Val Karren - The Deceit of Riches

“You know, I had a letter from him in November just before the winter holidays. He told me he had made a full recovery and thanked us all again for our quick action,” I informed the group. “He said it could have been a lot worse if we hadn’t done all we did to help him.”

Yulia hadn’t been with us on that voyage and she asked to hear the story.

“Ok, but let me tell it in English. Otherwise, it won’t be as good in Russian,” I demanded.

Everybody nodded to indicate no problem as everybody in the group spoke English better than I did Russian, except for Yulia.

“Rocky, Rocky… Rocky…” I was trying to remember his last name.

“Balboa!” came from Matvei.

“You and all your movie references, Matvei, it’s amazing. Did you spend your ENTIRE childhood watching bootleg movies from the USA?” I asked in a mocking tone.

“Almost!” he grinned.

“Rocky Balzano, that was it, Balzano! A very large man. Had worked as a meat packer his whole life in Philadelphia. Big fellow. Tall but also broad. Not in the shoulders, but like a barrel. The man had circumference!” I motioned in a large circle around my own non-existent belly. “He came to Russia because he was a big fan of some actor from Moscow, can’t remember who now. How he would have known the actor, being a meat packer in Philly, I never could figure out. He really liked acting and films though. I guess everybody has a hobby, right? But he talked with all the Russians on the boat about him and they thought him the most cultured American they ever met. Anyhow, he sprained his knee in St. Petersburg on one of our first days of the entire trip, and so he did nothing really except sit on deck and in the bar drinking with the other Russians who didn’t care to see the little Volga villages,” I was in a flow.

Irina chimed in, “Yes, I remember him too now. Very charming man. His stories were always so colorful and unbelievable, but he told them with such detail that they could not have been made up.”

“That’s him! Exactly!” I confirmed. “And when he had some drink in him, you couldn’t get him to stop talking. So anyhow, on our last day in Moscow before everybody flew home, of course, we always ended with the tour of the Kremlin cathedrals. Well, Rocky wasn’t going to miss this! He was in Russia and he was going to see the Kremlin, hurt knee or not! Only, the night before we had also had an older fellow in the group who thought he had had a heart attack after dinner. His wife was all worked up about it, but there was no way in hell that he was going to miss the Kremlin tour. He said to me, ‘we’ve finally beat those damn Rooskies and I want them to see my face in the Kremlin.’ Something very belligerent like that. It was so personal to him. Anyhow, I was assigned to this fellow with the heart attack. We couldn’t persuade him to rest that day so I was assigned to be his shadow for the day in case something happened. I wrote all the emergency numbers up my left arm of the US Embassy, the American and British medical clinics, etcetera.” I pulled up my shirt sleeve and motioned like I was writing over my veins showing through my white underarm. “So, we’re on Cathedral Square inside the Kremlin, just in front of the huge cannon and stack of cannon balls and everybody is getting a lecture from the official tour guide about the height of the towers, the golden copulas and the boring stuff that they all memorize in English. So, the tour guide invites us all to go into the cathedral now and I can’t see anything in the shadows on the ground after staring at those white cathedral walls and the shining domes in the sunshine. I don’t know where my charge has wandered off to and I panic a bit. Just then I heard somebody behind me give a yelp of pain and maybe stumble? So, I turn around but my eyes couldn’t see anything yet. So, it takes me a second just standing there looking dumb while Rocky is falling over.” I turned to the others at the table and asked “Do you all remember his wife Alice? Skinny, frail woman? Well, there she was trying to hold up this huge man and looks like he is about to crush her as he is falling.”

“How horrible!” gasped Yulia.

The others were just laughing.

“So, as soon as I could see again I jumped under his arm and sent Alice off to find some help from, well, you all,” motioning to my colleagues around the table, “who disappeared so quickly, but maybe also some other men to help me keep Rocky from falling over and hurting himself more. Well, Alice didn’t come back. So, there is me and Rocky in the middle of cathedral square hugging while he is moaning and asking for help so sit down; says his other leg is just about to give out. Remember, very big fellow, early sixties. Not in very good shape to be hopscotching around Cathedral Square on one leg.”

“Did he actually break his leg then?” Olga asked.

“No, he later had x-rays taken at the hospital. It wasn’t broken. It was just his weight, the sprain, walking on cobblestone probably, but anyway he thought he had really damaged his leg and was in lots of pain!” I clarified.

“So, Rocky needs to sit down before he falls over and hits his head. So, were standing not far from the Kremlin Palace and there were two soldiers, two guards standing in front of the ceremonial entrance. It’s all for show of course. So, I whistled to them and asked them to come help. They hesitated and wouldn’t come. So, I whistled at them again and then yelled at them for help. POMOGIY, POMOGIY !! So, they came running with their rifles on their shoulders. I told them that Rocky’s knee was broken and we needed to call an ambulance. So, the soldiers each got under one of Rocky’s arms and they just stood there. He was too big and heavy to carry. It was a great sight and I wish I had a picture of it, but I didn’t think of it at the time. It was like a proud father with his Russian boys in honor guard uniforms,” I was laughing as I recalled the details.

“You have to be making this up!” Yulia couldn’t believe the story.

“Every word is true. Every word is true!” Nikolai confirmed the story. Yulia was flabbergasted and laughed in disbelief.

“But wait, it gets better! So, I ask the guards where I could find a telephone. Remember that we couldn’t take our walkie-talkie radios into the Kremlin? We had to leave them on the coach so there was no way I could call our coach driver to meet us at the gates or something, and I needed to call an ambulance. So, one of the guards pointed out that the security office was just around a corner and there I could speak to the chief of Kremlin security. Instead of asking one of the soldiers to do it, I take off like lightning. The office was behind these tall wooden doors and I pull it open and find a startled guard sitting behind a metal detector, ‘I need your chair, it’s an emergency!’ I commanded and walked right through the metal detector, grabbed his metal folding chair and ran out the door and the metal detector, of course, is going off, alarm bells ringing because of the metal chair and all. Poor guy didn’t even know what hit him,” I was on a roll.

“This can’t be real, in the Kremlin? And nobody is trying to stop you?” Yulia had her hand to her forehead, “Why do they even have guards there?”

“I know what you mean. When I look back on this I just think, I hope that their nuclear codes aren’t stored in that place. It’s so easy to manipulate the guards. I can’t imagine they get many urgencies like this one. Everybody must be so well behaved that they don’t expect this type of thing. So, Rocky is now sitting on a flimsy metal chair, but he is so big that he has to straddle the chair, you know, like on a horse and he has his walking stick on one side to lean on while his injured leg has to be held straight. It looked so uncomfortable! So, I still needed to call an ambulance and so I run back to the security office. The guard this time was on the telephone in his office. I walked straight through the metal detector again, alarms go off again, and tell this fellow directly that I need to use the telephone to call an ambulance. He puts the handset down and steps back. I’m rolling up my left sleeve to read all the emergency numbers I wrote there that morning. I must have looked like some junkie rolling up his sleeve to find a vein.” I was flicking my lower arm to accentuate the drugs allusion. Olga was laughing quite heavily at this.