The Deceit of Riches

by Val M Karren

  “It’s late. Where are you?” she asked.

  “I have some good news,” I couldn't wait to share it.

  “Not over the phone. Where are you?” she asked in a quick burst.

  “Old town,” I said vaguely.

  “Come by on your way home and tell us,” she ordered.

  “OK, see you soon,” I agreed and hung up the handset.

  When I finally arrived to Yulia’s apartment she was full of news. “Do you know who phoned me earlier tonight? Irina Ivanovna,” Yulia beamed.

  “Do you mean Irina the cruise director from the Giorgiy Zhukov last summer?” I asked excitedly.

  “Yes, exactly. The spring sailing schedule starts in two weeks and they called to invite me to sail with them again to Moscow and back at the end of the month,” she said grinning.

  “Excellent!” I remarked.

  “I told them that you were here as well and they invited us both to travel with them as guests on the cruise,” she was nearly bouncing in her chair.

  ‘’That would be heavenly, but I will have to ask for permission to travel. My visa only permits me to be in Nizhniy and Moscow,” I said cautiously.

  “Nobody checks your papers on the cruise because you won’t sleep in hotels. If you sleep on the boat and stay with the tour group nobody will look at you,” she sounded annoyed that something might disrupt her new summer plans.

  “I will just ask Valentina Petrovna how I can obtain permission to travel. Shouldn’t be a big problem as I did it last summer too,” I tried to sound reassuring.

  “It would be so romantic to take that trip again!” Yulia pined. “So what good news do you have?”

  “I’ve been offered a job. It won’t make me rich, but it’s a start,” I said cautiously.

  “Peter, you aren’t going to work for the American businessman, are you?” Yulia knew how to start with the third degree. “You don’t know him well enough to trust him. You don’t know what kind of trouble this could get you into.”

  “Why are you so against it? You don’t even know the guy,” I protested annoyed.

  “And you have done your research on him, have you? If you know about him, who is funding him? Who is he working for? Would you even be working legally?” her scepticism annoyed me but I knew she was right.

  “Yulia, you have to trust somebody in this life, or you won’t get anywhere! Sometimes you have to take risks,” I offered a weak defence.

  “Peter, wake up! This is Russia. Trusting people you don’t know gets you killed. You can’t forget that. For all you know he could be a criminal too. He could be a spy. He could be anything and you’re just going to go work for him? Where does he work? Out of his home? Have you ever seen anything he has produced?” Yulia the journalist wanted cold hard facts and trusted nobody that couldn’t produce them.

  “OK fine! You win. I’ll turn down the offer. It was just a chance to work and earn some money and stay longer, maybe see where this all….never mind,” I muttered defeated.

  Even though I verbalized my acquiescence in the face of Yulia and her mother’s objections to me working for Del, my heart chose a different path of defiance and I decided to trust that Del was what he said he was. I chose then to deceive my friends and pursue what I came to Russia to pursue, not assume their wishes, desire, and fears. I decided I would not tell Yulia anymore about my research topic or anything I was writing. I would not tell her that I was working for Del. I would not tell Del about Yulia, I would not tell my professor about Del. I drew a curtain, a wall between the different compartments of my life in Nizhniy and was determined that they would not intersect. With Yulia, I would talk about the weather and the river boats and go strolling on the waterfront but not let her any further into my other dealings and activities. With that discussion and that split decision on a late Friday evening in early April, my own shadow life was born.

  Saturday was spent brooding with Hans and a pile of fried chicken overlooking the Volga together. The landscape had slowly taken on a light green tint in the trees and hillside on top of the bluff. Small buds were starting to appear on the hedges and branches. I had left my wool coat at home that day. The river was well over its normal banks and the lower embankment was completely under water. The sky was filled with dark threatening clouds juxtaposed against dark blue patches. It was a great day to be sitting out of the wind overlooking the old city, the river and God’s wider creations, with a stack of chicken on one plate and chicken bones on the other. Spring was definitely in the air. We kept going back for drumsticks and thighs much to the annoyance of the plump middle-aged woman in the kitchen. I drank the Pepsi while Hans tried again to choke down the local lemonade.

  I explained my several dilemmas of opportunity to my German friend who knew nobody in my circle of influence except for Valentina Petrovna and he disliked her about as much as I did. I needed an independent opinion detached from Dean Karamzin, the Sannings and Yulia and her mother. We spoke English no louder than a whisper in the corner of the dining room to avoid being overheard.

  More for my sake, than for his understanding, I explained to Hans the focus of my research and how it kept leading me head long into the operations of the local mafia boss, and about my decision deadline on Monday morning about whether or not I would interview Mr. P. I recounted the property auction, the cash escrow deposits of forty and fifty thousand dollars at the INKOM Bank. Hans, an economics major, having studied how Germany handled its own transition from state owned companies to private ownership assured me of what I already had concluded: black money should not be allowed to enter the official economy through privatization.

  “You see, Peter, East Germany had Vest Germany to help viz its own transition from communism to a free society. Legally, zere was no difference between the East and Vest Germanies once unification vas finished and the federal government vent into heavy debt to finance the rebuilding of old communist controlled regionz. Russia has nobody to throw it a lifeline, to show zem how to properly transition zeir laws to protect ze public interest. Now Russia has to look for cash and knowhow on its own from wherever it can find it, and that is why the shadow economy iz being allowed to knowingly flow into the visible economy.”

  “That is very insightful, Mein Freund. Thanks for that,” I said with appreciation, surprised that he had really intelligent thoughts, something I hadn’t yet heard from him earlier.

  “Zo, do you sink I can ask ze fat lady for more again, or vill she throw us out?” Hans asked stupidly.

  “C’mon Hans, we already can’t go back to The Monastery, where all the pretty girls live. I don’t want to be persona-non-grata at my favo-rite restaurant in all of Russia as well. I think we’ve already eaten a murder of crows here, let’s pack it in,” I suggested.

  “Okey, okey,” He threw his napkin on to his plate and we nursed our bottles of soda until about four o’clock.

  “Zo, are you going to verk with ze Amerikan? Do you sink it vill lead to somezing bigger?” he asked me pensively.

  “I would hope so, but I get the feeling that nothing is for sure in this country. Maybe I’ll work for a few months for him, but there is so much uncertainty in it all that I can’t imagine it being a long- term thing. We’ll just have to see,” I said taking another swig from my bottle.

  “Vill you vant to stay if he asks you to do somezing bigger?” he asked again.

  “If I do this interview and the research paper and if it gets published I may not live that long, but I just don’t feel, knowing what I know now, that I could rest until I put in on paper and at least try to tell the people what is going on,” I said somewhat defeated by inevitability.

  “Why do you sink that zey don’t already know it? Russian’s are not stupid people,” Hans truthfully pointed out.

  “Stupid no, but this is all so new to everybody,” I said defensively.

  “Corruption is nothing new to Russians. The communists exported it to East Germany, Czechoslovakia and Poland and you sink the Russian
s don’t know it when they smell it? The Germans knew it but it took a long time to push away the communists because of ze Russian tanks and soldiers. Oh, Peter, zey know it’s all corrupt, but zey know as vell zat zey are powerless to change it. If the wider world condones it as a legitimate system then nothing will change. It was zo in East Germany, Poland, Romania. If somebody with bigger tanks isn’t ready to help, then we all just kept our heads down instead of getting it smashed in by the secret police. The Russians know it. Zey just don’t want to have their families hurt by doing somesing about it. No mistake about it.”

  “Maybe then all the more reason to do it…,” and with that I decided to throw caution to the wind and follow my sense of justice.

  Before lectures on Monday morning I went straight to the Dean’s office before class. Before he was able to take his chair and with me still standing and leaning over the desk, I blurted at him, “Let’s do it!”

  15. The Zhukov

  It was a brilliant Friday, April afternoon without a cloud in the sky. The air was warm and fresh and one could smell the sunshine in the air. All seemed bright and clean. To stand still in the sunlight next to the surging river, eyes closed tight, looking directly into the prodigal sun, sparked rejoicing and mourning in one deeply mixed up emotion; where had it been hiding? Will it leave us again soon? I wanted nothing more than to stand right there at the edge of the water, rooted like a sunflower and follow every degree of the sun’s progress towards the Tropic of Cancer. Oh, how much I will miss it when it’s gone again! The joy of the warm sun today juxtaposed against the despair of cold snow showers from the week before was the discouraging mania that made this one moment so beautiful.

  The rechniy flot, or river fleet, based in Nizhniy Novgorod which plies the waterways of Russia for pleasure, was coming out of its winter hibernation in mid-April, flushing the water tanks, tuning up the diesel turbines, painting the decks and cleaning the passengers' cabins, taking on supplies and fuel. Even though the river was too high still to sail the largest of these holiday boats under a number of the bridges upstream, towards the Volga-Moscow canal and ultimately Moscow, the crew was bustling on the decks making the boats shine and getting ready for five months of vagabonding all over Russia, from St. Petersburg to Astrakhan, and Moscow to Volgograd. It was a thrill to see the boats again as they came one by one and moored at the Nizhniy Novgorod river station to show off their colors and flags before the holiday makers boarded for the year’s first sailings. In high summer, one usually walks down the gang plank to board a river cruiser. As the water had refused to recede we had to walk up to reach the first railings from the docks. It was a fine feeling to be back onboard the Georgiy Zhukov! It felt to me like arriving home after a long absence.

  We were all one year older but almost all the same happy faces were there on board already to greet me and Yulia as we stepped onboard for an impromptu reunion with our friends, and my former colleagues, with whom I had worked the summer prior. Even the captain remembered me and stopped to shake hands and greet us as he passed by, clipboard in hand, barking instructions to a deck hand.

  Irina, a tall lanky older woman with long gray hair greeted us as we stepped over the threshold. Irina, an outdoor enthusiast, was the senior of the tour guides of the group and spoke English with a proper English accent and perfect Russian with a warm literary accent. When she spoke, or retold a story one could easily think that she was reading one of Russia’s folk tales filled with fantastic verbs and adjectives. Life always seemed enchanting when she shared her adventures or even issued a warning.

  Nikolai, my good friend, was the complete opposite of Irina. This dark skinned, sunglasses clad Georgian from Tbilisi was in anything but in a hurry, and spoke Russian with an accent reminiscent of Josef Stalin’s, also a Georgian, with a cigarette never too far from his lips. He was maybe in his mid-forties and a father of two older children. Our friendship was built mostly in the bar drinking vodka and Pepsi, in between sailings when we were waiting for the next tourists from America. Somehow all his brown, white and yellow polyester shirts were missing the top two or three buttons and were always showing off his thick chest hair and gold chains with tiny icons hanging off them. If one didn’t know his good-natured heart and intense interest in people, one might mistake him for a Georgian gangster or pimp. His command of English, as well, was unimpeachable.

  Olga was a truly professional tour guide. Despite the weather or the destination, she was always dressed in a navy blue blazer and knee length skirt with a white collared blouse, white stockings, and dark pumps. She was in her mid-fifties with dirty blond hair down to her shoulders but kept in wavy full curls. It didn’t move in the wind, not even on deck on a windy afternoon. She spoke English exactly and was a history master. She had obviously traveled the river for tens of years with tourists and knew every bend of the Volga, every village, and monument. She was the epitome of order and punctuality.

  Matvei (Matthew) was a youth prodigy of maybe seventeen years when we met the year before. In 1994 his exposure to western pop-culture, Russian history, the English language and the courage that being seventeen gives a young man to do anything that enters his mind, made him a favorite among the American tourists. He had also become my right-hand man for tracking down lost tourists in Moscow and greasing the palms of local harbor masters who needed a little extra incentive to help them look the other way at times. His mother was an English instructor, his father a history professor in Moscow. He was indispensable on our voyages.

  “Peter, we thought maybe you were dead after what happened last summer. Nobody knew that you were flying back to Moscow from Volgograd that day and we thought we had left you behind half way to Saratov,” Nikolai muttered from one side of his mouth with a passive cigarette hanging out of the other corner of his mouth, the smoke blowing behind us in the sunny river breeze.

  “Sorry about that. I wasn’t in my best form when I departed,” was my apologetic reply. “Sorry to have caused you worry.”

  “And can you imagine my reaction when Nikolai told me that you weren’t on board? Nobody knew what had happened to you,” Yulia chimed in.

  “Oh Nikolai, do you still have my gray overcoat?” I asked between the discussion.

  “I am sorry, but my brother needed a good coat last fall. I gave it to him,” Nikolai apologized.

  “Not a problem, my friend, not a problem,” I waved it off.

  “The last I saw you, we were sitting on the river bank watching all the pretty girls’ legs in short sun dresses, and then you were gone a few hours later!” Nikolai continued.

  Yulia gave me an elbow in the ribs and a disapproving look. I gave an apologetic gesture and a glance toward Nikolai to blame him and absolve myself of the accusation in her eyes.

  “Yes, I was told there was an extra seat on the flight and the ship’s doctor thought it best I departed rather than sail again after what happened in Kazan,” I explained dryly. Everybody nodded as they remembered watching medics and an ambulance drive me away in front all the worried tourists.

  “What did happen in Kazan?" Matvei asked.

  “Things that I don’t want to remember. Maybe on a different day I’ll tell you all, but with the sun shining and weather so beautiful…,” I rummaged in my book bag and pulled out a squat two-liter bottle of Pepsi-Cola “…I think it’s time for a drink on deck!” and I winked at Nikolai.

  “Oiy, Oiy, Oiy! Americans,” they all sighed in unison looking exasperated at each other while Yulia laughed at me and told me to put it away.

  “I’ll find some glasses!” was Nikolai’s reply, “And a bottle of vodka!”

  Sitting just out of the breeze but still in the sunshine it felt like it could have been June. The sky was as azure as any tropical sea. The temperature was perfect. We smoked and drank and reminisced about the challenges and the scares of the last summer when we were working on the river.

  “What ever happened to Rocky? You remember the big man who broke his leg at the Kremli
n in Moscow?" Matvei inquired.

  “You know, I had a letter from him in November just before the winter holidays. He told me he had made a full recovery and thanked us all again for our quick action,” I informed the group. “He said it could have been a lot worse if we hadn’t done all we did to help him.”

  Yulia hadn’t been with us on that voyage and she asked to hear the story.

  “Ok, but let me tell it in English. Otherwise, it won’t be as good in Russian,” I demanded.

  Everybody nodded to indicate no problem as everybody in the group spoke English better than I did Russian, except for Yulia.

  “Rocky, Rocky….Rocky…” I was trying to remember his last name.

  “Balboa!” came from Matvei.

  “You and all your movie references, Matvei, it’s amazing. Did you spend your ENTIRE childhood watching bootleg movies from the USA?” I asked in a mocking tone.

  “Almost!” he grinned.

  “Rocky Balzano, that was it, Balzano! A very large man. Had worked as a meat packer his whole life in Philadelphia. Big fellow. Tall but also broad. Not in the shoulders, but like a barrel. The man had circumference!” I motioned in a large circle around my own non-existent belly. “He came to Russia because he was a big fan of some actor from Moscow, can’t remember who now. How he would have known the actor, being a meat packer in Philly, I never could figure out. He really liked acting and films though. I guess everybody has a hobby, right? But he talked with all the Russians on the boat about him and they thought him the most cultured American they ever met. Anyhow, he sprained his knee in St. Petersburg on one of our first days of the entire trip, and so he did nothing really except sit on deck and in the bar drinking with the other Russians who didn’t care to see the little Volga villages,” I was in a flow.

  Irina chimed in, “Yes, I remember him too now. Very charming man. His stories were always so colorful and unbelievable, but he told them with such detail that they could not have been made up.”