Val Karren - The Deceit of Riches

“Did you hear my last call to my mother? That was a funny conversation!”

“Nyet, but I know somebody listened and there is a transcript of that call. All foreigners are recorded and reviewed, and especially the Americans are watched very carefully,” she stressed the word ‘especially.’

“Well, y’all must not be doing a very good job because there is definitely nobody watching me, except for maybe Valentina Petronva,” I said in English in a lazy, casual way. I thought for a few seconds, but then swatted this idea out of the air. “Naah, I hardly even talk to her anymore.”

“No, I know you are watched and they must do good job if you are not knowing you are being listened to and watched,” Olya affirmed.

“C’mon. That’s all in the past now. The communists are all gone now. Nobody’s watching me or listening to my phone calls,” I replied again in English.

“Peter, what do you think happened to KGB on the day Soviet Union went away? Do you think they go to home and said “Hey, dorogaya maya, communist party collapsed today, so now we are all good guys and they don’t need me anymore?” You don’t think new Russian government don’t have need for secret police? You think that all departments of KGB just stopped existing? They changed the name to FSB and everybody keep their jobs. That’s it. We do the same thing, Peter. Listen, I like you. You are a nice guy and you like living in Russia. You go to classes, you study a lot, you aren’t involved with the mafia — well maybe tonight you are — and you don’t call anybody but your mother, but be careful who you talk to, what you say, what you do. You don’t want anybody to misunderstand you,” her tone was professional, not drunk.

“You’re serious, aren’t you?” I asked flabbergasted.

“Yes, and you promised to keep a secret,” she smiled and took a sip of her cocktail.

“Well, I didn’t think it would be that kind of secret. Okay, if you really are who you say you are, what was the last conversation you listened to on the telephone?” I had begun to be curious.

“Medical student from Turkey called his father,” she answered with clarity.

“Do you speak Turkish too?” I was surprised.

“No, I almost fell asleep for forty minutes. I recorded it and interpreter made Russian transcript on same day. There is transcripts of your calls too,” she reported.

“I would love to have that for posterity!” I commented sarcastically.

“Sorry, I cannot give those to you,” she was dead serious.

“You’re really serious, aren’t you? You’re not even a student, are you? You just come to the English club to watch everybody and hear what people are thinking. Do you write reports about that too?” I asked somewhat offended.

“Da, of course,” she answered without apology.

“Geez, C’mon Olya. Is Olya your real name?” I asked, expecting a denial.

“No, it’s not,” she said taking a drag from her cigarette.

“Wow, I just don’t know what to say,” I sighed. An awkward pause hung in the air between us.

“Do you want to dance with me?” Olya asked switching into Russian, “I’m still a girl, and you are still a boy and I have a job at FSB. It’s nothing bad. It’s Russia.”

“Sure, let’s go dance. The night couldn’t get any more surreal!” and off we went back into the club and joined the moshing crowd of very drunk students dancing to techno-trash Russian tracks that all sounded the same. Exams were over and nobody had use for their brains until Monday morning, so why not? My mind was already blown by the revelations of the evening so what else did I have to lose? My colleagues are family of the local mafia boss and my acquaintances are KGB operatives. What else could go wrong?

At eleven o’clock the music stopped and the spotlights swiveled in unison and turned to light up the stage in the nave. The big act was about to start. Mr P. took to the stage and riled up the crowd, wanting to hear how excited they were to know who was playing in the club tonight. The crowd responded with increasingly louder shouts of “DAAAAAAAA!” when asked if they were excited three different times—a spectacle not seen since high school pep rallies. Behind Mr. P. the spotlights had lit up the backdrop of the act to come. There was a ruby red outline of the Moscow kremlin towers with three red flags on poles displayed on either side of the closed gate of the Spaskiy Tower. The laurel branches of the Soviet Union’s seal extended to either side of the stages in an upward bending fashion, all against a backdrop of a city night scape of apartment buildings. It had a very nationalistic feel to it. I was intrigued about what we might see here. I was severely disappointed.

After a drunken introduction and Mr. P.’s stumbling from the stage, the members of the band came skipping out from under the Spaskiy gate tower cut-out dressed all in black leather, with leather cowboy hats. They took up their positions on the stage with a keyboard, drums and a single electric guitar. They didn’t look young, and they did not look cool. One had a beer belly! The lead singer came skipping out as well from behind the Kremlin cut-outs dressed like a feminine, overweight pirate with a scruffy beard and long brown hair and gyrated his hips in a way that made me cringe. He was wearing black spandex, a flowing white blouse with a gold embroidered black vest and black knee-high boots. The crowd of students knew who the group was and cheered as if Bruce Springsteen had just taken the stage. The music of the first number sounded just like what the DJ had been playing. I couldn’t stay and watch. I think they were lip-synching as well, but who would really know, being so inebriated. When you’re that drunk nobodies’ words match the mouth movements, not even your own.

I found Hans at one of the bars listing a bit on a bar stool, smiling with a glazed over look. He had a glass of something in his hand, half gone. I took a stool next to him and leaned my back up against the bar and faced the dance floor and joined Hans’s gaze at all the ‘girlz’. As I settled on to my bar stool and propped my dazed friend up by the shoulder, a very tall and curvy woman walked passed us in very tight pants and a sheer blouse with her bra fully visible through the gauzy material in front and back. I’m sure she was a trophy of one gangster in the room, but she was eye candy for the rest of us. Trying to move through the crowd she had to pause directly in front of Hans and turn her back, with her backside to him to let others pass through the narrow side aisles.

I saw it happening in slow motion, like a train wreck about to happen but could do nothing to stop it. Hans’s drunken arm slowly rose and his hand reached for the underside of her leather clad buns and squeezed with vigor and intent and said in his German accented Russian.

“Syadeese, dvevuchka, Syadeese!” (Please, girl, sit down here!)

The slap came so fast that it made my head spin! Hans dropped his drink and fell off his bar stool and everybody around us laughed uncontrollably. The woman was so incensed that she kicked him a few times and spat on him while he was trying to get back onto his wobbly legs. With the last kick, he fell again and hit his head against another bar stool. Before another kick or slap could come I jumped between the two of them, holding my hands in front of me, facing her with my hands visible to sign “enough is enough.” Hans stood up behind me completely dazed, but a bit more sober. The woman had fire in her eyes and Gucci platform shoes on her feet. Over her shoulder I could see a beefy body guard making his way through the crowd to her.

“Oh, Hans! You had better run!” I muttered to him in English from the side of my mouth with my eyes fixed on Brutus moving quickly towards us.