Val Karren - The Deceit of Riches

In the split second that I realized who I was standing with and just about to shake hands, I remembered the fury in his black eyes I had seen that frightening evening at his restaurant on Valentine’s Day. Not being able to help myself when I came face to face with him again I looked again into his eyes. This time there was no blackness, just a glazed over blurry eyeball. He was already drunk. The relief quickly spread through my system.

“Very pleased. You are very welcome tonight. You are a student in Nizhniy?” Mr. P. asked.

“Yes, I study with Dean Karamzin,” I replied politely

“Ah, my good friend… how is Roman Sergeiyevich?” he inquired.

“He is certainly healthy!” I informed him.

“You are American? You speak very good Russian,” he said over-complimenting me as drunks regularly do.

“Thank you, I have studied it for years,” I informed him.

Turning to his comrades in crime still sitting at the table and yelling louder than needed.

“Guys, we have a spy with us tonight from USA. Maybe he is FBI or CIA?”

Marina came to my defense with a pout at Mr. P., “Da Nyet, Peter is a very good boy! Very kind!”

“Maybe we talk later together, Peter. Maybe you come see me another day for lunch and you can tell me about yourself, why you come to Russia,” Mr. P. proposed.

“That would be… cool,” was my purposefully dumbed down answer.

We clasped hands in a brutish manner, like how I imagine kick-boxers greet each other, but we didn’t shake, just slapped.

Mr. P. turned back to his guests and I quickly disappeared into the crowd with Marina, before Mr. P’s brain cells, slowed by alcohol, made the connection with me and where I’d been seen earlier.

After we were a safe distance to be out of sight, I leaned down to Marina’s ear to ask, “How do you know Mr. P?”

“He is friend of my uncle. They do biznis together,” she happily chirped flipping her head and hair to the techno beats.

“Really? Is this what we call ‘biznis’ in Russia?” I asked ironically indicating everything unholy going on around us in a house of worship.

“Da, Nyet, Peter. He runs private ‘biznises’ in Nizhniy. Restaurants, shops, kiosks. He buys and sells lots of import products from Germany and Korea, you know, cars and T.V.’s,” she told me.

“Yes, I’ll bet he buys and sells the girls too from the looks of it. What else does he import? Anything from Afghanistan or Columbia?” I was sarcastic bordering on a bit angry.

“I don’t know what you are talking about…,” Marina looked confused.

Just then I saw a very skanky-looking, overdone young woman in fish net stockings and heels pull a young man into the confessional booth by his tie and pull the door closed behind her. His friends stood in the corner gawking and jabbing each other, already half drunk. Were they seeking privacy for blowing a line of cocaine or was she providing another service? I stepped outside to the courtyard to get some air after my unexpected and undesired brush with the past I was trying to avoid. The heat lamps were still warm and a number of students were outside smoking cigarettes in the cold, hanging around the stand tables in groups of two and three. A familiar voice called to me.

“Peter. Hello. Come join us.” An acquaintance of mine from the English club, Olya, was summoning me to her table and offered me a cigarette. I politely refused with an upheld hand of temperance.

“Olya, I hardly recognized you dressed all fancy,” I commented with a smile and an intended compliment as she looked very attractive.

Olya was an interesting young lady who I had become acquainted with through the English club. She seemed a bit older than the other students and not an academic at all. She seemed to have more street smarts than book smarts. She wasn’t in any of my other lectures and I had never seen her anywhere but at the English club, but she wasn’t the only one who fell into that category. The university had a wide range of schools under its umbrella. Even though I had never asked her what she studied, apart from English, I had figured that she was in an engineering focus of some sort, being more practical than studious.

As I approached the table to stand opposite Olya, her friend gave me a polite smile, and touching Olya’s arm took her leave and went back into the church as she extinguished her cigarette in the ash tray on the table, dropping ashes on the deep purple velvet table wrap. When we were alone Olya replied, “You didn’t recognize me? It is me who did not recognize you yesterday on Prokovka.”

“Oh, I didn’t even see you yesterday. I’m sorry I didn’t notice you,” I apologized.

“That’s okay. You did not see me on the street. It was many moments before I recognized you, dressed in the funny way, and then you were very far away to call to you. You looked different,” she mentioned.

“Hmmm… yes, Friday afternoon I had a bit of a, well, let’s just say I had to stop being Russian for an afternoon, and be more myself. With my exams done and my research paper approved and with the good weather,” I accentuated the good weather, “I just felt like running through a grassy park and kissing all the pretty girls.”

Olya laughed “You are a funny boy, Peter.”

“And you are a mysterious girl, Olya,” I replied with a mysterious voice.

“Mysterious? What means mysterious?” she asked for translation.

“In Russian?” I offered.

“No, explain me in English, please, for practice,” she requested.

“It means I don’t know very much about you, but yet you seem to be somebody that knows a lot but never says anything about what you know. You keep secrets, maybe,” I offered.

“Hmmm, very good thoughts about me,” she said pensively.

“So, do you study somewhere on Pokrovka? I didn’t know there were university buildings on that street,” I was sincerely interested.

“No, I was working,” she replied shortly.

“Working? I didn’t think students were allowed to have jobs. Oh, are you working in a private shop there on the street?” I was excited to meet somebody who worked in one of the newly privatized retails shops.

“No, I was…,” she tried to explain before I stopped her short.

“Let me guess, you selling your rubbish at the flea market in front of the creative arts museum?” I was teasing her.

At this remark, she became very perturbed and denied being a gypsy girl in some very unambiguous and un-ladylike terms.

“Then tell me what you do. Maybe I could stop by on some days and say hello while you’re working,” I suggested.

“That would not be possible,” she answered quickly and resolutely.

“Why not? I could always buy something from you,” I proposed.

“No, it’s not like that,” she turned and looked behind her and continued in a hushed voice “Can you keep a secret?”

“Secrets are dangerous things to have in Russia, I understand,” I whispered back.

“Can you keep a secret?” she asked again emphatically raising the tone of her hushed voice.

“Yes, yes, I can keep a secret,” I mumbled back. I wondered if she was drunk already too.

“I work in the TT building at the top of Pokrovka,” she revealed with shifting eyes.

“Really? I’ve been in there a few times to call my mother in the USA. What do you do there?” I asked naively.

She switched into Russian to quickly explain her vocation “I’m not a telephone operator Peter, I work for the FSB. l listen to telephone calls in and out of the city,” she said looking over my shoulder this time.

I found this such a preposterous idea that I laughed out loud a deep belly laugh and couldn’t stop for a few moments. When I finally got my composure back I started poking fun at her.