by Val M Karren
Hans kicked me under the table again.
Looking at my watch I stood up and declared, “I have an appointment at two o’clock, so I need to get going.” I left my plate of chicken bones for Hans to clean up, gave Tamara a peck on the cheek and a wink to Hans and was out the door to meet Misha for another round of apartment viewing.
Misha and I had agreed the week before to meet just off the Bolshaya Pokrovka Street at the cross street of Oktyabraskaya for two or three viewings. As I was running a bit late I decided to forego walking the usual scenic route and headed out through the narrow residential streets, heading up Nesterova Street, past the hospital on the left and crossing the busy Vavarksaya street. When I stopped to wait for the light on Vavarskaya street, a very long legged young lady in a yellow sun dress waiting to cross on the opposite side caught my eye and kept my attention. I shamelessly watched her walk towards me. I walked as slowly as possible toward her. As we met in the middle of the crosswalk I turned to see her from behind as she passed me. To my surprise just a few steps behind me was the fellow that Tamara had spotted at Gordost; short cropped hair, all black clothing except for the snow-white trainers with the British Knights logo on the side. He too was looking back, watching the swaying skirt and hips. Before he noticed me looking at him I snapped my head around to walk forward, now at a faster clip.
“Is he following me?” was my first thought. “No, he’s just heading to Pokrovka as well, don’t be so paranoid. Who wouldn’t go to Gordost first and then walk to Pokrovka? It’s Saturday. This is the fastest route.”
I did keep an eye on him in the store front window panes, just in case, as I walked on. When I stopped at the corner where I was to meet Misha at five minutes to two, the British Knights walked on and turned left up Pokrovka as casually as anybody.
Misha arrived right on time again and seemed to emerge from another dimension, as one minute he wasn’t there and the next he was right in front of me.
“How do you do that?" I asked him startled.
“Do what?” he was unaware he was doing anything odd.
“Nothing, nothing. I just didn’t see you until . . . nothing, nothing.” I was flustered.
“Are you okay today? You seem nervous,” he observed.
“I was just watching the girls and not watching out for you,” I lied.
“Oh, yes, it’s that season again isn’t it? May holidays coming next week. All the girls out today in their short skirts, are they?” He took a quick glance around. “Okay, let’s go.”
We walked on along Oktybraskaya opposite the tram tracks on the pavement behind all the parked cars. We continued past the junction, to the left up Dobrolyubova Street until we came to a red brick apartment block, maybe twelve stories tall directly opposite a dingy gray church that was just starting its renovation. On the ground-floor there was a small shopping complex with the usual boutiques selling cheap imported cosmetics and pantyhose as well as a green grocers and bakery. We entered on the ground floor and took the lift to the eighth floor.
After seeing two different apartments in the same building, which were less than optimal for our desired clientele, we exited the building onto the Sergiyevskaya street on the other side of the building and walked down the incline to the intersection with Dobrolubova Street to turn right and back toward Pokrovka. As we turned right, I glanced instinctively left to check oncoming traffic and saw, leaned up against the scaffoldings built up around the church, the glowing white British Knights of a young man dressed in black, smoking a cigarette. He was looking at his wrist watch and watching the entrance where Misha and I had entered the building. He was following me!
“Misha, we’re being followed,” I muttered to my colleague.
“I know. I spotted him already on Pokrovka. He was walking behind you from Vavarskaya and fell in behind us when we met and started walking. What an idiot wearing those shoes to be a tail.” Misha didn’t break his stride and kept on walking. When we reached the tram stop, we jumped on board and watched out the back window to see our tail still standing in the shade of the scaffolding, his plume of cigarette smoke and his shoes giving him away. He hadn’t seen us climb aboard and we rolled away with a sense of relief.
“You know that Del’s apartment was broken into?” Misha asked.
“Yes, I was there last night. I heard the whole story,” I answered.
“Something is going on. Not too sure what it is, but they sure are a bunch of amateurs, especially that guy!” motioning over his shoulder out the back window.
When we came back to Pokrovka I moved toward the doors but Misha motioned that I stay on the street car. I didn’t question his judgment as he seemed to know better what he was doing than I did. We stayed on the street car until we came close to Senaya Square via Bolshaya Pecherskaya, which ran parallel to Minin Street. We stepped off at Frunze Street. Misha thought it important to inform Del that I had been followed. I decided to walk back to Gordost and get a good look at the fellow when we came back to pick up his car that he had left parked on the upper embankment street. Misha didn't think that a good idea and went to find Del to consult with him about how to proceed. When I arrived at the restaurant to spot the driver of the black Lada, it was not where I watched the same fellow park it. I decided to walk on toward Minin Square and down the grand stairs to the waterfront and to the River Station bus stop. It was time to leave the old city today and spend some time at home. My face had become too well known in the old city.
I phoned Yulia from the Moscow station and asked if she wanted to go for a stroll along the Oka river with me? After forty-five minutes, she emerged from the metro station where I was warily waiting, making sure nobody had tailed me again. We went for a walk up the bank of the Oka river, arm in arm, passed the Yarmarka and the Alexander Nevsky cathedral and enjoyed the sunshine. I told her nothing of the morning’s intrigue with the British Knight. We spoke of the coming May holidays and what each of us would do with two weeks free from school. I told her about Hans’s new girlfriend. She was just as put out as I was. She said she never wanted to meet her. I described her a gold-digger. Yulia used a different word.
When I finally arrived back at my apartment, Babushka was sitting outside with her friends and acquaintances peeling potatoes into small tin pots with red embroidered cloths over their laps and with their summer headscarves on. All the old ladies greeted me politely, and I them in return. Before I could pass to go into the building, Babushka told me that some of my friends had just been there to ask for me. As I had just been with Yulia and I knew Hans would be very busy with his young beauty that evening, I couldn’t think of who it could have been.
“Had you seen them before?” I asked Natasha.
“Nyet. Two boys in a car. I’ve never seen your student friends in cars before.”
“A black car?” I pressed.
“Yes. Do you know them?’
“No, they are not my friends. What did you tell them?” I pressed further.
“Luba there told them that you don’t live here anymore,” and she giggled with her lady friends who were masters of neighborhood misinformation, “that you had moved to the student dormitories.”
“Many thanks, ladies!” I looked each of them in the face and gave them a smile.
“Hooligans!” Luba replied. “Just hooligans. They think they can drive right up to our door and demand information from us like they are the KGB! fu fu fu. The youth of today. We weren’t like that in my day. We were polite and respectful to the grandmothers in the village.”
I spent the evening at home with the curtains closed and kept my light off, spending time talking with Raiya and Babuska in the kitchen as we cooked and ate a late dinner together for the first time since I had come to live there. I felt for the first time that these were my true friends, the simple people of the town without a hidden agenda, who I could trust to protect and help me as needed. I had to be careful not to put them in harm’s way when it came looking out for me again.
&nbs
p; I spent most of Sunday indoors with my curtains closed and spent the day reading in English to distract me from the growing commotion surrounding my research and Del’s hotel and apartments project. I wrote a letter home but only mentioned that I had seen old friends on the river boats and that Yulia and I may go for a voyage again at the start of the summer holidays in July. I mentioned that I was busy with a research project but didn’t mention any details. I was becoming suspicious of who was reading and listening to all my correspondences. I kept the letter short and vague.
Around four-thirty that afternoon while I was cooking in the kitchen, the doorbell rang. Babushka toddled into the kitchen to ask if I was expecting any company, Yulia maybe? I confirmed that I was not waiting for guests. She said it was better that she go to the door.
“Nobody will hurt an old grandma,” she said and cackled as she waddled again to the door. The bell rang again with impatience. I stirred the vegetables in my fry pan.
After a few moments, I heard raised voices come down the hallway that could be heard over my stir frying dinner. I turned off the gas and walked with care and concern into the hallway to see Natasha with her back to the door pushing it closed while a foot was keeping it open and somebody was pushing on the other side. Babushka was yelling for them to go away, to leave and that nobody else was in the apartment. She motioned for me to get out of sight and continue to push on the door with her old, bent back. The shouting from outside grew louder and the door started to open further. Babushka was too small and frail to get the door on the latch. With my kitchen knife in my right hand I pulled Babushka out of the way of the door and let it fling open and met the assailant on the other side with my lunging stiff arm to his chest, palm thrust onto his sternum pushing him back out the doorway and in the stairwell. With a raised kitchen knife over my head in my right hand I was yelling and demanding that they leave. There were two others behind the man whose raised arm I was about to slash with my knife.
“Stop, Police!” the front man shouted at me.
I stayed my arm and lowered the knife, but not my hand on his chest, palm open, pushing him out still across the threshold of the apartment.
“You show me your documents now or leave!” I yelled at him, adrenaline pumping through my arms with each heart beat, I raised the knife higher.
“We are the police, we are all detectives!” the third man screamed at me.
All three revealed their concealed badges from their suit coat pockets and then let into me with a verbal barrage of accusations and questions. Babushka started crying in the hallway. The lead detective yelled at her like he was yelling at a whining dog to shut up and go to her room. She obeyed and disappeared into her bedroom.
“What do you guys want? Pushing in like this and frightening old ladies?" I spoke to them in a way that one would speak to somebody angrily on the street or the market, not as one would speak to police officers.
“You will call me, Sir! You will call him Sir and him Sir!” the senior officer pointed to each one of his colleagues, in turn, to make it clear that my near attack on them and my lack of respect was weighing quickly on their patience.
“We have shown you our documents, we now demand to see yours,” was the command from the detective.
I produced my passport and visa from my jacket hanging in the corner and waited silently for their verdict.
“American citizen, student visa, registered in Nizhniy Novgorod,” he spoke to his colleagues so it was clear who and what I was.
“What are you studying, young man?" the questions were short and exact.
“History and Linguistics, sir,” I found my polite voice as the adrenaline was subsiding.
“Do you have proof of this?” he asked again quickly with suspicion.
I found my student card in my book bag and handed it over calmly.
“Seems to be in order,” was his commentary as he handed the documents to his partners for a confirmation of his conclusion.
“Do you usually greet people at your door with a knife?” there was an inference in his question.
“I apologize. My babushka has been harassed yesterday by hooligans. I thought they had come back to rob the place now that it’s getting dark,” I said demurely.
“Did you report this to the local police,” he asked dryly without any intended irony.
“No, sir. I was not here to witness anything. She only told me about it and asked me to stay home tonight in case there were further problems. I was cooking in the kitchen when the bell rang,” I lied.
“You know that I could arrest you right now for assaulting a police officer?” he was trying to scare me, and it was working
“As I said, I did not know you were police officers. None of you are in uniform. I could not see any markings. I stopped when your colleague identified himself,” I replied humbly.
The other two detectives were looking around my room as I was held captive to the questioning of the lead officer. I was conscious of them while not looking away from the interrogator. Luckily, I had sealed the letter to my mother and put it in my school bag and my notes on Mr. P were in the same bag zipped up by the door, not on my desk where the police were looking. On the head of my bed was a novel by Maxim Gorkiy with a bookmark somewhere in the middle pages. A large Russian-English dictionary was open on my table with last week’s translation work next to it. In my window sill were a few English books I had brought with me from the States. There was a growing stack of The Economist magazines in the corner of the table with highlights around every article about Russia’s transition economy and mixed with that my printed articles from the American library. My shortwave radio and cassette player stood quietly next to the wall with a Russian group in the breach. It looked like the room of a studious student.
“You do not drink? You do not smoke?" the third officer inquired with a scowl on his face.
I looked sheepishly at the questioning officer and gave no answer.
The questions and answers went back and forth like a tennis match.
“Where in the city do your attend lectures?”
“Linguistics school on Minin Street, History department, Minin Square and Literature on Gagarin Street in the foreign students' division.”
“Who are you advisors there?”
“Mrs. Valentina Petrovna, Lyudmilla Daskova and Dean Karamzin and sometimes Professor Strelyenko.”
“Do you study there every day?”
“Most days, yes sir.”
“Do you have contact with other foreigners in the city?”
“Mostly just the other students from other countries each week, sir.”
“You are not involved with other foreign businesses in the city?”
“I am acquainted with a business man from America who my university advisor introduced me to. We share dinner every other week when he is not traveling.”
“Why do you not live in the dormitories with other students?”
“Honestly, because I want to learn Russian, not speak English with other foreign students.”
“Do you rent this room?”
“Yes, for twenty dollars per month.”
“We are here looking for the owner of this apartment, your landlord. Do you know where he lives?”
“No sir, I have only met him once in January. He doesn’t even come for his rent money. You can see that I have put three twenty-dollar bills in an envelope in my cupboard with his name on it. There, just open that door.”
The second detective opened the cabinet door and found the envelope with the rent money in it from February, March, and April. It wasn’t May yet. He counted the bills and nodded to his boss.
“Its the only money I keep in the apartment. I called him February and told him he is free to pick up his money anytime he is in the neighborhood. I don’t have a telephone in this apartment so I said he could just use his keys to come in and find the money when he needed it even when I am at lectures or the library,” I explained.
“Your land
lord is sought on charges of tax evasion. We need to know where to find him,” the detective demanded from me.
“I only have his telephone number. I can give that to you if you wish,” I offered helpfully.
“Yes, please.”
I reached into my bookshelf to find my address book and showed the officer the number scratched into the front cover. He took it from me and noted the number in his own notebook and then continued to look through my contacts. The addresses were from all over Russia; Moscow, Voronezh, Kazan, Ryzan, Samara and a number from Kyiv as well as a Byelorussian from Brest. I waited for his further questions.
“You have many friends in Russia. Have you traveled to all these places?”
“No sir, we all met on a river cruise last summer. We send letters and photographs to each other,” I answered truthfully.
“Please remember that you are not authorized to travel without permission from the police outside this province. Do not leave Nizhniy Novgorod without informing the police. If we are not able to find you, you could be arrested when you return and be fined and then deported. Is that clear?” he threatened.
“Yes, sir!”
With that, the lead detective gave a nod to his colleagues and they filed to the hallway and out the door. I closed it behind them and latched every latch without bidding them good evening. I went to my bed and nearly passed out, shaking and cold. Babushka stayed in her room for the rest of the evening but Raiya knocked softly on my door after fifteen minutes, took a seat at my table and started to ask even more questions than the police did, “That was horrible with all that shouting! Was nobody in uniform?”
I was laying on my bed with my arm over my eyes. I shook my head in the negative, not raising it from the pillow.
“The law says that if a plain clothes detective comes to the door they must have a uniformed officer with them. You were completely right to push them out! Did they ask you for any money?” she asked.
I shook my head again.