange as, if not stranger than, the back mountains of Austria. Needless to say, Dog Man had Peter’s attention.

  The forester shifted course and drove to a house in a tiny village the size of Nondorf. Peter disappeared into the sleet, returning with a man carrying a flashlight and a set of loupes. The newcomer peered at the stones, turning them this way and that, switching lenses for various magnifications, then said something in German and ran back indoors. Without a word, Peter returned to the road, flying past Binder’s and to the larger town of Gmünd, careening the jeep into a lot next to a one-story building. The forester spoke to Dad while staring at Dog Man in the rearview mirror.

  “Please inform this whoreson that the man who examined his garbage was an expert jeweler who said that they are well-crafted fakes. Inform this bastard that I do not like getting fooled. Inform him that we’re in front of the local constable center, where he will learn what happens to people who sell fake diamonds in Austria.”

  Over the next five minutes Dad’s translation skills were tested like they’d never been tested before as he struggled to convey the barrage of pleas, apologies, and explanations pouring out of the backseat. The whole thing was an awful, colossal misunderstanding: Dog Man was the real victim in all this, he’d been victimized twice, in fact, first when he was ripped off by that vile, lying scumbag from Minsk—may he go to hell!—and again for looking like he was trying to con Peter, a respectable Austrian gentleman whom Dog Man would never, ever take advantage of. Peter must realize that he [Dog Man] didn’t know the tsar personally, of course, so it’s not as if he could verify the source, and above all—

  “Let him go,” Dad asked. It was less than a month after the night at the tamozhnya, and the horror on Dog Man’s face was too familiar. “Maybe he isn’t lying.”

  Peter brooded with barely controlled fury as the wipers lashed across the windshield. He gave Dad a long look, then a nod, and spun the jeep around. Both Dad and the forester ignored continued appeals for clemency during the return trip to Nondorf. As soon as Binder’s lobby emerged into view, Dog Man extricated himself from the colossal misunderstanding, grabbing his diamonds and taking off into the downpour as if every constable in Austria and the ghost of the tsar were on his heels.

  “Would you like to stay for a while?” Peter asked Dad, who was about to follow Dog Man. “We can talk and drive around, since it is nice outside.”

  Dad stayed, and their cruises became a nightly post-business ritual. The two men chatted about politics, literature, and history. Both shared a healthy distrust of government, both had a quirky, somewhat immature sense of humor. They got along well.

  Peter revealed himself slowly, via innocuous remarks sprinkled into the conversation. “I work as a forester, and I work for the man who lives in that house,” he mentioned one day, pointing to a large stone castle that towered on a hill over a nearby town. “He is a baron, and all of these lands belong to him,” Peter clarified on another pass by the castle. Several nights later Dad learned: “I also live in that house, with the man who owns the forests.” The whole situation was strange, but Dad valued privacy and didn’t press for answers.

  One January afternoon, Mom, Dad, Lina, and I were stomping home from the grocery store. Nondorf had no shops, and the nearest village, Hoheneich, was an hour’s walk away, but the commute was an almost-daily ritual, since the adults were hesitant to use
an entire week’s stipend to stock up on groceries. I was usually excluded from the Hoheneich excursions, because the road had no shoulder and Austrian drivers didn’t believe in things like swerving or slowing down to avoid pedestrians. But being cooped up in the hotel was making me antsy and I had already turned my attentions to pestering Lina, so Mom bundled me up in one of Dad’s sweaters and permitted the trip.

  By the time we picked up the bread, cheese, and orange juice and began the crawl back I was regretting it. At the border, the tamozhniki had ripped through the seams of my warm rabbit fur coat (perhaps the border guards thought Mom and Dad were using me to smuggle out gold), and it was starting to disintegrate at an alarming pace. The icy trudge accentuated every little pine needle, each clump of snow, peeling off the landscape’s magic and exposing the monotony underneath. Fields fell around us, brimmed by hoary pines, and each one took a decade to traverse, thanks to the snow and ice and the uniformity, broken only by small groups of other refugees drifting by.

  The rumble of a heavy car carried far up the road, giving us plenty of time to leap into the safety of the snow banks (the practice had quickly become instinctual). Stomping through the snow was futile and so was trying to hitchhike, so we stood by and waited for the car to pass. Instead it rolled to a halt, and out hopped Peter. He scooped us up into the warmth of the jeep and turned to Dad, a mischievous grin on his face. “Would you like to stop by that house where the man who owns the forests lives?”

  “Is that possible?” Dad asked the forester.