by John Mole
“Mr Mile, are you trying to foolish me? What is this tax? Nobody gives taxes. Nobody makes profit. Everybody make money.”
“We have to account for everything to our investors and our partners. We have to keep proper books. Everything must go through the till. In England we have to account for...”
“Do not come into another’s monastery with your own Rule.”
We were distracted by the arrival of the wine waiter, a beefy chap in a cherry-red jacket, shiny black trousers and a big gold medallion dangling over his open-necked shirt. Boris sprang to his feet and I realized I had mistaken the man’s vocation. From his tan to his perfectly groomed hair to his corseted belly, everything about him was fake except for his dark eyes, so dark and expressionless they sucked in light. I had seen their sort before, in life-size photogravure on massive mobster tombstones in the German cemetery, intimidating passers-by even in death. I saw no reason to stand and devoted myself to tepid scrambled egg while he conducted a guttural conversation with Boris. He left in a jangle of jewellery and Boris sat down.
“Mister Mewel, you are very fortunate. You will have a financing of ten million roubles.”
“Ten lemons? That’s very gracious. We don’t need it.”
“How will you pay for the premises?”
“We have a joint venture with the cooperative that owns it.”
“The cooperative will not make a joint venture. They will sell you the lease. We will lend you money for it.”
“That is not our arrangement.”
“You are mistaken.”
He shrugged and refilled our glasses. They had made the cooperative a traditional non-refusable offer. They would sell us the lease and lend us the money to pay for it at a doubtless massive interest rate. In this way they laundered their money and made a safe loan to a foreign company. If we defaulted I would be killed. A good deal for them. A bad deal for me.
There was no point in arguing. We had a pleasant conversation about football while we finished our food. He was a Meat supporter too. Over a parting toast he was effusive with offers of help. He wrote down a telephone number in case I was ever in trouble. I was most grateful and charming.
We stood up. Then I did something very silly. I have done many stupid things, but this counts among the daftest. If anything can be said in my defence I would cite vodka, anger and loathing of these people and all they stood for.
“Do svidanya” he said.
“Get whacked soon,” I muttered, more fool me.
“Tsank you.”
“I hope they cut your goolies off.”
“I am pleased to meet you.”
“And shove them in your gob.”
“It is my pleasure.”
Thank God for the limitations of the Cambridge Proficiency. He signalled to a bull loitering at the slot machines, who escorted me outside. This time the thug took me to a little BMW and got in the driver’s seat himself. He was proud of the big crystal knob on the gear change. He tried to make conversation about football, but I ignored the punk and stared out of the window.
I was having nothing to do with the brotherhood. If you make yourself a sheep you’ll be eaten by the wolf. Jackets was finished. I wanted to get out of Moscow as soon as possible. I had been naïve. I had tried to do things more or less in the same way I would do them in London. I had been living in a fantasy world. I was angry and depressed that I had not foreseen this. I had failed.
The best that could be said about the project was that it had taken me behind the news headlines into a Russia where ordinary people lived. How far? I had only scratched the surface of how things really worked. If it was any consolation, many of my Russian friends were suffering similar disappointments with the New Russia. The difference was that I had the luxury of getting on a plane while they had to stay.
It didn’t take long to unwind my commitments. Malcolm was relieved, since he had his hands full with a new restaurant in Wimbledon. I had a desultory, distant phone conversation with Misha in Italy. I think he had already lost faith in Jackets, if he had ever had it. Oleg and Olga were sympathetic and Petya had never seen himself behind a counter. My fellow rabotniks at the Union were understanding. I sensed that they thought this would happen. I felt I had let the professor down. He was a man of great energy and integrity who worked tirelessly for his farmers and for democracy. He had been very open and supportive to us. I was a little disappointed that he seemed relieved too. The Union did not yet have the skills or experience to be an active partner in a commercial venture.
Besides, they had their hands full working on a farmers’ bank with Land O’Lakes.
Afanasy was philosophical. “By no means. We hoped for the best, but it turned out as it usually does”.
Natasha was on holiday at her grandmother’s dacha. I sat at her desk and wrote a letter explaining things and thanking her. I went down to say goodbye to Flor. I expected him to be disappointed in me, but his mind was on other things.
“Oh Mister John, when are you leaving Moscow? Will you be here next Friday?”
“I might be gone by then.”
“What a pity.”
“Why? Is there a concert?”
“I wanted to invite you to be a witness at our marriage.”
“Flor, this is a great honour. Married! Congratulations! I think I will be here. Who to?”
“She did not tell you? Natasha. We handed in the application a month ago. You were in London. In Soviet Union it was three months to wait. Now it is much better.”
“Natasha?” I hope I did not sound too shocked.
“You brought us together. I saw her in new light.”
What light did Natasha see him in - astral? It was not an obvious match. I hoped that she perceived in him what he was, a kind and good man with just enough zaniness to keep her interested. Anyway, she had more than enough zaniness for both of them.
At the ZAGS, the registry office, there was already a procession of parties coming down the stairs when we joined the one going up. The waiting hall was divided by benches into a score of separate waiting areas. Different parties were in different conditions of merriment. Those in the one before us had to hold on to each other to make it down the red carpet into the wedding hall. Another group were solemn and carried bibles.
The authorities had done their best in the wedding hall with sprays of artificial flowers and colourful banners. The registrar was a pleasant middleaged lady in a beige suit who asked the usual questions and mouthed da to prompt the couple. They put rings on each other’s right hands and kissed and signed the book, followed by the chief witnesses. The registrar reminded them of their responsibilities to each other and to the Motherland. She pressed a button on a tape player and we walked out to Mendelssohn’s wedding march. It all took about ten minutes.
We went on a photo shoot round Moscow. When we stopped in front of Pushkin’s statue near McDonald’s, I ran and got Tomas to come and play “Sweet Georgia Brown” for them to jive to.
After three hours of this we got back to Natasha’s apartment. Her mother and grandmother were waiting for us at the threshold with bread and salt. They had crammed tables into the living room and hall and loaded them with zakushka. We sat down where we could, bottles popped and we had the first toast from Flor’s friend Alexei. I was out of my depth with his slangy Russian and in-jokes, as I was for the rest of the toasts, which were the equivalent of the speeches at a British wedding. But I joined in the chorus of Za molodikh! - to the happy couple - and the chants of Gorko, gorko. This means “bitter” and the only thing to bring sweetness back is for the couple to stand up and kiss until they come up for air. We all counted 1...2...3...4...5 and of course it wasn’t long enough so they had to do it again.
After toasts and zakushka the tables were pushed aside for dancing. My heart sank when one of the guests picked up an accordion, but it was all raucous and jolly enough to drown him out. My contribution to the entertainment was the first three kicks of a Cossack squatting d
ance and then I fell over.
It was time for me to make a toast before shampanskoe and vodka and the general excitement completely obfuscated my Russian. I had forgotten what I had prepared but was fluent, although unintelligible. When I had run out of things to say, I took a bulging envelope out of my pocket and asked my neighbours to pass it up the table. They weighed it in their hands and wondered if it was dollars. When it got to Flor I asked him to open it instead of putting it away with the others. He took out a sheaf of papers and handed them to Natasha, who also looked puzzled.
“Dzhorn! What are these?”
“Contracts for 5000 tons of the finest potatoes. They’re all yours. Za molodikh!”
And that’s the end of this tale.
I hope our little Russians will be happy here
It wasn’t the end of the tale, though. For the next few days I moped around Moscow doing last-minute shopping and sight-seeing. Along with self-recrimination and self-doubt and self-pity and other self-centred self-indulgence was a niggling feeling of relief. Almost as inhibiting as the fear offailure is the fear of success. Did I really want to devote the next five years of my life to Russian fast food? There were so many other things to do, so many other places to see. A great weight had been lifted from my shoulders. Not least 5000 tons of potatoes.
The night before I left I had a last glass of Chablis and a cigar and went to bed early. The fax machine chattered and woke me up, but I rolled over and went back to sleep. The next morning I made a final cup of peppery coffee and finished packing. I took a farewell look around the flat, made sure the gas was turned off, peered under the bed. Like a Russian, the last thing I did before starting on my journey was to sit down quietly for a minute to let the spirit take its leave. It’s also the last chance to remember things like your ticket and your passport and the fax that came when you were in bed. It was from the managing director of an environmental engineering company in Lancashire. They had examined our proposal for the Bioreactor. It was ten years in advance of anything similar in Western Europe or the United States. They would like to come to Moscow and open discussions at our earliest convenience.
I cavorted round the room. I phoned Vladimir. I cancelled my ticket home. I phoned the family with the news: “This is the Big One!”
For the next year we worked hard to bring the Bioreactor to Britain. The science and technology were beyond me. My job was to mediate between English and Russian expectations and ways of doing things. For example, I had to explain to the Russians the tyranny of the Annual Budget, and to the Brits the tyranny of the Scientific Protokol. I’d written a book about this sort of thing and was pleasantly surprised to find how much of it was useful.
We made a technology transfer and licensing agreement that worked like a partnership, splitting the profits. It has survived pretty well and has just been renewed worldwide with our licensee’s new American owners. Russian biochemists spent time in Wigan and British engineers in Moscow. We took a little pilot plant on a truck and plugged it into the outlet vents of prospective clients.
At last Vladimir and I stood together on the roof of a plastics factory in the MiddleLands with the first full-size Bioreactor full of bugs from Moscow. We watched the sun set over the Black Country. Carbon carmines, silicate ochres, sulphate greens, sulphide reds, sulphite greens, zinc whites and brass yellows, all burnished in the sun, the air of human industry and aspiration, ripe for remediation. The final blaze of fiery rays lit up our faces. We shook hands.
“I hope our little Russians will be happy here.”
“Russians are not happy anywhere. But they get used to it”.
Vladimir is now director of his Institute. With brilliance, integrity and dogged determination, he has made it an outstanding centre of research and innovation again. At the same time he has built a thriving environmental engineering company specializing in air and water treatment. Our company and our partners help to keep the air of the Shires sweet with Russian bugs.
Misha has a successful international management consultancy based in Switzerland and advises small businesses all over the world. Olga has a chain of fashion shops that Oleg helps her to manage. Flor and Natasha have two children. They live in Phoenix, where he works for a bank and she trades meteorites on the net and waits for Rapture.
A protégé of Barees bought out the cooperative and took over the restaurant. He hired a Siberian Chinese chef and fitted it out as the Hard Wok Café. About eighteen months after I left he was shot dead in his kitchen.
The Russian company Kroshka Kartoshka, Cute Little Spud, has a chain of kiosks all over Russia and Ukraine selling tasty baked potatoes and fillings. Good luck to them.