Val Karren: The Deceit of Riches

Another roommate spoke up, Murat from Kazakstan, “He’s been drinking too much! Don’t listen to him. He always drinks too much. It’s the Chechens and Uzbeks we all have to watch out for. They’ll cut your throat while you sleep and drink your blood.”

“Ohh!” Vitaly cried foul, “How can a good Russian share a room with all foreigners and not tell them how the world is? Russia may be down right now, but that’s because we let in too many foreigners. Russia will come back strong again, just like after the war. We just have to get it together. We need a strong man, one who doesn’t drink vodka and can speak without drooling in the microphone. That drunk Yeltsin will get us all killed!” he spouted off further.

We all looked at each other a bit unsure of what to say. Criticising the sitting president was not a good way for a student in Russia to start the year and hope to keep his scholarship. Seeing our discomfort, Vitaly grinned the toothy grin of a patient and visionary avenger and then offered me a very warm bottle of beer and toasted me, “…but for now, …we will be friends! Na zdaroviya!” and he then chugged the rest of his oversized bottle in one breath.

Just a few minutes later Vitaly was snoring on his bottom bunk across from me, stinking of beer and body odor. I turned to the wall and tried my best to sleep.

Early the following morning after a less than satisfying shower and a light breakfast of borrowed tea and dry bread from the breakfast nook in my room, I went to meet Valentina Petrovna and Arkadiy, her secretary, who would accompany me to the university’s accounting office to hand over my tuition fees in hard currency. I had been instructed to pay this money in cash on arrival because a wire transfer to a local account was not a possibility. Money, when sent on a wire, to or from Russia, seemed to disappear more often than not. Banks were no longer safe places to put one’s money as nobody was quite sure when the next bank would collapse under bad debt or large-scale embezzlements. Hard currency in the hand is what the people trusted. To get that much cash required an advance from the Inkombank on Varavara Street where Visa and MasterCard were an honored foreign currency.

The morning was cold and still. Steam rose straight up into the frozen morning’s stratosphere. My breath crystallized as I exhaled. A fresh carpet of midnight snow hid the muddy imperfections of urban living and hushed the traffic on the wide boulevard in front of the campus. We shuffled through the fresh ankle-deep powder to the alley behind the administration building and climbed into the back of a waiting gray mini-bus with large knobby tires. There were no windows nor seats, only hard wooden benches along the walls with handgrips in place of seat belts. The bus hurdled violently over the ruts and bumps of frozen potholes or snow and ice. The three of us in the back braced ourselves with hands and legs to keep and heads from hitting the roof of the bus. The trolleybus would have been more comfortable but Valentina Petrovna insisted that we take the university’s van and driver out of “an abundance of caution” because of the amount of cash I needed to carry back to the school. It seemed to me that everybody was over-concerned about the local propensity for street crime. In hindsight though, perhaps it was the bankers, not the hooligans, that made the locals so nervous — and for good reason!

Confusion reigned when our small party of three entered the accounting offices at the school’s administration building. The clerks looked like startled sloths when we walked in. Nobody acknowledged us as we quietly closed the door behind us. There was no more than a glance and certainly no movement or knowing looks in our direction. After half a minute went by in near silence, a tension began to rise in the room. One could sense a concerted effort to be as nonchalant as possible. Something seemed very wrong.

“Young man!” Valentina blurted dramatically as if reading lines from a play, “As arranged we are here to pay this student’s study fees in foreign valuta.”

After some glancing around and shifting in his chair he replied. “That’s not possible, ma’am.”

Valentina insisted again. “I was told we could deposit this money here today,” She seemed to be putting on an act.

The clerk reaffirmed his position with an argument. “The university cannot deposit cash. We have no way to receive foreign currency,” he explained.

Valentina Petrovna turned to me and said in English, assuming I didn’t understand her conversation with the clerk, “Please give him your money and show him your receipt from the bank from this morning. He is afraid to accept the money not knowing its source.”

I reached for my passport and my wallet from inside my coat while looking questioningly at the impotent accountant, looking for an approving nod or a step forward that didn’t come. His face was blank. He stood looking at Valentina as I slowly walked to his desk and gave him my documents and the receipt, but not yet the money. He obviously couldn’t read them. He quickly glanced over them and handed the items back to me with a shrug and a blank expression as if to say ‘What is going on here?’ I stepped away without producing the fifteen bank notes in my other pocket.

“Valentina, he doesn’t know what to do with the money,” I stated the obvious.

She looked frustrated and flustered like an actor who had forgotten her lines.

I turned and addressed the clerk directly. “Tell me, please, if we exchanged these dollars into rubles, could the University accept the cash then?”

“Nyet, our office does not have access to a bank account. We transfer credits given to us by the administration and the government. Nobody pays with cash for education in Russia,” the clerk explained further.

“Mr. Turner please stay out of this matter. I will arrange this,” Valentina huffed again in English.

“Well, it seems we should be doing this differently, isn’t this so my friend?” I turned again to the statuesque clerk, hoping for a suggestion of alternate solution from him.

“Mr. Turner please give me the money and the receipt and I will work this out.”

I gave the envelope and receipt to Valentina who then placed it deliberately on the clerk’s desk.

“Please put this money in the safe, young man, and I will work out the acceptance of this money with the university’s director later this afternoon,” she instructed.

I watched as my tuition money was locked in a thick cast iron box with a large jagged key which the clerk took from an unlocked desk drawer.

“So much for an abundance of precaution,” I commented to Valentina, mocking her with sarcasm which she didn’t grasp at that moment. I had my doubts that my money would ever be seen in the accounts of the university.

I was quiet for the ten-minute ride back to the Gagarin Street building and dormitories trying to take in just exactly what had happened, but Valentina interrupted my thoughts to chide me again. “Mr. Turner. Please remember that you are a foreigner. People in our city are not used to dealing with foreigners. There are ways to do things in Russia and ways NOT to do things. To exchange so much money would draw attention and you could become a target. Please just focus on your studies and let the university take care of such matters.”

“Very well then, Valentina. I trust my money will be received and I can study then?” I poked the proverbial bear to hear her response, as my suspicions had been peaked by the display and act in the accounting office.

“Arkadiy is our witness that your money was deposited with the university,” she motioned to Arkadiy who was already nodding with a docile smile on his face.