The Deceit of Riches Read online

  Hearing this I reflexively flung my backpack on to my bed and kicked the door closed with my left foot.

  Most cultures in eastern Europe have a paranoid fear of drafts or cross winds in a room. If a window is open and a door is left ajar at the same time, those in the room will yell “Current!” This translates loosely into English as “Close the door before you make us all sick!”

  Vitaly was immediately very curious. “You are American? Why do you come to Russia? We all want to go to America or Europe.”

  “I have lived in America, I have lived in England and now it’s time to visit Russia,” I replied without guile.

  “You are crazy! How did you learn to speak Russian?" he demanded to know.

  “I spent last summer working on the Volga boats as a translator for American tourists, and that is where I learned to speak real RUSSIAN,” I emphasized the word Russian with a local Volga accent —very heavy and very round on the vowels.

  “Where did you visit?" his questions were rapid fire.

  “Almost every little village between Moscow and Volgograd. I really like Yaroslavl and Nizhniy the best, but Volgograd is something special!”

  “Did you visit the little town Ilyanovsk nearby Saratov? I am from Ilyanovsk,” he proudly proclaimed.

  “No, we sailed past Ilyankovsk but stopped in Samara and Saratov,” I consoled him.

  “You speak very good Russian,” Vitaly remarked while jabbing my chest with an index finger in a friendly gesture of approval, “I think you might be a spy, maybe CIA?" He joked from one side of his mouth while suspicion rummaged around in his thoughts.

  “That’s all past tense now. Russia and America are friends now,” I rebutted.

  “No, Russia is being a lap dog, and America the boss, not friends. One day, Russia will bite back for sure,” Vitaly proclaimed with a big of arrogance.

  “I don’t know. I don’t think that one can stop the progress that has come and the changes already made will be very hard to turn back,” I commented as I started unpacking one of my backpacks.

  “America is happy now about Gorbachev and Yeltsin, letting them do whatever they like around the world, but America needs to worry about when the mafia takes over. That is when the real fighting begins! When the big mafia bosses want something, they’ll kill anybody to get it. Nothing matters to them except control and money. Did you not see the TV exposé special last week about it? We hardly know who is mafia and who is for Russia,” he blathered on.

  “Don’t you think democracy will fix that problem?” I remarked trying to brush him off.

  “Hallo, American boy!” Vitaly spoke in good spirit but seriously, “Russians don’t know yet how democracy works. Russian workers don’t know what capitalism is. We were taught that profits were for criminals until five years ago. Do you think everything has changed because we voted for Yeltsin? It will take too much time to fix. But do you know who already understands these situations? The criminals, because they lived outside the Soviet laws already for many years. They know how the world works and will be the first to figure out how to take over Russia, and maybe with lots of blood. Russians aren’t afraid of blood in the streets,” he continued on obviously already drunk.

  “C’mon, Vitaly,” I rebutted a bit annoyed at his pointless rambling, “Ivan the Terrible has been dead a long time. The modern world doesn’t work like that any longer!”

  “You tell that to Stalin! He is dead now only forty years. He killed more people that Ivan Groznovo. Stalin could come back. Some say he never died,” Vitaly raised his eyebrows for suspense. “Did you hear about what is going on in Moscow? The gangs are killing each other every day. One group wants to control the aluminum factories in Siberia, another wants the nickel mines in Murmansk, one group is fighting to control the ports and customs duties. The government isn’t able to do anything about it. Business men are being killed every day in Moscow! The government doesn’t do anything about it because they are all part of a secret group too, helping make it all legal by privatizing Russia’s black gold into their own hands. I stay out of politics and business. It’s too dangerous. I’ll be an engineer and build bridges and keep myself alive.”

  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.

  2. Valentina & Karamzin

  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 s
tudent’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.

  Arkadiy was an interesting character; A former Soviet air force intelligence officer who spoke and wrote English like no other Russian I had ever met, yet so subservient to Valentina Petrovna. He must have been stationed abroad in a Soviet embassy in an English speaking country. Was this the fate of ex-Soviet military officers: to be clerks in the newly organized foreign students’ offices around Russia? Whatever his story, he was my witness.

  With my tuition paid, that morning I was introduced to the heads of the two departments in which I would be studying: Dean Roman Sergeyevich Karamzin, the head of the History Faculty, and Professor Lyudmila Ivanovna Dashkova of the School of Pedagogy.

  Professor Dashkova, a plump middle-aged woman with thick curly black hair was a warm and encouraging mentor who corrected mistakes without chiding. Self-correction of grammar, mis-annunciation or an incorrect stress on a changing adjectival form would be congratulated with a warm smile from her round, rosy cheeks. She was a doting mother over her students, who absolutely loved reading and teaching the Russian classics — Pushkin, in particular, was her specialty and she evangelized the world with the virtues of his tales and poetry. For her, there was only one version of the Russian lexicon that was acceptable, and that was Pushkin’s! Street slang and foreign cognates were to her as abhorrent as margarine to a French pastry chef. Only the best ingredients went into our essays.

  In our initial meeting, Professor Dashkova spoke only Russian with me and asked open questions to make me speak and explain myself.

  “Young man, please tell me what motivated you to study Russian and Russian literature,” Lyudmila began.

  “Well, I think it all started because I was afraid of war between our countries,” my reply started the professor.

  “So you are here to study the language of the enemy?” she asked suspiciously.

  “No, just the opposite,” I gave a startled return to her accusation, “so that we don’t remain enemies!”

  “Oh, yes, I understand,” she seemed relieved yet a bit ruffled.

  “I started teaching myself how to read the Russian alphabet when I was sixteen years old, and for several years taught myself vocabulary and phrases and started trying to read lexicons - but that was too advanced for me to do on my own. Once I reached university level and could take proper courses from a Russian born professor I really started to love this language. I find it very expressive. I wish English had so many adjectives.”

  “Have you done much reading in the classics in your study?” she inquired.

  “Sorry, I only know the stereotypical Russian authors. Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky & Pushkin. I can understand Tolstoy’s writing if I really concentrate, but then I have to read a paragraph twice. I can’t follow Dostoyevskiy in English or Russian, but I love Pushkin’s short stories! They are so Russian and timeless. I feel I understand Russia so much better through Pushkin,” I expounded.

  “I too love Pushkin very much. I feel he was the true Russian writer who not only observed Russia, like Tolstoy but who accurately interpreted Russia and Russians. Tolstoy was too caught up in Russia’s relation to and with France and other European countries. Pushkin was focused fully on Russian matters. He was the original Russian writer,” she said with a sparkle in her eyes.

  “I look forward to reading more of his works. I only know a very few,” I admitted.

  “And so we shall, and so we shall,” Ludmilla confirmed.

  “Your Russian skills seem to be excellent. Both your grammar is very careful and accurate, your accent is very good, and your vocabulary seems to have good depth. But I notice you do not use idioms and expressions. You speak very literally.” Her analysis intrigued me.

  “You don’t think or dream in Russian yet, do you?” she inquired.

  “No, not yet,” I conceded.

  “Well, if we put your nose into Pushkin a few hours every day, we can change that,” she smiled and made some notes in her notebook. “The more you read Pushkin, the more you will speak and write like Pushkin. So we will focus heavily on reading the classics and essay writing. Your conversation skills are excellent, you don’t seem to miss many details. Much of this work will be self-study so you will have to motivate and discipline yourself. Try to speak with people of all different kinds while you’re here. Old people speak differently than students. Lawyers speak differently than a worker from one of the aut
omobile factories. You will do well to speak more than listen to lectures.” She rattled these instructions off like a pharmacist giving instructions for the careful use of dispensed medicines. “And in April we will do a pre-test for the entrance exams to the Moscow State University, the MGU, and in June I expect that you will pass that proficiency exam. When you do that you will be eligible to study in Moscow if you wish,” she explained with proxy excitement.

  Dean Karamzin was a man larger than life! A life loving Russian academic with a head of thick dark hair and endless historical facts, dates, and allusions to historical events. His booming voice from his barrel chest could be heard through the entire lecture hall without a microphone. This was the case when speaking to sheepish students in history lectures or with a hall filled with arguing intellectuals. The Dean was in a very good mood when I met him for the first time in his office on Minin Square.

  “It is exciting to have a foreign student come to earn a Master’s degree in history and not to study just poems and grammar!” the Dean seemed to frown on the touchy feely disciplines and expressed his preference for dates and facts.

  “Thank you, sir. It is surely a unique chance for me as well to be here, learning first hand instead of just reading other people’s research from the other side of the ocean,” I remarked.

  “Indeed, indeed! So, what part of Russia’s history interests you. Do you have a proposal for a thesis yet?” he asked with what seemed to be a tinge of glee.

  “Well, the current events are what truly interests me. As you know history is being rewritten from the Soviet version to Russian version right now and I wouldn’t know what is acceptable or even real to research. Current events seem to be the only thing a student can see is really true.”

  “You speak the truth about our bad habit of changing our histories to suit our politics, but remember that nothing in Russia is ever as it looks on the surface, even what you read tomorrow in the newspaper. You will need to research for yourself to get to the truth.” He warned me with a chiding voice.