Val Karren - The Deceit of Riches

“Did he tell you that too?” Els jumped all over this new revelation.

“Well, it was part of his story. That’s how he learned to be mechanical with the cars. His father studied and worked in East Germany for some time. They would speak German together when nobody else was around. That’s how he could negotiate in Germany so well he said.” I explained.

“Kid you know what Nizhniy produces right? You know why the city has so many engineers and engineering schools, right?” Del asked rhetorically.

“Yes, the GAZ factory is just down the street from my place; cars, boats, trains, airplanes, and whatnot,” I proudly answered.

“MIGs, kid, MIGs.” Del spelled it out for me. “The Soviets closed the place because this was their center of excellence for fighter planes, military aviation, not GAZ built troop transports.”

“Do you remember anything he said about aviation?” Els asked me again looking me square in the face.

“No, I had it my head from his story that his father was an automobile engineer. That’s how Mr. P. got the idea and first inroads at the car parts factory and the rest. His father has a dacha where he kept the inventory and he drove his father’s car once a week to pick up a new load of spare parts. In my mind’s eye, I imagined his father to be an automotive engineer,” I begged their understanding.

“Nothing at all that would tie him to airplanes, aviation, radar technology?” Del continued with the questions.

I hesitated with my answer as I felt like I was being treated as a hostile witness now and I gave them both a very unsure look. This wasn’t about the hotel anymore. Something had shifted in the discussion and I couldn’t figure out exactly what.

“We’re just trying to figure out if his claims of having money left from his father are viable enough to make us worry about his bidding for the ground, that’s all,” Els reassured me with a smile.

“The only mention of the word airplanes was that he rented an unused warehouse from an aircraft parts manufacturer that was short on orders and supply. He stored his car parts there when they branched out to other car models and needed more space,” I revealed.

“There it is!” Del slapped his knee and stood up and paced around the room.

“Did I miss something?” I queried looking back and forth between the two of them.

After a few moments of talking to himself and staring at a blank wall, Del asked me, “Kid, you understand don’t you, why he wants to set up a casino?”

“Well, he says it’s to bring money and jobs to Nizhniy. He wants to make Nizhniy a Las Vegas type of city, God willing,” I answered.

Del explained. “Kid, you said you had the impression that the guy wasn’t more than a crook with honor maybe, but make no mistake about it the casino will be there to launder money, white wash it and put into foreign reserve banks, out of the hands of the Russian government and tax collectors. The little shark has to get his money out of the country before a bigger shark comes and eats him and his territory up, or as Mr. P. might put it, take over his market share. It sounds like Mr. P. has tapped a vein of wealth and is getting ready in the next year or two to make his big move and is setting up the needed infrastructure to move his money around Russian banks to someplace else. I think you found your perfect example to prove your model for your paper, but he is still perhaps too small of a fish for you to recognize it at this point. He’s just about to make his move into the major leagues with the casino plans. No doubt about it. It’s a perverted ‘rags to riches’ bonanza!”

I laid awake that night in my room until late thinking about the last few days and all the information I had learned and processed. It was enough to leave me suspicious of everybody and anybody. The evening with the Sannings had left me very unsettled. From the steel door to the panic button and the nonchalant way that both Del and Els took the break-in and the threats, to the professional interrogation that Els put me through to pull information from me about their business competitor. I had felt a palpable shift in the intensity of their interest when Mr. P’s father was being discussed. I began to suspect that Del and Els had a shadow agenda that they were also keeping from me. After all the warnings that Els gave me about looking into peoples’ motives and being careful with my choice of research methods, she lulled me into a sense of security to trust her, to trust Del with everything that I heard and learned during my studies and interactions with people in the city. Perhaps it was time to be less forthcoming with them about what I was learning. Maybe I needed to start asking them the questions that would fill in my gaps instead of me being used for the information I had gathered through my investigations and research. I felt that I was starting to be carried along by deep currents of other people’s agendas which were becoming frighteningly obvious; violence, corruption, industrial espionage. Perhaps it was time to be very, very cautious. Perhaps it was time to walk away…

Hans had a new girlfriend without whom he could go nowhere. Not even our Saturday afternoon fried chicken lunch was sacred anymore. She held his leash very tightly. Tamara was as beautiful as any fabled Russian girl and for that Hans could be forgiven for falling head over heels in love. Most likely it was lust, but at twenty-three years old, who really knows the difference? She was indeed beautiful and most likely a gold-digger looking for a foreign boyfriend to take her far away from the poverty, snow, and ice. Unfortunately, her brains did not match her beauty.

“Just look at what that tramp is wearing! Look at her hair and look at her fat backside, she needs to wear some heals to flatten that out!” was Tamara’s critique of nearly every female that entered our favorite eating establishment that day.

I rolled my eyes at Hans while Tamara poured scorn on what I thought were some very attractive young ladies. Hans gave an apologetic look back, but he was hardly sincere in his shameful looks. It was tragic to watch and hear.

“Why can’t these Russian girls see that their boyfriends are ugly dogs? Russian men look like cavemen! They all look like gorillas the way they walk. And why don’t they wear any colors? I can’t stand the black leather jacket look.” She clucked on while I silently devoured chicken thighs and drumsticks. Tamara ate nothing. I assumed it was to keep her fabulous figure from developing fatal flaws.

Those who have the impression that Russia is a gray, colorless place obviously, have not visited the country in the spring, because when the weather is warm the streets are awash in all the colors possible under the sun. The wearing of bright, brash and clashing colors by the ladies is almost an expression of the freedom of the body liberated finally from the black, gray and navy wool overcoats and fur hats. Young college girls wear the shortest skirts, the sheerest blouses and the tallest heels they can without breaking an ankle. The young men wear the same in their own right—tight silk button downs or the t-shirts of their younger, much smaller brothers with their new denim jeans. Wild flowers grow from any unpaved patch of dirt, springing up from between the cracks in the pavements and walls, in the brightest, happiest colors. This spring ritual of promenading without much on in Russia is undoubtedly a back lash from the months of not being able to feel attractive under the heavy winter clothes that one must wear to keep warm, indoors and out. In the warming weather people have a need to be noticed by those around them as opposed to everybody looking the same wrapped from head to toe to the point that even gender is sometimes not discernible through the layers. Gordost that afternoon was full with young couples enjoying the late April sunshine and making Russia look all the better for it! Only Tamara didn’t see it that way. Hans didn’t see anybody but Tamara.