Val Karren - The Deceit of Riches

“I am sorry, but the interview must now be over. I am very busy and must get back to my work. Tatyana will show you out.”

It was the end of April and the evenings were becoming longer with daylight and twilight lasting until almost nine o’clock in the evening. Gone were the days of thick coats and double layers. I was so happy to hear my babushka say that shapkas after mid-April were not to be worn any longer. Evidently, it was bad for men’s hairlines if they wore their fur hats in warm weather. She was full of those types of traditional wives’ tales and I added this one to a list of them that I was keeping. The last snow showers had been in the second week of April but they were just passing flurries on a few cold, wet days when the wind and clouds came from the north. The wind was now blowing warm air up the river valley, making the days and evenings as pleasant as any I could remember.

As I strolled up Minin Street to Frunze Street to meet with Del and Els that Friday evening I was deep in thought about what to do with the information that I gleaned from my discussions with Mr. P. He may have been an uneducated, maybe even dishonest businessman but there was nothing that I could pinpoint from what I had learned about him that indicated that he was hurting the everyday Ivan Ivanovich on the street. In fact, he made a strong case for his ends justifying his means. Even if had been getting his car parts off the back of somebody’s truck, at the least he had been providing a service that benefited other entrepreneurs in the city, helping others make a living by being able to fix their cars quickly. Perhaps Mr. P. was the wrong example on which to base my model of how the little shark becomes the big shark. He seemed rather adamant that those types of charlatans were only destroying Russia and looking out for themselves. Igor Ivanovich seemed to be, on the surface anyhow, building an enterprise that not only made him rich and influential but that helped move the local economy along in a very unsure time. During this period of economic chaos in Russia it was impossible for anybody to work completely within the law, and as Del rightly pointed out, the laws were changing every two or three months. What was perhaps illegal when it started was the catalyst for showing law makers that the laws had to change. I hoped that Del would be able to help me pick apart this new information and make some sense of it.

When the elevator doors opened on what I expected to be the fifth floor and the Sannings’ apartment door, I had to double check that I had punched the right button. Perhaps I had mistakenly pressed 3 instead of 5? I punched the 5 again to see if the elevator would close and take me higher, but it didn’t. I stood for a moment puzzled. I stepped back into the elevator and selected 0 to take me back to the ground floor. Perhaps I had entered the building through the wrong stairwell. Most Russian apartment buildings have multiple entrances on the ground floor along the length of the buildings, each entrance representing a stairwell or elevator shaft. I poked my head outside the ground floor entrance to check that there wasn’t one more door to the left as the Sanning’s apartment was on the fifth floor of the last stairwell from the street. As I looked left all I saw was a wall of cinder blocks about two and a half meters tall. On the other side of that low wall was Upper Embankment street. I was in the right place. I rode the elevator again up to the fifth floor and deliberately knocked a measured three times on a newly installed, rust-colored steel security door. The knock echoed on the landing and up and down the stairwell. I waited.

From behind the doors, I heard the faint voice of Del asking in Russian, “Who is there?”

“It’s the plumber, I’ve come to fix the sink,” I replied in a put-on Brooklyn accent to make fun of the whole situation.

I rolled my eyes as I waited for Fort Sanning to open its doors. I half expected to see Del holding a double-barreled shotgun and chewing on a stubby cigar in the side of his mouth, wearing a cowboy hat and a patch over one eye. It all seemed very overdone. As I heard the bolt of the steel door finally release, I pulled the door toward me. Stepping out of its way and peering around the edge I said, “Open sesame?”

“Very funny, plumber man. Come on in,” he bellowed. Del was in a good mood.

Without a coat, scarf and shapka to hang up I walked straight into the living room through the dark hallway but bumped my left arm on something protruding from the wall. That hadn’t been there that last time I had visited the apartment.

“That’s new, isn’t it? I said as I stopped to inspect it and rub my arm that had bumped it. “What is it?” I asked as I stepped through the doorway into the living room. Els was in the kitchen off to the left.

“It’s a panic button,” Del said matter-of-factly, “It is an alarm that sets off bells and lights here in the apartment, the landing… and in the police station.”

“Wow, you’ve got a burglar alarm wired to the police station? How far away is it from here?” I was puzzled.

“Minin Square, just a few minutes away, but we also have a police car stationed downstairs at night for the time being as well in case it happens again,” he said distractedly.

“In case what happens again? Del, what happened?” I began to get a very worried feeling in my gut and waited for him to explain what was going on.

“A few nights ago, a group of three of four thugs forced their way into the apartment just before Els and I were going to bed,” he said as if telling me a bedtime story.

“What!? Are you alright? I looked around the door into the kitchen to see if Els had been beaten up. Seeing she was fine I looked Del up and down. Maybe I had missed a cast or a bandage on his arm or leg…

“Yes kid, we’re fine. They didn’t hurt us, they just smashed the place up a bit and that’s all.” Del seemed to want to brush it off. “It’s nothing we haven’t seen before in Moscow.”

“Did they take anything?” I looked around and saw only the usual bookcases, television and whatnot. Nothing even seemed out of place.

“No, it wasn’t a robbery. They didn’t even ask for our money or passports or anything,” Del replied while he laid out silverware on the table. He just didn’t seem too concerned about it.

“Okay, then, what am I missing and should I be concerned?” I was desperate to learn about what had happened.

Del stopped setting the table and stood pensively against the refrigerator. “You know, it was really amateurish the way it all went down, don’t you think as well Els?”

“They certainly weren’t professionals,” was her input, and she continued adding vegetables to the cowboy stew.

“And how often have the two of you been attacked by professionals?” I asked sarcastically with a flip of my hand and arm into the air.

“What would you say, Honey? Three or four times? Del looked with a longing glance to his wife.

“This makes it four times now, Sweetheart.” She looked up from the soup and batted her eye lashes.

“You two are a real pair, you know that?” I laughed and took a seat at my usual seat at the table. “So if they didn’t beat you up, and they didn’t steal anything from you… just knocked over some chairs…” I asked hoping to get more details.

“And a table!” Els added putting her knife into the air, her back still to me so as to be heard and seen.

“And a table,” I continued, “why did they even break in?”

“Pure intimidation, my friend, pure intimidation!” was Del’s almost enthusiastic conclusion.

“Did they give you some sort of ultimatum to get out of town or something like that?” I interrogated further.