MOSCOW, June 13, 2005 – Today is “Russia Day.” The holiday started under Yeltsin as “Independence Day,” but there were a lot of jokes about what Russia had declared its independence from, and now it has become simply “Day of Russia.” The main thing is that everybody gets another day at their dacha.
I woke Zhorik up yesterday at the appointed 11, and we struck out to get his bus ticket after first taking 500 bucksi out of the Raiffeisen ATM. The dollar is now rising – it’s worth about half a ruble more than it was a couple of months ago -- so I didn’t want to take it out of my pension dollar account in BankAmerica.
We drank a couple of cocktails to get started on our main activity of the day – “bukhat,” getting shit-faced – and then came back to Belarusskaya Metro Station and found a jewelry store. He was “yo-blah” – “fuckin’ A” – about getting a gold chain, which we opted for when he didn’t like the malachite ring. We found one that we both liked for a little less than $ 100, and he was ecstatic. “I had one when I was five, but I lost it, and this is the first one I’ve had since.”
It seems I’m the only one who has given him a graduation present, though his sister Anya has promised him one, and his father has promised him a trip to the Black Sea, but I don’t see how Valentin, who is still recovering from his gallstone operation and can’t work, is going to manage that.
Anyway, he was bubbling with excitement and happiness, and we spent another two hours on “our bench” drinking our favorite cocktails – “Street” and “Red Devil.” He again professed his undying love and appreciation. When the local BOMZHI started hitting on us for money, we moved inside.
While we were sitting at the kitchen table, he took a phone call from Nastya. I heard them agreeing to meet. “Don’t invite her here,” I said quietly. They agreed to meet someplace at 5. When he hung up, he asked me what was going on.
Friday night, when student Masha came for her lesson, she left her purse in the entryway, as usual. Twice when I went out in the hall to get a book or to check on something, Nasty Nastya was there, blandly combing her hair or sitting placidly on the entry bench.
Denis was asleep, so she left soon after alone and without any fanfare. When Masha finished her lesson and went to get the money out of her purse, 700 of the 900 rubles she had put there that morning were gone! Somebody had apparently taken 700, but left 200, perhaps thinking she wouldn’t notice it if there was still some money left.
While Masha agonized about where and how the money could have disappeared, all I could see was Nastya’s vacant face staring into the mirror as she interminably combed her hair or sat like a bleached blonde knot on the entry bench.
Masha promised to pay me when she returns Friday night.
I said nothing to her about my suspicions, but when Denis woke up, I asked him, “What do you know about Nastya?”
“Not much. I haven’t known her long.”
I told him about the missing money. “Is it possible she might have taken it?”
“It’s possible. I don’t know that much about her.”
That was all I needed to hear. I was expecting him to gallantly defend her non-existent honor. Instead, he shrugs his shoulders and says, “it’s possible.”
“Then I don’t want her here again!”
He agreed.
I related the story to Zhorik. He was pretty well into his cups by then, and he was furious. “Nobody can take money from my dedushka,” he declared. Furthermore, she had hit him up for several hundred rubles that I had given him, which he couldn’t spare, but did anyway because she needed them.
“How can somebody accept someone’s hospitality and then steal from them?” he demanded. I reminded him that I wasn’t certain the thief was Nastya. Masha could have lost it or had it stolen someplace else.
But he was persistent: “I’m going to find out what happened” when they met at 5.
His bus was to leave at 7 from Komsomolskaya Metro Station. When we had bought the ticket yesterday morning, we had agreed that we would leave the apartment at 6 p.m. in order to have plenty of time. Unfortunately, when he and Denis left to meet Nastya, I didn’t remind him of this.
I immediately lay down for a nap. When I woke at 6, I was still alone. As I continued to watch “Woman of the Year” on TCM’s classic movie channel, the clock rolled on to 6:15, then then to 6:30. At 6:45, I was resigned – resigned is too negative a word given my ethereal experience yesterday morning – I realized that Zhorik would almost certainly spend another night here, and we’d have to buy another ticket today.
Just at that moment, they arrived. Zhorik had looked at his train ticket by mistake, and his alcohol-blurred brain told him the bus left at 7:45. He found his real bus ticket. 7 p.m. It was now 6:47.
“You’ll never make it in 13 minutes,” I said.
“Well, let’s try anyway,” Zhorik said, grabbing his bag.
“I won’t go with you,” I said. “I’d just slow you down.” I hugged him tightly and we kissed each other on the mouth.
About 7:30 Andrei called again from Stavropol. “Did Zhorik catch his bus?”
“I don’t know. He was late leaving, but he hasn’t returned, so I think he did. I’ll SMS you when I find out.”
He reiterated his plans to come to Moscow – “maybe day after tomorrow.”
I’ll be delighted to see him. I just hope he’s not coming after more money. If so, I’m going to be a hard nose.
Denis didn’t return until about 2:30 this morning. “Did Zhorik make it?”
“Yes, everything’s okay. The bus was about 10 minutes late leaving.”
Thank god, I breathed. I stayed awake long enough to have sex, but I couldn’t come again after my fantasy with Zhorik yesterday morning – or maybe I’d just had too much “bukhat.”
So I still don’t know what happened in the meeting with Nasty.
Kreutz called about 8 and asked if he could come by. He arrived a few minutes later with the most recent issues of Golf magazine and a request: “I want to buy my own room in Moscow. It’s a really nice room at Krasnaya Vorota in the center of Moscow. If possible, could you lend me $ 500 till August? I’ll pay you interest.”
I told him I’d do some figuring and let him know in a day or two. After giving Zhorik $ 500 yesterday for transportation, to pay for his international passport, living expenses, and to buy a new mobile phone, I’ve got $ 2363 left in Raiffeisen and a little less than $ 1000 in BankAmerica, or a total of about 3300. After 700 for rent and 300 for Denis this week, that will cut it back to $ 2300 +, and I’m due to earn about $ 700 from teaching this week, so I think I can afford it. What I can’t afford is to give Andrei more money. How am I going to handle any possible requests?
I will have to simply tell him no.
One of my favorite places in Moscow has been a tiny English book shop hidden away in a basement not far from Pavelyetskaya Metro Station called Shakespeare & Co. I was introduced to it by a former EE colleague, and immediately fell in love with it. It had a good selection of new books and an excellent selection of used books.
I went there seldom, because an armload of books, while relatively cheap, would still set me back 75 or 100 bucksi, which wasn’t peanuts. But on my occasional visits I found there some fascinating books: Russka, an illuminating historical novel tracing a handful of Russian families back to the 2nd century A.D.; John Cheever’s Wapshot Chronicles; Queer Noise, a recent history of gay influence in music; UFO Chronicles of the Soviet Union, a fascinating account of Russian UFO sitings dating back to one in 1663 described in detail by a monastic order; a remarkable memoir of a ballerina who had danced with Nijinsky for Diaghilev; and others.
Thus I was deeply saddened when I read the following account in the Moscow Times by Mary Duncan, the bookstore’s owner, noting that “Yukos was not the only business to be destroyed by Russia’s legal system and corrupt bureaucrats.”
‘You’ll be run out by the mafia. No one has money for imported American books, employees will steal, and bureaucrats will extort bribes until you have to close,’ they warned. Of all the dire warnings, only the last one was true.
Mafia elements were never a problem. Our kryshka, our “roof,” as protection is referred to in Russia, was a middle-aged Moscow bank director who loved Kurt Vonnegut. While purchasing books one day, he handed me several of his business cards and said, “If you have any problems with the local protection mafia, give them one of these and ask them to call me.” During the next few weeks, we gave out three cards.
From that time on, no one from the criminal elements bothered us.
Our staff proved to be an asset, not a liability. The multilingual Russian college students we employed were paid a dollar an hour, a good salary at the time. Instead of stealing from us, they would bring in cookies for the customers.
Since we’d renovated the rat- and roach-infested basement that was next to my partner’s existing book businesses, the rent was low. Our electricity wasn’t metered. Charges were based on our space, 65 square meters, not on how much electricity we used. And the Yeltsin-era bureaucrats, such as the local policeman and the building inspector, only bothered us for $ 25 to $ 50 per month in bribes.
Then things changed. We survived a court battle with our landlord. We survived the financial crisis of 1998, when thousands of foreigners and numerous Western businesses left Moscow. Shakespeare and Co. struggled and survived that crisis by buying and selling used books.
But we didn’t survive the election of President Vladimir Putin. Within a month of his inauguration in 2000, new, slickly dressed city officials claimed our sign did not conform to proper standards, our wiring was a fire hazard and our paperwork was incomplete. Fifty-dollar fines escalated to $ 1,500….
…Our sign still hangs outside. But our store, like Yukos, is only a ghost of what it once was. Fortunately, we weren’t big enough to share Mikhail Khodorkovsky’s fate.
Financially, I broke even. And as we say in California, the psychic rewards far outweighed the monetary gains: valuable experience, many new friends and the pride of having owned a thriving literary bookstore.
But I do have advice for anyone contemplating opening a business in Russia: Until Russia changes its legal system and stems the tide of bribes and corruption, only invest what you can afford to lose.
Unfortunately, that won’t be in Putin’s Administration – and maybe never, unless by some miracle a Georgia-style velvet revolution succeeds, and the new leader makes the kind of head-on onslaught against the entrenched thoroughly corrupt bureaucracy that Saakshavili undertook.
My good friend Andrei Y. several months ago started his own school here. He has a couple of times mentioned his problem with bribing the bureaucrats, but I haven’t talked to him recently. I don’t know if he’s surviving in this quicksand of curruption. I must get together with him soon and get his latest version of the Moscow small business nightmare.
In the meantime, I’ll miss my occasional but treasured visits to Shakespeare & Co.
All’s not well that doesn’t end well.
