Val Karren - The Deceit of Riches

Hans was annoyed. “Peter, this really isn’t a good time” he was giving signals with his face and head movements that I had buzzed him at just the wrong moment. He seemed to be in earnest.

“Hans, I really need to sleep here for the night,” I whispered from the shadow on the landing. “I”m in serious trouble and have no place else to go.”

“Peter, not now! Really, not now! Please just come back in two hours…,” he was insistent.

From behind him I heard a woman’s voice call out from the living room.

“Who’s there, Hansy?” it was Tamara.

“Nobody, Mein Schatz, just a drunk guy looking for his keys,’’ Hans replied and moved to close the door.

Without thinking I put my foot between the open door and the door frame before Hans could get the door on the latch. His reaction was one of shock and disbelief. His face took on a concerned look and he peered past me further into the dark stairwell.

“Hans, I really need your help! Please don’t close the door,” I said firmly. I didn’t push the door any further, but I did not remove my foot.

Our eyes met and we strained at each other’s glare for a few tense moments. To my relief his resistance gave way and the door opened a bit further and Hans waved me in with a defeated drop of his head and closed the door behind me. I glanced at Tamara’s bare legs and backside in the dark living room as she was picking up her clothes and dashed into the bedroom and slammed the door behind her.

“Peter, this had better be good!” He wheezed at me not wanting to raise his voice.

“Hans, thanks for letting me in. I’m sorry to interrupt, but I have no other safe place to hold up.”

I calmly explained to my friend, grateful that he didn’t send me away. “Listen, I was robbed, beaten, threatened with a pistol and had my apartment broken into and ransacked. I’m trying to get out of town but there is no train to Moscow tonight. I have to be out of Nizhniy by Monday morning so don’t worry, tomorrow I will be gone.”

“Why do you have to leave Nizhniy by Monday?” Hans was now looking worried.

“Listen, I don’t want to involve you any further than letting me sleep here tonight. Tomorrow I will be gone, by Monday I’ll fly away to the USA and won’t bother you anymore,” I explained.

“Look, Peter, you’re not a bother. It was just a bad moment. Come in. Do you need some tea?” he offered.

“I haven’t eaten all day. Do you have something I could eat too?” I had no pride left.

I woke with a start! The room was dark. I could hear a terrible commotion on the streets outside with blue lights flashing and reflecting off the glass of all the windows up and down the buildings on Minin street. I panicked and rushed to pull my shoes on. In the dark, I stumbled over the coffee table and landed hard on the floor on my left side and let out a yelp of pain. My eyes were pulsing in the dark searching for the shadows coming to deliver more blows as I struggled to get up. How did they find me? I was so careful! Holding my wounded left arm against my ribs I stood up again from a kneeling position and moved clumsily to the hallway. Hans stepped out and turned on the hallway light.

“Quick, turn those off!” I rasped at him emphatically.

The hall was quickly dark again.

“Hans, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry. I’ll get out before they figure out which apartment I am in. I won’t let them know where I was hiding!” I whispered in the dark.

“Peter, there’s a fire up the street. They aren’t coming to find you. Look, you can see the smoke and the fire from my bedroom window,” he said standing in his bedroom door.

I stood paralyzed with fear but felt the relief come quickly. My legs became limp and I felt that I would faint. I braced myself against a wall to catch my breath and equilibrium.

“Peter, go lay down. Everything is okay.” Hans sympathetically ordered.

The sirens of the fire trucks came wailing under our third-floor balcony as we stood in the warm night and watched the black smoke billowing up over the block. Down below the street was filling with students from the technical school dormitory across the street.

Hans yelled down to them. “Guys, guys! What’s burning?”

“The university building is burning! Come with us to help the fire fighters!” was the cry back from the group of students moving quickly together toward Minin Street.

Hans turned to go back in the apartment to find his clothes and shoes to go watch, if not help. As he stepped from the balcony into the living room, the pieces came together in my mind.

“Hans!” I called out. “It’s the Linguistics School. It’s the American Library! They’ve set fire to the American Library!” I felt my stomach sink. Guilt and shame came over me because of what I had brought on everybody due to my recklessness. How could I face the world again? Oh, God! Please don’t let there be any victims in this fire, I prayed in my sick, churning gut.

“You’d better stay here then, Peter! I’ll go check it out,” he yelled back to me from inside the apartment.

“No Hans! I’d better go before they find me here,” I cried.

“Sit your ass down! And don’t go anywhere until I get back!” he ordered me. I sat on the couch and cried quietly in fear and despair. How could I have let it get so far? What had I done? Why hadn’t I walked away earlier? The regrets and guilt piled on me like heavy bags of concrete. I hid my face in the couch and curled up, frightened for my life.

Hans woke me with a shake to my shoulders as the first day light was just visible through the balcony door. It was four-thirty. I had slept for about two hours.

“Peter, you were right. Somebody threw a Molotov cocktail through each window of the university building. It wasn’t an accidental fire.”

“It just couldn’t have been anything else!” I said blinking sleep from my eyes. I seemed to be in my right mind now after a night of hysterics. My eyes stung with fatigue and tears.

“Peter, you need to get out of town,” Hans confirmed what I already knew.

“Why? What has convinced you?” I pushed.

“On the front of the building they sprayed: Yankee Go Home!” Hans was embarrassed to tell me.

“Do you know if anybody was hurt?” I carefully asked.

“No, the place was empty. Nobody was found inside,” Hans confirmed.

“Oh good. That’s a huge load off my mind,” I sighed.

“They think the fire was done for political reasons…,” he reported.

“No, it’s not! They did it to destroy the CD database because they saw all the materials I was able to find out about them in just a few months. They are very, very nervous!” I felt the panic coming up again into my throat and my heart was thumping quickly again. I wanted to run!

“You gotta get out of here, Peter!” Hans reconfirmed.

“OK, I’ll get going, friend. Can you do one last favor for me, please? Will you go check up and down Minin Street if you see a black Lada with two goons sitting inside smoking?”

“There are so many people still in the street that I wouldn’t be able to tell who is who,” Hans commented.

“OK, I’ll just go quickly across Minin and head down the Upper Embankment toward the stairs and I’ll catch a cab from the river station to the train station. Maybe it’s too early for anybody else to be out and about.” I was lacing up my shoes as I was talking.

I gave Hans a firm, thankful handshake, picked up my backpack and bade him farewell and slipped out the door and on to the street. The air was rank with smoke and vapors. My nose and lungs burned and I jogged down the street and sprinted through the intersection at Minin street toward the river. I didn’t stop to look to see if the ‘British Knight’ was loitering around with his driver. I passed by Mr. P.’s residence at number eleven on the far side of the street; to my relief nothing more than the lights from his security office on the ground floor were burning. The house was still.