Val Karren - The Deceit of Riches

“Maybe then all the more reason to do it…,” and with that I decided to throw caution to the wind and follow my sense of justice.

Before lectures on Monday morning I went straight to the Dean’s office before class. Before he was able to take his chair and with me still standing and leaning over the desk, I blurted at him, “Let’s do it!”

It was a brilliant Friday, April afternoon without a cloud in the sky. The air was warm and fresh and one could smell the sunshine in the air. All seemed bright and clean. To stand still in the sunlight next to the surging river, eyes closed tight, looking directly into the prodigal sun, sparked rejoicing and mourning in one deeply mixed up emotion; where had it been hiding? Will it leave us again soon? I wanted nothing more than to stand right there at the edge of the water, rooted like a sunflower and follow every degree of the sun’s progress towards the Tropic of Cancer. Oh, how much I will miss it when it’s gone again! The joy of the warm sun today juxtaposed against the despair of cold snow showers from the week before was the discouraging mania that made this one moment so beautiful.

The rechniy flot, or river fleet, based in Nizhniy Novgorod which plies the waterways of Russia for pleasure, was coming out of its winter hibernation in mid-April, flushing the water tanks, tuning up the diesel turbines, painting the decks and cleaning the passengers’ cabins, taking on supplies and fuel. Even though the river was too high still to sail the largest of these holiday boats under a number of the bridges upstream, towards the Volga-Moscow canal and ultimately Moscow, the crew was bustling on the decks making the boats shine and getting ready for five months of vagabonding all over Russia, from St. Petersburg to Astrakhan, and Moscow to Volgograd. It was a thrill to see the boats again as they came one by one and moored at the Nizhniy Novgorod river station to show off their colors and flags before the holiday makers boarded for the year’s first sailings. In high summer, one usually walks down the gang plank to board a river cruiser. As the water had refused to recede we had to walk up to reach the first railings from the docks. It was a fine feeling to be back onboard the Georgiy Zhukov! It felt to me like arriving home after a long absence.

We were all one year older but almost all the same happy faces were there on board already to greet me and Yulia as we stepped onboard for an impromptu reunion with our friends, and my former colleagues, with whom I had worked the summer prior. Even the captain remembered me and stopped to shake hands and greet us as he passed by, clipboard in hand, barking instructions to a deck hand.

Irina, a tall lanky older woman with long gray hair greeted us as we stepped over the threshold. Irina, an outdoor enthusiast, was the senior of the tour guides of the group and spoke English with a proper English accent and perfect Russian with a warm literary accent. When she spoke, or retold a story one could easily think that she was reading one of Russia’s folk tales filled with fantastic verbs and adjectives. Life always seemed enchanting when she shared her adventures or even issued a warning.

Nikolai, my good friend, was the complete opposite of Irina. This dark skinned, sunglasses clad Georgian from Tbilisi was in anything but in a hurry, and spoke Russian with an accent reminiscent of Josef Stalin’s, also a Georgian, with a cigarette never too far from his lips. He was maybe in his mid-forties and a father of two older children. Our friendship was built mostly in the bar drinking vodka and Pepsi, in between sailings when we were waiting for the next tourists from America. Somehow all his brown, white and yellow polyester shirts were missing the top two or three buttons and were always showing off his thick chest hair and gold chains with tiny icons hanging off them. If one didn’t know his good-natured heart and intense interest in people, one might mistake him for a Georgian gangster or pimp. His command of English, as well, was unimpeachable.

Olga was a truly professional tour guide. Despite the weather or the destination, she was always dressed in a navy blue blazer and knee length skirt with a white collared blouse, white stockings, and dark pumps. She was in her mid-fifties with dirty blond hair down to her shoulders but kept in wavy full curls. It didn’t move in the wind, not even on deck on a windy afternoon. She spoke English exactly and was a history master. She had obviously traveled the river for tens of years with tourists and knew every bend of the Volga, every village, and monument. She was the epitome of order and punctuality.

Matvei (Matthew) was a youth prodigy of maybe seventeen years when we met the year before. In 1994 his exposure to western pop-culture, Russian history, the English language and the courage that being seventeen gives a young man to do anything that enters his mind, made him a favorite among the American tourists. He had also become my right-hand man for tracking down lost tourists in Moscow and greasing the palms of local harbor masters who needed a little extra incentive to help them look the other way at times. His mother was an English instructor, his father a history professor in Moscow. He was indispensable on our voyages.

“Peter, we thought maybe you were dead after what happened last summer. Nobody knew that you were flying back to Moscow from Volgograd that day and we thought we had left you behind half way to Saratov,” Nikolai muttered from one side of his mouth with a passive cigarette hanging out of the other corner of his mouth, the smoke blowing behind us in the sunny river breeze.

“Sorry about that. I wasn’t in my best form when I departed,” was my apologetic reply. “Sorry to have caused you worry.”

“And can you imagine my reaction when Nikolai told me that you weren’t on board? Nobody knew what had happened to you,” Yulia chimed in.

“Oh Nikolai, do you still have my gray overcoat?” I asked between the discussion.

“I am sorry, but my brother needed a good coat last fall. I gave it to him,” Nikolai apologized.

“Not a problem, my friend, not a problem,” I waved it off.

“The last I saw you, we were sitting on the river bank watching all the pretty girls’ legs in short sun dresses, and then you were gone a few hours later!” Nikolai continued.

Yulia gave me an elbow in the ribs and a disapproving look. I gave an apologetic gesture and a glance toward Nikolai to blame him and absolve myself of the accusation in her eyes.

“Yes, I was told there was an extra seat on the flight and the ship’s doctor thought it best I departed rather than sail again after what happened in Kazan,” I explained dryly. Everybody nodded as they remembered watching medics and an ambulance drive me away in front all the worried tourists.

“What did happen in Kazan?” Matvei asked.

“Things that I don’t want to remember. Maybe on a different day I’ll tell you all, but with the sun shining and weather so beautiful…,” I rummaged in my book bag and pulled out a squat two-liter bottle of Pepsi-Cola “…I think it’s time for a drink on deck!” and I winked at Nikolai.

“Oiy, Oiy, Oiy! Americans,” they all sighed in unison looking exasperated at each other while Yulia laughed at me and told me to put it away.

“I’ll find some glasses!” was Nikolai’s reply, “And a bottle of vodka!”

Sitting just out of the breeze but still in the sunshine it felt like it could have been June. The sky was as azure as any tropical sea. The temperature was perfect. We smoked and drank and reminisced about the challenges and the scares of the last summer when we were working on the river.

“What ever happened to Rocky? You remember the big man who broke his leg at the Kremlin in Moscow?” Matvei inquired.