by Val M Karren
After some struggle to dial the right number, the crank damaged by overuse and vandalism, I heard the line buzz, crack and finally settle into the normal clicks and beeps before finding the right telephone line. Then the scratchy, wobbly ringing tone of an open line repeated over and over in the ear piece, for what seemed like two or three minutes before the telephone was answered.
“Halloah?" a groggy man’s voice demanded an answer.
“Good day. My name is Pyotr,” I used the Russian pronunciation of my name to avoid the constant question of WHO? WHO? WHO? when people didn’t understand the English pronunciation of my name.
“Who are you calling?” again very gruff and hostile. I must have woken him with the telephone call.
“Is this the number of Mikhail Porashevsvkiy?” I asked with doubt in my question.
“Who are you?”
“My name is Pyotr. Do you know Del?” I asked skeptically.
“No names please,” the voice commanded.
“We are supposed to meet today,” I stated timidly.
“Yes, why so late?” the voice grumbled.
“Where and when can I meet you?” I asked with a bit of relief feeling I’d reached the right person.
“Do you know Kulibin Park on Byelinskovo Street?” he demanded to know.
“No,” I admitted my ignorance.
“Find it. Meet me at the little white church in the park at four o’clock,” he demanded.
Without waiting for an agreement or a question from me the line went dead. I looked curiously at the hand set looking to see if my ears had deceived me. I put it again to my ear to double check that he had really hung up. “Halloah? Misha?" Nobody was there.
It was already two o’clock so after buying a handful of piroshki from the old lady selling food in the dark metro tunnel I bounded up the stairs to the daylight, crossed Prospect Lenina just in time to catch the autobus, a long articulated, yellow stinky diesel engine bus. As it climbed the switchbacks of the bluff it felt like the bus would come apart, like an over-stretched accordion before we made it up the hill into the old town. As the bus crested the peak and emerged onto Lyadova Square on its way toward Gorkiy Square, I spotted the street name Byelinksovo and moved quickly to the exit, tapping people on the shoulder and asking “Are you getting off?" With every question, the other passengers would turn their shoulders and let me pass until I was standing directly in front of the doors. I exited at the next stop and started trekking up Byelinskovo street.
I came quickly to a park on the right side and crossed the road dodging the passing street car. Walking along the pavement of the street I was peering into the park looking for a little white Orthodox chapel. As the spring foliage had yet to fill in I could see through the entire park and saw nothing that even closely resembled a small white church. The park was filled with lines of birch trees, a children’s playground, a cafe, and restaurant but no white chapel. As I passed the main entrance to the park, I found a map of the grounds and discovered that this park was not Park Kulibin, but Park Pushkin. I scratched my head and looked about.
“Excuse me, please?” I turned and addressed an older woman leaving the park. “Can you tell me please where Park Kulibin is?”
“Further that way on the other side of the street,” She was motioning further up the street in the direction I had already been walking.
“And do you know if there is a little white church in that park?” I queried.
“Yes! Two of them!” and with that she put her head down and trudged on, towing her small dog behind her on a leash.
After fifteen minutes more I came to what turned out to be to Park Kulibin. To my relief, both white churches were visible through the naked birch groves as their spires poked above the tree lines. It was rather obvious which was the smaller one. I had still an hour to wait. I found a small café in the middle of the park and waited. As I sat and nursed a wretched, over-bitter mug of cacao. I couldn’t imagine why there had to be so much melodrama around meeting Misha. What an odd character he was. His demeanor and commands on the telephone reminded me of Yulia’s paranoid attitude toward talking on the telephone. I thought back to Olya’s revelation that the telephones are all bugged and everybody was still listened to by the secret police. It was no wonder that nobody wanted to speak more than needed over the telephone, but certainly people could be more polite about it!
At four o’clock sharp Misha appeared from the woods in front of the chapel and approached me directly and asked, “Are you Pytor?”
Without answering his question directly, I asked back “Are you Misha?”
With my question, he thrust his hand forward to shake hands with me, “Come, let’s walk this way,” and he led me deeper into the park away from the encircling streets.
Mikhail, or Misha, was a nondescript man of average height, average weight, dark hair and dark eyes with a light beard and was in his late twenties or early thirties. He dressed in gray. He would match any police description except that of a tall bald mafia enforcer with gold teeth. He wore wire rimmed spectacles. He wasn’t bold, but neither was he a mouse of a man. He walked with purpose.
“Why all the cloak and dagger?” I asked him with a bit of relief in my voice.
“Del’s business is always under investigation from one police or tax inspector or another. I never discuss on the telephone about where I am or will be. This is to keep Del’s paperwork and records safe. Otherwise, the next thing you know the place has been burgled. It’s happened twice since I started working for Del only one year ago,” Misha explained.
“What are the investigations for?” I queried.
“Jealousy, espionage, trying to steal his information in order to steal the business plans. So, when you call me, we will always meet in a new place to discuss our assignments, but never in my home or my office. We’ve had so many setbacks in one year that we can’t take any risks,” he apologized.
“What about Del’s place? He doesn’t seem too concerned,” I pointed out.
“No, that’s because that is his official home and those working in the shadows would never risk attacking his home because he is in the good circle with the mayor, you know? To be that brazen would mean that Del would have reason to close up shop and leave, which nobody wants because of the foreign investment he represents. So, the word is out that nobody can touch Del in his home. They try backhanded ways that don’t look overtly suspicious,” Misha talked as quickly as he walked.
“So why not just keep everything in Del’s apartment?" I thought I was asking an obvious question.
“That’s like leaving honey for the bear! It's too tempting. Sooner or later when there is a frustration, somebody will go take everything and bump off Del, literally or figuratively, so we keep things moving around so Del can’t be forced out of the project,” Misha seemed to know what he was up against.
We walked further into the park and eventually right out the other side and we crossed Gorkiy street and straight down Osharskaya street. I was following Misha thinking that we were heading to his office or apartment for a briefing and to give me a list of apartments to visit and view.
“So, I am supposed to be inspecting apartments that Del is going to rent. Are there already any apartments to visit?” I asked my guide.
“Yes, we have had seven people interested to rent or sell their apartments to us, but because we aren’t sure of the ownership of the apartments at this point, we will only visit those for rent. If in the end we get thrown out of these places by the rightful or new owners, then we haven’t lost any real money. Do you understand?” It seemed Misha had thought the whole thing through and was ready for any contingency.
“Yes, of course. Seems wise to me,” I stammered trying not to seem to clueless.
“So, do you have time right now to go and view the apartments?" he asked me abruptly.
“Sure, but don’t we have to make an appointment?” I said trying to stall due to my unsettled nerves.
“No, t
hese people are so eager to rent the places we could arrive at ten o’clock tonight and they would serve us tea and take us on a grand tour,” Misha said with some arrogance.
“I have no further appointments tonight, so let’s go,” I said trying to muster up my courage.
“Very good, then. We’re there!” Misha stopped walking and pointed upwards.
I stopped and looked around me to see a small park on our right boxed in on three sides by a mix of squat three story buildings from the turn of the century in bold colors in a folk architecture style. On the left was a well-kept apartment building from the 1960s with some interesting modern architectural elements. The standard block apartment buildings were nowhere to be seen. These apartments were obviously built for the intelligentsia of the city, not the working class. With the offices of the Atomic Energy Project around the corner on Svoboda Square, it was obvious that these apartments were a grade above what I was living in, meant for people a grade higher than who I was living with. It was a constant surprise to me to find these types of hidden, pleasant squares and nooks in the city. Here is where the city’s middle class lived. I could imagine nuclear engineers and professors wandering around the memorial gardens dreaming about solutions to complex equations and reactions, and reading Tolstoy and Pasternak on weekends in the shade while enjoying a smoke from a pipe with a cravat around their throats.
Before we entered the five-story red and white brick building Misha stopped me to give me some instructions.
“It would be very wise if you didn’t say anything while we are viewing the apartments. Just take mental notes, write some things down if you want to. I don’t know how people might respond to a foreigner asking questions,” his face was cold and serious.
“OK, I will just smile and be polite,” I nodded and pinched my lips closed with my thumb and index finger.
“Very good!” he was happy to be obeyed.
We rode the lift to the fifth and top floor in a narrow cabin lined with wood with a wrought iron grate protecting us from falling out as we passed upwards through each floor; thick concrete slabs and rebar. The cabin jolted to a halt on the fifth floor and Misha threw open the grating for us to step out onto the landing, a door on either side of us: numbers 51 and 52. On most floors of a workers’ building there could be four or six different doors with small two room apartments behind each door. Standing on the landing these apartments promised to be large and spacious. Misha rang the bell at number 52.
Misha whispered to me as we waited for the door to open. “Del wants all the apartments to be at least five floors up, for security. We’ll have to put steel doors on these as well, for security.”
I nodded saying nothing, looking at the floor.
When the door opened we were met by an older woman in her early sixties who obviously had been very attractive in her youth and was well dressed. She was in no way brash and trendy but it was obvious from the way she carried herself and spoke that she had been well educated and well-heeled for her whole life, yet lacking the arrogance of the nouveau riche in Russia. The apartment was also well appointed, but dated. The furniture was obviously 1970s Russia and the television and other fixtures showed that little renovation had been done, but was in surprisingly good repair. The living room was as I had expected, spacious with lots of light. The kitchen was also well equipped with a large refrigerator, a full oven and cooking range, standard cabinets for a Russian home, but again kept very clean and crumb free. The floors were a mix of hardwood and tiles with the bathroom tiled in a stylish art-deco mosaics in black and white. Very avant-garde! It was a dashing apartment with a view onto the tree filled park below in the square with a pleasant view of the more traditional buildings surrounding the park.
To my surprise, this very proper woman, without seeing any credentials or asking for any identification let us into her home to look around and ask all sorts of questions. She went so far as to tell us that her husband who had been an engineer in the town had died a few months earlier and that she was going to stay with her daughter in Samara. She planned to be away for a year as she was expecting her first grandchild, a girl, and needed to make an agreement quickly about renting the apartment. Misha left some paperwork for her to fill in and promised to call her after the weekend and let her know if ‘our agency’ would work to fill her apartment. We left with polite greetings. Once we were on the street walking toward Gorkiy street, and out of earshot of any potential clients, I turned and questioned Misha.
“Misha, I don’t understand any of this. I have to speak honestly! This woman doesn’t know you or me from Ivan the Terrible and she just lets us into her apartment without any assurance that we are who we say we are. We could have robbed her blind! We could have tied her up and carried her away after dark and just taken over her apartment. My friends tell me not to talk to anybody, not to let anybody I don’t know into my apartment, and you won’t even talk to me on the telephone but yet we just walk right into a fancy apartment? Please explain this to me,” I huffed in frustration.
“It’s easy. Russians trust Russians,” Misha said in a flippant expression.
“I’m sorry, can you please repeat that?" I said in disbelief.
“Russians …. trust … Russians. Pyotr. If a Russian gives a billion rubles cash, in small notes, to a friend to guard for him while he goes on holiday to Cuba or Cyprus for three years, even if that friend loses his job, is evicted from his home and is starving in the streets, he would not touch his friend’s money. Never! Friendship and trust between Russians are holy! You see, when somebody is from the government we do not trust the person because the government is only out to steal from the people. If you know that, you don’t have to guess and that person will never deceive you. They will walk in and tell you they are taking all your money and putting your grandmother in a hard labor camp. So, you stay away from that person and don’t let them get into your business,” he explained with surety.
“What about the Russian mafia? Isn’t that Russians hurting Russians?" I challenged.
“Yes, but it’s the same situation as with the government. They walk in with brass knuckles and knives and you know exactly who you are dealing with. They don’t hide themselves, you see them everywhere and everybody knows who they are and what they do,” he sketched without subtlety.
“What about the secret police, the KGB or FSB?” I continued to push.
“This is why we don’t speak on the telephone, because we don’t know who they are, but when a Russian looks into another Russian’s eyes, they don’t lie to each other and we don’t deceive each other. Others don’t get the same treatment. A Russian dealing with a foreigner is a dangerous and shadowy relationship. You will most likely never hear the truth from a Russian, you being a foreigner, unless you first become good friends,” he said seriously.
“So that is why you asked me not to speak while we were visiting these apartments,” I concluded.
“Yes, one word with your accent and the deal is over. It won’t go any further because when a Russian gives his word to another Russian…well, Russians trust Russians,” he said again accepting this simple axiom.
“So, foreigners are not trusted in Russia?” I asked in a hurt tone.
“Always very suspect. Why are you and Del in Russia? Simply to get rich and then you will leave,” he accused.
“Woah, hold on there. Please don’t group me with the rest!” I stipulated.
“Why shouldn’t I? Americans are always the first to come when they can make some money and the first to leave when things go wrong. The Brits follow right behind you. You cannot handle any moral ambiguity and sacrifice is only good to a point until it hurts too much, then you run away, even if your cause is just,” he said insultingly.
“You sure to do lay it on thick for a first date, my friend,” I said with an uncomfortable laugh and a frustrated sigh.
“Do you know Stalingrad?” Misha asked quickly.
“Volgograd, yes I was there last summer,” I r
eplied.
“No, the battle of Stalingrad. Study that battle with the fascists and you will understand what it means to be Russian. Russians know what it means to suffer and sacrifice. They won’t stop until they’ve won. They will throw their men, women, children and old men and old women at the enemy instead of surrendering their country to foreigners. They promised to protect their country, and with their backs to the Volga, they didn't let the Nazis cross. We all know we can trust Russians from Volgograd because their grandparents, every single one of their grandparents fought to beat the Germans, and we know that they have been taught to love Russia,” he said proudly, “do you know why a Russian woman who is beaten by her husband never leaves him?” Misha was treading on thin ice now with me. I didn’t answer but gave him a very annoyed look.
“Because she’s Russian,” he said with no shame.
“Well, we Americans stuck it out to whoop your butts in the cold war,” I said brazenly.
“Hah, nobody ever beats Russia. The Soviet Union lost to the United States, not Russia. Russia is still alive and will come right back now that the foreign leaders in Moscow are gone!” he said with some disgust in his voice.
“So why do you trust Del, a foreigner?” I challenged his hypocrisy.
“Trust? Who said I trust him? I work for him and I keep his business safe. He pays me. When he stops paying me, I won’t protect his business any longer,” he said with an emotional dryness that was believable.
“And what do you do precisely to protect Del?” I asked further.