Val Karren - The Deceit of Riches

“Do you mean Irina the cruise director from the Giorgiy Zhukov last summer?” I asked excitedly.

“Yes, exactly. The spring sailing schedule starts in two weeks and they called to invite me to sail with them again to Moscow and back at the end of the month,” she said grinning.

“Excellent!” I remarked.

“I told them that you were here as well and they invited us both to travel with them as guests on the cruise,” she was nearly bouncing in her chair.

“That would be heavenly, but I will have to ask for permission to travel. My visa only permits me to be in Nizhniy and Moscow,” I said cautiously.

“Nobody checks your papers on the cruise because you won’t sleep in hotels. If you sleep on the boat and stay with the tour group nobody will look at you,” she sounded annoyed that something might disrupt her new summer plans.

“I will just ask Valentina Petrovna how I can obtain permission to travel. Shouldn’t be a big problem as I did it last summer too,” I tried to sound reassuring.

“It would be so romantic to take that trip again!” Yulia pined. “So what good news do you have?”

“I’ve been offered a job. It won’t make me rich, but it’s a start,” I said cautiously.

“Peter, you aren’t going to work for the American businessman, are you?” Yulia knew how to start with the third degree. “You don’t know him well enough to trust him. You don’t know what kind of trouble this could get you into.”

“Why are you so against it? You don’t even know the guy,” I protested annoyed.

“And you have done your research on him, have you? If you know about him, who is funding him? Who is he working for? Would you even be working legally?” her scepticism annoyed me but I knew she was right.

“Yulia, you have to trust somebody in this life, or you won’t get anywhere! Sometimes you have to take risks,” I offered a weak defence.

“Peter, wake up! This is Russia. Trusting people you don’t know gets you killed. You can’t forget that. For all you know he could be a criminal too. He could be a spy. He could be anything and you’re just going to go work for him? Where does he work? Out of his home? Have you ever seen anything he has produced?” Yulia the journalist wanted cold hard facts and trusted nobody that couldn’t produce them.

“OK fine! You win. I’ll turn down the offer. It was just a chance to work and earn some money and stay longer, maybe see where this all… never mind,” I muttered defeated.

Even though I verbalized my acquiescence in the face of Yulia and her mother’s objections to me working for Del, my heart chose a different path of defiance and I decided to trust that Del was what he said he was. I chose then to deceive my friends and pursue what I came to Russia to pursue, not assume their wishes, desire, and fears. I decided I would not tell Yulia anymore about my research topic or anything I was writing. I would not tell her that I was working for Del. I would not tell Del about Yulia, I would not tell my professor about Del. I drew a curtain, a wall between the different compartments of my life in Nizhniy and was determined that they would not intersect. With Yulia, I would talk about the weather and the river boats and go strolling on the waterfront but not let her any further into my other dealings and activities. With that discussion and that split decision on a late Friday evening in early April, my own shadow life was born.

Saturday was spent brooding with Hans and a pile of fried chicken overlooking the Volga together. The landscape had slowly taken on a light green tint in the trees and hillside on top of the bluff. Small buds were starting to appear on the hedges and branches. I had left my wool coat at home that day. The river was well over its normal banks and the lower embankment was completely under water. The sky was filled with dark threatening clouds juxtaposed against dark blue patches. It was a great day to be sitting out of the wind overlooking the old city, the river and God’s wider creations, with a stack of chicken on one plate and chicken bones on the other. Spring was definitely in the air. We kept going back for drumsticks and thighs much to the annoyance of the plump middle-aged woman in the kitchen. I drank the Pepsi while Hans tried again to choke down the local lemonade.

I explained my several dilemmas of opportunity to my German friend who knew nobody in my circle of influence except for Valentina Petrovna and he disliked her about as much as I did. I needed an independent opinion detached from Dean Karamzin, the Sannings and Yulia and her mother. We spoke English no louder than a whisper in the corner of the dining room to avoid being overheard.

More for my sake, than for his understanding, I explained to Hans the focus of my research and how it kept leading me head long into the operations of the local mafia boss, and about my decision deadline on Monday morning about whether or not I would interview Mr. P. I recounted the property auction, the cash escrow deposits of forty and fifty thousand dollars at the INKOM Bank. Hans, an economics major, having studied how Germany handled its own transition from state owned companies to private ownership assured me of what I already had concluded: black money should not be allowed to enter the official economy through privatization.

“You see, Peter, East Germany had Vest Germany to help viz its own transition from communism to a free society. Legally, zere was no difference between the East and Vest Germanies once unification vas finished and the federal government vent into heavy debt to finance the rebuilding of old communist controlled regionz. Russia has nobody to throw it a lifeline, to show zem how to properly transition zeir laws to protect ze public interest. Now Russia has to look for cash and knowhow on its own from wherever it can find it, and that is why the shadow economy iz being allowed to knowingly flow into the visible economy.”

“That is very insightful, Mein Freund. Thanks for that,” I said with appreciation, surprised that he had really intelligent thoughts, something I hadn’t yet heard from him earlier.

“Zo, do you sink I can ask ze fat lady for more again, or vill she throw us out?” Hans asked stupidly.

“C’mon Hans, we already can’t go back to The Monastery, where all the pretty girls live. I don’t want to be persona-non-grata at my favo-rite restaurant in all of Russia as well. I think we’ve already eaten a murder of crows here, let’s pack it in,” I suggested.

“Okey, okey,” He threw his napkin on to his plate and we nursed our bottles of soda until about four o’clock.

“Zo, are you going to verk with ze Amerikan? Do you sink it vill lead to somezing bigger?” he asked me pensively.

“I would hope so, but I get the feeling that nothing is for sure in this country. Maybe I’ll work for a few months for him, but there is so much uncertainty in it all that I can’t imagine it being a long- term thing. We’ll just have to see,” I said taking another swig from my bottle.

“Vill you vant to stay if he asks you to do somezing bigger?” he asked again.

“If I do this interview and the research paper and if it gets published I may not live that long, but I just don’t feel, knowing what I know now, that I could rest until I put in on paper and at least try to tell the people what is going on,” I said somewhat defeated by inevitability.

“Why do you sink that zey don’t already know it? Russian’s are not stupid people,” Hans truthfully pointed out.

“Stupid no, but this is all so new to everybody,” I said defensively.

“Corruption is nothing new to Russians. The communists exported it to East Germany, Czechoslovakia and Poland and you sink the Russians don’t know it when they smell it? The Germans knew it but it took a long time to push away the communists because of ze Russian tanks and soldiers. Oh, Peter, zey know it’s all corrupt, but zey know as vell zat zey are powerless to change it. If the wider world condones it as a legitimate system then nothing will change. It was zo in East Germany, Poland, Romania. If somebody with bigger tanks isn’t ready to help, then we all just kept our heads down instead of getting it smashed in by the secret police. The Russians know it. Zey just don’t want to have their families hurt by doing somesing about it. No mistake about it.”