The Deceit of Riches

by Val M Karren

  “That’s comforting, thanks!” I muttered under my breath.

  “OK, Peter, you think about it for one week, and then we’ll talk next week at the same time. If you don’t want to finally, I will tell Mr. P. that your focus is changing to International investment or something else that doesn’t matter to us in Nizhniy. Then you’re off the hook Yes, fine?” was the Dean’s offer.

  “Yes, fine. I’ll consider it — but I know I won’t like it,” I mumbled even further under my breath.

  I left the dean’s office without a congenial handshake over his desk as there was no deal to shake on this time. I was greatly flustered at the suggestion of doing what the Dean was suggesting I do. I stumbled down the stairs to the courtyard, through the tunnel on to the square and took a deep breath. I wandered over to the Chkalov monument and stood above the grand staircase that lead down the bluff’s steep slope to the river front.

  The view was always one of great comfort. Whatever temporary problem or stress a person could be facing when standing over this river — the view gives one a great perspective.

  If the Volga, the life force of Mother Russia can keep flowing through the heartlands through both the good and bad times, through all the decades of horrible bloody history that Russia has known, with even more murderous and corrupt men in power than today, why should I care so much to even consider doing what the Dean is asking me to do? Why don’t I just say ‘Hell no!’ and walk away? Was it because I wanted to save Russians from themselves as Els has suggested? Was I really another Don Quixote trying to restore a gallantry and honour code that has never even existed in Russia at the public level? Was I in it for myself? What was I looking for by going on a crazy quest and would I realistically be able to attain it?

  I walked along the embankment above the Volga and through the Kremlin gates to the park inside, deep in thought, and walked the interior perimeter of the fortress, tracing the thick red walls and turrets with my fingers. I took a peek over the parapets every now and then watching out for invaders of a modern type. What was to be done?

  13. Auction House

  With little incentive to be outdoors again, after a few warmer days of reprieve, I buried myself again in my research corner on Minin Street searching for additional documentation on the local privatization efforts of the government. I was hoping to manufacture a way to appease the Dean’s wish for a thesis about the local situation, with local consequences using something and somebody other than the town mob boss as my study specimen. I would work to keep my dream intact, but also my knees and face. I had one week to find an alternate thesis topic.

  While skimming the databases I was reminded about the offer from Richard and Andrew at the World Bank mission to let me attend one of the monthly auctions in town, administered by the provincial government, who was divesting real-estate and business licenses for retail shops. I checked my watch.

  “Where would they be at three o’clock on a Thursday afternoon?” I asked myself. I gathered up my notebooks and new print-outs and headed for the bus stop. I waved Olga good evening and slipped out the door quickly.

  I found both of Richard and Andrew in their office this time, instead of at a local mafia establishment next door eating pizza, and rang the bell while I waved through the street window to them. Richard stood and came to the door to let me in and locked the door behind us. We stood between their desks, in an uneasy casual position half sitting, half leaning while I tried to remove scarves and hats without looking like I was setting up camp.

  “We thought you had left town. Thought maybe you’d seen enough after six weeks and left without saying goodbye,” Richard broke the ice.

  “Very sorry about that. I’ve been very busy with my research. I realized as well that I didn’t call my mother either on the first Saturday of the month. Can’t believe it's April already,” I said concerned about my own memory.

  “So how are you getting on? You look thinner,” Richard noticed.

  “Thanks for your concern but I have a grandmother already,” I grinned and looked them up and down. “Speaking of thinner, you’re both looking like you’re ready to go home soon. Is New York Pizza serving dieters’ pizzas these days?”

  “Gastly that place. You would think they would at least try to hide their real intentions next door. The cars that come and go from there. The clothes! They must be drug dealers!” Andrew chuckled.

  “Ahhh, yes. I’ve learned some very interesting things about the goings-on in this town. Maybe too much,” I commiserated.

  “So, you came and ate our pizza, picked our brains and then you never came back,” Richard brought us back to point.

  “Sorry, I’ve been so deep in research and writing and with midterm exams, I really lost track of time. When did we have pizza together? Must have been mid-February. Sorry about that,” I apologized.

  “Look, don’t worry, I am only having a go at you. Truth is we’ve been traveling quite a bit and just got back last week from visiting cities less attractive than this. We’re just finishing up a big report as well,” Richard said as he took a chair.

  “Alright, I won’t take up more of your time, but we had talked about me maybe attending a government auction when the chance came up. I could really use that chance now as I am trying to…well let’s just say my options are narrowing and I don’t like one of the options. I need to manufacture another good option to make my thesis work. Otherwise, I may miss the opportunity to publish in June,” I explained.

  Andrew leaned back in his swivel desk chair and spoke to me and the ceiling at the time. “Well, coincidently, and it’s a good thing you came by right now, as we are leaving at four-thirty, because tomorrow mid-morning in the Yarkmarka…, do you know where the Yarmarka is, there just across the first Oka river bridge?" He paused as I nodded my admission. “…the provincial and city governments will be selling off their grocery store holdings.”

  “Well now, must have had an angel on my shoulder today!” I beamed.

  “Maybe it was a devil!! This one is going to be controversial as Yegor Gaidar himself will be there with Governor Nemtsov. But that’s not the kicker. The kicker is that the bidders had to pre-register before hand to be vetted and somehow a local mob boss has made the list next to a number of groups of employees hoping to stage some ‘management buyouts,’ as we are calling them in our reports to the mother ship,” Richard added.

  “A local mob-boss? Would that happen to be Mr. P.?” I asked already knowing the answer.

  “Oh, I can’t remember all these Russian names from the Chinese ones, let me check.” Andrew turned his chair around to open a dossier on his desk. “Let’s see now,” he muttered as he scanned his lists. “A one Mr. P. indeed. Why, do you know him?”

  “Met him. Don’t know him,” I qualified my comments.

  “Do tell. How did you come to meet him? We understand he is not the most accessible fellow,” Andrew revealed.

  “Don’t know what you mean by that. He was showing off like a peacock last weekend at his Monastery here just up the road. It was a disgusting display if you ask me,” I said with disdain.

  “Well, he doesn’t take appointments is what we understood from the Major’s Office. He evidently put down a deposit of cash for the auction instead of having his books or credit examined to be sure he could purchase what he may bid on. We understand it was quite a bit of money,” Andrew continued.

  “Did anybody ask where the money came from?” I queried.

  “It’s in escrow at INKOMBank - solid enough bank being the national reserve bank and all,” Andrew confirmed.

  “Sorry, I meant, did anybody go over his tax returns to understand where the money came from?” I clarified my question.

  “Import business. He evidently already owns a few stores where he sells home electronics and a car lot where he deals in used cars from — Japan was it?" Andrew looked to Richard.

  “Korea,” I interjected.

  “You seem to know him well,” Richard mused.


  “Sounds like we know only what Mr. P. wants us to know about him. I learned what I know on the dance floor at his holy house of disco. You learned yours from the Mayor’s Office I guess?” I concluded.

  “Spot on,” Andrew made a motion of poking a dot in the air with his pen.

  We all hummed and hawed for a few minutes taking in the revelations.

  “Can I attend the auctions as an observer? An academic observer from the University?” I requested.

  “Anybody with the stomach for it can attend. It’s a public auction to keep in line with transparency and whatnot, keep the officials accountable, etc, etc.” Richard explained.

  “Will you both be there?” I asked.

  “Occupational hazard I’m afraid,” said Andrew turning back to his word processing.

  I gave a searching look to Richard to understand Andrew’s reluctance.

  “The communists always protest in large numbers. It’s a bit unnerving,” he explained.

  “Communists? Weren’t they outlawed by Yeltsin in 1992?” I was puzzled.

  “The party was outlawed, that is correct, but these are mostly the younger pensioners waving the Soviet flag and holding pictures of Lenin and Marx and getting up in people’s faces. It’s a bit bothersome. Because Mr. Gaidar will be there tomorrow the demonstration we understand is getting some national flavor and support from other regions. It’s supposed to be rather large tomorrow,” Richard explained while Andrew avoided the topic.

  “OK, I’ll be there. What time does it begin?”

  On Friday morning, I caught the metro from Proletarskaya and rode it until Moscovskaya, the train station. The metro from there crosses east over the Oka and into the lower old city where I hadn’t spent much time, as the river had been frozen, and the walk up and down the steep bluff was not the for faint of heart for one wearing wool and fur. The ice from the river was all but gone now at the beginning of April. The first boats were moving up and down river: flat barges, mostly, nothing too tall yet for fear of not slipping under the bridges as the tributaries were over full with melting snow packs and the Volga was swelling. The hydrofoils, or as the locals called them ‘Rockyetiy’ would soon be running up and down and crisscross, connecting river villages to the cities. Then would come some larger container vessels as soon as the water table fell a bit. Then at the end of April would come the fleet of river cruisers carrying tourists and holiday makers from Moscow to Volgograd and back. The Volga was slowly waking up from its winter hibernation.

  From the Moscow train station, I walked up the west bank of the Oka River, parallel to Soviet street to the exhibition hall, passing a five-story tall statue of Vladimir Lenin, so courteously pointing the way for me. As I approached the broad square in front of the Yarmarka I saw a fleet of black Volga and Chaika limousines, a hoard of police vans and black clad riot police and a large group of civilians in a semi-circle, surrounded by the riot police. The civilians were waving red and yellow flags with different years commemorated on them. Some had the hammer and sickle and other the letters of CPSU (Communist Party Soviet Union) embroidered on them. The group wasn’t chanting as much as they were screaming and yelling, making an uncoordinated ruckus. I supposed that Russians had yet to learn how to effectively use their new freedoms to protest. It appeared that the riot police had corralled the group of protestors and weren’t letting them go much further or cause much disruption to the events. I could not get close to them without having had to push police out of my way or politely ask to be let through.

  The Yarmarka is an impressive building from outside and in. On the outside, it is an architectural piece that one would expect to see on Moscow’s beautiful Red Square. It is an old building that was built by the merchant community of Nizhniy Novgorod in the 19th Century as an exhibition hall for their manufactured goods. A long, noble building with a thick fortress feel, perhaps mirroring the Kremlin opposite it across the river on the bluff. The red brick facade is filled with windows, letting natural light pour in with the exhibition hall behind that and taller by another story with a line of long, tall arches enclosed with glass, much like in English or French railway station, but with a very Russian style. I wondered why they didn’t make this building the train station as it would truly impress the visitor as they arrive in Nizhniy.

  I stood in the main entrance hall looking for a directional board that would tell me in which room today’s auction would be held. There was no information being volunteered for the unfamiliar visitor to find. Except for the protestors and limousines out front, I wouldn’t have thought that anything was going on in the building at all that Friday morning. I tried to open a few doors in a long corridor on the left and right, but all the doors were locked. The office windows were dark. I stepped out again on to the square to see if there was a less obvious entrance being used. As I stepped out in front of the fountains on the square to view the facade better, I watched a motorcade approach of two black Volga sedans, one in front and one in back of a dark burgundy colored Mercedes stretch sedan with black tinted windows, including the windshield. Completely bullet proof. They drove almost right over my feet. If I hadn’t stepped back along the flank of the fountain they very well would have driven right over me.

  Body guards first from behind stepped out of the car and scoped the square. They looked directly at me and I stood and blinked at them like a possum caught in the headlights of a speeding car. Then the back door of the Mercedes swung open and out stepped the bald head of a man I met not a week ago at his night club. Mr. P. himself had just arrived. I stood and watched as he and his entourage pushed themselves deftly into and through the crowd of police men and protesters and thru a smaller door that the protesters had gathered in front of.

  As Mr. P. and his thugs disappeared into the building amid shouts and raised fists from the protesters I headed into the line of police men behind them, pushing just as I saw Mr. P’s guards do. It worked. As I passed the last layer of police officers, stepping in front of their shields, I entered in the thick of the protestors who turned out to be very un-intimidating. The group was made of older women in head scarves and older men without teeth in shabby overcoats holding handmade photos and placards of the old communist guard. I smiled at them all meekly and motioned toward the doors behind them, and they let me pass without shouts of blood and brimstone on my head. Without a limousine or bodyguards, I must have appeared harmless to both the police and the protestors.

  I slipped into the room unnoticed and took a seat in the back. Richard and Andrew were present but were working closely with an interpreter and staffers trying to keep up themselves with what was going on and hastily giving orders and scribbling in their notepads. The auction was held in a cramped conference room set up with the auctioneer at the head of the room and the bidders in the first two rows, twelve people in total. Next to the auctioneer was a stack of files on a low table, each containing a property and license representing a retail store somewhere in the city, that were all for auction. Each file had a number on it which corresponded to the program given to the bidders with detailed descriptions of what was on offer. The session started after a delay from the official observers sitting front left at a long table draped in a green cloth. They pointed into the crowd and whispered frantically.

  I did not see Mr. Gaidar nor Mr. Nemtsov in the room much to my disappointment. Of course, they were present just for the photo opportunity and sound bites that had happened just before I arrived. They hadn’t come to actually run the auction. I felt rather foolish that I had expected the governor himself, with the gavel in hand, would be personally selling off unwanted stores and warehouses.

  As the bidding was opened after a long-winded reading of the rules and technicalities of the process it didn’t take long for the tension in the room to rise as the prices for the properties rose. The grand prize of the day was a run-down grocer directly opposite the Moscovskiy train station, on Filchenkova Street, on Revolution Square. The amount of foot traffic, bus tra
ffic and automobile traffic and the parking spaces in front of it made it perfectly positioned for visibility and accessibility. I knew the location well. It was perfectly located for any retail sales. There were three primary groups in the contest for win this location with the needed permits; A group of the current store’s management team, a consortium of the store’s employees represented by their chairwoman and a lawyer, and Mr. P. The split between manager and workers of the store was palpable in the front row as both groups continued to up the ante and price for the property. Mr. P. sat silently as the two rivals scowled at each other and whispered amongst themselves with every extra hundred-thousand rubles being committed. The observers were breathless as the price spiraled higher and higher.

  Neither group, the managers or the staff consortium would have the money to purchase the store and its operations outright. It would require a mortgage and then the staff’s entire wages for several years to be able to pay the debt of acquisition. Would they be able to turn a profit? Nobody really knew. The banks behind the offered mortgages perhaps didn’t know either but at least they would have a valuable property in their hands should the owners fail to pay the mortgage. The only person that could purchase the lot outright was Mr. P., but he wasn’t lifting his paddle to signal his interest. He sat idly by while the managers and workers battled it out. Only after the price rose above two million rubles did Mr. P. even start to twitch.

  “Two-million ten thousand, two-million twenty thousand, two-million twenty-five thousand, two-million twenty-seven thousand rubles…,” and the bidding started losing steam.

  The price stopped rising by ten thousands and was now clawing higher at smaller and smaller increments. The auctioneer looked at the workers’ representatives and asked if there was any higher bid from their side. After a quick consultation with the lawyer with the chairwoman from the workers’ group, she shook her head and then bow