Stuart Kaminsky: Blood and Rubles

Oleg Makmunov knew it was night. There was no sun. He knew he must be somewhere off of Gorky Street, for that was where he had started. The rest was a drunken blur. Even though he was dressed only in shoes, worn socks, threadbare pants, and a yellow and red American flannel shirt, Oleg Makmunov couldn’t even have told a policeman if it was winter or summer.

Alexei Chazov and his two brothers had followed the drunkard for about five blocks. They had stayed back in the darkness, though it was unlikely the drunken man would see them unless they were in his face.

The street was narrow and empty. Well, not completely empty. The Chazovs had seen a young man and woman with their arms around each other in a doorway.

The drunkard had wandered far since he had been thrown out of the New Hampshire Café with its blaring American music. He had stumbled, seemingly without knowing it, in the general direction of the Strogino District, a neighborhood of cement tenements. When he entered the Strogino, the Chazovs spotted him.

The drunk stopped, but Alexei held his brothers back.

In front of them, sitting on a low stoop, a man smoked a pipe. The man seemed big, but it was hard to tell because most of the lights on the small street were out, and the ones that were on were dim.

Oleg slumped into a doorway and searched his pockets for the small bottle of vodka he had tucked away, but found nothing. Another search, this time for money, produced enough rubles to buy a small bottle should he stumble on someone who might have one to sell. He repocketed the money and tried to decide which way led back to Gorky Street. He guessed left and took his first few steps in that direction.

The big man on the stoop finished his pipe. He tapped the ashes out on the sidewalk, rose, turned, and went through the door behind him.

Now the Chazovs could move. As they neared the drunkard, Alexei supposed that the man was old, at least fifty.

In fact, Oleg was thirty-three. He had given up most of his teeth to drink and dissolute living. He was known to the down and the drunk as Smiling Oleg, not because he smiled so much but because he looked so incredibly funny when he smiled his near-toothless grin.

“One small step for Oleg,” he said to the man who’d been smoking across the street, but now the man was nowhere to be seen. Oleg shrugged and took another step. “And one more step for the glorious future of Mother Russia.”

Before he took another step, he tottered. Almost certainly he would fall to the pavement. It had happened to him before. And so many times he had rolled over on the street to look up at whoever had pushed him and saw no one. This time he did not fall.

He took another step and was shoved hard from behind. His hands went out to protect his battered face from smashing into the pavement. At that he was successful. He was aware of more than one person above him as he rolled over on his elbows and looked up with his loopy smile that usually brought a laugh. The three faces hovering over him did not laugh. Oleg was trying to rise when something hit him, something hard, something heavy, just above his left eye. It wasn’t quite pain he felt but surprise. He slipped back down.

The second blow caught him flush in the face, and he was aware of his nose being smashed once again, probably along with his cheekbone. When something crushed his chest, cracking ribs, he found it very difficult to breathe.

He tried to speak when something cracked his skull, and he was vaguely aware that he must be dying. He made some attempt to breathe and think, but failed.

The three brothers continued picking up pieces of concrete and throwing them at the bloody mutilated head of Oleg Makmunov. When they were certain he was dead, the one who had jumped on his chest went through Oleg’s pockets where he found his few rubles, two keys, a piece of smooth stone, the color of which they could not see, and a stub of a pencil.

It was enough. The Chazovs expected no more. They walked down the narrow street, saying nothing, in no great hurry.

Alexei Chazov was eleven. His brothers, Boris and Mark, were nine and seven.

Porvinovich stood in line reading a book at the Registration Chamber. The book was in Russian, a rather boring novel about a family that could not make a living in the new Moscow.

Making a living was not a problem for Alexei Porvinovich. He was a wealthy man with a weekly income, after payoffs to all including the tax police, of twenty-four million rubles a week, approximately twelve thousand dollars.

He owned three companies-a lamp factory, a cigarette factory, and a movie company. The lamps were flimsy things with green shades that sat on tables and would take no more than a 30-watt bulb. The cigarette factory was actually a packaging plant where the Turkish cigarettes Alexei bought for practically nothing were repackaged and sold at a profit of five hundred percent. The movie company was new. Alexei knew nothing about movies, but he had discovered that American, French, German, English, and Japanese producers wanted to make movies in Russia. Alexei’s job, for a very high fee, was to get the foreign filmmakers through the new bureaucracy. Alexei was a master of proizvol, the exploitation of a system in confusion; the wielding of power to make rubles, and rubles to give power; the use of his power to further his own ends. He had been masterful at it when the bureaucrats were Communists, and he was an even greater master now that the bureaucrats were working for themselves. Capitalism had come with a typically Russian slant.

In addition to wealth, he had acquired a beautiful, intelligent wife who could speak five languages she had learned during her early years as a prostitute, and he supported his brother, who was little more than a lokhl, a simpleton.

The line moved up. Alexei could read the book no longer. He offered it to a lean, coughing man behind him. The man took it with no sign of thanks or gratitude. Alexei expected none.

Finally, it was Alexei’s turn to sit in the metal folding chair across the desk from the man with many chins. Alexei had dressed for the occasion-a conservative definitely-not-new gray suit, a slightly rumpled white shirt open at the collar, a gray tie with little blue lightning bolts. He put his black vinyl briefcase on the desk and smiled wearily as he handed over the papers. The man took them in his swollen fingers.

“Let’s see,” the man said.

He was dressed more formally than Alexei, in the near-uniform of dark suit and dark tie at the tightly buttoned collar.

“Protokal Sobradi is in order, addresses are … Is this a seven?”

Alexei leaned over and confirmed that it was indeed a seven. The man nodded his head seriously, the opening move to inform Alexei that there would be a price to pay for this problem and others he would surely find.

“Your ustav, charter, seems to be correct. You are requesting a limited-liability charter. What will you be making or selling?”

“Books and other related items,” said Alexei.

The other items included computers and apartment sublets.

The fat man did not pursue this. He turned the page to the financial statement, the heart of the matter.

“You have the twenty million rubles to start this venture?”

“As is stated on the forms, which are all certified,” said Alexei. “All dues and charges have been paid, as the documents show.”