Once they were surrounded by dusty shades of summer greens Gregor said, “Before I begin, Jeffrey, I must warn you of one very grave danger. Only you can say whether or not the warning applies, of course. I only ask that you search your heart very carefully before setting it aside.
“Sometimes in our selfish attempts to keep God out, we develop questions to which we believe there are no answers. Then we set them up as barriers between ourselves and God, and we never seek an answer. If a response is offered us, we either cast it aside with embittered anger over someone daring to challenge our defenses, or we immediately throw up another unanswerable question. The truth, you see, is that no answer is desired.
“Doubt can be a most valuable instrument of growth, if it is seen as a challenge. If it is a fuel used to search for more answers and a deeper understanding, then you who are poor and hungry in spirit shall inherit both profound answers and the kingdom of heaven. Believe me, my boy, if your search for answers is truly open-hearted, the Lord will reward you richly. But beware the blindness you are causing yourself if your questions are nothing more than defenses to keep Him out.”
Jeffrey pondered the question. “I guess that’s partly true. But I really did need God and He really wasn’t there. Maybe all I’m trying to do is keep from getting burned a second time.”
Gregor gave him an approving glance. “Your honesty is most admirable and most rare, Jeffrey. Very well. Let us look at the fact of your own suffering. And make no mistake, I do not question your pain. This matter of relativity is mere nonsense. Whatever it was that caused you pain was clearly something profound, and it carried a lasting effect. You have suffered. That is enough.
“For just a moment, I would like to ask that you remember whatever it was that caused you pain. Go back in your mind to that moment when you decided that God was not listening, and you turned away from Him.”
“I remember,” Jeffrey replied grimly.
“I know this is difficult for you, my young friend. I truly do. But try to see if one fact was not true for you right then. When you were in the midst of your suffering, did you not become more aware of how other people were living in pain? Did you find that barriers within yourself were crumbling?”
Jeffrey felt wracked by memories and by remembered pains and by a truth he had never recognized before. “Yes.”
“Yes. You felt it. The barriers fall as all lies must fall, if we are to remain honest with ourselves. The veil is ripped away, and you find yourself able to walk the valley that others know. This is a basic truth that we seek to flee from all our lives, my dear young friend, that no one can minister to a suffering soul except one who has passed through these flames and retained an open heart.
“Emotional, spiritual, physical pain—it doesn’t matter. Pain of any kind reduces the highest of us, even the great King David himself, to the lowest level of loneliness. We flee from it. We rage against it. We battle it with every weapon we have.
“You yourself know the desperation of searching for an end to your misery. And if the heart is awake, as yours surely is, you wish there could be a cure for every sufferer. You wish you could touch them, and cure them all.
“But you cannot. You can’t even keep your own puny self from knowing this horror called pain. You can’t even lock the door to your own life and tell this nightmare called suffering to stay out. It breaks down the door and forces itself upon you.
“So what do we do? Well, it is certainly possible to blame God. ‘You didn’t listen to me,’ we say to Him. ‘You forced me to endure this horrible pain! You crippled me, or at least allowed it to happen.’ This is the way it begins, you see. And the next step is of course very clear. We then turn our backs on God. We seek to punish Him as He has appeared to punish us. And once that is done, we continue our walk into darkness by hating God. By cursing God.
“What we do not ever want to see is that sometimes there is no earthly cure, no earthly solution. The stronger we are, the more we wish to see every problem in our life as temporary. To realize that something must simply be accepted and borne is to acknowledge that our own strength is not sufficient, that the world is not always under our control. This realization is such a hard task. So very, very hard.”
Gregor reached into the pocket of his voluminous sweater and emerged with a tiny pocket New Testament. “I brought my English version along.” He handed it to Jeffrey. “Would you please be so kind as to read from Second Corinthians, chapter twelve, verses seven through ten?”
It took quite some time for Jeffrey to find the passage. He squinted and braced the book with both hands against the car’s jouncing journey, and read:
“To keep me from becoming conceited because of these surpassingly great revelations, there was given me a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me. Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. But he said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.’ Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.”
Gregor nodded. “Even the great St. Paul has a painful thorn thrust deep into his side, and the agony has crippled him. He has great suffering. Three times the man who spoke with God begged Him to grant a cure. God refused to give a complete healing. Do you hear what I am saying, my young friend? God said that He knew of Paul’s suffering, yet refused to end it. He said no, I will not heal you. Not because you are a sinner and should be punished. Not because you have been found guilty. No. God recognizes Paul as a true disciple of Christ. So why does the divine Healer not heal? How can this be?
“It happens, my dear young friend, because God has something even better in store. Yet what can be better than a cure? What? The answer is, the presence of God. He gave Paul the grace to bear this suffering, and in so doing, to bear witness to His glory.
“In times of suffering, if we resist the temptation to blame God and curse God and hate God, He will strengthen us, deepen our faith, and see us through. It is not what we may want, it is not the end of our pain coming at the time and in the way of our choosing. But He in His own perfect way will use our imperfections and our weaknesses to the glory of His name. And in so doing, He will enrich us beyond all measure.
“He will deepen our life, our wisdom, and our faith, through the act of suffering. He can and will use the sufferer to reach those who might otherwise never know the glory that awaits them were they to only open their hearts to His call. He will help us to stretch out our hand, and give light to those who are entering into their own dark night.”
CHAPTER 15
The building had one entrance and two elevators for five hundred apartments set on nineteen floors. It was one of several dozen identical concrete monoliths grouped together on the outskirts of Cracow. The entrance doors, cracked wire-mesh glass and rusting frames, flapped noisily on their hinges.
The entrance hall was unpainted concrete—floors, walls, low-slung ceiling. Bent and scarred postboxes wept rust down the damp side wall. Meager light filtered through two fly-blown overhead globes. Mildew painted gray and green streaks in the corners. The air stank of refuse.
“We see fewer small items nowadays,” Gregor said, all business now that they were approaching a sale. “But as I said the other day, most buyers are out to spend as little as possible and will happily lie to the seller if it means paying a few dollars less. Others follow the person home and steal whatever is there. We, Alexander and I, are still approached by those who have done business with us in the past or heard of us from people who have, especially those with something truly valuable to sell.”
“Like today?”
Gregor tugged sharply at the elevator door and motioned Jeffrey to enter. “That, my dear boy, we shall soon see.”
The elevator complained like a cranky old man as it clanged past each floor. It s
topped on the seventh; Gregor pushed the door open with his shoulder. In the concrete-lined hallway squalling babies competed with echoing televisions and punk-rock music. Refuse littered the passage.
Gregor paused outside a battered door and said to Jeffrey, “As I have said before, it is best not to ask too many questions.”
His knock was answered by a balding man in unkempt clothes who greeted Gregor with a gap-toothed grin, a handshake, a clap on the shoulders, and words with the permanently slurred, coarsened quality of a vodka-and-cigarette fanatic. Gregor replied, turned and introduced Jeffrey. The man gave him a long, hard-eyed inspection before nodding a greeting.
He led them into the cluttered apartment of a dedicated bachelor. Empty vodka bottles and dirty plates littered every flat surface. Newspapers were scattered across the threadbare sofa and much of the floor.
A younger man, slighter and darker than their host, rose at their entry and stared at them with feverish eyes. Their host waved a hand toward the younger man and said something to Gregor, who translated. “This man is from the Ukraine, a section of the former Soviet Union which borders Poland. I have done business with our host several times before. He is Ukrainian himself, and keeps contact through his family with smugglers crossing the border. He will translate for us.”
The host bustled off to the kitchen alcove. Jeffrey seated himself at Gregor’s nod and gave the Ukrainian visitor a frank examination. He had black red-rimmed eyes, and skin the color of old leather. He was very slight, standing no more than five-three and weighing perhaps a hundred pounds. Despite the man’s twenty-odd years, his full beard was going gray.
When their host had returned and handed around tulip-shaped glasses of heavily sweetened tea, Gregor began a three-way discussion with the pair. He would ask a question to the host, who would then translate to the Ukrainian, who replied with a hoarse whispery voice. This was then translated back to Polish for Gregor.
Eventually Gregor turned to Jeffrey and said, “I asked him what the wait at the Polish border was like before passing through customs. He said this trip it was twelve days. It gets a little worse each time—I already knew this from the news reports. There are so many Soviets on the brink of starvation, you see. Anyone with something to sell is desperate to make it to Poland or Czechoslovakia. Polish currency is now freely convertible—you can change it for dollars or marks or whatever. The ruble is not. The Soviets have no faith in their monetary system, and are fearing the possibility of a total collapse. They are very keen to lay their hands on hard currency.
“This man also said that only the very small items are getting through these days. For months now the Polish border guards are trying to stop the smuggling of alcohol and cheap wares, and each car is searched carefully. You cannot bribe your way through, because the guards would then know you have something valuable and just confiscate it.
“Many people use the waiting time at the Soviet-Polish border as an indication of the state of the Soviet economy. They say it is a much more honest evaluation than anything the government puts out.”
“He must have something very valuable to make a trip like that,” Jeffrey ventured.
The Ukrainian waited through the laborious translation process and sipped at his glass of tea with fingers that trembled from fatigue. “He hopes so,” Gregor eventually replied. “He says the worst part of waiting at the border was the fear of bandits. He hasn’t slept very much for twelve days. He dared not travel with another man, because two men seen together was an automatic signal both to the border guards and the thieves that there was something of great value somewhere in the car.
“The Russian mafia has taken over the border area, according to this young man. He actually used the word mafia. They charge five dollars for a liter of water—one tenth of the average Russian’s monthly wage. Anyone who pays too quickly or buys too much has his car broken into at night. Keep in mind, there are no camping parks or hotels. They eat and sleep and live in their cars throughout the twelve-day wait. When the thieves pick their prey, he is beaten, maybe killed, and the car driven off somewhere to be searched at leisure.”
“What about the police or the border guards?” Jeffrey asked.
The man paused from his tea to give Jeffrey a look of bitter humor. “He says the line is over thirty miles long,” Gregor replied. “At night the guards never go farther from their hut than the circle cast by their lights, no matter how bad the screams. Every day or so there is another body to be brought out, identified, and buried.”
“Then why do people do it?”
“To trade,” Gregor replied, not bothering to translate.
“Seems like an awful risk,” Jeffrey said.
“That depends on how hungry you are, wouldn’t you say?”
Without preamble the small man stood, unbuckled his belt, and dropped his baggy trousers to the floor. With a grimace of pain he peeled black tape from either thigh and brought out two small packets wrapped in grimy rags. He fastened his trousers, sat back, motioned toward Jeffrey, and demanded something in a tense voice.
“He wants to know if you will offer him an honest price.”
“Honesty is the only thing I have to offer,” Jeffrey replied. “Ask him if he has any idea what he wants for the items.”
The smuggler gave a grin that split his dirty face and exposed teeth the color of aged teak. He said one word. “Valuta.”
“It’s a term you hear all through the Eastern Bloc,” Gregor explained. “It means Western cash. Transferable currency.”
The older man spoke. Gregor nodded and said to Jeffrey, “He says to tell you that valuta means cash that you can buy something with. Money with a purpose.”
The smuggler began speaking, the older man nodding and translating. Gregor passed it on. “You stand in line for everything today in Russia. A fistful of rubles won’t buy you bread. His sister has a sick baby, and last month waited three days in line for condensed milk. Each night the people in line would mark their place on one another’s palms, agree to a certain time to be back the next morning, and return and check carefully to make sure no one had broken into place. It’s been like that since early last winter. Sugar, milk, bread, meat, paper, soap—everything is either hard to find or just not available.”
“So how do they survive?”
When the translations were made, the man took his rag-covered bundle, set it firmly into Jeffrey’s hands, looked him hard in the eyes, said hoarsely, “Valuta.”
Jeffrey unfolded the rags from the smaller of the two parcels. It was a tiny case, no larger than his palm, of aged cedarwood. He had seen enough of these, and of the seal embossed on the top, to know that it was an original case from the House of Fabergé, court jewelers to the Czars of Russia. At least, that was what it appeared to be. He willed his hands to remain steady, and opened the box.
Inside rested a crystal flacon à sels. He recognized it immediately from the pictures he had studied. Almost every book on Fabergé contained an example, as it had been a favorite Christmas gift of the Empress Alexandra. It was designed as a container for either smelling salts or special healing salts brought in from some distant land, but as with many Fabergé items, it was probably rarely used. Such an item, even when originally acquired, was seen as a work of art to be enjoyed as such, rather than something that required a function.
The crystal jar was slender as a lady’s finger and octagonally shaped, the tiny dividing ridges chased with gold laurel bands. The cap was hand-fashioned from red gold in the form of an Eastern crown, and topped with a cabochon sapphire. It rested on a silk lining stamped with the Imperial Russian Eagle and the words Fabergé, London, Paris, St. Petersburg in Cyrillic, the Russian alphabet. Jeffrey had seen the words often enough in his reference books to identify them immediately.
The object within the second bundle was equally impressive: a slender gold box, perhaps twice the size of a pack of cigarettes. On its underside was scripted Jean Fremin, Paris, 1759. Jeffrey did not recognize the jewe
ler’s name, but traditionally only artists with better-known houses signed their work. The sides were decorated with carefully etched desert scenes done with royal blue enamel, or basse taille. Jeffrey opened the lid to find that the inner lining contained a miniature painting done on ceramic. It showed a young woman seated in her drawing room. The colors, preserved by second-firing the ceramic once the portrait was completed, were as vivid as the day they were painted. The miniature was held in place by an intricately scrolled bezel of gold.
Another round of translation ended with Gregor asking, “How much do you think they are worth?”
He was accustomed enough to the question now not to cringe. “Please tell them that I cannot give a true figure until they have been evaluated by experts. Which I am not.” He waited until this had been translated, and saw the small man nod his understanding. He went on. “But if they are real, which I think they are, they will be worth quite a bit.”
The tension was palpable as Gregor translated and returned with, “How much is that?”
“At least ten thousand dollars. Minimum. Per item.”
Gregor took out a pen and a piece of paper. As he wrote down the figures, he said to Jeffrey, “My insistence on this little act almost cost us the first deal with the gentleman seated to my right. He had clearly intended to use his mastery of Ukrainian as a means of exacting a larger commission. But I stood my ground, and he has come to see that my insistence on honesty has earned us more new business, and therefore more profits, than he would ever have gained from one large killing.”
He picked up the paper, held it over one piece and then the other, and said each time the single word, “Dollar.”
The Ukrainian’s eyes grew round, then he nodded and spoke sharply. The translation was, “It is agreed.”
“Make sure he understands that we won’t know anything about their real worth until the evaluation is completed.”
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